by Will North
ANDREW SWAM UP from sleep, gasped like a man who’d been holding his breath underwater, opened his eyes and looked around. He was home, in bed. He couldn’t remember how he’d got there. His head hurt.
Jamie was sitting beside him. He’d been with him in hospital as well.
“Why did you wake me? I’m tired.”
“Because that’s what the doc told me to do, to make sure you don’t slip into a coma or some such…”
Andrew blinked and tried to focus. “That was a nasty trick, Jamie, sending me off on an errand with no brakes. Am I that bad an assistant?”
“Very funny. If you’re not still delirious, then just shut up or I’ll give you another concussion.”
“Not a good feeling, that: no brakes, especially when you’re aimed straight at a bus. Was everyone okay?”
Jamie was quietly pleased that Andrew was so clear-headed, if cranky. “Yes. No one was injured except you. Bus driver sends his regards. But sitting here a while and thinking about it I reckon you’re lucky to be alive at all. If you’d been heading south to our new client in St. Just, you’d have coasted downhill into the valley below our hill to the bridge and, when the brakes failed, you’d have lost it at the bottom and flown right off the road and into the stream. Could have been killed. The police agree, by the way.”
“The police?”
“Been here and gone. You missed them. You were dozing. Rest is the best thing for a concussion. The docs saw no damage to your skull and no bleeding in their scan. Seems that big professor’s brain of yours took a bounce, but it bounced back. You’ll soon be fine.”
“The Land Rover?”
“Taken into evidence by the St. Ives police, which is a pain in the arse, frankly. We need our farm vehicle. But they say it shouldn’t be long.”
“Where’s Nicola?”
“In St. Ives, teaching. I thought it better to handle this myself instead of frightening her.”
Andrew squeezed his eyes shut in disbelief. “She’ll thrash you, you know, when she finds out…”
“So will Flora. Who cares? It was the right thing to do. You needed someone reliable to take you home.”
“And you’re saying that Nicola…?”
“Let’s just make this a guy thing; two mates looking after each other.” He made a zip movement across his lips and grinned.
“She’ll still thrash you.”
“All in a day’s work, my friend, all in a day’s work.”
“Jamie? Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary. Just be ready to go back to work tomorrow. Lee and I can’t rebuild the gardener’s cottage alone, you know.”
“Lee…”
“She knows nothing. But, knowing her, that won’t last long.”
“You got that right,” a voice said from the hall outside. Footsteps approached.
“Jesus,” Jamie whispered. “Something creepy about the way that girl just shows up…”
“What was that? I heard something,” Lee said as she marched into the room.
“Hello, sweetie,” Andrew said.
“What have you done to your head? You’ve hurt your head. I sensed it.” She stood beside him.
“How?
“I just know stuff, okay?”
Andrew raised his hands in resignation. “Bit of a car accident, is all. I’m fine.”
“If you’re so fine, why are you in bed?”
Andrew smiled, shook his head, and promptly thought better of it. It made him dizzy. Still, there was no getting anything past his Lee.
“Okay, so I hit my head. It’s called a concussion. It’s when your brain gets banged up against the inside of your skull: brain soft; skull hard. But there’s no serious damage. It’s kinda like a bruise, but no bleeding. I’m okay. Just need to rest a bit.”
“Where’s Nicola?”
“She’s in St. Ives, teaching, as I understand it. She doesn’t know yet.”
The girl considered this for a moment. “I reckon you’re in for another concuss, or whatever it’s called. She’ll be steaming you didn’t call her.”
“That was my decision, Lee,” Jamie said. “Drew was at the hospital in Penzance.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Lee said, stalking out of the bedroom. “Now we’ll have two men with concusses. She’ll smack you senseless, Jamie, and our work will suffer. Am I supposed to do everything around here?”
Jamie shook his head and turned to Andrew. But he’d dozed off again.
MARY TREVEAN KNOCKED at the door of the Chicken Coop cottage at mid-morning. She wasn’t even sure why she felt so compelled; she’d seen her tenant head off up the lane to the moorland with his backpack earlier and knew the cottage was empty. Now, in the late morning sun, the exposed granite summits looked gilded and on the updraft from the sea, a red-tailed buzzard hung high above, almost motionless, quartering the sky, searching for prey.
She had in mind surprising her Italian…“lover”? Was that what he was? How else to describe them both? She didn’t want to name it or consider its wisdom. She knew that she’d become obsessed with him, almost possessed. But she’d resolved not to care: he made her feel alive again. And anyway, he’d be gone soon enough. She gave herself permission to take what pleasure she could in the meantime. She’d begun wearing makeup again and caring about what she wore. She hoped he noticed.
So today she’d decided to do his laundry and present it to him in the evening, fresh and folded. A surprise. She entered the cottage, picked up a few soiled tea towels in the kitchen, a damp bathroom towel, and rummaged around in the bedroom collecting obviously worn clothes from a small pile at the bottom of the old pine wardrobe. She pulled one of his t-shirts up to her nose, caught his musky fragrance, and smiled. Then, at the bottom of the pile, she found jeans and a charcoal sweatshirt covered with rust-red blotches. Dried blood. Had he hurt himself? No, this was too much blood for a kitchen accident. Perhaps he’d come upon one of the wild ponies that grazed the moorland and it was injured and he’d tried to help. It happened all the time on the rough ground up there: they’d step into a hole, break a leg, and the foxes would make quick work of them.
A farm wife, Mary knew how to wash out bloodstains. They were the norm during calving season and she’d made her husband’s overalls sparkle when they were stained. First, she’d soak the garments in a big galvanized tub with coarse salt and water for half an hour. If that wasn’t enough, she’d rub ammonia into the fabric. She’d do the same today with Geremio’s clothes, run them through two cycles in her washer, and hang them on the rotary clothesline in her garden. The day was warm, the sky cloudless. They’d dry quickly.
“YOU THERE, HELLO? I need to examine this vehicle.”
Detective Constable Terry Bates, dressed in a simple khaki cotton pants suit and white blouse, her notebook in hand, was speaking to a pair of legs that protruded from beneath the back of Trevega’s dented Land Rover on Thursday afternoon. The vehicle was in the fenced impound yard used by the St. Ives police station.
“Hold your water, lady; I’m almost done here,” a voice called from beneath the chassis.
“I’m not a ‘lady,’ I’m police.”
Using his heels, the man beneath the Defender backed out from under the car on a wheeled mechanic’s creeper. Clearing the underbody of the car he lifted his head and squinted into the sun.
“Adam! Jesus!” Bates exclaimed.
“Which of the two would you prefer, Terry?” the man said as he rolled to the ground and stood. “I thought I recognized that voice.” He wore a white Tyvek coverall over his clothes.
“And by the way, you are most definitely a lady.”
“Good Lord, it’s you!” She wrapped him in a hug and then felt it immediately inappropriate. “Sorry. Just such a surprise!”
“But apparently not an unpleasant one?”
“No, no, of course not. But what are you doing here?”
“Got reposted to St. Ives from the Falmouth nick,” Constable Adam Novak said. “After that
Hansen case last year.”
“You were sent down for being successful?”
“Not sent down, ‘reassigned’ is what they called it. Too visible, as far as the duty Sarge was concerned.”
“That is so wrong.”
“And so typical: don’t stand out, that’s the unspoken rule—unless you’re Morgan Davies.”
“What were you doing messing about under that Land Rover? It’s evidence.”
“Doing my job. The boss in Camborne asked me to have a look; I have some knowledge of vehicles.”
“Well, I know you love to drive them fast, that’s for sure.”
Novak smiled. “Do you want to critique my driving skills or know what happened to this Land Rover?”
“Sure. Go ahead. But the SOCO people will be here shortly.”
“If they know what they’re doing, they’ll come to the same conclusion I have.”
“Okay, show me.”
They squatted next to one of the Defender’s rear wheels. “See that rubber tube attached to the inside wall of the wheel well?”
She looked closely. “Yes. What about it?”
“It comes from the brake system’s master cylinder under the bonnet. Inside that tube there’s another, a thin one made of steel. It carries fluid to the brakes, okay? The system’s hydraulic. With brake fluid, you have brakes; without brake fluid, you don’t. You following me?”
“I’m not an idiot, Adam.”
“Okay, fine. Now lay down face up on this creeper and I’ll push you under the rear of the car. I want you to see something.”
“You’re joking…”
“Just do it.”
“I didn’t know you could be such a bully…”
“I’m not. I’m your teacher. At least in this instance. Try to be a good student.”
Bates lay on the creeper, smoothed her clothes, and Adam pushed her beneath the Land Rover.
“Follow that rubber line from the wheel well, okay? What do you see next?”
Bates struggled to follow the line as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Then she saw it. “There’s a steel tube just like you said, not even a quarter inch. Only it looks to have been cut. The downstream end of the steel bit is crimped tight but the upstream end is splayed open.”
Novak pulled her out and helped her to her feet.
“Absolutely correct, detective,” he said. “When you want to sabotage a brake line, you don’t have to cut it. That’s too obvious. All you need do is crimp it, like with a wire cutter or just pliers. The two sections will remain connected. But the moment someone steps on the brake, the brake pressure—a thousand pounds per square inch—blows open the upstream steel tube, severs the line, and that’s it for the brakes. You’ve got none. That’s what’s happened here.”
“Which is to say…”
“This wasn’t a mechanical failure.”
She looked at Novak, once again thinking he should be a Scene of Crimes officer at least, not just a uniformed constable. She’d have a word with Calum.
“How do you know this stuff?”
“My dad had a garage. He could fix anything.”
“Sounds like you can, too.”
Novak turned away and wiped his hands on a cloth.
“How’ve you been keeping, Terry?” he said to the cloth.
She looked at Adam Novak, a man to whom she’d felt attracted during their last case together. With her promotion she’d moved on, at least geographically, far to the north of Cornwall, well out of his jurisdiction. She felt again his quiet charm and admired his face and head: eastern European origin and chiseled into sharp edges at cheekbones and jaw as if by a master sculptor. Close-cropped curly black hair. No question, the man was handsome…but also good, perceptive.
“I’ve been pretty busy, Adam: I’m a detective now, working under Morgan Davies.”
Novak smiled: “You have both my congratulations and my sympathy.”
“No, truly, I could not have a better boss, and she has given me a lot of rope in investigations, like this one. So I’m grateful.”
“And the rest?”
She paused and looked across the lot, cluttered with damaged vehicles. “A woman in the force is always watched, even preyed upon. No shortage of sexist comments and whispered asides. I ignore them or hit back, like Morgan does. Mostly, though, I keep to myself. It’s lonely. I have thought about you, though. You were always a complete gentleman when we worked together on the Hansen case. That’s rare in the force. Hell, it’s rare in a man...”
Novak ducked his head. There was motor oil in his hair. “Thank you.”
Bates took a breath. “I’ve always wondered, though: your love of cooking and fine wines, your appreciation of the natural world around you, your sensitivity to the nonverbal signals from those suspects we interviewed together in the Hansen case. That always impressed me about you. But…and I’m sorry to ask…are you gay, Adam?”
Novak looked up: “Would you care to test that theory?”
Bates regarded the man, her head tilted as if in consultation with herself, then shook her head and smiled.
“Perhaps, Adam, perhaps. But not just now.”
Fourteen
“DON’T YOU DARE leave, you coward!”
“But Nicola’s come…I heard her car on the terrace,” Jamie whispered, as if she could hear him all the way down in the ground level kitchen. It was late Thursday afternoon, the western light still strong.
“It was you decided not to tell her; I was unconscious, remember? You’ll stay.”
“She’ll flay me.”
“So will Flora when she finds out, so you’d better prepare yourself.”
Faintly, they heard Nicola enter the kitchen three floors below.
“Hello? Jamie?” she called. She’d seen his car on the terrace.
“You’d better call down,” Andrew said. “I’m not supposed to get up.”
Jamie slouched out to the upstairs hall. “Up here, Nicky!”
She found Andrew in bed.
“Oh, sweetheart, are you sick?” She turned to Jamie: “Thank you so much for looking after him. That’s so kind.”
Jamie said nothing.
“What is it, love? Flu or something?”
“Um, no. Car accident, actually. Bumped my head. Concussion.”
“What? When?!”
Jamie found his courage and answered: “This morning; he was on the way to St. Ives for supplies. Avoided a bus and hit a hedge in the Defender. The rescue people took him to hospital in Penzance to scan his head. I met him there. But he’s going to be fine, really.”
“And you didn’t call me?”
“You were teaching.”
“I was unconscious,” Andrew added.
“I can’t believe either of you idiots! I should give you both dope slaps!”
“I already have a concussion,” Andrew ventured.
“Shut up.”
Both men winced. Nicola’s hot Boston Italian temper, seldom in evidence, was scorching when it flared.
“I’m supposed to wake him from time to time, though he needs to rest,” Jamie explained, knowing it sounded lame.
Nicola pressed her hands against her head in frustration. “I’m going down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea so as not to kill you both for sheer stupidity. Perhaps your nurse here, Andrew,” she said, pointing a stiletto finger at Jamie, “can meet your needs.” And then she was gone.
“Reckon we got off lightly, Jamie,” Andrew said just above a whisper.
“I’d like never to know what ‘heavily’ might look like.”
NICOLA SAT IN the kitchen and poured her tea into a big, stained white china mug with sunflowers on the outside. Milk and sugar added, she lifted it and realized her hand was shaking: Car accident. He could have been killed…
Shortly after they’d met, when they’d barely known each other, Andrew had found and rescued her, battered and disoriented, from the Boscastle flood. He’d gathered her up like so much soaked
and broken debris and had brought her to safety. And, by some magic she did not fully understand, in time he’d also freed her from the emotional prison in which she’d been trapped for years by her abusive ex-husband and, long before that, her molesting older brother, now dead. She and Andrew had slipped into an uneasy but loving companionship—uneasy only for her because of her own history and fear of trusting any man. They’d adopted Lee and that had happened so easily, so naturally. They were a family now but she’d not really fully come to terms with that reality.
Until now.
She put down her teacup and went upstairs. Jamie had fled and Andrew was asleep. She took off her clothes, slid into their bed and curled around him.
“Andrew,” she whispered.
“Hmm? What?”
“Jamie said we’re supposed to keep you awake. I’m here to do that.”
“Right.”
“Andrew?”
“Yes?”
“I did not think I’d ever have the courage to live with a man again. Now I can’t imagine living without you. So no more accidents, okay?”
“Okay.”
She nuzzled his neck but he was asleep again, his brain resting.
LEE CLIMBED DOWN to her private place late that afternoon: the grassy cliff ledge a few feet below the coast path and high above the ocean. Despite the usual violence of the surging surf far below, this spot always comforted her. It was like the favorite old tree she’d clung to during the Boscastle flood with the Valency River raging below her, only safer, she reckoned: this was hard ground.
She was trying to understand the power of the upset she felt when she’d sensed Andrew had been injured. She’d just begun a walk down the valley to the coast that morning when she felt it. She’d turned back to the house but no one was there and she’d been anxious for hours. Andrew and her father had saved her life in the flood, yes. Andrew and Nicky had stepped in when her parents were killed. She understood and loved them for it and she couldn’t imagine a safer place. In the months since, she’d been able, slowly, to accept her situation and that Nicky clearly loved her like her own daughter. But Drew being hurt?