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Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
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HarperCollinsPublishers
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Dublin 4, Ireland
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
Copyright © Susan Lewis 2021
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Cover photograph © Natasza Fiedotjew (dandelion), Shutterstock.com (clock face)
Susan Lewis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008286934
Ebook Edition © April 2021 ISBN: 9780008286958
Version: 2021-02-12
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
6th September 1999
Chapter One: December 2019
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve: 31st July 1999
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen: August 7th 1999
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Acknowledgements
Read on for a sneak peek at Susan’s next book
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Susan Lewis
About the Publisher
6th September 1999
‘They’ve found her, sir.’
DCI Underwood’s heavy grey eyes rose from the file on his desk to the young DC at his door.
‘A call’s just come in,’ the DC explained, ‘from a builder. They’ve started clearing the land over at Embury Vale for the new estate. One of the workmen’s found a body, in a derelict railway hut. All indications are that it’s our girl.’
Underwood reached for his Nokia and got to his feet. ‘You can drive,’ he told the DC and started out of the room, wanting to lose no time, in spite of it apparently already being too late.
Karen Lomax, a seventeen-year-old local lass, had vanished from her home a month ago and all leads so far had been up the garden path at best, still open-ended at worst. No one seemed to know what had happened to her, where she’d gone or who could have taken her, although the smart money was on Timbo Jaks, the lowlife she’d been seen with a few times while the fair was on the common. None of her friends had said the relationship was serious, but Underwood would have been failing in his duty if he hadn’t tracked the Travellers down to find out if she’d gone with them. There’d been no sign of her, Jaks had sworn he’d never laid a finger on her, she wasn’t his type, but he would say that, wouldn’t he? They’d turned the camp upside down, had even hauled Jaks and half a dozen others in for questioning, but in the end they’d been forced to let them go.
Now a body had turned up not half a mile from where the fair had sprawled over the terrain in late July, and Underwood had never been one to believe in coincidences, oblique or otherwise. Karen Lomax had disappeared on 7th August, not two weeks after her last known visit to said fair.
‘Someone find out where Timbo Jaks and his lot are now,’ he barked to his team as he swept through CID, ‘and send a car to pick him up.’
Forty minutes later, Underwood and the young DC were standing on a vast patch of wasteland being drizzled on from above as they watched the SOCOs in hoods, masks, boots and gloves going about their work. Now that Underwood had set eyes on the body he was in no doubt it was Karen, partially decomposed though her once pretty young face was; the clothes, the hair, the build, were all a match. Early examination was suggesting a sharp blow to the back of the head was probably what killed her, but there was still a way to go. Any amount of other injuries, not immediately visible, might be revealed. Later, once the pathologist and forensics had done their jobs, they might know if she’d been beaten, tied up, tortured, starved; possibly if sexual relations had taken place prior to – or even after – her death. There were some sick bastards out there. What would be of more interest to the investigators was whether any identifying fibres, prints, hairs or fluids had been left behind.
Underwood’s next stop today was going to be the most difficult of all, breaking the news to the parents, Jess and Eddie Lomax. They owned a wine bar in the old town and lived above it. A nice couple, always friendly, knowledgeable about vintages, generous with the tastings. Honest, law-abiding types, who had closed the bar since the disappearance of their only child. Necessity demanded they were questioned, extensively, but no one had seriously suspected them. Their devastation would have been all but impossible to fake. It had been hard to handle, even for a seasoned detective like him.
Everyone who went into the bar knew their daughter, pretty, flighty, well-developed in all the right places, a proper handful if the truth be told, especially where the opposite sex was concerned. Like plenty of girls her age she was blossoming, growing up too fast, considered herself worldly, all powerful. She’d even batted her saucy eyes at him once or twice and he had a good ten years on her father.
‘I always said she’d come to a bad end,’ one of the neighbours had claimed. ‘That’s the trouble with girls these days, they don’t even dress decent so who can blame the poor boys for thinking something’s on offer when it isn’t?’
Though Underwood didn’t much appreciate that way of thinking, he had to admit it was an issue that kept coming up, and even he had been known to misunderstand a certain type of flirtation. Not that he’d taken advantage of it, but he couldn’t help wishing teenage girls were more aware of the dangers they were putting themselves in with their short skirts, transparent tops and binge-drinking.
‘Slappers, the lot of them,’ another neighbour had grunted. ‘And that Karen … The things I’ve heard about her.’
The gossip had been rife and cruel, but others had spoken about her fondly and loyally, especially her friends. She’d always been generous and caring, they’d said, a shoulder to cry on when things went wrong. She was a good laugh, up for anything, and yes, she liked boys, but who didn’t? It was normal, wasn’t it, at their age? And she was seventeen, so it wasn’t illegal or anything, so why shouldn’t she go with whoever she wanted? Yes, she liked them a bit older sometimes, in their twenties or thirties even, but she never went with married men, or not knowingly, anyway.
Timbo Jaks? Yeah, he was cool, and she did hang out with him for a while, but she hadn’t come over as upset when the fair shipped out. No one seemed sure if she’d met someone else by then, there were probably a couple she fancied, blokes who came into the bar, or who they met at cafés and nightclubs in town. It was summer, so lots of tourists around and they were all up for holiday romances, no strings, or maybe some if they wanted it. Her friends had never seemed convinced she’d run off with Jaks. ‘She wouldn’t, not without telling me,’ her best mate Lucy had insisted. ‘We didn’t have any secrets. No reason to. So no, I don’t reckon she went off with Timbo. For one thing, she wouldn’t do that to her parents, just up and go without even leaving a note, but that’s not to say he didn’t abduct her and make her go with him. I reckon it’s the kind of thing he’d do.’
The thrill of the horror made the girls unreliable witnesses. Their imaginations were so lurid and fertile that even Underwood had felt shocked by some of their suggestions, but he’d never got the impression they were lying about not knowing where she was. They seemed genuinely baffled and even afraid, as if whatever had happened to Karen might be coming for them.
So whether Jaks had or hadn’t abducted Karen was a question still to be answered, but Underwood had a very strong feeling that when the forensics came back everything was going to point to that little toerag. And when it did, no one was going to be happier than this detective, because an unsolved killing was not something he wanted hanging over him during his retirement years – any more than the parents needed the torment of not knowing what had happened to their precious girl to drag on any longer than it already had.
CHAPTER ONE
December 2019
Here she was driving across the moor she knew so well, a little too fast as usual, and loving every minute of it. What’s not to love about sunshine lighting up the world so gloriously in the middle of December? she might answer, if asked why she was smiling. It was so warm that she’d lowered the convertible’s roof and hadn’t even bothered to pull on the crazy reindeer hat she usually took with her at this time of year. It was quite possibly the most unstylish item of clothing she possessed and she loved it almost as much as the man who’d given it to her – the man who’d given a shout of laughter when he’d unwrapped his own gift that very same Christmas to discover she’d bought him the same hat. The children, quite predictably, had groaned, rolled eyes and laughed when their parents had put them on and started taking selfies. She wondered what they were going to do this year when they discovered that they too had reindeer hats and were expected to post shots on Instagram and wear them when they went out as a family?
Annabelle grinned to picture what the five of them would look like, some cheesy Christmas card or dorky family trying to get a few laughs. The children would find it funny in spite of themselves, and might even, because they were Crayces, go along with the craziness of it.
‘I don’t know another family like yours,’ her sister-in-law, Julia, would occasionally comment with an affectionate sigh. ‘Every one of you unspeakably beautiful, and quite possibly certifiably mad.’
Not mad, just joyful and thankful to be as blessed as they were in so many ways, not least of all in having each other and the incredible life they were able to live all the way up here on this wonderful moor. Sometimes she felt that the billowing, tumbling and soaring mass of it had a life force all of its own, a soul that breathed quietly and steadily beneath the wind-worn landscape, and was nourished by all that came to it.
She wound on through the high hedges, passing the occasional vista of sprawling uplands with her jaunty scarf and pale golden hair streaming out behind her, until she reached the Drang, local-speak for the meeting of roads and pathways. Here she turned into the welcoming, shade-speckled trail that roamed for a quarter of a mile to the wide-open gates of Hanley Combe Estate, aka home. As she swept through and past the quaint stone cottage just inside, she gave a toot of the horn to let her father-in-law know she was back. Although she doubted he was in there. Most likely he was over at the house with his very lively eight-year-old grandson, Quin.
On reaching the divide in the drive where an arc off to the left led to the main residence that she and David had constructed almost twenty years ago in a style that had confounded local planners at the time, she continued to the right and pulled up in the gravelled courtyard of the Byre. This transformed old barn, with its magnificent grey stone walls, black slate roof and grand oak doors, was home to the beating heart of their business. In more recent times it had acquired a glass-fronted wing on one side to house a shop and secure store, and a grand rotunda on the other with a conical roof and floor-to-ceiling windows. This last was used for parties, conferences and anything else it might be found suitable for, such as the upcoming festive Flurry.
As she got out of the car the crack of a gunshot rang through the skies, puncturing nature’s benign tranquillity like a wayward thunderbolt and echoing on for a moment or two into silence. No birds stirred, nothing moved at all. Two more explosions boomed into the stillness followed by two more, and yet more.
Reaching into the car’s back seat Annie began hauling out the shopping she’d picked up in town, more Christmas decorations, Secret Santa gifts and regular supplies for the Byre’s well-equipped kitchen.
‘There you are,’ a voice called out from the double front doors he was coming through. ‘Let me give you a hand with that.’
Happily passing the load to her brother-in-law, Henry, a slightly shorter and darker-haired version of his older brother, a director of the business as well as a landowner in his own right, she said, ‘David’s still out on the stands?’
‘They’ve just moved down to the tower,’ Henry replied, referring to Hanley Combe’s new accessory that soared forty metres out of the nearby woods for experienced guns to warm up before high pheasant-shooting days out on the moor. David, being the shooting school’s owner and senior coach, usually took these sessions himself, although Henry was perfectly qualified to do so, as were a handful of freelancers they called on at peak times.
‘The phone’s been ringing non-stop,’ Henry told her, leading the way inside. She couldn’t help noticing that his uneven gait seemed slightly more awkward today. That happened at times, usually when he was tired, or the weather was damp; he’d often joshed that having one leg longer than the other made it so much easier for him to get around the steeply rugged terrain of sporting estates, but the car accident that had caused it was very far from being a joke. For almost a fortnight after it had happened they’d lived in daily terror of losing him. David had never left his side, while all the time bracing himself to break the worst of all news to him that his wife, Laura, and four-year-old son, Ryan, hadn’t survived the crash.
Although it had happened almost twelve years ago, no one ever made the mistake of thinking Henry was completely over it, not even his second wife, Julia, who’d grown up with the Crayce brothers right here on the moor. Annie was fairly certain Henry had been Julia’s first love, but there again it could have been David, given how close they all were; in truth even Julia didn’t seem to know for certain. It was well known, however, that Julia had been David and Henry’s first love. Although that could also be said for Chrissie, or Sukey, or Rosa, or any one of the gang – aka the Moor-auders – they’d known for most of their lives. All anyone could agree on was that they’d been a pretty wild bunch back in their teens, away at boarding schools during the week, back on the moor for the weekends, until eventually they’d gone their separate ways to uni. It was there that Henry had met Laura, and after that he hadn’t often returned to his roots, until the tragedy had forced it. His parents and David and Annie had been there for him throughout his recovery, as had the rest of their friends, many of whom, like David and Annie, had by now made their own way back to Exmoor with various partners and offspring. However, it was Julia, with her easy-going nature and endearing eccentricities, whom Henry had really come to lean on during that time, for her own difficult marriage had been over by then, leaving her much freer than the others to commit to his recovery. And so, it had been a surprise to no one and a joy to all when, four years after the accident, she and Henry had announced they were getting married.
‘… so the Americans from Oklahoma want to book again for next year,’ Henry was telling Annie as he limped across the smart, cavernous barn with its high-beamed ceilings and rug-covered flagstone floor. The uneven, whitewashed walls were covered in antlers – most collected from around the moor, although some had been gifted by Gloucestershire’s Badminton Estate following a cull. At one end of the room was a vast Inglenook fireplace surrounded by leather sofas and strategically placed drinks tables, and at the opposite end, which they were heading for now, was Annie’s welcome desk, large enough to seat four with their laptops and other paraphernalia spread out around them, which it frequently did.
‘I’ve dealt with everything I could,’ Henry continued as he turned into the rotunda to drop off his cargo, ‘and I’ve made notes so you can see what’s what. Oh, the delivery of Hull cartridges arrived, already in the storeroom, and the new clay trap should be here tomorrow.’
‘Great,’ she replied, knowing David would be pleased to hear about the trap and stepping over a pile of boxes to get through to the kitchen she dumped the groceries on top of the fridge and flexed her hands. ‘Is Julia still with the reporter from The Field?’ she called out.
‘As far as I know,’ came the reply.
Pleased to be receiving the coverage, since the last time Hanley Court had featured in the magazine, nine years ago, it had virtually doubled their business, Annie pictured her sprightly sister-in-law chattering away eagerly as she toured the reporter around the best parts of the hundred-acre estate. Only clays were shot here at the school, either for recreation, or to practise for game shoots that were hosted by David and Henry in local as well other highly regarded sporting estates around the country.
‘How much longer is David going to be, any idea?’ she asked, coming back into the main hall. ‘Who’s he with again?’
‘A bunch of merchant bankers from London,’ Henry reminded her, ‘and no, that’s not rhyming slang. They all seem quite experienced, so it should be a good shoot tomorrow. A couple have their own loaders driving down tonight, so that won’t please the local lads too much, but we’ll still need half a dozen, plus the regular beaters and picker-uppers.’ It was common practice for locals to support the shoots by loading guns, beating the woods and covers to flush out the pheasants and working their dogs to fetch the shot game.
‘Is that arranged?’ Annie asked.
With a grin he said, ‘Are you seriously doubting me?’
‘Never,’ she laughed. ‘And I know their accommodation is sorted, because I booked it myself.’
‘OK, so I’m off to relieve himself,’ Henry declared, referring to his brother, and looping a set of ear-defenders around his neck. He picked up the unloaded Miroku shotgun he’d left broken on the centre table, grabbed a bag of cartridges and headed out the back door. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, glancing back, ‘Jules just texted to say the reporter’s about to leave.’
Annie unravelled her scarf and dug around for her mobile phone as it rang.
‘Hey Mum.’
‘Hey Max,’ she responded, adopting the same chirpy tone as her fourteen-year-old son who was growing so fast he’d soon be as tall as his father, and, according to him, twice as handsome. ‘Where are you?’
‘Same question to you. I’ve been trying to get hold of someone. Dad’s not answering. I guess he’s out on a shoot?’
‘No, he’s here, but he’s on the stands with clients at the moment. Anything I can do?’
‘Sure, I just wanted to ask if it’s OK to come home tomorrow instead of today? Perry Green’s invited me and a couple of others to stay over at his place tonight. A kind of pre-Christmas thing.’
‘I’m wounded,’ she declared, biting into an apple and opening up her emails. ‘I thought you couldn’t wait to see us.’
‘I can’t, but you know what they say about anticipation. Sometimes it’s the best part.’
That boy was getting too cute for his own good. ‘OK, just make sure you have everything before you leave school. We don’t want to be driving back there over Christmas to pick up all the presents you have for us.’
‘Not going to happen, because I haven’t bought any yet. Grandma’s promised to take me shopping next week. I’ll get the train, OK? You won’t have to worry about coming to get me then. Well, you’ll have to come into town, obvs, but it’s not as far as here. Is Sienna back yet?’
‘She got the train too. I met her about an hour ago, but all I’ve brought home is her luggage. She stayed in town with her friends, so I guess someone will have to go and pick her up later.’
‘Cool. I’ll give her a call. See you, love you.’
‘See you, love you.’
Though mildly disappointed that the two of them were not coming straight home from their boarding schools today, she could live with it since they were around most weekends and more often than not a bunch of teenagers came with them. Sienna, the sixteen-year-old, had plenty of friends, although she was all blissed out at the moment by Grant Peterson who’d apparently invited her to join him and his family in the Caribbean for Christmas and New Year. Annie was sure Sienna had felt tempted, but so far it seemed that even the irresistible Robert Pattinson look-alike hadn’t been able to tempt her away from Hanley Combe for the festivities. That was good – Annie really wasn’t looking forward to the time when they wouldn’t all be together for Christmas, although she was realistic enough to know it would happen one day.
As she sat down at her desk the doors to the woods and shooting areas opened and in wandered her sister-in-law, looking, as she often did in her jodhpurs, long boots and hacking jacket, as if she’d just dismounted from one of her beloved steeds. In fact, she often had, for her and Henry’s home – the original Crayce family farm that was now a popular livery stables and refuge for ageing donkeys – was less than three miles away across open moor. It was a journey Julia often made on horseback, although today she’d presumably come by car, as there had been so sign of a trusty mount outside when Annie had pulled up.