by Jo Allen
He narrowed his lips, trying to suppress anything that might alarm the child beside him. Once upon a time, she and her brother had been the lights of his life, his love for them so great that he would have killed for them. Doubt, growing in strength to become suspicion, had corrupted that love long before he’d tried to put it to the test. The letter from the DNA laboratory had put all positive feeling to death, turning his darlings into cuckoos in his nest.
Sometimes he thought that of all his life’s achievements, pretending that he still cared for Randolph Flett’s children was the greatest.
But his patience had worn out. There had been a glorious release from all that pain as he’d tightened his fingers around Greg’s throat, suppressing the boy’s struggles in an instant before tightening the rope round the neck. Was that his first mistake? If he hadn’t tried to make it look so obviously like a murder it might have passed as an accident. But, oh, it had felt good to string Dawn up.
That was her payment. If anything surprised him it was that he’d played the innocent so well that she’d never once suspected him until that moment in the wood by Brothers Water. And by then it was too late.
Laurie’s snatched message that the police had arrived at the house at Windermere had signalled to him that the game he’d come so close to winning was up. He’d gambled on a lot of things and they’d all come off, but now it was the end game. He would stop somewhere on the road, dispose of Sophie, and then make a run for it. Maybe he didn’t have much of a chance to escape, but not much of a chance was better than none. He would never give himself up.
‘Shall we stop and go for a walk?’ He’d pulled the car up on a short lane under the shoulder of the hill. It was the ideal place to hide, tucked where no one could see it among a belt of trees. He’d scouted it out a while before with the intention of using it for Dawn, but she’d been so insistent on meeting Randolph in her favourite place that it had seemed a shame to waste her perfect ending.
Sophie’s bottom lip popped out. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Yes. There’s something I want to show you.’ There was a beautiful view from the top, though the clarity of the distant horizon was blurred in the haze. Not that Sophie particularly liked looking at the scenery, but it would take the police a while to find her body and maybe buy him some time, and at least she could die in a beautiful place. Let Randolph, with his fondness for peace and solitude, take what comfort he could from that.
‘Daddy. You said we were going home.’
‘Don’t whine, Sophie. I promise you it’ll be worth it. Leave your phone.’
She got out with a petulant sigh and began to wander up through the trees. ‘Will we be long?’
‘Not long.’ It was as well he hadn’t been at home when the police had called. One look in the boot of his car and he’d have had to confess. He picked up the backpack he’d stowed there ahead of this moment. With Greg, setting the fire had had a dual use. With Sophie it wouldn’t be about destroying the evidence, because it wouldn’t take them long to realise it was him. But a carefully set fire could close a road long enough to give him a moment to get clear.
Paraffin and a lighter. They were all you needed.
*
‘They’ve stopped.’ Crawling up the steep hill aptly named The Struggle, Ashleigh fought to make caution triumph over impetuosity, to keep an innocent distance behind Max’s car. ‘Jude, how far away are you?’
‘I’m just coming up over the top of the Kirkstone Pass. There’s a car coming behind you the other way as well, from Ambleside.’
‘Tell whoever’s driving to get the blue lights on, for God’s sake. I’m scared for that poor child.’
‘What can you see?’
Ashleigh pulled the car up behind Max’s Porsche, taking a moment to turn so that she blocked him in. ‘We’re up at the top of a small wood a couple of miles up above Ambleside. I’ve parked so he can’t get away. He’s walking up the hill with her. There’s a quarry there.’ When they’d come over the road before she’d noticed it – much smaller than the working slate quarry further up, so that it looked as if it had been used for house building a hundred years or more before. ‘What do you think he’s going to do? Push her off?’
‘Let’s hope not.’ The wail of a siren pulsed in the background of the call. ‘But I don’t see this ending well.’
Ashleigh watched. Sophie wasn’t up for the walk. You could tell. She was holding Max back, stopping every few steps, and it was clear that he, in his turn, was losing his patience. The death of another innocent inched closer as she watched. ‘Jude. I have to go after her.’
‘I’m two minutes away.’
‘Two minutes is too long.’ She was out of the car now, scrambling up the slope through waist high bracken so dry that it scratched at her hands and arms as she forged forwards. Pulling at the child’s wrist, Max stopped and she made ground. Twenty yards. Below her the scream of the siren and the blue flashing lights of a police car gave hope and snatched it away at the same time as Max Sumner turned, looked down at the police chase, and saw her. Standing braced with one foot on a block of slate, he balanced against the backdrop of the deep blue sky, the burnished fellside and the last, drought defying gasp of green, and reached out towards his daughter.
‘Mr Sumner!’ Ashleigh called up to him, with the little breath that the climb had left in her lungs. ‘Why don’t you let Sophie go? Let me take her back, so Nicole can look after her.’
‘Daddy? What’s happening?’ Sophie turned down the slope. ‘What’s Ashleigh doing here?’
He stopped to issue her with a challenge, slipping off the backpack he’d been carrying. ‘I’ve no idea. Sergeant O’Halloran, what are you doing? Whatever it is, I hope you’ve got the proper authorisation for it. Or I’ll finish your career.’
Sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades. Sumner was evil. If she’d ever doubted it, Ashleigh knew it now. She kept scrambling up the rough hillside, feet catching in the tough, tangled stems of bracken that spread like a mantrap in the undergrowth. Concentrate on the child, she urged herself. Max must know he had no chance of escape, even though she couldn’t arrest him single-handedly. Her job was to limit the damage he could do. ‘Let me take Sophie away.’
‘Why would I let you take my child from me, Sergeant?’ He’d backed away so that he was on the edge of the quarry, its grey stone dropping away ten feet below him, but he let go of the girl’s wrist, fumbling at the zip of the backpack.
‘Sophie.’ Ashleigh tried her best, coaxing the child towards her, even as her heart hammered with fear of the unknown. What did he have in there? A gun? ‘I’m afraid your daddy isn’t well. Come over to me and I’ll take you somewhere safe.’ She tried one final appeal to the man’s better nature. Surely he must have loved the child once? ‘Mr Sumner. Max. Think of Sophie.’
‘I’m thinking of Sophie. She won’t have anything left when I’m in prison, will she?’
‘Prison?’ Ten was old enough to understand some of it, at least. ‘Daddy, why will you go to prison?’ And then the obvious explanation broke over her young face with horror. ‘Did you kill Mummy?’
‘Mr Sumner…’
‘It’s too late for her,’ he said as Ashleigh got close enough to take hold of Sophie’s hand. ‘It’s too late.’
*
Men like Max Sumner, who, even knowing that everything was over, couldn’t bear the humiliation of giving themselves up, always ran. If Sumner did that, then his only option was the open fellside and he’d be bound to run away from his pursuers and away from the road.
‘Let me get out here,’ Jude instructed the constable who’d been flinging the police car around the bends of the Kirkstone Pass and underneath the steep, sunlit slopes of Red Screes. Today he was assessing the raw beauty of the countryside for only one thing. How far and how fast could Sumner get over the unforgiving terrain, and how much would Sophie slow him down? ‘I’ll head him off.’ He jumped out of the car and came around the outside of t
he wood, beneath the quarry, keeping to the shadows of a belt of trees. Blue lights were streaking up from Ambleside now. Sumner was caught, but at what cost?
Thank God: a snatched glance above him showed that Ashleigh had the child but he could tell that she, too, wasn’t going to risk letting Sumner escape. Her voice floated across the golden bracken. ‘Walk down the hill, Sophie. Go on. There’s a police lady down there. She’ll look after you, and take you to your Auntie Nic.’ She was keeping herself between the man and the child, offering her what little protection she could from her father’s madness. ‘Mr Sumner. This is silly. Stop now, and hand yourself in. There are half a dozen police officers down there. The best thing to do is give yourself up before someone else gets hurt. I don’t know what you’ve got in that bag, but you’d be wise to put it down and walk away from it.’
Jude redoubled his efforts to reach them, struggling up the rocky slope. A loose stone slipped under his foot, pitching him forwards. Ashleigh was a brave woman, but didn’t she realise how dangerous the man was? The thought of losing her caught at him. Keeping low, he crawled like a commando up the far edge of the quarry, hauling himself up over rocks that were hot under the sun.
‘Don’t jump, Mr Sumner,’ Ashleigh’s voice coaxed, drifting over to him on the wind.
Why shouldn’t they let him jump, or even encourage it? Randolph Flett’s belief in natural justice might carry some weight if Max Sumner concluded the matter for himself. Nursing this thought, Jude came around the side of the quarry, pushed himself upright and sprinted across the dry ground, shouting, ‘Ashleigh’s right, Mr Sumner. It’s all over. You’re under arrest.’
Sumner had dropped his backpack on the ground and was rooting about in it. Too late, Jude saw what he was doing, the hands clutched around the plastic bottle of clear liquid, the fingers fumbling at the top. ‘Ashleigh!’
She saw, too, lunged at the man, too late. Liquid sprayed into the air from a bottle in his hands, then the terrifying flick of a spark, and an arc of flame leaped up from the dry bracken between them and the upcoming police officers, cutting them off from help.
Sumner had been running even as he flung the bottle to the ground. In a blaze of fire and a stench of paraffin, he broke past Jude and raced along the quarry edge.
Chris’s unwelcome statistic flared into Jude’s brain even as he turned towards Ashleigh. Grass fires moved faster than a man could run and the ground was still tinder dry from the summer drought, fanned by a breeze from the west. ‘Run!’
All three of them were running now, seizing the few seconds left to them before fire gobbled up the paraffin, found more fuel and blew up into a rearing front of flame. In seconds, it had reached the edge of the quarry, cutting off the escape route, and ranged up the hill. Jude slowed, just a fraction, to see where Ashleigh, closest to the flame and slowest off the mark, was. Heat seared his skin. ‘For God’s sake, Ashleigh! Run! Faster!’
She was with him now, white faced. Twenty yards separated them from the point where he’d emerged at the far end of the quarry and they’d be able to make a break down the hill.
Twenty yards he knew they couldn’t make.
Taking the only way he could think of to escape, he grabbed Ashleigh around the waist and pulled the two of them over the edge of the quarry.
31
It was just a bit of fun. Sitting at her dressing table, wrapping the scarlet silk kimono around her, Ashleigh turned over the first of the five cards she’d laid out in the shape of a cross.
The Eight of Swords. Your emotions are hanging in the balance, it warned her, and she allowed herself a wry smile at the understatement. In the balance? Her nerves were in pieces. How could they be anything else?
Sitting with the curtains drawn against the brightness of the evening sun, she hesitated. It was the first time she’d read the tarot since Dawn’s death, and she still couldn’t escape the awful symbolism of the Hanged Man. She’d never see that card again without thinking of Dawn’s body hanging stiffly from the rowan tree in Low Wood.
She held her right hand over the stacked deck for a moment, as if to check that the Hanged Man was safely in there and not in the four left face down in front of her, but the tingling she felt in her hands was nothing spiritual, but the residual heat from the grass fire. In her nostrils the smell of the incense stick she’d lit to aid her meditation was eclipsed by the grim smell of burning bracken.
There was one way to find out what the cards would tell her, and that was to turn them over. The next was the Nine of Swords. She shook her head over it, as she would over a feckless child. What kind of a message was that? That it was better to let sleeping dogs lie? No one would ever be brought to justice if we did that, she admonished the card, but she knew what it was really telling her. It was telling her she should stop raking over past relationships that never worked. That was the trap she’d fallen into, allowing herself to think about Scott when she’d shared her story with Dawn, letting herself down, admitting to herself that whatever she had with him wasn’t over.
But it was. Tomorrow, she said to herself, I’ll phone the solicitor and file for divorce.
The third card. The Lovers. Upside down, as it was, the card hinted at infidelity. Scott, again? Or Dawn, with too much love to spare and the unshakeable conviction that it was right to share it? Ashleigh had liked Dawn, too much, but in the end the woman’s action had done nothing more than shadow the deceit that had dogged her marriage and driven her to her death. She should know better, Ashleigh reproached herself. She’d become too involved and Dawn’s infidelity, as a result, had struck her more deeply than she should have allowed it to. No wonder Jude had scowled at her lack of professionalism.
She lingered. Not all cards meant what they seemed at first, and maybe the message was about herself, not Dawn. Drawing the Lovers didn’t mean she’d find love, but nor did it mean she wouldn’t. She spared a thought for Jude – charismatic, attractive, throwing the two of them off a cliff to save her life. And his, too. And of course he’d torn a strip off her afterwards for getting so involved. Was he all right? No one had thought to keep her informed after Doddsy had arrived and carted him off to A & E. She hurried on from this one. It was too difficult.
Certain that the next card would be the Fool, she turned it over with a sigh, but it was the Ace of Wands. She wrinkled her brow at this. The suit of Wands belonged to the element fire, and she’d had too much of that, at the beginning and the end of the adventure. In her memory, orange flame leapt up against the cloudless sky. This card offered her the chance to put down roots, but was this the place? After two weeks, was she ready to settle in Cumbria?
Today, as they sometimes did, the cards were giving her more questions than answers and she wasn’t in the mood to think too hard for herself. She shivered a little, looking out through the tiny slit she’d left between the curtains, westwards to the sunset, and waited for a moment before she turned over the last card. The Wish.
Oh, cards, you tease. Make a wish and it comes true, but when? Within nine days? Nine months? Nine years?
Ashleigh closed her eyes and wished.
32
Jude rolled over, but the action did nothing to help. The pain in his head throbbed and rose until he clenched his hands to his temples in a futile attempt to suppress it. Even with his eyes closed, a burning light seemed imprinted on his eyeballs and with every breath he took, Ashleigh O’Halloran’s perfume seemed to pulse through his veins. In his recent memory he held her body crushed against him as they’d fallen, pressed close to him as they’d come to the crunching stop where his memory ended. If he’d died, there in her arms at the foot of the quarry, would the post-mortem have shown that he’d passed out of this life with his lungs full of that haunting scent, just as Greg Sumner’s lungs had carried the imprint of the summer’s smoke filled haze?
He jammed the pillow down over his face to smother the pain and that didn’t work either, only amplifying it so that it drummed through his entire body. T
he perfume strengthened, too, so that he almost felt that Ashleigh was there beside him. Groaning, he knew he had no option but to get up and find some painkillers. Forcing himself to sit up, he left it as late as possible to open his eyes.
He wasn’t at home – or at least, not at the house in Wordsworth Street. He was back at his mother’s house in Wasby, in his childhood bedroom with its view up towards the tempting solitude of Mardale and Haweswater. On the bedside table, his phone jumped into life as he reached out to touch it. Messages. Mikey. He swiped the screen and clicked on voicemail, listening to what he knew would be his brother’s disappointed fury.
‘Jude. Thanks a lot for getting back to me, pal. Not. Don’t bother, in future. Becca got me sorted out. At least I found someone I could rely on.’
He groaned. He could try and explain, but Mikey would never understand. It had been like this with Becca, over and over again, always something else more immediate when the people he loved needed him and he always ended up letting them down, inflicting upon himself the pain of the right choice.
Their relationship had gone up in flames as surely as the bracken on the fellside, and God knew how long it would be, how hard he’d have to work, before he could repair it. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed he got to his feet, shaking when he stood, every movement plagued by aches and pains. He supposed they were something of a badge of honour, but more than that he couldn’t understand. The pain just kept coming, waves and waves, overriding any attempts to think, to rationalise.
He won control over the pain, unable to suppress it but not letting it keep him down. More steadily than he’d hoped, he crossed to the window and looked down to where Holmes rolled over in a luxurious patch of sunlight on Becca’s doorstep. It must be late morning. He stumbled along to the bathroom and found the cabinet empty of anything that could help him. His mother kept all her tablets downstairs in the kitchen. With the support of the bannister, he made his way downstairs to where Doddsy, fortified by a cup of coffee and a biscuit, was sitting looking overly comfortable at the kitchen table. Everything fell back into place in Jude’s befuddled brain – or not everything, but everything up to the point at which Max Sumner had finally taken leave of his senses. ‘Doddsy. Did we get the bastard?’