like a dying pig and nobody outside would hear a sound. Tash halted next to a bookcase. On its top, a pair of heavy brass bookends in the shape of lions enclosed a row of Wainwrights. She lifted one of the bookends and a couple of the books tumbled on to the floor.
‘Because it’s pointless,’ he said. ‘You’d never get away with it.’
‘What’s happened to Simon is pointless,’ she said. ‘I could make a sort of statement by killing you. A grand theatrical gesture. Show how pointless our whole fucking lives are — when you get down to it all.’
He felt himself tensing. The living room had two doors, one leading up to the tower, the other linking with the main part of the Hall. He could run if he chose, run back the way they had come. Indecision paralysed him. He’d never talked to a murderer before. What would his father have done?
Tash took a stride towards him. He caught the whiff of alcohol on her breath as she ran her finger along the edge of the bookend. She was caressing the lion’s mane as if fondling a pet.
‘Dusty,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘That’s what happens when you don’t have a housekeeper to keep things nice and tidy.’
Daniel took a breath. Hannah had told him that the m.o. in the killings of Gabrielle and Jean were the same. They’d both been bludgeoned first, rendered insensible so that the killer could destroy them at leisure.
He could hear Hannah speaking of his father. I saw him face danger, many times, and he never flinched.
So: was he his father’s son?
Neither of them moved.
Tick, tick, tick.
Presently, Tash shook her head. Turning, she replaced the brass lion on top of the bookcase.
‘I think it’s time to go.’
As he watched, she spun on her heel and walked out through the door that led to the tower. The heavy key rattled in the lock. For an instant, he thought he was trapped.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. He could walk back into the main building and she was no longer there to stand in his way. So why would she lock the door?
Shit.
Images suddenly poured into his head, as if someone had opened a sluice-valve. He could hear Aimee’s message on his mobile phone, feel the pounding of his heart as he realised what she meant to do. He was back in Cornmarket, temples throbbing as he raced along the pavement. He could hear excited whispers, see fingers pointing up into the sky. Up to the top of St Michael’s Tower.
Not again.
His limbs unfroze and somehow he stumbled through the door and into the corridor. As he flung open the door that led out to the courtyard, he told himself that he was already too late.
But she was still there, gazing down from the battlements. He was staring into the sun, screwing up his eyes as he tried to focus on the slight figure outlined against the sky. She’d waited for him. He had a chance, a last chance to save her. He cried out:
‘Tash!’
Her reply drifted away in the breeze. He thought she said:
‘Gabrielle.’
His stomach clenched. He was powerless to do anything but watch as she climbed on to the parapet and stepped off into the air.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hannah pointed to the grey bulk of the Sacrifice Stone looming before them. ‘So the legend had a grain of truth. You did look Death in the eye.’
Daniel followed as she picked her way along the narrow track on Priest Edge. The ground was bare underfoot. In the distance he could see the coffin trail winding down the fell. Since the drama of the previous week he’d made his apologies to the editor of
When they reached the Stone he said, ‘I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t be climbing up it again.’
‘Glad to hear you say so,’ she scolded. ‘The Lakes aren’t a theme park. People ought to leave its monuments alone.’
‘Sorry, it was an aberration. Put it down to the ignorance of an off-comer. It’ll take time for me to behave like a native. Even longer to feel like one.’
‘Thirty years minimum, no reduction for good behaviour. Never mind the tourism and the twee craft shops, Daniel. This is a private corner of the world. You can’t just march in and hope to belong.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
‘Still happy you moved here?’
‘No regrets.’
‘Despite all that’s happened?’
He brushed his fingers against the Stone, feeling its roughness. ‘Somehow the Lakes have got under my skin. Besides, at least one good thing’s been achieved. Barrie’s name has been cleared. Even if not by a court of law.’
‘What’s so wonderful about the judgment of a court of law? I’ve seen a few dodgy verdicts in my time, I promise you.’
‘When we had dinner, you mentioned that case about the man who hired the hitman, Golac. Still rankles that he got off scot free?’
‘You bet. Unfinished business.’
He’d heard her use the phrase before, it seemed to have a resonance for her. ‘Like my father and the murder of Gabrielle Anders.’
She was glaring at him. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about Tash instead of confronting her?’
‘It would have been the sensible thing to do.’
‘Too right.’
‘Leaving Oxford and coming here wasn’t sensible, either. Trouble is, I’m sick — yes, I’m so sick — of doing the sensible thing.’
‘You should have trusted me.’
‘I realise that,’ he said quietly. ‘It wasn’t about not trusting you. Please believe me.’
She swivelled, as if wanting to change the subject, and gazed down the slope towards Tarn Fold. ‘How’s the work on the cottage going?’
‘On bad days, it feels as though it will never end. As though I’ll never get the dust out of my sinuses and the wood shavings out of my hair. On good days, well, things are taking shape.’
‘And Miranda, is she glad she made the move?’
He looked at the traces of his footprints on the track. Soon the farmers would be praying for rain. People were never satisfied for long.
‘Most of the time, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Whether she will still be so glad after she gets back from London, who knows? I’m not sure — not convinced any more that she really thought this through. When the excitement fades…’
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t pry. None of my business.’
‘I’m turning my attention to the garden. It’s a wilderness, yet there’s something that puzzles me. As if it were laid out according to a strange, lop-sided design. The only snag is, I can’t make any sense of it.’
She put her head to one side, weighing him up. ‘Mysteries fascinate you, don’t they?’
‘History is stuffed with them. Every historian wants to find answers to the puzzles of the past.’
‘You said something earlier, about the moment Tash threw herself from the pele tower. You had a flashback.’
‘Uh-huh.’
