Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

I didn’t survive the damned war to die in a Cornish sea! he swore to himself, again and again. I’ll live to see this bastard hang!

So absorbed was he in the ordeal of surviving, he wasn’t even aware that his feet had struck the shingle of the beach where it met the rocks. It caught him ill-prepared for the next surging wave.

The tide was flooding in and he was swept forward with such force that he lost his grip on Cormac. They both were dragged up the shelf, the water and the sand unmerciful to their faces and hands, then the salt burning fiercely where the flesh had been scoured open.

He lay there, digging in with his fingers and toes as the water worked to suck him out again, the tide pulling with an energy he’d long since lost. Then it was past him, and he fought now for breath, trying to stop the shuddering of his lungs and the pounding of his heart.

Beside him he heard Cormac breathe as well, roughly at first, then a long, deep draught of air. And then the man was on his knees, something in his hand, raising it high above his head and bringing it down with all the strength he’d hoarded while he let Rutledge struggle to save them both.

Hamish shouted as Rutledge rolled, and the stone came thudding down without sound, ploughing deep into the wet sand, unstoppable with the renewed power of Cormac’s whole body behind it.

Enough, damn it, was enough!

Rutledge swung his foot and caught Cormac in the groin. He’d lost one shoe, but the toe of the other came into the soft flesh with the might of fury driving it, and Cormac screamed in a high-pitched howl of pain that could be heard above the sound of the water and the screech of the wind, rising in a gurgling, choking cry that was cut short as he doubled over in anguish, sobbing and spluttering as the next wave came in.

The cold water, Rutledge thought with fierce satisfaction, breathing hard with the effort he’d had to make, had turned out to be an ally after all…

Reducing Olivia’s Lucifer to the human plane of mortal suffering.

He lay there on his back on the wet shingle, rain pouring down over his face, and felt the scrapes and bruises and aches begin to come alive. His elbow throbbed with an intensity that made him wonder if it was broken or only cracked. Under his ribs there was another sensation, of fire and ice, where something sharp had gone in, and his head was still splitting with pain. Every muscle burned with exhaustion. He wanted only to sleep.

After a long, suffering silence Cormac said, in one shuddering breath, “I knew-when I first saw you that-you were different-mettle.”

“Why did you kill them?”

“You’re the policeman,” he said after a time. “You tell me.”

There was silence again.

Then an odd passion filled Cormac’s cracked voice. “The first day-the first day I came here-the Hall held me fast. There was a warmth about it-I don’t know. But-Anne laughed at me, when she heard me tell a groom I’d give anything to live in such a place. I wanted to choke it back in her throat, that laughter! Instead I had to walk away and pretend I didn’t care. When she fell-when I pulled at her sash to make her fall out of the tree-and she died on the grass in front of me, I realized I’d just found a way to have everything I wanted-if I was careful, and patient. After that, after that they were none of them safe.”

“What about the man on the moors? Did you kill him too?” Rutledge asked, suddenly remembering.

“The tramp. There was a chance-they never found Richard, you see-I thought he’d come back one day-yes.” He was still doubled over, hugging his body, his face grimacing as the waves of pain subsided in their own good time.

From somewhere in the distance they could hear voices calling.

Cormac lifted his head in the darkness, and stared at Rut-ledge.

“You had better kill me now. If you don’t, I’ll ruin you in the courtroom. They’ll blame you-before I’m done-”

For a split second, there was an overwhelming temptation to take him at his word. Rutledge clamped down on it, the policeman in him routing the soldier who’d swiftly calculated the odds, and he heard Hamish growl when the policeman won. In satisfaction? Or regret. He was too spent to care.

“Or will they be glad to convict the Irish bastard whose deception took in half the City?” Rutledge answered, and got slowly, achingly to his feet. He reached down a hand, and then thought better of it, grabbing the back of Cormac’s collar instead and dragging him to his knees.

Cormac managed to stand, half bent over, then suddenly found the strength of will to stand straight, eye to eye with Rutledge.

Lucifer had been stopped but not vanquished. Not yet.

Down the strand Constable Dawlish appeared in the heavy rain, peering towards them and shouting, “I think they’re over here!”

Inspector Harvey, with Smedley at his back and Rachel coming up at the run, something in her arms-blankets, he thought as she stumbled and slipped down the path from the lawns.

Cormac swung to face them and smiled as Harvey clapped handcuffs over his wet wrists. Watching, Rutledge unconsciously braced himself. It would be an appalling trial. The tragedy-as always, in Rutledge’s eyes-was that the murderer could never be charged with the havoc he’d brought to other people’s lives, only with the deaths laid at his door. Smedley was right, it wasn’t over for the villagers of Borcombe. Not for Rachel and Susannah. Not even for Olivia and Nicholas and Rosamund…

“And you. They’ll be after breaking you on the stand,” Hamish warned.

“They can try,” he answered, silently.

Rachel, looking up at him, said in a low, strained voice as she gripped his arm with wet, icy fingers. “I have to know. Was it me that Nicholas loved, or was it Olivia?” The words seemed to be torn from her, as if they had never been allowed to surface from the darkness of her dread. Until now.

Rutledge shook his head. And consciously told a lie, out of infinite compassion. “He didn’t want her to die alone,” he said. “It took courage to make such a choice. Forgive him for it.”

She bowed her head and began to cry.

When they’d taken Cormac away, and Rachel, her face set and pale, had followed Smedley back towards the village, Rutledge was left on the headland alone. Pulling one of the blankets she’d brought tighter against the cold air that had followed the storm, he limped across to where the black patch of burned grass had once been, even its shadowed outline filled in with green now, the ashes long since washed away.

He knew what had perished here in the fire Nicholas had built. Why Olivia and Nicholas chose that moonlit night of beauty in which to end it.

A love they couldn’t have.

After a time… “I envy you both,” he said softly in the night, lifting his head to look up at the room where they had died.

As he turned towards Borcombe, the wind followed, but Rutledge wasn’t aware of it. He stopped at the end of the drive and looked once more at the house below the headland. It stood there dark and silent, man-made and vulnerable, yet somehow invested with a grace all its own.

And he knew, without knowing how, that Olivia was finally at peace.

But that he would be possessed, for a very long time, by the woman she had been.