Rafe raised his head. “If you’re going,” he told Daniel, “then so am I.”
There was a small, tight silence. Rafe stared coldly at Daniel, unblinking; Daniel gazed calmly back. “Why?” he asked.
“Because he’s a moron,” Abby said, to her book. “Ignore him and maybe he’ll go away, or at least shut up. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I don’t want you guys,” I said. I was all ready for this, Daniel trying to join the party. I hadn’t counted on Justin having some weird unexplained phobia of country lanes, though. “All you’ll do is bitch at each other, and I’m not in the mood. I want Justin. I never see him any more.”
Rafe snorted. “You see him all day, every day. How much Justin can one person take?”
“That’s different. We haven’t talked in ages, not properly.”
“I can’t go out there in the middle of the night, Lexie,” Justin said. He looked like he was actually in pain. “I would, honestly, but I just can’t.”
“Well,” Daniel said to me and Rafe, putting his book down. There was a glint in his eye, something like a wry, tired triumph: one all. “Shall we go?”
“Forget it,” I said, giving them all a disgusted glare. “Just forget it. Never mind. You can all stay here and bitch and complain, I’ll go by myself, and if I get stabbed again, I hope you’ll be happy.”
Just before I slammed the kitchen door, panes of glass trembling, I heard Rafe starting to say something and Abby’s voice cutting across his, low and fierce: “Shut up.” When I turned back at the bottom of the garden, all four of them had their heads bent over their books again, in their pools of lamplight; glowing, enclosed, untouchable.
The night had turned cloudy, the air thick and immovable as a wet duvet dumped over the hills. I walked fast, trying to wear myself out, aiming for the point where I could fool myself that it was the exercise making my heart race. I thought of that great imaginary clock I’d felt somewhere in the background, my first couple of days, urging me faster. Sometime after that it had faded away into nothing, left me swaying to Whitethorn House’s own sweet slow rhythms, with all the time in the world. Now it was back, ticking savagely and getting louder every minute, speeding towards some huge shadowy zero hour.
I rang Frank from down in one of the lanes-even the thought of climbing my tree, having to stay in one place, made me itch all over. “There you are,” he said. “What were you doing, running a marathon?”
I leaned against a tree trunk and tried to get my breathing back to normal. “Trying to walk off my hangover. Clear my head.”
“Always a good idea,” Frank agreed. “First off, babe, well done last night. I’ll buy you a fancy cocktail for that one, when you get home. I think you may just have got us the break we needed.”
“Maybe. I’m not counting chickens. For all we know, Ned could be bullshitting me about the whole thing. He tries to buy Lexie’s share of the house, she blows him off, he decides to give it one more go, then I mention the memory loss and he sees his chance to convince me we had a deal all along… He’s no Einstein, but he’s no idiot either, not when it comes to wheeling and dealing.”
“Maybe not,” Frank said. “Maybe not. How’d you manage to hook up with him, anyway?”
I had my answer to that one all ready. “I’ve been keeping an eye on that cottage, every night. I figured Lexie went there for a reason-and if she was meeting someone, that would be the logical place. So I thought there was a decent chance whoever it was would show up there again.”
“And Slow Eddie wanders in,” Frank said blandly, “just when I’d told you about the house, given the two of you something to talk about. He’s got good timing. Why didn’t you ring me, after he left?”
“My head was buzzing, Frankie. All I could think about was how this changes the case, how I can use it, what I do next, how to find out if Ned’s bullshitting… I meant to phone you, but it went straight out of my head.”
“Better late than never. So how was your day?”
His voice was pleasant, absolutely neutral, giving away nothing. “I know, I know, I’m a lazy cow,” I said, giving it an apologetic cringe. “I should’ve tried to get something out of Daniel, while I had him to myself, but I just couldn’t face it. My head was killing me, and you know what Daniel’s like; he’s not exactly light entertainment. Sorry.”
“Hmm,” said Frank, not very reassuringly. “And what’s with the stroppy-bitch act? I’m assuming it was an act.”
“I want to unsettle them,” I said, which was true. “We’ve tried relaxing them into talking, and it hasn’t worked. What with the new info, I think it’s time to kick it up a gear.”
“It didn’t occur to you to talk that over with me before you swung into action?”
I left a small, startled pause. “I just figured you’d guess what I was at.”
“OK,” Frank said, in a mild voice that started sirens rising in my head. “You’ve done a great job, Cass. I know you didn’t want to get involved, and I appreciate the fact that you did it anyway. You’re a good cop.”
