But Helen wasn’t responding and there was something horribly floppy about the way she was just lying in his arms now, like a rag doll, a puppet with its strings cut. Then James noticed the blood and before he knew what he was doing he was trying to scoop it up, to sweep it back up into the wounds which covered his wife’s body, cuts from which sprouted thick spikes of glass from the smashed bottle of wine.
‘You’re not dead, you can’t be dead, you’re not, you’re not allowed to be, dear God no, you can’t die, you can’t! You have to stay! Please!’
James could hear himself screaming, roaring at the world to not take his wife, praying through tears for God to do something, anything, to take him instead, to just let her live, because she was the most wonderful person he had ever met, and the world needed her more than him. But the dark of the night didn’t care, the flames licked high, and in that field, James witnessed the sound and the pain of his own breaking heart as he said goodbye to his beautiful, gentle wife.
Chapter Two
Harry was hunched up on a chair inside the Penny Garth Café in Hawes, at a small square table, a steaming hot mug of tea in his hand and a bacon butty in front of him ready to be devoured. Outside, the day was refusing to accept that it was time for autumn to leave, even though November was settling in and soon enough December would be impatiently knocking at the door.
The morning had started bright, with a sky of deep blue scratched here and there with thin claw marks of cloud. The air had a metallic tang to it which, after being in the dales for a good few months now, Harry recognised as the faint promise of rain. It would come eventually, he had no doubt, as Wensleydale seemed to have its own weather system. A day could begin bright and promise so much, and yet change in a moment, with thick storm fronts sweeping down the valley, or creeping over the fells, as though here was where they felt truly at home.
Harry’s mind was about to drift off onto something else that was bothering him, a conversation he’d had not just with Detective Superintendent Alice Firbank, his DSup from his life down in Bristol, but Detective Superintendent Graham Swift as well, the DSup he was working under while up in the dales. And the subject of it, about his thoughts on turning what was still a temporary position into a full-time one, was playing on his mind more and more. Then a voice pulled him back into the moment and he stared across the table at its owner, through the steam curling itself up from out of the top of his mug.
‘What was that?’ Harry said.
‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘Well, you need to,’ Harry replied, as his younger brother, Ben, reached out for his own butty, clutching it between slim, careful fingers, as though holding something worthy of reverence. ‘You’ve been here a few weeks now, give or take a day or two. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you seem quite happy.’
‘It’s flown though, hasn’t it?’ Ben said.
‘I’m hoping that’s a good thing,’ Harry said.
‘Back in prison,’ Ben said, ‘the days didn’t just drag, they became one, you know? Just one long bloody day. Nothing to do but sit and stare at the walls.’
Harry replaced his mug with his butty and took a bite. He was still managing to keep up with his running, in no small thanks to the relentlessly enthusiastic, focused, and encouraging Police Constable Jenny Blades. But his diet was still a little hit and miss. And how anyone could resist a bacon butty no matter what health regime they were on, he had no idea. He’d heard rumour of meat alternatives using plant-based proteins. Sounded all a little bit too like science fiction, he thought, the kind of food eaten by people crazy or lucky enough, depending on your viewpoint, to scoot off into space and spend a few days on the International Space Station. He doubted it could ever replace real bacon.
‘So, tell me what your supervisor was here for, then,’ Harry said. ‘He was over earlier than usual, I noticed.’
‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t because something was wrong,’ Ben explained, waving a hand in the air, as though trying to placate Harry. Not that he needed placating as such, he was just concerned. And had every right to be.
‘You’ve got a year in total of supervised probation to get through,’ Harry said. ‘So, don’t be surprised if I, being your older, and therefore considerably wiser, brother, am rather keen to see that you get to the end of it without any hiccups. There’ll be no horseshit nonsense of any type while I’m on watch, of that you can rest assured.’
‘I will, and there won’t be any,’ Ben replied, and Harry saw the ghost of a smile on his face. ‘Oh, and its offender manager, not supervisor,’ he added.
‘Well, la-dee-bloody-dah,’ Harry said, shaking his head, then he pointed at his brother with his butty. ‘And you’re right, there won’t be. At all. So, come on then . . .’
Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘Come on then, what?’
Harry sighed. ‘What did he say? The offender supervisor manager bloke!’
Since Ben had arrived in the dales to move in with him, after being released from prison on probation, it hadn’t escaped Harry’s notice that Ben had already changed considerably. That was hardly a surprise, and it was difficult to see how somewhere inside the relaxed man in front of him was still the all-too-clear echo of the damaged, terrified one he’d visited in prison. But he had no doubt at all that he was, because
