by James Oswald
Not that I ever would. There’s others far more in need, and I don’t much like hospitals anyway.
I should leave, out through the front door to the nearest taxi and a ride home. But do I go back to my crime-scene flat, or Charlotte and Ben’s house? With Izzy back at Harston Magna, there’ll be nobody there to help me convalesce.
Instead, I take the lift to the sixth floor, struggle along the familiar corridor until I reach the ICU. Dan Jones still lies in his bed, the pillows slowly digesting him. He looks thinner, greyer, even less alive than the last time I was here. It’s the next room along that I’m more interested in though.
‘Wondered how long it would take you to get here.’
A lone figure sits on one of the plastic chairs across the corridor from the observation window. Diane Shepherd stands as I approach, head tilted slightly to one side as she takes in my appearance.
‘You look like shit, Fairchild.’ She sniffs the air like a hound. ‘And you don’t smell much better. Go home, for God’s sake.’
Given that describing her as dishevelled would be kind, I think Shepherd’s words are a bit rich. I can’t deny that I’m slightly whiffy though, a mixture of all manner of unpleasant things and fear.
‘I just wanted to see him.’ I turn towards the observation window on to the next room in the ICU. It’s almost identical to the one where Jones lies, only the figure in this bed is altogether larger. The Reverend Doctor Edward Masters is hooked up to a breathing tube, a saline drip and several monitors. His head is wrapped in a soft bandage, swollen like a rotting carcass. Nobody has tried to set his broken nose, although they’ve cleaned the worst of the blood from around his mouth. ‘I didn’t realise he was so bad.’
‘Doctor says he’s lucky to be alive. Not sure lucky’s the word I’d use. What did you hit him with?’
‘My fist.’ I look down at my hand, wary of lifting it lest the pain in my ribs flare. ‘And a lot of rage.’
Shepherd makes a sound that’s halfway between a cough and a laugh.
‘Anna whacked him on the back of the head pretty hard with my umbrella, too,’ I add.
‘You make quite the pair. If he’s not seriously brain damaged it’ll be a miracle.’
‘How is she? Anna.’ I look away from Masters, finding I don’t much care what happens to him as long as it’s permanent.
‘We’ve got her in protective custody. She’s a wild one, and we’re treading carefully, given her rap sheet. It helps that she’s of age. Just. She seems to think the world of you, too.’
‘Can’t imagine why.’ I shrug, then immediately wish I hadn’t.
‘She’s been telling us a lot of interesting things about Masters and his church. Claims she wanted to before, but couldn’t because of the spell he’d cast on her. Reckons you broke his hold on her when you broke his nose.’ Shepherd tilts her head at the window, but I don’t look around.
‘Even if I think his muti is bullshit, that doesn’t mean others don’t believe in it. They’d have to, otherwise how would he get away with it? I’m glad she’s helping, but look after her, yeah? She’s been through a lot of shit, and she saved my life.’
‘She’s going to be a key witness in any trial, so don’t worry about that. She knows a lot about Master’s inner circle. We’ve picked up most of his accomplices already, and once we start playing them off against each other the whole story will come out soon enough.’
Shepherd looks like she’s swaying slightly as she speaks, and then it dawns on me that it’s not her. She reaches out a gentle hand and steadies me.
‘Come on, Con. It’s time we got you home.’
‘I knew she’d not been well, but your mother was never one to share. Especially not when it came to herself.’
I’d thought when Diane Shepherd had said she was going to get me home she meant a squad car back to my flat. Instead, she put me in the back of her Mercedes and instructed her driver to take me to Harston Magna. I’m not entirely sure how she could have known about Aunt Felicity and Folds Cottage, but I suspect Alex Fortescue might have had something to do with that. However it was done, it was a kindness I’ll not forget soon.
It’s taken three days, but finally I feel awake, alive and comfortable enough to mix with people, and so I’m sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea and staring at the biscuits I know will be uncomfortable to eat. Who knew that cracked ribs could be so debilitating? Pain notwithstanding, it would be almost perfect. Were it not for the fact that my father is here too. He looks like he’s aged ten years since Ben’s wedding, although part of me wonders if that’s because of the way his wife died, rather than any heartbreak at her loss. He’s never been one to court that kind of publicity, and my mother’s death is most certainly public.
‘What was wrong with her?’ The words sound crass, heartless even.
‘According to her doctor, she had terminal cancer. It started in her breast, spread to her lungs and liver. She never told me.’
For the first time in decades I feel a certain sympathy for my father. He’s a bully and a coward, an old-school misogynist who drove me away from the family with his calculating sexism. But in that moment he looks like a little lost boy.
‘Was she not taking any treatment for it?’
‘Apart from daily prayer?’ His laugh is hollow. ‘I spoke to our GP. Neither her nor the oncologist have seen her in over six months, although they both knew about it, which is more than I did. I’ve looked in the bathroom cabinet. There’s nothing stronger than aspirin in there. She didn’t say anything. Why didn’t she say anything, Constance?’
Because your marriage failed the day you decided to have an affair with your best friend’s wife? Before that? Even ten years ago you were living separate lives, in separate parts of the hall. Barely talking to each other and certainly not talking to me. I hold that piece of hard truth to myself.
‘When did she first meet Masters?’ I ask instead. My father’s reaction is predictable.
‘Who?’
‘The reverend. That chap she invited to the wedding. Tried to kill me, remember?’
‘Oh, him. I guess that was maybe six, eight months ago? Before all that nastiness with Roger, anyway. No idea how they crossed paths.’
‘What about the money she gave him?’
That gets his attention, as I suspected it would. The worried frown answers my question for me. ‘Money?’
‘Mother made a donation to the Church of the Coming Light. I don’t know how recently or how much for, but you might want to get on to her executors and see about that. He was playing her, like the conman he is. My guess is he promised her a cure. Just didn’t say that it wouldn’t work. And that it would involve sacrificing her only daughter.’
‘Con, dear. Have you had your pills?’ Aunt Flick interrupts before we can come to blows, but in truth I haven’t the energy for confrontation.
‘I’m fine.’ I turn back to my father, say the words I never thought I would. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a tough few days.’
He looks at me with an astonished expression, as if he’s only just now understanding that I am a person, my own person, and not some object labelled ‘daughter’ he can order around as he pleases.
‘Tough for us all, and there’ll be hard times ahead.’ Aunt Felicity has the truth of it, and possibly the solution. She hefts the old china pot into the air and waves it gently around. ‘Who’d like some more tea?’
53
Two funerals and a wedding. I’d have been happy enough never to set foot in St Thomas’s Harston Magna ever again, and yet here I am for the third time in less than a month. I’m at the front this time, couldn’t really hide at the back without raising too many questions. There’s no space anyway. For all my mother and I never got on, it looks like the whole village has turned up to send her off.
Glancing along the pew, I see my father staring at
the coffin. We’ve not spoken since that morning almost a week ago in Aunt Flick’s kitchen, but he looks a lot less harrowed than he did then. Maybe the fact that Margo DeVilliers is sitting beside him helps. Well, if that’s where he wants to find solace, who am I to tell him no?
I follow his gaze as the vicar drones on about something worthy. I should feel something for the tiny woman lying in that dark and shiny wooden cage; she brought me into the world, after all. But I’m finding it hard to come to terms with the manner of her death. The post-mortem said the cancer was to blame, that she most probably died shortly after being placed in the sarcophagus, her body simply too weak to carry on living. The pathologist skirted over the reason why she was in there in the first place, but it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. Masters promised her a cure, selling it with all his charismatic preacher skills. What I don’t know – don’t want to know – is whether she knew the price of that cure would be my life. I’d like to think that she didn’t, but it’s going to take some work. Does that make me a bad person?
The service is mercifully short. Mother would have hated that. She’d have hated that it was officiated by the local vicar, too. Most of all she would have shuddered at the thought of being taken down into the Fairchild family crypt, underneath the nave. Laid to rest alongside generations of stuffy aristocrats. As far as I’m concerned she’s just an empty shell now, soon to be dust and bones. What does it matter where they lie?
I don’t follow the rest of the family down there. For once I’m fine with letting the Fairchild men take on that responsibility. I just want to get outside, away from this place.
‘How’re your ribs holding up?’
Izzy’s all dressed in black, which is more than I’ve managed. Dressing’s still an exercise in pain management, and so I tend to go for things that can be easily pulled on.
‘I’ll live.’ The words come out reflexively, before my brain’s had time to parse them. At least no one else is in earshot to hear my faux pas. Izzy half grimaces, half smirks.
‘You coming to the wake then?’
The wake, at the hall, where all the good people of the village will chatter and drink and eat disgusting canapés. A crowd of people, each one anxious to express sympathy for my loss when in truth I don’t really feel one. Guilt, sure, but loss? No.
‘Think I’ll give it a miss. Head back down to London once I’ve spoken to Ben.’
We both look over towards the narrow entrance to the crypt, but there’s no sign of anyone coming back out again yet. Behind us, the church has almost emptied, and by the time I’ve shuffled slowly to the door it’s clear. Outside, a small group of photographers and journalists are huddling under a tree for shelter from the drizzly rain. I’ve almost grown used to them now, and if it weren’t for the fear of pain, I might even raise a hand and wave.
‘Weird how they’ve never really pestered me at all, but whenever you’re around they appear.’ Izzy gets to the heart of something that’s been bothering me for a while now, and as I spot a familiar face in the small crowd of paparazzi, I feel it’s time to sort things out once and for all.
‘You might want to go back inside for a bit then,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to see if I can’t stir things up a bit.’
It takes me longer than I was hoping to cross the distance from the church entrance to the crowd of journalists. I can’t imagine that photographs of me hobbling along the uneven graveyard path will make good tabloid fodder, but then I’ve never understood the prurient fascination with the lives of others anyway. Something about my determination must be having an effect on them, too. At the church steps, I was getting the usual catcalls of ‘Give us a smile, Connie’ and other similarly inappropriate suggestions. Once they realise I’m heading their way, the voices fall silent, and as I get closer quite a few of the photographers start to pack up, move off. By the time I’m at the point where they were all clustered, only one remains.
‘Am I that scary?’ I ask, nodding at the backs of the retreating press.
‘Actually, yes.’ Jonathan Stokes looks frail, thinner in the face than when I met him in a café just a week or so ago. His skin has taken on a grey pallor, and his hair hangs in damp rat tails over his scalp. ‘And I asked them to go. Set them straight about what happened, too.’
‘That’s big of you.’
He shrugs. ‘You saved my life. Didn’t have to do that. I’m grateful.’
‘What was I supposed to do, let you choke to death when I know CPR?’
‘That’s not what I meant. But I’m grateful for that too.’
I have a suspicion I know what he’s talking about, but it’s not a line of enquiry I really want to pursue. Better to put Masters and his perversion of muti into a box marked ‘superstition’ and leave it at that. And besides, there’s something else I want to know.
‘Here’s the thing I never understood.’ I shove my hands in my pockets, then regret it when my ribs complain. ‘I can’t believe you guys would stake out my apartment the whole time. I mean, a story’s a story, but that’s a hell of a lot of effort for very little return.’
‘You know that’s not how we work, right?’
‘Yeah. That’s what I thought. So if you weren’t there all the time, you must have been tipped off I was coming. And the only people who could have done that are my fellow police officers. Feels good to be loved, doesn’t it.’
‘You pissed off a lot of people when you broke open Bailey’s corrupt little clique. Probably more than when you put DeVilliers away, though that’s why I was on your case.’
‘Thought as much. Your paper’s owned by one of Roger’s old friends, isn’t it.’
Stokes shakes his head at that. ‘Not my paper any more. I quit.’
That raises my eyebrow. ‘Do I see a conscience stirring?’
‘Not really. Still only good for this kind of work. Embarrassing celebrities, raking muck.’
‘So why’d you tell them all to leave me alone then?’ I nod my head in the vague direction all the other journalists have gone. ‘I don’t do exclusives.’
‘Ha. No. Wouldn’t ask for one. This Masters thing’s going to be big, and you’re right in the middle of it. You and your family. Thought I’d give you a heads-up. And a bit of space to mourn your old mum even if you didn’t exactly get on.’
‘That’s very noble of you, I’m sure.’ I turn to walk away, but he reaches out to stop me. Not catching my arm this time, I notice. He’s learning.
‘That young copper who died last year. Dan Penny.’
An unwanted memory pushes its way into my mind. Gun to the back of the head, execution style. Swift and brutal. ‘What of him?’
‘He came up through training with a new friend of yours, Detective Sergeant Latham. Couple of uniforms in your local nick were good chums of his too.’
Stokes says nothing more. A quick touch of forefinger to temple by way of a salute, then he turns and walks away.
Acknowledgements
It’s a bit of a minefield, writing acknowledgements at the back of a book. So many people help me in so many ways, it’s almost impossible to know when to stop. There’s always the worry that I’ll forget someone, too.
Having said which, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the team at Wildfire Books and Headline: Alex Clarke, Ella Gordon, Jo Liddiard, Jenni Leech, Siofra Dromgoole and everyone else who has worked so hard to make this book a thing. Thanks also to my copy editor, Jill Cole – yours is an essential job, but one which is often unacknowledged. I’m enormously grateful to Rose Akroyd, too, for bringing Con Fairchild to such brilliant life in the audiobooks.
I would not be in a position to write these stories without the tireless work and support of my agent, the effervescent Juliet Mushens. Thank you, Juliet, again.
These books look very nice on a shelf, but it’s all you readers who make it worthwhile. Thank you for taking a ch
ance on Con first time around, and if you’ve come back for this one then I must be doing something right. Here’s hoping you all stick around for more.
And finally thank you to Barbara, who doesn’t read crime fiction but does keep me sane. I couldn’t do it without you.
Biography
James Oswald is the author of the Sunday Times-bestselling Inspector McLean series of detective mysteries, as well as the new Constance Fairchild series. James’s first two books, Natural Causes and The Book of Souls, were both shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Debut Dagger Award. Nothing to Hide is the second book in the Constance Fairchild Series.
James farms Highland cows and Romney sheep by day, writes disturbing fiction by night.
If you loved NOTHING TO HIDE, why not try COLD AS THE GRAVE, the most recent book in James Oswald’s bestselling Inspector McLean series?
Available to order now
