there-and surveillance. We've also just picked up Doris Carlton-Jones in Dover.' 'No sign of Sara?' 'No. Maybe her disguise was more convincing.' 'And her face more changed.' 'What were you doing at Sternwood Castle?' I gave her a quick run-through. She let out a long sigh when I'd finished. 'Jesus, Matt. When will the killing stop?' 'We didn't kill anyone tonight.' 'So you say.' 'Don't worry, I taped the whole thing. And thanks for the vote of confidence.' She laughed bitterly. 'You're a long way from getting one of those.' 'End of conversation then,' I said, and broke the connection. Rog and Pete were pretending not to have overheard. My phone rang. I didn't recognize the number. 'Matt, it's me.' 'Andy! Thank Christ! Are you okay? Where are you?'
'Yes to the first question. Where are we?' I heard someone else speak. 'Blidbean in Kent. But, listen, you're not going to.'
'Blidbean?' I said. 'Never heard of it. What's the nearest-'
'Shut the fuck up, Matt!' he yelled. 'I've got Lucy with me. Sara and her mother grabbed her.'
My veins had filled with ice. 'Lucy? Is she all right?' I asked hoarsely.
'Yes, in a minute you can speak to her, but there's something you have to sort first. Tell Karen that your mother and Caroline need help.' I listened, then told Pete to call Karen, repeating the address of the safe house in East Grinstead that Lucy had remembered. Then I spoke to my daughter.
'What happened, darling?'
'I don't know who it was,' she said, the words spilling out in a babble. I caught 'motorbike helmet,' 'sprayed in the face' and 'woke up with Andy staring at me.'
I didn't scare her by asking anything about Sara. How had she found them? Lucy actually sounded over the worst. I knew Andy would have helped on that count, and she told me that the farmer's wife had given her clean clothes and something nice to eat. Apparently there were some very sweet kittens, too, could she have one? I said that her mother would have to rule on that.
As I was talking, Rog was driving toward the motorway at full pelt. Boney had briefed Karen and not long after we'd reached the M4, she called me back.
'We were lucky,' she said. 'There was a bomb squad unit only a few minutes away from East Grinstead.'
I felt my stomach cartwheel. 'A bomb squad unit?' 'Someone-you can guess who-had fitted bomb- belts to them both. The timers had been set for midnight.' I looked at my watch. It was half-past eleven. 'Shit,' I said. 'Close one. Are Fran and Caroline all right?' 'They've been taken to hospital, but I gather they were conscious, just drowsy. They'd been sprayed with some kind of knockout gas. Rings a bell, eh?' 'Yup. Thanks, Karen.' 'I take it you've turned back and are waiting for me at the castle.' 'Em, no. We're going to pick up Lucy and Andy.' There was silence for a while. 'All right, Matt. But I'll be expecting you and your friends in my office at nine tomorrow.' 'Do I need a lawyer?' 'I'd have thought you'd already have instructed one.' She hung up. I'd completely forgotten about my impending manslaughter charge. Thirty The night continued to be a busy one. We picked up Andy and Lucy in a deserted part of Kent and drove to the hospital in East Grinstead. Caroline was out of bed. She wasn't talking to me, though she did behave in an appropriately maternal way to Lucy. I sat next to my mother, who was still lying down, her face pale. 'I'm sorry about all this,' I said. 'How do you feel?' 'I'm all right, dear. It's the gas. I still feel a bit dizzy.' She looked at me. 'It was her, wasn't it?' 'Probably.' 'And she hasn't been caught?' I shook my head. 'They may still get her.' 'You don't really believe that, do you, Matt?' I shrugged. 'Sara isn't omnipotent. Andy could have caught her tonight, but he concentrated on getting Lucy out of her clutches.' 'Good for him,' she murmured, her eyelids fluttering as she dropped off again. I hadn't managed to tell her that Slash rescued Lucy without knowing who she was. That made him even more of a hero in my eyes.
Lucy appeared on the other side of the bed, having been passed fit by the doctors. She bent over and gave her grandmother a kiss.
'Are you okay, then?' I asked.
'They want me to stay the night in case I have a reaction to the gas.' She looked at me apologetically. 'Mum wants to talk to you now.'
On the way to the private room that my ex-wife had got for herself, I prepared for my hearing to be assaulted. Instead, Caroline was calm and collected.
'If you ever allow anything like that to happen to Lucy or me again,' she said, 'I will personally detach your scrotum and its contents from your supposedly he-man body.'
There was more but, when Caroline showed no sign of stopping, I went to make sure that Andy was okay. He'd been given several stitches to his forehead, but his skull hadn't been fractured.
'Bloody hell, Slash,' I said. 'How did you manage to stay conscious, never mind open that miniknife and cut through the rope?'
'No sweat,' he said. 'They breed us tough in New Jersey.'
Karen chose that moment to step through the cubicle curtains.
'Hi, doll,' Andy said with a grin. 'How's it hanging?'
I managed to swallow my laughter. The American really was a hero for talking to her like that. We left him and went outside.
'Any sign of Sara?' I asked.
Karen shook her head. 'We're still checking, but.' Her words trailed away and she ran her eyes over me. 'Where are your weapons?' I feigned innocence. 'And where are Rog and Pete?' 'I'm not sure.' That was partly true. Pete had gone off in a taxi to pick up his Cherokee, taking all our gear with him. He was somewhere between East Grinstead and Bromley. Rog, however, was out in the car park. I didn't mention that. She laughed. 'Honestly, Matt, what do you take me for? Someone blasted their way into Sternwood Castle and several shots were fired in that awful cave. I suppose you're going to tell me the earl and Alistair Bing did all that.' I remembered the tape. 'Em, no. But I promise we had no choice.' 'The AC will be the judge of that, and you'll need to convince the local force, too.' I raised my shoulders. 'Piece of cake. Are you okay?' She shook her head at me. 'I'm at the end of my tether.' 'You took the words right out of my mouth,' I said, putting my arm around her. 'Isn't that a song by Meat Loaf?' she asked, shaking free of me but managing to smile wanly. 'It is,' I said. 'You always did have a worrying taste in music.' She stopped and faced me. 'Don't think you're in the clear, Matt. There are things ordinary citizens can't do.' 'Like murder and mutilate innocent crime writers, spray knockout gas into people's faces, attach bombs to them and bury people alive?' I asked.
'And you believe that's a valid justification for taking the law into your hands?'
'No,' I said, taking hold of both her hands. 'But this is.' I kissed her on the lips, and eventually she responded. By raising her leg to my groin.
'Don't take advantage of me when I'm on duty,' she said, her voice softer than her knee.
I stepped back and watched her walk away. It hadn't been necessary that she came to meet me. The fact that she had suggested that we weren't completely washed up.
I said good-night to Lucy before Rog and I went back to London.
For the rest of the night, Meat Loaf had no chance. There was only one song playing repeatedly in my head. It was by Bob Dylan and it bore the name of my former lover and perhaps future nemesis, Sara. Thirty-One Andy, Pete and Rog showed up at New Scotland Yard the next morning to give statements, as did I. The VCCT threw the kitchen sink at us. We were questioned on our own by Taff Turner and a young sergeant called Amelia Browning. She was smart and almost got me to contradict myself several times. Then the assistant commissioner stepped in and interrogated me himself, but I still didn't change my story. I was charged with the manslaughter of Lauren Cuthbertson, but my lawyer didn't think it would go to trial. There were plenty of people who had seen the dead woman murder Jeremy Andrewes and attack me.
Doris Carlton-Jones refused to say a word, presumably forewarned by Sara. That left her at the mercy of the detectives and prosecutors, but I wasn't complaining-she could have made life difficult for me and Andy if she'd accused us of impersonating police officers. Then again, she had a lot of explaining to do herself, not least about her husband's skull. Then came the funerals. Karen warned me not to attend, but I felt it was my duty. She felt it was hers, too, so we went to four of them together. Two of the dead passed without ceremony. Lauren Cuthbertson had no family willing or able to arrange a service-so much for Sara and her birth mother's feelings for her. Sandra Devonish's mother and father collected her body from the morgue. Her funeral would take place in Texas. Karen said they seemed bewildered rather than grief-stricken. Not for long, I suspected. I decided to steer clear of Earl Sternwood's service; according to one of the newspapers, it was 'pagan in the extreme,' whatever that meant. And I left Alistair Bing/Adrian Brooks to his mother to bury-I hoped without any memorial stone.
The first funeral we attended was Mary Malone's. It took place in a churchyard in Wiltshire, where her
