Cupid's Arrow

by Isabelle Merlin

  If only

  It's eerie being out in this light, which is neither like the usual sort of moonlight, nor like sunlight, but something in between. Something not quite real. It comes to me that what it's most like is the light in which they shoot certain sorts of scenes in films. Like a flashback. Or a dream. Something out of time, out of place.

  I glance at Christine. She seems very calm, despite all that's happened. She's brought the gun with her. It's lying on her lap, glinting in the weird light. I can't quite believe I'm seeing it, can't quite believe what's happening.

  She turns off the road and goes bumping down a track. I'm afraid the gun will go off, but she doesn't seem to pay it any mind. The woods are all around us now, the trees bathed in that weird light. The headlights are only on low beam, you don't need the high, because it's so bright out there. We turn a corner and suddenly there's a car parked in a little clearing to one side of the track.

  Christine pulls up. She turns off the lights. She turns to me. 'We were right. He's here. That's the car he was driving.'

  I don't remember what car Laurie was driving. Some hire car. I nod. 'What are we going to do now?' My voice comes out like a squeak, despite my best efforts. I suddenly feel terribly afraid. Oh Remy, Remy.

  'We're going to have to find Remy, before –' She breaks off, with a sideways glance at me. She jumps out of the car and I follow, numbly. She walks up to the other car, tries the doors – they're locked. Cupping one hand over her eyes, she looks in through the windows. 'I can't see anyone in there,' she says. 'Wherever he is, it's not here.'

  It's very quiet. Not a breath of wind. The leaves are still. But I can feel unseen eyes watching us, a presence in these woods that is far more frightening than any wolf. It comes to me suddenly that it is the presence of evil. So strong is this feeling that I don't even try to argue with it in my head, like I usually would.

  Christine doesn't seem affected by the atmosphere. She walks past the car and looks down the track. 'It splits in two. I think one probably doubles back to come near my back garden. The other goes deeper into the woods.' She looks at me. 'Are you all right, Fleur? You look terrible.'

  'I'm, I'm fine,' I manage to croak. 'Really.'

  She raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment. 'I think they must have gone that way –' pointing to the track that goes deeper into the woods – 'because that makes the most sense, don't you think?'

  'I–I suppose so,' I say. I must get a grip on myself. I must not go to pieces right now. Remy needs me. I can see him in my mind's eye creeping through the woods, the crossbow in his hand, Patou at his side, intent on his prey. But I can see Laurie too, stopping because he's heard a footfall, the rack of a twig, waiting in ambush by the side of the path. What chance does Remy have against a man like that? And even if he catches Laurie, if he shoots him – then where will he be? He will be a killer, a murderer too. He will go to prison.

  'I wish –' I begin, then stop, because what's the use? I am in a waking nightmare and I cannot escape it. But Christine looks at me and says, gently, 'I don't think you should come with me, Fleur. It's too dangerous. Sit in the car and wait for me. Lock yourself in. No harm can come to you.'

  'No,' I say. 'No. I have to do this too. I have to –'

  'Then you take the other track. Just in case they, well, just in case they didn't go the way I thought. You'll be close to the house, then. If there's any problem, just run there. Go in. Call the police. Okay?'

  I want to say no, that I'll come with her on the other track – but as I look down that path, where the trees are pressing in and even the blood moonlight isn't penetrating much, I can feel my legs shaking and my throat close up with fear. I hate myself for the weakness, but I can't force myself beyond it. So I nod, dumbly.

  She puts a hand on my shoulder, briefly. 'Don't worry. It'll be fine. You'll see. Courage.' And then she's gone, walking rapidly up the track into the deep woods. She turns once and waves at me – I haven't even moved – and then she's swallowed up by the trees and the darkness and I'm alone.

  Now the silence presses in on my eardrums, so in some way I can't explain it's like a sound in itself. I know I have to move, that staying in that place is not an option, that unlike Christine, who is so brave and calm, I'm jelly. Cowardy custard. Scaredy cat.

  Come on, get a move on. One foot in front of the other. Head down that other track. You're safe enough there. They won't be there. He won't be there. He'll be far away from the house, he'll have gone deep into the woods to lure –

  No. Stop that. I walk down the track that leads back to the house. My steps get quicker. I've decided now. I'm going to go back inside, call the police. This has gone on long enough. What the hell are we thinking? My scalp is prickled all over with cold, the back of my neck is crawling. I have to stuff my fist in my mouth to stop myself from screaming.

  Then suddenly, there's a rustling in the bushes. I stop dead, so scared I can't even cry out. I wait for the ...

  And there he is, emerging from the bushes to one side of the path. He stops when he sees me. For a moment, our eyes meet. His eyes are green, very green, glowing with yellow lights. He is smaller than I imagined, but also fiercer-looking. A cruel grin. Sharp teeth. Beautiful fur, red-gold and burnished in the light. A proud tail. For an instant the fox and I stare at each other, then he is gone, quicker almost than the eye can see, flickering away into the bushes on the other side of the path.

  My heart resumes its beating. My hands unclench. I am about to start walking again when suddenly I catch sight of something. Something in the bushes, not far from where the fox emerged. Surely that isn't, no, it can't – yes. It is. It's a shoe. A muddy shoe. Not a shoe on its own – a shoe attached to – a foot. A leg. A leg in jeans. I part the bushes, crawl in. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just acting blindly without thought. Because I have to know. I have to know.

  There is a man lying in the bushes. He isn't moving. He is dressed in jeans and a hooded jacket. I can't see his face because he's lying on his front and the hood hides his head, but there's a rip at the shoulder which looks fresh. I think of the fox coming out of there and my gorge rises as I think I've disturbed him when he was about to start ripping into ... No. I won't think it. I won't. My legs wobble, my throat clenches and then I'm down on my knees beside him. I touch him but he doesn't move. I close my eyes and steel myself and pull the hood from his head, terrified of what I'll see, but knowing that I have to because if it is Remy lying there, then I'll...

  But it isn't Remy. And it isn't Laurie. It's Oscar.

  The shock of it is so great that I actually reel back. In books you read of people doing things like that and you can hardly picture it. Well now I can. I know. You do reel. You feel as though you've had a dizzy fit. Taken a knock to the head. As though you've gone mad. As though you've fallen from the world you know into a nightmare.

  I stare at Oscar's dead face. I know he's dead, because he hasn't moved. But my brain refuses to take it in. Why was he here? Why was Oscar here, and not Laurie? Is everything we thought completely wrong? Were all those deaths really nothing to do with Laurence Ferrier and that long-ago vendetta? Was it Oscar who killed his uncle and the PI and Valerie? But why? Why? To inherit more quickly? But then why kill the PI and Valerie? And what did the Hotel du Lys thing have to do with it? Maybe it had nothing. Nothing. We were just on the wrong track, like we'd been with the King Arthur coin business. But wait – wait – idiot that I was not to have seen it before – Oscar had been in Canada too! Playing the stockmarket. He came back with plenty of money. What if it wasn't the stockmarket at all, but something else? What if he had been somehow connected with those Hotel du Lys gangsters? Had known Laurie there? What if Raymond had been suspicious as to what his nephew had been up to in Canada? And what if he had found out...

  My brain stutters and freezes like a malfunctioning computer. These ideas are so wild and outlandish that I can't accept them and yet they must be true at least to some extent because otherwise what w
ould Oscar have been doing, lurking around the house, intent on God knows what, more murder, more destruction. But it's not us that's lying there dead – not me, not Christine, not Remy – but him. He's dead. Remy killed him. He shot him with the crossbow. He shot him dead. He shot him to avenge the death of his mother.

  Steeling myself, I look closer. It's been half-hidden by the jacket but now I can see that at the nape of the neck, there's a hole. A cylindrical sort of hole, smeared with blood. I've seen so many TV crime shows where pathologists blether on about exit wounds and stuff that I know it's bigger than a bullet hole. Different. He's been shot in the back of the neck. Shot from behind, the spinal cord severed by the bolt. My God, shot by his own crossbow. Crossbows are deadly things. He must have died instantly. He wouldn't have known what hit him. Remy must have come up from behind, aimed and ...

  This time the nausea rushes up unstoppably into my throat and I'm sick, so sick it's as if I'm throwing up my entire stomach and its lining too. When it's over I'm weak and shaking but I know I can't stay here. I have to go back to the house and call the police at once. Remy is out there somewhere – no longer the Remy I thought I knew but who I still care about so deeply that it makes my body ache – and the only way to help him is to get in the people we should really always have gone to, instead of trying to do this on our own and ending up with this.

  I stumble out of the bushes and back onto the track. A little wind has got up and the leaves of the trees are whispering and shivering. The moon is going, its light fading, the night returning to darkness. I walk along the track as fast as I can and as I do, I become suddenly certain that I am being watched. So strong is the feeling that I call out, 'Remy? Is that you? Please, Remy, come out. Please.'

  There's no answer to my words. I walk faster. But the feeling gets stronger. I stop. I turn around. Nothing. Noone. And then I hear a twig cracking. I know he's there, that he's no longer the person I thought I knew. He's mad. He's gone mad. He could do anything. All at once, I am filled with a terror so great that I'm no longer aware of what I'm doing. I begin to run. But not towards the house. Back up to the car, to the other path. To Christine. And I'm yelling for her as I go. If I really think about it, I know it's madness because he could get me any time but I still have a hope he won't hurt me, that he never meant for any of this to happen, and that everything will be all right, if only, if only...

  Devil's vow

  I'm back at the place where the paths meet. I can see the two cars from here. Christine isn't back. For a moment I am stricken by the absolute certainty that she's met her end too, in these dark woods. That she's lying dead on the path with a crossbow bolt in the back of her neck. Then I'm running to the other path, the one that she took, and I'm calling her name and shouting and crashing around, without caring anymore who's behind me, if it's Remy or anyone else – Laurie, for instance. Because didn't Christine say that was Laurie's car? She wouldn't have said it if she didn't recognise it. She'd know if it was Oscar's car. But no, she has Oscar's car. Remember? She borrowed it. It's the one we came in, here. So therefore it must be as she said. It's Laurie's car. And that means Laurie might be here too. It might be him, rather than Remy, who killed Oscar. But why Oscar? And why was Oscar here, if it wasn't him who . ..

  The thoughts buzz in my head like angry bees but they make no sense at all. Nothing fits. I don't understand. But I cling to the possibility that it is Laurie, and not Remy, who killed Oscar.

  But if Laurie is the murderer, then he's killed four times. And he's somewhere out here. Somewhere in these woods. And Remy – Remy is out here too. Tracking him – or being tracked? Hunter, or hunted?

  The nightie is clammy around my legs now, it's one of those short ones and I'm wearing boxers with it and the jumper, so I should be feeling pretty hot. But I'm not. I keep shivering. I call out once more, 'Christine! Christine!' and I edge along the path, which is getting darker and darker and more and more overhung with trees. Then suddenly, there she is, appearing it seems from the trees themselves. She has the gun in her hand. She sees me and stops and I run forward, crying, 'Thank God! I thought you were, I thought you were –'

  'What?' she says, calmly, putting the gun into her jacket pocket.

  'He's back there – I mean I saw – he's –'

  'Who? Remy? What are you saying?'

  'No. Not Remy.' I remember she's Oscar's fiancée. I have to break it to her gently. I say, 'It's, it's not who we thought it was.'

  'What are you talking about? Is it Laurie?' She sounds impatient.

  'No. I don't know where he is. If he's here. He might be. It's Oscar.'

  She freezes. I can see the white of her eyes in the shadows under the trees. She says, very quietly, 'It can't be.'

  'It is. I'm so sorry. It is. He's dead. Shot with a crossbow bolt.'

  'Oh my God.' She crumples suddenly, the strong woman folding at last and I rush to her before she falls to the ground. I help her up, make her walk to a nearby tree-stump, get her to sit down. I say, 'I'm so sorry, Christine. I'm so sorry.'

  Pretty weak, I know, but it's all I can think of to say, right at that moment.

  She is silent a moment. I can see her shoulders heaving a little but she has command of herself very quickly. She says, 'Then we had everything wrong.'

  I nod. I say, 'Are you sure that was Laurie's car?'

  'I–I think so.' But I think she sounds a little doubtful now.

  'Because if it is,' I say, swallowing, 'it means that Oscar was in league with Laurie.'

  'What! Don't be silly. Why would he be in league with –'

  'He lived in Canada, didn't he? How do we know what he did there? The sorts of people he met? Maybe he was in with those gangsters.'

  'You mean that Oscar was Laurence Ferrier? That's absurd.' She looks a bit recovered now.

  'No. No. I mean that maybe he knew Laurence Ferrier – Laurie. He couldn't be Laurence Ferrier. But he might have known him, back there.'

  She shakes her head. 'I can't believe it. Not Oscar.' Then her eyes widen. She says, very slowly, 'He was very worried about something, the last couple of weeks since his uncle died.'

  'Yes,' I say sadly. 'He looked haunted. Maybe he felt guilty, if he felt responsible, in some way, for Raymond's death – I mean if he and Laurie –'

  She nods, bites down on her lip, gives me a quick glance. 'What about Remy?'

  'I don't know.' I take a deep breath. 'I think he's somewhere here. Hiding.' I swallow, continue. 'Hiding either from Laurie, or because he –'

  'Because he killed Oscar, you mean.' She sounds almost brisk. She gets up.

  I can see the picture in my head, but it still doesn't make sense. I never would have thought, never, that Remy could cold-bloodedly kill someone like that. Even if he thought he was his mother's murderer. 'I don't understand,' I said, and it was only when I saw Christine's expression that I knew I'd spoken out loud.

  'What don't you understand, Fleur?'

  'I don't understand. Why did he shoot Oscar? Why would he think Oscar was the one?'

  She shrugs. 'I don't suppose he did. He just saw a man skulking around, didn't he? If he shot him from behind, he'd just have seen a hooded jacket, wouldn't he? A man in a hooded jacket lurking around doesn't inspire confidence, does it?'

  'But you don't just shoot – I mean, it could be anyone. If he didn't know who it was, he wouldn't shoot, just in case it turned out to be someone innocent. You'd want to know for sure. You'd want to get them to turn around. And then he'd have seen it was Oscar and –' Suddenly, I break off as something bursts in on me. A lightning flash of memory, searing into my brain. My scalp clenches. My hands shake. I look into Christine's eyes, and I know. I just know. Not how. Not why. But who, and the knowledge drops into my heart like a stone.

  She's seen my expression. She's bright. Quick. Clever. Like the fox, she's sensed the change in atmosphere, the sudden disturbance. She looks at me, raises an eyebrow.

  'What were you going to say, Fleur?'

>   Her hand's in her pocket. Fascinated, I stare at her as she calmly takes the gun out again. She lifts it casually. She can be casual. Slow, even, because I'm paralysed. Not likely to run away.

  I say, and every word feels heavy, 'I never told you. I was too scared. I just said there was an intruder. I never described him to you. Never told you he wore a hooded jacket. And you haven't seen Oscar's body yet either. Or have you?'

  'That was silly of me,' she agreed. She sounds quite cheerful, quite normal. 'You're quite right, of course. You didn't say.'

  'You – you killed him. With the crossbow. It was you who stole it.'

  'There was no crossbow,' she says, just as cheerfully, taking a step towards me. 'You, well, you sort of suggested it to me, with your talk of bows and arrows, and Remy, hunting him down.'

  'But, but I saw the wound.' I stare at the gun in her hand. 'It wasn't a bullet hole. At least I –'

  'No,' she says, smiling. She is so pretty and her eyes shine so brightly and I am so scared of her that I can hardly breathe. 'It wasn't a bullet. It was a bolt.'

  'But –'

  She jerks her head at the gun. 'You don't know much about guns, do you, Fleur?'

  I shake my head.

  'Have you heard of captive-bolt guns? Used to slaughter cattle in abattoirs. No need to waste bullets. Well, that's what this is.' She smiles. 'You just put it up to their head, press the trigger, wham. In goes the bolt, down they drop, stone dead. The bolt goes back into the gun, to be used again on the next one. Voila.'