skies, blue waters and a shepherd boy sitting under an olive tree on a sun-cracked hillside. She got dressed, tidied up, left everything as she would have liked to find it on her return, locked the door carefully behind her.
Mrs Gilpin was coming up the stairs with her morning milk.
'Off to work then’ she said.
'No, I'm not working today’ said Rye smiling. 'I've been admiring that lovely window box of yours. It's so clever of you to get such colours in the middle of winter, and I thought I'd drive out to that big garden centre at Carker and see if I could pick up anything as nice.'
Mrs Gilpin, unused to her neighbours being happy to exchange more than the briefest of greetings with her, flushed at the compliment and said, 'If you want any help, donlt hesitate to ask.'
'Thank you. I won't’ said Rye.
She ran down the stairs, happy in the knowledge that every word of the exchange would be imprinted on the magnetic tape of Mrs Gilpin's mind, and a little bit sorry that she had never gone out of her way to show the woman a friendly face before.
Until she met her neighbour, she hadn't had the faintest idea where she was going, but now she knew. And she knew why, though it wasn't till she crossed the town boundary and set her car climbing sedately up the gentle slope which led to the brow of Roman Way that she formulated the knowledge. At the top, she pulled on to the verge and waited.
Below her stretched the old Roman road, running arrow straight down an avenue of ancient beeches for nearly all of the five miles to the village of Carker. Down there she had sat in wait for the boy with the bazouki, watching as the light of his motorbike raced towards her, then switching on her own headlights and driving into his path.
Of all her victims, he perhaps was the one she regretted most. He had been young, and innocent, with no guile in his heart, and music at his fingertips. She hadn't killed him, but she had caused his death and in her madness read that as her licence to kill.
If she could bring someone back to life…
The thought made her feel disloyal to Sergius, her brother whom she'd also killed with her driving, though not deliberately, simply by selfishness and neglect.
But he would understand.
She waited till the road ahead was empty. In her mirror she saw a distant vehicle coming up behind her. Could it be…? Yes, it was!
A yellow AA van.
What more fitting witness could she ask!
But a witness to what? Here was a problem. How could you have an accident on a perfectly straight and traffic-free stretch of road?
Yet somehow it didn't feel like a problem.
She set off down Roman Way, her foot hard on the accelerator.
As her speed increased, she felt time slowing, so that the beech trees which should have been blurring by her were moving in sedate procession. This was part of that aura which had preceded her terrible deeds, the same kind of aura which in clinical terms often preceded the onset of epilepsy or other kinds of seizure. In her present case it could be either, the tumour at its destructive task or the harbinger of her final killing. She would on the whole prefer her medical condition not to be a factor in her death. She couldn't imagine it being a comfort to Hat to know he would have lost her anyway, and she could imagine how he would feel to learn she had been hiding the truth about her health from him.
But if it had to be, it had to be.
Then she saw the deer heading towards the road across the field to her left.
It was, she presumed, moving very fast, but to her leisurely gaze it advanced at a slow lope.
She recalled driving with Hat to Stang Tarn when a deer had appeared on the road ahead of them, sending his little MG skidding on to the grass verge and triggering memories which had come bubbling out, bringing her and Hat dangerously close, making her contemplate for the first time ever – and already too late – the possibility of happiness.
Happiness she had had, however brief, however t tainted. A deer had started it and now a deer would end it.
This was good. Hat would remember, and such patterns of fate are a comfort to the stricken. We grasp at anything to give us evidence that what seems meaningless has meaning, what seems final is only a pause before a new beginning.
The deer reached the hedgerow and flew over it in a movement of such beauty her heart stopped at the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Then it was on the road. She swung the wheel over, touched the brake lightly to give a touch of evidential authenticity to the AA man who was now within sight, and careered towards the far side of the road with scarcely any loss of speed. Yet in her time-out world, the approach to the tree that was to kill her felt so slow that she could make out clearly its bruised and scarred trunk and knew with a burst of joy that here was the very same beech beneath which the bazouki boy had died.
Even the dying which the coroner would describe as instantaneous took long enough for her to see the line it was necessary to cross. On one side knelt Hat looking pale and stricken and on the other stood Sergius and the bazouki boy, overlapping and melding, smiling in welcome.
Then it was dark, and in the control room of Praesidium Security where Hat had been posted to follow the progress of the van dispatched to collect the Hoard, everything went dark too.
'What's up with you?' demanded Berry, the manager, looking with concern at the young DC who had risen from his chair and was clasping both hands to his pallid face.
'I don't know. Nothing. Didn't the power fail?'
'Eh? I think I'd have noticed.'
'No, look there was something… see there! The signal's gone.'
Berry glanced at the computerized map, smiled and started counting.
'… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… there it is!'
A flashing light had appeared on the screen heading south.
'It's the Estotiland underpass’ he said. 'Shields the signal. Usually takes between twelve and twenty seconds, depending on traffic. Any road, no need to get your knickers in a twist. It's on the way back with the Hoard on board that these master criminals of thine are going to strike, not on the way down with an empty van. Didn't they teach you owt at police college?'
Hat didn't answer. It felt like something had been snuffed out in his mind. Was it possible to have a stroke at his age? But there was no paralysis of one side of his body, no twisting of his mouth, no sense that the link between thought and speech had been lost. Yet something had been lost.
'You don't look so grand,' said Berry, observing him more closely. 'Sit down, lad, and I'll bring you a cup of tea. You've not been near anyone with this Kung Flu, have you?'
'What? Yes. The DCI's got it.'
That'll likely be it then. How old's your DCI? I've heard it can be a killer.'
But Peter Pascoe in fact was feeling much much better. For the first time in five days he'd woken up without feeling he had been unwillingly summoned from the grave, and the only trace his mind held of the troubled visions of the past few days had something to do with a Scotch pie.
He had been sleeping alone, for his comfort and Ellie's protection. He pushed back the duvet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Excellent. No dizziness, no sudden overheating of the body. The door opened and Ellie came in with a tray. 'Well, hello, Lazarus,' she said. 'What's this? Urgent call of nature?'
'Something like that. What did you feed me last night? I've got dim recollections of a Scotch pie. I think there's been a miracle cure.'
'Scotch pie? No, you're still delirious. Stand up.' He stood up and fell over.
'Just a little miracle then. Do you want a lift into bed or are you going to levitate?' Sulkily he crawled back beneath the duvet. 'But I really do feel much better,' he protested. 'Of course you do. Why is it your bouts of illness always follow such a hyperbolical parabola? A simple cold takes you from death's door to the Olympic stadium in one mighty leap.'
