saw nothing but Tommy, in countiess images, each one more vivid than the last, each one accusing her of betrayal. This would be her punishment for that moment of selfish weakness with Simon.
As she reached the incline above the village proper, a final police car tore by her, sending up pebbles as well as spray from the street. There was no need for the horn to clear the road. Daunted by the downpour, the less hardy thrill-seekers had already started becoming discouraged by the climb. They had begun to seek refuge, some in shops, some in doorways, others flocking into the Methodist church. Not even the diversion of blood and a corpse seemed worth the potential ruin of fine summer clothes.
Only the most resolutely curious had completed the climb. Shaking her wet hair back from her face, Deborah saw them gathered in front of a drive where a police line was set up to keep them at a distance. There, the group had fallen into a speculative silence, one broken by the hot voice of Harry Cambrey who was arguing with an implacable constable, insisting upon entrance.
Behind them on the hill, rain assailed Trenarrow's villa. Its every window was lit. Uniformed men swarmed about it. Lights flashed from the police cars parked on its circular drive.
'Shot, I heard,' someone muttered.
'Brought anyone out yet?'
'Nope.'
Deborah scanned the front of the villa, working through the men, looking for a sign. He was all right, he was fine, he had to be among them. She couldn't find him. She pushed her way through the onlookers to the police line. Childhood prayers rose to her lips and died unsaid. She made bargains with God. She asked to be punished in any other way. She asked for understanding. She admitted her faults.
She ducked under the line.
'No, you don't, miss!' The constable who had been arguing with Cambrey barked out the command from ten feet away.
'But it's-'
'Stay back!' he shouted. 'This isn't a bloody sideshow.'
Unmindful, Deborah started forward. The need to know and to be there overshadowed everything else.
'Here, you!' The constable moved towards her, readying himself to thrust her back into the crowd. As he did so, Harry Cambrey darted past him, scrambling up the drive. 'Damn!' the constable shouted. 'You! Cambrey!'
Having lost the one, he was not about to lose the other, and he gripped Deborah's arm, waving to a panda car that had pulled onto the verge. 'Take this one,' he called to the officers inside. 'The other got past me.'
'No!' Deborah struggled to free herself, feeling a rising sense of outrage at her own complete impotence. She couldn't even break the constable's grip. The more she fought him, the stronger he became.
'Miss Cotter?'
She swung around. No angel could have been more blessed a sight than the Reverend Mr Sweeney. Garbed in black, he stood beneath a tent-like umbrella, blinking solemnly at her through the rain.
'Tommy's at the villa,' she said. 'Mr Sweeney,
The cleric frowned. He squinted up the drive. 'Oh dear.' His right hand flexed open and closed upon the handle of his umbrella as he appeared to consider his options. 'Oh dear. Yes. I see.' This final statement seemed to indicate that an action had been decided upon. Mr Sweeney drew himself up to his fullest height of not quite five and a half feet and spoke to the constable who still held Deborah in a determined grip. 'You know Lord Asherton, of course,' he said authoritatively. It was a tone that would have surprised any of his parishioners who had never seen him in blackface among the Nanrunnel Players, ordering Cassio and Montano to put up their swords. 'This is his fiancee. Let her by.'
The constable eyed Deborah's bedraggled appearance. His expression made it perfecdy clear that he could hardly give credence to a relationship between her and any one of the Lynleys.
'Let her by,' Mr Sweeney repeated. ‘I’ll accompany her myself. Perhaps you ought to be more concerned with the newspaperman than with this young lady.'
The constable gave Deborah another sceptical look. She waited in torment while he made his decision. 'All right. Go on. Stay out of the way.'
Deborah's lips formed the words 'Thank you', but nothing came out. She took a few stumbling steps.
'It's all right, my dear,' Mr Sweeney said. 'Let's go up.
Take my arm. The drive's a bit slippery, isn't it?'
She did as he said, although only a part of her brain registered his words. The rest was caught up in speculation and fear. 'Please, not Tommy,' she whispered. 'Not like this. Please. I could bear anything else.'
'Now, it will be all right,' Mr Sweeney murmured in a distracted fashion. 'Indeed. You shall see.'
They slipped and slid among the crushed corollas of fuchsias as they wound their way up the narrow drive towards the front of the villa. The rain was beginning to fall less heavily, but Deborah was already soaked, so the protection of Mr Sweeney's umbrella meant very little. She shivered as she clung to his arm.
'It's a dreadful business, this,' Mr Sweeney said as if in response to her shudder. 'But it shall be all right. You'll see in a moment.'
Deborah heard the words but knew enough to dismiss them. There was no chance for
In spite of the number of men who were on the grounds, it was unnaturally quiet as they approached the villa. The crackle of a police radio was the only noise, a female dispatcher giving direction to police not far from the scene. On the circular drive beneath the hawthorn tree, three police cars sat at odd, hurried angles, as if their drivers had flung themselves out without bothering to worry about where or how they parked. In the rear seat of one of them, Harry Cambrey was engaged in a muffled shouting match with an angry constable who appeared to have handcuffed him to the interior of the car. When he saw Deborah, Cambrey forced his face to the officer's window.
'Dead!' he shouted before the constable pushed him back inside the car.
The worst was realized. Deborah saw the ambulance pulled near the front door – not as close as the police cars, for there was no need of that. Wordlessly, she clutched at Mr Sweeney's arm, but as if he read her fears he pointed to the portico.
'Look,' he urged her.
Deborah forced herself to look towards the front door. She saw him. Her eyes flew wildly over every part of his body, looking for wounds. But, other than the fact that his jacket was wet, he was quite intact – although terribly pale – talking gravely to Inspector Boscowan.
'Thank God,' she whispered.
The front door opened even as she spoke. Lynley and Boscowan stepped to one side to allow two men to carry a stretcher into the rain, a body upon it. Sheeting covered it from head to toe, strapped down as if to shield it from the rain and to protect it from the stares of the curious. Only when she saw it, only when she heard the front door close with a sound of hollow finality, did Deborah understand. Still she looked frantically at the grounds of the villa, at the brightly lit windows, at the cars, at the door. Again and again – as if the action could change an immutable reality – she sought him.
Mr Sweeney said something, but she didn't hear it. She only heard her own bargain: /
Her childhood, her life, flashed before her in an instant, leaving behind for the very first time neither anger nor pain, but instead understanding, complete and too late. She bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood, but it was not enough to quell her cry of anguish.
'Simon!' She threw herself towards the ambulance where already the body had been loaded inside.
Lynley spun around. He saw her plunging blindly through the cars. She slipped once on the slick pavement but pulled herself to her feet, screaming his name.
She threw herself on the ambulance, pulling on the handle that would open its rear door. A policeman tried to restrain her, a second did likewise. But she fought them off. She kicked, she scratched. And all the time, she kept screaming his name. High and shrieking, it was a two-syllable monody that Lynley knew he would hear – when he least wanted to hear it – for the rest of his life. A third policeman joined the attempt to subdue her, but she writhed
