Yet all along he had the distinct sensation of being too late.
The radio crackled to life at ten past two. “Company, Inspector. Coming down Flask Walk…Keeping hard to the shadows…Oh, very nice technique, that…An eye out for cop-pers…Dark clothes, dark knit cap, collar on the coat pulled up…Stopped now. Three doors down from the nest.” There was a pause of several minutes’ duration. Then the whispered monologue began again. “Crossed the street for another look…Continuing the approach… Crossing over again towards Back Lane…This is our baby, Inspector. No one walks this way down a street at two in the morning in this kind of weather… Giving it over. I’ve lost sight… Turned down Back Lane.”
Another voice picked it up, said only, “Suspect approaching the garden wall…pulling something down over the face…running a hand along the bricks…”
Lynley switched off the radio. He moved noiselessly into the deepest shadows of the dining room. Sergeant Havers followed. Behind them, Lady Helen stood.
At first Lynley saw nothing beyond the dining room doors. And then a black shape appeared against the inky sky as the intruder’s body rose to the top of the garden wall. A leg swung to the inside, then another. Then a soft thud as he hit the ground. No face was visible, which at first seemed impossible since there was light enough from both stars and the street lamps on Back Lane to illuminate the snow, the sketching of the tree against it, the contrast of mortar against the brick wall, even to a certain extent the interior of the house. But then Lynley saw that the man was wearing a ski mask. And suddenly he was so much less of an intruder, so much more of a killer.
“Helen, go back in the sitting room,” Lynley breathed. But she did not move. He looked over his shoulder to see that her wide eyes were fixed upon the figure in the garden, upon his stealthy progress to the door. Her fi st was raised, clenched to her lips.
And then the unbelievable happened.
As he mounted the four steps, reached a hand out to try the door, Lady Helen cried frantically, “No! Oh God, Rhys!”
And chaos erupted.
Outside, the figure froze only for an instant before he bolted for the wall and took it in a single leap.
“Jesus Christ!” Sergeant Havers shouted and headed for the dining room doors, fl inging them open, letting in a rush of freezing night air.
Lynley felt immobilised by the force of disbelief at what Helen had done. She couldn’t have…She hadn’t meant…She would never… She was coming towards him in the darkness.
“Tommy, please…”
Her shattered voice brought him to his senses abruptly. Shoving her to one side, he dashed for the radio and said tersely, “We’ve lost him.” That done, he ran for the front door, raced outside, insensible to the sound of pursuit behind him.
“Up towards the high street!” a voice shouted from above the bookstore across the street as Lynley tore past.
He did not need to hear it. Ahead of him, he saw the black shape running, heard the frantic pounding of his footsteps on the pavement, saw him slip on a patch of ice, right himself, and run on. He was not bothering to seek the safety of the shadows. Instead he dashed down the middle of the street, flashing in and out of the light from the street lamps. The sound of his flight thundered on the night air.
A few steps behind him, Lynley heard Sergeant Havers. She was running at full speed, cursing Lady Helen violently with every foul word she knew.
“Police!” The two constables from the van had exploded round the corner, coming up quickly behind them.
Ahead, their quarry burst onto Heath Street, one of the larger arteries of Hampstead Village. The headlamps of an oncoming car trapped him like an animal. Tyres screeched, a horn honked wildly. A large Mercedes skidded to a stop inches from his thighs. But he did not run on. Instead, he whirled, lunging for the door. Even at the distance of half a block, Lynley could hear the terrifi ed screaming from inside the car.
“You! Stop!” Another constable charged round the corner from the high street, less than thirty yards from the Mercedes. At the shout, however, the black-garbed fi gure spun to the right and continued his flight up the hill.
But the pause at the car had cost him time and distance, and Lynley was gaining on him, was close enough to hear the roaring of his lungs as he surged towards a narrow stone stairway that led to the hillside and the neighbourhood above. He took the steps three at a time, stopping at the top where a metal basket of empty milk bottles stood outside the shadowed arch of a front door. Grabbing this, he hurled it down the steps in his wake before running on, but the shattering glass served only to frighten several neighbourhood dogs who set up a tremendous howling. Lights went on in the buildings that lined the stairs, making Lynley’s going easier and the broken glass nothing to contend with at all.
At the top of the stairs, the street was sided by enormous beech and sycamore trees that filled it with looming shadows. Lynley paused there, listening against the night wind and the howling animals for the sound of fl ight, looking for movement in the darkness. Havers came up next to him, still cursing as she gasped for breath.
“Where’s he-”
Lynley heard it first, coming from his left. The dull thud against metal as the runner- his vision impaired by the ski mask-fell against a dustbin. It was all Lynley needed.
“He’s heading for the church!” He spun Havers back to the stairs. “Go for the others,” he ordered. “Tell them to head him off at St. John’s! Now!”
Lynley didn’t wait to see if she would obey. The pounding footsteps ahead of him drew him back into the chase, across Holly Hill to a narrow street where he saw in a moment of triumph that every advantage was going to be his. A series of high walls along one side, an open green on the other. The street offered absolutely no protection. In an instant he saw his man some forty yards ahead, turning into a gateway that was open in the wall. When he reached the gate himself, he saw that the snow had gone uncleared in the drive, that elongated footprints led across a broad lawn into a garden. There, a struggling form battled a hedge of holly, his clothes snagging on the spiny leaves. He gave a raw cry of pain. A dog began to bark furiously. Floodlights switched on. On the high street below, the sirens started, grew maddeningly loud as the police cars approached.
This last seemed to give the man the rush of adrenaline he needed to free himself from the bushes. As Lynley closed in, he cast a wild glance towards him, gauged his proximity, and tore himself from the plants’ painful embrace. He fell to his knees-free-on the other side of the hedge, scrambled back up, ran on. Lynley spun in the other direction, saw a second gate in the wall, and ploughed his way to it through the snow at the cost of at least thirty seconds. He threw himself into the street.
To his right, St. John’s Church loomed beyond a low brick wall. There, a shadow moved, crouched, leaped, and was over it. Lynley ran on.
He took the wall easily himself, landing in the snow. In an instant he saw a fi gure moving swiftly to his left, heading for the graveyard. The sound of sirens grew nearer, the sound of tyres against wet pavement echoed and shrieked.
Lynley fought his way through a snowdrift up to his knees, gained hold on a spot of cleared pavement. Ahead, the dark shape began dodging through the graves.
It was the kind of mistake Lynley had been waiting for. The snow was deeper in the graveyard, some tombstones were buried completely. Within moments, he heard the other man thrashing frantically as he crashed into markers, trying to make his way across to the far wall and the street beyond it.