Bob Jenkins said, “Got to get in that fi eld, if you’ve a mind to let me,” and tilted his chin to direct their attention to where he had been heading in the first place when his dog had come upon the body.
Perhaps three yards away from the dead girl, a break in the hedge revealed a gate giving access to the nearest field. Lynley eyed it for a moment as the crime scene people began their work.
“In a few minutes,” he said to the farmer, and added to Sheehan, “They’ll need to look for prints all along the verge, Superintendent. Footprints. Tyre prints from a car or a bike.”
“Right,” Sheehan said, and went to speak with his team.
Lynley and Havers walked to the gate. It was only wide enough to accommodate the tractor, and hemmed in on both sides by a heavy growth of hawthorn. They climbed carefully over. The ground beyond was soft, trodden, and rutted as it gave way to the fi eld itself. But its consistency was crumbly and fragile, so although the imprints of feet were everywhere, nowhere did they leave an impression that was anything more than merely another indentation in the already choppy ground.
“Nothing decent,” Havers said as she scouted round the area. “But if it was a lying-in-wait-”
“Then the waiting had to be done right here,” Lynley concluded. He worked his eyes slowly over the ground, from one side of the gate to the other. When he saw what he was looking for-an indentation in the ground that didn’t fit with the rest-he said, “Havers.”
She joined him. He pointed out the smooth, circular impression in the earth, the barely discernible narrow, extended impression behind it, the sharp, deeper fissure that comprised its conclusion. As a unit, the impressions angled acutely perhaps two and a half feet beyond the gate itself, and less than a foot from the hawthorn hedge.
“Knee, leg, toe,” Lynley said. “The killer knelt here, hidden by the hedge, on one knee, resting the gun on the second bar of the gate. Waiting.”
“But how could anyone have known-”
“That she’d be running this way? The same way someone knew where to find Elena Weaver.”
Justine Weaver scraped a knife along the burnt edge of the toast, watching the resulting black ash speckle the clean surface of the kitchen sink like a fine deposit of powder. She tried to find a place inside her where compassion and understanding still resided, a place like a well from which she could drink deeply and somehow replenish what the events of the past eight months-and the last two days- had desiccated. But if a well-spring of empathy had ever existed at her core, it had long since dried up, leaving in its place the barren ground of resentment and despair. And nothing fl owed from this.
They’ve lost their daughter, she told herself. They share a mutual grief. But those facts did not eliminate the wretchedness she had felt since Monday night, a replay of an earlier pain, like the same melody in a different key.
They’d come home together in silence yesterday, Anthony and his former wife. They’d been to see the police. They’d gone on to the funeral home. They’d chosen a coffin and made the arrangements, none of which they shared with her. It was only when she brought out the plates of thin sandwiches and cake, only when she had poured the tea, only when she had passed them each the lemon and the milk and the sugar that either of them spoke in anything other than weary monosyllables. And then it was Glyn who fi nally addressed her, choosing the moment and wielding the weapon, a superficially simple declaration that was skilfully honed by time and circumstance.
As she spoke, she kept her eyes on the sandwich plate which Justine was offering her and which she made no move to accept. “I’d prefer you to stay away from my daughter’s funeral, Justine.”
They were in the sitting room, gathered round the low coffee table. The artifi cial fi re was lit, its flames lapping the false coals with a quiet hiss. The curtains were drawn. An electric clock whirred softly. It was such a sensible, civilised place to be.
At first Justine said nothing. She looked at her husband, waiting for him to voice a protest of some sort. But he was giving his attention to his teacup and saucer. A muscle pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He knew this was coming, she thought, and she said, “Anthony?”
“You had no real tie to Elena,” Glyn went on. Her voice was even, so extremely reasonable. “So I’d prefer you not to be there. I hope you understand.”
“Ten years as her stepmother,” Justine said.
“Please,” Glyn said. “As her father’s second wife.”
Justine set the plate down. She studied the neat array of sandwiches, nothing how she’d assembled them to form a pattern. Egg salad, crab, fresh ham, cream cheese. Crusts neatly removed, every edge of the bread cut as if it were a perfect plane. Glyn went on.
“We’ll take her to London for the service, so you won’t have to do without Anthony for longer than a few hours. And then afterwards, you can get directly back to the business of your lives.”
Justine merely stared, trying and failing to summon a response.
Glyn continued, as if following a course she’d determined in advance. “We never knew for certain why Elena was born deaf. Has Anthony told you that? I suppose we could have had studies done-some sort of genetic thing, you know what I mean-but we didn’t bother.”
Anthony leaned forward, put his teacup on the coffee table. He kept his fingers on its saucer as if in the expectation that it would slide to the fl oor.
Justine said, “I don’t see that-”
“The reality is that you might produce a deaf baby as well, Justine, if there’s something wrong with Anthony’s genes. I thought I ought to mention the possibility. Are you equipped- emotionally, I mean-to deal with a handicapped child? Have you considered how a deaf child might put a spanner in the works of your career?”
Justine looked at her husband. He didn’t meet her eyes. One of his hands formed a loose fist on his thigh. She said, “Is this really necessary, Glyn?”
“I should think you’d find it helpful.” Glyn reached for her teacup. For a moment, she seemed to examine the rose on the china, and she turned the cup to the right, to the left, as if with the intention of admiring its design. “That’s that, then, isn’t it? Everything’s been said.” She replaced the cup and stood. “I won’t be wanting any dinner.” She left them alone.
Justine turned to her husband, waited for him to speak, and watched him sit motionless. He seemed to be disappearing into himself, bones, blood, and flesh disintegrating into the ashes and dust from which all men were formed. He has such small hands, she thought. And for the first time she considered the wide gold wedding band round his finger and the reason she had wanted him to have it-the largest, the widest, the brightest in the shop, the most capable of heralding the fact of their marriage.
“Is this what you want?” she fi nally asked him.
His eyelids looked caked, their skin stretched and sore. “What?”
“That I stay away from the funeral. Is this what you want, Anthony?”
“It has to be that way. Try to understand.”
“Understand? What?”
“That she’s not responsible for who she is right now. She has no control over what she says and does. It goes too deep with her, Justine. You’ve got to understand.”
“And stay away from the funeral.”
She saw the movement of resignation-a simple lifting and lowering of his fi ngers-and knew the response he would make before he made it. “I hurt her. I left her. I owe her this much. I owe both of them this much.”