chapter one
He cowers there, flattening himself into the mud, waiting for the enemy to strike again, slipping in and out of consciousness until memory reminds him that this isn’t Korea and he isn’t a young soldier any more.
So why is he lying in the cold and dark, hurting, injured, knowing he is in mortal danger? He tries to move, his old bones grinding, one arm slack and useless. He feels inside his sodden shirt with his good hand. Collarbone broken, most likely. But how? What has happened? Why is he lying out here? The last thing he remembers clearly is leaning on a five-barred gate, surveying the farm and thinking there was rain in the air.
He winces as he tries to move, sure he is in a puddle; plenty of rain now. How long has he been out of it, then? Thinking is a huge effort but he has a vague memory of a noise just before it happened. Thunder? No, not thunder. Despite the pain, the fog in his mind is clearing. He’d thought it was thunder, that’s it, but his hearing isn’t too good nowadays (not that he’d ever admit it to his wife) and he’d been distracted by something on the other side of the field. Something that couldn’t possibly be there.
The rumble of a car approaching along the track had startled him from his reverie, the sudden hard revving of the engine his only warning as he’d leaped out of its way.
‘Someone drove at me deliberately,’ he whispers now.
And there it is again, the low growl of an engine approaching. Coming to finish him off.
Harriet Quigley glanced at the Arrivals board at Southampton Airport. Twenty minutes until her cousin Sam’s flight landed gave her time for a coffee and a welcome pause for thought, even though she was desperate to discuss the awful news with him. A good deal had happened in the two days since she had dropped Sam off on his outward journey. Their parting conversation had seemed almost trivial at the time but had now acquired a sinister significance.
‘Did I tell you I had lunch with old Walter Attlin? From your village?’ Sam had asked as they left the M3.
She’d been intrigued. ‘My cousin Walter? I didn’t realize you were on lunching terms with him.’
‘I’m not really,’ he’d said. ‘But I bumped into him the other day in Winchester High Street and he buttonholed me. Said he had a problem and I was just the man to help, so we had lunch in the cathedral refectory. He’s a great character, isn’t he?’
She nodded. ‘So what was his problem? And did you solve it for him?’
‘Not really.’ His grin was mildly apologetic. ‘Sorry, Harriet, he swore me to secrecy but I think it did help him to thrash it out with someone from outside, as a sort of sounding board. He said the trouble with getting to your eighties is that the friends you always trusted are either dead or demented, and he’s been worrying himself silly. It’s a pretty tenuous link between us, but the fact that he’s related to you through your father, and that you and I are first cousins on the other side, seemed to make him feel more comfortable about talking to me, even though we’ve never really known each other well.’
Now, as she spooned froth off her cappuccino, and waited for Sam’s arrival, she shivered. Her elderly relative, Walter Attlin, was foremost in her thoughts. His misadventure the other night had shocked everyone in the close-knit village, and she had a lot to discuss with Sam, who was not just her cousin, but her closest friend. Things were happening and Harriet was worried.
‘Penny for them, Harriet?’ The tall, silver-haired clergyman was standing in front of her now with an amused expression on his long, pleasant face. ‘You were miles away. Are you all right?’ Concern replaced affection as he asked, ‘How are you? And what’s the latest on Walter?’
‘I’m fine, Sam.’ She rose – very like him in looks; tall and slim, with a smile never far away, though her own hair was firmly kept to a natural-looking honey colour – and gave him a brief but affectionate hug. ‘Got all your stuff? Great, let’s get going. Walter’s—’
She was interrupted by a shout. ‘Miss Q? Oh my God. Grandpa? You.…’ she stammered, her face ashen. ‘He’s not … you haven’t come to tell me …?’
Harriet turned in surprise to see a petite twenty-something girl steaming towards her, face puckered with anxiety.
‘Edith? What on earth are you doing here? I thought you were in America.’
‘But Grandpa. Is he … is he …?’ The girl fell into Harriet’s welcoming arms.
‘He’s fine, honestly, Edith. As fine as an eighty-something man with a broken collarbone can be. And better than most, tough old devil that he is.’