If it hadn’t been for the scarf still gagging me, I would probably have drowned right there and then. As it was, my first instinctive gasp of shock consisted not entirely of cold water but mostly of wool. Meanwhile, the lake smacked me around the neck, got me in a headlock, and filled my ears and eyes but not my mouth. Not yet.
I went under, and began to flail frantically. I didn’t know which way was up. It seemed an endless age before my head broke the surface. I wanted to scream out, from the cold and terror, but the wool still gagged me and after one unsatisfactory gulp I went back under.
When I came up for the second time I was desperate for air. I managed to tear off the scarf and trod water, gasping. The outboard motor had started up again: its rackety purr passed some way off to my left and then began to fade. It was leaving me behind.
I was already finding it hard work treading water. I kicked my shoes off and went onto my back, sculling with my arms.
That was better. I couldn’t see anything except the sky, but I could breathe, and I didn’t need to kick so hard to stay afloat. I concentrated on getting my panicky gasping under control. Belatedly, I realised that parts of my back and chest and even arms were still dry, thanks to the old puffa jacket with its too-tight cuffs, although the chill tide of water was already seeping in. My ear throbbed where Matt had hit me; but that was the least of my worries.
The boat was barely audible by now. Surely he would come back, thought the hopeful idiot in my head. He wouldn’t leave me here! I almost tried to shout; the only thing that stopped me was a dreadful lack of breath.
Then a more rational part of me kicked in, saying, He’s not coming back. That’s the whole point. Don’t shout. You don’t want him to come back. Get a grip, girl. You’re in cold water and you’ve got thirty minutes, forty at most, before you pass out from hypothermia. I remembered the voice of my PE teacher. Water survival. We all jumped in the deep end in our pyjamas.
I had no pyjamas to make into buoyancy aids. I had a puffa jacket that was slightly buoyant for now but wouldn’t be much longer. I wasn’t in a nice warm pool with a temperature of 28 degrees centigrade: it was more like 4 or 5.
And how far from the shore was I? At Brockhole, Windermere wasn’t at its widest – only two thirds of a mile or so – but it was at its deepest. Two hundred feet of icy blackness, with me bobbing around on the top.
At the thought I began to flounder and sink. I swallowed a mouthful of water and had to force myself to lie steady on the surface again. Breathe. Kick. That’s it. No problem. It won’t pull you down, it’ll hold you up. It’s a great big cushion of water.
Of freezing water. But if it was, say, six hundred metres to shore, that was only twenty lengths of Carlisle baths. Less. That was nothing. I could do that. Ten years ago, I could swim thirty lengths in a nice warm pool, even if I hadn’t swum much since.
So pretend this was a nice warm pool. I could fake it, couldn’t I? My speciality, after all. Carlisle baths on Sunday morning: echoing with shouts and chlorine. Now get going.
I set off in the opposite direction to the boat, towards where I hoped Wray castle might be, doing front crawl. Immediately a surge of icy water rushed in under my coat and numbed me into shock. I switched to breast-stroke, and alternated it with lying on my back to kick, staring up at the stars, trying not to think how cold I was. Bubbles of air tickled their way up my back and escaped at my collar, burping gently by my ear. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I was grateful for the woolly hat, which acted like a wet-suit for my scalp.
I rested, listening again. No engine. Matt had gone. If he wanted me to drown, why hadn’t he pushed me under? But that might have been tricky. He would have needed a torch to see me, and that might have attracted attention. He must have assumed I was unconscious. And even if the slap of cold water were to revive me, maybe he thought I couldn’t swim in it for long…
A small wave burst over me, so that I struggled like a caught fish until my face broke the surface again. Keep it steady. That’s fine. Another session on my back: it was easier, but too slow. I was barely moving.
Selena in my kitchen, dripping. Can you not swim, then? And what had I answered? No, not when it’s as cold as that.
Selena and Matt... She’d rung Matt, in a panic, to tell him I had guessed who Isaac’s killer was. Although I’d had Russell in my mind, I’d never said his name to her. But she knew the murderer was Matt, so she leapt to her own conclusions: and now they both wanted me dead.
How many lengths had I done by now? Three, four? Say five. Only another fifteen to go. All I could hear was water gurgling, murmuring, talking: telling me this was not my place. I was an alien here. I switched to breaststroke again, agonisingly clumsy, noticing how everything was seizing up and winding down.
Stop noticing. Just swim. Think about something else. Selena: she was involved in this. But how? And why?
Kiss the girls and make them cry. Just who had kissed Selena in the dormitory, that evening at Raven How? We’d seen the three of them emerging: Selena, Matt and Griff… Somebody had kissed her, and somebody had watched. And who had Russell spotted on the dark road with her?
Matt and Selena. His best friend’s wife. Yet Matt had been so close to Luke once; gave him that poetry book. He’d loved him, hadn’t he? Loved him and led him away from the farm, down shady paths. The Wordsworth letter. Matt must have forged that: he was the literary one. The clever one. And then the motor business: had he meant the dodgy MOTs? Or was it the red diesel scam, when Luke got off with a caution in return for dobbing in his mates?
Matt blamed Isaac. Too much of his father in him. But did he really kill Isaac to revenge himself on me? No, no, surely not.
Abruptly I gulped in another mouthful of Windermere. The idea froze me as much as the cold water that seemed to be eating through both clothes and skin. Had I brought about Isaac’s death?
Yes. Yes, surely yes.
Matt had hidden himself from me, all but once. That strange, wistful memory of Luke: his heavy grace. My legs were heavy: as heavy as stone and almost as immobile. I rolled onto my back. The sky above me was like pitch, with not a single star. The distant lights of Bowness beckoned, and I kicked away from them.
So had Matt loved Luke, or not? He seduced Luke’s wife – except that he didn’t, not properly, because that would have made her cry.
I swallowed water, coughed it up again, tried not to retch, to get back into a rhythm. It was becoming harder.
Matt and Selena were in league. Had Luke known? Was that what made him reach for the gun? EVERYTHING IS AGAINST ME…
Luke must have felt betrayed by them both. Yet he still had his father, and Bryony, waiting in the wings. Why hadn’t they been enough? THERE’S NO PLACE LEFT, he scribbled in his last despair, but surely he was wrong.
I was struggling. Mind and body were both slow and clumsy. My jacket was soggy now, weighing me down, no help any more. I managed to pull it off, and let it drift away into the depths while I lay on my back, trying to summon up the energy to kick. I could barely move my limbs. Everything ached. There was a lump in my throat like a pebble: it was difficult to breathe.
Matt was expecting me to drown. Why not just oblige him? I was so cold, so tired, and who would miss me? Who would care? No great loss to anyone. No real friends. None of them would miss me, nor my family, nor Hunter, and certainly not Nick.
Everything is against me, I thought wretchedly. There’s no place left. Why not let go and drift down like my coat into black oblivion?
I stopped kicking and at once began to sink. As cold water rushed into my mouth, I heard Greta scolding furiously.
For Christ’s sake, Eden, live in the real world, can’t you? She was exasperated. The real world? Where was that? Oh, wake up, said Greta. I’m real, and so are Mum and Dad and Allen. You can’t do this to them. We care. We’re not all fakes like you.
I supposed Greta must know best. She always did. They cared for me, imperfect as I was, and imperfect as they were: they were
n’t all fakes like Matt.
I kicked again, surfaced, and forced my limbs back into a grim pretence of movement. I was determined not to drown. Greta would never forgive me.
Keep swimming. So what if you can’t feel your legs? Just do another thirty strokes. Then twenty. Then another ten. Then five. Then three.
Scenes flickered across my eyes, as if on fast forward. The old dog slumped and bloody in the yard; the gun balanced on Selena’s arm. I wanted you to rescue me, to make me real. I followed you. Sliding a handful of wet stones into her pocket, wading out towards the centre of the lake…
The sound of the water changed. A current pulled at me. I began to thrash and sink again; and then my toe scraped bottom. After three more frantic, splashy strokes, I could put my feet down. The darkness of land loomed ahead: I heard the faint consoling shush of ripples stroking the gravelly shore. Up to my neck in freezing water, I began to laugh and cry at the same time.
Save it, said the sterner, sensible part of me. Get yourself out first.
I couldn’t do it. Those last thirty metres were the hardest of all. The shallower the water, the heavier I got, so bereft of energy that I couldn’t even wade. I felt like an anchor tethered to the bottom: like one of those iron statues on Crosby beach, cemented underwater, frozen.
I crawled out at last, on hands and knees. As I flopped onto the shore I heard police sirens lamenting, away across the water. A pity they weren’t coming for me. I dragged myself a little further forward and curled up in a ball. I was safe now. Just rest a bit.
Don’t you dare, said my sterner self. It was beginning to sound like Greta. Pick yourself up and move. Find a road. Look for lights. Find a house. You can lie down when you find a house to lie down in. Not before.
I didn’t obey myself immediately. I just lay there, until I began to shiver so violently that it hurt. Then I made myself stand up and stagger along that little, unseen beach, which was edged by a bank and an invisible barbed wire fence which I discovered when I ripped my trousers on it. I managed to climb over it and then fell down. Grass. That was nice. Smelt good. I lay there for a while with my nose in it until my stern self – definitely Greta – kicked me to my feet and made me stagger on.
I tried to work out where I might be. My brain wasn’t up to it. But there were no trees here: that was good, for it meant I hadn’t drifted as far south as the woods at Claife, where I could find myself wandering along miles of deserted forest paths. This was just grass. Then a wall. Climb it. The other side had a different feel underfoot: the worn stones of a track.
I followed it uphill, trying to ignore my screaming muscles and my protesting stockinged feet, and after what felt like a mile but was probably just a couple of hundred metres found a wooden gate, glimmering palely in the starlight, and then a high hedge and beyond it the black bulk of a house with lights glowing through windows, thank God, so warm, so butter-yellow I fell in love with the colour on the spot.
I trailed up the path and met a front door. My fingers were throbbing: I could feel them, all right, I just couldn’t feel anything with them. I banged on the door with my fists, and when it didn’t seem loud enough, picked up the boot scraper I’d just stubbed my toe on and swung at the door with that.
A hall light came on. I dropped the boot scraper. The butter-yellow glow rushed out and hugged me. Framed by the light stood a middle-aged man, striped shirt, gripping a baseball bat.
“Good God,” he said. I was incapable of speech: I just leaned there, panting, trusting that my appearance would speak for me. After a moment he opened the door wider and I stumbled into the hall. Big house, nice carpet, though not any more now I was smearing bits of Windermere across it. Impressive staircase: somebody ran down it, voices, faces, female. I was ushered into a flowery kitchen and made to sit down next to an Aga pumping out heat. Wonderful. I closed my eyes.
“Better call an ambulance,” said someone. My eyes flew open.
“No! No ambulance!” I said thickly. I didn’t want to be carted off. I had to tell somebody about – what? Oh, yes. About Griff. And Matt. “Police,” I said. “Kendal station. Someone tried to drown me.”
“You what? Hang on!” He hurried away, and I was left with two women. The middle-aged one was anxiously sheltering a pair of eager children in pyjamas. The other, younger one took charge, producing a towel with which she began to vigorously dry my hair.
“You will have a hot bath,” she said decidedly. I shook my head. No time for that. I had to go and rescue Griff. And where was Matt now?
“Hot-water bottle,” she said firmly, “hot drink and duvet. You will take the children to bed, please, Mrs James? I am sorting out the lady here.”
“Aaah,” wailed the children in chorus, not wanting to leave, but their mother hustled them away.
“I am Krista,” said the young woman. “You will take off the wet clothes.” In a few minutes she had me stripped down to my underwear and wrapped in a towel and a duvet, with a mug of hot milk held between my hands. “Mr James is phoning now for police,” she said, and a moment later the man returned, disgruntled, the phone in his hand.
“You wouldn’t believe the trouble,” he said. “I keep getting put through. They want to talk to you now.”
He gave me the phone. There was some woman on the other end, crisp and faintly patronising. She called me dear. My mouth was numb: I said my name three times before she understood it, and tried to tell her what had happened although it was all too complicated, she couldn’t follow and I kept having to repeat myself.
“Tell Sergeant Brigg,” I said in desperation. “At Ambleside. Inspector Irlam and Sergeant Brigg.”
At last she rang off. I didn’t know what was happening. They were sending a car. Where to? Who for? I groaned, and Krista thrust a hot water bottle at me.
“For the stomach,” she said. I wrapped my arms around it under the duvet, feeling the heat roar through me: the receding cold raked my limbs angrily as it fled.
“Drink the milk hot. You are needing bath, then bed,” said Krista, cajoling me. She was enjoying herself. I shook my head. I didn’t want a bath, nor bed.
The phone rang; Mr James answered and held it out for me.
Hunter’s voice. “Are you all right?”
“More or less,” I said. “Hunter, it was Matt. He killed Isaac. He tried to kill me. He came round when I was at Griff’s flat–”
He cut me short. “I know. Griff had already told us about Matt being there. We’re on to him.”
“Griff told you?”
“In a manner of speaking. Muriel found him and rang us. Larry’s on his way up to Keswick to intercept Matt now. Don’t worry about him.” He sounded calm and matter-of-fact.
“Hunter! It’s not just Matt – it’s Selena too.”
His voice changed. “What? How do you know?”
“She rang Matt to tell him where I was. She thought I was on to Isaac’s killer. I wasn’t, but Matt thought I was about to dob him in – that’s why he came for me. Selena’s in on this.”
“Damn. Bloody hell. So if he heads for – I’ll drive straight over to Borran’s Rigg in case he turns up there. Where are you? High Wray, isn’t it?”
“Somewhere like that.”
“Are they looking after you?”
“They’re trying to put me to bed,” I said.
“Good. Stay there.”
“But, Hunter, if Matt goes–” Too late. He’d rung off.
“Bed, yes?” said Krista.
“No!” I stood up shakily: the hot-water bottle clunked, gurgling, to the floor. “I never told him about the gun!”
“The gun?” Her eyes widened.
“I need to get dressed. I have to go and help someone.” Bryony was alone on that farm with Selena, with the key of the gun case round her neck.
“You’re not in a fit state to go anywhere,” protested Mr James. “You’re much better off staying here. Isn’t she, Krista?”
“I will find you clothes,” an
nounced Krista. “Next I will give you the lift. Okay, Mr James? You said I can have the car for my night off.” She didn’t wait for an answer – I’m not sure it would have made any difference in any case – but promptly bustled away. I sat down and finished my milk while Mr James fidgeted, pretending to tidy up around me. He had no idea what to do.
Krista arrived with an armful of clothes and flapped her hands at him. “Out, now! Go! She gets dressed.” She shooed him back into the hall while I clothed myself in tracksuit trousers and a faded hoodie advertising AKADEMIKA PEDAGOGICZNA. She flung open a cupboard and umpteen wellies fell out. I picked a pair and followed her to the garage, where she climbed into a chunky Japanese four-wheel drive. I could hardly haul myself into it. My legs felt as if they’d been replaced by artificial limbs which I hadn’t yet worked out how to use.
“Where do we go?” asked Krista eagerly.
“Towards Skelwith Bridge. I’ll give you directions.” We rumbled off through the dark, the cloaked trees bending down to us, the scattered lights pale beacons in a lake of night. We charged through the silence and all the hills turned to look at our clatter.
I was trying to work out where to go first: straight to the farm, or to Raven How to warn Ruby and Russell, and maybe gather them up as reinforcements? I still hadn’t decided when Krista did a racing turn onto the Little Langdale road.
Events made my decision for me. The blue flashing lights were a shout at the sky: I didn’t need to hear the siren to know that the police had got there first. As we approached the end of the farm track, both siren and blue lights were abruptly switched off.
“Stop here,” I said, and Krista pulled up. “Thank you. You’d better go home now.” But she parked up and followed me as I hurried cautiously up the track towards the farm.
The house looked dark. A lamp glared from the corner of the farmyard, flooding it in ominous ochre light and sculpting strange shadows. Two police cars were parked behind the bull’s shed, out of direct sight of the house. A huddle of police was gathered there: Hunter and Fiona, and two young constables whom I didn’t know, talking into radios.
We weren’t the only arrivals. Someone was squeezing over the stile.
“Ruby?”
“I heard a shot. What’s going on?” said Ruby, breathless.
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t want to imagine.
As we entered the yard, one of the policemen turned towards us. It was Hunter.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Go back home. Get them out of here, George. And you, Eden! I thought I told you to stay where you were.”
“I had to come – I was worried about Bryony. There’s a shotgun in there, locked in a chest, and Bryony’s got the key.”
“Too late,” said Hunter. His voice sounded odd. “She’s barricaded in the upstairs bedroom with Selena and Matt. He heard us coming. He’s got the gun. And he’s already used it.”
Chapter Twenty-nine