The Healers

Chapter Thirty-two

They went to Laverock Farm that night. Hunter, knowing Ramsay’s reputation for caution, for sticking to the rules, insisted on it, pushing the argument to the point of insubordination.

“We’ve got to take Slater in tonight,” he said stubbornly, although in fact Ramsay had voiced no disagreement. “Charge him with the car theft, if nothing else. Anything to get him out of that house, prevent another death. Then, his voice almost hysterical: “Come on, man, you must see that Lily Jackman’s in danger! We can’t take the risk of leaving it until the morning.”

“No,” Ramsay said quietly. “I don’t think we can.”

It was almost midnight when they got to Laverock Farm and there were no lights on. Washing still hung from the line in the orchard and a white sheet billowed in a sudden breeze like a sail in the moonlight. They parked in the farmyard and waited.

There was a sudden noise in an upstairs room. Slater pushed open the sash window and the sound of the creaking wood running up the cords was shocking in the still air.

“Who is it?” he shouted. “What do you want?”

A lack of control in his voice made Ramsay cautious. He opened the car window and shouted back: “It’s me. Ramsay. Why don’t you come down? We can talk.”

“Are you on your own?”

“No, Sergeant Hunter’s with me.”

“That’s the bastard that’s been hassling Lily. Keep him out of this.”

“All right,” Ramsay said easily. “I’ll come in on my own.”

“No,” Slater said. “Just stand in the yard where I can see you. You can talk from there.”

“It would be more comfortable inside.”

“Maybe it would. But you’ll do as I say.” He swung round violently and they saw he was carrying a shotgun. He waved it wildly out of the window and repeated, “You’ll do as I say.”

“Where’s Lily?” Ramsay asked.

“She’s here with me. Where she belongs.”

“Is she alive, Sean?”

“Of course she’s alive. Do you think I’d hurt Lily?”

“Why don’t you bring her to the window? So I can see her.”

“No!” Slater said. “Just sod off!”

In the silence that followed Ramsay heard Hunter on the radio, calling for back up, specialist officers. He knew that the nearest firearm officers were in Otterbridge and it would be hours before they’d get out here. He thought it would all be over by then.

“Where did you get the gun, Sean?” he asked,

for something to say, just to keep him talking. It hardly mattered now and shotguns were two-a-penny in the countryside.

“It was Ernie Bowles’s,” Sean shouted back. “I found it in the glory hole under the stairs. Your blokes must have missed it when they searched. I knew he had one and it must be somewhere.”

There would be plenty of questions asked about that, Ramsay thought. Recriminations. Passing the blame.

“I know why you did it, Sean,” he shouted. “I know why you killed the McDougals.”

There was a brief pause.

“You know nothing!” Sean yelled back angrily. He pointed the shotgun into the air and fired it. The noise was like an explosion and made Ramsay turn away. It was followed by a screech as a barn owl was frightened from its roost in the tractor shed. The big white bird glided across the farmyard and settled on a tree behind the house. Everything was quiet and still again.

“Well, why don’t you tell me then?” Ramsay asked. “Why don’t you tell me how it happened?”

He moved closer to the house, away from the car, hoping to establish a more intimate contact. He stood under Slater’s window and spoke in a lower, conversational voice. He’d gene once to a seminar on hostage situations but he could remember nothing now of what he’d been taught. He didn’t even know if this was a hostage situation. From where he was standing he could not see inside the room.

“Well, Sean? Why don’t we hear your side of the story?”

“You wouldn’t understand!” Sean screamed. “You wouldn’t bloody understand!”

“I might,” Ramsay said. “If you explained. Just put the gun down and tell me.” He might have been speaking to a child throwing a temper tantrum.

“They didn’t think I was good enough for her.” Sean turned his head so the light caught his face. Ramsay saw that he was crying. His voice became broken by sobs. Just because I wasn’t taken in by them, by their talk. Because I wouldn’t go to their bloody groups. Inner knowledge and inner healing. What does that mean anyway? I didn’t need all that. I always knew what I felt. I bloody showed them.”

“But that wasn’t why you killed them, Sean, was it?” Ramsay’s voice was quiet, considered, interested.

“I did it for her!” The words came out as a bellow and reverberated around the valley, sending the monkey-faced owl into the air once more.

Hunter watched Ramsay move away from the car. When he was sure the Inspector held the boy’s full attention he opened the passenger door slowly. Then waited. There was no response from Slater. The car was parked sideways on to the house and the passenger door was out of his line of view. Hunter rolled out of the car and into the shadow of the tractor shed. He lay still, breathing heavily. In the distance he heard the conversation between Ramsay and Slater continuing. There was a smell of grain and old sacking. The floor was covered with dried hen droppings.

He crawled on his stomach away from the car, keeping to the shadow, thinking that this jacket had cost him a fortune and that the force had better cough up for a replacement. He knew he had to find a way into the house. The kitchen door was no good. He couldn’t get to that without Slater seeing even if a sudden, miraculous cloud covered the moon. He knew there was a front door with a storm porch, on the side of the house that faced the garden, and decided to make for that. When he reached the orchard he stood up. He was round the corner of the house and out of Slater’s line of view. But he knew he had to be quick. Slater might notice at any time that he was no longer in the car. He pushed his way past the washing and through a tangle of overgrown shrubs.

The door of the storm porch was unlocked. It was stiff, as if it had warped and was seldom used, but it gave way at last to Hunter’s tugging. The inner door had panes of bubbled glass and it was impossible to see inside. Hunter stood still for a moment, trying to hear if the conversation between Ramsay and Slater was going on, but

Ramsay had lowered his voice so much that he could not tell. Perhaps Slater had come downstairs and was waiting on the other side of the door, with the shotgun in his hand. He turned the handle and pushed. The door was locked.

Swearing under his breath he looked about him for a hiding place for a spare key. The front of the house was in shadow, and though his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom he could make out nothing in detail. He felt along the window ledge. His fingers found nothing but a thick layer of dust. There was a filthy doormat on the floor of the porch but no key underneath it. He retreated into the garden.

On each side of the porch was a large terra cotta pot, which in Cissie Bowles’s day might have held a flowering plant. Now each contained soil and a few dried up weeds. Hunter lifted each pot and felt underneath. Nothing. He scrabbled around in the dry soil and in the first pot he tried there was a large key. He cleaned off the muck and returned to the path. The key was rusty but it fitted.

“Open, you bugger,” he muttered, thinking that all he needed now was for the door to be bolted on the inside.

The key turned remarkably easily. He put his shoulder against the door, turned the handle and pushed it slowly open.

At first it seemed pitch-black inside. He could hear a clock ticking, Slater’s voice ‘insistent but indistinct upstairs. Then he saw he was standing in a wide hall. Stairs, with a banister to one side, led away from him. He hesitated. Sod the heroics, he thought. Let’s get Lily out and let the cavalry deal with the lunatic upstairs. But he was pleased to think that for her he would be the cavalry.

He felt his way around the downstairs rooms. There was a lounge, crammed with furniture, a dining room, damp and cold as a cellar with a huge mahogany table but no chairs, the kitchen which was flooded with moonlight. No sign of Lily. The bastard’s got her upstairs, he thought, and felt a rush of adrenaline.

He stood in the hall listening, but he could only hear Slater, relentless as a politician, going on and on about never having been understood.

Perhaps she’s dead, he thought. He started up the stairs, testing each tread with his foot before putting his weight on it, listening after each step for some sound from Lily. A cry or a movement from one of the other upstairs rooms.

There was nothing.

At the top of the stairs he stopped. Sean’s voice was very clear now, still ranting.

“She believed in them, you know,” he said. “She believed they could make everything better. I knew she was fooling herself. Some things you can’t heal. Not just by talking.”

Slater was in the bedroom over the kitchen. It too would have the moon shining directly in through the window. The door was slightly ajar and white light spilled out on to the landing.

Hunter moved softly along the landing, looking in the other rooms for Lily. There was a big square bathroom with a gurgling cistern, bedrooms with unsavoury beds and threadbare carpets, a huge commode like a throne. As he pushed open one door quietly there was a rustling of movement, but it was only a family of mice scattering to the holes in the skirting board. So Lily must be in the room with Slater, he thought. Why, then, was she so quiet?

“We’ve got a suicide pact, you know.” Slater’s voice came suddenly. “You won’t take either of us alive.”

The door to Slater’s room was panelled, with a dark and peeling varnish. Hunter pushed it open a crack further. He could see Slater’s back. The man was almost hanging out of the window, shouting to Ramsay, waving the shotgun to make his point. Hunter thought he might overbalance and go tumbling into the farmyard below.

Lily was standing in the corner beside Cissie’s high lumpy bed, with her back to the wall. She looked at Hunter. He gestured her to walk towards him but she did not move. She was wearing her nightdress, a long, white calico shift with a shawl thrown over the top. Hunter saw then that this was no victim waiting to be rescued. She did not seem frightened. She was watching Slater sadly, waiting for him to run out of steam. She thought he was making a fool of himself but she was prepared to indulge him. For a while.

Sean turned back into the room. Still he could not see Hunter.

“I mean it,” he said. “I’d rather kill you than let you talk to that pig. He was tricking you. Can’t you see?”

Lily moved slowly away from the wall.

“Go on then,” she said.

“What?” he shouted. “Are you mad?”

“Kill me then,” she said firmly, ‘if that’s what you want. I don’t care one way or the other.”

She walked towards him. Her bare feet made marks on the dusty floor. They were long and bony and they reminded Hunter of a bird’s feet.

Slater raised the shotgun towards her. In the farmyard below Ramsay was becoming anxious. They heard him calling, “Sean! What’s going on, Sean? Why don’t you come back and talk to me?”

Frustrated and helpless, Hunter stood very still. He knew that any movement might panic Slater into firing. Lily walked right up to him, so the barrel of the shotgun touched her chest.

“Love,” he said. “I only did it for you.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

“I thought you’d realized,” he said.

She lifted the barrel of the shotgun so it pointed towards the ceiling, then she took it from his hands, cradling it carefully in her arms like a baby.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” he said.

She turned and threw the gun on to the bed.

“Come on,” she said. “Come on.” She hugged him to her, so his head was on her shoulder, and looked over him at Hunter who came into the room and emptied the gun. They did not move, even when Hunter went over to the window and shouted out to Ramsay: “It’s all right, boss. It’s all over.”

Later, back at the police station, Ramsay asked:

“How did you manage that then? The Indiana Jones trick. Disarming your man with a single blow.”

Hunter paused. For a moment there was a temptation to lie. It would have been a much better story if he’d been more than an onlooker. He still felt cheated that there’d been no chance for action after all that build up.

“It wasn’t me,” he said. “It was Lily. She persuaded him to give himself up.”

“Ah yes,” Ramsay said. “Lilyjackman.”