Deadfall

by Lyndon Stacey

  'Linc? Are you okay?' Josie had come back. 'Where's your father going?'

  Linc looked at her and shook his head wordlessly, ashamed to find his eyes blurring with a sudden rush of tears. God! He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. Even as a child he rarely had. There was no point when there was no one to cry to.

  'The nurse is just coming.' Either Josie hadn't noticed, or she was pretending she hadn't.

  Linc closed his eyes and steadied himself. He knew it was shock that had weakened his defences. Josie took his hand again and he squeezed hers, looked at her and smiled.

  'I'm sorry. I keep doing this to you, don't I?'

  'You do rather. Actually, I'm beginning to think you might do better to marry a nurse,' she said.

  Linc summoned a smile in response. 'You might be right. How's Noddy? Do you know if he's okay?'

  'Well, he's a little sore but he doesn't seem to have broken anything, according to Nikki. Which reminds me – I should ring her. She was desperately worried, poor girl, but she had to get the horses home.'

  'Oh, my God!' Linc exclaimed in real alarm. 'The lorry! Nikki mustn't drive the lorry! She's bad enough in a car!'

  'Calm down. She didn't have to. Apparently Crispin was there.' Josie fished in her handbag, frowning. 'Damn! I've left my mobile at home. I'm always doing that. I'll just nip down the hall . . .'

  Linc closed his eyes. His head ached and he felt unutterably weary. It was hard to believe that, after everything else that had happened, he should end up in hospital as the result of a riding accident. Miserably he considered the ever-widening gulf between him and his father. Frankly he was surprised the old man had even come to the hospital, given his harsh comments on the subject in the past.

  There was nothing to be gained by dwelling on the matter. If he intended to continue eventing – as he assuredly did – then the breach with his father was a consequence he would just have to go on living with. He switched his thoughts instead to Noddy's strange behaviour. Something had badly upset him, but what? He was normally such a placid horse.

  A nurse appeared, cheery and efficient, checked him over, told him he'd live to fight another day, made a couple of notes on the clipboard at the end of his bed and left again, her soft-soled shoes squeaking away down the corridor outside.

  Linc went back to his thoughts.

  Footsteps on the lino. Josie was back. He opened his eyes and she smiled at him. 'Nikki sends her love. She was so relieved she burst into tears,' she reported.

  'Do they know what upset Noddy yet?'

  'No. Not exactly. Nikki wondered if he might have got an insect down inside his ear. A wasp or a horsefly, perhaps. I'll tell you what, though, she gave me one bit of good news. You and Magic won your class! Just wait till I tell Ruth, she'll be over the moon!'

  'That's great! Trust me to miss my big moment, though.' Linc put his hands on the mattress, either side of his waist, and tried to shift his weight up the bed a little. His back and neck felt very sore and he winced.

  'Ouch!' Josie said, wincing in sympathy. 'Does it hurt very much? The doctor didn't think you'd done anything serious but he said they'd X-ray you when you came round. It'll be tomorrow now, I suppose.'

  'How long have I been here? Where are we, come to that?'

  'Yeovil General. And it's just gone half-past five. Nikki rang your father just after three, and Mary rang the Vicarage to let me know. I'd only just got in from seeing Abby, so I jumped back in the car and came over here. Your father was in a bit of a state when I got here.'

  'Abby!' Linc exclaimed, remembering. 'How is she?'

  'Holding her own. They think she'll be okay. Now, I'm under strict instructions from your nurse not to keep you talking for too long, so I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee and I'll be back later.'

  Linc was given the all clear and allowed home at midday the following day, with the proviso that he should spend the rest of the day in bed and take it easy for at least another two or three.

  He was making himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen of his apartment that afternoon when his father knocked and announced himself. Linc cursed under his breath.

  'Come in,' he called from the kitchen doorway. Then, as he did so, 'Can I get you a coffee?'

  'Er, tea, please. Earl Grey.'

  'Have a seat,' Linc suggested, but Sylvester followed him back into the kitchen.

  'I thought you were supposed to be in bed.'

  'I was bored.' Linc rummaged in the cupboard for the packet of Earl Grey he'd bought soon after he'd moved in. This was the first time he'd had occasion to use it. He wasn't keen on fancy teas himself but he knew it was his father's favourite.

  'You look very pale.' He even managed to make that sound like an accusation.

  'Being knocked out obviously doesn't agree with me,' Linc observed flippantly.

  His father seemed strangely ill at ease. He wandered out into the sitting room again and Linc could hear the boards creaking as he moved around.

  When he carried the mugs through, Linc found him staring at a framed photograph that stood on top of the bookcase and groaned inwardly. The print was of him riding Hobo at the Talham Horse Trials. Putting the mugs down on the coffee table, he sank back in the nearest sofa and awaited the inevitable recriminations.

  There was a long silence and Linc was about to draw his father's attention to his cooling Earl Grey when he spoke.

  'Why do you do it, Linc? What are you trying to prove?'

  'I'm not trying to prove anything,' he said, exasperated. 'I do it for the same reason Mum did – I love it.'

  His father turned to face him. 'But you know what happened to your mother – why must you tempt fate? Are you trying to break me completely?'

  Linc was shaken by the anguish in his face. Up to now his opposition had always been expressed in such antagonistic terms it was easy to miss the underlying fear. Even so, Linc couldn't go through life being hemmed in by someone else's anxieties.

  'No! That's not what this is about!' he protested. 'This is about me and what I want to do. Eventing is my passion. I want to get to the top; to ride at Burghley and Badminton, and maybe – just maybe – ride on the British team one day. I might not make it, but nothing you can say will stop me trying!'

  'And what about yesterday? That nearly put a stop to you for good! From what Beverley says, if you hadn't landed in the ditch, the horse would have come down right on top of you! What would have happened to your precious dream then?'

  'Bugger Beverley!' Linc exclaimed furiously. 'Why can't she keep her bloody mouth shut?'

  'For once we agree. But the fact remains, people are killed eventing. Oh, I don't just mean your mother – it happens every year.'

  'People are killed doing all sorts of things. If you let statistics rule your life you'd never get in a car, for God's sake!'

  'Cars are a necessary evil. You don't have to ride,' his father pointed out.

  'Well, I choose to!' Linc retorted. 'And while we're on the subject . . . I saw Mike Farquharson the other day.'

  'Ah, he ran to you with that little story, did he?'

  'No, he didn't. We met by chance and had a cup of coffee together. How dare you turn down an offer of sponsorship on my behalf?'

  'I didn't. He decided against it.'

  'After you threatened to withdraw your custom! How low is that?'

  'I may not be able to stop you killing yourself on your bloody horses, but I'll be damned if I'll help fund it!' The Viscount had stepped forward to stand looking down at his son, with his hands on the back of the other sofa. Now he turned away and went to the door.

  'You haven't drunk your tea.' Suddenly Linc didn't want him to go. For once, everything was out in the open but it was all too ragged and raw to be left like that.

  'I find I'm not thirsty after all.' Sylvester opened the door and then paused. 'You're too much like her, you know. All fired up and passionate about things you care about. So alive! But then one day – she wasn't . . .'


  As the door shut behind him, Linc sighed unhappily. It had been the best opportunity he'd ever had to put his own point of view across, and what had he done? He'd lost his temper and said a lot of things that would have been better left unsaid. With a muttered curse, he slammed his fist down on the coffee table and then glared at the slopped tea.

  There was a tentative knock at the door and Mary peered round it.

  'May I come in?'

  'You can but I'm not very good company,' he warned her.

  'Oh, dear. You didn't quarrel, did you?'

  'No. Well, yes, I suppose we did. I don't now. I just can't seem to say the right thing.' His head was aching now and he massaged his forehead.

  'Is that tea going begging?'

  'Yeah, Dad didn't touch it, but I'll make you some fresh.' He started to get to his feet but Mary waved him back.

  'This'll be fine, but – call me a Philistine – I absolutely can't drink it without sugar.' She picked up the mug and disappeared into the kitchen, emerging shortly after with a spoon in her tea and a couple of the painkilling tablets the hospital had prescribed for Linc. These last she put on the table in front of him.

  He looked at them bemusedly.

  'Are you a mind-reader or something?'

  'No. Simple deduction. A row with Sylvester is enough to make anyone's head ache, even if they hadn't landed on it from a great height just the day before!'

  Linc took the tablets gratefully, affecting not to notice Mary's unconscious use of his father's first name.

  'Oh, I wish I'd handled it differently. It's the first time in – what? – seventeen years that he's even tried to talk about it and I made a real pig's ear of it. It was just so unexpected. I guess yesterday shook him up a bit . . .'

  'Mmm. That and something your young lady said to him.' Mary sat down opposite him.

  'Josie?'

  'Yes. At the hospital.'

  'What did she say?' Linc was intrigued.

  'I'm afraid you'll have to ask her,' Mary told him. 'She'd come out to use the phone but when she saw him she came straight over and demanded to know what he'd been saying to upset you. It was obviously private so I made myself scarce, but whatever she said, she certainly got under his skin. He was very thoughtful on the way home.'

  'Oh, dear. I didn't want to involve her in all this.'

  'I think she wants to be involved. And anyway, no one could ever accuse her of being a fair-weather friend, could they?'

  Linc chuckled. 'That's for sure.' He leaned back into the sofa, closing his eyes and wishing that the hospital had given him something a bit stronger and faster-acting.

  Mary read his body language. 'Right. Back to bed with you. Pull the curtains and go to sleep. Now!' she added, when Linc merely nodded without moving.

  'Yes'm!' he said with a mock salute, but nevertheless obediently got to his feet and headed for his bed.

  By the next morning Linc's headache had settled to more bearable proportions. He got up at the usual time and made his way to the Vicarage before anyone was around to try and talk him out of it.

  Ruth and Josie were mucking out the horses and both of them told him severely that he should have stayed at home, resting.

  'But I wanted to see how Noddy was doing.'

  'He's feeling a bit sorry for himself,' Josie reported, coming forward to kiss Linc. 'Just like his master, I expect.'

  'Oh, his master's suddenly feeling much better,' he told her, drawing her back for a second kiss. She looked fresh and beautiful with no make-up and her hair in a loose plait, and his spirits had indeed risen a notch or two at the sight of her.

  They walked across to Noddy's stable together and Linc went inside. Noddy turned to look at him, trailing a length of hay from his chomping jaws. Linc held out a Polo mint and, after a moment's hesitation, the horse came over to take it from him.

  'Oh, poor boy! He is stiff, isn't he?' Linc observed. 'And he's a bit sore round his mouth, too. Nikki must have forgotten to put the Vaseline on.'

  'Yes, he is a bit, but his eyes are much better. They were really sore yesterday. They just wouldn't stop running.'

  'Maybe that's what made him behave so oddly. But I'm not happy with the way he's walking. I think we ought to have the vet out, don't you?'

  'He came out yesterday,' Josie told him. 'I didn't tell you because you were supposed to be resting and I thought, knowing you, you'd probably come haring over here if I did. I was going to ring you today to let you know. Anyway, he thinks it's probably just severe bruising and should start to improve over the next few days. If it doesn't, he'll want to X-ray him. He's given us some anti-inflammatories for him, and he's allowed to go out in the paddock and mooch around for a few hours each day. So you see, it's all in hand. We're looking after Noddy; all you've got to do is look after yourself. Which, I must say, you don't seem to be too good at!' she added with a sideways look. 'You know, I wouldn't mind if our life together became just a little less exciting as time went on. That is if you survive long enough to make an honest woman of me!'

  Linc laughed. 'It's just an extraordinary set of coincidences. Believe it or not, I've led a fairly humdrum existence up 'til now. By the way, have you said anything to your folks yet?'

  Josie shook her head. 'No. We agreed to wait, didn't we? Then of course Abby's illness postponed it, to say nothing of you throwing yourself off your horse . . .'

  'If I wasn't so fragile, I'd make you pay for that remark, Miss Hathaway! By the way, how is Abby?'

  'Not too bad. She's very weak but improving all the time. The doctor's pleased with her anyway.'

  Deciding that no further treats were forthcoming, Noddy turned stiffly round and returned to his haynet. Linc looked at Josie.

  'Dad came up to my flat yesterday. He was in a strange mood. Mary tells me you had words with him at the hospital. What exactly did you say?'

  Josie coloured a little and looked at her feet. 'It was private, really.'

  'Secrets already?' he queried, raising an eyebrow.

  'Now that's not fair!' she protested. 'Actually, I think I was probably rather rude but it just made me so cross the way he was treating you. I said . . . well, I said if he keeps on pushing you away and something does happen, then he'll be left with nothing; not even memories. I asked him if he thought that was what your mother would've wanted. It was a bit melodramatic, I know, but I was just so mad at him for upsetting you like that. Have I blown it with him, do you think?'

  Linc put his arms round her. 'No, I don't think so. He didn't mention it to me. Mary thinks you gave him something to think about.' He dropped a kiss on her soft dark hair. 'Thank you for going into battle for me, but you didn't have to, you know. I'm used to him. He just caught me at a bad moment.'

  Linc was in the office after breakfast when Rockley rang.

  'Ah, Linc. How are you? Been keeping out of trouble, I hope?'

  'Er . . . yes. More or less,' he lied.

  'Well, I thought you might like to know that forensics confirmed the tyre on your father's Range-Rover was shot out and, what's more, we've found and arrested the culprit.'

  The DI sounded pleased with himself. Justifiably, in Linc's opinion.