The Boat House

FORTY-SEVEN

Diane hated this. She hated being left, she hated the thought of Pete going off alone, she hated her own body for letting her down. Surely they'd reached the point where the only way ahead was to go back to the hall, pick up the phone, and call in the cavalry? The fact of it was that Pete McCarthy had been the first of them to encounter Alina Petrovna, and he was the last to understand, really understand, that of which she was capable. He hadn't seen the graphic aftermath of her work that Ross Aldridge said he'd witnessed, and he hadn't been through Diane's experience of a sincere if rambling first-hand account from a man named Pavel, followed by the sight of his charcoaled body only a few hours later. No, he had to go running up there like a man with his hand out to a mad dog, convinced of his safety because he'd never yet encountered a dog that hadn't liked him.

Unfortunately, Diane couldn't help noticing how Alina seemed to deal out the same kind of treatment to her friends as to her enemies.

The best that she could hope for was that Alina would already be gone when he got there, using whatever time she might have bought for herself to get up and away from the scene. If she could get off the estate, maybe follow one of the walkers' routes over one of the mountain passes, then she could make it into another part of the region and perhaps even get away altogether. Find some other ride on some other road, find a new place to settle, start the process all over again while the police hunt ran itself dry with nothing to go on. Otherwise, what would Pete be facing? A radical revision of his illusions, at best.

She didn't even want to think about the worst.

She'd submitted to being left in the boat house like so much luggage for one reason, and one reason only. Pete had thought that he was dropping her off in the only available place of safety; and from where she was standing it seemed safe enough, with its heavy landward door and solid walls and its thick and grimy skylight of reinforced glass that barely let in the light, let alone anything more. But she hadn't come here to hide, whatever Pete might have been thinking.

She'd come in here because down below, in the dock, stood an unsold Princess.

And in the Princess, there was a multichannel VHF radio telephone.

The boat house lights weren't working, and hadn't been since the night of the party. But there were deck lights and cabin lights on the Princess, and the Princess was only one short flight of stairs away.

But short flight or not, this was going to be one of the toughest journeys that Diane had ever undertaken. Her ankle was giving her hell. She was sure that it was broken; she hadn't felt any snap as she'd gone over, but she was halfway convinced that she could feel the splintered ends of the bone as they ground together with each faltering step. She was still using the shotgun — unloaded, of course — as a makeshift crutch, but progress was slow and getting slower as the pain and the pressure increased. All the same, she couldn't help thinking that it was the most effective use she'd ever made of a twelve bore since she'd first begun to shoot.

Maybe there was something in the first aid kit that she could use. Painkillers, maybe even an emergency splint.

But before anything else, the call.

She checked that the boat house door was securely locked, and took out the key. She wasn't likely to forget that Wayne Hammond and his girlfriend had died in here. For that, if for no other reason, she'd have been happier if the light in here had been just a little better.

Childish fears, she told herself.

And, only halfway believing it, she began her slow shuffle toward the boat house stairs.

Pete was in the back of the Rover when he came around.

He didn't realise it straight away; for a time he hovered, half awake, while in his mind he followed his vision of an altered Alina through the dark spaces under that strange hotel. She led him along, her marbled and beautifully clawed hand beckoning him every now and again, until they reached a door at the corridor's end; and then, with a regretful smile and a sad shake of her head, she stepped through the door and closed it on him. Only then did he begin to see the kick-scuffed grey metal before his eyes, and to feel the coarse woollen blanket that had been placed under his head as a pillow.

It was the first time that he'd ever been knocked out and he decided, everything considered, that he wouldn't care to try it again.

He didn't much want to move, either, but he knew that he'd have to.

He'd been lying on the floor of the Rover's rear passenger section, cramped into the space in a near foetal curl. He felt dusty and gritty, and he had a five-aspirin headache. Alina was on the outside; she raised her head from whatever she'd been doing to look in through one of the rear door windows.

Her face, seen through the wire, seemed to show a genuine concern. Pete struggled up to sit on one of the Rover's inward facing bench seats.

"Are you all right?" she said.

"Considering." Pete made to touch the back of his head, and decided midway that it wouldn't be a good idea.

Alina said, "Don't bother trying to get out. You can't."

"Why are you doing this?"

"To make you safe."

"From you?"

She hesitated for a moment; and then she nodded once, making an admission that was obviously difficult for her. "You're safe as long as you don't try to follow," she said. "I won't be coming back. By the time someone finds you, I'll be gone."

"And the others will be dead."

"They don't die," she said. "I can't help what I do, Peter. I tried for a long time, and in the end it got me nowhere. I'm sorry."

"What do you mean, they don't die?"

"They join me," she said, her grey eyes open and empty of secrets. "They become my children of the lake." And then she turned her face away. "I am sorry, Peter. I wish there was some other way."

He stared at her through the glass, at that delicate, downturned head, as graceful and as heartless as a stone angel, and he knew then that he'd been wrong to think that she was anything other than lost. This was no fitful madness, no staged insanity; the depth and sincerity of her belief in her developed state were awesome. She was the Rusalka, in a faith that could be neither challenged nor shaken. In her own mind, she lived as the beast… and perhaps in the end, she could only be met and recognised as the beast.

"You're breaking your promise," he reminded her.

"A little," she said, looking at him again and smiling wanly. "As you broke yours, a little. I can leave you and you can't hurt me, no one will believe what you say. But I can't leave others to support you."

"What will happen to Diane?"

"Could she be in love with you?"

"I don't know. It's too early to say."

"If she is, then she'll call to you. And in the night, she may even come to you. And then perhaps you'll come down to the water's edge, and you'll beg me to take you."

"And will you?"

"Yes. Because then I'll be beyond promises." She took a step back from the wired window. "Goodbye, Peter," she said, and she turned to go.

She was going for Diane, to clear out the last of the cell, and Pete realised now that he'd engineered the entire setup himself when he'd broadcast his intentions to Ross Aldridge and to anybody else who might have been listening.

"You can't get to her," he shouted after Alina, and Alina, already halfway across the clearing, turned and looked back.

"I only wish that could be true," she said, and then she walked on.