being scaled down.
Same old story, Daniel thought, as he slipped the scraps of paper back into the buff folder. Everything was always Barrie’s fault.
After daybreak, he went out for a walk. Dew glistened on the grass and gusts of wind whipped his hair. After circling the tarn, he followed the track that meandered up the side of the fell to a small cairn that marked the halfway point. Above the tree-line, the terrain was patched with heather and scrub. In the sun, he had to screw up his eyes as he took in the view. The serenity of the valley was a perfect cure for a troubled night. The village slept, but he could hear plaintive cries from sheep in the fields surrounding Brack Hall.
I mustn’t let the murder take me over.
Rather than continue on the steep path to the Sacrifice Stone, he turned back. When he reached the cottage and looked in the living room, he saw Miranda’s shape under the duvet.
A tousled head appeared. ‘Where did you get to?’
‘Just getting some fresh air.’
He bent over and began to kiss her. She squealed, protesting that his cheeks were cold, and he said that she would have to warm him up. Hungrily, he undressed again and wrapped himself around her.
An hour and a half later, after breakfasting on scrambled eggs and scalding coffee, he jumped in his car and drove along the tree-fringed lanes towards the village. When he switched on the radio, Isaac Hayes was crooning “Walk On By”, followed by Sandie Shaw with “There’s Always Something There to Remind Me”. He couldn’t help laughing at himself. There was no escape.
What exactly had happened to Gabrielle Anders up on the heights? Unable to resist temptation any longer, he glanced over his shoulder. High on the hillside stood the Sacrifice Stone. Melancholy even on a spring day, it preserved its mysteries in sombre silence.
He turned his head back just in time to see an oncoming tractor. Putting his foot on the brakes and squeezing against the hawthorn hedge, he reminded himself that even in this pretty lane, unexpected dangers could lurk around the corner. Taking more care, he arrived at the first row of cottages that marked the entrance to Brack. The village was full of nooks and crannies. Over the centuries it had grown in higgledy-piggledy fashion, artless and appealing. The main street curved over the stream before running past the church. It divided around a small square boasting a general store and The Moon under Water before narrowing as it left the settlement and heading for the world beyond the valley. Behind the square wound a maze of paths and lanes, the homes of a couple of hundred people and a handful of barns, small businesses, and workshops.
Daniel was still accustoming himself to the transition from the busy malls of Oxford to this quiet backwater. In Brackdale, people relished the chance to linger over gossip. Everyone knew everyone else and no transaction was ever hurried; he was having to learn to relax and stop rushing at everything. And he was loving it.
Brack’s principal store was called Tasker’s; it doubled as a postoffice and he had a parcel of books to send back to the London Library. The local newspaper regularly chronicled the continuing struggle between the Royal Mail, wishing to increase efficiency and cut overheads through centralisation, and local people who campaigned against plans to compel them to travel miles to collect their pensions and BBC licences. In the end, economic realities would prevail and the community would lose its battle, but Daniel was sure it was worth going down fighting.
A sporty yellow Alfa 156 was parked opposite the entrance to the shop, a garish contrast to the rusting Fiestas and mud-splashed 4x4s on either side, and as unlikely a sight in a Cumbrian hamlet as a lumbering Hackney cab. Tasker’s was a double-fronted Aladdin’s cave, with narrow aisles leading between overflowing shelves that reached up to the ceiling. If you couldn’t find it in Tasker’s, the odds were you wouldn’t find it anywhere north of Manchester and south of Carlisle. Behind the main shop counter were rows of chunky toffee jars, the kind that Daniel had seldom seen since childhood. A girl was serving a small boy with liquorice and blackcurrant chews and it took an effort of will for Daniel to tear himself away from the sweet aroma and join the queue stretching back from the post office grill.
Half a dozen people were ahead of him. At the front, a shrivelled pensioner in a vast brown overcoat smelling of mothballs was arguing with a baffled teenage assistant. Daniel took his place behind a tall woman with blonde hair falling on to the shoulders of her wax cotton Barbour. After window-shopping at a pricy country-wear shop in Kendal the other day, he recognised her walking boots as top-of-range Le Chameau. She was clutching a packet of headache tablets. Turning, she smiled at him and towards the cantankerous old man.
‘I hope you’re not in a hurry to send that parcel. If you are, please do go before me. I’m not rushing off anywhere.’
She wasn’t wearing make-up and didn’t need to. Her lightly tanned skin was close to flawless, her cheekbones high, almost Slavic. Although he didn’t recognise her subtle fragrance, he had no doubt that it was expensive. No prizes for guessing that she owned the sporty Alfa outside.
‘Thanks, but I’ve all the time in the world.’
‘You may need it,’ she said. ‘Once Derek gets a bee in his bonnet…’
The old man raised his voice, blaming the assistant’s youth for her incompetence. Tiring of the wait, a couple of women in the post office queue drifted away to pick up milk and provisions. A burly man in shirtsleeves, presumably Mr Tasker, appeared behind the counter and joined in the debate with his dissatisfied customer.
Daniel grinned. ‘Regular occurrence, is it?’
‘It’s uncanny,’ she said. ‘Whatever time I call in, he always seems to be in front of me, making some sort of complaint.’
‘You live locally?’
‘Not far away. You?’
‘We’ve just moved here.’
‘I thought we hadn’t met. Do you live in Brack?’
‘Further down the valley. A little place called Tarn Cottage.’
Her eyebrows lifted. Whenever the cottage was mentioned, people seemed to take a step back. Everyone in the valley associated it with the Gilpins, which was natural enough after so many years, but they regarded it as inextricably linked to the murder of Gabrielle Anders.
‘How lovely. So we’re more or less neighbours. My husband and I live on the way out to your new home.’
‘Brack Hall?’
She laughed. ‘How did you guess? On second thoughts, don’t answer that. Maybe it’s better if I don’t know. Anyway, my name’s Tash Dumelow. Tash as in short for Natasha. Pleased to meet you…’
‘Daniel Kind,’ he said as they shook.
‘Kind?’ She frowned. ‘The name rings a bell.’
This kept happening, thanks to the television series. He’d never quite realised until the first programme was broadcast how many people spent their time with eyes glued to the screen. His ratings had scarcely rivalled the soaps, but people kept recognising his face or name. He decided not to enlighten her and instead said something anodyne about the pleasures of country living. She gave a vigorous nod of agreement.
‘You’re absolutely right. I was a city girl, but now I’d never want to live anywhere else. As Wordsworth nearly said, this is the loveliest spot that woman hath ever found.’
When Daniel explained that he’d moved up from Oxford and Miranda from London, Tash said, ‘So you don’t know people in this part of the world?’
‘Not unless you count the fact that in the last few weeks we’ve had half the tradesmen in Cumbria helping us renovate the cottage.’
She smiled. ‘Will you let me give you a tip, as one off-comer to another?’
‘Please.’
She lowered her voice, one conspirator briefing another. ‘If you ever hope of being accepted by the locals, you’ll need to get the details right. People like the Taskers don’t talk about Cumbria. That’s an administrative creation. Dating back to the Seventies, admittedly, but in a place like this, that’s only yesterday. The powers-that- be patched together Cumberland, Westmoreland, and a bit of Lancashire. If you’re a native, you talk about the Lakes. Or the Lake District.’
He grinned. ‘Thanks, I’ll try to remember.’
She patted him on the back. Her hand felt warm. ‘Now, you must come for dinner. My husband will be
