Part 51 (2/2)

”Why?”

”Because there's a train station in High Bentham.”

St. James got out of the car and slammed the door home. ”It could be a blind, Tommy.”

”In this weather?” Lynley asked. ”I doubt it. She'd have needed an accomplice. Another vehicle.”

”Drive this far, fake an accident, drive on with someone else,” St. James said. ”It's not that far removed from the suicide game, is it?”

”Who'd have helped her?”

All of them looked at Shepherd. He said, ”I last saw her at noon. She said Maggie was ill. That was it. As G.o.d is my witness, Inspector.”

”You've lied before.”

”I'm not lying now. She didn't expect this to happen.” He flicked his thumb at the car. ”She didn't plan an accident. She didn't plan anything but getting away. Look at it straight. She knows where you've been. If Sage discovered the truth in London, you did as well. She's running. She's panicked. She's not being as careful as she ought to be. The car skids on the ice and puts her in a ditch. She tries to get out. She can't. She stands here on the road, just where we are. She knows she could try for the A65 across the moors, but it's snowing and she's afraid she'll get lost because she's never made the hike before and she can't risk it in the cold. She looks the other direction and remembers the barn. She can't make it to High Bentham. But she thinks she and Maggie can make it there. She's been there before. She sets off.”

”All of which could be what we're intended to think.”

”No! b.l.o.o.d.y Christ, it's what happened, Lynley. It's the only reason why-” He stopped. He looked over the moors.

”The reason why...?” Lynley prompted.

Shepherd's answer was nearly taken by the wind. ”Why she took the gun with her.”

It was the open glove box, he said. It was the towelling and the twine on the floor.

How did he know?

He'd seen the gun. He'd seen her use it. She'd taken it from a drawer in the sitting room one day. She'd unwrapped it. She'd shot at a chimney pot on the Hall. She'd- ”G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Shepherd, you knew she had a pistol? What's she doing with a pistol? Is she a collector? Is it licenced?”

It wasn't.

”Jesus Christ!”

He didn't think...It didn't seem at the time...He knew he should have taken it from her. But he didn't. That was all.

Shepherd's voice was low. He was identifying one more crook to the rules and procedures he'd bent for Juliet Spence from the first, and he knew what the outcome of the revelation would be.

Lynley jammed his hand against the gear s.h.i.+ft and cursed again. They shot forward, north. They had virtually no choice in the matter of pursuit. Providing she had found the track from the reservoir, she had the advantage of darkness and snow. If she was still on the moors and they tried to follow her across by torchlight, she could pick them off when they got within range by simply aiming at the torches' beams. Their only hope was to drive on to High Bentham and then head south down the road that led to Back End Barn. If she hadn't reached it, they couldn't risk waiting for her and taking the chance she'd got lost in the storm. They'd have to set across the moors, back towards the reservoir. They'd have to make an attempt to find her and hope for the best.

Lynley tried not to think about Maggie, confused and frightened, travelling in Juliet Spence's furious wake. He had no way of knowing what time they'd left the cottage. He had no idea of the clothes they wore. When St. James said something about having to take hypothermia into consideration, Lynley shoved his way into the Range Rover and slammed his fist against the horn. Not like that, he thought. G.o.d d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l. However it ended, it wouldn't be like that.

They got no moment's relief from either the wind or the snow. It was falling so heavily that it seemed as though all of the northwest would be five feet under drifts by the morning. The landscape was changed entirely. The muted greens and russets of winter were moonscape. Heather and gorse were hidden. An endless camouflage of white upon white made gra.s.sland, bracken, and heath a uniform sheet upon which the only markers were the boulders whose tops were powdered but still visible, dark specks like blemishes on the skin around them.

They crawled along, prayed their way up inclines, rode the declivities on brakes and ice. The lights from Constable Garrity's Range Rover slithered and wavered behind them, but came steadily on.

”They won't make it,” Shepherd said, gazing out at the flurries that gusted against the car. ”No one could. Not in this.”

Lynley changed down to first gear. The engine howled. ”She's desperate,” he said. ”That might keep her going.”

”Add the rest, Inspector.” He hunched into his coat. His face looked grey-green in the lights from the dash. ”I'm at fault. If they die.” He turned to the window. He fi ddled with his spectacles.

”It won't be the only thing on your conscience, Mr. Shepherd. But I expect you know that already, don't you?”

They rounded a curve. A sign pointing west was printed with the single word Keasden. Shepherd said, ”Turn here.” They veered to the left into a lane that was reduced to two ruts the width of a car. It ran through a hamlet that appeared to consist of a telephone box, a small church, and half a dozen signs for public footpaths. They experienced an all-too-brief respite from the storm when they entered a small wood just west of the hamlet. There the trees were bearing most of the snow in their branches and keeping it relatively clear of the ground. But another curve took them into open land again, and the car was instantly buffeted by a gust of wind. Lynley felt it in the steering wheel. He felt the tyres slide. He cursed with some reverence and moved his foot off the gas. He restrained himself from hitting the brakes.

The tyres found purchase. The car moved on.

”If they're not in the barn?” Shepherd asked.

”Then we'll look on the moor.”

”How? You don't know what it's like. You could die out there, searching. Are you willing to risk it? For a murderess?”

”It's not only a murderess I'm looking for.”

They approached the road that connected High Bentham and Winslough. The distance from Keasden to this crossroads was a little over three miles. It had taken them nearly half an hour to drive it.

They turned left-heading south in the direction of Winslough. For the next half mile, they saw the occasional lights from other houses, most of them set some considerable distance off the road. The land was walled here, the wall itself fast becoming just another white eruption from which individual stones, like staggered peaks, still managed to break through the snow. Then they were out on the moor again. No wall or fence served as demarcation between the land and the road. Only the tracks left by a heavy tractor showed them the way. In another half hour, they too would probably be obliterated.

The wind was whipping the snow into small, crystal cyclones. They built from the ground as well as from the air. They whirled in front of the car like ghostly dervishes and spun into the darkness again.

”Snow's letting up,” Shepherd remarked. Lynley gave him a quick glance in which the other man obviously read the incredulity because he went on with, ”It's just the wind now, blowing it about.”

”That's bad enough.”

But when he studied the view, Lynley could see that Shepherd was not merely acting the role of optimist. The snowfall was indeed diminis.h.i.+ng. Much of what the wipers were sweeping away came from what was blowing off the moors, not falling from the sky. It gave little relief other than to make the promise that things weren't going to get much worse.

They crept along for another ten minutes with the wind whining like a dog outside. When their headlamps struck a gate that acted as a fence across the road, Shepherd spoke again.

”Here. The barn's to the right. Just beyond the wall.”

Lynley peered through the windscreen. He saw nothing but eddies of snowflakes and darkness.

”Thirty yards from the road,” Shepherd said. He shouldered open his door. ”I'll have a look.”

”You'll do what I tell you,” Lynley said. ”Stay where you are.”

A muscle worked angrily in Shepherd's jaw. ”She's got a gun, Inspector. If she's in there in the first place, she isn't likely to shoot at me. I can talk to her.”

”You can do many things, none of which you're going to do right now.”

”Have some sense! Let me-”

”You've done enough.”

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