by Fay Sampson
‘Millie’s here,’ she said. ‘We were coming to find you. We talked to your aunt. She’s nice, isn’t she? Millie guessed you might be staying here.’ She spoke as lightly as if Tamara had just come away for a summer holiday.
‘Millie?’ Tamara murmured.
A new fear grasped Suzie. Where was Millie? She had gone running ahead into the darkness of the woods.
Tom called sharply: ‘Someone’s coming!’
Suzie twisted round, trying to see past the dark bulk of the hire car. She couldn’t hear the expected siren of the ambulance, or see flashing lights. Through the purr of the engine they had left running she began to make out the sound of footsteps crackling through the undergrowth.
‘Tom!’ Nick’s voice made the same incredulous cry she had herself.
Nick came running into the shaft of light. There was someone with him. A slight blonde figure.
Millie let out a small scream and dropped to her knees beside Tamara. ‘Is she dead?’
‘No.’ Suzie’s reassurance was for Tamara, as well as Millie. ‘She’s going to be all right.’ She hoped it was true.
Nick cast a look round the scene. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what’s going on here. Explanations later. Have you called the police?’
Police? The word rang oddly in Suzie’s mind. It was the ambulance they needed, wasn’t it?
Tom’s voice was emphatic. ‘Too right. We should have done that long ago.’
Suzie heard the catch of Nick’s breath.
‘What’s that?’ he asked. He was staring into the wood at the roadside, shading his eyes from the glare of headlights. As she followed his gaze, Suzie caught the glimpse of something pale through the lower branches.
That running figure had been wearing light-coloured trousers. She glanced down. Tamara’s jeans were black. It had been someone else they had seen. Someone chasing Tamara. Someone who was lurking even now to watch this unplanned outcome. To take the news to Reynard.
‘Pet!’ she cried, leaping up. ‘Get her!’
Nick and Tom leaped for the bank and plunged into the wood. The dim shape that must be Petronella wheeled and darted away.
Suzie threw an anxious look behind her. Millie and Prudence were kneeling beside Tamara. The ambulance was on its way. She gave in to the desire for action and scrambled over the bank herself.
It was bafflingly dark beyond the headlights. But Petronella’s trainers betrayed her progress as they swished and crackled through the leaves. Nick and Tom charged after her. Suzie sped in their wake.
She heard Pet cry out. The sounds of trampled leaves and snapping twigs gave way to human shouts.
‘Lie still,’ Nick ordered. ‘You’re not getting away with this. A girl may die because of you.’
Might she? Suzie’s initial relief had been founded on so small a thing. That Tamara was conscious.
She stumbled upon them, almost cannoning into Tom. The two men were stooped over a small, prostrate figure.
‘The police are coming,’ Tom grunted as he struggled with her. ‘Dad, have you got something to tie her wrists with?’
‘I’ll get her shoelaces,’ Suzie offered.
She knelt in the damp leaves and felt for those trainers. Pet kicked once as Suzie’s hands closed round her ankle. Then she lay obstinately still, refusing to move her foot.
It was fiddlesome work, unthreading the laces, when she had only the feel of her fingertips to guide her. As she moved to the second leg, Suzie’s knuckles connected with something hard. She finished her task and handed the laces to Nick. ‘Try these.’
She heard, rather than saw, him twist Pet’s arms behind her and lash her wrists. It was reassuring to have Nick and Tom with her. Not to be alone in the dark wood, fearing what or whom she might meet. Or to be on the riverbank with only the mocking charm of Reynard for company. She shivered.
As she sat back on her heels, she remembered that moment when, instead of the soft fabric of Pet’s trousers, her hand had met something harder under the cloth.
On an impulse, before her mind made sense of the memory, she reached out in the gloom. Her eyes had adjusted enough to see the pale fabric clothing Pet’s legs. Her hand closed round it. She felt the long pocket of cargo pants. Yes, there was something under the cotton. Something long, narrow and hard. She ripped open the Velcro and drew it out. ‘She had this.’
Nick still had hold of Pet, though she had stopped struggling.
It was Tom who took the bar from her and examined its shape. ‘That feels very like a monkey wrench. What was she doing, charging through the woods with one of these in her pocket?’
In the silence, a tree creaked overhead.
Nick said quietly, ‘I don’t think we need to guess what would have happened if she’d caught Tamara. If she’d refused to come back to the boat, there was another plan. More risky than a simple drowning, but a risk this young lady was prepared to take for Reynard Woodman.’
Petronella said nothing. Suzie could hardly see her face in the near darkness. She tried to remember that immaculately groomed and made-up young woman on the lawn beside the river this afternoon. Now she lay in the mud, among damp leaves, with twigs twisted in her hair.
Nick was hauling her to her feet. He and Tom took her arms, one on each side. They were marching her back to the road.
‘Why just her?’ Suzie said. ‘Why isn’t Reynard here?’
‘Deniability,’ Nick snorted. ‘This silly woman would do anything for him. As if he’d keep her, anyway.’
Pet gave a bitter little laugh. The headlights caught the toss of her head. ‘Oh, he will. I know too much.’
‘You won’t be able to blackmail him. Once you come before a court, everyone will know what he’s done.’
‘Will they? You really think that girl will talk?’
Suzie’s mind did a somersault. Tamara had fled her home, not even telling Millie why. She could not bear to confess to anyone what her father had done to her. Even now, no one had actually said Reynard was the father of Tamara’s child.
And Tamara was lying injured on the road. At the very least, a head injury. And who knew what besides?
The blare of a siren cut through the shocked quiet around the car.
THIRTY
The flashing blue light that screamed towards them was too low. It was not the reassuring bulk of an ambulance but a police car. Two officers got out. A man and woman, both young. Suzie watched the man come towards them, glancing nervously at Tamara on the ground in front of Prudence’s car. She could see he was thinking of the emergency first-aid he had been taught, should he be the first at the scene of an accident, and hoping he would not be called upon to use it.
It was his colleague who knelt swiftly beside Tamara. Prudence answered her questions about the girl’s injuries briefly and practically.
The policeman drew an audible breath of relief. He turned his attention to the rest of them. ‘Constable Martin. And that’s my colleague, Constable Eve Tandy. You reported a traffic accident and –’ his young face took on an expression that struggled with disbelief – ‘an attempted murder?’
His wary gaze took in the slight form of Petronella, closely guarded by Tom and Nick.
‘That’s right,’ said Tom. ‘I was the one who phoned you. Tamara ran out in front of our car. But we were on our way to help her. Mum and Dad and Millie had come to look for her after she disappeared and we were scared—’
The constable held up a placating hand. ‘Just hang on there, sir. I’ll want statements from all of you. You’re . . .’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Tom Fewings, right? Who’s this young woman? Why is she tied up like that?’
‘Citizen’s arrest,’ said Nick. ‘We suspect her of having designs on the life of Tamara Gamble. We found this on her.’
The constable’s eyebrows shot up at the sight of the wrench. It looked bigger, uglier in the full glare of both sets of headlights.
A palpable relief washed over the group as the sound of a second siren
brought the ambulance speeding smoothly to a halt. Suzie felt some of the terror drain from her as the green-overalled paramedics, in their yellow jackets, jumped out. One had an emergency kit in her hands. Tamara was still alive. She had crossed that dangerous gap between the accident and the arrival of professional help. She was no longer the Fewings’ responsibility.
It was selfish to think like that. Tamara had no one else here.
Frances. For the first time since she and Nick had left the house for the landing stage, Suzie suddenly thought of Tamara’s aunt. Had she been sitting in the House in the Forest all this time, waiting for full darkness to fall so that she could spirit Tamara away? Wondering what was happening in the meantime? What her brother was doing? Why none of them had come back?
‘Do you have Frances’s number?’ she asked Nick.
She saw his guilty start. He reached for his phone.
The paramedics had finished their examination of Tamara. They were putting a neck brace on, getting ready to ease her on to a stretcher to transfer her to the ambulance.
‘Can I come too?’ Suzie asked. ‘I’m not a relation, but Millie here is her best friend. She knows me.’
‘Good idea,’ said the female paramedic. ‘I’m Betty, by the way.’
‘Suzie. Suzie Fewings.’ She glanced anxiously at PC Tandy. ‘You’ll be wanting statements from all of us. But I don’t like to think of her going to a strange hospital without somebody she knows. Not after what happened this evening. We’re getting a message to the aunt she’s been staying with.’
‘Go ahead,’ said the policewoman. ‘From what I’ve picked up so far, I think I should come too. I don’t think she’s fit to be questioned yet, but someone should be on hand in case she does want to talk. And you’ve said enough to make me think I should keep an eye on her safety. There seem to have been some fairly strange goings-on in these woods this evening.’
‘It’s a complicated story. But there’s something else. Someone else. You’ll find a motor cruiser on the river on the other side of the wood, if he’s not already taken fright and headed back to Burwood. Kevin Gamble. Otherwise known as Reynard Woodman.’
‘The author? I loved his books when I was a kid. How does he fit in with this?’
‘He’s Tamara’s father. I can tell you what I think he’s done. But only she knows the truth.’
‘Let’s hope she makes it, then.’
The words shocked Suzie out of the warmth of relief she had felt when the emergency services arrived. Could Tamara still die? She shot a fearful look at the girl’s still, white face.
They were lifting the stretcher gently into the ambulance. Suzie was about to climb up after it.
Millie sprang forward. ‘I want to come too.’
The paramedic Betty turned round from the ambulance’s interior. ‘Sorry, kid. This is an ambulance, not a coach excursion. We’ve got enough on board as it is.’
‘That’s not fair!’
Constable Tandy looked back at her colleague, at the group around the hire car, now a possible crime scene. At Petronella, now handcuffed. At Tom, who had been driving. At Nick and Prudence and the indignant Millie.
‘I hope he’s called for backup. This is only his second week on the job.’
Hunched in the back of the ambulance, PC Tandy took Suzie’s statement. Suzie was aware how circumstantial and incoherent it must sound. Tamara’s reluctance to name the father of her child. The Fewings’ fear of Leonard Dawson’s role. His refusal to report her missing. The glamorous tennis coach. The scared schoolboy Justin Soames. Their failure to contact Tamara’s father. And the notelet, with Prudence’s inspired guess that led them to the House in the Forest and Tamara’s aunt. But not before they had misinterpreted the evidence and called on Tamara’s father and Petronella. Their converging on Frances’s house; all of them hunting the elusive and frightened Tamara.
All the time she was talking, Suzie was aware that Tamara herself was lying only an arm’s length away. She could not be sure how conscious the girl was of what was being said about her. The occasional moan suggested she was still awake. It might be the pain of her injuries or emotional distress.
Only Tamara could tell them the truth about her baby. Unless she was willing to testify, no one could be brought to court.
She might die before that.
Her thoughts were broken into by a sudden tension in the ambulance. Betty was bent over the recumbent figure of Tamara. The motherly paramedic called to the driver, ‘Brad. She’s haemorrhaging.’
‘I’m doing my best.’
The ambulance was speeding through the late evening traffic on the outskirts of a town, siren blaring. Suzie undid her seat belt and moved to kneel beside the stretcher.
In the dim light she saw the stain where Betty had pulled back the blanket from Tamara’s legs.
‘She was pregnant,’ she said.
The other woman’s eyes met hers. ‘Maybe just a threatened miscarriage.’ Then her expression sharpened with awareness. ‘She looks very young.’
‘She’s fourteen.’
‘So maybe it’s just as well, as long as she pulls through safely. We’ll be at the hospital in a few minutes.’
Tamara stirred on the stretcher. She gave a little cry. ‘The baby! Will I lose it?’
Suzie’s hand closed round hers. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. We’re almost at the hospital. They’ll look after you.’
Tamara had started to cry. ‘I don’t care what they say. It’s my baby. I want it.’
Betty was preparing an injection. It would be some sort of sedative, Suzie guessed. All she could do was hold Tamara and stroke her face. The needle slipped in. A few moments later, Tamara’s anxious face softened. Suzie felt her limbs relax.
She turned her face up to Betty. ‘You heard her. Tell them to try and save the baby. She knows the problems, but she’d already made up her mind. It was because they wanted her to have an abortion that she ran away from home.’
She felt the huge responsibility of Tamara’s future in her hands. And that of the unborn child. It would be so easy for a well-meaning doctor to put an end to it now. Would Tamara thank her for this intervention? Or would there come a time when she regretted she had not taken the easy way out?
Suzie thought about the tiny, partially-formed baby and what it might become. She remembered Tom and Millie, newborn. The inexpressible wonder of it.
Then reality kicked in. How would Tamara explain its parentage to the child? She opened her mouth to pull back from that too-confident instruction. Then changed her mind again.
Had Johan Clayson wished she might lose the baby, before Adam was born? Had she taken steps to procure a miscarriage, from some eighteenth-century wise woman? How did she feel when she held Adam in her arms and knew that calumny would always follow them?
She had not lived long to bear her share of it.
Suzie struggled with her fear. It was illogical to think that Tamara’s story would mirror Johan’s as closely as that.
This was the twenty-first century. Modern treatment would save Tamara. If necessary, the Fewings would stand by her and her child.
Or would she prefer to be with her aunt? Away from the tyrannical Dawson . . . but so close to her father, if Suzie’s darkest fears about Reynard Woodman were true?
The ambulance swung off the road, the siren silenced. Moments later, it pulled up at Accident and Emergency. With practised speed, the stretcher was lowered to the ground. Nurses and porters were already waiting to speed it inside. Suzie and Constable Eve Tandy were left as bystanders.
Suzie’s mind sprang to life again. ‘Quick. There’s something we need to do.’ She ran down the corridor after the retreating stretcher party. She caught the nearest nurse. ‘She’s having a miscarriage. At least, we think she is. It’s really important. She wants this baby, but if it can’t be saved, can you . . . I don’t know what you do with a foetus, but can you keep a . . . a sample? For DNA. In case there’s a criminal prosecution.’
The nurse looked startled. Then she took in Constable Tandy’s uniform. ‘OK. I’ll tell the doctor.’
Tamara was gone, through the swing doors. Suzie and Tandy looked at each other.
‘Coffee,’ said the constable. ‘Or tea. With sugar. No arguments.’
THIRTY-ONE
Suzie came to with a start. She looked around her, disorientated, and felt a sharp pain in her neck. She had fallen asleep in the hospital waiting room.
Around her, in various aspects of weariness, were Nick, Tom and Millie. Prudence was asleep beside Suzie.
Sometime in the night, Constable Tandy had been relieved. In her place sat Detective Sergeant John Smithens. In contrast to the fit young woman, he was middle-aged and rather plumper than Suzie thought a policeman should be. She tried to imagine him running down Petronella as she fled through the woods. He would have been unlikely to catch her. But he had a genial, fatherly look about his side-burned face. Someone Tamara might feel reassured to find at her bedside when she was able to talk.
If she could trust any man now.
Maybe it would have been better if Constable Tandy had stayed, even though she was only a beat-pounding, uniformed officer.
Still, the arrival of the Detective Sergeant meant that the police believed they were dealing with something more than a traffic accident.
Doors swung open and Frances O’Malley came through. Her tall, rangy figure bore little family resemblance to the curvaceous Tamara or Frances’s sprightly brother Kevin, otherwise Reynard. Only their red hair linked brother and sister.
Frances’s face was gaunt with tiredness. She looked at their expectant expressions and said, ‘She’s lost the baby.’
‘And Tamara?’ The question was wrenched from Suzie.
Frances sighed. ‘All right, under the circumstances. She’s still sedated.’
So the very worst had not happened. This was not going to be Johan’s story.
Yet Suzie felt the wrench of bereavement, even at second hand. She caught Nick’s eye and, before he could speak, snapped, ‘Don’t you dare say, “It’s all for the best”!’
