The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(59)

“Watson,” Holmes was saying.

The man lingering near the house was looking at us. He held up a hand and then pointed his finger, like a teacher calling on a student. Then he pulled his coat more firmly around himself and walked away from us toward the house.

“Watson,” Holmes said. “Watson. Jamie. Look at me.”

I wrenched my eyes toward her. I felt slow, and heavy, as though someone were holding me down underwater. The up-down-up-down wail of the siren beat against us like a current. It was an ambulance. Someone must have called one. Was there a house close enough to hear the gunshot and call 999?

I almost asked Holmes. But she was looking at me like I was a cancerous growth she needed to have removed.

“What now?” I asked, half-laughing. “What’s the plan?”

Her eyes were always colorless. Now they were cold. “I need you to take the fall,” she said, turning to look at the paramedics jumping out the back of the ambulance. “I need you to confess.”

Had it been any other day, any other situation, I might have agreed. I might have flung myself into it after her. Maybe it was desperation for connection. Maybe it was delusion. Folie à deux. Maybe for the last three months I’d had a death wish, throwing myself off bridges, not caring if any net hid at the bottom.

Not this time.

“That’s what I’m here for, then. To take the blame.”

“Watson—”

“That’s the big reason behind me coming along with you. I’m the fall guy. The person you pinned it on. You’ve had weeks. Weeks, Holmes, to explain! If you’d said anything at all. Anything! I could have changed your mind! But you maneuvered me here just to—”

She whirled on me. “This is love,” she snarled, her pupils pinned, her eyes all dangerous light. “This is what love looks like.”

“Then no one’s ever loved you,” I said, “including me.” The paramedics—I would get their attention. There was a police car right behind them, men pouring out of its doors. A detective, unmistakable in her plainclothes and sunglasses, a radio in her hand.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey! I need help!”

“Watson,” she said, grabbing my arm, “what are you doing?”

“Telling the truth.”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

I shook her off and ran to meet the approaching officers. “There was a man here—he’s tall, he has glasses, he had a rifle with a scope. He shot our friend. He’s still out here somewhere.”

The officer looked past me, to August’s cooling body. “Where?” he demanded. “Which way did he go?”

I pointed helplessly at the copse of trees where he’d been hidden, hoping they’d find something I’d missed, something to point the way. The policeman took off at a run, the others behind him.

Holmes stared after them, wild-eyed. “Wait,” she said, “wait. Wait. I did it.”

It was soft. So soft that only the officer at the back stopped, and turned to see.

“I did it,” she said again. “It was me.”

“Miss,” he said, a bit pleading. “I know that isn’t true—”

She stalked forward. “I used a .338 sniper rifle from the top of that elm. I’ve been practicing at the range in Eastbourne for years; take my picture to them, they’ll identify me. I’ve been away for the last two years—”

The officer took an involuntary step back. “Backup,” he said into his radio. “Backup.”

“—but I’ve been planning this all this time, because that man over there?” She jabbed at finger at August’s body. “He broke my heart. He lied to me. He proposed to someone else. He belonged to me, and he proposed to Bryony Downs, and I will be damned if I see him go. If I saw him go. Past tense. We’re past tense now.”

The officer put his hands up, nodding, the way you would with a tiger in a center ring.

“And this?” Holmes jerked her hand at me. “This pathetic, sniveling boy thinks that if he gets me out of this mess, he can have me, like I’m some prize to be won. Look at it. Look at me. How much is it worth to you now?”

“DI Green,” the officer said gratefully, as the woman in the long coat approached, picking her way through the snow. “We have a confession—I haven’t cautioned her, it’s an excited utterance—”

Her sharp eyes went from Holmes to me and back again. “Which one?” she asked.

“Her.”

Did I imagine it, the DI’s disappointment? “Fine,” she said. “Cuff her. Caution her. Then ask her again. You too, boy, come along.”

Cautiously, the officer took Holmes by the arm. Despite everything, despite the way she’d all but spit blood in his face, he treated her like she was spun glass. He put the cuffs on her wrists, and the DI put a hand on her shoulder, and the three of them walked back to the car.

I made to follow them. And then I saw that I had missed the paramedics taking August’s body away. From a distance I saw them hoist the gurney up into the back of the ambulance. They would take him to the morgue. They would cut off his clothes and lay him on a slab, like an object. Like a doll. I wondered who they’d call to identify him. Who was left to come and say his name?