simply to fulfil a fantasy of a new life with a woman he still hardly knew?
The moment she stretched her arms and yawned elaborately, allowing him to admire the way she filled the navy blue overall, he knew the answer. How could he ever tire of Miranda?
‘Oh, I do love sloshing paint on walls.’ Her overall was covered with splashes. ‘Wonderful therapy.’
‘I never suspected you of this insatiable appetite for do-it-yourself.’
‘It’s not my only insatiable appetite,’ she said, sneaking a hand inside his shirt. ‘At least there are one or two things you’re still good for. But I’m not having you use your lack of expertise with drill and chisel as an excuse for fiddling with a new book just yet.’
‘Spoilsport.’
‘Did you hear the forecast for tomorrow? It isn’t bad. Why don’t you get out from under my feet and leave me to be lusted after by that nice young builder with the unicorn tattoo? You can go into the village and run a couple of errands. Afterwards, you could make a start on clearing the grounds.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to wait a year in a new house before making any drastic changes to a garden? So you can work out exactly what is growing, and where.’
She removed her hand and waved at the thick undergrowth spreading out from the patio all the way down to the pool. ‘Does it take an Einstein? The brambles have to go. Same with the ground elder. Weeding isn’t enough. It needs digging out, so not a trace of it is left. Otherwise we’ll never be rid of it.’
He savoured the flinty taste of the champagne. It crossed his mind that she wanted rid of more than the ground elder. She was determined to transform the cottage in a matter of weeks, to make it unrecognisable as the house that a supposed murderer and his mother had shared. A sort of exorcism. But Mrs Gilpin had left no trace of her personality here, nothing to show that she had ever existed. It was as if she had withdrawn from the world after the death and disgrace of her son, determined to wipe away all evidence of his life or hers, even in her own home.
‘You’re a ruthless woman.’
‘I know what I want.’
‘Me too,’ he said, reaching towards her.
She shivered. ‘It’s freezing. I think I’ll take my drink inside.’
He put his arm around her. ‘Good idea. I’ll help you to warm you up.’
‘Twenty minutes ago you were dog-tired and your back was killing you.’
‘A chance for you can try out that massage technique you wrote about last month.’
‘But the bedroom stinks of paint, even with the windows open.’
‘There was another reason I bought that sheepskin rug for the living room. Come on, let’s test it for comfort.’
‘Daniel?’
‘Mmmmm?’
‘You were talking in your sleep.’
His head was hurting after too much Bollinger and his back still ached. Miranda always made love with an intensity that he’d never before experienced, not even with Aimee. Exhilarating, but she’d left him drained. He forced his eyes open. The living room was in darkness.
‘What time is it?’
‘Half past four.’
‘Too early.’
‘No, Daniel, don’t drop off again. This is important.’
They were curled up together under a duvet on the massive new rug. He felt a spasm of pain in his vertebrae as he propped himself up on his elbows and looked into her anxious face.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I woke up ages ago and couldn’t get back to sleep again. Then I heard you muttering to yourself.’
‘What was I saying?’
‘Aimee. You kept repeating her name, over and over again.’
Guilt knifed him. ‘Oh Christ, Miranda, I’m so sorry.’
‘You were dreaming of her.’
‘No, no. It’s just that…’
But he was lying and they both knew it. He’d had the same dream many times before, although this was the first time he’d woken her with it. Each time he was running through the streets of Oxford, pounding the pavements, heart thumping, desperate to find Aimee before it was too late. Always the same panic, the same sick feeling in his stomach. No matter how many times he had that dream, it always ended in precisely the same way. He failed to save her, he was always too late.
Miranda dozed off, but sleep continued to elude him. In the recesses of his brain, a scratchy voice echoed. It belonged to the woman who had lived here for so long.
‘Barrie! Barrie! Now look what you’ve done!’
Daniel remembered Mrs Gilpin shouting out to her son, scolding him for coming into the cottage without bothering to wipe his muddy feet. It was the wettest morning of the holiday and the two of them had been right here in the front room, playing with a Monopoly set that Daniel had brought. Barrie was unfamiliar with the rules but found the names of the London roads and stations fascinating. Soon he could recite them by heart, even though his strategy in zooming around the board was closer to anarchy than capitalism. It was great fun and their hoots of glee attracted the attention of his mum who had been out in the barn, chopping firewood. She always needed to be occupied. He never actually heard her say that the devil finds work for idle hands, but he was sure she believed it.
‘It was my fault, Mrs Gilpin, not Barrie’s,’ he said, as she appeared in the doorway, red-faced and scowling. ‘I got caught in the cloudburst and dashed in the moment Barrie opened the door. Sorry, I forgot…’
‘You mustn’t cover up for him,’ she said, her cheeks dark with temper. ‘He has to take responsibility for his own actions. He’s not a little child any more.’
Daniel opened his mouth to protest but a glance at Barrie kept him quiet. His friend was shaking his head, as if to say It’s not worth it, she won’t listen to you. Everything’s always my fault.
In the end he gave up the struggle for sleep and padded into the front room. It was a mess, with hundreds of his files crammed into cardboard storage boxes piled into dangerously leaning towers. He tiptoed around them, searching out the sheaf of press cuttings he’d collected about Barrie Gilpin’s crime, before retreating into the soon- to-be-tiled kitchen to study them by the warmth of the stove.
The murdered woman was called Gabrielle Anders and she’d been in her twenties. Not much seemed to be known about her. She came from London, not Cumbria, but she’d lived in the States for years. She had been staying in Brackdale for a few days while she toured around and visited friends. One night someone had slashed her throat so viciously as almost to sever her head. After stripping off her clothes, the killer laid her ruined body on the Sacrifice Stone.
A young woman found dead on an ancient boulder mentioned in legends about pagan rituals. Journalists loved it and treated their readers to lurid descriptions of human sacrifice through the ages. A popular historian from Bristol University contributed an excitable feature claiming that the instinct to shed the blood of innocents as a means of self-preservation remains just below the surface of every supposedly civilised society. Early reports added that a local man was missing from home. The police gave his name as Barrie Gilpin and revealed that he was known to the victim. With a red pen, Daniel had highlighted the quote from Detective Chief Inspector Ben Kind of Cumbria Constabulary that had first caught his eye. His father said that the missing man might be able to help with their inquiries. A smudged photograph of Barrie scowling at the camera illustrated more vividly than any words that he was the sort who preyed on pretty and defenceless young women. Even the laziest reader would deduce his guilt. The hunt did not last long. Forty-eight hours after the killing, a walker peered into a narrow ravine and caught sight of a crumpled body at the bottom of the cleft. Barrie had not travelled far.
Suicide or accident? A quick death or a lingering end in a rocky tomb? Who cared? The reports implied a poetic justice about his death. The final cutting carried another comment from Ben Kind. It said little, but was pregnant with implications. He announced that the police investigation into the murder of Gabrielle Anders was
