story. She would never have cut off all contact with her own dad, even if he’d walked out on them to share a bed with another woman.
Tomorrow, more than likely, Stuart would turn up safe and sound. Even assuming Louise had cut him with the scissors, Hannah doubted that he’d bring in the police. He was good at playing the percentages. There was more risk for him in complaining that Louise had attacked him. He wouldn’t want a police investigation looking into his personal life.
She owed Stuart. Without today’s bizarre incidents at Crag Gill, she and Daniel would have had no excuse to meet. In her head, she could hear her friend Terri demanding to know what had
Turning into Lowbarrrow Lane, she mentally donned her body armour, rehearsing answers to Marc’s complaints about her work taking over both their lives. She didn’t waste time putting the car in the garage, but when she marched into the front room, she found him with his feet up on the sofa, watching a sitcom on telly. He jumped up at once and kissed her on the cheek. He never lost the ability to nonplus her.
‘I opened a bottle of Chablis.’ There were two glasses on an occasional table, full to the brim. ‘Come on, take the weight off your feet. It’s just out of the cooler, I poured it the moment I heard you scrunching up the gravel when you reversed outside the front door.’
She had half a dozen questions for him about Bethany Friend. But with the first sip of the wine, she decided to leave them for one more day. It was all about timing.
‘When you’ve finished, if you like, we can get an early night.’
He smiled. A handsome man, still. Desirable.
‘Give me ten minutes.’
She needed that long. Not to knock back her wine, but to rid her mind of the picture of Daniel Kind, sitting on the other side of the pub table. And of the sudden urge — conquered, thank God, how could she be so pathetically adolescent? — to kiss each and every furrow in his brow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Overnight, the temperature dived below zero. For once, no mist curtained the garden of Undercrag when Hannah opened the front door, but frost glittered on the grass and trees and there were streaks of snow on the higher ground. Not a smart move to leave the Lexus out in the open. She spent five minutes scraping the windows clear of their hard, opaque glaze so that she could see to drive into Kendal.
Twenty to seven and, apart from a few farm vehicles, the lanes around Ambleside were deserted. Muddy tracks left by the tractors had frozen over, and the drystone walls were powdered white. Passing Waterhead, she glimpsed ice on the surface of Windermere. Since childhood, she’d adored crisp, dry winter mornings, but that didn’t account for her lightness of mood. Seeing Daniel again had given her a buzz. Until yesterday, she’d refused to admit to herself how she missed him. She found herself humming along to an old Cliff Richard number on the car radio: ‘Devil Woman’.
Daniel fretted too much. A bluestocking law lecturer transforming into a crazed scissors killer? Unlikely. Yet she was glad he cared enough about Louise to go on that strange expedition to Crag Gill. Just as well Stuart Wagg didn’t have his premises guarded by a Rottweiler. She doubted whether any harm had befallen Wagg, though she’d promised Daniel that she’d ask someone to check things out. It was unwise to turn a blind eye to any missing persons report, even when you couldn’t care less if the misper in question never turned up again. And it provided a reason to call him again, to confirm that Wagg was back home, safe and sound. After that, she didn’t have a script for the conversation.
At this hour, she had her pick of parking spots at Divisional HQ. She left the car there and set off for her meeting with Fern Larter. The shutters were down over the shop windows in Stricklandgate, and even at opening time, some of the stores would remain empty and lifeless. Local retailers faced a harsh winter; nobody knew when the economic chill would ease.
The sharp air chafed her cheeks, and turned her hands blue, but she felt a stab of virtue as she strode up the one-in-seven gradient of Beast Banks. This was one of her favourite parts of the town, reeking of history, ancient and modern. Up above, footpaths led to the earthworks of Castle Howe. The Normans chose this hill to construct Kendal’s first castle, a motte and bailey burnt to the ground by Scottish raiders. An obelisk loomed up from the summit. Hannah recalled it was erected to celebrate the Glorious Revolution, and bore the inscription,
A newsagent’s was open and a billboard for the
She strode past the building that had once housed a sub-post office. It had inspired a local teacher to dream up the adventures of Postman Pat, before Royal Mail, ruthless as the marauding Scots, shut it as part of a ‘service improvement programme’. Now there was only a red commemorative plaque to show for it.
‘I could murder a fry-up,’ DCI Fern Larter said as they exchanged a New Year embrace outside the steamed- up windows of the Beast Banks Breakfast Bar.
Hannah detached herself and fought to get her breath back. It was like being hugged by a pink elephant. Even allowing for a bulky winter jacket in a shade even more shocking than her latest henna hair dye, Fern seemed larger than ever.
‘Looks like you’ve been a serial offender over the holidays.’
‘Don’t be such a mean cow. My New Year’s resolution was to lose a stone in January.’
‘This is no time for recidivism.’
‘Sod off.’ Fern mopped her brow with her leather gauntlets; the climb had made her sweat as if it were the height of summer. ‘Life’s too short for guilt. I deserve a greasy-spoon breakfast after slogging up Beast Banks. See that patch of green over the road? They used to bait bulls there. Reckoned it improved the quality of the meat.’
‘You’re a mine of information.’
Fern’s was the first name chalked up on the police quiz team sheet. Her magpie mind accumulated vast quantities of useless information, along with a few nuggets that made her a formidable detective. She’d once told Hannah that William Wordsworth had been Collector of Stamps for Westmorland, and cringed when Hannah said she didn’t even know he was into philately.
‘There’s more. The butchers’ shops of Kendal were originally congregated around the corner in Old Shambles, but the site was too flat for the blood and offal to drain away. That’s why they built New Shambles on the slope by Finkle Street. For better drainage down to the river.’
‘Lovely. Still in the mood for breakfast?’
‘Lead me to it, I’m famished. God knows why we’re faffing around out here in the freezing cold when there’s food inside.’
Already a queue had formed at the counter. Hannah recognised half a dozen colleagues, emigres from the police canteen ten minutes away at Busher Walk. She and Fern were served by an obese woman in a ketchup- stained overall, and carried their trays to a table at the back. Not to avoid prying eyes, but to put a bit of distance between them and a battered transistor radio on a shelf near the door. Radio One blared, the brothers Gallagher yelling like angry old men, as if trying to make themselves understood through the fuzziness of the reception. The subtle charm of The Tickled Trout might have belonged to a different continent, a different century.
‘How goes the Saffell case?’
Fern pushed a hand through her thick hair. If she’d combed it that morning, it wasn’t apparent. Fern was a
