The door of the storm porch was unlocked. It was stiff, as if it had warped and was seldom used, but it gave way at last to Hunter’s tugging. The inner door had panes of bubbled glass and it was impossible to see inside. Hunter stood still for a moment, trying to hear if the conversation between Ramsay and Slater was going on, but
Ramsay had lowered his voice so much that he could not tell. Perhaps Slater had come downstairs and was waiting on the other side of the door, with the shotgun in his hand. He turned the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
Swearing under his breath he looked about him for a hiding place for a spare key. The front of the house was in shadow, and though his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom he could make out nothing in detail. He felt along the window ledge. His fingers found nothing but a thick layer of dust. There was a filthy doormat on the floor of the porch but no key underneath it. He retreated into the garden.
On each side of the porch was a large terra cotta pot, which in Cissie Bowles’s day might have held a flowering plant. Now each contained soil and a few dried up weeds. Hunter lifted each pot and felt underneath. Nothing. He scrabbled around in the dry soil and in the first pot he tried there was a large key. He cleaned off the muck and returned to the path. The key was rusty but it fitted.
“Open, you bugger,” he muttered, thinking that all he needed now was for the door to be bolted on the inside.
The key turned remarkably easily. He put his shoulder against the door, turned the handle and pushed it slowly open.
At first it seemed pitch-black inside. He could hear a clock ticking, Slater’s voice ‘insistent but indistinct upstairs. Then he saw he was standing in a wide hall. Stairs, with a banister to one side, led away from him. He hesitated. Sod the heroics, he thought. Let’s get Lily out and let the cavalry deal with the lunatic upstairs. But he was pleased to think that for her he would be the cavalry.
He felt his way around the downstairs rooms. There was a lounge, crammed with furniture, a dining room, damp and cold as a cellar with a huge mahogany table but no chairs, the kitchen which was flooded with moonlight. No sign of Lily. The bastard’s got her upstairs, he thought, and felt a rush of adrenaline.
He stood in the hall listening, but he could only hear Slater, relentless as a politician, going on and on about never having been understood.
Perhaps she’s dead, he thought. He started up the stairs, testing each tread with his foot before putting his weight on it, listening after each step for some sound from Lily. A cry or a movement from one of the other upstairs rooms.
There was nothing.
At the top of the stairs he stopped. Sean’s voice was very clear now, still ranting.
“She believed in them, you know,” he said. “She believed they could make everything better. I knew she was fooling herself. Some things you can’t heal. Not just by talking.”
Slater was in the bedroom over the kitchen. It too would have the moon shining directly in through the window. The door was slightly ajar and white light spilled out on to the landing.
Hunter moved softly along the landing, looking in the other rooms for Lily. There was a big square bathroom with a gurgling cistern, bedrooms with unsavoury beds and threadbare carpets, a huge commode like a throne. As he pushed open one door quietly there was a rustling of movement, but it was only a family of mice scattering to the holes in the skirting board. So Lily must be in the room with Slater, he thought. Why, then, was she so quiet?
“We’ve got a suicide pact, you know.” Slater’s voice came suddenly. “You won’t take either of us alive.”
The door to Slater’s room was panelled, with a dark and peeling varnish. Hunter pushed it open a crack further. He could see Slater’s back. The man was almost hanging out of the window, shouting to Ramsay, waving the shotgun to make his point. Hunter thought he might overbalance and go tumbling into the farmyard below.
Lily was standing in the corner beside Cissie’s high lumpy bed, with her back to the wall. She looked at Hunter. He gestured her to walk towards him but she did not move. She was wearing her nightdress, a long, white calico shift with a shawl thrown over the top. Hunter saw then that this was no victim waiting to be rescued. She did not seem frightened. She was watching Slater sadly, waiting for him to run out of steam. She thought he was making a fool of himself but she was prepared to indulge him. For a while.
Sean turned back into the room. Still he could not see Hunter.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’d rather kill you than let you talk to that pig. He was tricking you. Can’t you see?”
Lily moved slowly away from the wall.
“Go on then,” she said.
“What?” he shouted. “Are you mad?”
“Kill me then,” she said firmly, ‘if that’s what you want. I don’t care one way or the other.”
She walked towards him. Her bare feet made marks on the dusty floor. They were long and bony and they reminded Hunter of a bird’s feet.
Slater raised the shotgun towards her. In the farmyard below Ramsay was becoming anxious. They heard him calling, “Sean! What’s going on, Sean? Why don’t you come back and talk to me?”
Frustrated and helpless, Hunter stood very still. He knew that any movement might panic Slater into firing. Lily walked right up to him, so the barrel of the shotgun touched her chest.
“Love,” he said. “I only did it for you.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“I thought you’d realized,” he said.
She lifted the barrel of the shotgun so it pointed towards the ceiling, then she took it from his hands, cradling it carefully in her arms like a baby.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” he said.
She turned and threw the gun on to the bed.
“Come on,” she said. “Come on.” She hugged him to her, so his head was on her shoulder, and looked over him at Hunter who came into the room and emptied the gun. They did not move, even when Hunter went over to the window and shouted out to Ramsay: “It’s all right, boss. It’s all over.”
Later, back at the police station, Ramsay asked:
“How did you manage that then? The Indiana Jones trick. Disarming your man with a single blow.”
Hunter paused. For a moment there was a temptation to lie. It would have been a much better story if he’d been more than an onlooker. He still felt cheated that there’d been no chance for action after all that build up.
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “It was Lily. She persuaded him to give himself up.”
“Ah yes,” Ramsay said. “Lilyjackman.”
Chapter Thirty-three
It was almost dawn when they sat round in the incident room listening to Ramsay tell the story. Bleary-eyed and crumpled, they were too tired to interrupt and they were surprised that he found the energy to keep going. He wanted to explain it, he said, though they thought that motive wasn’t really important not now that the case was over. They should be celebrating.
“It was quite simple,” Ramsay said. “Obvious really once you realized that the story about Faye Cooper was just a distraction. Slater sent the anonymous letter to confuse us. And because he’s always resented the Abbots and the time Lily spent with them. He moved James McDougal’s body for the same reason. To make us think that the murder had something to do with Faye…” His voice dropped so they could hardly hear. “And I suppose it did have a lot to do with the girl in a way.”