Cupid's Arrow (24 page)

For a heartbeat, I just stood there, stunned. Then my brain started moving again and I ran to the window. I looked out gingerly, dreading that I'd see Remy's body lying on the gravel. But there was nobody. And nothing. No blood. No sign of a struggle. No sign that anything had happened to him, except for those messy bedclothes. But that could have been him, throwing them off.

Suppose he'd gone himself, of his own free will, for some urgent reason? But then he'd have left word for me, surely. I scoured that room, looking on the table, in the drawers, under the bedclothes, everywhere, for a note, but found nothing. Not a clue.

He wouldn't just go and leave me alone, would he? No. I couldn't believe that. And anyway, why
would
he go? What could possibly be so urgent that he'd just up and leave and ... Patou! He wouldn't have gone without Patou. I raced downstairs and into the living room where I'd last seen the dog, lying on her basket. She wasn't there. I called, 'Patou! Patou!' But she didn't answer. Of course she didn't answer. She was gone, like him.

That meant he must have gone of his own free will, surely. Because if it had been the intruder – Laurie – whoever I'd caught a glimpse of, in the garden, then he'd not have known Patou was there. He'd not have come in here at all.

I looked around the room. Everything was as still as it had been when I went up to bed, except for the fact that the laptop was lying on the coffee table. Someone must have brought it in from the study. It had its lid down. I opened it. A blue light blinked. The computer was still on, hibernating. I touched the keyboard. Up sprang a website. One I recognised.
The Casebook of Dreaming Holmes.

The door banged. An instant later, there were Christine's footsteps, heading for the stairs. Forgetting all about the computer, I dashed out into the corridor. 'Christine! Remy's gone!'

She stopped dead. 'What?'

'He's not in his room. I can't find him. Patou's gone too.'

'But why?'

'I don't know. I thought he'd have left me a note.'

'And he didn't?'

'No.' I suddenly remembered what she'd gone out for. 'Did you find him? The man I saw, I mean.'

'No. But I did find this.' She pulled something out of her coat. A torn piece of paper. 'He must have dropped it. He must have been in a hurry. It got trampled in the mud. But look at it. What do you think it is?'

I looked at it. My heart raced. My skin crawled. I said, weakly, 'It's a drawing. A sketch of a woman's head. It's had a corner torn off.' My legs wobbled. I'd seen that style before, that bold hand. In fact I'd seen several of these drawings, lying defaced and scattered around a dead woman's cottage ...

'Yes, but do you see who it is? It's pretty unmistakeable, don't you think?'

I nodded, unable to trust my voice.

'Why the hell would anyone carry around a sketch of Valerie Gomert?' said Christine, blankly. 'Tell me that, Fleur.'

I stared at the sketch, thinking of the missing corner lying in the evidence box at the Avallon police station. I thought of how wrong we'd been in our assumptions. I said, 'She wouldn't have had time, poor thing. Of course she wouldn't. How could we be so stupid?'

Christine stared at me. 'What are you talking about? What the hell is this picture?'

'Valerie was making a tarot,' I said. 'The Bellerive Tarot. Each of the symbols was portrayed by someone she knew. Someone from Bellerive. We thought – the police thought that the missing card would carry a portrait of her murderer. Someone she knew. We thought that's why he might have taken it. But maybe she didn't have time. I mean –' Christine still looked blank. 'If she'd only just clapped eyes on him that evening, she might not have known, for sure. He'd have changed, from way back when. She wouldn't have had time to draw a picture of Laurie as Death or the Hanged Man. No, this one I bet she'd drawn a while back – she'd drawn herself as Death or whatever – poor woman.'

Christine looked puzzled, but I didn't feel like explaining the tarot to her, not right at this moment. I said, 'I suppose her murderer must simply have taken it as a trophy.' I shivered. 'Or something like that. Maybe that's what that Hotel du Lys paper was about too. It was a kind of trophy. Reminding him of things. Raymond must have found it. So that means – that means he must have met Laurie at least once before.'

'Oscar didn't say,' said Christine, uncertainly. 'But then I suppose I never asked. It's certainly possible. But why would Hotel du Lys mean anything to Monsieur Dulac?'

'He was a good friend of Valerie's. Maybe she told him. Or maybe he found out, somehow. But he wasn't sure. He wanted it checked out, so he employed –'

'The PI,' Christine nodded. 'It's possible. We could hunt down the –'

I actually felt the jolt in my mind. I said, 'Oh my God, that's what he's doing.'

'What?'

'Hunting him down. Remy –'

She looked utterly confused. 'What are you talking about, Fleur? I don't understand a word. Are you saying Remy's being hunted by Laurie? But I thought you said Patou was gone too. Wouldn't –'

'No. No.
Remy is hunting Laurie.
He saw him tonight. Outside. He's gone to hunt him down. With Patou.' My throat felt like it would close up. 'He's going to kill him because of what happened to his mother. He used to have a bow and arrow, but not with him. Do you have any other weapons, I mean, other than that gun?'

Her eyebrows raised. 'That's crazy, Fleur. You surely can't be suggesting ...'

'Please. Do you?'

'I do have a crossbow,' she said reluctantly. 'Well, it's not
mine,
actually. It's Oscar's. He used to belong to an archery club in Canada. Target practice. He asked me to keep it here because Raymond didn't want it in the house. I don't think he's used it in ages. I don't think there's even any bolts left with it.'

'Please. Where is it?'

'For God's sake, Fleur. Don't be –'

'Please.'

'Cupboard under the stairs,' she said at last. 'But how would he know that?'

I didn't listen. I ran to the cupboard she'd pointed out, and pulled open the door. There was a light to one side. I switched it on, and looked inside.

'What a mess,' said Christine, over my shoulder. 'It wasn't as messy as this before. Hang on. Don't go in. Let me have a look.' She went in, and began pulling aside the boxes and piles of old blankets and various odds and sods that littered the floor of the cupboard. After a moment, she straightened. She looked at me. Her voice sounded puzzled. 'It doesn't seem to be here.'

I'd been expecting it, ever since she'd mentioned the crossbow. But it was still a shock. I said, 'Oh God, Christine, we've got to find him! He thinks he's going to kill Laurie, in revenge for his mother.'

'I think you're right,' she said, briskly. 'This Laurie guy's already killed three people. One more won't matter to him one bit.'

'But where do we start? Where would he have gone? What are we going to ...'

'I'd start with the woods,' she said, calmly. 'You saw that guy out the back. And Remy's room is at the back too. Obvious thing is, the guy came in through the woods. But not on foot. He'd have a car somewhere. He'll be headed back to it, I'd say. There's a trail, just a few metres away from my house. We'll go there. We'll take the car. That'll be quicker. Okay?' She reached out to me and laid a hand on my arm. 'Don't worry. It will be all right. Remy won't be caught out so easily by that Laurie. We'll find him. Don't you fret.'

I nodded, feeling as though a burning weight had lodged in my chest. I didn't want to say what was really in my heart – the horrible feeling that I'd never see Remy alive again. To say it might make it come true so I pretended that I was reassured, and tried to smile, and followed her meekly outside to the car, still in my nightie and jumper but with dirty old sneakers from the stairs cupboard on my feet. I must have looked a sight. But that was the last thing on my mind, I can tell you. All I could think of was Remy, imagining he could really stalk a three-times murderer through the dark woods. As if he was a hunter from one of those medieval stories he loved, on the track of a particularly cunning and dangerous wolf...

It's eerie being out in this light, which is neither like the usual sort of moonlight, nor like sunlight, but something in between. Something not quite real. It comes to me that what it's most like is the light in which they shoot certain sorts of scenes in films. Like a flashback. Or a dream. Something out of time, out of place.

I glance at Christine. She seems very calm, despite all that's happened. She's brought the gun with her. It's lying on her lap, glinting in the weird light. I can't quite believe I'm seeing it, can't quite believe what's happening.

She turns off the road and goes bumping down a track. I'm afraid the gun will go off, but she doesn't seem to pay it any mind. The woods are all around us now, the trees bathed in that weird light. The headlights are only on low beam, you don't need the high, because it's so bright out there. We turn a corner and suddenly there's a car parked in a little clearing to one side of the track.

Christine pulls up. She turns off the lights. She turns to me. 'We were right. He's here. That's the car he was driving.'

I don't remember what car Laurie was driving. Some hire car. I nod. 'What are we going to do now?' My voice comes out like a squeak, despite my best efforts. I suddenly feel terribly afraid. Oh Remy, Remy.

'We're going to have to find Remy, before –' She breaks off, with a sideways glance at me. She jumps out of the car and I follow, numbly. She walks up to the other car, tries the doors – they're locked. Cupping one hand over her eyes, she looks in through the windows. 'I can't see anyone in there,' she says. 'Wherever he is, it's not here.'

It's very quiet. Not a breath of wind. The leaves are still. But I can feel unseen eyes watching us, a presence in these woods that is far more frightening than any wolf. It comes to me suddenly that it is the presence of evil. So strong is this feeling that I don't even try to argue with it in my head, like I usually would.

Christine doesn't seem affected by the atmosphere. She walks past the car and looks down the track. 'It splits in two. I think one probably doubles back to come near my back garden. The other goes deeper into the woods.' She looks at me. 'Are you all right, Fleur? You look terrible.'

'I'm, I'm fine,' I manage to croak. 'Really.'

She raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment. 'I think they must have gone that way –' pointing to the track that goes deeper into the woods – 'because that makes the most sense, don't you think?'

'I–I suppose so,' I say. I must get a grip on myself. I must not go to pieces right now. Remy needs me. I can see him in my mind's eye creeping through the woods, the crossbow in his hand, Patou at his side, intent on his prey. But I can see Laurie too, stopping because he's heard a footfall, the rack of a twig, waiting in ambush by the side of the path. What chance does Remy have against a man like that? And even if he catches Laurie, if he shoots him – then where will he be? He will be a killer, a murderer too. He will go to prison.

'I wish –' I begin, then stop, because what's the use? I am in a waking nightmare and I cannot escape it. But Christine looks at me and says, gently, 'I don't think you should come with me, Fleur. It's too dangerous. Sit in the car and wait for me. Lock yourself in. No harm can come to you.'

'No,' I say. 'No. I have to do this too. I have to –'

'Then you take the other track. Just in case they, well, just in case they didn't go the way I thought. You'll be close to the house, then. If there's any problem, just run there. Go in. Call the police. Okay?'

I want to say no, that I'll come with her on the other track – but as I look down that path, where the trees are pressing in and even the blood moonlight isn't penetrating much, I can feel my legs shaking and my throat close up with fear. I hate myself for the weakness, but I can't force myself beyond it. So I nod, dumbly.

She puts a hand on my shoulder, briefly. 'Don't worry. It'll be fine. You'll see. Courage.' And then she's gone, walking rapidly up the track into the deep woods. She turns once and waves at me – I haven't even moved – and then she's swallowed up by the trees and the darkness and I'm alone.

Now the silence presses in on my eardrums, so in some way I can't explain it's like a sound in itself. I know I have to move, that staying in that place is not an option, that unlike Christine, who is so brave and calm, I'm jelly. Cowardy custard. Scaredy cat.

Come on, get a move on. One foot in front of the other. Head down that other track. You're safe enough there. They won't be there. He won't be there. He'll be far away from the house, he'll have gone deep into the woods to lure –

No. Stop that. I walk down the track that leads back to the house. My steps get quicker. I've decided now. I'm going to go back inside, call the police. This has gone on long enough. What the hell are we thinking? My scalp is prickled all over with cold, the back of my neck is crawling. I have to stuff my fist in my mouth to stop myself from screaming.

Then suddenly, there's a rustling in the bushes. I stop dead, so scared I can't even cry out. I wait for the ...

And there he is, emerging from the bushes to one side of the path. He stops when he sees me. For a moment, our eyes meet. His eyes are green, very green, glowing with yellow lights. He is smaller than I imagined, but also fiercer-looking. A cruel grin. Sharp teeth. Beautiful fur, red-gold and burnished in the light. A proud tail. For an instant the fox and I stare at each other, then he is gone, quicker almost than the eye can see, flickering away into the bushes on the other side of the path.

My heart resumes its beating. My hands unclench. I am about to start walking again when suddenly I catch sight of something. Something in the bushes, not far from where the fox emerged. Surely that isn't, no, it can't – yes. It is. It's a shoe. A muddy shoe. Not a shoe on its own – a shoe attached to – a foot. A leg. A leg in jeans. I part the bushes, crawl in. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just acting blindly without thought. Because I have to know. I have to know.

There is a man lying in the bushes. He isn't moving. He is dressed in jeans and a hooded jacket. I can't see his face because he's lying on his front and the hood hides his head, but there's a rip at the shoulder which looks fresh. I think of the fox coming out of there and my gorge rises as I think I've disturbed him when he was about to start ripping into ... No. I won't think it. I won't. My legs wobble, my throat clenches and then I'm down on my knees beside him. I touch him but he doesn't move. I close my eyes and steel myself and pull the hood from his head, terrified of what I'll see, but knowing that I have to because if it is Remy lying there, then I'll...

But it isn't Remy. And it isn't Laurie.
It's Oscar.

The shock of it is so great that I actually reel back. In books you read of people doing things like that and you can hardly picture it. Well now I can. I know. You
do
reel. You feel as though you've had a dizzy fit. Taken a knock to the head. As though you've gone mad. As though you've fallen from the world you know into a nightmare.

I stare at Oscar's dead face. I know he's dead, because he hasn't moved. But my brain refuses to take it in. Why was he here? Why was
Oscar
here, and not Laurie? Is everything we thought completely wrong? Were all those deaths really nothing to do with Laurence Ferrier and that long-ago vendetta? Was it
Oscar
who killed his uncle and the PI and Valerie? But why? Why? To inherit more quickly? But then why kill the PI and Valerie? And what did the Hotel du Lys thing have to do with it? Maybe it had nothing. Nothing. We were just on the wrong track, like we'd been with the King Arthur coin business. But wait – wait – idiot that I was not to have seen it before – Oscar had been in Canada too! Playing the stockmarket. He came back with plenty of money. What if it wasn't the stockmarket at all, but something else? What if he had been somehow connected with those Hotel du Lys gangsters? Had known Laurie there? What if Raymond had been suspicious as to what his nephew had been up to in Canada? And what if he had found out...

My brain stutters and freezes like a malfunctioning computer. These ideas are so wild and outlandish that I can't accept them and yet they must be true at least to some extent because otherwise what would Oscar have been doing, lurking around the house, intent on God knows what, more murder, more destruction. But it's not us that's lying there dead – not me, not Christine, not Remy – but
him.
He's dead. Remy killed him. He shot him with the crossbow. He shot him dead. He shot him to avenge the death of his mother.

Steeling myself, I look closer. It's been half-hidden by the jacket but now I can see that at the nape of the neck, there's a hole. A cylindrical sort of hole, smeared with blood. I've seen so many TV crime shows where pathologists blether on about exit wounds and stuff that I know it's bigger than a bullet hole. Different. He's been shot in the back of the neck. Shot from behind, the spinal cord severed by the bolt. My God, shot by his own crossbow. Crossbows are deadly things. He must have died instantly. He wouldn't have known what hit him. Remy must have come up from behind, aimed and ...

This time the nausea rushes up unstoppably into my throat and I'm sick, so sick it's as if I'm throwing up my entire stomach and its lining too. When it's over I'm weak and shaking but I know I can't stay here. I have to go back to the house and call the police at once. Remy is out there somewhere – no longer the Remy I thought I knew but who I still care about so deeply that it makes my body ache – and the only way to help him is to get in the people we should really always have gone to, instead of trying to do this on our own and ending up with this.

I stumble out of the bushes and back onto the track. A little wind has got up and the leaves of the trees are whispering and shivering. The moon is going, its light fading, the night returning to darkness. I walk along the track as fast as I can and as I do, I become suddenly certain that I am being watched. So strong is the feeling that I call out, 'Remy? Is that you? Please, Remy, come out. Please.'

There's no answer to my words. I walk faster. But the feeling gets stronger. I stop. I turn around. Nothing. Noone.
And then I hear a twig cracking.
I know he's there, that he's no longer the person I thought I knew. He's mad. He's gone mad. He could do anything. All at once, I am filled with a terror so great that I'm no longer aware of what I'm doing. I begin to run. But not towards the house. Back up to the car, to the other path. To Christine. And I'm yelling for her as I go. If I really think about it, I know it's madness because he could get me any time but I still have a hope he won't hurt me, that he never meant for any of this to happen, and that everything will be all right, if only, if only...