The Wounded Snake

by Fay Sampson

  For a moment, it seemed that it would disappear round the bend. Then there was a screeching of metal against tarmac. The Range Rover slewed violently off course. As David broke into a run towards it, the vehicle skidded in a half circle and toppled over on to its side. It lay on the verge of the road, wheels spinning, the engine still racing.

  Harry, Hilary knew with a lurch of her heart, must be trapped on the underside.

  The two officers were sprinting downhill towards the crash. More were coming out of the car park. Hilary and Veronica shot each other panicked stares, and set off after David. Veronica’s longer legs pulled her ahead of Hilary.

  ‘I was very much afraid,’ she panted as she passed, ‘he was wanting to kill himself. He may just have done so.’

  The first officer to get there climbed up to pull the passenger door open. As he reached an arm inside, the noise of the engine fell suddenly silent.

  Hilary ran past the parked police car. Only now could she see the mesh of spikes that had punctured the Range Rover’s tyres. They had meant to stop Harry, but what if they had killed him instead? She was very much afraid of what sight might meet the officer who was leaning, head down, across the front seats of Harry’s car.

  She prayed David would be able to do something. He was a doctor. She was thankful, as she had not been before, for all his experience of violent bloodshed in war-torn parts of the world. Surely he would be able to cope.

  She had to convince herself that Harry was still alive.

  Her steps were slowing. One of the policemen had called on her to stop, but she had taken no notice. She knew that she did not want to see. She did not need to be here. There would be nothing she could do that trained professionals could not do so much better than she could. She should have listened to Veronica. She could have been back in Lady Jane’s Chamber with the rest of the course. She could still hear DS Blunt’s voice, ordering her back.

  But she was here, with a sick feeling in her throat.

  David had reached the Range Rover. Instead of climbing into it, as she expected, he seemed to be remonstrating with the policeman who had got there first. She watched him back away from the car and look instead at the still-smoking engine and the petrol which, Hilary could now see, was trickling from the fuel tank down the hill. She knew David would rather have left the injured man where he was until the ambulance crew arrived with the proper equipment. But he seemed to change his mind. He hoisted himself up on the footboard. Most of his body disappeared into the car. The police officer flattened himself to one side to let him past.

  Now she could see them both straining to lift Harry’s body from the wreck. Hilary was now horribly conscious of the leaking fuel.

  They were lowering him out. David was supporting his neck. The second policeman strode across to help them. Together they carried him a safer distance from the car, to lower him on to the grass almost at Hilary’s feet.

  Veronica caught hold of her arm. ‘You don’t have to look.’

  But Hilary did.

  There was less blood than she had feared. It streaked David’s fingers as he laid Harry’s head on the ground. David, she noted, was the one giving orders now. He was supporting Harry, carefully arranging his back and limbs to do the least possible damage. The driver of the police car was back at his vehicle, urgently radioing messages.

  Hilary looked behind her. She was not surprised to find the long-legged DI Foulks coming down the drive at a loping run, followed by DS Blunt. There was a group of course members spilling out of the archway further up the hill.

  Her ears strained for the wail of an ambulance siren.

  Harry moved his blood-streaked head with a groan.

  ‘Thank God!’ Hilary gasped. ‘He’s alive.’

  The uniformed officers stood aside to make room for the detective inspector. He bent over the injured man.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Walters. Didn’t you get the message from the hospital? Your wife’s come round from surgery. They think she’s going to live.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Harry moaned. ‘She was meant to be dead.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Hilary’s heart sank. Ever since she had heard about Jo being struck on the head, and remembered Harry’s seemingly premature tears, a little part of her mind had wondered. Could all those tears really have been for Melissa? And if they were for Jo, how else could he have known?

  ‘Lie still,’ David was saying. ‘The ambulance will be here soon.’

  Even as he spoke, Hilary could hear sirens in the far distance.

  But DI Foulks was also bending over the injured man, more urgently.

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Walters? Who wanted her dead?’

  Hilary already knew the answer before Harry spoke.

  ‘I did.’ There was an eternity of grief in his voice.

  ‘You did? You’re telling me you hit your wife? I’m not arresting you yet, but I ought to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence.’

  ‘Leave him,’ ordered David. ‘He ought to stay quiet.’

  But Harry turned his head with a low cry of pain. Hilary knew it was not all physical.

  ‘I made a mess of it, didn’t I? Will you arrest her now?’

  ‘Arrest her? For what?’

  ‘For killing Melissa Standforth.’

  ‘Bingo!’ said one of the uniformed policemen quietly.

  Hilary looked down at Harry’s tortured face. She stepped round him, into the line of the inspector’s vision.

  ‘I think I can explain.’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say.’ The DI lifted his grey eyes to hers. ‘You think it has to do with what Gavin Standforth said in the chapel. But don’t you think it’s a bit extreme, to kill a woman just because her husband stole your idea for a book?’

  ‘You need to appreciate the sort of person Jo is. Extremely intelligent. Very good at plotting. Perhaps more intent on the machinations of a murder and how the perpetrator might get away with it than just lashing out in sheer revenge.’

  ‘You’re suggesting that she killed Melissa Standforth as an intellectual exercise?’

  ‘Given the circumstances, I think it’s very possible, yes. She could have denounced Gavin on Twitter, or something like that. But would people really be that interested? Sour grapes, they’d say. She wouldn’t be the first writer by any means to claim they were the unacknowledged source for a bestselling author’s book. People have gone to court over it. No, she wanted to get her revenge in such a way that she could see in Gavin’s eyes his understanding that she had done it, and why. For her, this was better revenge than killing Gavin himself. That would all have been over in a few seconds. No, Harry’s right. She killed Melissa instead, so that she could look forward to Gavin knowing for the rest of his life why she did it, and being unable to say anything. Not without wrecking his own reputation. You saw him in the chapel. You heard him. He was reduced to a quivering wreck by the thought that what he did to her might get out in open court. Not just the social media. That’s trivia. And can you just imagine the headlines if he shopped her? Wife murdered to reveal author’s shame. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jo met him in the chapel after dark yesterday to tell him what she’d done and taunt him with it. No, Gavin was going to keep quiet and suffer the knowledge of the truth. Jo thought she could see how to plan the perfect crime.’

  ‘She would have done,’ Harry groaned, causing all of them to recall his presence, bloodstained, on the grass at their feet. ‘You asked us all if we’d seen that tracksuit. Nobody but me had. She’d taken care to bring other clothes for her morning runs.’

  ‘Black leggings, I remember,’ said David. ‘With a pink tee shirt. I met her jogging in the grounds this morning.’

  ‘But I’d seen the tracksuit in her holdall. I was putting our bags away after we’d unpacked. I asked her if she’d like me to hang it in the wardrobe, but she said no.’

  The sirens were screaming closer. More than one of them. Time was running out. />
  ‘So she knew you’d seen the evidence. That you knew what it meant. Did she threaten you?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘She trusted me. I loved her. I still do.’ His voice was trembling. Tears started down his face again.

  ‘Hush, Harry. Lie still,’ David told him.

  ‘I knew if I kept quiet it would never come to court. She was far too clever. But Melissa was dead. Someone had to answer for that. Jo thought she’d committed the perfect crime. I couldn’t bear to think of her being arrested and knowing that she hadn’t. It wasn’t just being sentenced to life for murder. It was the …’

  ‘Humiliation,’ David supplied.

  ‘She couldn’t have borne it. I thought I could spare her that. It was meant to be quick and painless. Justice to Melissa done. Jo would never have known what happened. But I couldn’t even get that right.’

  His voice was failing. David took his pulse.

  Next moment, they seemed to be surrounded by uniformed paramedics, with a fire crew following hard on their heels. David and the inspector stood back. The paramedics put a neck brace on Harry and transferred him carefully to a stretcher. Not far below them, firemen were shovelling sand on to the leaking petrol, dousing the smoking engine with foam. For a few moments, there seemed to be a whirlwind of professional activity.

  As the ambulance doors closed, Hilary felt utterly exhausted.

  The inspector got to his feet, brushing grass from the knees of his trousers.

  ‘You crime writers! I’ll never understand you. Can you really get so caught up in a fictional murder that you’ll commit a real one to settle a score?’

  ‘I think it was more than revenge,’ Hilary said uncomfortably. ‘Jo needed to prove to herself that she could. That she wasn’t just capable of writing a blockbusting novel, but that her plot was watertight enough to turn it into a reality. And I wouldn’t put it past her to have planned to write a novel afterwards about what she actually did.’

  ‘Defying the world to make the connection,’ Veronica agreed.

  ‘As a result of which, Harry Walters took it upon himself to see justice done in his own ham-fisted way,’ the detective inspector said grimly, ‘rather than hand the evidence over to me.’

  ‘For love,’ Hilary reminded him.

  The ambulance siren was fading in the distance. Hilary watched the fire crew packing up, preparing to go. Some of the police officers were starting to disperse.

  ‘He was going to get into his car and kill himself, rather than be made to testify against her,’ Veronica said. ‘Poor, poor Harry.’

  THIRTY

  ‘That wasn’t meant to happen.’ The uniformed policeman’s voice was high and nervous. ‘They told us that spike strip just brings them to a gradual stop. They showed us videos.’

  ‘He swerved deliberately,’ the driver tried to reassure him. ‘Must have.’

  ‘He would have done,’ Hilary heard herself say. ‘He wanted to crash.’

  She saw with an irrational irritation that the rest of the Morland Abbey people were swarming down the road towards them. Honesty told her she would have done the same. She imagined the deluge of questions they would be bursting to ask. But she did not want to talk to them. To anyone.

  David’s hands were still smeared with Harry’s blood. He was wiping them with handfuls of grass.

  Random thoughts skidded through her mind. Weren’t you supposed to wear gloves for that sort of thing nowadays? David wouldn’t think about himself, of course. Still, Harry was hardly likely to be carrying HIV. On the other hand, how did she know? How much did she know about anybody, after this weekend?

  David had been at worse scenes than this, seen streets running with blood. She had always tried to avoid thinking about that.

  They were surrounded by excited people.

  ‘That was Harry, wasn’t it? Crashing his Range Rover. Was he running away? Does that mean he’s the one who killed Melissa Standforth?’ Jake was almost shouting in his eagerness.

  ‘Poor man,’ Ceri was saying. ‘Is Jo dead? Is that why he went off the road?’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Lin Bell looked pale. ‘It was bad enough finding one body. At least, I thought it was a body when I came across Jo on the footpath. But two in one day.’

  ‘Harry’s alive,’ Veronica reassured them. ‘They’re taking him to hospital. And Jo’s come round.’

  ‘So she can tell the police who attacked her!’ This time the eager question came from Tania. ‘Has she?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Veronica sounded as tired as Hilary felt. ‘I’ve no information on that. And I don’t expect the inspector will tell us if she has.’

  There was a hesitation, then the crowd reluctantly began to break up. Most were heading, not back to the abbey, but to the car park. It was, Hilary realized, finally over.

  Fiona the receptionist had David, rather cautiously, by the arm, anxious to avoid contact with his bloodied hands. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up. You can’t go home like that.’

  The young police officer, still looking worried, was gathering up the spike strip he had thrown in the path of Harry’s Range Rover. Hilary made an effort and walked back up the hill towards him.

  ‘It’s not your fault. You tried to stop him safely. He was just off his head with grief.’

  The policeman shook his head, as if he could still not believe what had happened.

  ‘I never thought I’d be on the spot when, you know, somebody coughs up to a murder. Or an attempted one. It’s sorted now, isn’t it? All the stuff that’s happened here this weekend?’

  Hilary sighed. ‘I suppose so. I don’t know at what point DI Foulks will decide Jo is fit to be charged with murdering Melissa. Harry will have to testify. He’s not clever enough to get out of it. He really will wish he’d killed himself when they sentence her.’

  The officer stopped in the act of folding up the spikes. ‘Do you think he’ll try again?’

  ‘Killing Jo?’

  ‘No. Suicide.’

  ‘Probably not. The stuffing’s been knocked out of him. Now he’s told the inspector everything, he’ll think it’s finished. He’s no idea what they’ll put him through if she pleads not guilty. The courts. The press. He’s too honest to take anything back. But I doubt if even Jo is clever enough to lie her way out of this now.’

  ‘That’s it, then.’ The police constable grinned, suddenly brighter. ‘Job done.’

  ‘You could look at it like that. Three case files closed for your statistics. But for those two, it’s only just beginning.’

  Veronica joined them. ‘I wonder what Dinah Halsgrove will think, when she reads about all this in the paper.’

  ‘It will probably be in her next book.’

  The River Dart bubbled clear over its stony bed beside the road. On the opposite bank, a steam engine puffed its way towards Totnes, pulling its cream-and-brown coaches. Autumn was colouring the banks of trees on either side of the valley.

  As they drove away from the abbey, Hilary lifted her eyes to Dartmoor ahead, where she knew the skylarks would be singing. It should have been idyllic.

  It was David’s decision to bid farewell to the Dart with a cream tea at the magnificently restored Buckfast Abbey.

  ‘This one’s still functioning as abbeys were meant to.’

  They turned off the main road to where, across the bridge, the abbey fields sloped down to meet the river. They parked under the trees and strolled down the path through the entrance to where the pinnacles of the great church soared up to greet them.

  Soon, they were sitting on the roof terrace of the café in the autumn sunshine, watching the Sunday visitors exploring the grounds and the magnificence of grey stone and golden window tracery. Hilary could picture the brilliance of the modern stained glass inside, crafted in the monks’ workshops.

  ‘There’s something hopeful about Buckfast, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘Of course, it’s terribly romantic to see the old ruined abbeys like Morland, not to mention Glastonbury, Fountains
, Rievaulx, Whitby and the rest. They’re a telling witness to just how drastic the Reformation was. Past glory, deliberately pulled down. But here you got a handful of twentieth-century monks who weren’t content to let destruction have the final say. So they set to, with their own bare hands, and rebuilt, well, all this.’ She gazed across at the church and the abbey buildings beyond it.

  The other two sat in silence. She sensed that they knew she meant more than reconstructed stone walls.

  ‘It’s going to be pretty hard for those folk to rebuild their lives, isn’t it?’ Veronica ventured. ‘Jo and Harry.’

  ‘It’s in the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service,’ David suggested. ‘If Jo makes a full recovery, my guess is that they won’t press Harry too hard for his part. “While the balance of his mind was disturbed”, that sort of thing.’

  ‘They can hardly say that about Jo,’ Hilary retorted. ‘Her mind was working all too sharply.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Veronica said more softly. ‘It must have been a terrible shock to her when Gavin stole her work. A betrayal of trust. The opposite of what she hoped when she came on their course. She wanted so much to hit the A-list.’

  ‘But it was all so calculated. She must have scared Melissa into agreeing to a secret meeting at the Leechwells. How else could she have known Melissa would be there? And that business with the hooded tracksuit. That was all planned beforehand. She knew when she packed that this was how she was going to do it. It had to be the Leechwells. There must have been a particular pleasure for her in killing Melissa in the Long Crippler pool. To use the title of Gavin’s stolen book against him in such a horrific way.’ She shivered, remembering the feel of the water in the ancient well as she lifted the sodden body.

  ‘Men often get away with things on the grounds that it was a “heat of the moment” thing. I’m not sure that works so well with women,’ David mused. ‘Lashing out with brute force. It’s less of an option if you haven’t got the physical strength. Instead it smoulders, for years, maybe, until it can’t be held in any longer. That’s how she must have felt about Gavin.’