‘Safety from what? It’s a Christmas card, not a threat.’
Pippa said, ‘Take another look, Toby. I checked it out on the Internet just to be sure. In the original painting, the blade of the axe doesn’t have any red on it.’
Estover examined the card, frowning, and said, ‘Just a poor reproduction, perhaps. I noticed you don’t seem to have shared any of your concerns with Johnny.’
She shook her head impatiently and said, ‘Of course I haven’t. You know Johnny. He can’t take too much reality. You haven’t been upsetting him, I hope?’
‘Upset Johnny?’ Estover laughed. ‘You’re joking, of course. You know what he said to me as I left? If you run into Wolf in Cumbria, give him my best!’
She said, ‘And that didn’t convince you we were wise to be getting away?’
‘On the contrary. If Wolf did have any notion of coming after us, Johnny in the witness box would be worth at least six jury votes.’
She said incredulously, ‘You think Wolf would be using the law? Jesus!’
‘What else would he do?’
Pippa shook her head and said, ‘You may be a great lawyer, Toby, but it’s real life out here, not just words. Didn’t having your tree chopped down teach you anything? I doubt if Wolf Hadda is looking to get himself a good brief. He’s a dangerous man.’
‘You think so?’ said Estover. ‘Well, I have some dangerous friends too. But it bothers me to see you reacting like this, Pippa. I’ve always regarded you as a rock. Why would you think Wolf might be truly dangerous? I understand he’s pretty well a broken reed after all those years inside.’
‘I just don’t care to be around if and when he puts himself together again,’ she said. ‘You can rely on your dangerous friends for protection, Toby. From my memories of Wolf, I prefer distance.’
Estover observed her thoughtfully for a moment, then began to smile.
‘Now what memories would they be? Let me guess. I often wondered why you were such a non-fan of Wolf’s. I’m guessing that, back in the golden days when we were all such dear friends together, you tried your charms on him and he turned you down. He must have given you a real scare for you to be still feeling the aftermath!’
She didn’t react to his gibe but said quietly, ‘Right as always, Toby. He said, “I’ll screw you if you really want it, Pippa. But I’m sure that, even while you were hitting the high notes, you’d be thinking of half a dozen good moral imperatives for confessing to Imo. So I’d probably have to kill you soon as we finished. So what do you say? Still up for it?”’
‘And you actually believed him?’ said Toby.
‘I’m selling the house, aren’t I? And I’d better get on with it. By the way, you got your card at your office, did you?’
‘That’s right. Why?’
‘Interesting he didn’t send it to your house. Perhaps he’s got some other form of greeting in mind for Imo. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Toby.’
She walked out of the kitchen. When Estover followed, she was halfway up the stairs.
She didn’t look back.
14
A noise woke Alva Ozigbo in the middle of the night and for a second she experienced that heart-stopping feeling of not knowing where the hell she was.
Then she remembered, and in her confused mind where? was pushed aside by how? and why?
Professionally, there was nothing wrong in a psychiatrist accepting overnight hospitality from a patient. As long as they didn’t share a bed, of course, and she had minimized any danger of this by wedging a chair against the door. Not that anything in Hadda’s manner had suggested he regarded her as desirable. Indeed, as her analysis had probed deeper and deeper after that first impassioned cry for help, he had revealed that his sexual urges seemed to have gone into hibernation during his prison sentence.
‘I don’t even wake up with an erection now,’ he told her. ‘But of course you’ll probably have to take my word for that.’
And this, apart from the time he had tested her assurance that the sound channels of the CCTV system were turned off, was the only time he had come close to suggestiveness.
But hibernation was not a permanent state, and better safe than sorry, so in lieu of a lock, the chair had been jammed up against the door handle, though she couldn’t avoid a sense that her motives for such a melodramatic gesture were at best muddied.
She set that aside for later consideration and concentrated on examining how she’d come to be staying at Birkstane.
Her practical reasons were those urged by her host. Dusk had been fast approaching, the first swirls of mist were already rising, and she needed more time to talk to him about the money. Pretty feeble. The mist had proved little more than a frost haze, she would have had no difficulty in driving slowly back to the village, and even with the pub a no-go area, the vicar would hardly have turned her away.
In the event, the fact that she stayed had turned into a reason for denying her the object of her staying.
Their simple dinner had been accompanied by a far from simple bottle of excellent burgundy. She’d examined the label and felt this was a good cue to bring up the subject of the money chest. As soon as she started, Hadda had put one of the two fingers on his right hand to his lips and said, ‘Football and finance are banned topics at civilized dinner tables.’
‘I thought it was religion and politics,’ she said.
‘Not in Cumbria,’ he said.
Afterwards, mellowed by the wine plus a shot of whisky in her coffee, she had not resisted when in reply to her attempt to return to the subject he said, ‘Let’s leave the dénouement till tomorrow, like in the Arabian Nights, OK?’
It was only as she was on the point of slipping into sleep that it occurred to her that in the Arabian Nights it was Scheherazade who kept on postponing the conclusion of her tale because she knew that, when it was finished, she would be put to death.
Now, waking, it struck her that the bedroom was remarkably light. Her last impression just before she closed the curtains had been of complete and utter darkness, the kind of dark that anyone used to the permanent half-light of the modern city never sees. So the square of brightness marking the small window made her wonder if some intruder had triggered a security light, though somehow the ideas of Birkstane and modern technology didn’t sit well together.
She slipped out of bed and drew back the curtains.
Not modern technology; more like ancient mythology.
The evening mist had vanished and the moon had risen. Its pearly light suffused the sky and the countryside, exploding to brilliance, like gunpowder scattered over embers, wherever it touched the hard hoar frost clinging to twigs and branches and blades of grass and the ribs and furrows of ancient stone walls.
It wasn’t a human landscape she looked out upon, it was the land of faerie, a land where human why’s and how’s didn’t apply. It was magic that bound her here. Her only safety lay in flight from the enchanter, but her books of knowledge held no elfish charms to see her safe through these fields of light.
Her gaze drifted down to the farmyard below her window. There were marks on the whitened cobbles as if something had moved across them since the frost fell. She remembered that a noise had awoken her but she couldn’t remember what it was.
She went back to bed, and must have slipped back into sleep immediately for it seemed only a few seconds till she was woken again, this time by a fist banging on the bedroom door and Hadda’s voice calling, ‘Breakfast in fifteen minutes. After that it’s DIY!’
She rose. Perhaps the remnants of the fire in the grate had still been warming the air when she got up in the night as she hadn’t noticed the cold then, but now it was freezing. She dragged on her clothes. Through the window the countryside still looked magical, but only in a glitzy Christmas card kind of way. She removed the chair from the door and headed out to the bathroom. There was a trickle of warm water. Getting enough to fill the ancient tub would have taken half an hour, by which time she
would probably have contracted pneumonia, so she settled for a perfunctory splash in the cracked basin. Then after dragging a comb through her hair, she descended to the kitchen.
Here there was warmth from the crackling fire and the smell of frying bacon. Hadda greeted her with, ‘Perfect timing, Elf. Sleep all right?’
This was the first time since her arrival that he’d used the nickname. Last night he’d called her . . . in fact, he hadn’t called her anything, and she realized now that this sense of a barrier raised had distressed her.
‘Yes, thanks. Anything I can do?’
‘Make the coffee, if you like.’
His face had a healthy ruddy glow that made the scars on it stand out like ribs of quartz in a granite boulder. His hair, she noticed, was damp and looked as if it had been roughly ordered by drawing his fingers through it.
As she made the coffee she said, faintly accusing, ‘You look as if you’ve had a shower.’
He said, ‘What?’
Then he put his hand to his head and smiled and said, ‘Of course. Didn’t I mention the shower facilities?’
‘No, you didn’t,’ she said.
‘Well, no time now, but after breakfast if you still want one, just go out of the door, head towards the estate boundary wall, you’ll meet a beck. Turn left and follow it upstream about twenty yards and beneath a little waterfall you’ll see a pool, just room enough for one. I’ll get you a towel.’
It took a moment to realize he wasn’t joking. She thought of that frost-bound world out there and shuddered.
He took some plates out of the oven where they’d been warming, put the bacon on them, quickly scrambled some eggs in the remaining fat, spooned them alongside the rashers and said, ‘Grub up.’
The plate looked to hold more calories than she usually consumed in a day, but she cleared it without any noticeable difficulty.
He sliced a loaf thickly, impaled one slice on a toasting fork, another on the bread knife and said, ‘Now it really is do-it-yourself time.’
They sat before the fire, toasting bread, spreading it thick with butter and marmalade, then washing it down with coffee.
‘Enough,’ she said after three slices.
‘Eat,’ he commanded. ‘Lunch is a moveable feast at Birkstane.’
She remarked, but didn’t remark upon, the assumption that she’d be staying for lunch.
Their breakfast conversation was desultory in an easy domestic sort of way, touching on how old the house was (500 years, give or take); who had embroidered the Lord’s Prayer sampler hanging on the wall (Great Aunt Carrie); why toast done on an open fire was so much better than under a grill or in a toaster (how could it not be?); but finally she felt it was time to say, ‘So, Wolf, this matter of the money . . .’
‘Not before the dishes are washed,’ he said firmly.
‘This another old Cumbrian custom?’
‘Oh yes. We always washed up before going out to kill the Scots or the Irish. Whichever happened to be invading at the time.’
You can’t have been in a Celticidal mood yesterday, she thought, recalling the sinkful of dirty dishes.
She stood up and went to the sink.
‘Let’s get to it,’ she said. ‘Washing-up liquid?’
‘I seem to be out,’ he said, coming to stand beside her. ‘Look, it’s a bit crowded by this little sink. Why don’t you wander off and check that your car’s survived the night. Sneck, you go with Elf.’
In other circumstances she might have replied that she didn’t mind a bit of crowding. Instead, obediently she slipped on her jacket and set out gingerly across the yard which the frost had turned into a frozen sea.
Sneck, equally obedient, followed her. Whether his function was to watch over or simply watch her, she didn’t know, and she didn’t care to test it by diverting from the direct route along the lonning to her car.
The blankets were still in place, stiff in their folds. She sat in the car and turned the key. The engine started first time and she let it run while she opened the boot. She took out her walking boots. Had it been some kind of vanity that prevented her from changing from her smart trainers when she arrived yesterday? She did a quick self-analysis. A psychiatrist was as susceptible to mixed motives as anyone else, but needed to be a lot clearer about them! No, she decided. Yesterday afternoon the frost had thawed enough for the surface of the lonning to be tacky rather than polished. This morning, however, a bit of substantial ankle support was very much in order. An immobilizing sprain was the last thing she wanted.
Could it be that Hadda had considered the possibility when he suggested she went out to the car?
Now she was really being paranoid!
She was roused from her reverie by Sneck letting out a bark.
After a while she heard what he’d already heard, an approaching car, and a moment later a blue Micra that she’d last seen outside the vicarage came into view.
To her surprise, Sneck advanced to meet it, wagging his tail.
Luke Hollins got out and reached out his open hand to the dog with something on the palm that Sneck removed with surprising gentleness.
‘That’s a pretty convincing demonstration of the power of faith,’ said Alva.
‘Just the power of food, I’m afraid,’ replied Hollins. ‘I always bring a packet of treats with the groceries. No groceries today, but fortunately I remembered to fill my pocket with Sugar Puffs. How about you? What have you done to tame the beast?’
Sneck had returned to Alva’s side and was lying down on the icy ground with his shoulder warm against her leg.
‘Nothing, really. I used to have a dog, when I was a child. Not as wolfish as this one, but pretty crazy. Spot, I called him, but my father said I should have called him Sufficient.’
Hollins looked puzzled and Alva laughed and said, ‘Don’t you do the Bible any more in the modern church? Sufficient is the evil! Spot used to terrorize the neighbourhood, dig up the garden and chew the furniture if he was left in the house by himself.’
‘So you’re used to dealing with wild things,’ he said.
He glanced toward the house as he spoke.
She frowned then said lightly, ‘So, if no groceries, what brings you here?’
‘I just wanted to check that everything was OK. I called in at the Dog first thing. They were in a bit of a tizz. Jimmy Frith, that’s the landlord, always likes a glass of ale with his breakfast but when he drew it, it came out foaming.’
‘Isn’t that what ale is meant to do?’
‘No, I mean really foaming. It was the same in all the pumps and when he checked he found someone had got down in the cellar and put washing-up liquid in all the casks.’
Instantly she thought of the noise that had woken her, the spoor on the frost whitened yard, the lack of washing-up liquid in the cottage. Could Hadda have gone down to the village in the night to exact revenge on the pub landlord for his racist rudeness? It didn’t seem likely. Getting into the cellar and doctoring the beer would have required a dexterity quite beyond a man who walked like a wounded bear. But somehow the idea made her feel warm.
Hollins was offering his own much more reasonable explanation:
‘Serves Jimmy right for letting the kids who come in drink more than they should. His nickname’s Jimmy Froth, so as practical jokes go, it was pretty apt!’
He grinned as he spoke, then, as if realizing that the discomfiture of one of his parishioners was not a proper subject for mirth, he overcompensated into a tone of deep concern as he said, ‘Anyway, when I found you hadn’t stayed there, I got really worried and thought I’d better head out here straight away.’
‘Thinking Wolf might have murdered me?’ she said. ‘Well, as you can see, he didn’t.’
‘But you did spend the night here at Birkstane?’ He said it with a casualness more significant than reproach.
‘Yes. His wife . . . his ex-wife showed up while I was waiting for Wolf. We chatted briefly then she went. Wolf seemed to think my pr
esence would deter her from coming back.’
It rang pretty unconvincingly in her own ears but the vicar seemed ready to accept it was reasonable.
He said, ‘So what was his explanation of the money?’
‘He hasn’t offered one yet,’ said Alva. ‘But he has worked out where I got my information from. I was just on my way back to the house for a heart to heart. Why don’t you join us?’
Hollins looked doubtful.
‘Don’t know if that would be a good idea. If he knows it was me who . . .’
But the issue was resolved by a cry of, ‘Is that you, Padre? Didn’t they teach you at your seminary not to keep a lady standing in the cold? Come along to the house, for God’s sake!’
Hadda had appeared at the bottom of the lonning.
He whistled and turned away. Sneck, with an appreciative glance at Hollins, raced after him and was alongside the slow-moving figure in an instant.
‘There you are,’ said Alva. ‘All is forgiven.’
As they walked together down the lonning, Hollins said, ‘So how did you find him?’
Alva said, ‘As my host or as my patient? Not that it matters. Good manners prevent me from commenting on him in the first capacity, and professional ethics in the second. I’m sorry, but as you said in your letter, our concerns here are rather different. I’m very glad however to have you present to hear his explanation about the money. In this case I think that four ears may definitely be better than two.’
Hadda was brewing more coffee when they entered the kitchen. She saw his gaze take in her change of footwear and foolishly felt glad that her boots had the well-worn, well-cared-for look that showed they belonged to a serious walker.
‘Car all right?’ he said.
‘Yes, thanks. I’m glad you suggested the blankets, though. They’re frozen solid.’
‘It was a hard night. I had to break some icicles off the fall this morning else I might have been speared as I showered. How about you, Padre? That vicarage still an ice-box?’
‘The boiler heats the cellar perfectly adequately but then seems to deny the basic law of physics that says heat rises,’ said Hollins.
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