“It doesn’t bother me, honestly. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you? I know that’s a daft thing to think, but to be able to do something like that, you picture someone completely unhinged.”
“You want to try talking to him again?”
Heather blinked, surprised he had offered it so readily. “I want to help. And I think he knows more about my mum than he’s letting on.”
On their way out, she pressed her hand to his sleeve; the arm underneath her fingers was firm and warm, and she fought against the urge to squeeze it.
“Hey. Thanks for the lunch. It’s a grim subject but the company is good.”
They paused in the doorway, and for a moment they stood close together. She looked at the collar of his shirt and the patch of tanned skin just above it, wondering what would happen next, when his phone made a shrill noise. Turning away slightly, he thumbed the screen.
“I’d better get back,” he said. “But if you can make it tomorrow, we can try again with Michael Reave?”
Heather nodded, faintly disappointed. “I’ll be there.”
By the time Heather was back at her mother’s house it was full dark, and the terracotta pot by the doorstep was almost completely lost in shadows. Trotting up the path, Heather was half convinced she had imagined the whole thing, but as she reached it, kneeling down in the dark to pick it up, her fingers brushed over the scratched surface and a tingle moved up her arms and across her back: the heart.
Inside the well-lit kitchen, she turned the pot back and forth under the lights, examining the shape she’d first noticed just after Mr. Ramsey had given her the keys. It still looked rough and strange, and it was very much like the heart scratched into the rock in Ben Parker’s office. And there was something else, some other dim memory she couldn’t quite grasp …
Heather took the pot to the sink and gently tipped out all of the black dirt, sifting through it with her fingers, but there was nothing more to be found. Standing back, she looked up to see her reflection in the window; she looked pale and drawn, her dark hair falling forward across her cheeks and forehead.
“It has to mean something,” she said aloud to the empty kitchen. “It’s not a coincidence, it can’t be.” There was a connection here. A connection between not only her mother and Michael Reave, but between Heather and the new killer. Which had to mean she was in real danger. The story, she reminded herself. If there really was a connection between her and the Red Wolf, it meant that any article she wrote would be truly explosive. She would have to play this very carefully.
Movement in the darkness outside the window. Heather gasped, nearly dropping the pot, which she slammed down on the counter. There was a figure out there, a dark shape against the lawn. Without thinking she snatched up a knife from the kitchen drawer and ran to the back door, ramming the key home and turning it so violently that later she would realize she had almost sprained her wrist. Outside, the chill of the autumn evening filled her lungs like ice blocks and she could see almost nothing. Confused thoughts shot like comets across her mind: what if I catch the killer, what if he kills me, what if I kill him …
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Light from the kitchen windows cast yellow squares across the lawn. Whatever had been moving out there was gone.
CHAPTER21
BEFORE
MICHAEL STOOD ON the driveway looking out across the fields below, narrowing his eyes as another vanload of young people drove up. They were greeted by a group who had already set up their tents, and he heard their bright voices drifting across to him. A soft pressure next to his thigh let him know that the dog was with him, and he heard the squeak of a pair of wellington boots moving across the foyer floor.
“I thought the rule was, not on our doorstep?” He spoke without turning around. The man chuckled from behind them, then appeared, pulling on a pair of thick gardening gloves.
“Your problem, lad, is that you’ve got no vision.” The man sucked in air through his teeth. It was early spring, and still very cold in the mornings. “I’m setting up a septic tank for them. Want to help?”
Michael crossed his arms over his chest. Down below, a pair of women were walking together across the field, one of them carrying a guitar case. They both had long blonde hair the color of wet straw, perfectly straight, and they walked arm in arm, their heads bent together in conversation. They looked like they could be twins, at the very least, sisters. He knew, instantly, that they, like all women, were not to be trusted.
“Why are you doing this? You’ve never wanted company here before.”
“Company? It’s hardly company, lad.” The man grinned his long toothy grin. “Oh no, this is something else altogether.”
CHAPTER22
SHIVERING OUTSIDE THE gates waiting to be taken inside the prison, Heather glanced back at a small strip of green across the road. In the summer it would be thick with trees, but thorough winds had stripped all the leaves from the branches and it looked exposed and raw. A figure was standing there, his back to her, a hood up over his head and his hands deep in his pockets. She thought of Michael Reave, so dedicated to the landscape and things that grow. Unwanted, one of the images she’d found during her Internet searches floated through her mind’s eye; a woman, her face pale and waxy looking, her mouth full of blood and her head garlanded with primroses and small white flowers Heather couldn’t name. What did Reave do now, trapped in an antiseptic little cell? Did they have schemes to
