by Jo Allen
But the police, so close, might as well be a million miles away if Brandon was closer, knowing it didn’t matter to him what the consequences were of his actions. She hadn’t thought of that as she’d deliberately doomed his hopes for the future with that call to Laura, and sent their lives spiralling from one act of revenge to the next.
At the bottom of the hill the wall marked the edge of Red Bank Road. She didn’t dare climb over it, but kept crawling. Icy mud oozed through her fingers and a wet branch snagged her jumper. Rhododendrons. Someone’s garden. She shivered.
A dog barked.
Despite her desperation, despite her need for silence, she couldn’t suppress a whimper of fear. The rhododendrons gave way to a lawn and a driveway that wound to a house, out of sight. Five yards away the drive opened onto the road.
She ran, launching herself up like a sprinter from the blocks, over the road and over the wall, throwing herself to the soft ground without regard to bumps and bruises. Now she was a hundred yards from the police car at the top of Coffin Lane, probably a hundred more from the blue lights that flashed outside the garden centre.
That close.
She crawled along the wall, followed as it turned towards the lake, and scrambled over it and into the New Agers’ field.
*
‘No sign of either of them?’ Jude had left Ashleigh struggling to turn the Mercedes in the narrow and crowded lane, and was calling in to the police officers in the village as he and Doddsy set off down towards the village. Charlie Fry was reversing the police car down the lane ahead of her.
‘Not in the village. They may be in the woods.’
‘Keep looking. I’ve got more support coming. The male suspect is dangerous and may be armed.’ Jude closed off the call. ‘It’s Cody I’m most worried about. She could be anywhere.’
‘She’s done a runner,’ Doddsy said, his tone fringed with judgement. ‘That must be what it is. So maybe she did kill them after all.’
‘I don’t buy that.’
‘There’s a police car sitting in the village. She can see it. She’s meant to see it. Why the hell wouldn’t she think to go down and ask for help?’
Jude thought back to the text, the sheer vindictiveness of the ashes in the grate. ‘She’s terrified of her brother.’
‘She must be, if she doesn’t think we can be trusted to help her when she needs it.’
Ignoring him, Jude carried on down the lane. The police car came behind them and stopped and Tyrone got out. ‘Want me to go and join in the search?’
‘Jude!’
Jude spun round. A figure burst out through the gate into the New Agers’ field, one he recognised immediately. Storm. ‘Is something up?’
‘Your woman from up the hill.’ Storm tossed a savage look in the direction of the cottage. ‘She’s down in our camp, claiming her brother wants to kill her. Not that I blame him.’
‘Where is he? Did she say?’
‘In the woods somewhere. She swears he’s following her, but the woman’s in such a state I wouldn’t believe her. I don’t care. Just come and take her away before she brings us any more trouble than she already has.’
‘Stay here.’ Jude took a couple of steps down the lane.
‘No.’ Storm scowled at him. ‘I don’t give a damn about Cody Wilder but I’ve got Raven to think about.’
‘Whatever.’ There wasn’t time to argue. Jude turned to the two policemen still in the car. ‘Get down into the village and see if you can find him. Doddsy. Tyrone. You come down with me. We’ll get to Cody and make sure she’s safe.’
‘I’ll come too.’ Ashleigh had parked the car at the bottom of the lane. ‘You might need me.’
His instinct was to send her away, to make sure she kept safe, but he couldn’t do that. ‘Yes.’ Cody or Raven might welcome Ashleigh’s input.
He sprinted the last few yards down to the field, with Storm beside him and the others in his wake. ‘It’s okay, Dr Wilder. Jude Satterthwaite here.’ The mud squelched beneath his feet as he slowed to cross the field. ‘I’m going to take you somewhere safe.’
‘Safe? That bitch isn’t safe!’
Raven screamed. A dark figure vaulted the low wall from the woods and ran across the field into the dancing light cast by the campfire.
Brandon. ‘Where the hell is she? Who’s hiding her?’ He kicked at the campfire and it flared up. ‘Where is she? In here?’ Bending to snatch up a branch, he touched it to Raven’s weaving tent. ‘Burn, Cody Wilder. Burn!’
Jude had begun running again but the tent flared into life ahead of him, forcing him around it. From behind it, from the depths of Lynx’s tent, Cody’s voice burst out into the night. She might be scared but she faced her fear. ‘I’m over here. What’s the matter, Brandon? Can’t you understand how life works? If you destroy someone’s life, they’ll destroy yours. It’s karma. Take me on if you want. If you dare!’
‘Police!’ Jude shouted at him. ‘Brandon Wilder, stop where you are!’
He didn’t, snatching up a second burning branch from the campfire, holding one in each hand like a fire eater paused to perform. ‘You bitch! After everything I did to protect you! All the things you made me do! The people I killed to keep your secret!’
He lunged forward, touched one of the flaming sticks to the tent. The canvas flared up. Screaming as she emerged from its depths Cody jumped aside, the only place that was left to her – away from Brandon and away from Jude and Doddsy.
‘No one come nearer!’ Brandon’s voice cracked in the smoke as he headed after her. ‘No one comes near me until I’ve burned you on earth like you’re going to burn in hell!’
Jude kept running but Doddsy, with a surprising turn of speed, got to Brandon first, shoulder to shoulder with the American and barging him away from his sister. The burning branches fell from Brandon’s hand as they sprawled to the ground but Brandon shook himself free, scrambled up to his feet, and turned once more to his sister.
Smoke, flames, shadows and screams wove together. The brazier tipped over, spilling burning coals over the grass between Jude and Doddsy. ‘I’ll get her!’ Doddsy shouted, and dived to reach Cody even as Brandon turned and broke for it.
Jude took him down, a bruising collision that sent the two of them rolling on the wet ground. Ashleigh appeared beside him as he pinned Brandon to the ground and Tyrone closed in, too. The handcuffs closed on Brandon’s wrists and Jude, sitting back on his knees, turned to look for Cody and saw flame.
Time ran past him at two speeds. His own movements, pushing himself to his feet as fast as he could, were aeons slower than the split-second flaring of the burning brand that had somehow brushed his friend’s jacket as he fell. ‘Doddsy! Your coat! You’re on fire!’ And even as he hurdled the burning slick from the upturned brazier that lay in front of him, the flames took hold and Doddsy disappeared behind a sheet of orange.
21
‘All right.’ Jude was weary beyond endurance. It had been a long night, a long week, and duty had obliged him to carry on with the task of arresting and questioning Brandon and dealing with Cody when his mind was very much on other things. ‘Dr Wilder, I realise you’ve had a traumatic day. Maybe we’ll take a break.’ The clock in the interview room in the police headquarters – surely wrong – showed it was half past eleven in the evening but when he checked his watch, he saw that it was right. Time had played tricks on him and the night had run away.
Cody, her face expressionless, shrugged. Somewhere behind those eyes he was sure she was fighting a battle with herself, with her caustic, outspoken nature. ‘Do I go back to the cottage?’
‘Probably a hotel would be better for the night. You could try the George.’
‘Then perhaps you can get someone to sort me a taxi.’ She stood up and picked up her jacket, standing for a second with it suspended from her forefinger. ‘Chief Inspector. It does no good to say I’m sorry, though I am. But you have to believe me. I had no idea what Brandon did. No idea.’
Belatedly, Cody seemed to realise what they might be. She stopped in the middle of picking up her bag. ‘Is Inspector Dodd all right?’
‘I don’t know.’ If it was very bad news he’d have heard. He clung to that, turning away so that she didn’t see the expression on his face. ‘Let’s resume tomorrow. It may not be me who speaks to you. It will probably be Sergeant O’Halloran.’
‘You’ll be speaking to my brother again?’
‘Yes.’ He’d take a positive delight in taking on Brandon, black as sin from the crown of his cowboy hat to the sunless depths of his soul.
‘You’ll have to tell me how he killed Owen. I can’t work it out.’ She paused to stare across the car park towards the town, deep in thought. ‘For what it’s worth I didn’t play any part in killing my father, either, though I was glad he died. It was entirely Brandon’s doing. I was complicit in hiding the evidence. No more.’ She paused for a moment. ‘No. I’ll be honest. I’d likely have killed him, eventually. If he’d lived, he would have destroyed me.’
There would be no proof of what had happened in the Wyoming storm, just one sibling speaking against the other, and that was for someone else to sort out, on the other side of the world. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, like a sleepwalker.
‘And one more thing. Despite what I told Laura Maracado, I never slept with Brandon. It wasn’t that sort of relationship.’
He really didn’t care. What Cody did, how she squared her conscience and her morality with the things she’d done and said, were no concern of his. All he was interested in was the extent to which she’d been involved in the deaths of four innocent people, and it looked to him as if she was in the clear. ‘As I say. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.’
He held the door open for her and followed her down to reception, where Ashleigh was sitting waiting for him. She jumped up when he came in and waited while he called a taxi, furnished Cody with the number for a hotel and signed her out of the building that was officially closed. Only then did he dare ask. ‘Any news?’
‘You haven’t heard? It’s not good, Jude, but it’s not bad either. He’s badly burned but he’s going to make it.’
‘I’ll need to go and see him. I’ll need—’
‘Not at this time of night.’ Regardless of the setting, she put her arms round him.
He held onto her, pressing his cheek against her hair. He’d lost sight of her in the chaos of the evening, but she must have been picking up the slack. ‘You didn’t have to wait for me, but thanks.’
‘I did have to.’ She turned her face up to his and kissed him, quickly. ‘I have your car. But I’d have waited anyway.’
‘I’ll run you home.’ They’d had plans for dinner out and an evening in, but those were left in the smoking embers of the campsite.
‘Thanks. We’ll have an early start tomorrow.’
‘You’ll have to deal with Cody for me. She won’t be any trouble. She’ll be too busy making excuses and proving that she couldn’t have done it.’
‘I feel sorry for her. What a god-awful childhood she must have had. It’s no wonder she can’t handle people. Was she any help?’
‘Oh yes. She couldn’t tell me enough.’ He led the way across the car park to where the Mercedes stood in solitary splendour, and took the key from Ashleigh’s outstretched hand. ‘If I’d had some of this detail a few days ago we might never have been in this situation. She’d heard the washing machine early in the morning on the day Lynx was killed. Brandon had told her he couldn’t sleep because he was jetlagged, but my guess is he was washing the blood from his clothes. She thought she’d heard him moving around when Fi was killed, but she decided it was part of a nightmare so she tried to forget about it. And he was the one who gave the chocolates to Seb. There were two left, but he only offered one in the box. To make sure he got the right person, I imagine.’ He’d never seen anyone distance themselves from someone they claimed to care about quite as clinically as Cody had gone about cutting herself free from Brandon. ‘He confessed to her. It’ll be on the tapes, if we ever get to hear them.’
‘And Owen?’
‘Owen had threatened to ruin Cody a couple of times and she’d told Brandon about it. I’ve no doubt he turned up intending to silence the poor kid, and was lucky with the opportunity to make it look like a suicide.’ He started the car.
‘He must have thought that was enough. And then he realised he had to kill again.’
‘And again.’
They fell into silence. The smoke from the campfire lingered in Jude’s nostrils as he drove back to Penrith, hands balanced still on the steering wheel, contemplating the evening as if at a distance. Light, shadows, screams would echo in his head when he slept. Doddsy hadn’t screamed, only twisted in fear as he tried to shake off his flaming jacket. It was Storm who’d saved him, beating the flames down with his hands until the others had reached him.
He broke the silence. ‘Is Storm all right?’
‘Yes. He wouldn’t go to hospital but I did manage to persuade him to see a doctor. The Gordons have taken the two of them in again. They’re lovely people. So kind.’
Jude pulled the car up at the kerb outside the house she shared with Lisa. ‘I thought they might have ditched this stupidity about modern medicine after that nonsense over the knife. He doesn’t know how close he came to being charged with perverting the course of justice.’
‘I did try and talk to Raven, and see if I could persuade her to go and see a doctor. She says she doesn’t know how. But I tipped off Eliza Gordon, so maybe she can do something to help.’ She unclipped her seatbelt but made no move to get out.
‘Let’s hope so.’ He shared her reluctance to part. Ashleigh understood him, knew the strains of fighting other people’s demons as well as your own.
‘Tyrone was really upset about it, too.’
He nodded, watching her fingers playing on her lap. ‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’
‘Jude. Why don’t you come in?’
It was tempting, so tempting. ‘We’ve a lot to do. It’ll be an early start.’
‘Yes, and it’s been a bugger of a day. And your birthday, too. Don’t tell me you want to go home alone.’
He rested his fingers on the steering wheel. His own company was the last thing he wanted but there was too great a risk in depending on other people. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I still have things I need to do. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Make sure you get something to eat,’ she cautioned him, as if she were his mother.
‘I’ve got two dozen cream cakes in the boot.’ He managed a wry smile at the direction his birthday had taken.
‘Oh, Jude.’ She leaned towards him for a kiss that would have led them somewhere else on a better day, then opened the car door and got out. ‘Call me if you need me. Any time.’
When he’d watched her safely into the house, he turned the car and drove back down the hill into Penrith. The mention of food reminded him how long it had been since he’d eaten and the cakes held no appeal, and he was reluctant to go back to his house because he knew what he’d find there. For the past few years, on his birthday, the postman had delivered an anonymous packet containing thirty chocolate coins in silver foil. He drove along Middlegate and up through the square, slotting the car into a space in Great Dockray.
There was a queue. Rather than join it, he paused outside to check the message that popped up just as he parked. Chris.
Up
date on Doddsy. Serious but stable. Expected to make it. Call for further update tomorrow am.
Already regretting having turned down the offer of company he tossed the phone from hand to hand, infuriated by his own powerlessness, and distracted himself by calling Tammy. Though it was nearly midnight, he knew she’d answer. She was a night owl, and even if she was back from the crime scene at Grasmere, she’d still be awake. ‘Hi, Tammy. I’m just checking in.’
‘Oh, hi Chief. Another quiet night for all of us, eh?’
‘I’ll say. Are you home?’
‘I just got in. I’ll be back up there tomorrow.’
‘You’ll want to look for blood in the washing machine or in Brandon’s clothes. And yew berries in the garden or in the bin. Seeds removed.’ Brandon was an opportunist and, until the end, he’d been a lucky one. Jude passed a hand over his forehead. It would wait. ‘That’s not why I called. I wanted to make sure Tyrone’s okay.’
He stiffened. Becca, close but not too close to Adam Fleetwood, her head bent towards him in conversation, came along down the path from Angel Lane into Great Dockray. He stepped back into the shade and hoped they’d go on past.
‘I know he’s seen a few grim things already, but this shook him up. He’ll get over it. He’ll see a lot worse before he gets his pension.’
In all probability there wasn’t much worse than seeing someone you cared for going up in flames like a human torch and if Jude wasn’t mistaken Tyrone had quickly become as fond of Doddsy as he was himself, though in a very different way. Maybe Tammy hadn’t worked that out, or maybe she was using her robust common sense as a shield against so many of the grim things she herself had seen. ‘It wasn’t great.’
‘I hear Doddsy’s going to be okay, though.’
‘So they tell me.’
Becca and Adam came closer. Jude’s voice must have given him away, because Adam turned and flicked a very obvious glance towards him. ‘Well, well,’ he said to Becca, in a voice that was meant to be heard. ‘Look who it is.’