In a Dark, Dark Wood(58)

‘Where’s Clare?’

‘She was trying to get a signal up the far end of the garden – apparently you can sometimes get one there.’

‘But there’s nothing,’ a voice came from over my shoulder. It was Clare. Her face was the colour of skimmed milk, but she was dressed. ‘Can he talk?’

‘He was saying a few words,’ I said. My throat was cracked and hoarse with tears. ‘But I … I think he’s unconscious now.’

‘Oh f*ck.’ Her face went even whiter, even her lips bloodless pale, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I should have come down sooner. I just thought —’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Nina cut her off. ‘It was the right thing to do – getting an ambulance was the most important thing, if we could only have got a f*cking signal. Right, I think that tourniquet is as good as I can make it – I’m not going to try to do anything else now, let’s get him out of here.’

‘I’ll drive,’ Clare said instantly.

Nina nodded. ‘I’ll come in the back with James.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Clare, you go and bring the car as close to the front door as you can get it.’ Clare nodded and left to get her car keys. Nina carried on, talking to me this time, ‘We’ll need something to lift him on. It’ll hurt him too much if we just pick him up.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Something flat ideally, like a stretcher.’ We both gazed around but there was nothing obvious.

‘We could take a door down.’ Tom’s voice came from behind us, making us both jump. He gazed down at James, now fully unconscious on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood. There was a kind of horror in his expression. ‘Flo’s out cold in the bedroom. Is he going to be OK?’

‘Honestly?’ Nina said. She glanced at James and I saw her face was weary and, for the first time since she had taken over, showing traces of fear. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. It’s possible he’ll make it. Door’s a good idea. Can you find a screwdriver? I think there was a box of stuff under the stairs.’

Tom gave a short nod and disappeared.

Nina put her face in her hands. ‘Fuck,’ she said, into her cupped, muffling palms. ‘Fuck, f*ck, f*ck.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘No. Yes.’ She looked up. ‘I’m fine. Just – oh my God. What a f*cking stupid wasteful way to die. Who the hell fires a gun when they don’t know what it’s loaded with?’

I thought of Tom, waving it around yesterday as a joke, and I felt suddenly sick.

‘Poor Flo,’ I said.

‘Did she pull the trigger?’ Nina asked.

‘I – I assume so. I don’t know. She was holding it.’

‘I thought you were.’

‘Me?’ I felt my jaw drop with surprise and horror. ‘God, no. But it could have been anyone who jolted her – we were all standing so close.’

There was a growl from outside and I heard Clare’s tyres crunching through the snowy gravel outside the front door. At the same time there was a thud from the living room and Tom appeared, dragging a heavy oak door with the handles still attached.

‘It weighs a ton,’ he said, ‘but we’ve only got to get it as far as the car.’

‘OK.’ Nina took charge again, her authority effortless. ‘Tom, you take his shoulders. I’ll take his feet. Nora, you support his hips as we lift and shift them onto the door; try not to disturb that dressing on his thigh and be careful not to catch anything on the door handle. Ready? On my count of lift; three, two, one, lift.’

We all heaved, there was a kind of groaning involuntary whimper from James that brought a fresh spatter of blood to his lips, and then he was onto the makeshift stretcher. I ran to open the huge steel front door – thanking God for the first time for the scale of this house, that the internal door would fit through easily – and then back to help Nina with the foot end of the door. It was immensely heavy but we wrestled it down the hallway and out into the freezing night where Clare was waiting, the engine ticking over, the exhaust a white cloud in the cold air.

‘Is he OK?’ she asked over her shoulder, reaching to open the rear door. ‘Is he still breathing?’

‘He’s still breathing,’ Nina said, ‘but it’ll be touch and go. OK, let’s get him off this door.’

Somehow, in a horrible, trembling, blood-spattered rush, we got him into the back seat, where he lay slumped, breathing in a shallow rasping way that frightened me. His leg was hanging out of the car, and, grotesquely, I saw that the seeping blood was steaming in the chilly air. The sight stopped me in my tracks, and I was just standing there, too shocked to think what to do next as Tom folded the leg gently into the footwell and then shut the door.

‘There’s not going to be enough room for both of us,’ Nina said. For a minute I didn’t know what she was talking about, and then I realised: James was taking up all the back seat by himself. There was no way Nina could fit in the back as she’d suggested.

‘I’ll stay,’ I said. ‘You should go with them.’

Nina didn’t try to argue.

‘Nora?’ Lamarr’s voice is gentle but insistent. ‘Nora? Are you awake? Can you tell me what you remember?’