‘What? Mark, you killed someone.’
‘Only because I had to – to stop you finding out.’ His voice rose in frustration at her refusal to understand. ‘I didn’t want to but I had no choice. Nick was going to ruin everything – it was all going to come out, I was terrified of losing you. I had to try to—’
‘Is he dead?’
‘I think so. Yes.’ Mark said it calmly, matter-of-fact. ‘See? He’s gone and you know everything now. We can start again with a clean slate. We’ll go somewhere and make a fresh start. We can make this work; I know we can. Tell me we’re going to be fine.’ He tightened his grip on her wrists. ‘Say it.’
‘I . . .’
‘Say it.’
‘I can’t – I can’t. You’ve killed people – we can never go back.’
He gave a cry of pure anguish. ‘You . . .’ He looked at her for a second, eyes shining in the dark, and then he let go of her wrists and grabbed hold of her coat by the neck. He pulled her towards him and now, at this angle, she could see his eyes, rage-filled and terrible.
He lifted her higher, jerking her upwards, then thrust her back against the ground. Her head hit something hard in the earth – a rock. The burst of excruciating pain was still resonating through her brain as he dragged her head up and smashed it back down again. He was going to kill her, too. She was going to die here, in the pitch dark, in the middle of a vast, empty field miles from anywhere. She thought momentarily of Tom at home in London waiting for her and she thought her heart would burst.
Up again and down. Her vision was starting to chequer – she was going to black out. With her right hand, she scrabbled around, searching. Down went her head again and for a moment, everything turned black. Then her fingers found what they were searching for: a stone the size of her hand, cold, sharp on one side. Through the fear and panic came one clear thought: This is it.
She gripped the stone, lifted her arm and then, screwing every ounce of her terror and panic and horror together, she smashed it into his temple. For a second Mark seemed merely stunned. Then he gave a single grunt and slumped on top of her.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The temperature hadn’t risen above freezing for ten days but overhead the sky was a blue better fitted for July than the last week of January. There had been a lot of foot traffic here over the weekend, evidently, and the snow was long gone from the path, but up on the steepest parts of the hill and in the lee of the trees, virgin drifts of it remained. Down to their right, untouched by the farmers, the patchwork fields of Herefordshire were white.
Claiming the need for a head start, Sandy and Lydia had gone on first while Hannah and Tom bought the ticket for the car park. Hannah looked up now and saw them a hundred yards or so up ahead, Lydia willowy in her black jeans and borrowed parka, Sandy six inches shorter and bundled up as if for a polar expedition. The sound of their laughter reached back through the stillness of the air.
Tom put his arm through hers as they negotiated a steep section in the path and came up on to a small plateau that gave a clear view of the grassed-over skeleton of the iron-age fort.
I’d take on a fortful of pagans for you, swede-heart. Mark’s voice, as clear as if he was standing beside her.
‘All right?’ Tom was looking at her.
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
‘Of course.’ She smiled and took a square of the chocolate that he was proffering. He put the rest of the bar into his pocket again and turned to look back the way they’d come. His cheeks were already ruddy from the cold.
‘Is this where he proposed to you? Up here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this meant to be an exorcism?’
‘Of sorts.’
‘Is it working?’
She shook her head. ‘I hear him all the time, wherever I am. I always will, I think.’ She started walking again and Tom caught her up and gave her back his arm. ‘I killed someone,’ she said. ‘The idea of it – another human being is dead because of me.’
‘A human being who killed two other human beings – maybe three – and was about to kill you.’
‘I know. But still.’
They walked on. The Malverns lay ahead of them, the peaks of the line of hills like vertebrae in the spine of an ancient beast that had curled up and fallen asleep underneath the earth. Every night of the two months since it happened Hannah had lain awake and replayed it scene by scene: the confrontation in the kitchen, the chase through the garden out into the pitch-dark fields. The weight of the stone in her hand and the sickening crunch when she’d smashed it against Mark’s temple.