Connie heard the car driving down the track after they’d had breakfast. They were so far from anywhere, hidden by the trees, that the sound carried and seemed very loud. Once she might have worried that it could be the police. That fat female inspector, with her huge hands and her filthy feet and her questions. Now she’d have been glad even to see Vera Stanhope. But perhaps it would be Veronica. This was her territory after all. The boathouse must have flooded before. She’d know the best thing to do. Connie leaned out of the window and caught a glimpse of the car through the branches. Not her car. It was the wrong colour for that, and her little Nissan wouldn’t make it through all the water. But it might be Veronica all the same.
It was still early in the year and the sun, which had come out now, was very low in the sky. The emerging sun made the figure on the shore nothing more than a silhouette, appearing suddenly from the high wall surrounding the old garden. Perhaps the car had got stuck, or perhaps they’d decided to walk the last part. Connie had to squint even to see the figure as a person. It was a shadow with waterproofs and boots. She could tell no more than that.
A small dinghy that had once rested on the bank now floated on the pool, tethered by a rope. The man tugged on the rope and pulled the boat towards him. Because it was a man, Connie thought. The action seemed too strong and purposeful for her visitor to be a woman.
She called to Alice. ‘Look, sweetheart, we’re going to get rescued.’ And the two of them waved like mad things. The man on the shore only raised his hand in greeting.
Now he’d pulled the dinghy onto the bank and had taken out a couple of oars that must have been stowed under the seat. He pushed it back into the pool and waded in as far as his calves, then he climbed aboard.
He rowed towards them, circling towards the boathouse. The light was no longer behind him, but as he approached he had his back to them and still Connie couldn’t make out who it was. Even when he’d reached them, and tied the rope around one of the planks that made up the rail of the deck, she didn’t recognize him. Then her attention was elsewhere, stuffing all their belongings into a bag, making sure that Alice was with her and not too close to the water.
‘Just wait a minute!’ she shouted and some of the panic returned. Though that was ridiculous because their saviour wouldn’t just turn round and row back to dry land without them.
She heard him climb onto the boathouse deck. There was the creak of the planks, the splash of displaced water as his weight left the dinghy, then footsteps. He stood in the doorway and she saw him properly for the first time and recognized him. She’d seen that face before.
Chapter Forty
Vera told herself that there was no hurry. The social worker and her daughter would be in the boathouse. It would have been an adventure for them, like camping out. The girl would probably have enjoyed every minute. Vera hadn’t minded a bit of an adventure herself when Hector had first taken her on his expeditions. It was only as she got older and realized the implications of the night-time raids into the hills that she’d disliked and then come to hate them. Perhaps that was why she drove so fast, because she didn’t want the girl to have the same sort of memories of childhood that she’d been left with: the fear in the pit of the stomach and the longing to be home in a familiar place. Because there’d always been people chasing Hector: the police, the National Park wardens, the RSPB. Absorbed in his passion, he’d enjoyed the game of cat-and-mouse. It hadn’t bothered him that Vera had been terrified.
Vera felt a sort of sick excitement now as she coaxed the ancient Land Rover to greater speed. Just before the turn-off through the stone pillars with their cormorant carvings there was water across the road. A sign saying: Way Closed. Flood. An elderly man was trying to do a three-point turn in the narrow track to get back to the village. Or a forty-point turn. Vera pushed the Land Rover into four-wheel drive, drove it so that two wheels were on the steep verge and the vehicle was tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, then ground past the pensioner’s Volvo. The water was deep enough to seep in through the doors. She wasn’t sure the old man noticed they were there until the spray caused by their movement splashed onto his windscreen. Beside her Joe Ashworth swore.
The grass track past the formal gardens of the old house was much boggier than it had been when she walked down it a few days before. Even in four-wheel drive, she felt the vehicle slide. She kept the pace slow. It was most important now not to get stuck. She wanted to get the mother and daughter back to safety, and then she had an arrest to make. Before anybody else got hurt.
She knew Ashworth had questions, but she couldn’t concentrate on getting them to the boathouse in one piece and chat to him at the same time.
‘What’s that?’ Ashworth’s question annoyed her because she was just navigating a tricky patch, but she looked all the same. A small car stuck, water up to the bumper, the driver’s door wide open. Ashworth had the righteous indignation of the careful driver; he always seemed old before his time: ‘They must have been mad trying to get down here without four-wheel drive.’
Then Vera knew that the little girl was in danger, not of having bad dreams and tarnished childhood memories, but of not growing old enough to remember anything.
‘Out!’ she said. ‘Quick! We haven’t the time for this.’ She was wearing wellingtons, but Ashworth was still in his work shoes, newly polished every morning. He looked at the mud and slime surrounding the vehicle and hesitated. She’d already gone four paces down the track, slithering and swearing at every step. She glanced back at him, still in the Land Rover. ‘Do you want another child drowned? Get out here, man. That’s an order.’ As she spoke, she knew she was being unfair. If she’d shared her fears with him, he’d have been there before her.
They ran together past the garden with the strange statues and the tall wall covered in ivy and, reaching the edge of the pool, she thought they were too late. She saw the rowing boat, the man inside, bent over his oars and so intent on pulling his way across the water that he didn’t see them. And she saw the mother and her child on the deck, following his progress.
‘They’re all right then,’ Joe said. He was frosty with her and had every right to be. ‘He’s gone to save them.’ Implying that there was no need for the fuss and the ruined shoes.
‘No, pet, that’s the last thing he wants to do. He hates happy families.’
Vera stood watching. She was completely powerless. The boathouse was on the other side of the pond, too far away for her to shout, so she couldn’t warn Connie. Besides, what could the woman do if she heard? She was imprisoned there.
And, Vera thought, the man in the boat would be impossible to scare now. With the second murder he’d gone beyond reason. This was like one of those nightmares when you scream and no sound comes, when you try to run, but your feet won’t move.
‘It was him,’ Ashworth said. ‘All the time? Of course. I should have recognized the car.’
She didn’t answer. They watched the man climb onto the boathouse deck. They couldn’t see Connie or the girl, who were still inside. Ashworth slipped away from her and made his way through the undergrowth, following the line of the floodwater to the point where the boathouse was closest to the bank. No thought for his shoes now or for his Marks and Spencer suit.
I owe him an apology. He’ll never want to work with me again.
There was a high-pitched scream, so loud that Vera could hear it even at this distance. The man appeared on the deck with Alice in his arms. Connie followed. She was the person screaming. It seemed to Vera that the child was silent, frozen perhaps with fear, her only survival tactic to shut off all emotion. Frozen as Vera had been. But the scream had woken Vera up. Suddenly she found herself on the phone demanding back-up, an ambulance, a rubber dinghy and a helicopter. Screaming herself, into her mobile: ‘Now! Get them here now!’