Текст книги "Vows of Silence "
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
But something splintered inside him and anger, anger mixed with a terrible sense of betrayal and rejection, took over and he was no longer icy, calm, focused, he was an uncontrollable mess of emotions. His hands shook. He had brought the deer rifle, but the Heckler & Koch carbine was in his bag too. He put the rifle away. His hands still shook because he was trying to be quick but more because he knew that he was losing control, he was angry, he was not going to follow the plan. How could he follow any plan now? Plans didn’t matter any more.
He picked up the G36, looked, saw Georgina and her mother, standing talking to some girl with a load of floral displays. There were others. Other girls. Other mothers. Other women. Alison might even be there somewhere. He took a single deep breath and ran with it, the handgun held correctly, up under the nose, close, tight, not like some amateur kid. He wasn’t an amateur. He knew what he was doing. He ran over the bridge towards the lawns. Silently. He would start shouting to Georgie any second. Shoot first, then shout, shoot first c not the other way round, not what he should do.
Shoot. Shoot. He saw Georgina turn. Her face. Horrified. Disbelieving. Hands coming up to either side of it. Saw her mouth open. It seemed to take forever. He had all the time in the world now. They were all looking, they all saw him, though not all of them knew what was going to happen, they looked confused. Someone even laughed.
Shoot and shout.
He shot. It went anywhere.
Shouts. Shouts that were not coming from him, though they were words he had used often enough.
“Drop the gun, drop the gun. Drop the gun. Put your hands above your head. Put your hands c”
The lawn and the gravel area in front and the bridge were trampled by thousands of them, thousands, feet, boots, shouts. Screams.
“Drop the gun, drop the gun. Put—”
A voice he knew, close up. “Fucking hell, it’s Clive Rowley.”
“Rowley. Clive Rowley. Clive Rowley. Rowley, Rowley, Rowley.” His own name went round and round in his head as he dropped the gun and was on his knees, then on his face, flat on the grass, pressed to it, a foot in his neck.
“Fucking hell.”
He closed his eyes. He was calm. Glad really. He’d stopped. Like he said he would.
Stopped.
Seventy-seven
“Can you wait five minutes, Superintendent? The Chief is just on a call.”
Ellie, Paula Devenish’s pleasant secretary, smiled but Simon was not reassured. He did not feel that the call, whatever it was, could not be interrupted, he felt that he was being kept waiting so that the Chief could score a point. But he nodded and smiled back at Ellie, and sat down and got up and looked out of the window onto the station yard. And sat down again.
“Can I get you a cup of tea?”
“No, thanks.”
Ellie went on with her work. From other rooms, other sounds of HQ at full stretch in the middle of a normal afternoon. From behind the Chief’s door, he could not even make out the murmur of her voice.
The last time they had met had been at the press briefing following the arrest and charging of Clive Rowley. Paula Devenish had spoken, Simon had sat beside her and said nothing; she had fielded the questions to which, inevitably, few answers could be given. She had gone into the conference room and given a pep talk, praised everyone, left immediately. Since then, there had been silence, until this morning when she had asked Serrailler to come in.
He was glad to get out of Lafferton. The atmosphere at the station was strained and quiet. That was always the case when a member of the force had been charged with an offence, but although the DCS had known it happen a couple of times in his career, nothing any officer had done had ever been as remotely serious as this. Clive Rowley would go into police history. The other members of armed response were still stunned, still unable to take in that one of their own, a man they had worked with in the tight bond of trust and mutual reliance which was so essential, could have used his skills and training, as well as his weapons, to kill so many. Every incident was being analysed, there was talk of nothing else. What kind of man Rowley was, whether he had ever said a single word which might have given them a clue, every what, when, how and why was being talked over and over and Serrailler had no intention of stopping the post-mortems. Not yet. They needed to talk and that was fine by him so long as the talk stayed within the station walls.
Rowley had been denied a final killing. The mother was injured, not seriously. And the girl was unscathed. Rowley was a trained marksman. However disturbed he was, he could never have missed her. Not at that range. He must have deliberately aimed away.
On arrest, he had said nothing. He had not spoken a word or looked directly at any of them. The whole thing had been over in some highly charged but also highly disciplined minutes.
Time went on. Ellie left the room. Came back. Smiled at Simon again. Answered the phone. Went back to her computer. After a further few minutes she had got up and put the light on. It was a gusty, wet day of low sulphurous-looking cloud. The autumn had changed.
Ellie glanced up. “Sorry about this.” She smiled.
They had had Chris Deerbon’s funeral the previous day, in this rain, this wind, this gloom. Cat had made her own decision. The service had been in the lady chapel of the cathedral, which was full—but it was small. The notices had said “Family” but patients and colleagues had come and they had all been glad of it. Sam had walked, white-faced and serious, up to the front, and stood beside his father’s coffin to read a short prayer. And, for once, Hannah had made no fuss, demanded no attention, but only looked at him intently. He had asked to do it, Cat had said. The whole occasion had seemed over too quickly. Weird and unreal. Any moment, Simon had thought, Chris would be there, after all, standing among them and none of it would have happened, this would be someone else’s funeral, a stupid mistake.
Cat had gone with Chris’s mother and brother to the crematorium. Richard and Judith had taken the children back to Hallam House. There was no wake.
Simon had watched them all leave at the side door and then walked, through the rain, back to work.
He sat on the hard chair in the Chief’s outer office and the funeral was in his head, his nephew’s white face, his father’s sudden look of old age, Cat’s eyes heavy with weeping, the smell of the candles being snuffed out by the verger, the sound of the footsteps of the bearers on the stone floor. Chris. Simon had had such a good, such an easy relationship with his brother-in-law, who had been part of his life for so long; they had been friends and family, like brothers but without the strain of being siblings. And Chris had been the best husband to Cat, the best father, the best doctor. The best.
“Simon?”
He looked up, startled for a second, before pulling himself together ready for a battering.
He didn’t get it. Nor was anything said. Not explicitly.
“I knew I was right to trust you,” the Chief said with a wicked smile.
“Thank you.” Simon grinned back. “I had a hunch about the wedding fair. But as soon as I’d taken the armed chaps off the cathedral, and rushed them to the hotel, panic set in. Not about the royals. About you. And your reaction.”
“We had thanks and compliments from the Lord Lieutenant and thanks from the Prince’s office. The cathedral couldn’t have gone more smoothly, though I’m glad we don’t have that sort of thing often, it puts a huge strain on the system. How are the team?”
“Shaken. Can’t get their heads round it. But Rowley never put a foot wrong you know, there was nothing. Not a thing.”
“So how do you account for this? Your desk sergeant has a visit from a man called Matty Lowe who said he’d been attacked. Then he saw Rowley at the Jug Fair and recognised him. Rowley was his assailant. Mr Lowe went into Lafferton station wanting to talk to you but ended up with DS Whiteside.”
“I didn’t know anything about this.”
“No,” said the Chief drily. “Whiteside claims you refused to listen to him.”
Seventy-eight
There were no messages on his answerphone when he got back to the flat. He opened the windows—it was a mild autumn night, cloudy and still. The lights were on in the cathedral for a service.
He rang Cat.
“I’m fine, Dad and Judith have been here all day and Judith is staying a couple of nights. It’s not for me, it’s the children—they need a lot of extra attention. Sam’s gone silent. He might need you, but not yet. Go away, Si, you need a break.”
“If you’re sure c”
“I am. I’ll need you too, but for now it’s OK. I’m numb. Really. Go.”
He was about to ring off, then said, “Listen. Clive Rowley.”
“What about him?”
“There’s one word everyone has used about him—I’ve used it—it seems to be the defining word.”
“What’s that?”
“Loner.”
“Does it fit?”
“Oh yes. But—is that the word you’d use to define me?”
There was a long silence.
It had struck him just now as he had run up the stairs to the flat. Loner. He had been longing for his own space, his beautiful rooms, his haven, his peace and solitude.
Loner.
“Well, there are loners and loners. Obviously.”
“You know what I mean.”
“If you’re asking me are you a weird loner and likely to turn into a maniac with a gun or a serial killer, then no. No, of course you’re not. Or a crazy recluse or one of those people who go along the street talking to themselves. No.”
She was talking seriously. She had not made light of his question.
“Is this really worrying you or is it just the aftermath of the gun business?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.
“If it’s the latter I’m not surprised. If you’re really worried c listen, don’t take this the wrong way, love, but I’m not sure I’m the right person to talk to about it.”
“You think I ought to see a shrink?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t need to.”
“Stop it. I can’t take it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You asked. It’s been a bad night. Helen Creedy rang me.
“What was she thinking of?”
“She didn’t know about Chris. Not everyone does. Why would they? I had to listen, I couldn’t tell her, but I’m pretty much drained. Her son Tom killed himself.” She paused, gulped and then said, “Anyway—if it doesn’t worry you, then it’s fine. If it does, do something about it. That’s good advice about quite a lot of things, from warts on the nose to liking your own company. Make the most of your time off.”
Seventy-nine
The roads to North Wales were easy for the first fifty miles, after which Simon ran into a series of hold-ups and an accident which created a particularly long detour. He switched the car radio from channel to channel until he found some news, started to listen to a long report on police corruption and switched to Mozart. It was dark and wet and, after half an hour, he heard a weather forecast which indicated that the area he was heading for would be subject to a higher than usual rainfall with gales and the likelihood of landslips.
He pulled into a garage which had a dismal café attached, drank a decent coffee, bit into a disgusting sandwich and had a sudden picture of himself, sitting alone at this plastic table in front of squeezy bottles of ketchup. The windows were steamed up but outside the weather was worsening.
He drank up, left most of the sandwich and ran through the rain. His plan was madness: he would have to retrace part of the route and probably stay somewhere overnight. He didn’t care.
Right, he thought. It’s the right thing.
He put a Bruce Springsteen disc into the player and drew away from the forecourt and out onto the road.
He stopped once more and then, an hour later, found a large corporate hotel off the motorway. It was bright, warm and dry, he had a clean room, two large whiskies and a good steak, before dialling the farmhouse number.
“Hi. Me.”
“Where are you? I hope you haven’t gone to North Wales, the forecast is seriously bad.”
“I heard it, so I turned round.”
She sounded relieved. “What will you do?”
“Might head for London.”
“Better than the Welsh mountains.”
“Might go across country, instead.”
“Right.” She knew better than to ask questions.
“How are you?”
“Oh, you know. It’s Sam I’m worried about c He went for a long walk with Dad and didn’t say a word apparently. Not a single word. Judith has been playing board games with Hannah. I just feel shattered but I can’t sleep. Normal. That’s normal.”
“I’ll be back on Tuesday. Maybe Sambo will talk to me c I could take him somewhere. I’ll think.”
He slept better than he had done for some nights, in spite of the traffic nearby and the soft mattress, woke at six and was on the road in half an hour. Breakfast later.
He switched on the radio. Off again. The sky lightened to a seagull grey but the rain had stopped. The roads were open and straight, the land flattened out. He speeded up.
Was this the way? He didn’t know. The right place to be going? Nor that. But he knew he had to try. If it wasn’t right, he could draw a line in the sand.
“Follow your instincts.”
It was just after eight. He drove to a hotel where he had stayed some years before. Still there, still the same. They had a room but it wouldn’t be ready until lunchtime. He left the car.
It was chilly. But beautiful. He had forgotten how beautiful the buildings were. The last time he had been here it had been springtime with daffodils and crocuses studding the grass. Now the last few leaves hung on to the trees and the wind ruffled the surface of the water. Bells chimed the half-hour.
He walked. Past Peterhouse. Past King’s. On. At first he could not find it, but then he remembered that it was tucked away, cloistered behind larger, more imposing facades.
He went through the gateway. Under the arch. Stopped at the lodge for directions. Across the court. Another arch. The sudden silence.
He pushed open the wooden door.
There were twenty or so people in the college chapel. The lights were on. Candles lit. He hesitated. Chapels and churches were not regular haunts of his in spite of living in the shadow of the cathedral. But this was where he had been directed. He slipped into a pew, at the end of the row. Bent his head briefly. When he looked up again Jane had come into the chapel to take the morning service. She was standing at the front a few feet away and staring, with astonishment, into his face.
