Folly

by Stella Cameron

O’Reilly had managed a hair-raising but successful one-eighty through oncoming traffic and they’d ended up heading in the right direction … before the mammoth mixer turned suicidal.

  From the back seat, craned forward to see between O’Reilly and Lamb, Tony felt his mouth open but the only noise he heard was the wild, grinding howl of the mud-covered monster lurching across the path of the Volvo no more than a hundred and fifty yards ahead.

  ‘Back up,’ Lamb yelled. ‘Back up!’

  He was, Tony realized, shouting to the lorry driver, not O’Reilly. The colors of other vehicles spun around them, running together before his eyes. A steady blare of horns drummed amid the shrieking of tires that weren’t grabbing anything but ice.

  O’Reilly cranked the steering wheel left, as hard left as it would go, and the Volvo shuddered, slid, found some traction and leaped inches from the road to slam into a bank. They roared upward, O’Reilly pumping the brakes and fighting for control.

  They stopped.

  Tony fell backward against the seat. His father didn’t make a sound. In the front seat, Lamb filled any lull with colorful language mostly unintelligible to Tony.

  He started to open his door.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ O’Reilly snapped. ‘We need to move. Now.’

  Miraculously, the Volvo made a smooth descent to the roadway – only to be confronted by the maniac equipment driver who waved his arms in front of them until they stopped.

  ‘Not now,’ O’Reilly hissed. He told Lamb to, ‘Give the fool a card and warn him off.’

  They were already moving again when Lamb rolled down the window and a scrawny man covered with cement dust from the top of his Mohawk to the steel caps of his Doc Martens grabbed the open rim and stuck his head inside the car.

  ‘Shite,’ said O’Reilly the Irishman, braking again. ‘Take our number and call it in, son. We’ll deal with you later. And get out of our way.’

  The man pointed back to his cab and yelled, ‘The police are for emergencies, right? My missus is dying in there.’

  FORTY

  Cradling her left hand, Alex molded her body tighter to the curve of the culvert. When her lungs burned, she remembered to breathe. Listening so hard her ears popped, even the sound of air shifting in and out of her body was too loud.

  There was nowhere else to go. Not any more. Here she would stay until help arrived – how could it? – or Will came. If help came, it would be Tony or the police and they would come, shouting and running and sliding. If Will came, it would be like a snake, looking for a silent way to wherever she was, the knife in his hand.

  And if it got dark, if the icy veils at either end of the culvert turned from hazy blue-white to black, would she have the strength, the courage to crawl out and try to find her way, or would the cold and the weakness she felt seeping into her have left her to slip away in this huge, stinking pipe?

  Whispering reached her.

  Alex held her breath again and listened, tried to make out voices, or a voice.

  The light changed. At the end furthest from where she’d climbed in here, the end where the ice was unbroken and looked thicker, a black rim showed like the thinnest crescent moon painted in silhouette.

  She sighed, slumped a little … until the whispering came again, and the black crescent became a half moon, slipped to obscure the lower half of the opening, then covered it completely in a final shushing crescendo of the whisper.

  Sweat broke out on her face, cold sweat, and between her shoulder blades. When she blinked it didn’t stop the burning in her eyes. If Will came in the same way she had, her plan was to escape the other way. But she knew what had happened. Snow and ice and probably rocks had fallen like an avalanche to block the second opening.

  The waves of tremors started in her knees. If she didn’t hold on, she’d slide into the muck that rose around her ankles. Panic didn’t respect her needs. Now she needed to cling to some shreds of reason, not pass out from a lack of air.

  With her mouth pressed beneath the cuff of her right sleeve, Alex blew. She blew and blew and sucked in, and blew, trying to imagine inflating her parka. Somewhere there was a character that blew up, or looked puffy, something made of rubber … or pastry. A doughy, pastry creature, white like the world and blowing up with each push of air. A laugh came out as a hiccup and she pressed a forearm over her mouth.

  The Land Rover. Someone would see it beside the road and at least wonder. They’d call it in? The police would come. They could be coming now, clambering all over the area looking for her and they’d know it was her from checking the license plate.

  They could miss this altogether … unless she made a lot of noise.

  And guided Will straight to her. He could be out there – right above or somewhere near the culvert.

  Or he could have known he was finished and driven the Land Rover away to try an escape.

  The opening into the culvert, the one she’d used, smashed all the way. A scream stuck in Alex’s throat while she watched glittering shards of ice burst inward. Step, by backward step, she moved slowly away. Say something. Call out. She looked over her shoulder at the blocked end. If it wasn’t heavy snow she might still break a way out.

  ‘Bitch! I’ve got you now.’ Will’s voice echoed, hoarse and terrible, along the pipe.

  Alex turned, slipped and dragged herself to the darkened ice and fought to break a way through. She scrabbled and grabbed a rough rock and hacked at the surface. It didn’t give. The water from uphill must have been heavier during brief thaws and the result was an impenetrable wall.

  ‘That greedy fool Restrick had his uses in the end,’ Will said, standing still to watch her fight. ‘He knew Cornelius Derwinter was paying me not to let on how he raped my wife, and how the kid wasn’t mine, y’know? And the price for that holy bastard’s silence was donations to mend the bloody church roof. Can you imagine that? The church roof? Me? It was your fault in the end about the other monk or whatever he was. If you hadn’t pushed him on Restrick, I wouldn’t have known where to go to get rid of him.’

  Alex put her hands over her ears but heard him just as clearly.

  ‘That one begged for his life at the end. God-fearing but begging for his life. Some tripe about having the wrong cincture. He didn’t know anything about anything, just wanted to give Brother Dominic back his cincture and get his own. What’s a cincture – you tell me that?’

  ‘Will.’ Her voice sounded hollow and rusted.

  ‘And afterward, Restrick wanted out. He wanted to go to the police and tell them what he knew – how he’d left the front door of the rectory open for me to go and talk to Brother Percy. Restrick should be dead and he will be. First you, then him, and I’m away free.’

  She wanted to yell that he was mad, that everyone knew what he was and what he’d done by now, but all she dare do was wait and be quiet.

  From the pocket of his coat, Will drew the knife and flicked out the blade. The noise it made was like an explosion in the enclosed space.

  He started toward her, slowly. ‘Why didn’t you just go? Once you saw the Black Dog was doing OK again, why didn’t you see you weren’t needed and get out? You weren’t wanted as a kid and you’re not wanted now but you’ve ruined everything. Did you like finding the piece about your precious baby? She was lucky, she got out early. You were supposed to go away then. You were supposed to go when I fixed the electrics for the motion sensors. Nobody remembers anything around here. It was old man Derwinter who had me take the electrical classes. I’m good at it.

  ‘Everything would have worked out. Leonard started the money again. I was getting everything back. But first it was that Edward crawling in to talk about mercy and forgiveness, then you wouldn’t leave any of it alone.’

  Adrenaline shot through Alex. Never taking her eyes off him, she crouched to claw up stones. She threw them at him, one after another and filled her hands with more. If she could throw darts, and she still could if she wanted to, she could throw rocks – accurate
ly.

  Will yelled and threw a forearm over his brow. And she bombarded him with more and more debris, even hitting him with the slimy carcass of a rat. Will screamed that time.

  He was too close now and she threw with arms that ached.

  The knife, streaking at her, showed silver for an instant. It flipped over and landed, blade into watery mud in front of her feet.

  Alex snatched it up and held it in front of her. She weighted it, aimed it. Hitting him would be easy from where she stood.

  With his hands spread, palms toward her, Will began walking again. ‘Give it to me,’ he said.

  He rushed her.

  Dropping the knife, Alex took the rock she still held in her left hand and aimed it for the space between his eyes. She put her whole body weight behind it and heard the squelching impact. Will had tried to turn his face aside and the missile crashed into his eye, shattered the socket.

  His head snapped back, he staggered, and crumpled into the mud.

  FORTY-ONE

  The sight of her, falling with every other step, scrambling uphill, her face streaked with dirt and blood and with ice caked in her hair and on her clothing, hit Tony with enough relief to all but wind him.

  O’Reilly reached Alex first with Lamb close behind. She stopped trying to walk and let them hold her up.

  Tony slowed down. He began to feel warmer inside – and more jumbled and besieged by emotions than he could have imagined.

  He was only yards from her and he smiled. ‘You gave me such a scare,’ he managed to say, wanting to be the one supporting her, wrapping her in his arms.

  That wasn’t something he had a right to do, but in time perhaps … If friendship was ever there in the first place, it might grow back. He’d have to be patient; not his strong suit.

  Uniformed officers ran past him and were sent on toward the open end of the culvert from which Alex had appeared. Lamb left to follow them.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve killed him,’ Alex said, looking at his face. ‘I didn’t want to kill him.’

  ‘Will’s in there?’ Sickened, Tony stared at the opening she’d climbed out of. ‘You were in there with him?’

  ‘He had a knife.’ Her voice broke. ‘He murdered Edward and Percy – and he was the one who attacked Reverend Restrick.’

  He could almost feel her shock settling in. ‘She doesn’t have to talk about this now, right, Inspector? She can tell it all when she’s warm and dry.’

  Medics carrying gear, including a stretcher, hurried by them.

  ‘Alex says the keys are in the Land Rover,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Will you drive it to pick up your dad and get it back to Folly-on-Weir, then?’

  Tony took another step toward Alex and the detective. He was being dismissed. ‘Is that what you’d like, Alex?’

  She didn’t answer or even seem to hear.

  ‘My dad went to help a woman in labor.’ All he saw in Alex was confusion. ‘In a cement-mixer truck. I need to find him now.’

  When she still didn’t say anything, he turned uphill and started to climb. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet – or much else.

  ‘Tony!’ Alex’s shout started level and got higher. ‘Tony?’

  He faced her. ‘I’ll bring your Land Rover back. Where shall I take it?’

  ‘To Corner Cottage,’ she said, looking at O’Reilly who nodded, yes. ‘That’s where I’ll be, then. Can you come in? Will I see you?’

  He gave her two thumbs up and carried on up the hill.

  From somewhere, warmth washed into him.