traipse round Beatrix Potter’s old home, accompanied by a coachload of Peter Rabbit fans who’d made a special journey from Osaka. Across the hay fields, Far Sawrey boasted its own church, shop and part-time post office. Old Sawrey must be the poor relation, skulking among the oak trees up a lane that petered out into a path winding up Claife Heights.
The sun blazed as she threaded through the narrow byways to the west of Windermere. On days like these, she loved driving. She had the roof open, breathing the hot air, letting Bill Withers’ ‘Lovely Day’ wash over her. A month earlier, she’d taken delivery of a gleaming two-litre Lexus and she was still relishing her new toy. She qualified for an essential-user car loan and on impulse had dug into her own pocket as well and gone for something livelier than a boring old Mondeo or Vectra. Motorway driving was tedious, too many roadworks, but the gentle pace of the lanes was fine, at least until she encountered a minibus full of tourists coming in the opposite direction and had to reverse all the way back to the nearest passing place.
After a couple of wrong turnings, she found the ‘no through road’ sign she’d been seeking and squeezed her car between steep grassy banks. To her right she caught glimpses of a strip of water through a cluster of rowan trees. Beyond a farm gate, the lane became a rutted track, climbing through woodland. On a post beside a wooden gate, she saw a green slate nameplate marked Keepsake Cottage. The Gleave house, scene of the crime.
She pulled up at the end of the lane. Neat and whitewashed, the cottage was elevated so that even ground- floor rooms commanded a view of Esthwaite Water over the tops of the trees. Scarcely 10 Rillington Place or 24 Cromwell Street, yet this was where Warren Howe had been butchered.
His body had been discovered in the back garden. So close to civilisation and yet a murderer had been able to scythe down Warren Howe in the open air with little fear of being observed. Nobody walking the path up the incline would have had a clear sight of the grounds of Keepsake Cottage; the woodland was too dense.
On impulse, she walked up the driveway, the urge to explore overpowering caution. If someone came out of the cottage and demanded to know what she was up to, she would produce her ID. It almost always did the trick; most people wanted to keep on the right side of the law.
Suddenly a bark broke the stillness and a sleepy-eyed mongrel, a canine Robert Mitchum, moseyed down the path. It looked in the mood to bite the hand that fed it identification. She swore and beat a retreat to the Ford. The dog followed her to the bottom of the drive and gave an uncompromising yelp as it watched her leave. As she executed a three-point turn, she took a hand off the wheel and pretended to shoot the pooch, but it gave her a sidelong glance packed with Mitchumesque scorn.
Soon she was on the lower slopes of Claife Heights, driving past a large green board with yellow lettering outside the entrance to an old farmhouse set back from the road. FLINT HOWE GARDEN DESIGN. So even after all these years, Peter Flint had kept the memory of his partner alive in the name of the business. She wasn’t naive enough to write off suspects on the basis of knee-jerk amateur psychology, but it didn’t seem like the act of a man with murder on his conscience.
The lane forked and she followed the sign marked OLD SAWREY ONLY. As she climbed the hill, she passed a scattering of houses before seeing a building perched on the brow, overlooking the lake and forest and fells beyond. The Heights looked like a small and ancient village pub with a conservatory extension tacked on at the front to enable diners to make the most of the view. Tubs overflowing with yellow and purple pansies bordered a pathway connecting the restaurant to a large detached house, set further along the slope. The grounds of house and restaurant were divided by willow screening. The car park was almost deserted and Hannah reversed into a space between a purple Citroen and a board outside the canopied entrance displaying times of opening. The restaurant was shut to customers for another couple of hours. Above the door a notice confirmed that Isobel Marie Jenner and Oliver Cox were licensed to sell intoxicating beverages. So the widow and the chef were still together after all these years.
As Hannah switched off the ignition, the restaurant door opened and a solidly built young woman in a white T-shirt and denim jeans hurried out. She reached the Citroen and fumbled in a battered bag for the key. Her face was blotchy and her eyes full of tears. With a start, Hannah recognised her. The red hair was shorter than in the photograph she’d studied earlier in the day, but the blue eyes and jutting jaw were unmistakable.
The woman in distress was Kirsty Howe.
Chapter Four
The giant hog bared its teeth at Kirsty Howe. She halted on the pathway between the trees, then took a pace towards the beast. For all her distress, she could not help smiling as she reached out and patted its head.
She loved Ridding Wood. Since childhood, she’d felt safe here, surrounded by the weird creatures carved from wood and iron. For all their fangs and contorted faces, they never hurt you as people did. In her early teens she’d confessed to Sam that she thought of the sculptures as friends, each with a pet name, but he’d taunted her without mercy. Now she knew better than to share secrets with her brother, but to this day, she remembered what she used to call the hog.
‘Hello, Boris. How are you today?’
Babyish, Sam would say, but she didn’t care. This leafy haven was her second home, a refuge she escaped to when things went wrong. After her father’s death, she’d wandered around the by-ways of Grizedale Forest for hours, struggling to reconcile herself with what had happened, and there was scarcely a route that she did not know by heart. She liked to come here for the setting of the sun, when families had returned home and hikers had tramped on. Even on a summer afternoon, with whooping kids on the hunt for wild animals along the sculpture trail, the exercise soothed her as words of comfort never could. She drank in the soft air and the mossy smells, she swayed to the music echoing through the woodland, as unseen wanderers struck the huge wooden xylophones standing beside the route to the stream. Even today, with the words of the cruel letter burning in her brain, Ridding Wood did not fail to work its magic.
She ran her hands over the hog’s back, careless of splinters. She envied artists, people who began with a blank canvas or page or a block of marble and had the talent to create something fresh. Imagine the sense of freedom it must give. Whereas she stayed in Old Sawrey, waiting at table and yearning for something that always seemed tantalisingly out of reach. Wanting it so badly that someone who must hate her had noticed, and was tormenting her because of it.
After blundering out of the restaurant, she’d needed to get away. Driving on autopilot, she’d wound up at Grizedale Forest, and parked near the old Hall. Would they miss her if she never showed up again? Oliver, how would he react? Would he suffer a pang of regret?
She crossed the high bridge. On the other side of the water, a circle of steel glinted from the branches of a spreading copper beech. Each familiar landmark she passed calmed her, made her feel more secure. Further on, lights powered by the sun flickered in an elaborate beehive hanging high in the trees. From the river, she heard the shouts of paddling children and the conversation of their parents. Somehow she couldn’t imagine having kids of her own. Plenty of time, her mother said, but that wasn’t the point.
The track emerged from a leafy tunnel into open grassland and she subsided on to a large carved seat, allowing the sight of fields and fells to wash over her.
She glanced at her watch. Oh God, better get going.
Jumping to her feet, she felt her muscles straining. She’d need to get into shape before her next parachute jump. As for Oliver, she would not give in. She would see this through.
‘You never said if you fancied anyone as Warren’s killer,’ Hannah said.
‘That’s right, I didn’t.’
Nick was sitting at his desk in the corner of the CCR team’s room. He was entitled to an office of his own and there’d been talk of him sharing with Les Bryant, who had come out of retirement to give the team the benefit of his wisdom on the fine art of murder investigation. Whether Nick’s preference for remaining in the thick of things was down to an egalitarian impulse or a wish to escape being holed up with the dourest of Yorkshiremen, Hannah wasn’t sure. Right now her sergeant’s gaze was fixed on the computer screen. With all the ringing phones and competing conversations, his voice was so quiet that she had to bend over his shoulder to hear his reply. His aftershave had a subtle tang.
‘Any particular reason?’
