Instead she turned and ran. There was nowhere to go. The gate ahead was unclimbable and on either side stretched that wide swathe of desolation which TecSec had ripped through the noble old wood. Even dry it would have been unattractive terrain, but drenched by the autumn rains, its surface a morass of glutinous mud pocked with water-filled craters, only a madman, or one under threat from a madman, would advance across its treacherous surface.
Ambler paused and glanced back. Perhaps she was contemplating surrender. But whatever she saw in Patten's face persuaded her that an insane valour is sometimes the better part of a dangerous discretion.
She turned and ran into the wasteland.
For a second Wield thought that like some story-book fay she was skimming lightfoot across the gelatinous mud, leaving nothing more than the merest splash of water vapour to mark her path. Then he realized that she must be following the line of unretrieved, perhaps unretrievable, duckboards laid to facilitate passage to the crater where Wendy Walker had encountered the bones.
This was serious. With the removal of so much material for Dr Death's sluices, the crater now was huge and immersion there could lead to a fate far worse than George Headingley's heavy cold.
Interestingly, the same thought seemed to have occurred to Patten. Rage drained from his face to be replaced by real concern, and he called after the fleeing woman, 'Jane, don't be daft, lass. There's nowhere to go. Take care. Come on back, no one's going to harm you.'
It was impossible to tell if the woman heard him above the howl of the storm. Wield came alongside and added his voice to the plea.
'Miss Ambler,' he bellowed, at almost Dalziel decibel level. 'It's OK. We know you've had real provocation. There's no real harm done. Head on back here and we'll soon sort it out.'
The woman had stopped, whether because she'd heard or merely reached the limit of the duckboards was impossible to say. The surviving trees of Wanwood, pressing like caged football supporters against the nethermost security fence, rocked and surged in a fury of sound which a fanciful mind might have heard as a protest against the death of their fellows. A tremendous blast unsteadied the woman. She staggered, recovered, staggered again. Then she was gone.
'Jesus!' exploded Patten. Then he was running along the duckboards, followed more cautiously by Wield.
The excavations had turned the crater into a small tarn filled with impenetrably brown water. As they reached its edge, the woman surfaced gasping for air and flailing her arms wildly. There was seven or eight feet of water beneath her, Wield guessed, bottomed by God knew what depth of sucking, clinging mud. That would be the killer. Get your feet stuck in that and there'd be no kicking free.
'Float,' he yelled. 'On your back. Just float!'
Perhaps she heard him, perhaps it was just exhaustion and the paralysing effect of the cold water, but she stopped flailing and lay backwards on the surface. Patten, on one knee like a Victorian suitor, reached out his right hand. Wield grabbed the other to give him support. Ambler saw the outstretched hand, reached for it, their index fingers touched like God's and Adam's, then the wind drove a small wave into her gasping mouth and she choked and vanished under once again.
Seconds passed. One. Two. Three…
'Shit,' said Patten. 'I'll have to go in.'
He began kicking his shoes off. Thank God for action man! thought Wield fervently, withdrawing all his previous reservations about the breed. Then right in the centre of the tarn he saw a movement in the waters, like the turbulence in the pool at Lourdes which presages the moment of miracle.
'There she is!' he screamed.
And next moment like some creature of the deep too violently aroused from its age-long slumber, Jane Ambler burst upwards with such force that it seemed as if she was ambitious to stand on the surface of the water. It was a manoeuvre to win a gold medal at synchronized swimming; and incredibly, horribly, she was not disqualified by lack of a partner. In her arms was the figure of a man, his head flopping backwards like a chrysanthemum on a broken stalk, and as the brown water drained through the sodden locks, Wield recognized Jimmy Howard.
He only had a split second to register the knowledge and the reason it gave for Patten's concern at seeing the girl plunging into the water. Then a clenched fist caught him on the back of his neck and he tumbled forward into the muddy depths.
As he sank, he thought, I should have worked harder to get Edwin out of his bad temper this morning. He'll think I got myself drowned on purpose just to spite him!
The thought was so absurd he might have laughed if that wouldn't have involved imbibing another gallon of this foul liquid. Instead he kicked out and burst to the surface, gasping in great mouthfuls of windy air. Jane Ambler was quite close. He was pleased to see she had jilted her grisly escort, and he reached out and took her in the prescribed life-saving hold. Shock seemed to have rendered her catatonic and she made no attempt to struggle.
He glanced towards the duckboards. Patten was crouched there, his gaze fixed on them. It didn't need a novelist's imagination to read what was going through his mind. Was there any chance of getting away with sending them to join Jimmy Howard at the bottom of the crater? And with one down, what did it matter how short the odds were anyway? That was the military mind. Limited by its elevation of death to a first rather than a last option.
He paddled to the far side of the crater and tried to get a supporting grip on the wall. Muddy clay came away in his hand. There was neither exit nor support there. The water was bitterly cold. He couldn't keep the pair of them afloat for long. It would have to be the duckboard and the hope that Patten's mind still had some hold on the realities of the situation.
The man had stood up and was looking back towards the drive. Perhaps he's just going to make a run for it, thought Wield hopefully. But no, he was kneeling down again, reaching out a threatening hand as Wield got closer. Grab it and jerk him into the water? thought the sergeant. Then drown the bastard!
He might have a chance. But he doubted if Ambler could survive if he let her go.
He was very close now.
Too close. As he opened his mouth to start the unpromising reasoning process, the hand shot out the extra inches and seized him by the collar. He drew in a huge breath of air, but instead of the expected thrust into the drowning depths, he felt himself being pulled alongside the duck-boards.
God is all powerful, he thought. He can make even the military mind see reason.
Then he turned his head sideways and saw that it wasn't seeing reason that had made Patten change his plans, it was the sight of Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe advancing along the boards like gods out of a machine.
Back on terra firma, with Patten cuffed and on his way to a cell, Wield, showered and dried and wearing the only clothes available which were the hated TecSec uniform, drank a cup of tea liberally laced with Batty's Glenmorangie which Dalziel had liberated from the doctor's sideboard.
'He won't mind,' said Dalziel. 'Soul of generosity, that fellow.'
'Has he been told what's gone off?' asked Wield.
'Not yet,' said Dalziel. 'Thought I'd leave it till I see if we've got enough to nick him, then I won't need to be polite to the sod any more.'
He filled Wield in on the hypothesis he and Pascoe had put together.
'But it's not going to be easy to prove without an admission,' he concluded.
'Or hard evidence.'
'Oh aye. Or hard evidence.' He regarded Wield shrewdly. 'Got anything in mind?'
'Jane Ambler could be worth talking to,' said Wield.
He hadn't had time yet to go into the details of the woman's sabotage.
'You reckon? Then let's go see her. She's lying down in the medical room with Novello waiting for the ambulance.'
'I'll catch you up,’ said Wield. 'Something I need from the car.'
He went outside. Ambler's Polo had been driven back up to the house to clear the drive. He opened the passenger door and started searching through the holdall on the seat. There wasn't a great deal in it – obviously 'collecting her things' had merely been a ruse to get back inside Wanwood – and there was only one envelope. Handling it carefully, he glanced inside. It contained half a dozen film negatives. He held them up to the light and
