Death on Lindisfarne (26 page)

“I've been an idiot! I put that down to her bipolar disorder. It never occurred to me that she might have come face to face with the very people who abused her. No wonder she ran away that evening!”

“And if she recognized them, they probably recognized
her
. She must have changed, but the name was still the same. They would have had every reason to silence her, before she told anyone what they did.”

Aidan gave a great start. She saw the horror in his eyes.

“God forgive me! I've left Melangell with them!”

L
UCY WAS THE MORE NATURAL RUNNER
, but fear drove Aidan's feet.

They were nearing the house when Lucy drew level with his shoulder and panted, “It's all right. They won't do anything to her. They'll want to stay inconspicuous.”

But all Aidan could see was the pleading look on Melangell's face, Frances's restraining hand clamped on her shoulder.

How old had Rachel been in that children's home, when no one but Karen would believe what had been done to her?

Foolishly, he clutched in his mind the image of the sitting room at St Colman's just before he had left it. Melangell stretched out on the floor. Elspeth attacking her task with hilarity. Valerie choosing her colours carefully. Frances filling in the outlines with exaggerated care. David more truculent.

He burst in. The sitting room was empty. Someone had tidied away the felt-tip pens and the colouring sheets, and stacked them neatly on a coffee table. There was no sign of Melangell.

Lucy held his arm firmly. “There's no need to panic yet. Maybe they're in the garden. Or they've gone for a walk.”

Aidan dashed upstairs. Melangell was not in her room. Peter emerged from his bedroom next door.

“Have you seen Melangell?”

“Sorry.”

He flew downstairs. His feet sped him through the garden door. Tendrils of mist dampened the wooden tables and chairs. Lucy was already there, looking around her. Her face was graver now.

He saw a light on through a gap in the curtains of Elspeth and Valerie's room and pounded on the door.

It was Valerie who answered. She looked, tight-lipped, over his shoulder at Lucy. “Yes?”

“Where's Melangell? Have you seen her? Or the Cavendishes?”

Elspeth strode forward to stand behind her friend. “You missed the excitement.”

Blood seemed to crawl through Aidan's body, as though time had been slowed down. He could hardly get the words out. “What happened?”

“That Ince woman. Rachel's mother. After we'd packed up the kiddie colouring stuff, we found her lurking in the garden, Val and I. She grabbed my arm and asked for Lucy. Kept looking round her, as if she was terrified of something. Then out came the Cavendishes, with your Melangell in tow. The woman gave one look at them, let out a sort of scream and fled.”

“What did the Cavendishes do? Do they still have Melangell?” He was almost dancing on his feet, with a desperate urge to run after them. To find them somehow.

Elspeth shrugged. “Search me. You left her with them.”

Valerie said more kindly, “They stopped dead when they saw Rachel's mother. You could tell from their faces it was a shock. Why? Was there something between them? I didn't see what happened after Karen ran. We went into our room.”

Aidan dashed to the next chalet bedroom and hammered on the Cavendishes' door. There was no reply.

When he turned, Lucy was already on her mobile. She was recounting the details crisply to someone. He assumed it must be the police.

She looked up as Aidan met her eyes. “I've called out the coastguards. They'll start a missing person search. I hope to goodness they don't find the Cavendishes doing a bit of harmless shopping, or I'll have egg on my face. No, sorry, Aidan! I
do
hope that's what they'll find. But I've warned them what we suspect: that they could be dealing with a pair of murderers. They just need to locate them and hold back. I'm going to call in the police to make the arrest.”

She was back on her phone.

He felt an enormous thankfulness for her capability. It was incredible that she could be so strong and decisive only hours after an attack on her life. His own heart was pounding.

“What's up?” Peter had suddenly materialized behind them.

“It's Karen,” Lucy said briefly. “I'm pretty sure she believes the Cavendishes killed Rachel.”

She turned her attention back to her mobile. “…Yes, the causeway's closing any time now… Aidan!” She swung round on him. “Was the Cavendishes' 4x4 still outside?”

She must have seen the alarm in his face as he sped back through the house.

There were only three cars left: Lucy's VW, Mrs Batley's Ford, and the elderly Bentley Elspeth and Valerie had arrived in. For the first time, Aidan cursed his last-minute impulse to walk across the sands and leave himself on the island without a car.

When he got back to the garden with his news, the other four were consulting earnestly.

“The police are on their way,” Lucy assured him. “They'll have to use the lifeboat. The helicopter can't operate until this fog clears.”

“But if the Cavendishes' car has gone, they could already be off the island!” Aidan was almost bursting with impatience.

“Why would they take Melangell?” Valerie asked. “It would only make things more difficult for them.”

“I don't think it's Melangell they're after,” said Lucy. “It's Karen. They'll think she's the only one who knows what this is all about. They don't know she's already told me what Rachel said about them as a child. That they were abusing the children in their care.”

“Then where's Melangell?” Aidan protested. “What's happened to her?”

Lucy took command of the situation. “Show me,” she ordered Elspeth and Valerie. “Where did you see Karen go?”

The two women looked at each other.

“She'd come out of those bushes at the back of the garden,” Elspeth said. “And dived back in there when she saw the Cavendishes.”

“Did they go after her? Are you sure you didn't see anything before you went indoors?”

“As far as I remember, they stood stock still, as if they'd had a shock,” Valerie volunteered. “They sort of looked at each other, as though they didn't know what to do. I'm sorry. That's really all I saw. It seemed too rude to stand and stare at them.”

“Right,” Lucy decided. “Show me where Karen went.”

The five of them plunged into the thick screen of bushes at the back of Mrs Batley's garden. Aidan, not surprisingly, was ahead of the others.

He gave a sudden cry.

Lucy's heart pounded in alarm. She was at his side in seconds.

“Here,” he showed her. “Someone's broken through the hedge into the field.”

A horizontal branch of the beech hedge had been snapped. Smaller twigs were bent aside. The ground was littered with fallen leaves.

She squeezed through after Aidan. The meadow beyond sloped gently down towards the big car park on the outskirts of the village. The further edges of the field were lost in fog. Nothing moved on it in the gloom but sheep.

“Look here!” Aidan cried.

Not far from the gap, two high-heeled white shoes lay thrown on the grass.

Lucy thought rapidly. “If they came after her, Karen might still have got away. Without those ridiculous shoes, she's probably quicker on her feet than the Cavendishes.”

“Would she have realized she was in that much danger?”

“I'm sure now she believed they killed Rachel to keep her quiet. That's what she was trying to tell me. So yes, she's intelligent enough to know she's almost as much a danger to them as her daughter was.”

“But if they chased after Karen, why take Melangell? Why not just leave her behind?”

She saw the anguish in his face.

“I'm sorry. I've got no answer to that.”

The others had pushed through the hedge behind them. Lucy turned to them.

“Elspeth and Valerie. Go back to the village. Find out if Karen's there. Or if anyone's seen her or the Cavendishes and Melangell. Peter, there's a footpath that goes across the middle of the island. Check that. Aidan –” she read in his eyes the desperate need to do something active – “I've asked the police to put out a check on the mainland for the Cavendishes' car.”

“We don't know the number. Unless it's in Mrs Batley's register.”

“Trust me, I memorized it. Old habits die hard. A red Honda CR-V. But if they lost time chasing Karen, they'll still be on the island. The causeway's closed now. It's my belief their first priority will be to silence Karen if they can. We need to find them.”

He was already breaking into a run back towards the garden. “They'll almost certainly have seen her running away. If they couldn't catch her up, all they had to do was get in their car and overtake her at the end of this field. We have to find that Honda.”

“My car,” Lucy panted. “You're right. They have to be here. There's no way off now.”

They raced back through the bushes, across the lawn, into St Colman's small car park at the front of the house. Lucy clicked her key and lights flashed from her car. Aidan leaped into the passenger seat. Lucy swung the car out onto the road.

She sped down the slight slope to the public car park. There were more vehicles than she had expected. People had crossed the causeway earlier that morning, to spend the day on Holy Island. The tide would be down again mid-afternoon.

No figures moved among the parked cars.

Her heart wrenched at the look on Aidan's face. She swung her gaze around, searching for the bulk of the red 4x4.

She reeled off the registration number. “It's a pretty distinctive car. I always wondered why a couple like them would want an off-road vehicle. But it means they could have driven across the dunes to that beach where you found Rachel's body. Anyway, it shouldn't take us long to find, if it's here.”

Aidan sped away. Lucy checked in the opposite direction. In a couple of minutes they were back at Lucy's car. She knew the answer by Aidan's face.

“You said they could drive over the dunes. Could they have chased her that way? Do you think they took Melangell with them?”

A grim picture was forming in Lucy's mind. If Melangell knew now what the Cavendishes had done to Rachel, and might, even now, be doing to Karen, what about the child? Might they devise a scenario that would make it look as if Karen was responsible for her own death and Melangell's?

She dared not say this to Aidan.

“There's only one way to find out. We'll drive as far down the road as the tide will let us.”

Below the car park, the road swung abruptly seawards. They reached the corner at Chare Ends, where the Pilgrims' Way across the sands made landfall. All Aidan could see now was the beginning of the line of posts that marked the route, looming up out of the grey water, until they were lost in the mist.

“Blow!” Lucy said as she rounded the corner. “I'd forgotten this next bit of road was below the high tide mark. But we can make it a bit further, if you're game. It's not over the tarmac yet.”

Aidan was leaning forward. His eyes were groping through the patchy fog ahead. There was no sign of another vehicle.

“Why would they come this way? Wouldn't Karen be safer running back to the village?”

“We'd have met them on our way back to St Colman's if she had. Their car's gone. There are only two choices. There's just this one road. It has to be this way.”

Aidan tore his eyes away from the water lapping ever closer to the surface of the road. He looked at the sandy flats on the inland side, pooled with water after last night's tide. To their right, beyond a fence, rough grass faded into the mist.

“They might just have made a run for it, before the causeway closed. Taken a risk on Karen. After all, you said nobody believed her the first time.”

“It wasn't a murder enquiry then.”

They drove on. Lucy's phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket and handed it to Aidan. “Take that, would you?”

A male voice spoke in his ear. “Miss Pargeter? Northumbria Police.”

Aidan's grip tightened on the phone. “She's driving. Can I take a message? I'm Aidan Davison. Is this to do with Rachel Ince and the Cavendishes?”

A hesitation. A thought raced through Aidan's mind. This could be nothing to do with Rachel's death. What about that murderous attack on Lucy last night?