Roses fall, but the thorns remain.
Dutch proverb
The window was almost square and barely a dozen inches across. Using a small nail file, Kate had scraped and gouged away at the moulding to the point where most of it was stripped away. Luckily the wood was rotten in one corner, which had given her a head start. She had done most of the scraping in the early hours of the morning, careful to make as little noise as possible, flushing the debris down the toilet.
The window looked out on a barren patch of ground behind the house. Farther on, perhaps thirty paces away, edged by weeds and farm debris, stood an old wooden outbuilding. Just inside the open entry, Kate had earlier spotted an old bicycle leaning against a stack of wood. From the bathroom, looking through the dusty cobwebbed window, she hadn’t been able to tell whether the tyres had air in them or not. She prayed they did.
Kate sat on the toilet staring at the ceiling in the half dark. She had no idea of the time but guessed that at least four hours had passed since the television had been turned off downstairs. She had arbitrarily established that as somewhere between eleven and midnight. Assuming that to be reasonably accurate, she guessed the present time at between three and four in the morning. She decided not to wait any longer.
She slipped her nail file under the corner of the pane of glass and gently levered on it. She hoped that when it popped out it wouldn’t crack or shatter. That could be disastrous.
She pulled again, the palm of her other hand flat against the glass. It didn’t crack. But it didn’t budge, either.
As hard as Kate tried, the pane of glass wouldn’t come out. The edges were free of the moulding on all sides but many years of weathering and aging had apparently glued the glass to the putty on the outside.
‘Damn it,’ she whispered. ‘Damned glass.’
She scraped some more, stopping occasionally to listen for sounds in the house. Slipping the nail file under the corner where the rot gave her the most purchase she pulled back again. She realized that her fingers were perilously close to the edge of the glass. One slip and she could suffer a nasty gash. She had a temporary vision of her kidnappers following her bloody trail.
She paused, took a deep breath and pulled again, this time in a quick jerking motion. She thought she could see the pane bending.
‘Damn you! Come out,’ she breathed. Still it stubbornly refused to budge. She had no choice but to break it, she decided. But she had nothing hard enough to hit it with. Even if she did, the sound of a windowpane shattering would wake the entire house.
Biting her lower lip, she slipped the tip of the file under the glass, this time only by barely an inch, to get maximum leverage. She squeezed her eyes shut, pulling with two hands on the slender file. Suddenly, with a crack, a corner of the pane broke off. The triangular piece of glass fell quietly on to the worn shag rug she had placed under the window for this purpose. She stopped for several seconds, straining once more for telltale sounds in the quiet of the house. She heard nothing. A draught of air blowing through the small opening caressed her face. It took another minute before she could jiggle the remaining glass free. Finally it came out in one piece. She placed it against the wall, inhaling the crisp early morning air. It had the distinct aroma of manure. But to her it was like expensive perfume.
She stepped on to the toilet and put one knee on the sill. As she was about to pull herself up to squeeze through, she detected a fleeting movement outside against the outbuilding. She strained in the darkness to see what it could be. A cool breeze now blew her hair lightly across her eyes. She saw nothing. Probably just the wind disturbing something, she reassured herself. A wind chime tinkled on the other side of the house. Otherwise it was quiet. ‘Here goes. It’ll be a tight squeeze,’ she said under her breath. She hoisted herself up – and suddenly froze.
Across the yard she saw the tiny glowing dot of a cigarette burning. For a matter of seconds it grew brighter, illuminating the man’s face as he inhaled.
Alex had a restless night. When he awoke he was still fully dressed, the duvet crumpled around him. The copy of Country Life which he had been reading last night was still open by his pillow. He remembered picking it up and leafing through it for no other reason than to take his mind off the day at Compton’s, finding the rose, and all the things that could possibly go wrong tomorrow.
The Cross Keys must have changed hands since the review Kingston had recited in the car. It fell pitifully short of the glowing description in the guidebook. The lingering aftermath of last night’s indigestible dinner was still making itself heard sporadically from somewhere deep in his stomach. ‘Three stars, indeed,’ he said under his breath, listening to the dying strains of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ on the plastic clock radio. He closed his eyes, shifting on the mattress with more bumps in it than a sack of golf balls, listening to a lady with a Scottish accent giving the weather report for the south of England. It would be foggy in the early morning, she said, with sunny periods, turning to partly cloudy and breezy, with chances of scattered rain. ‘In other words, another typical English summer day,’ he groaned. He showered in the meagre cubicle that should have won an interior design award for most economical use of space. To add further to his discomfort, the chattering and gurgling pipes offered only two choices of water temperature: scalding hot or frigid. Abandoning further thoughts of ablutions, he dressed in a black turtleneck, tan corduroy trousers and a fleece-lined windbreaker. Remembering the ‘breezy’ part in the forecast, he stuffed a scarf in his jacket pocket for good measure. He looked himself up and down in a mirror screwed to the back of the wardrobe door. He was suitably dressed for anything the day might offer, he decided. He preferred not to examine his puffy eyes too closely.
Wolff woke to the acrid smell of stale wood smoke. It was one of the first things he’d noticed on his arrival at the farmhouse yesterday. More than one hundred years’ worth of errant smoke had permeated every post, beam, plank and board of the old house.
He had to get some fresh air. What time was it anyway? He switched on the wobbly table lamp fashioned from a wine bottle and squinted at his watch. It was not quite five. At least he had managed to get some sleep. He dressed, put on a Seattle Mariners baseball cap, picked up his Marlboros and left the stuffy room, quietly closing the door behind him.
In the pre-dawn darkness, a breeze tousled the leaves of a graceful birch by the front door, making the sound of wavelets rippling on a pebble shore. Shielding his lighter from the wind, he lit a cigarette. Now and then, when the breeze slackened, he caught a whiff of fertilizer and other farm-like smells. He stood for a minute or so, enjoying the solitude. His eyes had now adjusted to the darkness and he could make out the shapes and silhouettes around him. For no reason, he walked to the side of the house. He started to think about the coming day and what it would be like when he finally got to see the rose that was to be his salvation. The dark mass of an outbuilding of some kind – a barn, probably – loomed to his left. The rustling of a nocturnal creature in the brush ahead of him momentarily interrupted his thoughts.
The wind had picked up. Between the corridor formed by the house and the barn it was kicking up dust and dry leaves in ankle-high eddies. Somewhere a door or window rattled on loose hinges. As he walked between the buildings, Wolff had to tilt his head down to prevent the dust from getting in his eyes. He ducked into the barn. Out of the wind, standing there, smoking the last of his cigarette, he noticed with indifference the curtains flapping in an open window on the first floor. Then he started back to the house. It took him three steps before he registered the implication of the open window.
Running into the house, he suddenly realized that he didn’t know which room Marcus, Billy or Kate occupied. He started banging on every door he could find, shouting Marcus’s name. Finally, Billy appeared in the hallway, pulling on jeans.
‘Billy, which room is the Sheppard woman in?’
‘The one on this side,’ he said, pointing. ‘Upstairs,’ he added, still half asleep and confused.
‘Shit! Just what I thought – the goddamned window’s wide open.’
Marcus appeared at Wolff ’s side. ‘What the fuck’s goin’ on?’ he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
‘It looks like the Sheppard woman’s escaped,’ Wolff snapped. ‘You told me there was no way she could get out of that fucking room. Christ knows how much of a head start she’s got. Marcus, you get the Jeep and drive up to the main road. Chances are she’s on foot, so check out the fields as you go. If you don’t find her, go straight to The Parsonage. I’ve got a feeling that’s where she’ll be headed. But she’s obviously not gonna stay there for long, so you’d better hustle. On the way, check out every goddamned phone box you can find, too. First thing she’s gonna do is call the police.’ He turned back to Billy. ‘Come with me. We’re gonna have to close up shop and get the hell out of here.