Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

The gates had wrought iron words welded in as part of the design. On the left-hand gate was Trout , and on the right was Hall . The name of the house. There were more lights showing in the front windows. Regular yellow bulbs upstairs, and twinkling reds and greens below. Christmas decorations, lit up all night.

Reacher set off down the driveway, stepping high, a yard at a time, clumsily. At the bottom of every step he felt frozen gravel underfoot. He was hungry. He hoped the cook was in a good mood. Which was never guaranteed. He had seen TV shows from Britain about country houses. Sometimes the cooks reacted badly to unexpected circumstances.

He made it to the house. It was a big old pile made of stone. The kitchen door was presumably around the back, through more deep snow. Whereas the front door was right there, and it had an iron bell-pull handle.

Reacher pulled the handle. He heard a faint sonorous bong inside, and then hurrying feet, and the door was flung open. A woman looked out. She was maybe fifty. She looked rich. She was wearing a formal dress. Black velvet. She looked like she had been up all night. She looked like a difficult person.

She said, ‘Thank goodness. Are you the doctor or the policeman?’

Reacher said, ‘Neither.’

‘Then who are you?’

‘My taxi turned back because of the snow. I was hoping to get a cup of coffee.’

‘Taxi to where?’

‘Cambridge.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Apparently. Merry Christmas, anyway.’

The woman stared at him. The moment of decision. He was not an ideal houseguest, at first glance. He was a huge guy, all bone and muscle, not particularly good looking, and not very well dressed.

The woman said, ‘Did you see the doctor or the policeman out there anywhere?’

He said, ‘I didn’t see anyone. Do you have a problem?’

‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

She backed away into the gloom inside, and Reacher followed her, to a hallway the size of a basketball court. There was a Christmas tree at least ten feet tall, and a staircase at least ten feet wide.

The woman said, ‘Are you sure you’re not a policeman?’

‘I was once,’ Reacher said. ‘In the army. But not any more.’

‘Our army?’

‘The U.S. Army.’

‘I should introduce you to the colonel. My husband.’

‘Why do you need a policeman? And a doctor?’

‘Because someone stole my diamond pendant and my stepdaughter is upstairs having a baby.’

‘On her own?’

‘It’s the Christmas holiday. The staff left yesterday. Before the snow. There’s no one here.’

‘Apart from you and the colonel.’

‘I don’t know anything about babies. I never had any. I’m only her stepmother. I telephoned for her doctor almost four hours ago. And the police at the same time. I thought you must be at least one of them.’

A man came down the wide stairs, holding the rail, shuffling with fatigue. He was dressed in evening wear, apart from maroon suede slippers. He came all the way down, and stood up straight, and said, ‘Who are you, sir?’

Reacher gave his name, and told his brief story, stranded in the snow, a lighted window in a distant house, the hopes of a cup of coffee. The man introduced himself with the rank of colonel. Reacher said in the circumstances he couldn’t presume to trespass on their hospitality, and would leave at once.

The woman said, ‘Mr Reacher was a policeman in the army.’

The colonel said, ‘Our army?’

‘Uncle Sam,’ Reacher said. ‘Half a dozen different MP units.’

‘I wish you’d been a medic instead.’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘It’s her first baby, and it came on fast. I imagine her doctor is having a problem getting here.’

‘Does her doctor know her well?’

‘Has done for years.’

‘So he’ll make an effort.’

‘She. Her doctor is a woman. She’ll make an effort.’

‘Therefore she could be stuck somewhere,’ Reacher said. ‘She might have tried the last couple miles on foot, like I did. It’s about the only way.’

‘She’ll freeze to death. What should we do?’

Reacher glanced at the window. He said, ‘We should wait fifteen minutes. For a little more daylight. Then scan from the upstairs windows. With binoculars, if you have them. We need to look for incoming tracks that stop dead, way out there.’

The colonel said, ‘You must have been given medical training to some degree. Our MPs seem to get plenty.’

‘Ours didn’t include childbirth,’ Reacher said. ‘I bet yours didn’t, either.’

The lady of the house said, ‘I can’t go in there. It wouldn’t be appropriate.’

Fifteen minutes later the snow was lit up grey, and all kinds of natural detail was visible for miles around. They started in the colonel’s own bedroom, at a window facing west. They saw nothing. No abandoned car, no wandering footsteps getting weaker, and then stopping.

They set up facing north, at a window in the upstairs hallway, and saw the same nothing all over again. The wind in the night had polished the drifts to a shine, and nothing was broken.

South was the same story. A blank sheet. No footprints.

East was a different story. The only good view out was from what was about to become the delivery room. Or the maternity ward. Or whatever else you wanted to call it. Hopefully not the ICU. The colonel wouldn’t go in. He said it would be unseemly. His wife had already made her position clear.

So Reacher knocked politely, and heard a gasped come in , so he did, keeping his eyes front, explaining as he went, raising the field glasses, seeing his own tracks from earlier, curving in from the right, starting way out, coming close to the wall, and in through the gate.

But also seeing a second incoming track. From the opposite direction. Starting level with his own, but way on the left, and then homing in with the same smooth curve, but suddenly stopping. Stopping dead, some way short of the wall.

A voice from the bed said, ‘Have you found her?’

He said, ‘I think so.’

‘Look at me.’

He did. She was a flushed brunette, squirming with discomfort, the sheet pulled up to her chin.

She said, ‘Go and rescue her, please. Bring her to me. I can’t do this alone.’

‘I’m sure your stepmother would come if you really wanted her to.’

‘Not her. This is her fault. I saw her wearing the diamond. That was my mother’s pendant. I freaked out and went into labour. Now I need help.’

Reacher nodded and stepped back to the hallway. The others followed him downstairs. He said, ‘Get hot water ready, and blankets. The doctor could have been out there a long time.’

Then he set out. Back along the driveway, using his previous footholds in reverse, straining from one to the next. Then peeling away from the gates, the other direction, in a symmetrical curve, scanning ahead to a lower horizon, battling the wind, plunging through undisturbed snow, at first seeing nothing, then seeing a shadow, and the shadow becoming a hole, and beyond it staggering footsteps leading backward to where she had started.

Two sets of footsteps, in fact.

A big hole.

Reacher floundered on. Saw two people lying in the snow. A woman in a parka, and a cop in a bulky yellow police jacket. Both were shivering and both had their eyes closed. Reacher rolled the cop aside and hauled the doctor into a sitting position. Her eyes blinked open. Beside her the cop sat up. Reacher asked him, ‘How long have you been out here?’

The guy checked his watch and said, ‘Me, about two hours. I found her car abandoned and followed her tracks in the snow. I didn’t get any further than she did.’ His words were all broken up by shivering. They came out in spurts of steam.