A Finer End (16 page)

Pausing, she checked automatically for oncoming traffic, even though she could not have failed to hear a car on such a still night. The lane was dark as a tunnel now, visible only by the layer of mist that had settled near the ground.

She stepped out, pushing the bike, and a light came out of nowhere, dazzling her, blinding her. Throwing up her arms as she heard the roar of an engine, she sensed a rush of movement towards her.

Just before impact, some tiny fragment of her consciousness noted that there had been no squeal of brakes.

T
HE MUSIC CHANGED
, slowly; the joyous melody faded, softening, until it became a lament. Fiona sensed an immense sorrow for a passing, an ending, of something precious beyond human understanding, but more than that she could not tell.

At last there was only a hollowness in her head, and beyond the glass there was nothing but darkness and the faint lights of the town across the Coombe. She put down her brush, exhausted. She had no idea of the time—she never kept a clock in the studio—but she could tell by the cramp in her hand and the ache in her back that she’d been painting several hours.

Stepping back, Fiona surveyed the canvas. She, herself, never named the creatures that came to her, but the critics referred to them as sprites, spirits, or sometimes, angels. Tonight, to her surprise, she had painted them within a framework of greensward and ruined stone walls—the gates of the Abbey itself—and for the first time, the spirits seemed to hold the now-familiar little girl within their protection.

It was only blocked in, of course. She would finish it tomorrow, if there were no more visions. Now she needed rest; but first, a walk, to clear her head.

The house was quiet, breathing in its midnight rhythm, and when she peeked into the bedroom she saw the humped shape of Bram’s body under the duvet.

Grabbing an old Barbour off a peg, she let herself out the front door and stood for a moment, breathing the frosty air. To her left lay Wick Hollow; to the right Bulwarks Lane gave an open view of the Coombe to the west. Threading her way through the garden, she turned to the right, and when she had passed the house a break in the canopy of leaves above her gave a view of the stars.

As she walked, she became aware of movement in the woods, an agitation more intense than the usual nocturnal shufflings of badgers and rabbits. Fiona stopped, listening,
wondering what could be disturbing the woodland creatures on such a calm and beautiful night. “What is it?” she whispered, but there was no response. Feeling uneasy, she continued onwards, but more cautiously.

When a tendril of wind moved down the lane, disturbing a bit of rubbish, she started, then chided herself. It was only a supermarket carrier bag, and as she watched it blew a few more feet, lodging against something larger in the road, a dark shape, perhaps a fallen branch, and beside it a longer, more solid object. Drawing closer, she saw that the more solid shape was oddly human. Another trick of perception, she decided. Her steps slowed until she came to a halt beside the thing.

Not until she knelt and touched the form was she convinced that what she saw was real. It was a woman, her upturned face a pale smudge, and beside her not a branch, but a fallen bicycle. Fiona pulled her small torch from the pocket of her jacket, then gasped as it lit the woman’s face.

Jack Montfort came to a halt a yard inside the intensive-care unit, overwhelmed by the sight of the machines and tubes surrounding Winnie’s slight, still form. Why hadn’t they told him she would look like this—alien, and frail beyond hope? A tube ran into her nose, another into her mouth, and on a shaved strip of her scalp the angry edges of a wound were held closed with clips.

“You’re here to see Winifred, aren’t you, dear?” a soft Irish voice said beside him.

Jack turned, barely registering scrubs, a friendly smile, and a name badge that read “Maggie.” He nodded, not trusting his voice.

“You’re her ‘friend,’ I take it? Her brother came in a bit ago. Took one look, turned green, and bolted, poor man.”

“Did he?” Jack’s resolve not to do the same strengthened, as he suspected she had intended.

“It’s all these high-tech doodads give folks the willies.
But don’t let them frighten you. They’re just keeping her comfortable, and letting us know how she’s doing.”

“How—how is she?”

“We’ve got her warm and toasty now, and resting quite comfortably. She was hypothermic when they brought her in, and her heart was a bit dicky, but she’s stable now—”

“Heart?” A fresh jolt of fear shot through him.

“A bit of cardiac arrhythmia, due to the warming process. All perfectly normal. She’s a lucky girl, your Winifred. Do you know where she was found exactly?”

“In Bulwarks Lane, below Glastonbury Tor.”

“On the tarmac itself? Probably saved her life, then. The tarmac would have held the day’s heat. A few feet either way into the grass or the ditch …” Maggie shook her head ominously.

It had been Suzanne Sanborne who had rung Jack in the early hours of the morning. He had been increasingly uneasy about Winnie—it wasn’t like her not to let him know her whereabouts—but he had told himself that she must have had an emergency. He had, in fact, imagined her sitting at the bedside of an ill or dying parishioner. That was an irony too painful now to contemplate.

In a daze, he had driven the thirty miles to the hospital in Taunton. While Andrew Catesby acknowledged him with a tight-lipped nod, Suzanne told him that the police believed Winnie must have been on her way to visit her friend Fiona Allen when she had been struck by a hit-and-run motorist. It had been Fiona who had found her, rung for police and medical aid. Fiona had then rung Andrew, who in turn had called Suzanne. How like Andrew, thought Jack, not to have rung him.

By daybreak, they had still not been allowed to see Winnie and Suzanne had been unable to stay longer. Left alone with Andrew Catesby, who glared at him from across the waiting room, Jack had left the hospital and driven to police headquarters in Yeovil. There he had seen Detective
Inspector Alfred Greely, the officer who had taken the call on Winnie’s accident. Greely, a phlegmatic man with a farmer’s face and a West Country burr, held out little hope that the driver of the car could be traced. There were no witnesses, and little, if any, possibility of forensic evidence on the bike—their only avenue lay with Winnie herself, if she should awaken and remember something vital.

Now, looking down at her smooth face, calm in a repose more profound than sleep, Jack asked Maggie, “Can I speak to her? Will she know me?”

“Of course, you can, dear, and the more the better. And it’s a good bet that when she wakes up, not only will she remember that you’ve been here, she’ll remember everything you’ve said to her.” Maggie fetched a hospital-issue chair that looked too insubstantial to support Jack’s large frame and placed it next to the bed. “She’ll need you to anchor her, give her consciousness a focal point. Talk to her, touch her, hold her hand. Tell her what’s happened to her.”

When Jack took Winnie’s hand between both of his, it felt cool and unresponsive. “Winnie, it’s me, Jack,” he began awkwardly. “You’ve had a bit of a bump on the head, but you’re going to be fine, love.”

“You just keep talking to her,” Maggie instructed when he paused, “and I’ll give you a few more minutes.” She moved away to attend another patient, her face impassive.

Jack fumbled in his pocket for the prayer book the hospital staff had found in Winnie’s handbag and began to read, hoping the familiar and comforting words would somehow reach her.
“O Lord our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God, who has safely brought us to the beginning of this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance.…”
His voice broke; he bowed his head and closed the small leather-bound book with its gilt-edged pages. It was Winnie’s, a gift from her parents upon her confirmation,
she had told him once. They had been killed in a boating accident shortly afterwards, and the book had become one of her treasures.

How had she managed to survive such grief whole? he wondered. He whispered to her, rubbing her hand between his, telling her he loved her, that she was strong and that he would let nothing—nothing—take her away from him.

Maggie reappeared at his side with a soft touch on his shoulder. “You’ll have to go now, I’m afraid, but you can come back in a couple of hours.” As Jack stood, regretfully letting go Winnie’s hand, she added, “Did I hear someone say that Winifred was a vicar?”

“Of St. Mary’s, in Compton Grenville.”

“If she likes music, you might bring something for her to listen to. Music can be a very strong trigger for some people, especially if it’s an important part of their daily lives.”

“Can I leave this with you?” Jack held out the prayer book. “In case you have a chance to read to her? Or if she wakes …” He looked up, desperately meeting Maggie’s hazel eyes. “What if she wakes up while I’m gone? Or …”

Maggie dug a piece of paper and a pen from her pocket. “You have a mobile phone?” Jack nodded. “Give me your number, and I’ll ring you if there’s any change at all.”

Jack thanked her and, with a last look at Winnie, went out into the waiting area. It was then that he sank into the nearest chair, shaken by the realization that he could not bear to lose her, could not bear to go back to the desert that had been his life after Emily’s death.

Nor could he bear to sit idly by, waiting. There were too many unanswered questions. What would Winnie tell them
when
—he refused to consider the possibility that it might be
if
—she woke? Why had she been going to see her friend Fiona at that time of evening? Where had she been before that? Why hadn’t she rung him? And what had she seen before the car struck her?

There must be something he could do. The police had certainly not shown much interest in investigating the accident. Winnie was much too levelheaded to have cycled blindly into the path of an oncoming vehicle. But how else could this have happened, unless someone had deliberately hurt her? And that was unimaginable.

He would go see Fiona. Perhaps Winnie had rung her, told her something that would explain her unlikely appearance in Bulwarks Lane.

And there was one other person he could call; someone he could trust to tell him if he was completely mad.

Kincaid returned the phone to its cradle on his desk just as his sergeant came into his office with a sheaf of papers in a folder.

“Report from forensics,” Douglas Cullen said, sliding the folder across the desk and pulling up a chair.

“Any joy?”

Cullen shook his head regretfully. “No, sir. Nothing, zilch, nada.”

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “I see you’ve been watching American telly again.” He suspected that Cullen liked to imagine himself a tough,
NYPD Blue
-type detective—a harmless enough fantasy as long as it didn’t get in the way of his work—but surely no one could look a less likely candidate. With his fair hair, spectacles, and rosy-cheeked, schoolboy complexion, Cullen was the very image of the traditional English bobby.

For the past two weeks, they’d been working a case that looked disturbingly as if it might be the beginning venture of a serial killer. The victim, the owner of an antiques stall in Camden Passage, had been found on her own premises, and so far they had not turned up a smidgen of useful evidence. Kincaid had begun to think that the killer had worn a hermetically sealed suit, and been invisible to boot.

As he opened the folder, his mind wandered to his recent—and unexpected—phone call from his cousin Jack Montfort and the dilemma it had presented him.

How long had it been since he’d seen Jack? He had been away on a case when Emily and the baby died … it would have been his aunt’s funeral, then, but he had done little more than shake Jack’s hand and offer his condolences before rushing back to London.

If there was anyone who’d had more than his share of tragedy, it was his cousin. But now it seemed Jack’s new love was lying in hospital and he seemed distraught, fearing that the hit-and-run might not have been an accident. Hesitantly, Jack had urged, “You could come for the weekend, just see what you think.”

“But I’d have no jurisdiction,” Kincaid had protested.

“It doesn’t matter. I just … It would be good to see you.”

His mother and Jack’s had been close, and the families had spent extended time together in the summers when the children were small. Jack had been a rather solemn but likable boy, always ready for an adventure, and he had grown into an engaging and generous man. Kincaid’s memories of the holiday Jack had given him in his Yorkshire time-share had been marred by Emily’s death so shortly afterwards, but the thoughtfulness of the offer had been typical of Jack.

“I’ll let you know if I can work something out,” Kincaid answered, ringing off. As much as he regretted letting Jack down, he had no real intention of driving to Somerset for the weekend.

There was no way he could leave London; something might break on the case, and Doug Cullen wasn’t experienced enough to handle it alone. And he and Gemma had managed little enough time together lately—he’d been hoping to make the most of Kit’s plans to spend the weekend with friends.

He shuffled papers resolutely, determined to focus on the matter at hand. But as he read through the disappointingly negative report, he couldn’t quite forget the desperation
he’d heard in Jack’s final words. His cousin needed his support, and Kincaid suspected how dearly it had cost Jack to ask for it.