A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(221)

As the figure emerged and then stood upright, Le Gallez said, “Now.”

Nearby in their cramped little space, the officer in question rose and in the same movement switched on a torch so powerful that it blinded Deborah for a moment and did much the same to China River, caught both in its beam and in Le Gallez’s trap.

“Stay where you are, Miss River,” the DCI ordered. “The painting’s not there.”

“No,” Deborah whispered. She heard Simon murmur, “I’m sorry, my love,” but she didn’t quite take it in, for things happened too quickly after that.

At the door to the dolmen, China spun as a second light from the wall behind them picked her out like a hunter’s quarry. She said nothing. Instead, she ducked back inside the earthen mound and shoved the door closed behind her.

Deborah rose without thinking. She cried out, “China!” and then in a panic to her husband and to the police, “It’s not what it seems.”

As if she hadn’t spoken, Simon said in answer to something to Le Gallez asked him, “Just the camp bed, some candles, a wooden box holding condoms...” and she knew that every word she’d spoken to her husband about the dolmen was something he had relayed to the Guernsey police.

This somehow—illogically, ridiculously, stupidly, but she could not help it, she could not help it—seemed like an even greater betrayal to Deborah. She couldn’t think through it; she couldn’t think past it. She could only charge out of their hiding spot to go to her friend. Simon grabbed her before she got five feet.

She cried, “Let me go!” and wrested away from him. She heard Le Gallez say, “God damn it. Get her away!” and she cried, “I’ll get her for you. Let me go. Let me go!”

She twisted from Simon’s grasp but she didn’t leave him. They confronted each other, breathing hard. Deborah said, “She has nowhere to go. You know that. So do they. I’m going to fetch her. You must let me fetch her.”

“I don’t have that power.”

“Tell them.”

Le Gallez said, “You’re certain?” to Simon. “No other way out?”

Deborah said, “What difference does it make if there is? How’s she going to get off the island? She knows you’ll phone the airport and the harbour. Is she supposed to swim to France? She’ll come out when I...Let me tell her who’s out here...” She heard her voice quaver and hated the fact that here and now she would have to battle not only with the police, not only with Simon, but also with her blasted emotions, which would never for an instant allow her to be what he was: cool, dispassionate, able to adjust his thinking in a moment on the edge of a coin, if it came down to it. Which it had.

She said brokenly to Simon, “What made you decide...?” But she couldn’t finish the question.

He said, “I didn’t know. Not as a certainty. Just that it had to be one of them.”

“What haven’t you told me? No. I don’t care. Let me go to her. I’ll tell her what she’s facing. I’ll bring her out.”

Simon studied her in silence, and Deborah could see the extent of the indecision that played on his intelligent, angular features. But she could also see the worry there of how much damage he’d done to her ability to trust him.

He said over her shoulder to Le Gallez, “Will you allow—”

“Bloody hell, no I will not. This is a killer we’re talking about. We’ve got one corpse. I won’t have another.” Then to his men, “Bring the sodding bitch out.”

Which was enough to spur Deborah on her way to the dolmen. She shot back through the bushes and reached the door into the mound before Le Gallez could even shout “Grab her.”

Once she was there, they had little choice but to wait for what would happen next. They could storm the dolmen and risk her life if China was armed, which Deborah knew she was not, or they could wait till Deborah brought her friend out. What would happen after that—her own arrest, most likely—was something about which she did not care at the moment. She shoved open the thick wooden door and entered the ancient chamber.

With the door shut behind her, black enveloped her, thick and silent like a tomb. The last noise she heard was a shout from Le Gallez, which the heavy door cut off when she closed it. The last sight she had was the spearpoint of light that fast extinguished at the same moment. She said into the stillness, “China,” and she listened. She tried to picture what she’d seen of the dolmen’s interior when she’d been inside with Paul Fielder. The main inner chamber was straight ahead of her. The secondary chamber was to her right. There might be, she realised, further chambers within, perhaps to her left, but she hadn’t seen them earlier and she couldn’t recall if there were any additional fissures that might lead into one.

She put herself in the place of her friend, in the place of anyone caught in this position. Safety, she thought. The feeling of being returned to the womb. The inner side chamber, which was small and secure. She reached for the wall. It was useless waiting for her eyes to adjust, for there was nothing to which her eyes could adjust. No light pierced the gloom, not a flicker, not a gleam.

She said, “China. The police are out there. They’re in the paddock. There’re three of them about thirty feet from the door and one on the wall and I don’t know how many more in the trees. I didn’t come with them. I didn’t know. I followed. Simon...” Even at this last, she couldn’t tell her friend that her own husband had apparently been the instrument of China’s downfall. She said, “There’s no way out of here. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t know why...” But her voice couldn’t get through that sentence with the calm that she wanted, so she took another route.