The Tied Man

I gave him my very finest disparaging look.  ‘Of course.  What, did you think I was?  Some damn amateur?’

*****

At nine thirty-six, the disappointment on Coyle’s face was palpable as we arrived at his gate-lodge. I parked the Land Rover by the quay and we sat and waited, like the obedient children that we were, for Henry to collect us.   He had already set off across the lake in his little launch and he was carrying a female passenger that I didn’t recognise.

‘Y’know, you could just dump me out of the door, turn this thing around and fuck off,’ Finn suggested.  ‘There’s still time.’

‘No I couldn’t.  And if you advocate that again, I’ll personally unpick your stitches with my teeth.’

Finn grimaced.  ‘I reckon if you ever fancied it, you could give Blaine a run for her money on the ‘creative sadism’ front.’

‘Different league.  I just have better things to do with my creativity, that’s all.’

‘Hell, I’ve just seen who my welcome party is,’ Finn said.  ‘Doctor Parnell. Looks like all your hard work’s been in vain, Lili.  If she’s in charge of my recovery I’ll be in a box by the end of the week.’

‘Not funny.’

‘S’true.  It won’t even be anything to do with my injuries.  She’ll give me botulism or anthrax or something.’  He gave me a woebegone look that made me smile despite myself.

Henry tied the boat to the jetty and half-jogged to our car.  ‘Oh it’s marvellous to see you!’ he cried as I jumped out and opened Finn’s door.

‘Yeah, looks like mother’ll live to shit her bed for another day, eh, Henry?’

Henry’s face fell.

‘Remember: stitches.  Teeth,’ I warned, and Finn flashed me an evil grin.

‘Ah, Henry would only worry if I was nice to him.  This way, he knows it’s nothing terminal.’

Henry’s smile returned.  ‘And this way, I know it’s the real Finn that you’ve brought back, and not some civilised imposter.’

‘Touché,’ Finn conceded.

‘Lilith, I don’t believe you’ve met Doctor Ingrid Parnell?’  Henry said as we approached the launch.  ‘Lady Albermarle has arranged that Finn here gets round-the-clock care until she knows he’s properly on the mend.’  He stepped closer so he could whisper to me.  ‘I rather think her concern is a little belated, but there you go.  She even insisted that he was supervised for the lake-crossing.’

‘Oh, deep joy,’ Finn said, loud enough for the woman to hear.  For once, Henry didn’t reprimand him.

I climbed into the boat and got my first good look at Blaine’s tame doctor.  At first glance she appeared to be in her sixties, with a nondescript, bland face and a broad stripe of white in her centre-parting where she was several months overdue for a dye-job.  On closer inspection, Ingrid Parnell could be no more than forty-five, but she stood as a prime example of what happened when you finally surrendered to Blaine Albermarle: you became a ghost.

I looked at Finn, pale and exhausted after a day that had tested him to the very limits of his endurance, and realised that despite everything, he had never yet surrendered.

Chapter Twenty

Finn

Even with Doctor Parnell’s ministrations I survived, and for two long weeks I was confined to quarters whilst I healed.  Parnell was more generous with the morphine than Maxwell had been and I was grateful for the blurred edges it gave to my days; it combined with the temazepam to temper the images of knives and lunatic Roman emperors that had now added themselves to my more familiar nightmares.

From Henry, I learned that Blaine had advised Lilith to double her efforts on the portrait.  I didn’t doubt for a moment that she was keen for her masterpiece to be completed, but I understood her well enough to know that this was my employer’s way of beginning to restore control.

I’d hoped that this enforced separation would help to replace the safe distance between us, but I missed Lilith like hell.  Every day that fortnight she managed a way to see me for a grabbed half-hour, bringing armfuls of gardening magazines and, on her very first visit, a sketch of a sleeping Bran as a ‘get well’ card from the pair of them.  Each time she left I meant to tell her not to come again, without the words ever leaving my mouth.

*****

Two weeks to the day from when Royce Garvey carved me like a Christmas turkey, Doctor Parnell finally gave her permission for me to leave my room.  Just ten minutes after she left the island I was informed by Henry that I would be working that same night and, on legs that felt as though they no longer belonged to me, there was only one place I wanted to go.