Upton found her first. Hugo had gone too far to the left, Agarwal farther still. They heard him shout, and when they got to him he was straddling the grave, clear of brush now. He was holding her waist and trying to lift her, to take the strain off the rope, his head at her chest, his face drawn taut by the weight and his own distress.
“Agarwal, here, quick.” Hugo stooped, his hands forming a stirrup that Agarwal stepped into. “On three.” Hugo counted aloud and hoisted the constable high enough to loop his arms over the bough. Agarwal pulled himself up as Hugo went to help Upton, straining to hold up the limp form of the vicar. Agarwal shinned along the branch until he was directly over them and, as Hugo and Upton hoisted Kinnison as high as they could, he reached down and loosed the noose, then slipped it over her head. They laid her on the ground beside the grave that was meant for her, and Hugo put his fingertips against her neck.
“I think I feel something,” he said, though with the adrenalin shooting through his body it was hard to be sure.
Agarwal was already on the phone for an ambulance and police backup, and Upton had sprinted to the parking lot in case Walton was still there. He came back minutes later, panting.
“No sign of him. That bastard, how evil can he be?”
“He doesn’t see it that way,” Hugo said, kneeling beside Kinnison. “In fact, he sees her as the bad one, the murderer who got away with it. He’s just doing what he thinks his father would have done, should have been able to do.”
“The executioner.”
“Right.”
“You sure that’s what’s going on?”
“I am.”
“But why the grave for her? He didn’t dig one for the others.”
“Because she buried her dead husband in their garden. But forget that, we need to figure out who’s next.”
“You think there’s more?”
Hugo touched Reverend Kinnison’s throat again, sure this time he felt a pulse; her skin was certainly warm. He looked up. “I don’t know. I also don’t get Pendrith’s involvement in this. It’s like they should be on opposite sides, don’t you think?”
“Right. Pendrith wanted to let convicted killers out of prison early, and Walton wanting them all hanged. They were on the opposite ends of the law-and-order scale.”
“Unless they weren’t.” Hugo stood. “Walk with me. Agarwal, can you stay with her a moment?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
Hugo felt the burn of an idea in his mind, a flickering that he needed to nurture and coax into life, but not beside the wounded figure of Reverend Kinnison. Somehow, dealing with hypotheticals and theories, necessary though they were, seemed disrespectful within earshot of where she lay fighting for her life.
“What if their goal was the same, but they were just getting there different ways?”
“What do you mean?”
“Follow my logic, see what you think of this: for some reason, Pendrith was in league with Walton, and I can only think it was because he was doing something he didn’t want people to know about.”
“Sure, that makes sense.”
“Now, when you make a deal with the devil, sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want it to.”
“The devil can be deceitful,” Upton said. “It’s kind of his shtick.”
“Right. Walton’s sins were prompted by some kind of psychotic break, something Pendrith couldn’t necessarily know the extent of and certainly couldn’t control.”
“OK, keep going …”
“I don’t think Pendrith foresaw any killing. He’s an MP, for God’s sake, an elected politician. No, I think he was running a sneaky little public relations campaign with Walton, almost an anti-public-relations campaign.”
“Now you’ve lost me.”
Hugo looked out over the fields as the distant wail of a siren cut through the murky morning. “Basically, I think they were both after the same thing. The return of the death penalty.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Before he became an MP, Pendrith was in favor of it but abandoned that position because it made him unelectable. It goes without saying that Walton wanted it restored, too.”
“So how do you explain Pendrith’s bill to get killers released?”
“Simple reverse psychology. He probably thought they’d come out and be a danger to society, maybe even hoped they would.”
Upton nodded. “I’ll admit that there’s nothing gets the people stirred up as a killer released from prison who kills again. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.”
“Right. But I think Walton messed with that scheme, had his own vision of justice that got in the way.”
“Those suicides. Sean Bywater hanged himself after being released.”
“Right. Except I’m betting you Harry Walton had a hand in that. If I remember the story, Bywater supposedly carved the word SORRY into the wall.”
“Seems appropriate given what he did to his victims,” Upton said.
“True, but if you’re Walton it’s also a nice way to avoid having to forge a suicide note. And Bywater isn’t the only one who died after being released.”
Upton snapped his fingers, excited now. “Walton’s car. Remember where it was found?”
“Church parking lot, or a parking lot owned by the church.”
“Exactly. Not a church but a halfway house run by the Church of England.”
“So to find out who burned up in the car, we just need to see who checked in to the halfway house in the last week or two and hasn’t been seen for a few days.”
The siren was loud now, and Hugo could hear several more close behind.
“Here comes the cavalry,” Upton said. “Let’s head back.”
They wound their way between a dozen headstones to where Agarwal sat on the ground holding Kinnison’s hand, talking softly to her, his voice reassuring, encouraging. Hugo knelt again, touched her throat, and shook his head. He stayed there for a moment, then stood and spoke quietly to Upton. “Weak pulse. We have to hope there’s not too much structural damage or, God forbid, brain damage.”
“God forbid. We also have to figure out what’s next,” Upton said in a low voice. “Is he just going to keep killing?”
Hugo watched Agarwal tuck his coat tightly around Reverend Kinnison as the ambulance pulled into the parking lot and its siren died. “I don’t think so,” he said to Upton. “Honestly, if I had to guess, I’d say he’s going out with a bang. He knows the game is up and he’ll want as much publicity, as much media coverage, as he can muster.”
“So he’s going to make one more kill?”
Hugo nodded. “But I can’t imagine—”
The lawmen moved aside as two paramedics passed by and went to Kinnison, crouching over her as they went to work.
“You need to understand that even though we call profiling behavioral science, the truth is that much of it is guesswork based on experience.”
“So give me your best guess.”
“I think he’s got one more kill in him. Someone that will bring the newspapers running and have the TV cameras close by to capture the aftermath.” He held Upton’s eye. “Maybe even capture the murder itself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
They made no promises, but the paramedics said she’d live, prompting Hugo and the two English policemen to exchange relieved looks. After Reverend Kinnison had been gently laid on a stretcher, the three followed slowly behind and decided to head back to their inn to discuss what to do next. And maybe get some coffee.
They made small talk in the dining room as their host, the stocky and smiling publican, poured fresh coffee and called back orders for breakfast to his wife in the kitchen. As his cup was refilled, Hugo wanted to get to the one question they needed to address: Who was next on Walton’s list?