Midnight is a Lonely Place (37 page)

Bending double she drew in great rasping gulps of air, not daring to look behind her, keeping her eyes strained into the darkness. Then, suddenly she saw it. The rising silhouette of the dunes against the white of the distant trees, and the angular black shape which was a roof. There was no sign of any light from the upstairs windows.

She swallowed, willing her heartbeat to slow down as she turned her back on the sea and looked for the track between the dunes. The cottage garden was white with snow; beneath the wall it had drifted in the wind and was heaped into shallow piles already several inches thick. Not giving herself time to think she followed the wall towards the front and peered round it. The Land Rover stood where they had left it. She closed her eyes and sank against the wall, weak with relief. It was only at that moment that she realised that she had half expected it to have gone. Leaving the shelter of the wall she walked towards it, then she stopped abruptly. The front door of the cottage was wide open.

‘Bill.’ Her lips framed the words silently. Her stomach was churning suddenly and her legs seemed incapable of co-ordinated movement, but somehow she forced herself to walk towards the door. Light poured out of the hall, showing the snow white and clean. There were no signs of any footprints.

She crept to the door and peered in. The sitting room door was open and she could see the curtains blowing against the window. The cottage stank of vomit. ‘Allie?’ Her voice came out as a croak. ‘Allie?’ she tried again. ‘Are you there?’

The effort of will required to force herself to walk forward and peer into the room was enormous, but somehow she managed it. It was as she had left it. Bill still lay on the sofa; nothing had been touched. Cautiously she stepped inside. The woodburner had cooled down. There was no welcoming glow from it now. The room was distinctly chilly. She took another step forward, pressing her forearm against her mouth and nose in an attempt to filter out the evil smell in the room and stopped, overwhelmed with horror and disgust. The blanket which she had drawn over Bill’s face had been pulled back. His face, blue and puffy was turned towards her, his eyes half open, staring blindly straight at her. In front of him on the floor was a pool of vomit.

Turning she ran back towards the front door, trying desperately to control her own retching. She tore out of the house and running to the Land Rover, slumped over the bonnet, her head cradled in her arms, her stomach feeling as though it were somersaulting against the back of her throat. For several seconds she stood still, fighting her nausea, her legs trembling, then at last she managed to grope in her pocket for the keys. She found them and staggered to the driver’s door, trying desperately to insert one in the lock. It was several seconds before she realised that the door was not locked. Dragging it open she pulled herself onto the seat and slammed it shut. Then she burst into tears.

Her glasses. She had lost her glasses. Sniffing frantically she groped in her jacket with shaking hands until at last she found them, pushed into an inner pocket. Rubbing her eyes with her wet sleeve, she put them on and leaning forward she inserted the key into the ignition. Fumbling with the unfamiliar gears, she slammed the gearstick back and forth until she managed to find first and at last she pulled the heavy vehicle round to face the sea and jerkily she began to drive towards the dunes.

‘Come on. Come on. Please don’t get stuck, you bastard, please don’t get stuck,’ she begged, her voice husky as she peered forward desperately through the streaked windscreen.

The Land Rover lurched across the grass and down onto the sand, its tyres slipping and sliding but somehow keeping a grip on the shifting, wet surface of the beach as she threaded her way at a snail’s pace between the dunes, the headlights catching a whirling wall of sand and snow and sleet. When at last she saw the sea, it was a barrier of angry white rising in front of her, hurling itself at the land. Biting her lip she tore the wheel round, heading north now, keeping the vehicle moving at a steady walking pace, every muscle tense as she willed the wheels to keep their traction. Where was he? Oh please God, let her find him. She had never felt so lonely in her life, with her eyes straining frantically ahead, scanning the beach and the dunes to her left as she looked for Greg’s hunched figure on the sand. She hadn’t been too long, surely? She cursed the time she had wasted weeping like some useless, spineless feeble fool, and desperately she pulled the vehicle further away from the sea as it lurched into a weed-strewn rutted pool and ground to a halt. ‘Oh, no!’ She juggled the clutch and accelerator desperately, trying hard not to drive in deeper. ‘Please. Please, come on.’ She wrenched the gear levers back and forth frantically as the car rocked forwards and lurched to a standstill again, the wheels spinning. ‘Damn you!’ She hit the steering wheel in fury. ‘Come on. Come on!’ In the cold remorseless beam of the headlights the beach was unrelentingly empty of life. Sleet whirled in the double light beams, the sand gleamed coldly and beyond it, even above the sound of the engine, she could hear the angry roar of the sea. Biting her lips in concentration she tried a new combination of gears and suddenly, wonderfully, the old vehicle lurched into life and dragged itself out of the hollow, shaking itself free like some great hippopotamus which had been wallowing in the mud. ‘Be careful.’ Kate was talking to herself openly now. ‘Be careful you silly cow. Look where you’re going. Next time you won’t get out.’ Her hands gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles cracked, she leaned forward again, peering into the shadows at the edge of the headlight beams.

Midnight: the witching hour, in this empty, godforsaken, lonely place.

Where in the name of God was he?

XLIV

‘Allie?’ Diana leaned over her daughter’s bed. ‘Allie, can you hear me, darling?’ The child was cold again, her skin clammy, but she wasn’t shivering. After her first outburst she had said nothing at all as her mother led her upstairs, ran a hot bath and helped her undress. Normally Allie would have protested wildly at the thought of Diana even coming into the bathroom while she bathed but now she stood meekly while Diana undressed her, lifting her arms obediently like a small child as her mother pulled off her sweater and tee shirt, and stepping quietly into the bath. Sitting down she drew up her knees and hugged them, resting her chin on them, eyes closed, as Diana sponged her back with warm water. ‘Do you want to lie back for a bit to thaw out?’ The child was so thin. How had she not noticed that she was losing so much weight? Diana went on sponging, watching, horrified, as the scented water trickled down Allie’s staring ribs and around the prominent knobs of her backbone. ‘Allie, did you hear me? Do you want to lie down and have a bit of a soak?’

The shake of the head was barely visible.

‘Come out then. Let’s get you into bed,’ Diana spoke briskly. ‘Then I want you to tell me what happened. Did you see Greg and Kate?’

Alison stood woodenly whilst her mother towelled her dry and moved her limbs with the same automaton jerkiness as before as her nightshirt was pulled over her head. Obediently she allowed Diana to lead her to her bedroom and there she climbed into bed. It was only as Diana put the teddy into her arms that she showed any emotion at all. Clutching the toy against her chest she turned on her side, pulling her knees up below her chin until she was curled in the foetal position, and she began to cry.

‘Allie, sweetheart.’ Sitting on the bed beside her, Diana put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. She felt helpless and afraid. ‘Sweetheart, please. Don’t cry. You’re safe now.’

But Alison went on crying, sobbing into the teddy bear’s fur until at last she fell asleep.

Diana sat there for a long time, her hand on her daughter’s thin shoulder then at last she stood up. Turning off the main light she left the small bedside lamp burning and, leaving the door ajar, she tiptoed out of the room.

The living room was empty. ‘Roger? Paddy?’ She went quickly to the study. That too was empty. ‘Roger?’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘Patrick? Where are you?’ She retraced her steps to the front door and pulled it open. The front garden and the grass which led down to the saltings were a uniform white beneath the whirling darkness. There was no sign of her husband or her son. Closing the door again she bolted it and walked slowly back to the fire. They must have both decided to go up to the main road after all. She stared round the room. The two cats were sitting together on the sofa, a pair of recumbent lions, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the embers of the fire. The sight of them reassured her, but for the first time for years she found herself wishing they had a dog. If there was someone out there in the woods a dog would at least alert them. Her gaze went thoughtfully to the shotgun which Roger had left propped in the corner, a box of cartridges on the chair beside it.

Unable to sit down and relax she walked through into the kitchen and began to tidy it. She was on automatic pilot. Her entire concentration was fixed outside the house, listening.

‘We should have brought the gun, Dad.’ Patrick was scared. He kept as close as he could to his father as they walked up the track. At their feet the torch beam was searching the ruts for any sign of footprints or tyre marks.

‘It’s not thick snow. It’s hardly settled here, under the trees. If he’d come this way we would have spotted something by now.’ Roger was indignant rather than scared.

He did not believe that there was a murderer skulking in the woods. Whoever had attacked Bill would be long gone by now. He stopped, glaring down at the pale circle of torchlight as it rested on a patch of muddy pine needles gleaming with watery sludge. It made no sense, all the same, to take unnecessary risks. The car had not come this way. Of that he was convinced. And they had left Diana alone in the farmhouse. Better to go home and search again outside the door where the car had been standing. A stranger might after all, have driven off across the garden. No, he halted that train of thought. There had been no trail of destruction through the bare flowerbeds. The other possibility was that he had driven across the lawn and down onto the marsh. The garden was more exposed on that side of the house. Perhaps the snow had indeed hidden the tracks or they had missed them in their initial panic at finding the car gone.

He led the way back, swinging the torchlight left and right this time, scanning the darkness between the trees, conscious that Patrick was so close beside him that he could feel the boy’s shoulder brushing his own. He found himself wishing suddenly for both their sakes that Patrick was small enough to be held by the hand.

Outside the front door they stopped. Roger drew a deep sigh of relief. The pain was coming back. He could walk no further. He followed Patrick to the door and waited, leaning against the wall while Patrick banged on it, thankful that the darkness hid his face.

The door opened within seconds and Diana fell on them both. Hugging them to her she dragged them to the fire. ‘Thank God! Did you get through? Is the doctor coming? And the police?’

She looked from one to the other and her face fell. ‘You didn’t get there, did you,’ she said in a small voice. She sat down abruptly.

Roger sank down beside her and took her hand. He shook his head. ‘The car’s gone, Di. It’s been stolen.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes.

‘So he was here. Right here outside this house.’ Her eyes went to the curtained window near her. She closed them weakly, slumping against Roger’s shoulder. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Nothing. Not tonight.’ Roger was suddenly so tired he could hardly speak. ‘We’ll just have to pray that Greg and Kate are together and safe. Greg will look after her …’

His voice trailed away as he thought suddenly about Bill. Bill was a man; a big man and he had not been safe.

‘It will help no one if we go searching for them in the dark. Far better to keep ourselves safe here until daylight. We’ll check again that all the windows and doors are locked and wait it out. There is nothing else we can do.’

‘I’ll check, Dad.’ Patrick had been standing looking down at his parents. He fought off the wave of fear which had been building inside him as he realised suddenly and completely that they were as helpless and afraid as he was; that for the first time that he could remember they were not going to be able to bail him or themselves out of the situation.

His father looked up at him and their eyes met. ‘It’ll be OK.’ Roger gave a wan smile. ‘We’ll sort it all out in daylight.’

‘Sure, Dad.’ Patrick turned towards the stairs. Then he stopped. ‘Greg’s going to be all right, isn’t he?’

‘A great big chap like Greg? Of course he is.’

‘But he wasn’t in the cottage.’

‘I expect they were looking for Allie.’

‘And he doesn’t know she’s safe.’ Patrick’s voice rose unsteadily. ‘They’ll go on looking, Dad. Greg won’t give up.’

‘They’ll be all right, Paddy.’ Diana forced herself to stand up. ‘Greg is not a fool. He’ll realise there is nothing he can do in this weather. He and Kate will go back to the cottage or they’ll come here. Now you go upstairs and check everything’s all right, while I put the kettle on. Don’t wake Allie, but double check her window too.’

She watched her younger son nod and turn away. Then she glanced down at her husband. His face was grey, his eyes shut. Miserably she pulled the rug from the back of the chair where she had folded it that morning – yesterday morning, she corrected herself as she glanced at her watch – and she tucked it round him, then she went to the Aga and slid the kettle onto the hotplate.