Elizabeth George: A Great Deliverance

“Where’s Dougal?” he called.

Bridie looked up. Her curly hair trapped the sunlight, burning an autumn contrast against the bright green pullover-several sizes too large-that she wore. “Inside. He has a stomachache today.”

Lynley wondered idly how one diagnosed a stomachache in a mallard and wisely thought better of asking. “Why are you feeding him, then?” he asked.

She pondered the question, scratching her left leg with the top of her right foot. “Mummy says I ought to. She’s been keeping him warm all day and she says she thinks he can eat something now.”

“Sounds like a good nurse.”

“She is.” She waved a grubby hand at him and disappeared into the house, a small package of life with her dreams intact.

He walked across the bridge and into the lodge. Behind the reception desk, Stepha stood up, her lips parted to speak.

“It was Ezra Farmington’s baby that you had, wasn’t it?” he asked her. “He was part of the wild, crazy laughter you wanted after your brother died, wasn’t he?”

“Thomas-”

“Wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Do you watch when he and Nigel torment each other over you? Are you amused when Nigel drinks himself blind at the Dove and Whistle, hoping to catch you spending time with Ezra at his house across the street? Or do you escape the whole confl ict with Richard Gibson’s help?”

“That’s really unfair.”

“Is it? Do you know that Ezra doesn’t believe he can paint any longer? Are you interested, Stepha? He’s destroyed his work. The only pieces left are his paintings of you.”

“I can’t help him.”

“You won’t help him.”

“That’s not true.”

“You won’t help him,” Lynley repeated. “For some reason, he still wants you. He wants the child as well. He wants to know where it is. He wants to know what you did with it, who has it. Have you even bothered to tell him if it’s a boy or girl?”

She dropped her eyes. “She’s…she was adopted by a family in Durham. That’s the way it had to be.”

“And that’s to be his punishment, I take it?”

Her eyes flew up. “For what? Why would I punish him?”

“For stopping the laughter. For insisting on having something more with you. For being willing to take chances. For being all the things you’re too afraid to be.”

She didn’t reply. There was no need for her to do so when he could read the answer so clearly on her face.

She had not wanted to go to the farm. The scene of so many of her childhood terrors, the farm was a place she wished to bury in the past. All she had wanted to see was the baby’s grave. That done, she was ready to leave. The others, this group of kind strangers who had come into her life, did not question her. Rather, they bundled her into the large, silver car and drove her out of Keldale.

She had no idea where they were taking her, and she didn’t much care. Jonah was gone. Nell was dead. And whoever Gillian was remained to be discovered. She was simply a shell. There was nothing else left.

Lynley glanced at Gillian in the mirror. He wasn’t sure what would happen. He wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to do. He was working on instinct, a blind instinct which insisted that something good had to rise, like a phoenix triumphant, from the ashes of the day.

He knew that he was looking for meaning, that he couldn’t accept the senselessness of Russell Mowrey’s death in King’s Cross Station at the hands of an unknown killer. He raged against it, against its vile brutality, against its diabolical ugliness, against its terrible waste.

He would give meaning to it all. He would not accept that these fragmented lives could not somehow conjoin, could not reach across the chasm of nineteen years and find peace at last.

It was a risk. He didn’t care. He would take it. It was six o’clock when he pulled in front of the house in York.

“I’ll just be a moment,” he said to the others in the car and reached for his door handle.

Sergeant Havers touched his shoulder. “Let me, sir. Please.”

He hesitated. She watched him.

“Please,” she repeated.

He glanced at the closed front door of the house, knowing that he couldn’t possibly face the responsibility of putting the matter into Havers’s incapable hands. Not here. Not now. Not with so much at stake.

“Havers-”

“I can do it,” she replied. “Please. Believe me.”

He saw then that she was giving him the final say over her future, that she was allowing him to be the one to decide whether she would stay in CID or return once and for all to the street. It was represented in the matter before them.

“Sir?”

He wanted desperately to refuse her permission, to tell her to stay where she was in the car, to condemn her to the pavements she had walked in uniform. But none of that had been Webberly’s plan. He understood that now, and as he looked at her trusting, resolute face, he saw that Havers-reading his intention in their destination-had built the funeral pyre herself and was perfectly determined to strike the match that would put to the test the promise of the phoenix.

“All right,” he fi nally replied.

“Thank you, sir.” She got out of the car and went to the front door. It was opened. She stepped inside the house. And the waiting began.

He had never thought of himself much as a praying man, but as he sat in the car in the growing darkness and the minutes passed, he knew what it was to pray. It was to will goodness out of evil, hope out of despair, life out of death. It was to will dreams into existence and spectres into reality. It was to will an end to anguish and a beginning to joy.

Gillian stirred in the back seat. “Whose house-” Her voice died as the door fl ew open and Tessa ran outside, hesitating on the front path, peering towards the car. “Mummy.” Gillian said it on a breath. She said nothing else. She got out of the car slowly and stared at the woman as if she were an apparition, clinging to the door for support. “Mummy?”

“Gilly! Oh my God, Gilly !” Tessa cried and began coming towards her.

It was all Gillian needed. She ran up the slope into her mother’s arms, and they entered the house together.

Elizabeth George is the author of highly acclaimed novels of psychological suspense. Her first novel, A GREAT DELIVERANCE, was honoured with the Anthony and Agatha Best First Novel awards in America and received the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France; WELL-SCHOOLED IN MURDER was awarded the prestigious German prize for international mystery fiction, the MIMI '1990'. Her novels have now been adapted for television by the BBC as the Inspector Lynley Mysteries. An Edgar and Macavity Nominee as well as an international bestselling author, Elizabeth George lives on Whidbey Island in the state of Washington.