My solid oak door shook on its hinges as I kicked it shut. ‘
Arsehole!
’ I hollered, loud enough for Finn to hear, wherever the bastard was.
As I undressed, adrenaline coursed through my body and I trembled like a malaria victim.
I had hit Finn.
Everything I knew about him and his life, everything that I had witnessed, had meant nothing in that one dreadful moment of betrayal in a shadow-filled corridor. I had no doubt that it had been engineered by him so that he could triumphantly declare that he had been right all along, but this did nothing to assuage my guilt.
‘You twisted fuck.’ I climbed into bed, having decided that I didn’t give a damn what happened to him anymore.
By three in the morning I still didn’t care. And I still hadn’t slept.
The soft
tut
of the outboard motor cut through the silence, and I sat up. I couldn’t imagine Henry needing to go into the village at this hour, and Royce and Selena had paid too much to leave so early out of choice.
The whisper of disquiet that had begun the previous evening returned as a full-throated roar and I retrieved my paint-stained tracksuit bottoms and vest-top and ran barefoot to the cavernous reception hall, where Henry had just let himself back into the building.
‘Lilith! What on earth are you doing awake at this hour? You’re not ill, are you?’
I ignored his concerned questions. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Just sorting out the launch so our latest guests could get back to the mainland. Apparently Selena had a migraine and she’d left her medication in their lodge.’
I fought down the panic that had begun to flutter in my throat. ‘You let them leave?
And
take the boat?’
Henry took a step back, startled by my aggression. ‘I don’t think there’s too much of a problem. They decided she’d be better off staying on shore for the rest of the night, and they said they’d bring the launch back first thing in the morning. She
was
looking rather peaky.’
‘For God’s sake, Henry!’ I exploded. ‘They pay a small fortune for a night of high-level filth, disappear at half time without so much as a goodbye, and you don’t think there’s too much of a bloody
problem
? How bloody docile do you have to be not to question something like that? This place has fucking lobotomised you!’ My voice, hard with fury, echoed through the still night. ‘Where’s Finn now?’
‘I assumed, well, I thought he must be back in his own room,’ Henry stammered. ‘Oh my goodness, you don’t think…’
‘Go and get
Blaine
,’ I snapped. ‘Go and wake that bitch of a woman up and tell her I need to see her. Now.’ I was already walking away.
‘Lilith, she really won’t like being disturbed at this hour. What on earth do I tell her when she asks me why?’
‘Anything you like. Just go and get her, Henry.’
‘But where will you be?’
I began to run. ‘Wherever they’ve dumped Finn,’ I called over my shoulder.
*****
I sprinted down the spiral staircase to Finn’s squalid tip of a room, hoping to see his stoned body crashed out across the mattress.
Empty.
Sick with dread, I hurtled down the corridor to the dungeon, bare feet slapping loudly against damp stone. I heaved on the wrought iron handle and the door swung open.
Empty again.
I stepped inside, hoping for some trace of Finn’s whereabouts, but saw only the crumpled bed, an abandoned bottle of champagne and two smeared, empty glasses, illuminated by a guttering, dying oil lamp. I began to back away, glad to be out of that place, then realised. I forced myself to step up to the great St Andrew’s cross.
My first thought was that they had killed him.
Finn hung from his wrists, his head bowed and still as death. Just as I was about to scream, he gave a juddering breath and looked up at me, wide-eyed. ‘Got cut.’ He slumped down again, and I had to fight hard not to retch as I breathed in the ferrous tang of congealing blood.
He made a feeble attempt to pull himself up by the straps around his wrists as I began fumbling at the first buckle. ‘Had a... a knife or somethin’. Bas’ard.’
‘Fall into me, Finn. Let’s get you on the floor and see what’s going on.’ The second buckle flicked open. I half-caught him as he fell with a wet, dull thud onto the stone slabs, and finally I could see the damage Albermarle Hall’s latest guests had inflicted.
‘I think it might be a
very
good idea if you don’t move,’ I managed, with considerable understatement. The back of Finn’s right leg had been ripped wide open, and his stomach was daubed in blood. ‘Oh crap,’ was all I could manage as my mind raced away from me, dredging together scraps of anatomy classes and the first-aid learnt from my mother’s litany of suicide attempts.
Dark red suggested venous rather than arterial blood, which was a blessing, but the sheer amount from the two wounds was horrific and even worse, I couldn’t tell whether Finn’s blitzed state was due to his cavalier approach to self-medication, or simple blood loss. Right now, an interesting combination of the two was looking like a good guess.
‘Okay sweetheart, I don’t know how much you’re getting of all this, but I need you to stay
really
still for me,’ I finally managed, and Finn narrowed his eyes.
‘You’re being nice to me. Now I’m scared.’
‘I’ll call you a pig-shagging Irish cunt if that makes you feel any better.’ I began to tear a length of fabric from the bed sheet. I turned the strip over and over until I had a thick wad, then pressed it firmly onto the gaping hole in Finn’s leg. He gave a surprised yelp of pain and tried to haul himself away but I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back onto the floor. ‘Still, Finn,’ I ordered.
‘Wha’ you doin’ here anyway? Thought you hated me.’
‘I do, just not enough to let you bleed to death.’ I made another pad from the ripped sheet and gently covered the wound on his stomach. There was only a tiny hole, but I had no idea how deep it was, or what Royce might have managed to pierce. I wasn’t about to take any risks.
‘What you doin’now?’ Finn asked. ‘He only punched me.’
‘Yeah, with a scalpel in his hand.’ I nodded at the little blade that had been thrown across the room. I was surreptitiously checking the pulse at his wrist when
Blaine
’s voice, clipped and irritated, rang down the corridor.
‘This had better be important, Henry.’
‘Lilith was terribly agitated, Lady Albermarle,’ came Henry’s response.
‘Yes, well Lilith seems intent on creating her own melodrama. And if they’re not here, I’m going back to bed.’
Blaine
strode into the room and her face immediately blanched as she took in the bloodbath.
‘Tell Coyle he needs to review his screening procedures,’ I said.
I was cold. Sleeping-on-the-streets,
Dublin
winter cold. It was a strange feeling, lying there in a pool of my own blood, with the dawn’s summer warmth seeping into the stones beneath me, and still shaking with a ferocity that made my teeth ache. Even when Lilith laid a blanket from the bed over me, it made scant difference.
‘Henry, go and call Doctor Parnell,’ Blaine ordered, but there was a tremor in her voice that suggested that despite her outward calm, for once she was well and truly rattled.
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. He needs a hospital,
Blaine
,’ Lilith snapped, before Henry had the chance to take a single step.
‘Out of the question.’
There was no way
Blaine
was going to let me off the island. If Doctor Parnell couldn’t fix me with a couple of sticking plasters and an aspirin, I was just going have to lie stark bollock-naked on the floor of a dungeon and quietly bleed to death. I wanted to tell Lilith to save her breath, but then the way she went at it with
Blaine
, I’d have been pushed to get a word in. Instead, I shut my eyes and listened as Lilith Bresson went to war on my behalf.
Lilith’s voice bounced off the stone walls. ‘He’s been stabbed in the stomach,
Blaine
, and he’s been left hanging for the best part of an hour. And do you want me to teach you about the arteries in the back of his knee? Right now you’re facing the very real possibility of a man bleeding to death in your cellar, so unless the sainted Doctor Parnell has got the facilities to deal with anything from a lacerated liver to a blood transfusion, I would say you’re
really
going to have to think out of the box on this one.’
Then she came up with the clincher. ‘And I’ll tell you something else, shall I? If my Big Reason For Staying does end up weighed down with rocks in the lake, I’d
probably
consider that a bit of a deal-breaker. Wouldn’t you?’
As she spoke, Lilith surreptitiously took my hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. I was glad of the reassurance, especially as she was discussing my potential demise with all the concern of a forensic scientist.
‘All right, all right,’
Blaine
snapped, and raised a hand in the air to halt the tirade. ‘Just let me think this through for a moment.’ She massaged her temples as she tried to make this mess vanish. ‘Henry. You can take him.’
Henry actually took a step back. ‘Oh God, I couldn’t. I’ m so sorry, but it’s all that blood. You know what I’m like with that.’
‘Well Coyle can’t take him. Not with his driving ban. He’s not allowed off the estate.’
‘I’ll take him,’ Lilith said.
Blaine
gave a hard laugh of derision. ‘I don’t think so, do you? I couldn’t begin to imagine the feeding frenzy if the press find Lilith Bresson driving around Northumberland with a half-dead naked man in her passenger seat.’
Even in the very depths of a crisis, no one could accuse
Blaine
of forgetting the priorities.
‘People
don’t
recognise me, that’s just it,’ Lilith rejoindered. ‘They know ‘Brand Lilith’, not some scruffy cow in tracksuit bottoms and mud-brown contacts – how many times has someone spotted me in the village, huh? Not once. They’re looking for the ballgown and the attitude. It took the best part of three hours yesterday to transform into the woman most people expect to see.’
There followed a pause that lasted for days in my head, and I felt the numbness in my stomach begin to morph into something involving devils and hot pokers.
Finally,
Blaine
spoke, her voice controlled once more. ‘Right. You can take him to
Castlerigg
Hospital
. It’s a private clinic – I’ll get Henry to bring you directions – where he’s to be seen by a Doctor James Maxwell.
Nobody
else. He’s an old friend of mine. I’ll make the call to inform him that you’re on the way.’
‘Thank you,’ Lilith said, gracious in victory.
‘No matter what you think of me, I’m hardly the kind of person who would let someone die on the floor. I simply needed a little time to work out a plan that worked well for everyone concerned.’
Blaine
had relaxed again now, happy that she had things under control. ‘I needn’t have to add that his curfew stands. Ten o’clock, back at the Hall, or I begin to make some very awkward phone calls for both gentlemen here. You talk to no-one else, and draw as little attention to yourself as is humanly possible. Are we perfectly clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Henry, call Mr O’Halloran, would you? Get him to drive his Land Rover to the jetty, and bring the spare launch over. I think Lilith’s Jaguar should stay in the garage for this little trip.’
Blaine
knelt at my side, carefully avoiding the widening pool of blood. ‘This – ’ she placed a perfect finger on my lips, ‘– stays shut, Finn. I
will
get to hear everything, and if you so much as
think
my name between now and ten o’clock tonight, there’ll be two girls in
Dublin
who’ll think that their God has truly deserted them.’
She straightened up and turned to Lilith. ‘I’m trusting you to manage things; all those years of coping with family crises have probably made this seem like an absolute breeze, but I can’t emphasise how important discretion will be.’
‘I understand.’
‘I’ll let you get on with your mission of mercy then, seeing as I have quite a list of tasks of my own, thanks to Mr Garvey and his delightful bride-to-be.’ Which was
Blaine
’s way of saying that dear old Roycie could kiss goodbye to his beloved career.
I should have been worried. Should have feared for the safety of my sisters; for Henry’s barely-there mother; even for my own continued existence. But all I could think was that I was about to travel beyond the prison walls of Albermarle, and it was all thanks to the woman I’d so recently hated with every last inch of my being.