There’s a scuttling close to me. David. He’s on his feet. I roll to the left and narrowly miss his foot as he attempts to kick me. My hands quickly grope along the floor. The knife must have fallen close to Isabel, unless she opened her arms and threw it in the heat of the moment.
“What did you do, Leah?” David says in a low growl. “If you’ve hurt my daughter—”
My skin is slick with mingled sweat and blood, and the dirt that has made its way into the wounds on my back will make me vulnerable to infection, but I can’t worry about that now.
David lurches closer and grabs hold of one of the ropes still attached to my wrist, yanking me towards him, causing a jolting pain to run all the way down my arm to the elbow. I’m pulled onto my feet, with David pressing his face against mine. The spit from his heavy breathing collects on my upper lip.
I have no chance of finding the knife with him holding me so tight. Even though I wriggle and squirm under his grip, I’m still attached to the rope and he has it tight in his fist. He’s taller, wider, stronger, and fitter. There’s no way I can beat him.
Just as I’m about to open my mouth to tell Tom to run away as fast as he can, David lets out a strange high-pitched exhale, like air coming out of a balloon. His grip on me loosens as he gropes around his back, searching for something. Not giving him even a single second to right himself, I pull the ropes from out of his hands, kick him as hard as I can between the legs, and then push him down.
Tom stands behind him, his bound hands reaching towards me, trembling from head to toe.
“I… I stabbed him,” he says. “I stabbed him.”
“It’s all right.” I pull him into a hug, ignoring my nakedness and the ropes attached to my wrists and ankles. “Isabel.”
She’s still on the floor, her head lolling to one side. I crouch down and feel for a pulse. It’s still there, but she seems to be unconscious. Moving quickly, I grab a knife from Isabel’s torture table, crouch back down next to Isabel and search for a phone. There’s nothing. Next I try David. He lies in a pool of his own blood, his glassy eyes staring up at me. He’s dead, which I try to ignore as I search his jacket pockets. No phone. I try his jeans. No phone.
“We need to get out of here. But first I need to get out of these.”
Isabel’s knives are sharp, so cutting through the ropes takes moments. Then I pull David’s jacket off his dead body and wrap it around my shoulders. I’m freezing cold, covered in blood, and sore all over my body, but my mind is clearer than it has ever been before.
“Come on.” I take Tom’s hand and hurry out of the house. I don’t know what other structural damage was done to the house when the ceiling caved in, but it’s certainly not safe to stay there.
“What about her?” Tom says, nodding at Isabel’s unconscious form lying amidst broken pieces of plasterboard and crumbled bricks. “If you… If you kill her, this is all over.”
I turn over the knife in my hand and consider it for a moment. “If I kill her, it’s murder.”
“But after what she did to you, she deserves it.”
“I can’t, Tom. I just can’t do it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sharp, slanting rain hits my sore skin with nature’s needles. Tiny pinpricks of agony spread across my face and my bare legs. With my left hand I grip Tom, and with my right hand I grip the knife. I’m not so much running as tumbling; rushing downhill away from the dilapidated farmhouse. My eyes sting from the plaster dust, my back is sore from my cuts, and David’s jacket chafes every injury when I move, but I will not stop. I’m all too aware of Isabel left behind in the house; unconscious, but for how long?
As a trained nurse, I couldn’t bring myself to kill her. Not after spending a good portion of my life protecting the vulnerable. I couldn’t take a life, and I feel weaker for it because I’m running away from the house, and I’m looking over my shoulder in fear.
“How far is it to the Braithwaites’?” Tom asks. His palm is sweaty inside mine, despite the chill of the wind bringing the rain down. He must be as high on adrenaline as I am at this point.
“I know I can walk there in forty minutes. If we run, maybe twenty. It’s mostly downhill.”
“I think I hurt my ankle when we were getting out of the house.”
I’ve been concentrating so hard on getting away from the Fieldings I haven’t even noticed that Tom is limping. “Do you need to stop?”
“No,” he says, biting his bottom lip. “Let’s get away from… away from what’s in that house.”
I turn back once more while the house is still visible through the dark, before the shadows engulf it. The ramshackle door is slightly open. Did I leave the door open?
“We need to keep moving.” It’s becoming a mantra.
The wind whips David’s jacket open as we hurry down the hill, exposing my abdomen to the rain. Whenever my back is turned towards the direction of the house, a slow tingling feeling works its way up my spine, and every moment I expect a hand to grasp my shoulder. I anticipate her whisper in my ear—one for sorrow. Tom is struggling, I can see that. He winces every time his foot is caught on a slight bump on the path. My bare feet will be torn up by stones by the time we reach the Braithwaites’, but I’m beginning to feel numb from the cold, which helps.
There’s no light on the moors. Even the Braithwaites’ farm is dark tonight. There are no lights on in Rose Cottage either, not that I’m sure I can even see it from where we are. I imagine we’re still high up in the hills, but it’s hard to know if we’ve drifted sideways, seeing as my only way of figuring out which direction we’re heading is if we’re going down or up. It hits me for the first time: We could get lost. Twenty minutes away from the farm is fine if you know which direction you’re heading, but there’s no way of knowing in the dark. I can’t see any of the landmarks I use in the daytime.
“Leah,” Tom whispers. “Can you hear something?”
We stop suddenly, and my feet sink into the soft, muddy ground. We’re definitely away from the path now because I haven’t felt stones on my soles for quite a while. Both Tom and I are panting from the effort of hurrying away, but I need to concentrate, so I slow my breathing down and strain to listen.
It’s quiet, but not quite silent. Wind whistles through foliage, and rain patters against David’s jacket. Tom is trying hard not to breathe loudly, but he’s still out of breath from hurrying down the hill.
I listen.
My body is in tune with nature, ready to identify any sound that doesn’t belong. I know these moors, I’ve walked them before, and I’ve spent time with Seb, sitting, thinking, listening. I know how to listen.
The footfall is soft, barely perceptible above the wind and rain, obviously made by someone who doesn’t want to be heard. When I whip my head around, the grass stirs, and feet move hastily, but there’s no one there.
My heart kick-starts another rush of blood to my extremities, warming me. Adrenaline surges through my body and heightens my senses. We need to get out of here as fast as we can. I don’t know where Isabel is, but I know she’s following us. Pulling on Tom’s hand, I urge us on, putting a finger to my lips for us to make our way quietly. If Isabel can merge into the shadows, we can too, and staying quiet will help with that.
There’s nothing but shapes on the moors, from the looming rocks to the sudden slopes and the sporadic trees. It occurs to me that Isabel might not be the most dangerous thing on the moors—we could fall into a ravine, or trip and break an ankle. I’m not sure what to do, whether to run wildly downhill until we come to civilisation, or find a place to hide and wait out the night, praying that Isabel doesn’t find us. Or, if she does, finish what we started and plunge this knife into her heart.
“Leah.”
My name is an echo through the noise of the wind rustling the moor grass, but as it works its way into my mind, every muscle in my body stiffens. Tom lets out a whimper. I squeeze his hand to reassure him that I’m here before spinning around in se
arch of her.
Nothing but darkness.
“Stop hiding, Isabel.” If I can at least know where she is, maybe I can stop whatever it is she’s planning to do. My mind is filled with images of her moving towards me at preternatural speed, slashing my face with her fingernails, feasting on my flesh with her teeth. In my head she scuttles on all fours like a sick, deranged monster from a horror film.
The reality is just as bad.
As I search desperately for her, a hint of blonde hair emerges from the long grass on the moors, followed swiftly by her torso. She dives towards me with her own knife outstretched and her teeth bared. In the split second that it happens, I push Tom away and steel myself for her attack, her shadowy figure launching at me like a feral cat. I’m more vulnerable than her, half-naked, half-frozen, and wounded, but I won’t give up without a fight because if she kills me, I won’t be around to protect Tom.
“Get out of here!” I shout to him. “Run down to the farm and phone the police.”
As Isabel slashes the knife towards my face, I fall onto my backside and dive away from her. I’m scrabbling back up the hill when she comes at me again, falling to her knees by my feet. I kick her in the shoulder, knocking her on her back and roll headfirst, managing to sink the knife into her thigh. Isabel screams in pain and a swell of blood escapes the wound. I’m vaguely aware of Tom running away in the distance. Good—now all I have to think about is Isabel.
I lift the knife, ready to strike her again, but Isabel is swifter than I anticipate, slipping away from me and staggering to her feet.
“You don’t give up, Leah,” she says. “I always thought you would, but you keep on going. You never gave up on me, did you? Always looking for a way to make my life better. Most nurses wouldn’t give a crap about trying to prove my innocence, but you could never let it go. I almost admire you for that.”
I climb to my feet and steady my arm with the knife. No matter what I do, my hand keeps shaking. Isabel, however, remains cool and confident despite her wounded thigh.
“You’re not a killer. We both know it, but you don’t appear to be able to face up to it.” She closes the distance between us with a step. “It’s time to give up now. Tom won’t make it to the farm, will he? He’ll get lost on the moors and I’ll slaughter him after I’ve killed you.”
“No, you won’t.” My voice is surprisingly strong.
“I will.” Her blonde head bobs up and down as she nods. “This has always been inevitable since the first moment we met. I love you, Leah, but we can’t both live, so it’s going to have to be me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Why?” She tilts her head to the right as if genuinely confused by the notion that she might lose.
“Because Tom is my son, and I’m never going to give up until he’s safe.”
Her brief moment of shock is all I need to get the advantage, but Isabel is not someone taken off guard easily. As I’m about to plunge the knife between her ribs, she kicks my feet from under me and we tumble together down the steep slope of slippery grass. Her hand is in my hair as we gain momentum, but neither of us can get our knives in the right position to do any damage. Finally, a rock stops our fall, and we split apart. I tumble farther than Isabel, landing on a hard surface. Rock. It’s slimy as I struggle to my feet, shuffling and slithering while attempting to stay balanced. As I force myself upright, I advance a few steps, gliding across the smooth stone, unstable and out of control. My toes kiss the edge of the rock after coming to an abrupt halt. When I realise where I am, my heart skips a beat, and I panic, scurrying two steps away from the edge. Through the dark, cloudy night, I can barely make out the cliff. Tom and I wandered farther away from the path than I’d thought, coming to the edge of the gorge that works its way through the valley on the moors. If I’d slipped any further, I’d be dead.
Isabel rights herself, lifts herself up and dusts herself down. The knife is gone from her hand, lost in the fall. But her determined look tells me that she hasn’t given up. She’s coming for me.
I’m going to die.
It’s not the first time I’ve had that thought tonight, but it is the moment that feels the most immediate. It happens so quickly that I can count the number of breaths I take.
Breathe. Isabel’s hands are forceful against my shoulders, forcing me towards the edge. Breathe. She shoves me back. My shoulders lean so far over the edge that I’m completely off balance and about to fall. Breathe. My heel is inches away from the drop. Breathe. I drop my left shoulder, throwing my weight to the side. With the last remaining strength in my body, I use the momentum of my dive to throw Isabel away from me and over the cliff to the depths below.
Breathe.
Her scream pierces through the rain as she flies over the edge, hands scrambling to grasp hold of me, the rock, anything. They find nothing but air. The look on her face etches itself into my memory, an image I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. Half-drowned in shadow, she finally transforms into the wild animal she always wanted to be.
For a few precious moments, Isabel is a bird in flight.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
By the time I make it to the farm, I’m limping on torn feet, doubled over from pain, my teeth chattering against the freezing cold. The only warmth comes from my own blood running down the backs of my legs, mingled with rainwater and mud. Seb rushes out of the house, hastily dressed in pyjama bottoms, a jacket, and a pair of boots.
“Tom?”
“He’s here.” Seb wraps his arms around me and lifts me as I begin to collapse.
I wake to the sound of sirens pulling into the farm courtyard. Paramedics are here for me. They bundle me up and put me on a stretcher with Tom joining me in the back of the ambulance. Headlights and torches light up the courtyard like a festival at night, the beams bouncing off the guns of the armed officers.
It takes me a moment to remember what’s happening and where I am. Then I see her face in the darkness and the echo of her screams as she plummeted down into the ravine.
“Isabel,” I whisper.
Tom leans over me and squeezes my hand. With the lines of concern between his brow, he appears older than ever before. When did he become a man?
“What happened to her?” he asks.
“She’s dead.”
The dark depths of unconsciousness pull me away from the harsh light of the ambulance. As I drift into slumber I feel Isabel’s bony fingers dragging me away.
*
When I was Isabel’s nurse, she lent me a book about birds to read while she was in her art therapy sessions. In that book it said that magpies are capable of grief. They are clever and cunning birds, too, but the thought of them grieving their lost ones certainly provides an alternative view to their perceived maliciousness. Isabel has always been the magpie, but I wonder whether the grief I feel for her counts in this instance. Even as Isabel was torturing me, I saw a glimmer of humanity hidden behind a soiled past, and I think I’ll spend my lifetime wondering whether she was a product of her childhood and incarceration, or whether she’d been born a magpie imitating a human voice.
I’m in a private room the size of a small hotel room, with a large glass window overlooking York. The hospital smell permeates every ion, and it’s never quiet because there are always nurses bustling through the ward. Outside, the minster stands proud in the centre of the city, a reminder of what stood before us and will stand long after we’re gone. Isabel still looms as large as a cathedral, with my life firmly covered by her shadow. I need to know what happened to her that night on the moors. I need to know if she really is dead.
What I do know is that in the abandoned farmhouse, police found no evidence that Isabel and David had been living there for more than a day or two. David was dressed in special scent-reducing clothing, so Isabel probably had some too. At least that explains why she was able to evade the tracking dogs after she escaped.
The police searched my cottage on the Braithwaites’ property and found
chocolate bar wrappers, empty water bottles, and odour-eliminating spray in the attic. The scent-reducing products were bought over the internet by David, which means the three of them worked together. David and Owen helped Isabel after she got out of Crowmont. Isabel and Owen planned the murder of James Gorden, bringing his body back to Hutton in a display of horror designed to shake me to my core. It must have been David who took the rest of James’s body to the abandoned farmhouse after police had finished searching the area and moved on.
The thought of the three of them planning all this makes my stomach turn over in disgust. I’m sure the details will come out in due course, but for now I can’t stop thinking about James. Where did they store his body? Did he remain in a car boot somewhere, rotting into the lining of the car? Or was he stuffed in a freezer and defrosted before being transported to the farmhouse? Did David carry his body up the path on the moors in the dark? Or did he manage to drive up there somehow? How close was I to all of this? If I’d looked out of the cottage window at the right moment would I have seen one or more of the Fieldings carrying the body of James Gorden through the night? I’m not sure I ever want to know.
And, at last, I finally know what happened to poor Maisie Earnshaw, an innocent victim who stumbled into the world of the Fieldings, a six-year-old girl who never deserved such a violent death. During sleepless nights in the hospital I often think about contacting Maisie’s parents just to talk to them about what I know, but I doubt it would offer them any peace. Sometimes I even think about contacting Anna Fielding, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It’s up to the police to find out if Isabel’s mother was somehow involved in this whole mess.
One For Sorrow Page 24
