In his stomach now, a tightening knot. He was breathing hard and his teeth were clenched. What had been excitement had drained away, and he was in the grip of dread; dread of not finding Sid; dread of finding her body. He’d been half a second away from piling into that oncoming car: subtract an atom of luck and he’d be dead or badly injured. And whatever was going to happen to Sid would carry on happening, unless it already had. And she’d never know he’d tried to stop it.
A gunshot broke the evening in two, but it was only his engine, the knock that was a rattle reaching new heights.
And then a dull grey something shone through trees on his left, and River remembered a lake, a picnic spot. A small piece of his boyhood fell into place, and he slowed approaching the next long curve, suddenly sure there’d be a parking place here, behind a line of trees. Even as the thought formed, reality arrived to meet it: déjà vu made physical. He turned off the road, drove into the darkness, and came to a halt twenty yards from the space’s only other vehicle: silver, its registration ending XTH. The doors hung open, but there was someone in the back seat. Someone not moving.
River killed his engine, and for a second or two was aware only of how loud his breathing was.
The airbag was still in the footwell, and tangled his foot as he climbed out. His heart was beating too fast, and his legs trembled as he approached the other car, thinking No, Christ, not again. Remembering the blood on the pavement the last time Sid had died.
‘Let’s finish it here in the car,’ Sid said, and pushed the O.B.’s letter opener up through Jim’s jaw, into his head. She was surprised at how easy this was, if not as surprised as Jim. Because his seat belt was still in place he didn’t fall forward but sagged back against the car’s upholstery, and bubbled some nonsense, and died.
Jane screamed.
Sid opened her door and tumbled out.
She was away already, running along a track to the water’s edge. Speed mattered. Maybe Jane would wait to check that Jim was beyond help, but Sid already knew he was. She hadn’t even bothered trying to remove the blade, it was in so deep.
He had only been cold a few moments, but Sid guessed it was already starting to feel quite normal.
The trees thinned out, and she reached the lake. The path turned into a narrow wooden jetty, lapped by lake water, and leading to a wooden shack on stilts: a bird hide. It wasn’t much bigger than a telephone box, and Jane could probably tear it down with her bare hands. So Sid stuck to the shore, veered left, ran a few paces, then ducked among trees, which immediately attacked her, slashing her face and hands with low branches. She stopped, and they calmed down.
Her clothes were dark. She could blend into shadow. But she’d already used up a lifetime’s luck, along with her only weapon.
The look in Jim’s eyes when he’d known he was dead. There’d been outrage there, rather than fear.
All was quiet.
There were no birds, no traffic; only the fussing of the lake as the wind skated across it. You’d have thought there’d be lovers, or drinkers, or both; you’d have expected at least one small group of idiots looking for romance or similar oblivion. But there was only Sid and Jane, who’d be coming for her now, armed and with urgent intent, because this was no longer a job, it was personal. Whatever toxic bond had fused Jim and Jane, she’d avenge its sundering. So it was likely that Sid would die in this unfamiliar place, and with the thought she pressed against the tree trunk, as if trying to melt inside it, become invisible, become tree.
Tt Tt Tt said the bullet, and a gunshot broke the evening in two.
Sid yelped, but it hadn’t been a gun, had been a passing car, and she opened her mouth to scream for help, then snapped it shut. A scream would bring Jane, and it wouldn’t take Jane a moment to finish her job. Which was what Sid had become: an unfinished job. Like an unswept floor, or an unwashed dish. Fuck that, she thought. Tt Tt Tt said the bullet. Fuck that.
She could slip back onto the track and keep running. She doubted it went anywhere. It would circle the lake and bring her back where she’d started, but didn’t most paths do that? Look at her own travels. When she’d fled Cumbria she’d imagined River a place of safety. For some reason he was a fixed point among a mess of scattered detaiclass="underline" a pair of shoes in a wardrobe, beyond use, but never thrown away. Rubbish littering an office floor. Bad coffee drunk in a car at night. Why did you come here? … I couldn’t think of anywhere else. And you’re safe.
There was no fathoming what the mind kept hold of.
‘Bitch!’
She was grabbed by the arm and pulled onto the track, flung to the ground and kicked hard. She tried to roll with it, a lesson supposedly burned into bone memory on the Park’s training mats, but she landed like a bag of wet sand, the air punched out of her.
When she opened her eyes Jane was a fuzzy rim of light, which brightened and dimmed to the beat of Sid’s heart. She crouched to be sure of being heard.
‘I could put a bullet in you now. Kill you one piece at a time. But you’re still going in that water in the end, and you’re going to die with your lungs bursting. Because that was the plan.’
‘That’ and ‘plan’ were where she kept the beat: her tool the handle of her gun, her drum Sid’s head.
Tt Tt Tt.
The world was flaring grey and white, like a washed-out flashback in a creepy movie. Sid’s head hurt, as did her knees, and everywhere between.
‘So small and harmless, so fucking wounded you looked. Holding that lump of metal as if that was your only weapon.’
Another blow. Another moment of nearby lightning. Sid felt her teeth scream.
‘And all the time that fucking knife up your sleeve.’
Sid spoke, but the words came out so thickly they might have been made of mud.
Jane shook her. ‘What?’
Sid spat. ‘He helped me on with my jacket,’ she said. ‘He let me have the knife.’
Be Villanelle. Be Lara Croft.
She’d been Sid Baker, but the old one, not the new.
‘Get on your fucking feet.’
Jane dragged her back to the jetty, her gun hand round Sid’s collar, the gun itself pressed to Sid’s ear. Sid’s feet were next to useless, and seemed to slide off the earth, but progress was made.
The walkway to the bird hide was solid and new. Halfway along Jane sent her sprawling again.
‘I should gut you like a fish. Make you eat your own entrails.’
You can borrow my knife. I left it in your lover’s head. But the words wouldn’t emerge: Sid’s throat was locked.
There ought to be birdwatchers. Crews of twitchers, awaiting the dawn chorus. But it wasn’t even early yet; was still getting late.
Then Jane was kneeling beside her, one palm flat on her back, the other pulling her hair, forcing her to look up. ‘What you’ll see when you’re dying. My face, laughing at you. And all your dead friends too.’
Sid said, ‘His jaw was soft. The knife went right through.’
Jane banged her head on the woodwork, then heaved her across it, one hand still on her collar. She forced Sid’s head over the edge. The water was high and stared back at her, an ever-folding blanket laced with sequins, reflections from nowhere. Sid could only see two inches in front of her, but the view reached all the way to life’s end. And then it was gone and her head was underwater, held there by Jane’s hand.