Evil for Evil Page 21

  The look Kerr gave her was profoundly discouraging. Lissa’s eyes grew big with hurt and she withdrew into pained silence. Matt’s face was expressionless.

  Christie was working at the stove as the others sat at the kitchen table. She had the sort of headache you get on oppressive days that need a storm to clear the atmosphere, and she was afraid one would break any minute now. She’d have given supper a miss if it hadn’t been her turn to cook.

  She brought the plates over, then sat down herself. The sausages and mash hadn’t really worked: the mash was lumpy and there was too much Bisto in the gravy. The men ate stolidly, but Lissa, tasting it with a fastidious grimace, pushed the plate away with a little martyred sigh. Christie wouldn’t have minded a ‘God, this is disgusting!’ – would have agreed, readily enough – but at this typically Lissa reaction she felt a flood of loathing for the woman.

  It was Kerr who broke the silence with a conciliatory remark about the progress of the rut, as if he was afraid of going too far. Matt’s reply, though, was brief and cold, and when they disagreed on precisely when the stags should be put to the hinds, the argument developed an edge and bitterness that was out of all proportion.

  With a sick, cold feeling, Christie realised this wasn’t what they were really arguing about. They were squaring up over Lissa, like a couple of stags, neither quite ready to make a challenge. She had believed Matt cared little for his wife – could she, hideously, be wrong?

  She felt she was struggling to breathe. The moment the men had finished she got up, put out yoghurts and biscuits and cheese, then cleared the plates, scraping the uneaten food off her own and Lissa’s and stacking the dishwasher before she said, as lightly as she could, ‘I’m just going out for some fresh air. I’ve a bit of a headache.’

  It was almost dark outside. The nights were drawing in fast now and over in Innellan the lighted windows and the street lamps made a bright chain round the edge of the bay, but it was too early for stars. There was a chill wind blowing and Christie shivered even as the fresh night air cooled her cheeks. Her nerve endings still felt charged with tension, as if her fingers might crackle if she touched metal. So many emotions, swirling around – some of them her own.

  Perhaps it was her anger that was making her head ache: anger at Lissa, anger at Kerr, anger at herself most of all. Anger, and humiliation.

  She’d seen all the signs of a broken marriage: separate bedrooms, Lissa’s relationship with Kerr, Matt’s indifference to his wife, almost bordering on dislike. Had Christie read it wrong? Was this just a kind of marriage she didn’t understand? Most dreadfully of all, had Lissa been right in accusing her of being a dumb romantic, cherishing a teenage-style crush? Had Lissa and Matt talked about how to handle it – had a laugh about it, even?

  She clenched her hands so that the nails bit into her palms. She’d always had problems with rejection. Maybe she should leave now, before Matt told her, oh so sympathetically, that she must leave.

  Like hell she would! Christie was a soldier and she’d been in plenty of fights with steeper odds than this one. She wouldn’t give in until there was nothing more she could do.

  She mustn’t let it get to her. She’d been in a very bad place before and if she wasn’t careful she’d be back there. Very deliberately, she unclenched her fists, spread out her cramped fingers and shook the tension out of her hands.

  Perhaps she needed the island cure again. She could ask for the keys to the bothy and just retreat. But working out her emotions like she had last time had attracted an audience – she couldn’t do that again.

  The island was no more than a dark outline tonight and the stretch of water between was inky black under the lightless sky. It looked menacing, not like her beloved refuge at all, and Christie gave a little shudder, with the odd feeling she had heard described as a goose walking over your grave.

  There was a smirr of rain on the wind now, and there were clouds gathering too, grey purple in the night sky. She considered going to the pub, but she didn’t fancy a wet walk back. The company in the house wasn’t appealing either, but she could slip upstairs to her room unseen.

  As she walked back, she saw that though the light in the kitchen was still on there was no one there. There was a light behind the drawn curtains of one of the rooms in Kerr’s little flat between the kitchen and the sitting room, and she wondered if he and Lissa were together. Matt had probably withdrawn to his office and she thought of going there to speak to him. But no, everything at the moment was just too complicated, too murky. She went in through the kitchen then headed upstairs.

  There was a light under Lissa’s bedroom door, next to her own. Christie paused, wondering whether, perhaps, Kerr was beginning to back off. And if he did, would Matt and Lissa make an effort to save the marriage?

  Matt Lovatt was sleeping soundly when the rain came sweeping in a little after midnight. He didn’t hear it – or the tinkle of glass breaking at the back of the house in his office, or the muffled crump! as the petrol caught fire.

  And nor did anyone else.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Georgia Stanley was sleeping only fitfully. She’d wrenched her shoulder manhandling a keg too enthusiastically, and as she turned over a stab of pain shot through her, waking her completely. She groaned, failed to find a comfortable position and decided painkillers were the answer. Still half asleep, she plodded through to the bathroom, found the Neurofen and ran the tap for a glass of water. It was only as she stood at the basin that she looked out of the window above it.

  It took a moment for her to register what she was seeing. There was a light in a downstairs window at the end of the back wing of the Lovatts’ house, a strange, flickering yellow light. Flames! The room was on fire, and all the other windows were still in darkness. With a cry of dismay she dropped the glass, not even noticing as it shattered in the basin, and ran back to her bedroom, stumbling in her haste, and dialled 999.

  The flames had found the pitch-pine panelling in Matt Lovatt’s study and attacked it greedily, licking at the heavily varnished surface, speeding along, up, behind, as the resiny wood caught. The room became an inferno; a window broke and with a roar that sounded like a cry of triumph the flames billowed out and up.

  Inside, too, it was making its way behind the plaster of the walls, devouring the flimsy laths and reaching up into the gap between the floors. As the old, dry beams began to smoulder, the lethal black smoke crept and swirled. A joist collapsed, breaking down the ceiling below. The rest of the windows had broken now too; the office desk, reduced to a skeleton outline, crumpled to the floor.

  In his room off the corridor above, Matt Lovatt was heavily asleep, deep in a disturbing dream where he couldn’t move or cry out, where he was sinking deeper, deeper—

  Someone was shaking him, moving those helpless limbs, shouting, shouting. He was too tired to be bothered, too tired. He sank back again, but the shaking and the shouting went on. He was being pulled upright, and at last he struggled to the surface. It was Christie, yelling, swearing, trying to haul him out of bed. His head was swimming, he felt sick …

  Christie was wrapping a wet towel around his face, then around her own. She was choking as well – on the smoke, the smoke that was making him cough too now. Fire! That was what she was telling him – and the adrenaline of fear gave him the strength to stand, to stagger across the room. The floor under his bare feet was hot and Christie was urging him on, the fear in her own voice showing, but his lungs were labouring, his limbs didn’t want to obey him and moving was hard, so hard and so slow.

  The light in the upper hall was on, and there was more air here; the smoke was wispy rather than dense. His eyes were streaming and smarting, but at least he could breathe and his head became a little clearer as Christie supported him down the stairs. The fire was below in the wing behind him, where he could hear the cracking of timbers and a crash as something down there fell; it would soon spread across the stairwell to the rooms at the front.

 
‘Lissa?’ he croaked.

  ‘It’s all right. I told her before I came for you. Come on, come on, we’re nearly there.’

  He supported himself against a wall as Christie fumbled with the bolts on the front door and at last flung it wide. Air, pure fresh air, damp with the teeming rain outside, poured through the opening and he tore off the towel and gulped it as if it was water and he was dying of thirst. Christie shoved him out, then followed and collapsed on to the grass, burying her face in it, groaning and clenching her fists.

  Matt barely noticed. He felt as if his head might split; the nausea was making him dizzy and his sight was blurred. He sat down on the wet grass, barely noticing the rain that was soaking him through.

  But a thought forced its way into his clouded brain. The bolts! Christie had unbolted the door – but Lissa would have done that, surely, on her way out? Where was his wife? Had she gone through to the back to warn Kerr? In the flat by the kitchen he should have been far enough from the site of the blaze to be safe, and they could have left the house that way. Matt screwed up his sore eyes to focus better in the lurid, demonic light.

  He could see Kerr now, coming out of the kitchen door on crutches; apparently he hadn’t taken time to put on his artificial leg. But he seemed to be alone.

  ‘Lissa?’ Matt yelled, and Kerr shook his head, made a shrugging gesture.

  Oh God! He looked back at the house. Thin threads of smoke were coming out of the front door now. He could hear shouts as people came hurrying from the village, but this couldn’t wait and Kerr, in his present state, couldn’t help. Matt grabbed up the towel, wound it round his face again and went back into the building he had just escaped.

  The lights gave a flicker, and then went out. In the thick darkness, the only illumination came through the staircase window, from the wing which was well ablaze. The noise was terrifying, like an express train; the smoke on the landing now was no better than the corridor had been.

  He took the stairs two at a time and burst into Lissa’s bedroom, shouting her name. Incredibly, she was asleep – or had the toxic fumes got to her already?

  She was still breathing, but impossible to rouse. Matt began to gag and the carbon monoxide headache was almost blinding now. If he lost consciousness, they’d both die.

  Lissa was, at least, small and slight. He grabbed her in a fireman’s lift and struggled out on to the landing. Her flimsy nightdress caught on the finial at the top of the staircase, jerking him to a standstill. Confused, he struggled, then almost lost his balance as the cloth suddenly ripped. His head was swimming, every breath a struggle in the thickening air, and he could feel his legs buckling. With the flames outside casting a flickering, red, angry light, the dark pit of the stairwell below looked like a vision of hell.

  Smoke rises. Crawl, he told himself – he wasn’t sure his legs could hold him up much longer anyway. He put Lissa down, then collapsed beside her, and began to inch like a caterpillar backwards down the stairs, dragging Lissa with him. Her head bumped on each step, but there was nothing else he could do. The wet towel had fallen off at some point and his lungs hurt as he sucked in the sooty air, desperately seeking oxygen. Willpower alone was keeping him going; one more pull, one more, just another one …

  He was nearing the bottom now and the air from the open door began to reach him at last. Kerr, impotent on his crutches, was standing in the hall, shouting.

  ‘Keep going, keep going, you’re nearly there! Can you make it?’

  ‘Have to,’ Matt groaned. He reached the threshold and with a mighty effort stood up, pulled Lissa out of the house then reeled over to fall on the wet grass. He was retching and coughing but not caring about the rain, not caring about his smarting eyes, his painful throat, his shattering headache, his churning stomach, just being thankful to breathe. And miraculously, that was the sound of sirens now as fire engines went screaming through Innellan and hurtled up the drive, men leaping from them and running out the hoses.

  A fireman sprinted over and lifted Lissa from where she lay inert on the gravel, picking her up as if she weighed nothing at all and carrying her to where another was spreading a tarpaulin out on the grass in the beam of the lights they were setting up. They had an oxygen mask on her face in seconds – big, gentle, efficient men.

  They started playing fountains of water on the flames, the fire hissing and spitting defiance as clouds of smoke changed to steam. Hoses were being trained on the main part of the building as well, soaking the roof and the walls. The wing was all but gone already; they were working to save the rest of the house.

  Matt’s pyjamas were sodden, his hair was plastered to his face and he was chilled through, but he still felt too shaky to get up off the wet grass. Christie, similarly groggy, was sitting up now too, looking ghastly.

  He managed a smile. ‘Well done, soldier,’ he rasped, patting her hand. ‘We’d have died in there, if it hadn’t been for you.’

  She bit her lip. ‘You nearly did die. I-I didn’t realise Lissa was still inside. I banged on the door and yelled at her, so I just thought …’

  ‘Of course,’ Matt said soothingly. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for that.’ But there was just a trace of hesitation in his voice as he said it.

  Innellan, wakened by the sirens of fire engines, three police cars and an ambulance, turned out in force to observe this latest sensation. Fire, raging uncontrollably, has a compelling attraction and people, huddled under umbrellas, stood mesmerised in little groups, talking in suitably hushed voices. Some had come down from the chalets as well, Derek Sorley among them and Elena Tindall too, with the hood of her new parka pulled up against the rain. On the further side of the crowd Cal Findlay stood silent, a little detached from the others. There was no sign of the Donaldsons, father or son.

  They watched as Melissa Lovatt was taken away in an ambulance, and paramedics escorted her husband, Kerr Brodie and Christie Jack, blackened with smoke, soaked to the skin and wrapped in survival blankets, over to the Smugglers Inn where Georgia Stanley had hot soup and brandy waiting for them.

  But when, a little later, Derek Sorley came up to join a group, saying jokily, ‘Well, it’s good entertainment, you have to say,’ he was met with stony silence.

  Then one man said, ‘You’ve gone too far this time, you and Steve. Folks like you aren’t wanted here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sorley was instantly defensive. ‘You watch your mouth! This is nothing to do with Steve or me. Say that again and I’ll take out a writ. I’ve witnesses.’

  ‘None that would testify,’ said another voice, and faced with a row of turned backs, Sorley retreated.

  Elena Tindall walked back up to Spindrift along with the woman who had called the police on Sunday night, her husband and son silently bringing up the rear. It was very late; Elena was tired and cold, and disinclined to make polite conversation.

  However, it was not required of her. The woman kept up a shrill rant about the defects of Innellan and her determination to get a refund with compensation on top until they reached her chalet, and Elena, with a weak smile, could walk on.

  She let herself in, but didn’t put on the light. The room was still lit by the livid glow of flames and the flashing orange lights of the fire engines. In any case, she didn’t like the idea of standing illuminated in the picture window, like a figure on a stage.

  She heard the noise of loud voices and laughter before she saw them appearing up the track: the weasel-faced man, along with his companions in the pub on Sunday night. The two younger men had their arms round each other’s shoulders; the older man was walking alongside, but they were clearly all in high good humour.

  Elena shrank back into the shadows. Something wicked this way comes …

  ‘What the hell is going on at Innellan?’ DI Fleming asked DS MacNee next morning. It was a repetition of the question she’d been asked earlier by a distinctly tetchy Superintendent Bailey, but he hadn’t got a satisfactory answer and she didn’t either.

  �
��God knows,’ MacNee said, and they both bleakly contemplated the day ahead when everyone, from the victims to the already-encamped media, would be asking the same.

  ‘The first thing they’re going to ask is whether it’s connected with Smith’s murder, or just coincidence.’

  ‘And what’ll you tell them?’ MacNee asked with some interest.

  She groaned. ‘How would I know? On the face of it, why should it be? That was a coldly sadistic crime, committed maybe ten years ago. Hard to see any connection with what looks like a long-standing campaign of minor harassment that got a bit reckless last week, and now looks to have progressed to fire-raising on a grand scale.’

  ‘The Donaldsons and Sorley starting to get desperate when Lovatt still hasn’t got the message?’

  ‘Desperate indeed,’ Fleming said grimly. ‘It’s pure chance that the lot of them weren’t killed. The fire chief’s at the scene this morning so we’ll need to get down there. He’ll be able to pinpoint how and where it was started – and you never know, it could just turn out to be an electrical fault.’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be right! You don’t believe it any more than I do.’

  She sighed. ‘No, I don’t. But fire-raising’s tough to pin on anyone. An inferno like that – what have you got left for forensics? Then you’ve had every fireman in the county tramping about the scene, inside and out, so it’s hopelessly contaminated. It’s a smart choice of crime.’

  ‘Sorley’s not daft, and he’s gallus with it – complaining about dangerous animals, when it’s a pound to a bawbee it was him and his pals let the stag out.’

  ‘Chief suspects, certainly. We’ll get them in today and lean on them.’

  ‘Steve Donaldson first,’ MacNee suggested. ‘He’s the weakest link.’