In The Presence Of The Enemy (80 page)

She set off after Robin. In his car he’d followed the track to the castle. On foot, following the track wasn’t necessary. She cut across a stretch of open land. This was a vista that long ago would have given the castle’s inhabitants visual warning of a coming attack, and Barbara kept this fact in mind as she dashed across it. She moved in a crouch, knowing that the moonlight that made her progress less diffi cult also made her visible—if as a shadow only—to anyone who happened to look her way.

She was making quick, easy, unimpeded progress when nature got in her way. She stumbled against a low shrub—it felt like a juniper—and unsettled a nest of birds. They shot up in front of her. Their
chack, chack,
chack
bounced and echoed, it seemed, round every stone in the castle walls.

Barbara froze where she was. She waited, heart pounding. She made herself count to sixty, twice. When nothing stirred from the direction Robin had taken, Barbara set off again.

She reached his car without incident. She looked inside for the keys, praying to see them dangling from the ignition. They were gone.

Well, it had been too much to hope for.

She followed the curve of the castle wall as he had done, picking up the pace now. She’d lost the time she’d intended to gain by avoiding the track. She needed to make up that time through any means. But stealth and silence were crucial. Aside from the tyre iron, the only other weapon she had was surprise.

Round the curve of the wall she came to the remains of the gatehouse. There was no longer a door attached to the old stones, merely an archway above which she could dimly see a worn coat of arms. She paused in an alcove created by the half-tumbled gatehouse wall, and she strained to listen. The birds had fallen silent. A night breeze susurrated the leaves on the trees that grew within the castle walls. But there was no sound of voice, footfall, or rustling clothes. And there was nothing to see except the two craggy towers raised towards the dark sky.

These contained the small oblong slits which would have shed sunlight on the spiral stone stairways within the towers. From these slits some defence of the castle could have been made as men-of-arms raced upward to the crenellated roof. From these slits also, dim light would have shone had Robin Payne chosen either of the towers in which to hold Leo Luxford hostage. But no light fi ltered from them. So Robin had to be somewhere in the building whose roof Barbara had noted some twenty yards from the farthest of the towers.

She could see this building as a shadowy form in the dim light. Between the gable-roofed structure and the archway where she stood in what felt like a teacup of darkness, there was little enough to hide her. Once she ventured out of the gatehouse and beyond the trees and shrubs at the wall, there would be only the random heaps of foundation stones that marked the sites where once the living quarters of the castle had stood. Barbara studied these heaps of stones. It appeared to be ten yards to the first group where a right angle of rubble would give her protection.

She listened for movement and sound.

There was nothing beyond the wind. She dashed for the stones.

Ten yards closer to the castle’s remaining structure allowed her to see what it was. She could make out the arch of the Gothic lancet windows and she could see a finial at the apex of the roof sketched against the dusky sky. This was a cross. The building was a chapel.

Barbara glued her gaze to the lancet windows. She waited for a flicker of light from within. He had a torch. He couldn’t be operating in total darkness. Surely in a moment he’d give himself away. But she saw nothing.

Her hand felt slick where it held the tyre iron. She rubbed it against her trousers. She studied the next stretch of open ground and made a second dash to a second heap of foundation stones.

Here she saw that a wall lower than the castle’s outer walls had been built round the chapel. A small roofed gatehouse whose shape mirrored the chapel itself acted as shelter for the dark oblong of a wooden door. This door was closed. Another fifteen yards gaped between her position and the chapel’s gatehouse, fifteen yards in which the only shelter was a bench from which tourists could admire what little remained of the mediaeval fortifi -

cation. Barbara hurtled herself towards this bench. And from the bench she dashed to the chapel’s outer wall.

She slithered along this wall, tyre iron gripped fiercely, scarcely allowing herself to breathe. Hugged to the stones, she gained the chapel’s gatehouse. She stood, her back pressed to the wall, and listened. First, the wind. Then the sound of a jet far above. Then another sound. And closer. The scrape of metal on stone. Barbara’s body quivered in reply.

She eased her way to the gate. She pressed her palm against it. It gave an inch, then another. She peered inside.

Directly in front of her, the chapel door was closed. And the lancet windows above it were as black and as sightless as before. But a stone path led round the side of the church and as Barbara slid within the gate, she saw the fi rst glimmer of light coming from this direction.

And that sound again. Metal on stone.

An unattended herbaceous border grew profusely along the outer wall that bounded the chapel’s environs, overspreading the stone path with tendrils, with branches, with leaves, and with flowers. Here and there this overgrown border had been trampled, and observing this, Barbara was willing to bet that the trampling hadn’t been done by some fi rst-Saturday-of-the-month visitor who had risked his car’s suspension by venturing out to this remote location.

She glided across the path to the chapel itself. She sidled along the rough stones of its external wall till she gained the corner. There, she paused. She listened. First she heard the wind again, a swelling and receding that rustled through the trees on the hillside nearby.

Then the metal on stone, more sharply now.

Then the voice.

“You’ll drink when I say to drink.” It was Robin, but not a Robin she had heard before.

This wasn’t the uncertain and untried detective constable she’d been speaking to for the last few days. This was the voice of a thug and a killer. “Have we got that straight?”

And then the child’s voice, reedy and frightened. “But it doesn’t taste right. It tastes—”

“I don’t care how it tastes. You’ll drink it up like I tell you and be happy to have it or I’ll force it down your throat. You understand?

Did you like having it forced down your throat last time?”

The child said nothing. Barbara inched forward. She ventured a look round the corner of the chapel and saw that the path led to a set of stone steps. These steps curved downward through an arch in the chapel wall. They appeared to lead to a vault. Light fi ngered its way up these stairs. Too much light for a torch, Barbara realised. He must have taken his lantern as well. He’d had it with him when they’d gone to the windmill. That must have been what he’d removed from the boot of his car.

She fl exed her fingers round the tyre iron.

She pressed forward slowly along the chapel wall.

Robin was saying, “Drink, God damn it.”

“I want to go home.”

“I don’t give a shit what you want. Now, take this—”

“That hurts! My arm!” The boy cried out.

A scuff ling followed. A blow fell. Robin grunted. And then his voice snarled, “You little turd. When I tell you to drink…” And the sound of fl esh hitting flesh, striking hard.

Leo shrieked. Another blow fell. Robin meant to kill him. Either he’d force the drug into him and wait the few minutes for him to drop off and drown him then as he’d done to Charlotte, or he’d kill him with violence. But either way, Leo was going to die.

Barbara raced the length of the path towards the light. She had surprise on her side, she told herself. She had the tyre iron. She had surprise.

She rushed down the steps with a howl and flung herself into the vault. She crashed the wooden door fully back against the stones.

Robin had a tow-haired boy’s head caught in the crook of his arm and his hand was forcing a plastic cup to his lips.

She saw in an instant how he meant to do it this time. The vault was an ancient burial chamber. Six lead coffins spanned a trench in the floor. In this trench lay a pool of algae-slimed water that gave off an odour of rot, human filth, and disease. That’s the water that would be in Leo’s body. Not tap water this time, but something infi nitely more challeng-ing for the pathologist to play about with.

“Let him go!” Barbara shouted. “I said bloody let him go!”

Robin did so. He shoved the boy to the fl oor.

But he didn’t back away and cower at having been caught out as a killer. Instead, he came at her.

Barbara swung the tyre iron. It connected with his shoulder. He blinked but came on.

She swung it again. His hand shot up and grabbed it. He wrenched it from her grasp and flung it to one side. It slid across the stone floor. It clanked against a coffin and fell into the trench with a splash. Robin smiled at the sound. He advanced.

Barbara yelled, “Leo! Run!” but the child seemed mesmerised. He crouched near the coffin that the tyre iron had struck. He watched them from between his fi ngers. He cried, “No! Don’t!”

Robin was fast. He had her against the wall before she knew what was happening. He drove his fists into her, one to the stomach to shove her into the stones and then, jerked forward, another to the kidneys. She felt heat sear through her, and she grabbed his hair in her fingers. She twisted hard and pulled his head backwards. She sought his eyes with her thumbs. He jerked back instinctively. She lost her grip. He powered his fist into her face.

She heard her nose break. She felt the pain of it spread across her face like a shovel on fi re.

She fell to one side, but she grabbed on to him.

She took him down with her. They hit the stones.

She scrambled on top of him. Blood gushed from her nose and onto his face. She gripped his head between her hands. She lifted it. She pounded it onto the stone floor. She drove her fists into his Adam’s apple, then against his ears, his cheeks, his eyes.

She shouted, “Leo! Get out of here!”

Robin’s hands grabbed for her throat. He thrashed beneath her. Through a mist in her eyes she saw Leo move. But he was backing away. He wasn’t running for the door. He was crawling between the coffins as if to hide.

She screamed, “Leo! Get out!”

With a grunt, Robin threw her off him. She kicked out savagely as she hit the ground. She felt her foot hit his shin and as he sank back, she jumped to her feet.

She drew her hand across her face. It came away crimson. She shouted for Leo. She saw the colour of his hair—bright light against the dull lead of the coffins—and then Robin surged to his feet as well.

“Fucking…God
damn…
” He charged, head lowered. He ploughed her against the wall. He grunted. He battered her face with sharp blows.

A weapon, Barbara thought. She needed a weapon. She had nothing. And if she had nothing, they were lost. She was. Leo was.

Because he would kill them. He would kill them both because she had failed. Failed.

Failed. The thought of it—

She shoved him away from her, her shoulder driving desperately into his chest. He pounded her back, but she caught him to her, arms at his waist. She dug in her feet for purchase and when his weight shifted, she drove her knee upward, seeking his groin. She missed and he grabbed the advantage. He threw her against the wall. He grabbed her by the neck. He plunged her to the fl oor.

He stood above her, looked to the left and the right. He was seeking a weapon. She saw it as he did. The lantern.

She grabbed his legs as he lunged to get it.

He kicked her face, but she pulled him down.

When he thudded to the fl oor, she crawled on top of him, but she knew her strength was nearly spent. She pressed against his throat.

She locked her legs round his. If she could hold him here, if the boy could get away, if he had the sense to run into the trees…

“Leo!” she shouted. “Run! Hide!”

She thought she saw him moving at the edge of her vision. But something about him wasn’t right. Hair not bright enough. Face gone ghoulish, limbs looking dead.

He was terrified. He was only a kid. He didn’t understand what was going on. But if she couldn’t make him see that he had to get out, get out fast, get out now, then…

“Go!” she cried. “Go!”

She felt Robin heave. Legs, arms, and chest.

With a burst of power he flipped her off him again. But this time she couldn’t get to her feet. He was on her just as she’d been on him.

Arm at her throat, legs locked onto legs, breathing hotly into her face.

“He
will…
” Wildly, he gulped in air. “Pay.

He
will
.”

He increased the pressure. He ground himself onto her. Barbara saw a blur of white buzzing round her. And the last thing she saw was Robin’s smile. It was the look of a man for whom justice was being done at last.

LYNLEY WATCHED CORRINE PAYNE
lift the cup to her mouth. Her eyes were groggy and her movements sluggish. “More coffee,” he said to Nkata grimly. “Make it black this time.

And stronger. Double strength. Triple if you can.”

Nkata responded warily. “Cold shower might do the same trick.” He went on as if in rebuttal to the statement that Lynley didn’t bother to make: They had no female DC with them. They could hardly undress the woman themselves. “Wouldn’t have to take off her clothes, would we? We could just douse her good.”

“See to the coffee, Winston.”

Corrine murmured, “Little chappie?” and her head lolled forward.

Lynley shook her by the shoulder. He pulled back the chair and lifted her to her feet. He walked her the length of the dining room, but her legs had all the strength of cooked spa-ghetti. She was as useful to them as a kitchen utensil. He muttered, “Damn it, woman.

Come out of it.
Now
,” and as she stumbled against him, he realised how badly he wanted to rattle her into oblivion. Which told him how large his anxiety had grown in the thirty minutes since arriving at Lark’s Haven.