A Finer End (35 page)

But first, she rang Kincaid at Jack’s.

“Andrew! What are you doing here?” Faith stared at the apparition in the doorway. His thin anorak glistened with rain, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked different somehow, younger, and she realized he’d taken off his glasses.

“I’ve come to see you.” He stepped into the kitchen and shut the door. “You’re looking well.”

“Well?” She looked down at her distended abdomen, then back at him. “Is that all you can say?”

“What should I say? That you’re blooming? Or one of those other euphemisms people use to get round the fact that pregnant women resemble beached whales?”

His cruelty was shocking. Nor was there any trace of tenderness in his voice. What had she seen in him, all those months ago?

He had been impressed with her performance in his history classes, and with her knowledge of music. And she had been so flattered by his interest, intrigued by his boyish good looks and his air of vulnerability. When he’d begun asking her to stop by his office, she’d felt singled out, special. And then had come the casual touch, the hand on her shoulder, the stroking of her hair—so different from the fumbling of boys her own age.

The thrill of it had made her giddy with excitement, and when he’d said, oh, so nonchalantly, “If ever you’re walking up Wirral Hill, stop by my house for a cup of tea,” she had gone.

There had been a few charmed weeks of regular visits, of feeling so grown-up, sleek with her secret and her superiority to the other girls in her class.

Then reality had struck—a missed period, the worry, the sickness, the inevitable acknowledgment of the truth. When she’d told him she was pregnant, he had wept in her arms like a terrified child, and she’d sworn to him she would never tell anyone the truth. And she’d believed that, once the baby was born and she was on her own, perhaps they could be together again.

Now she saw that she had been mad to think she had meant anything to him—or that she had ever been more than a dreadful mistake in his eyes.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“This can’t go on, you know,” said Andrew, coming a
step closer. “This wondering, waiting for the ax to fall. I can’t bear it anymore.”

“I haven’t told anyone!”

“Not Garnet?”

“No. I swear.” But she
had
confessed to Garnet, when Winnie had urged her to see her mum—and learned to her horror that Winnie was Andrew’s
sister!
She had been introduced to Winnie only by her Christian name, and so had never made the connection.

“And you haven’t told my sister?”

“I wouldn’t tell Winnie!”

“I never expected that,” Andrew said dispassionately. “That you would make friends with my sister. Did you think it would give you some hold over me?” He shook his head. “You should have known that was the one thing I would never tolerate.”

Too late, Faith realized her mistake. But if she had lied and told him Winnie knew, would it have made a difference? “I’ve protected you. All these months. I had to leave home, because my dad would have killed you if he’d found out.”

“That doesn’t matter now. But my sister … You have to understand. Winnie mustn’t ever know. I can’t take any more chances. I’m sorry.”

He was on her before she could move, his hands round her throat.

Faith felt the searing pressure of his thumbs, heard the rasp of his breath in her ear. She struggled, trying to pull his hands away, but she couldn’t loosen his grip.

Even through the suffocating fog of her fear, she knew that if she lost consciousness she would be finished. She kicked at his ankles, but he merely tightened his grip on her throat. His face was contorted with purpose, unrecognizable. He pushed her backwards until she felt the cooker press against the small of her back.

Her vision blurred, sparking with luminous blue spots. In a last effort, she stopped scrabbling at his hands and
reached behind her, groping for something, anything, that might hold him off.

Her fingers closed on the handle of Garnet’s cast-iron frying pan. She lifted it, vaguely aware of a tearing in her wrist from its weight, then swung it with all her strength.

The blow caught Andrew in the temple.

She saw the flare of astonishment in his eyes, then his hold on her throat gave way and he crumpled, toppling back against the table. He grasped at it, pulling himself up; Faith swung the frying pan again.

Andrew slumped to the floor.

Faith stood over him, panting and trembling. There was no blood. If she moved, would he come at her again?

Then she gasped as pain gripped her, doubling her over, squeezing at her, and a gush of warm liquid ran down her legs. When she could stand upright again, she inched round Andrew’s still form, whimpering in terror.

She had to get out, away from the house. Away from him.

Stumbling out the door and down the steps, she ran through the downpour across the mud-slick yard to the back gate, and, once through it, onto the rocky slope of the Tor.

Up. She must go up. Blinded by the rain, sliding and falling, then picking herself up again, she began to climb straight up the side of the hill, towards the ancient contours cut into the rock, the maze that led to the summit of the Tor.

“H
ULLO, LOVE. GOOD
journey?” Kincaid eased the car into the traffic exiting Bath station as rain began to spatter on the windscreen.

“Any luck with your search this morning?” Gemma asked.

“This has been a wild-goose chase if I ever saw one. We’ve not turned up anything remotely resembling a lost Gregorian chant. I’m beginning to think we’ve all gone a bit soft in the head.”

“You won’t be able to stay much longer.”

“No.” He concentrated on his driving for a few moments, then said, “DCI Greely is still sifting through the material from Garnet’s house, but there are no phone records, no computer, no Caller ID—there aren’t even any personal letters that he’s been able to find, just business records.”

“And no help from those?”

“Only in the negative sense. He’s checked with those customers who had tile-work commissions pending, but she made no deliveries on the night of Winnie’s hit-and-run.”

“What about forensics?”

“No evidence of an assault or an abduction in the house, and although they did find a few of Nick’s prints, they can all be accounted for by his story. The only other identifiable prints are Faith’s and Garnet’s, and there’s nothing to indicate that prints were wiped, as they were on Garnet’s van.”

“Not Jack’s?” Gemma asked.

“Not a smudge,” he said with relief.

“Garnet Todd led a remarkably isolated life,” Gemma mused. “Most of us have an accumulation of flotsam from our connections, our relationships. Faith told me that Garnet had been a midwife, so she gave up a job where she had regular, intimate contact with people for tile making, a solitary occupation.”

“She did have a few close friends. Buddy Barnes, for one.”

“Faith’s boss?”

“I had a chat with him yesterday. It occurred to me afterwards that he’s extremely fond of Faith, and that if there should be anything to Nick Carlisle’s theories about Garnet preparing Faith for some sort of bloody ritual on the Tor, and Buddy found out about it—”

“You think Buddy might have murdered Garnet?”

“I’ve asked DCI Greely to run a check on him, at least.”

“Then what about Winnie? What reason could Buddy have possibly had for hurting Winnie?”

“I haven’t got that far. Did you realize they all knew each other, years ago? Garnet and Buddy, Bram and Fiona Allen. Buddy and Fiona were an item, apparently.”

“Well, perhaps it would all make sense if Buddy had murdered
Fiona—
”

“A long-simmering unrequited love?” Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “At this point I’m open for anything.”

“What if”—Gemma gave him a sly glance—“what if Garnet found out something about Nick that would ruin his chances with Faith for good?”

“Do I see cream on your whiskers? You’ve found something. Out with it,” Kincaid demanded.

“I told you I discovered that Nick’s mum is the novelist Elizabeth Carlisle. This morning the constable in her Northumbrian village rang me back. It seems that our Nick left behind a baby he refused to acknowledge or support. His mum has done right by the girl, apparently, but Nick’s name is mud.”

“And then he came to Glastonbury and fell in love with a girl pregnant with another man’s child?” Kincaid snorted. “Sounds like someone’s idea of a cosmic joke. But I doubt Faith would find it amusing.”

“That might explain why Nick would kill Garnet, but not why he would have struck Winnie. Unless”—Gemma frowned—“unless we’ve got it the wrong way round. What if it was
Winnie
who found out about Nick—isn’t that more likely, with her connections?—then Garnet saw Nick hit Winnie. So he was forced to silence her.”

“You’re leaving out one thing,” Kincaid objected. “Nick doesn’t have a car. His bike could not have caused Winnie’s injuries.”

“Perhaps he borrowed a car—or stole one.”

“That’s a possibility we should check.”

The rain fell in sheets now, and the traffic ground to a halt behind a long tailback. Kincaid glanced uneasily at his watch.

“What is it?” Gemma asked.

“We’re not going to make Glastonbury by five, in this downpour. But I asked Jack to pick Faith up at the café, if we weren’t in time.”

“But she was expecting you—”

“Jack promised he’d be there at the stroke of five. She’ll be fine.”

But as the minutes passed, Kincaid could sense Gemma’s growing tension. She sat quietly, eyes fixed on the road, as if she could hurry the car. As they neared Glastonbury, the rain fell even more heavily and the sky grew black. He drummed his fingers on the wheel as they crawled behind a lorry.

But at last they zigzagged their way through the village of Pilton, and the final clear stretch of road lay before them.

Then his cell phone rang.

It was Jack on the line, sounding frantic. “She’s gone. Faith’s gone. She told Buddy she didn’t feel well earlier this afternoon, that she was coming home. Then he began to worry about her, and rang me. No one’s seen her since she left the café.”

“Where are you?”

“At the house. I rang Nick at the bookshop, but he hasn’t heard from her either.”

“Wait there. She may ring you, or show up at the house any minute. And you don’t want to leave Winnie alone. We’re almost in Glastonbury—we’ll find her.”

“It’s Faith, isn’t it?” Gemma said as he disconnected.

“Missing since midafternoon. Told Buddy she was going
home.” He swore under his breath, but he knew it was his own lack of foresight he was cursing. Why the hell hadn’t he been more careful? “Where could she have got to?”

“The farmhouse.” Gemma said with certainty. “Duncan, she’s gone to Garnet’s farmhouse.”

As Kincaid pulled the car over, Gemma grabbed her torch from the door pocket and jumped out. Fumbling open the gate latch in the rain, she ducked under the crime-scene tape and ran across the muddy yard. The sight of the kitchen door standing ajar made her blood run cold. She stepped inside and looked round, fearing the worst.

The butter-colored cat sat on the kitchen table, blinking at her, and then, beyond that, in the midst of the chaos left by the police, she saw a huddled form on the floor.

“It’s Catesby!” Kincaid exclaimed, behind her. “Dead?”

Andrew Catesby had fallen on his back, half under the table, but even in shadowed light Gemma could see the ugly swelling on his temple. A heavy frying pan lay on the floor nearby, as if it had been dropped.

She could hear his breathing, raspy and labored, and when she felt his wrist his pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips.

Kincaid was already dialing 999, and once he’d requested medical help he left a message with Control for DCI Greely.

“Faith must have been the connection all along, not Garnet,” he said as he squatted beside her. “Jack said she’d gone to public school—Andrew must have been her teacher. And the father of her baby. That day you found him here, he must have been looking for Faith.”

“She protected
him
all this time. Was it Andrew who tried to kill Winnie, then, because she’d guessed? And then murdered Garnet in case Faith had told her?”

“We may never know,” Kincaid said grimly. “Unless Faith
can tell us. Where the hell is the girl? If Andrew attacked her, she could be hurt. You stay with him. I’ll search the house.”

Gemma glanced at the open door, thinking furiously. She knew with unshakable certainty that Faith was no longer in the house. She knew, too, where she had gone, and that
she
must go after her.

She also knew that she could never explain her conviction to Kincaid, and that he would forbid her to make that climb alone in the dark. But they couldn’t both leave Catesby. “Right,” she replied. “You have a look.”

It would take Kincaid a very short time to search the small house, and Andrew Catesby’s breathing had not worsened. When Kincaid disappeared down the corridor, she slipped quietly out the back door.

The rain had diminished to a fine mist, a soft touch against her face. “Bloody hell,” she muttered, realizing Kincaid must have the car keys. Looking up at the Tor’s black bulk rising behind the house, she considered going straight up the hill, then dismissed the plan as more foolhardy than the one she was already contemplating. The lane it must be, then.

She jogged until cramp seized her, but pressed on to the Tor’s north entrance. The path was undemanding at first, a fairly straight and gentle incline across a field, leading to a few stone steps and a narrow way through a copse of trees. Gemma breathed a sigh of relief as she came out the other side. Then she saw what lay ahead.