‘Leech. Stand up.’ Leech did so. ‘Leech, go and get the other scythe. Behind me on the wall, hanging up. Go and get it.’ Leech seemed relieved to be given instructions, and obeyed. Sara heard a clatter and rasp as the scythe came off the wall and the shuffle as he returned to the camp bed where he stood, scythe in hand.
‘What’s going on?’ she whispered. ‘What about the rye?’
Ivan said, ignoring her, ‘Remember the Jap lady, Leech? See? He doesn’t. Remember the little Jap lady you lifted over the hedge so she could get to the towpath?’
Leech was nodding mechanically, without recognition.
‘He doesn’t remember. But she took photographs of the rye to show her husband. Very serious, you see. She wanted his opinion. She was prepared to meet him to tell him, even though she’d left him. Because an ergot outbreak is a natural disaster and we must be quite, quite sure before we go burning crops and raising the alarm, mustn’t we?’
‘She knew? She told you?’
‘Of course she did. She didn’t have to go into detail. I know enough pharmacology to know what ergot does, once she pointed out it was all over the rye.’
‘But what do you mean? You’re making a mistake. You must be ill.’
‘Leech could tell you, if he had any sense, which he doesn’t, of course. He doesn’t mind me saying, do you,
Leech? Leech? Leech, come on, you’ll do anything for me, won’t you? See your sleeping bag there, Leech? I want you to cut it up. Now. Go on. Cut it up with the scythe, like I tell you. Just do it, Leech.’
Leech wavered, whimpering, looking from Ivan to Sara. She said, as gently as she could, ‘Don’t, Leech. You don’t have to. It’s all right, don’t get upset.’
Leech lifted the scythe and began slicing. The blade split the fabric like skin and white clouds of stuffing escaped. Ivan sniggered.
Sara turned her eyes away and tried again to free her arm from Ivan’s grip. She said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove. Mrs Takahashi didn’t find ergot on the rye at all, did she?’
‘Of course she did! You’re nearly as stupid as Leech. And she’s desperate to tell her husband. All I had to do was tell her he rang on Friday night after she was asleep to tell her to meet him at 9.00 instead of 12.30. And then I bike it in along the towpath, find her outside the RPS and tell her there’s been another phone message and she’s to meet him outside Photo-Kwik instead, so they can develop the pictures she’s taken to show him. And of course I can show her a little shortcut. We used to supply herbs to that place, you know, before it was the Snake and Ladder. Side entrance in the alley always open, first thing.’
‘Let me go, please. Please.’ Sara looked round desperately. Under the stark light the bags of rye sat on the table and Leech whimpered from his bed like an unhappy dog.
‘Isn’t nature wonderful? A lovely organic way of wiping out my father’s fucking clinic and his fucking reputation. Sad really, she didn’t deserve it. But my father deserves to lose his fucking patients and his fucking clinic. You know
he lies to his patients? He fakes tests and lies to them. And you know he’s impregnated my fucking wife?
My
wife!’ Ivan’s voice had risen and now carried the screech of a guilty, thwarted child’s defensive zeal to be understood. Tears of rage were running down the baby face.
Sara’s legs were trembling wildly. Her voice, when she tried to speak, was lost in gulps of panic because the diminishing portion of her mind that was still rational was telling her, almost detachedly, that she was being told these things because Ivan was confident that she would not have an opportunity to repeat them.
‘That’s nonsense. Absolute nonsense. As if your own father would—’
‘He did! The pair of them have been at it for months, to get her knocked up! It’s just the kind of thing they’d do, they’re shits! Alex Cooper heard them at it—oh of course she didn’t realise, she thought it was Yvonne! But I knew who it had to be! I
knew
!’
Sara’s voice was remarkably slow and calm. ‘You bloody fool. Oh no, it wasn’t Yvonne. Maybe it wasn’t
anybody
. Maybe Alex Cooper made the whole thing up, can’t you see? Your father turned her down. Maybe that’s why she left, because she came on to him and he turned her down. She was just spreading her bit of poison before she went. Maybe it made her feel better. She fooled you.’
‘That’s a fucking lie! A fucking lie! My father—my
father
—’ Ivan’s mouth twisted on the word, ‘he never kicked anybody out of bed in his life! He had it coming! It would have got them all in the end, except for stupid fucking Warwick and his butter. I was mad when Hilary told me about his butter. I had to go and look it up. It’s the vitamin D in butter, it stops the ergot working, did you find
that out, you smart-arsed bitch? So I took direct action with Warwick, on a nice busy day when the place was full of strangers.’
‘Ivan, I don’t believe you. You’re making up some awful story and I don’t know why, please let go of me …’
‘Interesting about the vitamin D, don’t you think? I’d forgotten it’s in butter. That’s why my father wasn’t ill, he takes vitamin tablets. So he was just sitting on his well-toned arse in his fucking clinic watching them die. That was so funny. And he couldn’t do a thing about it. That clinic’s not really his anyway, it was my money as much as his, my
mother’s
money. Then you come along talking about ergot and compensation, you bitch. Nobody else had a clue.’
‘But Leech does, now,’ Sara said, softly. Her eyes were burning into Leech, willing him to make a run for it. But he did not move his gaze from the open door.
Ivan snorted scornfully and turned the scythe slowly in the air. ‘Leech comes in very useful. Warwick is killed and Leech disappears, and later, when he’s found dead, everyone will think it was Leech. Because when we arrived here, or so I will say, Leech leapt on us with the scythe. He injured me first.’
Slowly he drew the scythe down along the outside of his thigh. The denim fell open; blood seeped out of the sliced flesh. He shifted his weight on to his other leg, panting. Then he cut again. And again. He swallowed hard and gave a deep, groaning sigh which Sara thought, sickened, was one of relief. Although tears were running down his cheeks, his wincing face wore a smile of gratification.
‘Oh, bloody painful. Bad business. But eventually, of course, I manage to overpower Leech and get the scythe
from him, which I use to defend myself, unfortunately killing him. But not before he’s hacked you to bits, tragically. A frenzied attack, the third person he’s killed, do you see? Bad business.’
‘But, Ivan, I don’t know what you mean,’ Sara managed to say. ‘Ivan, listen.’ She could hardly bear to look at him. His face was twisted with the effort of speaking through his pain. Blood poured from the three wounds on his leg. ‘Listen to me. You know none of this is true, don’t you? Ivan …’
Something she had heard about using a person’s name to reduce tension swam into her brain. ‘Ivan, just stop a minute. I’ve got this all wrong, so have you. The rye—the rye over there on the table. I looked at it. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s perfectly okay. It’s clean.’
Ivan snorted and adjusted his grip, glanced at the rye and back at Sara’s face.
‘Honestly, it’s not contaminated, that’s what I was trying to show you. There’s nothing wrong with it. Honestly, I swear, it’s perfectly all right.’
She was wide-eyed, bewildered, terrified. ‘Ivan, I’ve made some sort of awful mistake, jumping to stupid conclusions. It’s because I’m so upset about James, I suppose. I wanted some kind of reason for it. Only please, let me go.’
Ivan stared at her distrustfully. He did not let go.
‘I’ve just grabbed at an explanation and it’s wrong. The rye’s fine. Go and look.’
Still he did not let go. Sara tried again. ‘You’ve done the same thing, jumped to the wrong conclusions, made up all that stuff and got us all scared for nothing. Come on, let me go. Leech wants you to as well. There’s no need for
this. Let me go. I promise you, look at the rye and you’ll see for yourself. It’s fine. Whatever made people ill it certainly wasn’t the rye. The rye’s fine. You can just sell the clinic and put all this behind you.’
Leech’s whimpering had stopped and he was gazing past Ivan into the darkness beyond the open door. It was impossible to tell whether he stared with longing, hopelessness, or complete insensibility.
‘Leech, come here,’ Ivan shouted. ‘Come here, you stupid bastard. Cut her. Cut her, Leech. With the scythe. Go on!’
Leech raised the scythe and grunted as he lurched forward. His eyes were wild with incomprehension. He swung the scythe once, whined in desperation and let it fall back to his side. He looked at Sara blankly.
‘Just fucking do it, Leech! Cut her!’
Leech nodded. ‘Kind,’ he said. Then he swung the scythe up again into the air behind him and brought it down hard on Ivan’s shoulder.
Sara’s scream came like an explosion as Ivan’s blood hit her face. She pulled herself away, screaming to Leech to run, as she made for the door and dived into the darkness. But instead of the open, empty ground, the night air and safety, she ran straight into the hard, upright wall of someone’s chest.
T
HREE O’CLOCK IN
the morning can be a good time to drink a large brandy, or it can be bloody awful. Sara, sipping hers, had not decided. Andrew sat opposite her across the kitchen table in Medlar Cottage, whose shaded lamps and familiar, faint smells of wood and bread were gradually reducing their sense of crisis and soothing them with a warm, approving atmosphere.
Sara put down her glass. ‘I’m too full of tea,’ she said. There had been gallons of it, as well as blankets over her shoulders, and questions, in the previous two hours of talking to the police. Ivan was in hospital under arrest, saying nothing, apparently overwhelmed by grief at his wife’s miscarriage and the confusing events in the shed. Leech also was in hospital, also under arrest. Sara had given her story at least twice and insisted on coming home. Andrew had insisted on coming with her. She looked across at him warily.
‘So how did you know? How did you know to come to the smallholding?’
Andrew looked slightly blank. ‘Dan. Daniel, I mean. We got back to the flat tonight, knackered. We had a good time on the bikes, or rather he did. I was miserable about
you. But until tonight he hadn’t mentioned the picnic once. So when I put him to bed I just asked him why he’d tried to feed you the poisoned sandwich. I said I thought he was fond of you.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was nearly asleep. He told me not to be stupid, of course he was fond of you, it was me he hated. Then he threw his arms round me and said he didn’t any more so I gave him a big hug and tucked him in.’
Sara said, ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Neither did I at first. Then I thought about it. He didn’t hate you but he tried to kill you because it would hurt his father. It made me think of Warwick, being killed on the Open Day when it’ll hurt Stephen Golightly most. Not because Warwick’s done anything to anyone. I just thought it might be worth following up, that’s all.’
‘Good God! You realise what you’ve done, don’t you? You’ve acted on intuition! How
awful
for you. I’m
so
sorry.’
‘Shut up, you. So I rang the Sulis to speak to Ivan’s father and that’s when I found out about Hilary, and Ivan going off to the smallholding. With you. I didn’t much like the sound of that so I took Daniel to Mrs Thing in the flat upstairs and said something urgent had come up. She thought I was insane.’
‘Well, I’d say it was above the call of duty.’
‘Duty?
Duty?
That had nothing to do with it. I’ve thought of nothing except you and those things I said. I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me do it. I love you. And I can’t bear it that I wasn’t with you when you heard about James. When I left him in the hospital on Sunday I had no idea it was that serious.’
‘I don’t think anyone did. I’m sorry, too, for everything, all of it. I love you, too.’
‘We’ve both been stupid, haven’t we?’
Sara nodded wearily. ‘And we won’t do things like that to each other again, will we? We’ve agreed that. We shouldn’t keep saying it.’
He smiled at her. ‘But how much I love you, that’ll bear repeating. I do love you.’
Sara said, ‘I love you, too.’ Before she could say any more Andrew said, ‘And no more sorry, either. You should drink your brandy if you can. It’ll help you sleep.’
‘The thing that’ll keep me awake is what you said about all that stuff Ivan said in the shed probably being inadmissible as evidence. It’s so wrong.’
Andrew sighed. ‘It does seem that way. But we won’t get a conviction on the basis of what little I overheard—not when it’s the story of an off-duty police officer looking for a conviction, confirmed only by his girlfriend. Leech’s evidence won’t be any good, obviously, even if he managed to give it. And there’s no conclusive forensic proof that Ivan murdered Mrs Takahashi or Warwick.’
‘But what about the Snake and Ladder! He said he knew about the side door being open, and he would have known about the radio in the kitchen, that nobody would hear anything. Surely—’
‘It’s not evidence.’
‘Well, what about the alibi, then? When Mrs Heffer saw him on the embankment. Why would he be up there? It’s Leech who went up to watch the trains. You ask her, see if she was sure. It could have been Leech in the blue shirt, couldn’t it? He’s tall and thin, they both wore hats.’
‘Yes, it sounds like we could throw some doubt on his
alibi. We’ll check. But that’s not evidence either. Even the rye itself—you were very convincing, by the way, you almost had me believing it
was
clean—even though it’s riddled with ergot, it doesn’t prove any criminal intent. We can’t prove Ivan knew that it was contaminated, less still that he set out to use it to kill people or damage them. We can’t even prove he knew what ergot was or anything about what it does. Unless he confesses, and there’s no reason to suppose he will, he’ll get away with it.’
‘What about the photographs? Ivan knew Mrs Takahashi had taken pictures of the ergot and that no used films were found in her bag. Don’t you think he could have taken them and had them developed?’