In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  “Yes. Right.” And then she paused and added for good measure, as if in response to something else Lynley said, “Tomorrow morning? Right. That’s no problem. Once you’ve got Harvie in the nick, he’ll tell you what he’s done with the boy. You won’t need me out here any longer, beating the bushes. What time do you want me at the Yard?”

  “Well done, Barbara,” Lynley said. “Hold fast as you are. We’re on our way.”

  Barbara punched the button to disconnect the call. She watched Robin at work on the floor. She wanted to pounce on him and beat both truth and reality from him. And she wanted the result of that beating to be that Robin was as he’d first seemed. But she knew she was powerless to do anything at the moment. Leo Luxford’s life was far more important than her coming to understand two minutes of clutch-and-grope amid the towels and the bedsheets of the linen cupboard. As she said, “Shall I put the phone…?” Robin looked up at her, and she saw why he had been so intent upon cooking the dinner, upon straightening up the mess she had made, upon keeping her occupied with him and distracted from what she’d inadvertently uncovered in the linen cupboard. He’d picked up the candles. He was preparing to stow them back inside the cupboard. But among the tapers in his grasp was a silver candle that wasn’t actually a candle at all. It was part of a flute. Charlotte Bowen’s flute.

  Robin got to his feet. He shoved what he held along one side of a stack of towels. Barbara saw, among the detritus on the floor, another section of the flute lying next to the case from which it had fallen. He scooped this up among a handful of pillowcases. He put it in the cupboard. Then he took the phone from her and said, “I’ll stow it,” and he grazed her cheek with his fingers as he passed her on the way to his room.

  She expected his spurious ardour to have undergone a change once the flute was out of sight. But when he came back to her, he smiled as he approached. He ran a finger along her jaw and bent to her.

  Barbara thought of the lengths to which she would go in the line of duty. This wasn’t one of them. His tongue felt like a reptile in her mouth. She wanted to snap her jaws shut and grind her teeth until she could taste his blood. She wanted to knee him in the balls so that stars shot out of his miserable eye sockets. She wasn’t about to roger a homicide for love, for money, for Monarch, for country, for duty, or for the sick thrill of it all. But that, she realised, was the very reason Robin Payne wanted to roger her. The sick thrill of it all. The great big belly laugh of having it off with the very cop who was trying to track him down. Because that’s what he’d been doing all along, in one form or another. He’d been having it off metaphorically at her expense.

  Barbara could feel the anger burning holes in her chest. She wanted to smash in his face. But she could hear Lynley telling her to carry on. So she considered how best to buy time. She didn’t think it would be difficult. She had an excuse right here in the house. She pulled away from Robin’s kiss and said in a whisper, “Bloody hell, Robin. Your mum. She’s just in her room. We can’t—”

  “She’s asleep. I gave her two pills. She’ll be out till morning. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  So much for plan one, Barbara thought. And then in a flash she registered what he’d said. Pills. Pills. What sort of pills? She needed to get back to the bathroom posthaste because she had little doubt of what she would find among the prescriptions she’d swept from the shelves of the medicine chest. But she wanted to be sure.

  Robin enclosed her, one arm on the wall, the other hand on the back of her neck. She could feel the tensile strength in his fingers. How easy it must have been to hold Charlotte Bowen beneath the water until she died.

  He kissed her again. His tongue probed. She stiffened. He withdrew. He looked at her intently. He was, she saw, nobody’s fool. “What?” he asked her. “What’s going on?”

  He knew something was up. And he wasn’t going to take the bait if she again tried to hook him with her concerns about his mother. So she told him the truth because something about him that she hadn’t seen before—a predatory sexuality—told her there was a possibility that he would interpret the truth in a way that would serve her needs. “I’m afraid of you.”

  She saw the suspicion flicker in his eyes. She kept hers steadily, trustingly on his.

  “I’m sorry,” she went on. “I tried to tell you before. It’s been ages since I’ve been with a man. I don’t much know what to do any longer.”

  The flicker in his eyes went out. He himself moved in. “It’ll all come back to you,” he murmured. “I promise.”

  She suffered through another kiss. She made what she hoped was an appropriate sound. In answer to this, he took her hand. He guided it to him. He curved her fingers round him. He tightened them to squeeze him. He groaned.

  Which gave her the excuse to break away. She was careful to sound breathless, confused, dismayed. “This is going too fast. Robin, hell. You’re an attractive man. God knows you’re sexy. But I’m just not ready for…I mean, I need a bit of time.” She rubbed her knuckles fiercely into her hair. She gave a laugh that was meant to sound rueful. She said, “I feel completely inept. Can’t we slow things down? Give me a chance to—”

  “But you’re leaving tomorrow,” he pointed out.

  “Leaving…?” She caught herself at the edge of the precipice. “But that’s only to London. And how long does it take to get to London? Eighty miles? No time at all if you want to be there bad enough.” She offered him a smile and cursed herself for spending so little time in her life practising womanspeak. “So do you? Want to be in London? Bad enough, I mean?”

  He ran his finger down the bridge of her nose. He used three fingers to smooth against her lips. She remained immobile and ignored the impulse to snap her way down to the third knuckle.

  “I need some time,” she said again. “And London’s not far. Will you give me some time?”

  She was out of her minuscule bag of dubious female tricks. She waited to see what would happen next. She wouldn’t have said no to a deus ex machina at about this time. Someone zipping down from on high in a fiery chariot would have been just the ticket. But she was in Robin’s hands as much as he was in hers. She was saying, Not now, not here, not yet. The next move was entirely up to him.

  He touched his mouth to hers. He slid his hand down the front of her. He cupped her so quickly between the legs that she might not have felt the gesture at all except for the fact that he did it hard so that once his hand was gone, she could still feel its hot pressure. “London,” he said. And he smiled. “Let’s have dinner.”

  She stood at her bedroom window, straining her eyes out into the dark. There were no streetlamps on the Burbage Road, so she had to depend on the moonlight, the starlight, and the occasional lights from a passing vehicle to reveal a sign that Lynley’s promised police surveillance was in place.

  Somehow, she had gagged down her dinner. She couldn’t remember now what else he’d cooked other than the lamb chops. There’d been serving dishes on the dining room table, and she’d picked from them in a semblance of eating. She’d chewed, she’d swallowed, she’d drunk a glass of wine after switching it with his—just as a precaution—when he’d gone into the kitchen to fetch the vegetables. But she’d tasted nothing. The only one of her five senses that had appeared to be functioning was her sense of hearing. And she’d listened to everything: to the sound of his footsteps, to the rhythm of her own breathing, to the scrape of their knives against china, and most of all to the muted noises from outside. Was that a car? Were those the soft thuds of men taking up position? Was that a doorbell ringing somewhere, allowing the police access to a house from which they could wait for Robin to make his move?

  Conversation with him had been torture. She’d been acutely conscious of the risk of asking the wrong questions—in the guise of a growing intimacy between them—that would inadvertently betray her knowledge of his guilt. To avoid doing that, she had talked instead. There was little enough to sustain conversation and less that she wished to s
hare with him. But if he was to believe that she harboured a dream of seeing him upon her return to London, she knew she had to keep stars in her eyes and happy anticipation in her voice. She had to look at him directly. She had to make him think she wanted him conscious of her lips, her breasts, her thighs. She had to make him talk, and when he did, she had to hang on his words as if they were the manna for which she was starving.

  It wasn’t exactly an act she had perfected. By the end of the meal, she was utterly clapped out. By the time they’d cleared the dishes from the table, her nerves were strung taut.

  She’d said she was ready to drop, the day had been a long one, she’d need to make an early start in the morning, she was due at the Yard at half past eight, and with traffic what it was…If he didn’t mind, she’d take herself off to bed.

  He hadn’t minded. He’d said, “You’ve been through it today, Barbara. You deserve a decent kip.” He’d walked with her to the foot of the stairs and caressed the back of her neck as a goodnight.

  Once she was out of his line of vision, Barbara waited to hear the movements that would tell her he’d returned to the dining room or to the kitchen. When the sounds of crockery being washed floated up to her, she slipped into the bathroom where earlier she’d sought out Corrine’s inhaler.

  Breath held and moving as noiselessly as possible, she’d shifted through the prescription bottles that lay in the basin where she’d tumbled them. She read labels eagerly. She came across drugs for nausea, for infection, for discomfort, for diarrhoea, for muscle spasms, and for in digestion, all of them prescribed for the same patient: Corrine Payne. The bottle she was looking for wasn’t there. But it had to be…if Robin was who Lynley thought he was.

  Then she’d remembered. He’d given Corrine pills. If they’d been with the other prescriptions originally, he would have had to root through the basin—as she had just done—to find them. Finding them, he would have scooped up the bottle and shaken two pills into his hand and…What had he done with the bloody bottle? It wasn’t replaced in the medicine cabinet. It wasn’t on the basin’s ledge. It wasn’t in the wastebasket. So where…? She saw it, sitting on the top of the cistern. She gave a mental crow of triumph and grasped it in her hand. Valium, she read on its label. And the directions to the patient: Take one tablet at the onset of stress. And the additional small warning label: May cause drowsiness. Do not mix with alcohol. Take only as directed.

  She’d returned the bottle to the top of the cistern. Gotcha, she thought. She’d gone to her room.

  She’d made quarter of an hour’s bedtime noises. She thunked herself onto the bed and turned out the light. She waited five minutes and then slipped to the window. Which is where she now stood, watching and waiting for a sign.

  If she knew they were there—and Lynley had said they would be—then she should see some sign of them, shouldn’t she? An unmarked van? A dim light behind a curtain in that house across the road? A movement near those trees by the drive? But she saw nothing at all.

  How long had it been since Lynley’s call? she wondered. Two hours? More? He’d phoned from the Yard, but they were setting off at once, he’d said. They’d make good time on the motorway if there hadn’t been a smashup somewhere. The country roads to Amesford were a bit of a problem, but surely they would have arrived by now. Unless Hillier had stopped them. Unless Hillier had demanded a full accounting. Unless bloody sodding Hillier had thrown his usual wrench in the works…

  She heard Robin’s footsteps in the corridor outside her door. She flew to the bed and scrambled beneath its covers. She forced herself to breathe the breath of the living dead, and she laboured to hear her door’s knob turn, her door swing open, and his stealthy tread come across the room.

  Instead, she heard noise in the bathroom. He was peeing like a fire hose. It went on and on. Then the toilet whooshed, and when its noise receded, she heard a ticky-click that she recognised. Pills being rattled round in a bottle.

  She could hear the pathologist’s explanation so clearly, as if he were standing right here in the room. “She was drugged before she was drowned,” he’d said, “which explains why there are no significant marks on the body. She wouldn’t have been able to put up a struggle. She was unconscious when he held her under the water.”

  Barbara shot upright. She thought, The boy. He isn’t going to wait for the paper tomorrow. He’s going after the boy tonight and he’s using the Valium to do it. She cast the covers to one side and silently darted to the door. She ventured a hair’s crack opening.

  Robin came out of the bathroom. He went across to his mother’s room and opened her door. He watched for a moment, appeared satisfied, then turned in Barbara’s direction. She shut her door. There was no bolt. Nor was there time to race to the bed before he reached her. She stood with her head pressed against the wood. She prayed, Walk on, walk on, walk on. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the wood. He tapped quietly. She did nothing. He whispered, “Barbara? Asleep? Can I come in?” And then he tapped again. She pressed her lips together and held her breath. A moment later she heard him on the stairs.

  He lived in the house. So he knew there was no bolt on her door. So he hadn’t wanted in, because if he had wanted in, he would have walked in. So he had only wanted to assure himself that she was asleep.

  She eased her door open. She could hear him below. He’d gone into the kitchen. She crept down the stairs.

  He’d closed the kitchen door behind him, but he hadn’t latched it completely. She cracked it the width of a strand of yarn. She could hear more than she could see: a cupboard opening, an electric can opener whirring, the sound of metal clinking on tile.

  Then he passed within her line of vision, a large red Thermos in his hand. He rummaged in a cupboard and brought out a small chopping block. Onto this he placed four blue tablets. He crushed them into powder with the back of a wooden spoon. He neatly swept this powder into the Thermos.

  He moved to the cooker where something was heating. He stirred for a minute. She could hear him whistling under his breath. Then he carried a pan to the Thermos and funneled into it hot steaming liquid, tomato soup by the smell of it. After he capped the Thermos, he scrupulously cleaned away all evidence of his work. He gave a glance round the kitchen, patted his pockets, brought forth his car keys. He went out into the night, switching the kitchen lights off behind him.

  Barbara raced for the stairs. She flew up them and dashed to her window. His Escort was rolling silently—and lightlessly—down the drive towards the road. But they would see him once he hit the street. Then they would follow.

  She looked right, then left. She waited. She watched. Robin’s car started once it slid into the road. He switched on his headlamps and headed west, in the direction of the village. But no one followed. Five seconds went by. Then ten. Then fifteen. No one.

  “Shit!” Barbara whispered. “Bloody sodding…God damn!” She grabbed her keys. She pounded down the stairs. She dashed through the kitchen and into the night. She hurled herself into her Mini. She started it with a bellow, ground its gears to find reverse, and shot down the drive and into the Burbage Road. She drove without headlamps, tearing in the direction of the village. She prayed. And she alternated the prayers with curses.

  In the centre of the village, she braked where the road forked on either side of the statue of King Alfred. If she took the left fork, she would be heading south towards Amesford. The right fork led north towards Marlborough and towards the country lane that passed through the Vale of Wootton, through Stanton St. Bernard, through Allington, and past that ghostly chalk horse that had been galloping across the downs for a thousand years. She chose the right fork. She floored the accelerator. She whizzed past the dark-enshrouded police station, past Elvis Patel’s Grocery, past the post office. The Mini felt airborne as it took the bridge that arched over the Kennet and Avon Canal.

  Once beyond the canal, she was out of the village and into the beginning of farmland. She scanned the horizon. S
he squinted hard at the road ahead of her. She cursed Hillier and everyone else she could think of who might have cocked up the surveillance plans. She heard Lynley’s voice telling her that the boy’s safety was paramount, that Payne would go after him once the tabloid story didn’t appear. She saw Charlotte Bowen’s body as it looked during her autopsy, and she pounded the steering wheel, shouting, “Damn you! Where’ve you gone?”

  Then she saw it: Headlamps flashed against a windbreak of trees some quarter of a mile ahead of her. She shot towards that light. It was her only hope.

  He wasn’t speeding as she was. In his mind there would be no need. As far as he was concerned, his mother was asleep and Barbara was asleep. Why draw attention to himself by tearing along the road as if pursued by demons? So Barbara gained on him, and when he cruised past a brightly lit petrol station outside of Oare, she saw that indeed it was Robin Payne’s Escort that she was following. Perhaps, she thought, there was a God after all.

  But no one followed her. Which told her that she was completely on her own. Without a weapon, without a plan, and without a complete understanding of why Robin Payne had set out on a path to destroy the lives of so many people.

  Lynley had said that there was a third child fathered by Dennis Luxford. Since the kidnapping note had ordered the newspaperman to acknowledge his firstborn child, and since acknowledging Charlotte Bowen hadn’t served the interests of the kidnapper, the only possible conclusion was that there was an older child. And this was a child whom Robin Payne knew about. Knew about and was angry about. Angry enough to kill. So who…?

  He’d changed, Celia said. Directly he returned from what she had assumed to be his detective course, Robin had changed. When he’d left Wootton Cross, she’d assumed they would be marrying. When he’d returned, she felt the gulf between them. She’d concluded that gulf meant another woman in Robin’s life. But what if Robin had discovered something about her? About Celia? About Celia’s involvement with another man? About Celia’s involvement with Dennis Luxford?