Fight or flight?
One of a number of useful things she’d figured out in the ‘loony bin’, known to her and thousands of others as a stress recovery spa, was how to deal with her automatic reaction to threat.
Running away only made you look weak.
‘That does it,’ she said, not trusting herself to look at Tony, or anything other than the back of Lamb’s head. ‘I’ll call you later, if that’s OK.’
She was on her way into the parish hall by the time she heard him say, ‘I’m right behind you.’
‘Hello, gentlemen,’ she said evenly to O’Reilly and Lamb, who faced each other across the pock-marked folding table someone had requisitioned from the Women’s Auxiliary supplies to use as a desk. ‘I thought I’d check in. With all the commotion at the rectory this morning I decided to get out of the way, but I’m sure you’ll want some sort of statement from me.’
Lamb drew down his brows and gave her a closed look but – and she could have imagined it – she thought O’Reilly smiled slightly before wiping his expression clean.
‘Leaving the scene this morning wasn’t a good idea,’ he said to Alex. ‘You’ve slowed us down.’
She heard Tony mutter what sounded like, ‘Is that possible?’
‘We’ve wasted manpower looking for you,’ Lamb said.
‘You’re joking.’ She widened her eyes. ‘I haven’t left Folly. If you can’t find someone in this little village—’
‘We just came from the Burke sisters’ place,’ Tony broke in, not particularly smoothly. ‘We saw all the palaver still going on by the church from one of their windows. We wondered how things were going.’
She wasn’t ready to skate past what she’d heard a few minutes earlier. ‘Have you heard of the East Anglia Stress Recovery Center, Detective Sergeant Lamb?’
O’Reilly reached absently for one of his lumpy bags of sweets, this one from beneath a stack of unpleasant-looking photos. Alex tried not to look too hard but saw enough to know they were of Brother Percy – after his death.
‘Have you heard of it?’ Alex pressed.
‘No,’ O’Reilly said for both of them, dislodging a bright yellow sherbet lemon from its sticky partners and putting it in his mouth. A bump appeared in his cheek.
‘Well established,’ Alex said. ‘Emphasis on healthy living. Diet, exercise, rest, meditation, massage – the holistic approach. You get the picture? They definitely do not cater to loonies. I imagine the other paying guests would take a dim view of loonies wandering around. I’m not sure that’s an appropriate term for anything these days, by the way. But that’s where I went after a bad time in my life. Have you ever had a bad time in your life, Detective Lamb?’
His gaze slid away from her face. There was a stain of color over his cheekbones.
‘We all have,’ O’Reilly said. He made an attempt to shuffle the photos under a folder. His dark eyes weren’t happy and his naturally soft Irish voice got even softer. ‘You do know you shouldn’t have left this morning?’
‘Of course I do.’ Her mother used to tell her to reason unreasonable people into submission. ‘It’s not every day I’m asked to help cut down hanging people. I couldn’t do anything to help him and I didn’t want to stay there. And to be completely honest, I panicked. I’m not proud of that but it isn’t unreasonable.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Tony said.
She was grateful to have him at her shoulder. Even his presence felt solid.
‘Did I hear you say you’d spoken to people about me, Detective Lamb?’
‘That’s right.’ At least he had the grace to sound slightly subdued. ‘That’s a normal part of an investigation. You do seem to be involved in what’s been happening here.’
O’Reilly cleared his throat.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Tony said. ‘Involved? She’s been unlucky enough to come upon two dead men. Does that give you the right to go digging for dirt in her past? You won’t find any. Take it from me.’
Alex began to feel warm. Tony was a good man to have around when things got tough – at least for her. She gave him a quick smile.
‘You may walk on puddles around here, Dr Harrison,’ Lamb said, heavily sarcastic, ‘but what you think won’t go far outside your little village.’
‘Bill,’ O’Reilly said, ‘could you get back to the other thing we talked about? Did the search team arrive?’
Lamb said, ‘Yes, boss,’ stiffly, and gathered up his gloves and notebook from the table. ‘They’re combing the hill. They’ve got dogs too, which may not be useful but it can’t hurt.’ He nodded and left.
‘I’ll get another chair,’ O’Reilly said, hopping up.
The hall looked foreign to Alex. Transparent panels had been hung from an overhead beam and these already had a smattering of photos on both sides and a lot of undecipherable notes, arrows, rough charts and diagrams drawn in glaring orange.
Two other tables stood, one behind the other, with uniformed police working at computers. Phones rang intermittently. She hadn’t realized what a lot of activity there was, but hearing about reinforcements coming in to help with the investigation alerted her to just how much activity there was in the hall.
Tony took the second chair from O’Reilly and they all sat down.
‘So they’re searching the hill?’ Tony said. ‘What are they looking for?’
O’Reilly’s secret little smile returned. ‘That’s what we’re hoping to find out. Unfortunately we haven’t had any useful information from anyone who might know.’
Alex sighed. ‘Brother Percy could have been able to help with that.’ She didn’t elaborate and Tony avoided adding anything. ‘Too bad he wasn’t taken seriously when he tried to talk to a policeman yesterday.’
‘More than too bad,’ the detective said. ‘But I still wish you hadn’t run off this morning. It didn’t look good when we realized you’d gone. Why do you think darts from your pub have been used?’
The swift change of topic startled Alex. ‘How would I know? It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I had to ask. I don’t want to scare you but it does seem that someone wants to connect you to these crimes.’
‘There wasn’t a dart this morning,’ Alex said.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I … well, I don’t know. But I didn’t see one. Do I need a lawyer?’
‘This isn’t an official interrogation,’ he said, ‘but you’re entitled to representation whenever you want it. Not that I have more questions at this point. I remind you that you came to me and initiated this conversation. That’s a good thing.’
‘Would I leave darts from my pub lying around at crime scenes?’ Alex said and heard Tony clear his throat. She met his eyes and saw a warning. She was saying too much.
O’Reilly propped his elbows and steepled his fingers. ‘I might be able to think of a reason why you’d do that.’
She was more rattled than she wanted him to see. Having to listen to Lamb trot out the things she wanted to forget had unbalanced her. Now she wanted to get away from here and not think about what O’Reilly was suggesting.
‘The first victim didn’t kill himself,’ he said. ‘The pathologist has demonstrated that there appears to have been a surprise attack and the victim couldn’t have had much chance to defend himself.’
‘That’s what we expected,’ Tony said.
Expecting to be stopped, Alex reached for the top photo of Brother Percy’s body. O’Reilly let her pull it in front of her. She stared at the full-color horror of it. At least the monk’s face was turned from the camera.
Without looking away, Alex pulled the kitchen knife from her pocket and placed it on the table. ‘I took that without knowing what I’d done,’ she said. ‘It’s what I used to cut him down.’
The man didn’t say a word.
‘Why are there bruises down there?’ Alex asked, pointing at marks above Brother Percy’s collarbones. ‘Shouldn’t they be up here where the cincture tightened … around …’ She covered her mouth.
‘Since this is going to get out anyway, you might as well get it from a reliable source,’ O’Reilly said. ‘He didn’t kill himself either. He was strangled then strung up. I’ll want to talk to each of you more later on. Please make sure we know if you decide to leave the area.’