A Bitter Feast(100)

“My head,” moaned Mark. “I don’t remember—she must have bloody hit me.” He put a hand to the back of his head, wincing, and when he pulled it away his fingers were dark with blood.

Kincaid grasped his shoulder. “Mark, take it easy. Who hit you?”

“Bea. It must have been Bea. She was saying crazy things about O’Reilly—” Realization seemed to hit him. “My barn! Christ! Get some water!”

“I know where the hosepipe is,” said Viv. “But, Mark, where’s Grace?”

“Grace? What are you talking about?”

“She saw Bea hit you.”

Mark shook his head, then grimaced. “Bloody hell. No, she can’t have—Viv, get the damned hose.”

But Booth loomed out of the dimness, dragging a coil. “Viv, go turn the tap.” The sound of sirens came faintly on the wind as Booth eased the barn door open and shouted, “Now!” The jet of water hit the smoldering straw with a hiss and a billow of dark smoke.

Viv reappeared beside Kincaid and Gemma, her face smudged with soot. “I’ve got the torch from the van,” she said. “We’ve got to find Grace.”



Gemma and Kincaid followed Viv down the lane toward Nell Greene’s cottage. Their eyes had grown accustomed to the twilight and they made their way without using the torch, which Viv gripped more like a weapon than an implement. Looking back, Gemma saw the strobe of blue lights coming from the opposite direction.

“We know Grace was here,” Viv had insisted back in the farmyard. “And that she was on foot. She’s terrified, and she could be hurt. I don’t think she will have gone far. We should try Nell’s—she’d feel safe there.”

“Viv’s right,” Gemma had said, although she knew the thud they’d heard over Grace’s mobile might have been a blow, and that Bea might have bundled the injured girl into her car and taken her God knew where. But Booth had already put out an alert for the Fiat, and they had to cover every other possibility. “We should go on foot. If Bea is searching for Grace as well, we don’t want to warn her that we’re coming.”

Reluctantly, Booth had agreed, but he’d stayed behind to direct the emergency operations and to make sure the farm was searched thoroughly. “Be careful in the lane,” he told them. “Don’t forget what happened to Jack Doyle.”

Not having seen the accident scene, Gemma could only imagine, but she was doing that all too well as they crept along the very edge of the narrow lane, listening for the sound of an oncoming car, a crackle of movement in the hedgerows—or the cry of a distressed child.

The thunderstorm seemed to have collapsed with the dusk, thank God, with only a brief spatter of droplets on their cheeks as they set off. The air had gone dead still. She could hear Kincaid breathing right behind her. A heavy, green scent rose from the grass on the verge as their feet crushed it.

With a clap, a bird exploded from the hedge right in front of Viv, who swore and almost dropped the torch. When their hearts had stopped thudding, they moved even more carefully, until Viv brushed Gemma’s arm with her fingers and tilted her head to the left. They must have reached the drive to Nell’s cottage, and so far had seen no sign of either Grace or Bea.

But when Gemma looked, she realized that they would have to move out into the open to reach the cottage itself. She tapped Viv, who was still wearing her kitchen whites, and mimed taking off the jacket. Viv slid out of it and tucked it into the bottom of the hedge.

They kept to the grass, avoiding the crunch of the gravel in the drive. As they drew closer, there was no sign of light or movement in the cottage. Kincaid had just whispered that they should split up when Gemma saw it, a crouched shape moving around the corner of the cottage, then rising to try the door—a shape too large to be a child, the movement too furtive to be Grace. She clutched at her companions, but they’d seen it, too.

Viv wrenched herself out of Gemma’s grasp and took off at a dead run, her trainer-shod feet only whispering on the springy grass. Too late, the shape rose and turned, and Gemma saw the pale moon of Bea Abbott’s face beneath her dark hair.

Then Viv was on her in a rugby tackle. The impact took them both to the ground, then Viv was on top of Bea, punching and pummeling, while Bea twisted and kicked at her, grunting with the effort.

Gemma reached them first, and between them she and Viv managed to get Bea facedown. Gemma slipped off her light anorak and, with Viv’s help, managed to tie Bea’s wrists together while Kincaid pinned her feet.

Once secured, Bea twisted away from them until her back was against the cottage wall. “What is wrong with you?” she shouted at Viv. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Where is she?” spat Viv, shining the torch in her face. “Where’s Grace?”

Bea flinched away from the light. “I have no idea. Viv, listen to me—”

“You killed them. You poisoned Fergus, didn’t you? I loved him,” Viv cried. “You knew I loved him and you—”

“Don’t be stupid, Viv. Of course I didn’t—”

“We found Mark Cain,” put in Kincaid, still panting. “He’s okay, no thanks to you, and he remembers what you did.”

Bea went still. Her expression turned calculating. “So? It’s his word against mine.”