Later that evening, Alex crouched where Tony had told her to wait, close to a clump of bushes beside the road. His headlights picked up her pale face as he drove on the other side. As he’d suggested, when he drew almost level, she ducked down and became invisible.
He made a U-turn and came to a stop on a stony grass verge just past Alex. She crunched rapidly to meet him when he jumped out of the Land Rover with Bogie close behind. ‘Could you see me? Did it work?’
‘Bloody hell, why didn’t I stop.’ Frustration overwhelmed him. Stuffing Bogie’s lead into one pocket of his coat, he dropped his torch into another one and shoved his hands under his coat, on his hips. ‘I saw you just fine.’
‘And now you’re blaming yourself because Pamela’s missing? What sense does that make? You don’t even know if it was her you saw – or if it was anyone. Tonight you knew where I was and you were looking. You were likely to see me.’
Rationalizations didn’t untwist his gut. ‘Thanks.’
Alex caught his arm in both of her hands. ‘You do guilt too well, my friend. Too well. You’re the most thoughtful man I’ve ever known. You made a decision and it was the right one for that moment.’ She hugged him quickly, leaned on him.
A better man wouldn’t be so pleased to hear how much she trusted him. And he wouldn’t be giving a second thought to pressing an advantage even if he spent so much time thinking about just that, finding and pressing an advantage with Alex. They had work to do and fast if there was any hope of having an impact on what had happened to Pamela.
He rubbed her hands and kissed the top of her head lightly. ‘I hope you’re right about that.’ Being careful not to push too soon or too hard with Alex had probably robbed him of a chance of something more with her. ‘The most thoughtful man’ she’d ever known wasn’t the way he wanted her to think of him.
‘Where would someone go from those bushes – in the dark like this? This is around the time you drove by before? It’s not so late but you can’t see much.’
When Alex moved away from him, he almost sighed. ‘She – or whoever it was – was probably waiting to cross the road without being seen.’
‘There’s a bit of a beaten-down path leading up the hillside somewhere around here,’ Alex said. She wore jeans, and a down gilet over a high-necked jumper and a cardigan, much as she had when she left him at his clinic that morning.
‘Come on, and you stay close, Bogie.’ At a rapid clip, she crossed the road and started searching, carefully, between more scrubby wild shrubs and bushes. Bogie snuffled along, his black ears perked up. A dog on a mission with his person.
Tony put away the keys to the Land Rover and followed.
The chilly breeze felt as if it would bring a shower, but the moon still slunk along a livid sky, silver behind thin veils of charcoal clouds.
‘Alex.’ He remembered bringing his dog Katie this way on a walk. ‘I think there’s a sort of path that goes all the way to—’
‘To Ebring Manor?’ she cut him off. ‘What’s left of it. Bogie and I have gone that way. Looks like he’s found the trail again.’
‘If this leads to anything useful, it’ll be almost too easy,’ he told her. ‘Take my hand, we’ll go faster.’
She laughed through gasps. ‘In other words, I need help from someone stronger.’
‘Yes. I’m supposed to be stronger. Anything wrong with that?’
She grabbed his hand and leaned into the hill. ‘I’m not proud,’ she said. ‘I just find men and their egos funny sometimes. I wouldn’t change places with you. This might be easier if we really knew our way.’
He paused to let them both catch breath. ‘I’m starting to think this path is pretty well used.’ His torch switched back and forth ahead of them. ‘It looks trampled.’
An unexpected gust turned into wind and zipped through the almost bare trees, whipping the last scratchy skeletons of winter leaves into their faces. He glanced down at Alex, his torchlight picking out the gleam of her green eyes, and remembered how the kids had called them ‘witchy.’ She had put up with a lot from the children of narrow-minded parents, including whispers of ‘bastard.’ He was glad he’d been around, and that he’d been older and bigger than the bully bunch.
He had always thought her beautiful, but unaffected. The feelings that went along with those reactions only intensified.
‘Did I say Harry didn’t show up for the women’s meeting at the parish hall tonight?’
He paused. ‘The hell you say. You didn’t tell me. Has anyone seen him at all?’
‘He called to say he had to stay in the city. At least he let them know he wasn’t coming.’
Tony pushed a low branch out of their way. ‘Whoever he spoke to would have asked if Pamela was with him. Not that he had to say one way or the other. We can hope she is.’
‘This is a weird evening,’ Alex said when they ploughed on. ‘It’s trying to be ominous. Or is that just in my head? I do love every season in this place. Too bad I had to leave it for a few years to find out how great it is.’
He looked toward her again, briefly, and squeezed her hand. They knew enough about one another not to rehash old demons, but they also understood that they still lived with those demons.
Bogie had shot ahead and was out of sight. With Alex, Tony broke out of the trees and looked ahead to where the outline of what had once been ancient Ebring Manor stood out, luminous and pallid on a large mound. The stubby drum tower and a few other pieces of the original buildings thrust sharply into the purple sky. The clouds looked like smoke from a smoldering fire now.
‘What do we hope to find here?’ Alex said. ‘There isn’t anyone else here that I can see.’ She shivered forcefully and pulled her hand from his to wrap her arms around herself. ‘There’s no noise but I could swear everything is popping around me. It’s all alive and I hate it.’
‘Alex?’
Dark curls tossed forward around her pale face. ‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘No, it’s not nothing, what’s the matter?’
She looked grim and cold, neither of which made particular sense. ‘Leave it, Tony.’
Puzzled, he planted himself in front of her. ‘I’m not going to leave it.’
‘I’ve got a feeling.’ She breathed out hard through her nose. ‘I’d rather not give more ammunition for the stories about me being a bit spooky, but I do get … premonitions. Forget it. It’s nothing, just a feeling, that’s all.’
‘Bogie’s heading for the tower,’ he said, glad of an excuse to switch topics. Delving into things she’d obviously rather not discuss wasn’t a good thing. They respected one another’s privacy – perhaps too much.
Stepping over the stones that made up the boundary of the building, they took off after Bogie. It wasn’t an easy climb. Once inside the tower and halfway up a second flight of broken steps, the dog waited for them at the top. He ran away as soon as he saw them.
Tony was the first into the partially roofless top level. He shone his torch around the area, aiming first at the purple-tinged sky, then around the bare stone floor.
A bump moving under a rumpled tarpaulin gave Bogie’s whereabouts away. The tarp and whatever it covered were pushed under what remained of the roof.
‘Someone’s been camping out up here,’ Tony said, picking up a corner of the heavy waxed sheet. ‘Or something.’ He threw back the tarp, revealing a rolled-up quilt and what looked like a sleeping bag. It was two sleeping bags, zipped together, and there was a rolled up airbed.
‘Looks well used but it’s expensive stuff,’ Alex said. ‘Pillows in plastic bags. What’s this? A down blanket. A box of cutlery. Plates. Glasses. All mod cons.’ She shivered visibly.
‘Someone walking on your grave again?’ Tony said, and grimaced. ‘That wasn’t a bright thing to say.’
‘I don’t want to stay around here.’ She pushed her hands inside the sleeves of her cardigan and shivered again. ‘Bogie’s gone back down. I don’t want him running off.’ She met Tony’s eyes and he didn’t recall her looking at him in quite that way before. Anxious, but searching, as if she were trying to read him at some deep level.
Wishful thinking. She was freaked out, looking for reassurance, and he didn’t blame her.
‘I shouldn’t have brought you up here.’
‘I’m a big girl. I bet that bag belongs under the tarp.’ Capacious and made of green canvas, a bag leaned against a wall and Alex looked inside. She held it out for Tony to see and he lifted out the contents.
He produced a box of Italian glacé chestnuts, a sealed blue envelope, not addressed, that felt like a card, and a heavy, leather case. ‘Crikey.’ He had unclasped the lid. ‘Zeiss binoculars – tip-top stuff. Worth a bundle. No one would deliberately leave these here.’ He snapped the lid shut and replaced the case in the bag.
‘This isn’t a kids’ hangout,’ Alex said quietly, picking her way to the top of the steps.
‘It could belong to teenagers with imagination and major pocket money.’
Rather than answer him, Alex put a hand against one wall and started climbing down.
Tony put the bag with the rest of the supplies, swept the tarp back into place and went after her. Once outside they were met by a wind that stopped and started, unenthusiastic about its haphazard efforts.
‘It was a mistake to bring you here,’ he said, draping an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s depressing and you don’t need reminding of past …’ He let his words trail off.
‘Past horrors, is that what you were going to say?’ Alex slipped a hand under his jacket and around his waist. He felt her hold on to his sweater.
Nose to the ground, Bogie snuffled back and forth, moving in and out of the torch beam, intent on some quest known only to him.
The ruins of the manor house, with its jagged reminders of lost walls, made a forlorn white sketch in the gloom.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Alex said. She called the dog but he continued to run aimless patterns on the ground with his black nose.
‘Bogie,’ Alex cried. ‘Come, boy. Now.’
The answer she got was wild barking that trailed into a thin yowl. Alex found Bogie with her light. He stood near the grill-covered well, his neck stretched upward, barking in spurts that ended in almost soundless croaks.
Alex leaped forward but Tony caught her arm to stop her.
She looked back at him, her face stark, and jerked her arm away.
Tony ran toward the dog.