I landed on my shoulder, a jolt of pain traveling up my neck and into the back of my head. My legs tangled in the bicycle pedals, and the entire thing came down on top of me, scraping my legs and pushing me out of balance. I slid on the side of the dirt road and into the ditch by the roadside, breaking my fall with the palms of my hands as I scraped the dirt and the thin layer of rotted leaves.
I lay in the damp mulch in the bottom of the ditch, trying to push the twisted bicycle off me. Overhead, a rook cried from a treetop somewhere, and Pickwick barked again. I had just enough time to wonder whether there would be a second shot when I heard his toenails scrabble on the road above me.
The sound filled me with panic. “No, Pickwick!” I cried, pulling my legs beneath me—my stockings were shredded, one knee wet with blood—and crawling to the edge of the ditch. The dog was watching me, waiting for me to get up. “Go back!” I begged him, gesturing toward the hedgerow. “Now! Go!” My brain seemed to have detached, and all I could think in that moment was, Please, don’t let my dog get shot. From somewhere ahead of me, through the trees, I heard a man’s shout, and then another, but no second shot came.
Pickwick curled his tail to his haunches and crouched, not sure of what I was asking him to do. I held my breath and hesitated, on my hands and knees on the edge of the ditch, listening for a moment that likely lasted seconds but felt like a year. My hat had fallen off, the palms of my gloves had shredded, and my chest ached. I could not stay where I was. Whoever had shot at me—and I knew by instinct who it was, of course—could either shoot at me again or come closer to finish the job. I had to run.
I crawled out of the ditch, my hands and knees stinging, keeping low to the ground. I had just gotten my feet under me, ready to run in a crouch, when I saw the figure in the trees.
It was a man, tall and thin, far back in the green shadows. He was looking at me, but as I raised my gaze he turned away, and I saw only the brim of his hat, the sleeve of his jacket. Pickwick had gone still, his ears pricked, watching. He did not growl.
I wondered wildly, at first, whether it was a policeman. But the figure moved off through the shadows, smooth and uncanny, making no sound. From the trees came a whiff of an awful smell.
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
I forced my feet into motion. I half ran into the cover of the trees, out of the sunlight, into the cool shadows. A breeze cheerfully ruffled the leaves overhead, the scent of early autumn mixing with the blatant smell of death. An ache began in my head. Someone was dead. That much I knew: Someone was dead, and I’d seen his ghost.
From far off, a motor sounded, receding, but there was no sign of anyone on the road. If I was being pursued, if anyone nearby had heard the shot, they gave no indication. If James had heard, he did not come.
James.
It hadn’t been him; it hadn’t. The figure had been too tall, too unfamiliar. I would have known if it had been James; I would have recognized him even in death. Still, the possibility felt like a punch in the stomach, and I fought to regain control of myself. You are alone, Ellie, and there is no one to help you. What will you do?
Pickwick made my decision. He brushed past me, loping on quiet feet in the direction of the dead figure. His tail was up, his body alert. In seconds he had vanished into the bushes.
I followed, limping because of my bad knee. I had somehow kept my messenger bag strapped across my body, and I now tucked the bag behind me as I walked. The trees weren’t thick here; they grew in small belts between properties and stretches of unused road and farmland. I followed the dog and the unseen figure, vanished now, across the soft ground, through the dappled light. Soon we climbed a rise and the trees thinned abruptly, and I stood on a bright hill of emerald green looking over the landscape of hills and valleys, changing to the warm colors of autumn between the dotted homes and barns below.
Sprawled on the hillside was the body of a man.
He lay facedown, angled down the hill, as if he’d been struck while descending. He wore a suit of chocolate brown, the back of the jacket flung upward over his back, left where it had folded when he fell. His arms were pinned beneath him, his legs sprawled. His hat had fallen off. Far below, at the bottom of the hill, parked at the side of the dirt road and partly under the cover of a thick stand of bushes at the edge of the trees, was a motorcar. Probably his.
I stopped, panting, and made a strangled noise. There was no movement, no sound; the man’s body lay still, an unnatural part of the scenery. No one passed on the road below. It was as if the Kent countryside, in that moment, was deserted except for me, my dog, and the dead man. I gathered my courage and stepped closer.
His head was slightly turned, his eyes half open and glazed in death. The pretty grass beneath his neck was soaked in blood, the ground dark with it, droplets clinging to the blades of greenery. He showed no other mark; something very sharp had gone very deep into his neck, killing him quickly and effectively before his body had been left to fall. I recognized his thin build—I had seen it disappear into a doorway in Piccadilly Circus, and I had also glimpsed his face in the underground. It was the man in the houndstooth jacket.
I blinked hard, taking in the coppery scent of damp blood, and ran a hand over my face. I realized I was still wearing my torn gloves, the palms reduced to threads. I absently pulled them off and threw them to the ground, as if that would accomplish something. There had been a man’s cry shortly after I’d been shot off my bicycle. Two of them, one after the other, quick. The sound of the man in the houndstooth jacket, dying.
Five minutes ago? Ten?