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The water found his right ear first, tickling it almost like a caress. He twisted his head away so that it lapped against the back of his neck. It crept slowly, like a thief, trying to cover his ears and steal away all sounds. He closed his eyes. It was said that drowning was a peaceful way to go. Finn guessed it wouldn’t be too long before he found out.
When the time for words ran out, there were only four that Finn wanted as his last: ‘I love you, Gemma.’
37
The car shuddered to a stop at the worst place imaginable. Right in the middle of the ford. Glancing down in panic, I saw that every light on my dashboard was on; it was lit up like a Christmas tree. The car had stalled, that much was obvious. But had water got into the engine? I wasn’t much of an expert on cars, but I knew enough to be aware that if it had, this would be the end of my journey today.
I sat up taller in my seat and peered through the windscreen. There were no houses nearby to yell to for assistance, and certainly no other cars who’d been foolish enough to chance their luck by driving through the ford.
The car was rocking worryingly as the fast-running water buffeted it. It wasn’t yet deep enough to reach the bottom of the driver’s door, but if the rain kept falling, it soon would be.
I bit my lip and reached for the ignition key. I probably had just one shot at this before Inspector Graham’s worst fears were realised and I became part of the problem rather than the solution.
‘Please start,’ I pleaded to my car, or to the patron saint of hapless drivers with missing fiancés.
I almost cried when, after a wheezy cough, the engine decided to forgive me for my bad decision-making and came back to life. Forgetting the ‘slow and steady’ advice, I pressed down hard on the accelerator and shot out of the ford like a stunt driver. Unable to believe my luck, I didn’t stop but drove shakily forward, one hand on the wheel and the other brushing away tears of pure relief that wouldn’t stop falling.
Amelia Holmwood had mentioned that various tradesmen had been hired to work on Mushroom Cottage, but understandably, given the weather conditions, none were there today.
I took one glance at the mud-furrowed driveway and decided not to press my luck. I’d escaped from the ford, but the sludgy drive might not be so forgiving. I flicked on the hazard lights and left my car in the lane. Even through the driving rain I could see that the cottage was looking considerably smarter. The front door was now a bright cherry red, and the window frames all looked as though they’d recently been painted. I skirted the quagmire of the drive, but the front lawn was almost as badly waterlogged. I could feel the ground sucking hungrily on my boots with every step I took. I walked quickly, pulling my feet free in a series of squelching strides.
I paused just once, beside the estate agent’s signpost that was hammered into the lawn. I reached out and ran my fingertips over the diagonal ‘Sold’ sticker. I shook my head, still unable to take in the enormity of what Finn had done. I still didn’t knowwhyhe’d changed his mind, but several missing pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place during my drive that morning. Finn’s reluctance to hand over his passport hadn’t been so that he could flee the country; I realised now that he must have needed it as proof of identity for the house purchase. And the money missing from our joint account had actually been used just as it had always been intended, as the deposit for the cottage. I was also willing to bet that Finn’s missing belongings were either in a storage unit somewhere or already in the house. My house. I shook my head, because it didn’t matter what the paperwork might say. This was our house, our home, and it always would be.
Amelia had given me the combination for the key safe, but I had no reason to enter the property. There’d been enough people milling through Mushroom Cottage over the last week for me to know that Finn wasn’t inside. He wasn’t lying injured at the bottom of the stairs, as Walter’s daughter had feared her father might one day be. According to Amelia, Walter had been absolutely delighted that we’d changed our minds about buying his home. ‘He said he could tell how much you and Finn loved the house,’ she told me on the phone. She gave a nervous laugh. ‘He also said that his wife had told him it was time for him to move on.’
With one hand gripping the hood of my jacket, I ran into the wind and towards the house. Edna whipped viciously at my clothes and threw broken twigs and leaves at my face as I peered through every downstairs window. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but if it was for a sign that Finn had been there on the night he’d gone missing, there was none. What I did see were ladders, dust sheets and a great many pots of paint.
Finn had wanted so much to make this place perfect for us, and the thought that he might never see the end result cut me like a knife. There was nothing more to see there, and I ran back to my car with a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the waterlogged soil.
There were, I realised, very few reasons why Finn might have mysteriously gone missing between the petrol station and the house. Once I’d eliminated the downright crazy ones, like alien abduction, every alternative filled me with dread. I ping-ponged between them, unsure which option was worst. Frankly, they were all equally terrifying: carjacking, kidnapping, mugging, amnesia. Every theory had holes, and yet as I drove along the rain-slicked lanes, I refused to allow the far more logical possibility to gain a foothold.
Could Finn have been involved in an accident? He was a good driver – far better than me; his reactions were fast, and he never took stupid risks behind the wheel, but still.
Through the deluge I could see a signpost up ahead, but even with the wipers at full speed it was impossible to read. I wound down the window and leant out, jerking back as the wind hit me like a slap. Blinking the raindrops from my eyes, I read the sign. Foxton was just seven miles away. Seven miles to the last place Finn had been seen. My chest tightened uncomfortably as I studied the narrow road, which disappeared into the distance like a spool of grey ribbon. It was deserted, because who but the most desperate of people would be out in these conditions?
Lightning flashed above me and even though I would have thought it impossible, it began to rain even harder. Seven miles from here there should be a police patrol car, dispatched by Inspector Graham, heading this way. I shivered and wound up the window. It felt like a race to find Finn, and I really didn’t care whether the police won it or I did. Just so long as he was found.
The rear-view mirror confirmed the road was clear as I went to pull away, but out of habit, and because I hadn’t forgottenallof my dad’s driving tuition, I glanced at my side mirror. Something glinted briefly behind me, snagging my attention from the road. It wasn’t enough to stop me from driving away, but it bothered me, and I’d travelled no more than a couple of hundred yards before I brought the car to a stop. I swivelled in my seat and looked over my shoulder. The rear wipers weren’t as effective as the front ones and whatever I thought I’d seen was impossible to spot from this distance.
It’s probably nothing. A trick of the light.Except there wasn’t any light, not really. It was grey and gloomy and therewassomething back there. Something I was meant to see.
Even in good conditions I would have hesitated before reversing along a road this narrow, and today wasn’t about pushing my luck. I paused to switch on my hazard warning lights again and reached into the glove box for a torch. Edna savagely ripped the car door from my hand as I stepped from the vehicle. I yanked it back, and after a brief tug of war managed to slam it shut.
The wind howled like a banshee as I walked into it, my body hunched forward. With every step I took, the elements tried to push me back. Leaves and fragments of branches littered the tarmac and swirled through the air as though magically levitated.
Without the signpost as a marker, it would have been easy to lose all perception of distance. The wind repeatedly whipped the hood from my head and eventually I stopped pulling it back up. My hair was plastered to my skull, my jeans flattened against my legs, and the boots that were supposed to be waterproof were definitely not.
The signpost shimmered in the rain like a desert mirage, but eventually I reached it, leaning heavily against it as I caught my breath. The distance I’d covered had been nothing, but I felt as though I’d walked for miles. My fingers were cold and numb as I fumbled with the switch on the torch. It took four attempts before I located the setting with the brightest beam. I shone it down the road, trying to recreate the line of sight I would have captured in my car’s wing mirror. I was hoping that whatever it was I’d glimpsed would reflect in the beam of light. But had the mystery item been on the road, or in the undergrowth beside it? I had no idea.
Sweeping the torch beam left and right, I slowly walked along the route I’d just driven. After a few minutes, the certainty that I’d seen something had diluted to just a vague suspicion. I was at the point of giving up when I saw it, half buried in the overgrown weeds beside the road. A piece of twisted chrome – no more than a foot in length – was embedded in the earth. I crouched down beside it and pulled it from the ground. It broke free from the soil with surprising ease. Did that mean it hadn’t been there for long? Perhaps for only six days?
I turned the length of metal over and over in my hands, no longer feeling the rain as it relentlessly pummelled me. Had this been torn from a car? More specifically, was it from Finn’s highly distinctive Gran Torino with its gleaming chrome bumpers?
I got to my feet and began searching the surrounding undergrowth at the side of the road. I found no other pieces of debris; no tyre tracks, or flattened foliage, or anything else to suggest that what I’d found wasn’t just another piece of roadside detritus. My search was hampered by the waterlogged grass, which was slippery underfoot, and I was all too aware of the deep gully bordering the edge of the road. If I lost my footing and fell into it, tumbling through the dense gorse and brambles, who knew how I’d find a way out. The thought felt like a well-aimed punch. It quite literally took my breath away. How deep were these gullies? Were they deep enough to swallow a person from sight? How about a car? Were they deep enough to conceal one?
I didn’t stop to think, which in hindsight was probably a mistake. Dropping the piece of chrome to the ground, I slithered my way to the edge of the gully and cautiously began to climb down. My feet skidded away from me almost immediately and if it hadn’t been for the network of exposed tree roots on the steep sides, which I grabbed as a handhold, I would have slipped beneath the foliage in an instant. But my passage through the brambles and gorse was treacherous and it wasn’t long before my hands were scraped and bloodied as the prickly undergrowth did its best to resist intruders. I crept forward, inch by painful inch, hacking a pathway through the thorns with a length of branch and peering into the shadowy bushes for further clues.
I’m not sure when the folly of my actions began to dawn on me. Blood was trickling down my forehead from a particularly nasty cluster of thorns, and the deeper I went into the gully, the more worried I became that I wasn’t going to be able to get back out. From somewhere below me I could hear the unmistakable sound of flowing water. The gully was beginning to fill, and if I didn’t turn back there was a good chance that rather than helping Finn,Iwas going to be the one who needed rescuing.
