Lech didn’t reply.
“Because I doubt your work bennies’ll cover plastic surgery.” Lamb jammed his hands in his pockets. “You owe me a bottle of Talisker. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m kidding. But here. In case a third way occurs to you. Other than stitches or surgery.” He pulled something from his pocket and put it on the desk. “I’ll want it back, mind.”
He left the room and headed downstairs rather than up.
After a while, Lech reached for Lamb’s gift and weighed it in his hand. Heavier than it looked. Good quality. A real old-school implement, in fact, with a handle that might be silver.
When he unfolded it, the razor’s blade glinted meanly in the pallid light.
Somewhere under a pile of snow—in a wood, in a field, by a stile—was the monkey-wrench she’d used to clock one of the bad actors that first night. She’d have liked it now. Women carrying blunt instruments were taken more seriously. It was the
At the time, though, it had been weighing her down, and flight had been her major concern.
She moved through the trees as quietly as she could, but underfoot was a mess of twigs and leaves; the same carpet that had given away the enemy presence—it was always enemy presence; that was the rule. In joe country, any stranger was a hostile.
Emma had disappeared from view already. The shed was a blocky dark presence in a thicket; a casual glance, and you wouldn’t know it was there. But it wasn’t the casual glance that worried her; it was the expert appraisal. The noise came again—a rustle, but one with deliberate pace to it; a measured rustle, not a careless breeze. A rustler who had paused to measure his impact on the surroundings.
Louisa waited. The estuary lay behind, a hundred yards or so; the tide was in, and had filled the basin with a shiny grey light that glimmered between trees. Every other direction was shades of brown and white. The sound that had alarmed her came from the path, she thought, but it was hard to tell.
It happened again: a low-down noise. Someone easing forward, but keeping low, close to the ground.
What mattered, she thought, was that she lead them away from Lucas.
She had to assume he had a gun, and with that thought dropped to one knee, and groped around for rustic weaponry. No club-shaped sticks appeared. No handy brick-sized rocks. A few loose stones was all. She took them anyway, thinking
One stone, smooth and brilliant, she kept in her hand. The others she slipped into her pocket.
When she reached the track she fell to a crouch. The path stretched for a hundred yards before veering left; in the other direction, the way they’d come last night, the sightline was no more than twenty. The ground was rough and pitted, and there was an odd stretch, tramline straight, three inches wide, where snow lay. An oddity caused by the shape of the overhead trees, she assumed, not wanting to pay attention to quirks of nature; wanting to focus on that rustling sound which came again now, to her left. Her grip on the stones tightened. Whoever was approaching didn’t sound loud enough to be a person, which meant they were a person trying not to sound loud; a person who knew where to place their feet. She could all but see him, fading into sight like a professional, his gun in a two-fisted grip. Her jacket might as well have had gold and red circles imprinted upon it. And then the fox came trotting round the corner, its movement a bare rustle in the morning light; the scrappy bundle in its mouth a living thing until two minutes ago. It barely glanced at her as it passed. Some dangers were more noteworthy than others.
Louisa breathed out, shook her head, and went back to rejoin Emma.
The voices belonged to a man, a woman. The woman was leaning against a tree and the man was up in her face. It didn’t look pretty but that was okay: he wasn’t looking for pretty, or its opposite. Neither of these people mattered. They were, though, in his way.
He made to head past, but the man spoke.
“What you looking at?”
Lars raised his hands in polite surrender. “Just out for a walk.”
“Yeah, well walk somewhere else, all right?”
Lars looked at the woman. She didn’t seem surprised at her companion’s belligerence. Wearied by it, if anything.
He said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my friends? Two women? One wearing white, the other black? And a teenage boy?”
The man stepped away from the woman. “Am I here spying on women? Is that what you’re asking?”
“It wasn’t what I was asking, no.”
“Just as bloody well, right? Because I’m minding my own business, okay? Which is what you should be doing too.”
“Yes, fine. Okay.”
“You foreign? You sound foreign?”
“Well,” said Lars. “I’m not from round here. That’s true.”
