‘Holding it,’ said Kim, the surgeon’s assistant.
‘Edward, the crossbow bolt.’
‘Here,’ said Edward.
‘You want to be part of our display, little madam?’ He pulled a pistol-shaped metal object from the deepest pocket of his tunic and held it out towards Stevie. ‘I tend to employ this for melting marshmallows and the odd crème brûlée. Useless for welding. Butane torch.’
She glared at him. ‘What do you want me to do with this?’
‘The holdall is over there, the tree is over there, we’re safe. I want you to flick off the flame guard and click the trigger.’
She did. As the torch sparked into a blue flame, Edward winced. The flame made a soft whooshing sound. ‘Okay, Mr Temmis – you hold the flight end of the bolt in the flame for at least a minute until it starts to glow, please.’
They stood there. Edward holding the bolt, Stevie holding the gas torch, Kim with the heavy magazine.
‘The bolt’s heating up too,’ said Edward.
‘Here.’ Marner took it. ‘Ouch. I see what you mean.’ He pulled an oily rag from his pocket, and wrapped it around the centre of the shaft. ‘Should be okay now. Give it another thirty seconds.’
As they watched, he said: ‘I’ll have to be careful with the next bit because it may happen very quickly. When I say “Go”, Kim, you hand me the glossy magazine, Edward, you hand me the bolt, and Stevie, you shut down the burner.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘Knock off the flame guard and release the trigger.’
‘It’s glowing,’ said Edward.
‘Go,’ said David Marner. He grabbed the bolt in his left hand – ‘Shit, that’s hot’ – and took the copy ofVoguein his right. The bolt was facing outwards, with the smoking tail to Marner’s left as he walked. He stood beside the tree, almost sheltering himself, and placed the bolt rear inside the hole so that most of the shaft was still exposed. Then he took the magazine and, with two rapid strokes, smashed the crossbow point so it was driven into the tree. There was silence. He held the magazine across the hole with the bolt in. Nothing. He kept the magazine in place and moved around the tree, embracing it from the opposite side, now holding an edge of the magazine in each hand so it fully covered the hole.
They stood and waited.
Still nothing.
‘Sodding waste of time that was,’ he said finally, dropping the magazine to the ground. ‘Better stay back all the same.’
‘What happened?’ asked Edward.
‘Lack of oxygen I reckon,’ said Kim, to his left.
‘Yeah, that’s probably right,’ said Marner, making heavy work of climbing over a log that blocked his route back to them. ‘I think the pellets—’
There was suddenly a powerful blast, so loud that Kim screamed. Marner ducked, then spun to look back over his left shoulder. ‘Christ alive, what just happened?’
Smoke was pouring from the tree trunk. They approached. ‘Do not go near the exit hole until we’ve worked it out,’ said Marner.
They came indirectly, from the right. Heavy smoke tumbled from the hole in the tree trunk. ‘Let me get the ramrod,’ said Marner. He pulled it from the holdall. ‘This is how accidents happen.’ He used the ramrod like a cotton bud in an ear, searching for a blockage.
‘Where’s the bolt?’ he asked.
‘Over here.’
It was Stevie, who had moved at an angle from the oak tree to another, thirty feet away. The bolt was stuck into the trunk at the same height as the hole it had exited from. ‘It must have come out with unbelievable power,’ she said. ‘I can’t even get the thing out. And it’s hot.’
Kim and Edward looked at each other.
‘Well,’ said David Marner, ‘you’ve proved something, though I’m not sure exactly what.’
‘Oh God.’ Stevie looked stricken. ‘I think I was wrong about Wendy. The doctor did it, didn’t he? He killed himself.’
