‘Why didn’t you call the police?’
‘Why haven’t you?’
It would have taken too long to explain. Murray replied, ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know either. Maybe out of pity for Christie. She’d realised what she’d done and was screaming fit to wake the dead. Maybe out of a fear I’d be implicated. After all, it was only my word against theirs that Archie and I were innocent. I knew Bobby Robb well enough to be sure that if he went down, he’d do his best to pull the rest of us into Hell behind him. Whatever the reason, it was a big mistake. I opened myself up to blackmail and nightmares. But I do know I’m damned if I’m going to have the whole thing resurrected.’
Murray could see the fly-blown kitchen, the naked couple leaning over the kitchen table, the baby at its centre. It was too much. He closed his eyes for a moment then asked, ‘What did you mean when you said you had an interest in the child as well?’
Fergus was close enough for Murray to see his sad smile.
‘Can’t you guess?’
Murray nodded.
‘I suppose I should have.’
Christie ended her mantra. She shouted, ‘If you want her, you’re going to have to come and take her.’
Fergus looked at Murray.
‘Are you going to stand in my way, Dr Watson?’
‘It depends on what you intend to do.’
All this time they had been standing a distance apart, like opposing foes reluctant to fight or flee before they saw each other’s weapons. Now Fergus adjusted his cap and started to walk across the grass to parley face-to-face. This was the Fergus Murray recognised: the lecture-theatre showman, darling of the students, despair of the secretaries, the canteen boaster and distinguished scholar, crass enough to pimp his wife, vain enough for a bespoke academic gown.
Murray looked down at his own mud-drenched clothes and knew that whatever the truth of the child’s death, and whatever followed next, his career was over. He was too stunned to feel the full impact of the knowledge, but he knew it would come, just as a bereaved man knows his numbness will be replaced by grief. He straightened his back, wanting to walk away and leave them to it, but unwilling to abandon Christie to Fergus’s ruthless self-interest.
It was as if his thoughts touched the woman. She stirred and made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. Murray glanced down at her. Christie’s eyes looked huge. She bit her bottom lip, half-smiling. He looked back at the professor making his way across the grass with his usual assurance, not bothering to stick to the beaten path, and suddenly Murray realised what was about to happen. He shoved Christie from him and yelled, ‘No, Fergus, stop!’ The other man faltered, and for a second Murray thought his warning had been in time. Then the professor fell.
At first it looked as if Fergus had simply lost his footing and skidded backwards onto the mud. But all at once he groaned and began scrabbling for purchase on the slippery ground. The battle was too fast and too desperate for him to cry out again. The only sound was of the wind in the tree-tops and the desperate slap of Fergus’s arms and legs flailing in the wet mud as he fought with gravity, like a man showing how it was to drown. Then it was as if something beneath the earth grabbed him tight around his legs and pulled hard, sliding him swiftly and horribly down the unmarked sinkhole and into the below.
Murray started to run forward, but Christie grabbed his ankle and brought him down.
‘Do you want to follow him?’
He’d landed beside her and their mud-spattered faces were unbearably close. Murray scrabbled in his pocket and brought out his mobile. She knocked it from his hand.
‘He’ll be in Hell by now.’
Murray shoved her away. He was beyond speech, beyond thought. He pushed himself up, slipped and cried out in terror of the earth, but it was merely the same mud he had been wallowing in for the last hour. He dropped down onto his hands and knees again and started crawling towards the sinkhole, but he stopped after a few faltering inches, too feared of Fergus’s fate to go on.
Murray sat back up onto his hunkers, sobbing as he hadn’t in a long while. He saw the glint of his phone, picked it up and hauled himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment. Then he started to stagger away from the cottage, careful to keep to the path.
Christie shouted, ‘It was all lies, everything he said, lies.’
Murray set his back to her and followed the curving track to where Fergus’s Saab sat, its lights still glaring. He leant in through the car’s open door. The vehicle was empty, no sign of Rachel. Murray turned and looked at Christie. She was lying spot-lit in the mess of mud they had churned up between them, her hands clutching the tin trunk; a savage pietà. There was a rush in his stomach. He bent double and spewed the remnants of Mrs Dunn’s cakes onto the ground.
Chapter Thirty-Two
MURRAY WIPED HIS mouth on the back of his hand. He walked back, helped Christie to her feet as gently as he could manage, and then lifted the long-dead child’s coffin onto his shoulder. He carried it silent through the darkness and the sludge, like a doom-laden St Christopher. Christie said nothing beyond a whispered thank-you; merely let herself be gripped around the waist and supported back to her car. The rain had almost stopped, but they were already soaked through and coated in filth. Somewhere a bird hooted. It was a strangely human sound and Murray felt his stomach lurch.
Christie was shivering. He took a tartan travelling rug from the boot, wrapped it around her shoulders and then settled her and his other burden in the back seat. Her hand went to the trunk’s hasp and he whispered, ‘Please, you promised. Not until you’re home.’
Christie nodded and shifted her hand to the lid, where she let it rest.
Murray started the engine. There was no point in questioning whether he was fit to drive. He was fit for nothing. He raised the clutch gently and the car eased forward.
‘Thank Christ.’
The dashboard clock glowed 03.45. The whole adventure had lasted less than two hours.
There was no option but to retrace the route they had taken earlier. Murray was shivering too now, his hands so numb he wouldn’t have known he was gripping the steering wheel, except for the fact that somehow he was managing to guide the Cherokee round the curves in the road.
The night was still pitch murk. Murray realised he was driving faster than he had on their journey out, but made no effort to cut his speed. Their tyres would leave marks in the mud which, now that the rain had stopped, would not be washed away. There was no helping it. He kept the headlights off, amazed he could still think of his own self-preservation when deep down he cared nothing for it. He glanced at Christie in the rear-view mirror. Her hand was still resting on the box, but her eyes were shut, her skin yellowed, mouth slack.