Longshot. Part 72

I didn't answer him either. He sped away back to the car and we could hear his urgent voice, though not the words. He returned shortly telling me to hang on, it wouldn't be for long; and the shock had made him breathless too, I noticed.

'We've looked for you for hours,' he said, anxious, I thought, to prove I hadn't been forgotten. 'We telephoned the police and the hospitals and they had no news of a car crash or anything, so then we came out here

'Because of your message,' Mackie said, 'on the cork-board.'

Oh, yes.

Gareth's camera was swinging from Perkin's hand. Mackie saw me watching it and said, 'We found the trail, you know.'

Gareth chimed in, 'The paint by the road had gone but we looked and looked in the woods. I remembered where we'd been.' He was earnest. 'I remembered pretty well where it started. And Perkin found it.'

'He went all the way along it with a torch,' Mackie said, stroking her husband's arm, 'clever thing - and he came back after absolutely ages with Gareth's camera and said you weren't there. We didn't know what to do next.'

'I wouldn't let them go home,' Gareth said. A mixture of stubbornness and pride in his voice. Thank G.o.d for him, I thought.

'What happened exactly?' Tremayne asked me bluntly. 'How did you get like this?'

'Tell you- later.' It came out not much above a whis-per, lost in the sound of their movements around me.

'Don't bother him,' Mackie said. 'He can hardly speak.' They waited beside me making worried encouragements until the ambulance arrived from the direction of Reading. Tremayne and Mackie went to meet the men in uniform, to tell them, I supposed, what to expect. Gareth took a step or two after them and I called him in an explosive croak, 'Gareth,' and he stopped and turned immediately and came back, bending down.

'Yes? What? What can I do?' 'Stay with me,' I said.

It surprised him but he said, 'Oh, OK,' and stayed a pace away looking troubled. Perkin said irritably, 'Oh, go on, Gareth.' I said, 'No,' hoa.r.s.ely. 'Stay.'

After a pause Perkin put his back towards Gareth and his face down near mine and asked with perfect calmness, 'Do you know who shot you?' It sounded like a natural question in the circ.u.mstances, but it wasn't.

I didn't reply. I looked for the first time straight into his moonlit eyes, and I saw Perkin the son, the husband, the one who worked with wood. I looked deep, but I couldn't see his soul. Saw the man who thought he'd killed me- saw the archer. 'Do you really know?' he asked again. He showed no feeling, yet my knowledge held the difference between his safety and destruction.

After a long moment, in which he read the answer for himself, I said, 'Yes.'

Something within him seemed to collapse but he didn't outwardly fall to pieces or rant or rave or even try to pull out the arrow again or finish me in any other way. He didn't explain or show remorse or produce justification. He straightened and looked across to where the men from the ambulance were advancing with his father and his wife. Looked at his brother, a pace away, listening.

He said to me, 'I love Mackie very much.' He'd said everything, really.

I spent the night thankfully unaware of the marathon needlework going on in my chest and drifted back late in the morning to a ma.s.s of tubes and machines and techniques I'd never heard of. It seemed I was going to live: the doctors were cheerful, not cautious.

'Const.i.tution like a horse,' one said. 'We'll have you back on your feet in no time.'

A nurse told me a policeman wanted to see me, but visitors had been barred until tomorrow.

By tomorrow, which was Wednesday, I was breathing shallowly but without mechanical help, sitting propped up sideways and drinking soup; talking, attached to drainage tubes and feeling sore. Doing just fine, they said.

The first person who came to see me wasn't Doone after all but Tremayne. He came in the afternoon and he looked white, fatigued and many years older.

He didn't ask about my health. He went over to the window of the post-operation side-ward I was occupying alone and stood looking out for a while, then he turned and said, 'Something awful happened yesterday.' He was trembling, I saw. 'What?' I asked apprehensively. 'Perkin-' His throat closed. His distress was overwhelming.

'Sit down,' I said.

He fumbled his way into the chair provided for visitors and put a hand over his lips so that I shouldn't see how close he was to tears.

'Perkin,' he said after a while. 'After all these years you'd think he'd be careful.'

'What happened?' I asked, when he stopped. 'He was carving part of a cabinet by hand- and he cut his leg open with the knife. He bled- he tried to reach the door- there was blood all over the floor- pints of it. He's had cuts sometimes before but this was an artery- Mackie found him.' 'Oh, no,' I said in protest.

'She's in a terrible state and she won't let them give her sedatives because of the baby.'

Despite his efforts, tears filled his eyes. He waited for his face to steady, then took out a handkerchief and fiercely blew his nose.

'Fiona's with her,' he said. 'She's been marvellous.' He swallowed. 'I didn't want to burden you with this but you'd soon have wondered why Mackie hadn't come.'

'That's the least of things.'

'I have to go back now, but I wanted to tell you myself.'

'Yes. Thank you.'

'There's so much to see to.' His voice wavered again. 'I wish you were there. The horses need to go out. I need your help.'

I wanted very much to give it but he could see I couldn't.

'In a few days,' I said, and he nodded.

'There has to be an inquest,' he said wretchedly.

He stayed for a while sitting exhaustedly as if loath to take up his burdens again, postponing the moment when he would have to go back to supporting everyone else. Eventually he sighed deeply, pushed himself to his feet and with a wan smile departed.

Admirable man, Tremayne.

Doone arrived very soon after Tremayne had gone and came straight to the point.

'Who shot you?'

'Some kid playing Robin Hood,' I said.

'Be serious.'

'Seriously, I didn't see.'

He sat in the visitors' chair and looked at me brood-ingly.

'I saw Mr Tremayne Vickers in the car park,' he said. 'I suppose he told you their bad news?'

'Yes. Dreadful for them.'

'You wouldn't think, would you,' he added, 'that this could be another murder?'

He saw my surprise. 'I hadn't thought of it,' I said.

'It looks like an accident,' he said with a certain delicacy, 'but he was experienced with that knife, was young