‘Watch out! More coming down!’
From further up the lawn, struggling with one of the hoses, with the weight and power of the water pumping from its nozzle, two fire fighters shouted to them, waving as another section of the Palm House collapsed, the glass shattering, the few remaining walls shuddering with the impact.
‘This way.’ Shouting now, the fire fighter grabbed Sebastian’s arm, pulling him out over the lawn, looping around to the back of the nearest fire tender.
The din was horrific, magnified by the darkness, cries and shouts and the wail of the alarm bouncing off the house’s noble façade. Alex felt a shiver run up her spine. After everything, after all the nights she had lain awake cursing Kilfenora, she had never prayed for this. But the great house was holding on to its dignity despite the flames, greedy, squabbling, reaching up the exterior walls for more.
More shouts. Looking up they saw a man on a hydraulic platform, another on a turntable ladder, both precariously close to the flames, their hoses focused, the powerful whoosh of water arcing high into the air, soaking the roof, keeping it wet to stop the flames spreading. Another fire fighter appeared beside them, but Sebastian wasn’t paying attention, had his eyes fixed on the house.
‘Evening sir, I’m Station Officer John Reilly, Incident Commander. We’ve got eight appliances in attendance, we’re doing our best to contain the blaze to the conservatory. I’ve got men on the inside keeping it out of the main house. The smoke’s the problem. You said your grandfather might still be inside.’
Snapping out of his daze, Sebastian nodded, wiping the sweat from his forehead, leaving a filthy smear behind. ‘His rooms are on the ground floor in the west wing. Did Olga not show you?
Station Officer Reilly shook his head, ‘there’s a woman in the back of one of the ambulances, she’s hysterical, babbling in German. We’ve been trying to find an interpreter.’
‘Jesus. He’s in his eighties, had a stroke. He’s in a wheelchair.’
Reilly nodded, the anguish in Sebastian’s voice raw, his own voice filled with urgency as he said, ‘I’ve a team ready to go in. Can you show us?’ Then, glancing at Alex, taking in the black smudges around her mouth and nose, ‘The young lady needs to see a medic.’ He waved his arm, summoning a paramedic from somewhere behind them. Alex squeezed Sebastian’s hand, coughing again. It was time for him to look after his family now.
Wrapped in a silver foil blanket, crinkling as she moved, Alex found herself being guided to the back of an ambulance, the paramedic’s arm around her shoulders. She coughed again. How could this be happening? She felt her knees wobble as he sat her down on the tail plate, the paramedic briskly fitting an oxygen mask over her face. Alex breathed deeply, rocking with the effort, her body beginning to shake uncontrollably.
‘Were you inside?’
She nodded, the mask still in place. She didn’t really have the energy to speak. Her eyes began to well with tears.
‘You’re in shock love, take another slug of the O2 there, that’ll sort you out.’
The paramedic picked up her hand, clipping something onto her finger, ‘We just need to check out the oxygen levels in your blood. It won’t hurt, it uses a laser strobe to test your blood through your fingernail.’
Alex hardly noticed, heard him say something else, but his voice was dim, like a distant light flickering far out at sea, vanishing as a wave of darkness washed over her.
On the far side of the drive, a tight knot of fire fighters had gathered, waiting for instructions from their senior officer. Someone had thrown a jacket around Sebastian’s shoulders. He wore it now, incongruous over his jeans.
‘So we can gain access down this side – through the French windows?’ The Incident Commander was shouting, his voice hoarse. Sebastian could hardly hear him.
Sebastian nodded, his face thrown into shadow by the bright lights from the fire engines. ‘It’s this way.’
How could his grandfather survive this? There had been moments on that landing when he had felt like lying down, giving up, exhaustion making every limb heavy, the smoke just so hard to breath. But with Alex behind him, he’d pushed on, pushed to the limits of his endurance and beyond. And he was fit, worked out at least three times a week, was thirty-five years old, not almost ninety. Sebastian suddenly felt a pang of fear grasping at his gut.
Leading the men across the front of the house, past the high yew hedges bordering the Formal Gardens, Sebastian pushed open the narrow cast iron gate set between two staunch red brick pillars that replicated those at the opposite corner of the house, at the far end of the kitchen garden. To their right, the windows of what had been the drawing room, now Lord Kilfenora’s apartments, were dark, unseeing.
It was impossible to tell from outside if they were filled with smoke. The darkness was oily, the gardens shadowed by the bulk of the house. Sebastian prayed that Olga had been sensible enough to close the hall doors when she had put Guy Wingfield to bed. They were all solid oak, over two inches thick, panelled, carved like the staircase.
The staircase. Would the staircase survive? The wonderful staircase?
Sebastian prayed that the fire officer was right, that the fire was contained to the Palm House. Pushing away images of the heart of the house burning, Sebastian’s brain began to work with frightening logic; the hall doors might stop the fire if it did spread, but, as they all knew well, the house was plagued with draughts, and where cold air could flow, so could smoke.
‘You can get in here.’ Before he could finish, the fire fighters were nodding, getting their instructions, three of them pulling on their breathing apparatus. One of them who had dragged a hose with him, stood back as he waited for it to charge, holding it high as the crisp lake water gushed from it. An axe came down on the paned door with a crash. Sebastian leapt backwards, the glass splintering as the axe head hit the lock. It was an unfair fight. In moments the wooden door gave way, exploding inwards, thick black smoke billowing out, escaping like it had been corked in a bottle.
‘There’s a connecting door between this room and his bedroom, it’s in the middle of the north wall.’
The men nodded, gave Sebastian the thumbs up. The doors still swinging from the force of their blows, they pushed forwards into the smoke, enveloped in seconds in an impregnable darkness. Sebastian started to follow them, felt the station officer’s hand on his arm, pulling him back firmly. He struggled for a moment, then nodding, understanding, shook off his hand.
‘They’ve thirty-five minutes of air max. They’ll do their best to find him.’
Pacing between the yew and box borders, the sound of his boots on the gravel drowned by the hubbub in the drive, his hands plunged in his jeans pockets, Sebastian kept his eyes fixed on the lake, visible occasionally through the drift of the smoke, its surface disturbed only by the action of the pumps, sucking the moonlight from the surface, sending it to the heart of the inferno. Then behind him, Sebastian heard the crunch of boots on glass, the unmistakable sound of radios crackling into life, turned to see the first of the fire fighters struggling backwards out through the broken door. As he emerged, Sebastian could see a second officer. They were carrying something between them. His grandfather? It had to be.
The station officer clapped the fire fighter on the shoulder, urging him forward with his burden, turned to wait anxiously for their back-up man carrying the hose.
‘Is he okay? Is he breathing?’ Sebastian’s voice cracked.
Their breathing apparatus still in place, the fire fighters glanced at him, their expressions unreadable through their masks. Getting clear of the building, heading for the drive, Sebastian followed them, stumbling over the border to the path. Guy Wingfield’s face was grey, his mouth and nose smeared black, his head lolling uselessly to one side, eyes closed. Painfully thin, limbs stick-like, twisted sinews of flesh and bone revealed as his pyjamas flapped, the men carried him easily.
His appetite had been failing for years, the first stroke paralysing his face ma
king eating difficult, messy, undignified. And Sebastian knew that his dignity was the one thing Guy Wingfield held onto with a vice-like grip. But confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk the dogs, to ride out with Tom, his energy levels had fallen rapidly. He’d tried to stay involved, but it hadn’t been long before he’d started delegating everything except the crossword to his grandson.
Moments later, the old man was lying on a stretcher on the grass, the fire fighters and paramedics blocking Sebastian’s view as they deftly fitted an oxygen mask over Lord Kilfenora’s nose and mouth, took his blood pressure.
Watching them work, Sebastian was hit with a surge of utter despair. Ahead of him, another ambulance swung around the bend in the drive, pulling up with a hiss only yards away, its blue strobes bouncing off the fire fighters’ visors, off the windows on the western side of the house. More paramedics were out of the vehicle, had the back doors flung open, before Sebastian had caught his breath. He ran his hand across his eyes, so many people were trying to save the old man, he couldn’t give up now. He wasn’t a quitter, and neither was Guy Wingfield.
His heart pounding in his chest, eyes fixed on the activity in front of him, Sebastian felt like he was trapped in a bubble, the sounds strangely dull, his blood pumping in his ears. He hardly registered the Garda car that pulled up behind the ambulance, the uniformed officer who got out. His focus was entirely on the medical team, on Guy Wingfield, he was a stubborn old goat, would pull through, had to pull through…for a moment Sebastian was back in his grandfather’s study, summoned from the den where he had been sketching…
‘I’m sorry my boy I don’t know how to tell you.’
It was the one and only time in his life that Sebastian had seen his grandfather cry. As he stood leaning on his desk, his arms spread to support the weight of the message he was about to impart, a tear had coursed its way down his leathery cheek.
In that split second, Sebastian had been sure he was going to tell him that he’d found out what had happened to Alex, that it was something dreadful, that she’d been murdered by a psychopath, or had been abducted by white slave traders, and shock had paralysed him before Guy Wingfield had even had a chance to speak.
‘It’s your parents’ Sebastian John and Marjorie. Both of them. They’ve gone, some bastard jumped a red light in Cape Town. Hit them head on. Left the scene of course. The police are trying to track him down.’ Guy Wingfield had rambled on, not pausing for breath, ‘But there was nothing anyone could do…I’m so sorry.’
His emotions overloaded, overwhelmed by shock, sorrow, by guilt that his first thought had been for her, for Alex, Sebastian had nodded, unsure what to do, had turned and walked out of the study, out into the chill of the hall and through the open front door, the heady scents of summer caressing him as he started to walk. It was four miles to Tom’s tiny cottage, four miles down winding lanes, but only two miles cross-country. And when he reached the yellow front door, Sebastian had pounded on it, taking out his anger and frustration, all his sorrow, on the pristine paint, banging until a voice behind him had brought him up. Tom’s voice, calm and soothing.
‘Come on lad, I’ll put the kettle on.’
And now as Sebastian stood here, the house burning, his grandfather, his only living relative, lying helpless on the ground, the enormity of being alone in the world hit him for the first time. He’d never been particularly close to his parents, had spent more time with his pal Cormac than his father. And at the time they had been killed, he’d still been still so wrapped up in his own loss, his grief after Alex’s disappearance, that their absence from his life hadn’t really hit him.
He couldn’t let his grandfather go that easily.
Snapping back to the present, Sebastian saw one of the paramedics poised over the old man’s chest, defibrillator paddles in his hands about to shock him. Surely not?
Taking a step closer, his arms folded tightly across this chest, Sebastian tried to see what the paramedics were doing, to understand; but it was useless. He didn’t have time to watch medical dramas on TV, had never done a first aid course, had no real idea of what was going on. As the paddles came down on his grandfather’s chest, the sound of shouting drew his attention to the house.
‘Sector one clear. All persons accounted for. Fire under control.’
FORTY TWO
‘Evening, how can we help you?’
Peter nodded to the Garda sergeant who had answered his rap on the wired glass partition separating the station from the black and white tiled hall, taking in his sergeant’s stripes.
‘There’s a car abandoned on the main road. A red BMW. I know the owner, I’m worried something might have happened to her.’
‘And who would you be sir?’
‘I’m a good friend of hers, her name’s Caroline, Caroline Audiguet-O’Reilly. She’s Sebastian Wingfield’s fiancée.’
There was a pause as Garda Sergeant O’Hanlon pursed his lips.
‘There’s no need to worry sir, she’s quite safe.’
‘Was there an accident, is she okay?’ The words tumbled out.
‘No accident. Miss Audiguet-O’Reilly was apprehended earlier this evening a bit the worse for wear.’
Peter leaned on the counter so he could see the sergeant properly, ‘Drunk?’
‘That would be about it sir. We’re looking after her here. Are you a good friend of hers sir?
Peter paused, then nodded.
‘You wouldn’t have any knowledge of her whereabouts this evening?’
Peter’s brow creased, ‘Sorry?’
‘There’s been a serious fire at Kilfenora House. We need to establish Miss Audiguet-O’Reilly’s whereabouts this evening.’
‘Christ, is everyone alright? Is Sebastian alright?’ Peter paused, his face confused, then clearing as if something had suddenly fallen into place. His voice was urgent as he continued, ‘Jesus I heard the sirens...someone came into the pub and said “the house” was on fire; I never twigged.’ Peter shook his head like he was a total idiot, like he’d let someone down by not seeing the obvious and turned as if to leave. ‘I’d better get up there...’
Peter turned back to him like he was torn between staying and going, then nodded, acknowledging the note in the sergeant’s voice.
‘Sorry, you’re right, I’d only be in the way. Old habits.’ Then, ‘Do you think Caroline was involved?’ Peter managed to get just the right amount of disbelief in his voice.
‘Not for me to say sir.’
Jesus. Peter’s mind moved swiftly into practised professional mode, assessing the options, weighing up the outcomes. The very reason he’d had such a distinguished military career, was now so successful in business, was his ability to make rapid, sure decisions. Out in the field it meant life and death. There was no room for mistakes.
But here was a real curve ball. They were going to pin the fire on Caroline.
Had she been to Kilfenora? He hadn’t seen her but that didn’t mean anything. She’d hardly be touring this part of the countryside if she hadn’t – there was absolutely no reason for Caroline to be in Kilfenora village unless she was visiting the house. But why had she been leaving so early? Had she had a row with Sebastian? It would be just like her to get caught in the middle of Peter’s own personal war. Peter sighed inwardly.
It was time to change the game. And that call from ‘New York’ was the ammunition he needed.
‘There’s no way she could have had anything to do with it.’ Peter shrugged like it was obvious. He was about to blow his alibi out of the water, but it was a calculated risk, ‘I had to drop some papers in earlier. I saw her car heading down the road as I pulled in. There was no sign of a fire then.’
‘You sure sir? What time would that have been?’
‘Around 9.30? I’m not sure, Jesus it’s been one of those days
.’ Peter shook his head, then said, ‘I was in the pub, nipped over while I was waiting for my dinner. I meant to go earlier but had to wait for a call to confirm what needed signing.’ Then, as if it had suddenly dawned on him, ‘but if the place was on fire they’ll be toast by now. Shite, I need to get them faxed back. Unbelievable.’
‘Was Mr Wingfield expecting you?’
Peter shook his head, ‘It all happened quicker than we expected. We were due to meet the day after tomorrow but I knew Sebastian was at Kilfenora and I needed to get his signature, so I thought I’d run down and drop in. You know how bad the mobile reception is around here so I got the guys in New York to call me in the pub – I couldn’t give them the number at Kilfenora. But then when I got to the house he didn’t answer the door. I never thought of calling him to say I was coming. Must be the jet lag, my brain’s slow.’ Peter shook his head, ‘Stupid.’
‘So how were you going to tell him these papers were there?’
Peter looked back at the sergeant like it was all a total pain in the arse, ‘I thought I’d call him from that hotel on the Dublin road and then shoot back. I didn’t want to call him from the pub with half the village listening.’ Well that made sense at least. Peter continued, ‘It was a bloody nuisance. I almost broke the bloody door down at Kilfenora banging but that house is so bloody huge he couldn’t hear, he was probably down in the cellar or something.’
O’Hanlon nodded like he was buying the story but Peter had had enough experience of interrogation himself to see that the sergeant still only half-believed him.
‘Would you like to step inside sir, we might have a little chat.’ Sergeant O’Hanlon came around and unlocked a door to Peter’s right. Sticking his hands in his pockets Peter nodded obligingly, ‘Of course.’
The public office of the tiny station was warm, too warm. Peter shifted uncomfortably in his waxed Barbour jacket as the sergeant indicated he take one of the swivel chairs next to a battered desk. O’Hanlon remained standing, his arms folded.
‘So what time did you say you were at Kilfenora?’