Nick struggled with the van door, yanked it open and threw himself inside. One thought. Drive. He had to get away. Fast.
The engine responded, the back end of the van sluing from side to side as Nick floored the pedal, accelerating between the lines of parked cars.
He braked hard at the end of the street, turned a corner, then another, navigating as fast as he could along the myriad of narrow city streets.
Was he being warned, set up or played with?
He hit the brakes. He shouldn't have left that pan for the police to find. His fingerprints were on the lid, probably all over the pan too. He had to go back, get rid of the evidence. The police could arrive at any time.
Doubt. Wouldn't that be part of Peter's game? He'd want Nick to go back, waste time removing evidence, digging himself deeper when all the time there was something else—the ears, the nose, God knows what—hidden in a drawer, the fridge or under a pillow. Nick running around like a rat in a maze while Pendennis watched and laughed.
No, he couldn't go back. The police would be on their way. A tip-off. All part of the game. One which he was not going to play. He gunned the engine. He needed space, time to think. A place Pendennis and the police couldn't find. And he needed to find Louise. She'd be next.
If she was still alive.
He hit re-dial at the next junction. Why didn't she answer?
Louise started at the noise—a creak from upstairs. Any other day she probably wouldn't have noticed. Old houses were never quiet. But since Nick's message she'd been unable to settle. And being told by the police not to panic hadn't helped—if there was nothing to worry about, why had they driven all the way over to tell her?
Pendennis. She could see him whenever she closed her eyes, his grin smiled in the embers of the fire in the lounge grate, he pursued her into her dreams. He was the cause of every unknown sound and inspiration behind every fear.
She shivered. The room was cold. The heat from last night's fire had all but gone and she couldn't afford to start another one until this evening. Finances, lack of. She grimaced and took another look at the figures on the screen. Surely last month couldn't have been that bad?
But it had. Another month with more going out than coming in, the gap ever widening, her savings diminishing. Just what she needed—doing the monthly accounts was supposed to take her mind off Pendennis, not depress her further.
She stared at the screen wondering where all the money had gone. Well, it was late winter. Her vegetable plot at its bleakest—only the leeks and winter cabbage producing, the early broccoli another five weeks away, her stores of usable potatoes and onions dwindling. Not to mention the extra fuel bills and the feed for the animals.
A sudden noise from outside made her jump. A chainsaw starting up. Someone out hedging or cutting up logs for firewood.
Or looking for someone to massacre.
Stop it, Louise, she told herself. You're being ridiculous. But she listened all the same, listening for the whine of the motor to come closer.
It didn't, stopping instead after a fifteen-second burst. Louise kept listening, all other senses on hold, her eyes unfocussed, her body stock-still. A goat bleated from the front field breaking the spell. No doubt Bonnie, the young Anglo-Nubian, complaining that it was too cold, too muddy, not enough food and she was bored.
Try living my life, thought Louise. And took another look at the figures. Maybe it was time to get a part-time job? Though how she'd fit it in was beyond her. The vegetable garden took up all her spare time from April to September and rescue cases could arrive at any time. If she cut down on the rescues then she'd risk losing donations and charitable status. If she skimped on farm maintenance—the hedges and the buildings—she'd lose her Countryside Stewardship Grant.
She was stuck. With no good way out. All logic said downsize—sell the farm, buy somewhere cheaper, get a proper job. But this was her life. And her last link to her father.
She sighed. Anchored to the past, that's what she was. By the farm, the land and the dream. They'd found the property together—she and her father—both falling in love with the nut-brown thatch, the eye-brow windows, the leaded lights, the massive oak beams, the buttermilk walls that hadn't known a right angle in over four hundred years. They'd made an offer on the spot, and moved in two months later. It was to have been their refuge from a world that had taken away a wife and mother, their hope for a new, simpler, self-sufficient life.
She sniffed away a tear. Her father's ashes were scattered around the base of the old beech tree by the barn. His favourite spot. He'd sit beneath its massive canopy for hours watching the sun slowly set.
Memories like that could not be quantified. Nor outweighed by numbers or logic.
She'd never leave. And that was that.
The chainsaw started up again. Or was that a car? She glanced toward the window but couldn't see anything. And whatever it was it had stopped. She rose from the chair and started to walk to the window. Then the hammering started, someone was pounding on her front door.
"Who is it?" she shouted, standing well back from the door, her legs braced to run.
"It's me. Nick. Open up."
She unlocked the door. Nick burst in. He looked shaken, and out of breath.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "Has anything happened?"
"What . . ." She stopped mid-sentence, he'd pushed past her and run into the kitchen. "What are you doing?" she asked, hurrying after him.
"Checking," he said, his eyes darting everywhere. "Has anyone been here? Left anything?"
"Only the police," she said, folding her arms. "What the hell did you think you were playing at last night? You scared the shit out of me."
He didn't seem to be listening. He pushed past her again this time into the hallway. "Have you looked everywhere?" he said over his shoulder. "Would you notice if someone broke in and left something?"
"Like what?" She followed him into the lounge. "Nick, if this is some kind of joke . . ."
He turned. "Do I look like I'm joking?"
He didn't. Louise's day edged another notch downwards. She'd checked the news reports—both last night's and this morning's. All they'd said was that a body had been discovered at Framlingham Hall and the police were treating the death as suspicious. No one had mentioned Pendennis, and last night she'd been assured that he was still locked up.
But Nick's face said different.
"What happened at the Hall?" she asked.
He told her everything. The body, his arrest and the remnants on his kitchen table. She listened, her pulse quickening. This could not be happening.
"Now do you see?" said Nick, bouncing forward in his chair. "You're next."
"No." She shook her head. There had to be some mistake.
"Think about it," urged Nick. "He's playing with us. First the dead body, then the scattered body parts. Where do you think he'll hide the ears?"
She found her hand rising to the side of her face, her injured ear tingling.
"But Pendennis is locked up! The police said . . ."
"The police!" The chair could no longer contain him. He was on his feet, arms waving in frustration. "They think I did it. Dead body, suspicious character at the scene, why look any further? I doubt anyone's even been to Upper Heywood to check."
"But why would Upper Heywood lie? They couldn't hope to get away with anything as stupid as that."
"Oh, no? They call it news management. You wait and see. In a couple of days someone'll come on air and say that Pendennis has been recaptured and how they couldn't release the news earlier because of the unnecessary panic it would have caused and how the police investigation would have been hampered by thousands of mistaken sightings. It's what government agencies do all the time."
Louise felt besieged. She could see the logic in what Nick was saying but there had to be other possibilities. If only he'd slow down and give her a chance to think.
"Couldn't it have been someone else?" she asked.
"Who? Someone left a mutilated body at a house only I frequent. Then they go to my home and leave body parts on my kitchen table. I'm being targeted. Now, how many Mafia bosses have I pissed off this last week?" He raised a finger to his cheek in mock deliberation. "Hmmm, let's see . . . none. How many serial-killing murdering bastards have I met? Oh, just the one. Do you think it could be him?"
"There's no need to be sarcastic."
"He attacked you, Lou. He tried to rip off your ear. That body last night was missing two ears . . . and a nose—which is Pendennis's trademark. What more do you need?"
"The police said . . ." she started.
"Sod what the police said. We've got to get out of here." His hands swung towards the front door in an exaggerated shooing motion. "Now, come on. Pack whatever clothes you need. I know a place we can hide . . ."
"No," she said, gripping the arms of her chair. "I can't leave. I won't."
He stared at her, incredulous. "What do you mean you can't leave? Pendennis could be here any second. He might already be here."
She felt like one of those poor families on the HV broadcasts. You saw them all the time. In the midst of floods, lava flows, insurrection and hurricanes. An interviewer on the doorstep, asking why they refused to leave. All reason weighted against them. But still they clung to the forlorn hope that their home would be spared, their valley saved. Some miracle around the corner. Some miracle that never came.
"No," she said, looking away from him. "I have responsibilities. I have animals to look after."
"Don't you understand? The man is a butchering maniac."
"No, you don't understand." She glowered at him, stabbing a finger towards his chest. "I can't just run off. Someone's got to look after them." She pointed at the window, towards her fields and animals. "It's my job. It's my life."
She could feel the catch in her throat, her lip trembling. And then Nick replied, his voice for once calm and reasoned.
"And what do you think Pendennis is going to do to them?"
Her hand flew to her mouth. Her animals! She hadn't thought. "I'll call the police. They'll protect us."
She started punching numbers on her wrist. Nothing happened. Her wrist-phone was still switched off from last night. She flicked it back on.
"Louise." Nick's hand closed around her wrist, covering the dial-pad. "They won't listen. And even if they did, they'd only protect you, not your animals."
She struggled to pull her wrist free and then stopped. He was right. To the police, animals were property, not living beings. They'd park a squad car in the yard and watch the house but not the paddocks. There were five acres of fields. Pendennis would use that. He'd get to her through her animals. Make her wake up to find a butchered corpse in the front field.
She shook her head. No, she couldn't let that happen. She'd spent her life protecting animals. She couldn't endanger them.
"We've got to go," she said, pushing him away, rising to her feet, already starting to plan the hand over. "I'll ring Karen, see if she and Jane can take the sheep and goats. There's a girl in the village who might be able to take the donkey."
She hurried towards the bureau by the door. She'd have to draw up a diet sheet. Who liked what, when and how much.
Minutes passed, maybe tens of minutes. Louise running from room to room, phoning friends and acquaintances—explaining, cajoling, begging, packing—while Nick played with her old HV set in the corner, bringing up images of Pendennis and monitoring the news reports.
"At least no one's found the body parts on my kitchen table yet," he shouted up to her as she clicked her battered suitcase shut. "We should be able to get a clear run out of Oxford."
"Which reminds me," said Louise. "Where exactly are we going?"
He didn't answer. Louise called louder. "Nick?"
Still no answer. Louise froze. She could hear the drone of conversation through the floorboards—the holovision?—but nothing else.
She hurried to the stairs—no point trying to be furtive in a house where every floorboard creaked—and flew down them. She grabbed her father's walking stick by the coat rack and burst into the lounge.
Nick was over by the holovision set. Two of him. One, a grainy head and shoulder shot floating two feet off the ground. A woman reporter was talking in the background.
"Police have yet to confirm that this is the same man they held for questioning last night but informed sources . . ."
Nick muted the commentary. He looked dazed. "They've just found a tongue and a pair of ears on my desk at college."