A Bitter Feast Read online

  Of course, they would be all right tonight. Their family friend Wesley Howard had offered to stay with them. Then Kit would walk Toby to his ballet class in the morning, after which they’d meet Doug Cullen at Paddington for the train. Not that Kit and Toby couldn’t have traveled down alone, but Kincaid felt better knowing they’d have adult supervision.

  The thought of Doug as “adult supervision” made him smile. Not that Doug wasn’t past thirty now, but somehow he couldn’t see his sergeant in a parental role. Doug had said he had a sculling event in the morning, but Kincaid suspected he was more reluctant to lose a Saturday morning in his garden. Since the spring, the garden had become Doug’s new passion and he talked about it with the tediousness of the convert.

  Kincaid also wondered how comfortable Doug felt about the visit to the Talbots’ country home. They had both worked with Sir Ivan after the events of the spring, but neither had met his wife, and from Melody’s description Lady Adelaide sounded quite formidable.

  The sun sank below the horizon and he shifted restlessly, wishing he’d at least had the forethought to grab a sandwich and a bottle of water. But, hungry as he was, he was more concerned about his old car than his stomach. The Astra’s engine had seemed a bit rough lately. He hoped the car didn’t overheat with all the idling.

  When the traffic finally began to move, he breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like the old beast would make it, after all. And perhaps he would even reach the Talbots’ in time for dinner.

  Dawdling, Nell sipped at her cold coffee. Outside, the dusk faded and lights winked on in the village. But neither Viv nor Bea emerged from the kitchen, nor did the man in the fedora return for his coat. Diners came and went, and Jack was too busy at the bar to chat. Reluctantly, Nell settled her check with Jack and let herself out into the crisp night.

  The car park was now dark as pitch and the sharp air smelled of wood smoke and apples. Nell wondered if there might be a light frost by morning, and if the weather would hold for tomorrow’s luncheon. She supposed that she would just show up at Beck House and do whatever was needed. Perhaps Lady Addie would know something about the mystery man, although Nell didn’t think she was much of a one for gossip.

  In the meantime, Bella, her border collie, was waiting for her evening walk, and the stars were hard and bright in the night sky. Nell took a breath of contentment as she unlocked her little Peugeot. This was a good life she had chosen, all in all.

  Easing her way out of the car park, she took the old quarry road out of the village. Her cottage was close enough that she could have walked, but the lane was narrow and could be treacherous in the dark. Her headlamps glared against the hedges as the lane dipped and turned.

  Suddenly, a figure appeared in the center of the road. Nell jammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt. The man in the fedora was walking away from her, in the center of the lane. He didn’t turn or even seem aware of the car, and as she watched he staggered slightly. Was he drunk after all? Why was he walking away from the village, and without his coat?

  Lowering her window, Nell called out, “Hello, there.” When he didn’t respond, she got out, leaving the engine idling, and walked towards him. “Excuse me! Do you need a lift? It’s not safe walking these lanes in the dark.”

  He kept going, and it wasn’t until she reached him and put a hand on his arm that he turned, as if startled. Immediately, she saw that he was not drunk, but ill. His face was pale, beaded with sweat in spite of the cold, and his eyes were unfocused. He swayed under her touch.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Do you not feel well? I think you need some help.” He didn’t resist as she grasped his elbow and guided him gently towards the car. She could feel him trembling. Should she take him back to the village? But then what? Not only did she not know where he was staying, there was no doctor.

  The man swayed against her, mumbling something she couldn’t understand. Nell made a decision. It would have to be Cheltenham. There was nothing nearer. “Right,” she said briskly. “I can see you’re ill. Let’s get you in the car.” She put an arm round him to support him. “We’re taking you straight to hospital.”

  Kincaid’s predictions turned out to have been overly optimistic. The traffic had slowed again, and it was fully dark by the time he finally left the Oxford ring road. The car was too old to have built-in sat-nav, and not wanting to stop to check his mobile, he trusted to his memory of the map he’d looked at earlier.

  As he passed Burford, the land began to rise into the Cotswold Hills, as well as he could tell in the dark. Not far to go, then, but he had to laugh at the idea of the Talbots referring to their place as a “weekend” home. Perhaps they knew a way to circumvent the motorway traffic—or simply took the train to the nearest station, where they had a retainer waiting to fetch them. Or maybe they just took a helicopter, he thought, grinning.

  A signpost loomed in the headlamps. It was the turnoff for Bourton-on-the-Water, the nearest small town to the Talbots’ village. Almost there, then. He was wondering if he should find a place to pull over and check the map on his mobile when headlamps blazed suddenly from his left, blinding him.

  Before he could throw up a hand or hit the brake, there came a tearing impact, and all went dark.

  Chapter Two

  Sound returned first. Gradually, Kincaid became aware of creaks and groans, like metal protesting, and then a sort of rhythmic ticking.

  Smell came next. Burning rubber. Hot metal. Petrol.

  His eyes flew open. At first the darkness seemed absolute. Then, as he began to make out shapes, nothing he saw made sense. When he tried to move, his head spun and a wave of nausea hit him.

  Something warm trickled into his eye. Blinking, he reached down to touch his face—down, not up.

  His orientation came back with a jarring click. He was upside down. What the hell had happened?

  This time he moved more gingerly. Pain in his shoulder, a twinge of pain across his ribs. Seat belt. He was hanging upside down from his shoulder harness.

  A flash of memory came. Lights. Bright lights on his left.

  Shit. He must have been hit.

  Take it easy, he told himself, stifling panic. Assess the situation.

  Cautiously, he turned his head to the left, trying to focus. In the dimness he could make out a mass of metal and glass where the seat should have been. The passenger door.

  “Shit.” This time he managed to whisper it. He touched the collapsed remains of his airbag, thinking it had probably saved his life. From somewhere behind him came a strobe of light, then he heard a car door slam. A voice called out.

  The smell of petrol grew stronger. His heart thudded. Bloody hell, the engine. Reaching up, he felt for the ignition and turned the key. He had to get out of the car.

  Inching his right hand upwards, he felt for the door latch. There. When he pulled it, there was a satisfying thunk. Good. Not jammed. He pushed the door outwards a few inches, exhaling with relief when it seemed to move freely. Another foot and it stopped, caught, he thought, on a slight rise in the ground. Still, it was enough.

  He took a breath, wincing at the pain in his ribs, then, bracing his right hand against the roof, he unbuckled the seat belt with his left. He eased his shoulders through the open door, then slithered out and back until he was free of the car.

  Panting from the effort, he used the door to lever himself up until he stood, facing the bonnet. The glare from his own headlamps shone into impenetrable blackness, disorienting him. Slowly, using the door as a support against the dizziness, he turned, blinking against more lights. It took him a moment to understand that he was seeing the headlamps from two cars. The first was nose in to the hedge that bordered the verge. When he blinked against the glare, he could see that the vehicle’s front end was crumpled like a child’s smashed toy.

  Behind that car, another stood at a slight angle to the road, its headlamps illuminating the wrecked vehicle—the car that had hit him, he realized, with a shock that made him grip t
he door a little harder. A figure moved, blocking the light momentarily.

  “Sir, are you okay?” It was the woman’s voice he’d heard before he climbed out of the car.

  “I think so,” he managed, his voice cracking. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Anyone else in the car?”

  “No.” Thank God, he thought .

  “Okay, good. Hang on. I’m ringing for help.” Her voice was calm, assured, but still he heard the tension beneath the words.

  No one had emerged from the other car.

  Fingers touching the underside of the Astra, he made his way to the end of the boot, then he stepped out towards the wrecked car, feeling his way across the uneven ground. The woman, who had knelt by the driver’s-side door of the wreck, stood.

  “Hey,” she called. “You need to stay put.”

  “I can help.”

  As he drew nearer, he saw that she was dressed in a cardigan over what looked like hospital scrubs.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said. “Is anyone hurt? I think that car hit me.”

  He blinked as she shone a torch in his face.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s a surface cut. I’m fine.” He tried not to wince as pain shot through his ribs.

  She looked back at the car against the hedge, seemed to hesitate. “Okay, look. I need to walk up the road to get a good signal. Can you just talk to this lady here while I do that?”

  Kincaid nodded, then, realizing she probably couldn’t see the gesture, said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

  After an instant’s pause, the woman started towards the road. “Right,” she threw over her shoulder. “You know what to do.”

  Crossing the last few feet to the driver’s door, he realized there was no sound from the car’s engine. Had the Samaritan reached in and turned it off? Carefully, Kincaid lowered himself into a squat, wincing as pain shot through his knee. Touching the car for support, he peered into the driver’s window.

  A glance told him that the airbag had deployed and collapsed. And that the impact with his car had crumpled the front end of the small saloon into the car’s interior. The driver was trapped. And she was conscious.

  She turned her head towards him and whispered something he didn’t understand.

  “Help’s coming,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Now he saw that there was a passenger beside her. A man. And he wasn’t moving.

  “I—” Her voice was a thread of sound now. She lifted her hand, reaching towards him, and he took it gently. Her fingers felt small in his, and warm. He thought her short hair was light in color, but he couldn’t tell more in the dim light. She moved, as if to struggle.

  “Shh.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “Stay still. Are you in pain?”

  She blinked, looking puzzled. “No. I—I don’t know. Will you stay . . . with me?”

  “Of course I will. We’ll have you out of there in a tick, don’t you worry.” It was going to take the fire brigade, he thought, and probably the Jaws of Life. How long before they arrived? He caught the coppery scent of blood. “Just hang on,” he said, as reassuringly as he could.

  “I—” Her fingers moved in his. “I didn’t mean . . .” Her voice faded and he thought, even in the dim light, that her skin had lost color.

  “It’s all right,” he told her. “It was an accident.” He thought he heard sirens in the distance.

  “No.” The woman turned her head until she could meet his gaze. “I didn’t . . . He was . . .” Her fingers tightened in his. “Please,” she whispered. “Tell them he—” And then the light went out in her eyes.

  Viv knelt on the kitchen floor, chasing down slippery fingers of peeled potato with shaking hands. She’d dropped the pan of hand-cut chips destined for the deep fryer.

  “Here, let me help,” said Angelica, squatting beside her and reaching for the pan.

  “No.” Viv shook her head. “Can you do more chips? We’ve got to get them on or we’ll fall behind.” The hand-cut chips were one of the pub’s signature dishes and the orders for fish and chips and steak frites would be piling up. It was Angelica, the line cook, who ordinarily prepped them before service.

  “Okay. But how about you take a smoke break.” It was a joke; a weak one. Viv didn’t allow anyone who smoked to work in back or front of house, much less smoke out in the yard.

  Viv chased down the last potato and stood, dumping the lot in the bin.

  Ibby, her sous-chef, gave her a cold look as he squeezed past her with two starters of gravlax and horseradish cream. “We’re already in the weeds. What were you thinking, letting that wanker in the kitchen?”

  “I didn’t let—” Viv stopped, pressing her lips together. There was no point in arguing with Ibby—Ibby, whose ever-present sense of grievance kept him from being the chef his cooking skills justified. “Just get on with it,” she said.

  His muttered, “Yes, Chef,” as he set the plates on the pass was sullen, and she thought that she might actually, finally, fire him. But he was right. What had she been thinking?

  She’d taken a breath and turned back to the pies puffing up in the oven, when Bea came in from the bar, her face flushed.

  “What the hell happened in here?” Bea hissed. “Sarah says you had a row and half the restaurant heard it. And the tickets are piling up.”

  Viv met Bea’s gaze. “Where is he? Is he still out there?”

  “No. But he’s left his coat.”

  Panic seized Viv. “Grace. Where’s Grace?”

  “She’s watching telly in the cottage. I just checked on her.”

  Viv’s hands shook with relief. “Good. I just didn’t want—” She broke off as Jack came through from the bar.

  The tiny kitchen was suddenly much too hot and filled with far too many bodies. “What the hell are you playing at, Viv?” Jack snapped his bar towel like a bullfighter throwing down a challenge. “Who the hell was that, swanning about the place all day in his poncey hat?”

  They all stared at her. Waiting, for different reasons, to hear what she would say.

  Finally, Viv spoke to Jack. “Fergus. Fergus O’Reilly. The chef. He was my chef, a long time ago.”

  Kincaid had shaken the driver, gently at first, then more forcefully. When there was no response, he’d shouted for the woman with the mobile phone.

  “I think she’s stopped breathing,” he said when she reached him.

  She deftly moved him aside. Feeling for the pulse in the driver’s neck, she shook her head. “Bloody hell. I can’t get to her, and I don’t have any equipment.”

  The sirens grew louder. “We’ll have to wait for the ambulance.”

  “But she—she was just talking to me. And what about him?” He gestured towards the passenger.

  The woman shook her head. “He wasn’t belted in. I’d guess his head hit the windscreen.”

  Kincaid looked at the driver again, and he knew that she was too still, much too still. A wave of dizziness hit him.

  He must have swayed, because the next thing he knew he was sitting on the ground and the woman was steadying him with one hand while shining a torch in his eyes with the other. “You may be concussed,” she said. “You’ve got a lump the size of a goose egg. Don’t move.”

  The siren had grown deafening. Headlamps threw the woman’s face into profile. She was about Gemma’s age, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Then the siren’s wail stopped. Doors slammed, voices shouted. The woman left him. He stayed where he was, frozen, as the action flowed round him.

  A boulder, he thought woozily. He might as well be a boulder in a stream. The water was so cold. Not water, he realized, but ground. The cold was seeping through his trousers. The night had turned chill. Why, he wondered, had the woman in the car had her window down? He was shivering now, his teeth beginning to chatter.

  The woman came back to him, throwing a rough blanket over his shoulders. “Can you stand if I help you
?”

  Kincaid started to nod, then quickly thought better of it. She steadied him as he pushed himself up, then she supported him across the rough ground of the verge to her car. Opening the door, she eased him down onto the seat, examining his head in the light of the dome lamp. “You’ve got a good cut there, and one on your cheek, but the bleeding’s let up. What else hurts?”

  “Ribs,” he managed with a grimace. “And my hand,” he added with surprise, glancing down at his right hand. He could see bruising, and the beginning of swelling. “Why didn’t I feel it?”

  “Shock.” She reached into the footwell and drew something out of a bag. “I keep a thermos in the car for the drive home.” She unscrewed the cap and filled it. “Here. Drink up.”

  Kincaid took it left-handed, with shaking fingers. It was coffee, hot and milky. A few sips stopped his teeth chattering. He could see the ambulance crew moving round the wrecked car, their yellow safety jackets gleaming in the light of the flares they’d laid.

  “The woman,” he said. “The driver—”

  His helper was shaking her head. “Nothing they could do. It’s going to be a job to get both of them out. I can’t imagine what happened. She always seemed such a careful person.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Oh, not well. But I recognized her. Nell Greene. She was an administrator at my base hospital. In Cheltenham. A nice woman, but she left under some sort of cloud.”

  Nell, Kincaid thought. He wished he’d known. He kept hearing her voice, entreating him.

  One of the yellow jackets loomed nearer. The woman, who’d been squatting beside the open car door, rose and spoke to him, their voices drifting down to Kincaid.

  “Dead,” the man said.

  His companion gave him a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? We know they’re dead.”