The legend. The person about whom all those stories had been told, and upon whom so many of those rumours had focused. Edmund did not understand how it had happened, or how the legend had wound up in this remote corner of England, but he knew who was lying in the narrow bed.
As he stared down, he was strongly aware that Crispin was pouring into his mind, filling him up, so that all the guilt and the fear scalded through Edmund’s whole body. He thought he gasped with the pain of it, and he must certainly have made some sound, because the movement he had been watching for came from the bed. A light stirring, and then a half-turning of the head.
You’re not yet so far away that you don’t sense I’m here, thought Edmund. But is it me you’re sensing? Or is it Crispin? Because it’s Crispin who’s smiling down at you, and it’s Crispin who’s reaching into the coat pocket for the syringe, and who’s saying to me, Isn’t it fortunate that we brought this with us, dear boy…
It isn’t me in this room any longer, thought Edmund. It’s Crispin. It’s Crispin who’s about to sever this remaining link to the shameful past. The voice inside his head was very clear, and he could hear exactly what Crispin was saying.
One last murder to commit, that was what Crispin was saying. One last murder, and then we can be safe.
And this murder, dear boy, is going to be the easiest of them all…
As he bent over the bed, the door opened behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Lucy and Francesca had not been able to keep up with the police cars, which had hurtled away at top speed and vanished into the swirling traffic and the snaking network of roads.
‘I didn’t think we would,’ said Fran. ‘But I think we’re on the right track.’
After they left the motorway the roads narrowed and were harder to negotiate, but the signs were still clear. They were going deep into the fenlands, and if the telegraph poles and the occasional electrical pylon or cellphone-mast could have been blocked out, they could both have believed themselves to have somehow gone back to medieval times.
‘I’ve never been to this part of England before,’ said Lucy. ‘Have you?’
‘Fen country. No, I haven’t. But there’s masses of history out here and lovely bits of folklore. The Babes in the Wood in Wayland Forest and the Paston Letters, and some of the settings for David Copperfield. I might set up a project for my sixth-formers on all the associations of the place,’ said Francesca thoughtfully. ‘Where are we now?’
‘We need to go straight across the next traffic island, and then turn sharp right after about two miles.’
‘It’s quite well signposted,’ said Fran, negotiating the traffic island. ‘But I’m glad Michael wrote down that list of villages, or we’d have been hopelessly lost.’
The names on the signposts were like something out of an old-fashioned children’s fairy-story. Grimoldby and Ludford Parva and Osgodby. A fat little country bus jogged along behind them for a few miles, and then turned off down a lane marked Scamblesby.
‘You don’t suppose we’ve fallen into Beatrix Potter territory and not noticed it?’ said Francesca.
‘It feels like that, doesn’t it? Or is it nearer to Lewis Carroll?’
‘Straight down the rabbit-hole and through the looking-glass,’ agreed Fran.
They were passing through stretches of flat, reed-fringed marshlands now, and once or twice there was a feeling that the skies might be moving downwards, blurring with the land. Lucy thought the winter days would be very short here but memories would be long. All kinds of forgotten secrets might live out here for a very long time.
She had thought they would need to ask for directions, but in the event it was easy enough to follow Michael’s hastily-scrawled notes.
‘The house must be along there,’ said Fran.
‘Yes. It isn’t quite what I was expecting though,’ said Lucy, and as Fran turned the car into the narrow lane she thought: we’re going back into the past, I can feel that we are.
But I don’t know whose past it is.