Part 23 (1/2)

The wave of anguish which swept over her surprised her. Greg was the only strong one amongst them; the only one who could protect them if ... If what? If they were attacked?

Almost as though he had read her thoughts Patrick shook his head. *Whoever murdered Bill must be long gone by now. In our car. It was stolen yesterday. I'm going up to the Farnboroughs' on foot. It won't take me more than an hour.'

She drank some more tea, feeling it flowing through her veins like some kind of elixir of life. *You can't go on your own. I'll go with you. A quick wash and something to eat a' she was surprised suddenly to realise just how hungry she was, *a and I'll be ready for anything. What's the weather like?'

Patrick stood up. He leaned across his desk and pulled back the curtains, letting in a dim brownish light. *Not very nice. It's still windy and there's been quite a bit of snow. They are forecasting blizzards a' He broke off suddenly.

*What is it?' The lurch of panic in Kate's stomach told her she was not nearly as calm as she had thought. All her fear was still there, under the surface, waiting to flood back through her.

*The car!' Patrick's voice was strangled. Putting down the cup Kate lurched out of bed and went to stand beside him. *Where? d.a.m.n it, my specs are in my jacket.' She screwed up her eyes as she looked out across the snow-covered gra.s.s towards the edge of the saltings.

*Out there, on the marsh.' Patrick's voice was awed.

The Volvo was standing some hundred yards from the gra.s.s and sand at the edge of the salting, balanced on high sections of gra.s.s-topped mud. Beneath its wheels, the tide was rippling merrily out of the creek leaving a curtain of weed draped on the car's b.u.mper.

*Is there anyone in it?' Kate could only make out the outline from this distance.

*I don't think so.' Patrick sounded distracted. *How could it have got there? No one could have driven it.'

*Not even at low tide?'

*Kate, look at the height of the ground it's standing on! Those are like little islands. At high tide those gra.s.s patches are above sea level. They must be four feet off the ground. There is no way that car could have got there, no way.'

*The tide must have carried it. There was a terrific wind last night a '

*Blowing this way. Off the sea. That's a car, Kate. A b.l.o.o.d.y great Volvo. It's not a d.i.n.ky toy. If it got in the sea it would sink.'

*Yes. Of course.' She pushed her hands deep into her pockets, aware that she was s.h.i.+vering. *Can we walk out there? When the tide's gone out a bit?'

He nodded absently. *I'll have to tell Dad.'

*I'll come downstairs.'

She stood back and watched as he headed for the door. He was in a daze. She glanced back at the window. The car was still there, the windscreen glittering in a stray, watery ray of suns.h.i.+ne.

On her way downstairs she glanced into Alison's room through the open door. The girl lay unmoving, her hair spread across the pillow. The teddy lay on the floor, a hot water bottle near it. Kate stood for a moment watching her. She had a feeling Alison was not asleep.

*Allie?' she whispered. *Allie are you awake?'

There was no reply.

Roger was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of him, which judging by the skin on the top was cold and unappetising. Diana was standing near him watching the toaster.

*Did you manage to sleep?' She smiled at Kate and indicated the coffee pot on the hob.

Kate made for it gratefully. *A bit.'

*Pour Greg one too, will you Kate, and take it through to him. I think he'd be glad to see you,' Roger said. He mustered a valiant smile. *Then you and I and Paddy will grab a bit of breakfast. By then the tide will be low enough to make our way out to the family barouche. Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I can't think how the h.e.l.l they got it there, but it won't be worth a tinker's ha'penny after the tide has been in it.'

*The insurance will pay, Dad.' Patrick had emerged from the study.

*Let's hope so.' Roger's face was grim as he watched Kate make her way across the room with the two mugs of coffee.

Greg was propped up against a pile of pillows and cus.h.i.+ons on the camp bed in the study. Someone had made a makes.h.i.+ft cage across his foot to keep the weight of the bed-clothes off it, and though Kate could see the pain in his face as he grinned at her, he looked immeasurably better than he had the night before.

*How are you?' She knelt to hand him the coffee, and then sat down on the floor beside him. *I hear the foot is not too good.'

*I'll live.' He reached out a hand to her. *And that fact I owe to you. It hasn't escaped me that you saved my life about five times last night. That's some debt I owe you.'

*Don't be silly.' Embarra.s.sed she looked down into her coffee. It was thick and black and rich.

*I know. Anyone would have done it.' He was laughing.

*Probably. Yes.'

*Well, thanks anyway. If I had been you I would probably have left me there to rot and thought it served me right after the way I've b.u.g.g.e.red you about.'

She smiled. *Poetically put.'

There was a moment's silence. Then Greg reached out to her again. *Kate, I had the most peculiar dream while I was asleep. I think we are all still in terrible danger. I've told Paddy and now I'm telling you. You'll think I'm hallucinating; you probably think I was hallucinating last night a '

*If you were, then we both were,' she put in softly. *We both saw that figure.'

*Was it because we were expecting to?' He shook his head and releasing her hand, reached for his coffee cup again. *When you came here I decided to scare you away. You know that. The joke, if it was a joke, got rapidly out of hand. We all began to imagine things ...' He paused, his attention riveted to the depths of his cup. *In that state, maybe, what I saw was dictated by my own mind ...' He paused again. *Thomas De Quincey puts it rather neatly, if I remember it right. ”If a man who only talks about oxen becomes an opium eater, then he will dream about oxen” a is that right?' He cast her a quick glance under his eyelashes, and did not miss the look of astonishment in her face. ”*And if a man who is a philosopher has an opium dream then it will be ... humani nihil a ”'

”*Humani nihil a se alienum putat.”' Kate finished for him. *Well, well, I would never have suspected that you had read The Confessions.'

He smiled, the look of mischief cutting across the greyness of pain. *Well, I used to be quite literate, you know. I even know what it means. ”He believes nothing human strange” a yes?' He waited for her comment. When she said nothing he went on, *I even read up my Byron when I heard what Lady Muck was up to in my cottage.'

*Lady Muck?' She was even more astonished.

*If you'd known I called you that you would have left me to the sharks.'

*Indeed I would.' Thoughtfully she took a sip of coffee. *You haven't told me yet what you dreamed of. What phantasmagoria haunted you?'

*Marcus.'

She bit her lip. *Who else.'

*He tried to get me, you know, on the beach. He tried to take me over. I fought him ...' He paused. *In my dream he was trying to get inside my head again.' He s.h.i.+fted his weight uncomfortably in the bed. *It was the most awful dream I have ever had in my life, and yet I can't remember more than a few bits.'

*You were awoken perhaps by a stranger from Porlock.' Kate smiled at him, trying to tease him out of his bleak mood.

*All right, all right. Believe it or not, I know that one too. All I remember is that he was trying to get inside my head, and that if I had let him he would have got into this house. And that was what he wanted. To get to us. Because we know his secret.'

She was watching him. *And what is his secret?'

He glanced at her looking for signs of disbelief or scorn. *That he killed Claudia. But there's more to it than that. Much more. Otherwise why would he be so angry? And so desperate?'

The silence in the room grew uncomfortable. There had been no humour in his eyes; no relieving lightness. What she had seen there, behind the narrowed grey-green irises, was fear. She swallowed, plaiting her fingers together nervously.