I had stuck up for him.
I had fallen for his charm, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it.
I had ignored the warning implicit in the fact that he had previously faced down the police and won.
I remembered his cold anger when he told me about Nolan molesting Chloe and it made me shiver.
I had been blind.
If Turner had made it back to his car, he would have driven it away. For whatever reason, he had run the other way – downstream. So if I wanted to find him, that was the way I needed to go.
On the way back I reached the house sooner than I had expected, covering what was now familiar territory more quickly. From the river it wasn’t possible to see much of the house itself – it was almost as if Crow Lane House wanted to hide among its brooding trees. I hoped like hell the back-up would arrive soon and that Georgia would get on with sending them down to the river. Kate’s body was still where we’d left it, stiffening into rigor mortis. I shied away from looking too closely at her face, at the accusation I thought I’d see in her eyes. Why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you save us?
The trees on this side were denser, the air cool and dark as I hurried along the path. How long had it been since Derwent started down the path? Ten minutes? Twenty? How far could he go in that time? He was a runner. He would be faster than me. He might even be faster than Turner, given the fact that Turner had his asthma to slow him down and had been limping the last time I saw him – although it occurred to me that Turner might have been faking it to look less of a threat. And the asthma – how bad was it really? I was questioning everything I had assumed I knew about Turner. How had he found Kate?
The answer came easily, as if I’d known it already. She had told him where she was. Colin Vale’s voice again in my ear: If anything happened to my kids … I’d want to kill whoever hurt them. And his face, so calm but implacable.
She had invited him to her house. She had lured him there, hoping that when his guard was down she could get her revenge on him.
It hadn’t worked out that way. Maybe she hadn’t minded that either. Maybe it had come as a relief. So much of what she’d done had been for Chloe’s sake as well as her own. What was the point of going on?
I had slowed my jog to a walk, cautious now. If Turner had somehow managed to overpower Derwent or dodge past him, he would be coming back this way. I didn’t want to run straight into him. I was keeping to the edge of the path, under the trees, half-hiding, half-inclined to go back to Georgia and wait for men with dogs and searchlights and maybe even a helicopter to track Turner.
It was a stupid place to walk I realised a split second after someone caught hold of my elbow and hauled me backwards. I took a breath to fill my lungs and a cold hand came down over my mouth, hard enough to hurt. I elbowed him as viciously as I could in the stomach, just under the ribcage, and heard the air rush out of his lungs. It didn’t begin to loosen his grip on me. He dragged me into the shelter of the trees, away from the path and hissed two words in my ear.
‘It’s me.’
I nodded fervently and Derwent slackened his grip on me enough to let me pull his hand away from my face and twist around to look at him. His hair was plastered against his skull and he was shivering. His clothes were completely saturated.
‘Why did you grab me?’ I whispered, outraged.
‘Any excuse. Why did you elbow me?’ He was holding on to his stomach, wincing.
‘I wasn’t sure it was you. Any luck?’
‘I saw someone but I lost him in the reeds. He was miles away,’ Derwent added, defensive. ‘I didn’t have a chance.’
‘Did you go in the river?’ I was staring at his clothes, at the mud and grass stalks that clung to the material.
‘A little bit.’
‘You’re lucky you’re not a little bit dead.’
A grin. ‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t give me the kiss of life.’
‘I wouldn’t have had the chance. You’d be in the sea by now if it had gone wrong.’
He rubbed a drip off the end of his nose and pushed his hair back off his forehead, leaving a beautiful muddy streak that I thought he deserved. ‘This fucking weather. I didn’t get a good look at him.’
‘It was William Turner.’
‘What?’ Derwent stared at me, obviously startled. It made me feel slightly better about having been taken in. ‘How do you know?’
I told him about the car while the rain eased up, not that it mattered to either of us by then.
‘Shit. He’ll have wanted to get back to the car.’ Derwent swore some more, peering up and down the path. ‘Could he have got past both of us?’
‘I don’t think he can have gone by the river – you’d never be able to swim against the current even if it wasn’t running high. Maybe he climbed the wall.’
Derwent hacked through the undergrowth to get to the wall. He clambered up it with a reasonable amount of skill and a frankly excessive amount of swearing. When he got to the top he leaned over it for a minute or two, shining his torch along the wall in both directions.
‘Anything?’
‘Nope.’ He slithered back down to the ground, and if the river hadn’t done for his trousers, the wall finished the job. He examined the rip that exposed one knee as he trudged back to me. ‘I mean, it’s possible. But I think he went in the water.’
‘He panicked,’ I said.
‘He saw I was after him, that’s why.’
‘If he’d known you were that old and slow he’d probably have taken his chances.’
Derwent glowered at me. ‘Watch it, Kerrigan.’
We started to trudge back towards the house.
‘I keep thinking about Kate,’ I said. ‘About the fact that we have to take some responsibility for what’s happened.’
‘Me too.’
‘Really?’ I was surprised. Guilt wasn’t something that Derwent usually bothered to feel.
‘The paperwork is going to be a fucker, for starters. Death during police contact?’ He shook his head. ‘I hope you like time off.’
‘We weren’t even there when she died.’
‘Georgia was.’
‘Well, she didn’t do it.’
Derwent shrugged. ‘Stand up for her if you like, but it’s not worth you sacrificing your career for someone who wouldn’t do the same for you.’
A shout from up ahead made me jump.
‘That’ll be the locals,’ Derwent said, picking up his pace.
I could hear dogs barking and wished more than ever my radio was working so I could warn them that we were going towards them. Police dogs tended to bite first and ask questions later. But when we found them – or they found us – the dogs were on leashes.
‘Lost someone, have you?’ the sergeant said. His dog was dancing on hind legs, her tongue lolling crazily as she panted. There were three other police officers and one other dog, and all of them looked fiercely competent.
I gave them the description of Turner and told them about the car. The sergeant nodded.