faded into the faraway past.
‘I hate to intrude on you like this,’ Leigh said. ‘I don’t mean to presume on such a brief acquaintance.’
‘We’re glad of any visitors,’ Miranda said. ‘It’s so lovely here, but I’ve not acclimatised to the isolation yet. When the workmen finish for the day, the place is as quiet as a cemetery. One of these days, when we’re sorted, we’ll have a housewarming and you can consider yourself invited.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ Leigh put her glass down on the paving. ‘Although your hospitality isn’t making it any easier for me to ask the favour that brought me here.’
‘Ask away,’ Daniel said.
She cleared her throat. ‘The police have been questioning my sister and me this afternoon. Just because we were both working at The Moon under Water at the time Gabrielle Anders stayed there. I finished early at the bookshop so that I could meet them at home. Two constables, they’d already brow-beaten Dale. Resurrecting the past. Talking about the statement she gave after the girl was found murdered.’
‘It’s a cold case,’ Daniel said. ‘You’ve seen the publicity about this new team the police have set up? I’m sure the questions are merely routine.’
‘Dale and I were wondering why they’d chosen to dig up that particular cold case. Cumbria isn’t exactly a hot-bed of crime, but surely there are plenty of old inquiries that failed to produce an arrest or conviction. Why pick on that one?’
‘They’re not focusing simply on the Anders murder. It’s one of several they are reviewing.’
With a sharpness he hadn’t heard from her before, she snapped, ‘Then you’re already aware they are looking at the case?’
He drained his wine, barely noticing the flavour, just relishing the lift that the alcohol gave him. Miranda’s face had creased with anxiety but he could see no good reason to dissemble.
‘It’s no secret, I did talk to Hannah Scarlett.’
Leigh leaned forward so that their faces were close together. ‘Have you any idea of what you’re doing?’ she said bitterly. ‘Any idea about the can of worms you’re opening?’
For a split second he thought about Tash’s fear that Jean Allardyce had gone missing. Even if she had, it couldn’t be down to him in any way. Could it? ‘Sorry, I don’t follow.’
‘Can’t you imagine the disruption and upset this kind of thing causes?’
‘Hang on a moment,’ he said. ‘When we talked in the pub, I thought you agreed that Barrie was an unlikely killer.’
‘Barrie’s dead.’
‘Does that make everything all right?’ Miranda gave him a baleful glance, but he plunged on. ‘His reputation doesn’t matter, is that it? It seems to be a widely-held opinion in Brackdale. If he wasn’t guilty, fine, no problem. He was an oddball, anyway, a loser. So who cares?’
‘That’s not fair.’ Leigh flushed. ‘Okay, Barrie was one of life’s scapegoats, but it’s not the real issue. By encouraging the police to dig over old ground, you’re opening a Pandora’s box. Who knows what may fly out?’
‘The police are perfectly capable of turning up stones without my egging them on. Hannah Scarlett is a good detective.’ A good detective. He realised that he’d borrowed the phrase she’d used to describe his father and added quickly, ‘A woman her age doesn’t make Chief Inspector without being quick on the uptake.’
‘You’re right,’ Leigh said slowly. ‘She is a good detective.’
‘Well, then. What are you afraid of?’
‘Daniel,’ Miranda said. ‘This isn’t helping…’
‘It’s all right,’ Leigh said. ‘I’m not offended. In fact, you’re absolutely right. I am afraid, though not for myself. Afraid that innocent people will get hurt. People I care for. That’s why I came to ask you a favour.’
‘You can always ask.’ Daniel ventured a smile to take the chill off his words.
‘The favour is this. Can’t you give up on trying to fight Barrie’s corner? You know and I know what he was really like, why not leave it there? If you insist on re-opening old wounds, even more innocent people will suffer, and how can that help Barrie? I know your heart’s in the right place, and I don’t mean to be patronising when I say that. The truth is, though, you’re simply making matters worse. If you have any influence with Hannah, please try and persuade her to concentrate on something more worthwhile.’
‘Even if I wanted to do that,’ he said, ‘why should she listen to me? My only connection with her is that she worked with my dad. She strikes me as very much her own woman. You can bet she’ll make up her own mind about what she does.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Leigh swallowed the rest of her wine. ‘She is her own woman.’
‘In any case, if there’s one man who has a chance of talking her round, surely it’s Marc Amos. Or have you talked to him and got nowhere?’
When he’d met her previously, she’d seemed poised and self-confident, but now her voice was low with despair. ‘You don’t understand a thing, do you? Oh God, I should never have blundered in here. I’ve only made myself look ridiculous.’
Miranda reached out an arm, as if to offer consolation, only to find herself clutching at air as Leigh scrambled to her feet.
‘I must go. I’ve said too much already. Thanks for the drink. I shouldn’t have disturbed your evening. Sorry.’
Daniel watched as she pushed and shoved her way blindly past the makeshift barricade, scratching her arm on a protruding length of timber as she made good her escape.
‘Leigh,’ he called, ‘can we talk about this? Please?’
She didn’t look back, just shook her head and hurried around the corner of the building and disappeared from view. He was about to follow, but Miranda’s shaking voice halted him in his tracks.
‘Happy now? Or won’t you be satisfied until your obsession with what happened all those years ago has antagonised every single person in this bloody valley?’
After Eddie finished, they ate a scratch meal together in silence. The food tasted of dust. Whilst Daniel was filling the cafetiere, Miranda announced that she had a migraine and was going to bed. Left to his own devices, he swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of coffee, slung the crockery in the new dishwasher, and decided to go for a walk. The evening was mild and another hour’s exercise before darkness fell might help to set things in perspective. He felt a sort of kinship with those sci-fi movie heroes who slay the wicked alien only for the creature to spring back to life, more fearsome than ever, in the final reel. This new life was turning out to be even more complicated than the old.
Their bedroom door was shut. He tapped gently and said, ‘I’ll be out for an hour. Going to clear my head.’
No reply.
He padded down the stairs again and put on his jacket and boots. He’d decided on a circuit of the Fold, taking in the pack horse bridge, a stretch of the beck and the disused corn mill that Tash Dumelow was planning to paint. An undemanding ramble, a chance to sort things out in his mind.
A bright red tea rose was coming into bloom by the side of the path. The memory came back to him of his grandmother, who had stayed with the family the Christmas before she died. He would have been ten years old and he always associated her with the aroma of cigarette smoke blended with talcum powder. She was a shrewd Lancastrian who must by then have realised that her life would soon be destroyed by the cancer eating at her lungs.
‘Promise me this, you two,’ the old lady wheezed one night while he and Louise were reducing each other to tears of rage over some petty juvenile dispute. ‘Life is shorter than you realise. You must remember to stop and smell the roses.’
It was the last conversation he could recall having with her. Time to take her advice, he thought, pausing to inhale the rich scent. As he unfastened the gate, he turned over in his mind the conversations he’d had with Jean Allardyce and Tash Dumelow and Leigh Moffat. So much for being a stranger in Paradise. As a boy, life had seemed simple to him, no more than a steady and straightforward ascent of a mountainside to gain greater and greater heights. And then his father had deserted them and he’d discovered that the way forward was barred by crevasses as deep as they were dangerous.
From out of nowhere came the muffled blare of Elmer Bernstein’s theme from
