ROZ WATKINS is the author of the DI Meg Dalton crime series, which is set in the Peak District where Roz lives with her partner and a menagerie of demanding animals.

Her first book, The Devil’s Dice, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award, and has been optioned for TV.

Roz originally studied engineering and natural sciences at Cambridge University, before becoming a patent attorney. She was a partner in a firm of patent attorneys in Derby, but this has absolutely nothing to do with there being a dead one in her first novel.

In her spare time, Roz likes to walk in the Peak District, scouting out murder locations.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Roz Watkins 2018

Roz Watkins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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.

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008214623

Version: 2018-04-23

For my parents.

Thank you for your support, encouragement, and advice on how to kill people.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Extract

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The man clambered into the cave on shaking legs, sucked in a lungful of stale air and stared wide-eyed into the blackness. When the dark mellowed, he shuffled inside and sank onto the seat that a long-dead troglodyte had hewn into the cave wall. The familiar coldness seeped through his trousers and into his flesh. The discomfort pleased him.

He fished out his torch and stood it upright, so the light beamed up and bounced onto the glistening floor. Bats hung above him, their tiny feet grasping at the rock, furry bodies tucked into cavities.

The solitude was soothing. No judgemental glances from colleagues. No clients clamouring for his attention like swarms of angry insects. No wife shooting arrows of disappointment his way.

He placed the book by his side. Eased the cake from his pocket, pulled open the crinkly plastic wrapper and took the soft weight in his hand. He hesitated; then brought it to his lips, bit firmly and chewed fast. Another two bites and it was gone.

The air went thick. His throat tightened. He leant back against the cave wall. There wasn’t enough oxygen. He gasped. Clamped his eyes shut. An image of his long-dead mother slid into his head. Slumped in her wheelchair, head lolling to one side. And an earlier one – way back when his memories flitted like fish in shining water – smiling down at him and walking on her legs like a normal parent.

He rose. Stumbled to the back of the cave, grasped at the ferns on the wall, fell against them. His stomach clenched and his upper body folded forwards. He was retching, choking.

More snapshots in his head. Kate’s face on their honeymoon. Beaming in the light of a foreign island, laughing and raising a glass to sun-chapped lips. He gasped. Air wouldn’t come. Drowning. That time in Cornwall, still a child. Beach huts against the bright blue sky and then the waves throwing him down. Dragging him along the sea bed, his terror bitter and astonishing.

He crashed to the cave floor. An image of a childhood cat, orange-furred and ferocious, but loved so much. The cat dead on the lane. Now a girl hanging deep in the Labyrinth, the noose straight and still. Please, not his girl.

A terrible burning, like maggots burrowing into his cheeks. He clawed at his face, nails hacking into skin, gouging into eyes.

Blackness coming in from above and below. The image of his mother again, in bed, both emaciated and swollen. Suffocating. Pleading.

Chapter 1

I accelerated up the lane, tyres skidding in the mud, and prayed to the gods of murder investigations. Please bestow upon me the competence to act like a proper detective and not screw up in my new job.

The gods were silent, but my boss’s voice boomed from the hands-free phone. ‘Meg, did you get the details? Body in a cave… almond smell… philosophy book…’

I squinted at the phone, as if that would help. Richard’s monologue style of conversation meant he hadn’t noticed the bad signal. Had he really said ‘philosophy’? Our usual deaths were chaotic and drunken, with absolutely no philosophy involved.

Another snatch of Richard’s voice. ‘Scratches on his face…’ Then the line went dead.

I swerved to avoid a rock and dragged my attention back to the road, which climbed between fields sprinkled with disgruntled-looking sheep and edged with crumbling dry-stone walls. A mist of evidence-destroying drizzle hung in the air. As the farmland on the left merged into woods, I saw a couple of police vehicles in a bleak parking area, and the sat nav announced that I’d reached my destination.

I pulled in and took a moment to compose myself. Of course it was terrible that a man was dead, but if he’d had to die, at least he’d done it in an intriguing way, and when I happened to be nearby. I was an Inspector now. I could handle it. Mission ‘Reinvent Self in Derbyshire’ was on track. I took a fortifying breath, climbed from the car, and set off along a corridor marked with blue and white tape.

The path sloped up towards the base of an abandoned quarry. I trudged through the fallen leaves, the mud emphasising my limp and sucking at my feet with an intensity that felt personal. I needed to rethink my fitness regime, which mainly consisted of reading articles in New Scientist about the benefits of exercise. It wasn’t cutting it in my chubby mid-thirties.

Through the trees I saw the face of a cliff, tinted pink by the evening light. An area around its base was enclosed by ribbons of tape stretched between rocks and shade-stunted oaks, and a police tent squatted just outside. I walked over and encased my genetic matter in a protective body suit, face mask, overshoes and two pairs of gloves.

The duty sergeant was a bearded man who looked slightly too large for his uniform.

‘Sergeant Pearson,’ he said. ‘Ben. No evidence trampled. All under control.’

I didn’t know him, but I recognised the name. According to the (admittedly unreliable) Station grapevine, he was extensively tattooed. Nothing was visible but apparently his torso was completely covered and was the subject of much fascination, which just demonstrated the poor standard of gossip in the Derbyshire force.

‘DI Meg Dalton,’ I said, and looked around the taped area. There was no-one who was obviously dead.

Ben pointed to the cliff. ‘In the cave house.’

A narrow set of steps, smooth and concave through years of use, crawled sideways up the face of the cliff. At the top, about fifteen feet up, a dark, person-sized archway led into the rock.

‘There’s a house up there, burrowed into the rock? With a corpse in it?’

‘Yep,’ Ben said.

‘That’s a bit creepy.’

Ben squeezed his eyebrows together in a quick frown. ‘Oh. Have you heard… ?’ He glanced up at the black entrance to the cave.

‘Heard what?’

‘Sorry. I thought you said something else. Never mind. It’s not important.’

I sighed. ‘Okay, so what about our iffy body?’

‘Pathologist said he died within the last few hours. And SOCO have been up.’ He nodded towards a white-swathed man peering at what looked like a pile of vomit at the base of the cliff.

‘Who’s been sick?’

‘The dog. Seems to have eaten something nasty.’

‘The dog?’

‘That’s how they found the body. Bloke lost his dog. Searched everywhere for it. Eventually heard noises up there.’ Ben thumbed at the gap in the rock. ‘Climbed up, saw the body, found the dog licking something.’

‘I hope it wasn’t tucking into the corpse?’

‘It was a Labrador, so I don’t suppose it would have turned it down. But I think it was the plastic wrapper from a cake or something. Looks like it might have been poisoned.’

‘Is the dog okay? Where’s the owner? Has someone taken a statement from him?’

‘It’s all here for you. They’ve gone to the vet, but the dog seems fine. Only ate a few crumbs, he thought.’

‘Interesting location for a body,’ I said. ‘I’ve always been kind of fascinated by cave houses.’

Ben inched towards the cliff and touched the rock. ‘This area’s riddled with caves. Not many of them were ever lived in, of course.’ He hesitated as if wondering whether to say more, given that a corpse was waiting for my attention.

‘I’d better press on,’ I said, although I wasn’t looking forward to getting my bad foot up the stone steps. Besides, there was something unsettling about the black mouth of the cave. ‘What were you going to say earlier? When I said it was creepy?’

Ben laughed, but it didn’t go to his eyes. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I grew up round here. There was a rumour. Nothing important.’

‘What rumour?’

‘Just silliness. It’s supposed to be haunted.’

I laughed too, just in case he thought I cared. ‘Well, I don’t suppose our man was killed by a ghost.’ I imagined pale creatures emerging from the deep and prodding the corpse with long fingers. I forced them from my mind. ‘I was told the dead man smells of almonds. Cyanide almonds?’

‘Yep, slightly. You only really get the almondy smell on a corpse when you open up the stomach.’ Ben’s stance changed to lecture-giving – legs wide apart and chest thrust forward. I hoped he wasn’t going to come over all patronising on me. I wasn’t even blonde any more – I’d dyed my hair a more intelligent shade of brown, matched to my mum’s for authenticity. But I was stuck with being small and having a sympathy-inducing limp.

‘Yes. Thanks. I know,’ I said, a little sharply. ‘So, do we have a name?’

Ben glanced at his notes. ‘Peter Hugo Hamilton.’

‘And he was dead when he was found?’

‘That’s right. Although I’ve seen deader.’

‘Can you be just a little bit dead?’

Ben folded his arms. ‘If there are no maggots, you’re not that dead.’

‘Okay, I’ll have a look.’ I edged towards the steps and started to climb. A few steps up, I felt a twinge in my ankle. I paused and glanced down. Ben held his arms out awkwardly as if he wanted to lever my bottom upwards, a prospect I didn’t relish. I kept going, climbing steadily until I could just peer into the cave. A faint shaft of light hit the back wall but the rest of it was in darkness. I waited for my eyes to adjust, then climbed on up and heaved myself in.

A musty smell caught in my throat. The cave was cool and silent, its roof low and claustrophobic. It was the size of a small room, although its walls blended into the darkness so there could have been tunnels leading deeper into the rock. A tiny window and the slim door cast a muted light which didn’t reach its edges. I pulled out my torch and swooped it around. I had an irrational feeling that something was going to leap out of the darkness, or that the corpse was going to lunge at me. I scraped my hair from my clammy face and told myself to calm the hell down and do my job.

The dead man lay at the back of the cave, his body stretched out straight and stiff. One hand clutched his stomach and the other grasped his throat. I shone my torch at his face. Scratches ran down his cheeks and trickles of blood had seeped from them. The blood gleamed bright, cherry red in the torch light.

A trail of vomit ran from the side of the man’s mouth onto the cave floor.

I crouched and looked at his fingers. They were smeared red. Poor man seemed to have scratched at his own face. Under the nails were flecks of green, as if he’d clawed his way through foliage.

Resting near one of the man’s bent arms was a book – The Discourses of Epictetus.

A plastic wrapper lay on the stone floor. I could just read the label. Susie’s Cakes. Dark chocolate and almond. I lowered myself onto my hands and knees and smelt the wrapper, wishing I hadn’t given up Pilates. I couldn’t smell anything, but I didn’t know if I was one of the lucky few who could smell cyanide.

I stood again and shone my torch at the wall of the cave behind the man’s body. Water seeped from a tiny crack in the cave roof, and in the places where light from the door and window hit the wall, ferns had grown. Some were crushed where it looked as if the man had fallen against them, and others had been pulled away from the cave wall.

I felt a wave of horror. This was a real person, not just a corpse in an interesting investigation. He was only about my age. I thought about his years lost, how he’d never grow old, how his loved ones would wake up tomorrow with their lives all collapsed like a sinkhole in a suburban garden.

I breathed out slowly through my mouth, like I’d been taught, then stepped closer and pointed my torch at the area where the ferns had been flattened. Was that a mark on the stone? I gently pulled at more ferns with my gloved hands, trying to reveal what was underneath. It was a carving, clearly decades old, with lichen growing over the indentations in the rock like on a Victorian gravestone. It must have been completely covered until the dying man grasped at the ferns.

Something pale popped into my peripheral vision. I spun round and saw a SOCO climbing into the cave house. His voice cut the silence. ‘We found a wallet with his name and photo driving licence. And a note. Handwritten. It said, P middle name.’ He showed me a crumpled Post-it, encased in a plastic evidence bag.

‘Has the back wall been photographed, where he pulled at the ferns?’

The man nodded.

‘Okay, let’s see what’s under there.’ I pointed at the marks I’d seen in the rock.

Together we tugged at the ferns, carefully peeling them off the cave wall.

The SOCO took a step back. ‘Ugh. What’s that?’

We pulled away more foliage and the full carving came into view. My chest tightened and it felt hard to draw the cold cave air into my lungs. It was an image of The Grim Reaper – hooded, with a grinning skull and skeletal body, its scythe held high above its head. The image was simply drawn with just a few lines cut into the rock, but it seemed all the more sinister for that. It stood over the dead man as if it had attacked him.

‘Hold on a sec,’ the SOCO said. ‘There’s some writing under the image. Is it a date?’ He gently tore away more ferns.

I crouched and directed my torch at the lettering in the rock. A prickling crept up my spine to the base of my neck. ‘Not a date,’ I said.

The SOCO leant closer to the rock, and then froze. ‘How can that be? That carving must be a good hundred years old – the writing the same – and covered up for years before we cut the foliage back.’ His voice was loud in the still air, but I heard the tremor in it. ‘I don’t understand… The dead man’s initials?’

I didn’t understand either. I stepped away from the cave wall and wiped my face with my green-stained gloves.

Carved into the stone below the Grim Reaper image were the words, ‘Coming for PHH’.

Chapter 2

I emerged and climbed down from the cave, backwards, trying not to slip on the worn stone. Relieved to be outside, I jumped awkwardly down the final few steps and enjoyed the smell of damp trees and the feel of solid ground and daylight.

Ben sidled up. ‘What do you think?’

What did I think? I had no idea. ‘The dead man’s initials are cut into the cave wall,’ I blurted. ‘But they look like they’ve been there for decades.’

Ben jerked his head back and wiped his forehead. ‘No. It can’t be.’

I felt a shiver of unease. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s…’ Ben took a step sideways. ‘I don’t like to talk about it.’

‘Well, if it might be relevant to our body, you’d better talk about it.’

‘You know the Labyrinth? On the other side of the valley.’

I shook my head. ‘What about it?’

Ben opened his mouth and paused. ‘Okay. It’s a vast cave system below the Devil’s Dice, you know, the rock formation. It’s not a good place. The tunnels go for miles and miles. Some of it’s underwater. And there’s a noose in a cavern deep inside. Teenagers go there to commit suicide.’

I felt a flush of adrenaline, hot then cold. Why was he telling me this? I didn’t want to know.

Ben continued. ‘The rumour is – if you can’t find the noose, it’s your sign you should live.’

I stared at the light filtering through the trees, feeling the familiar thickness in my throat. I couldn’t let it get to me. I was over all that now. Reinvented. I firmed up my stomach. ‘And the relevance of this?’

‘So, the point is, if you can find the noose, they say you find your initials have already been cut into the cave wall behind it.’

‘Cut into the wall by someone?’

‘They’re said to appear on their own.’

‘Have you been there?’

Ben hesitated, then licked his lips and nodded. ‘We tried to save a girl. We were too late. I’m a caver – I should have got to her quicker.’ He looked clammy and kind of avocado coloured. He pressed his hands against his stomach. ‘I could never go back there. Never.’

I tried to stop myself picturing the noose hanging still and straight, deep inside a cavern. My hands clenched into fists, nails digging into palms. ‘And the initials?’

‘Well, there were initials engraved into the cave wall. Lots of them. They looked old. We didn’t check for our girl’s.’

‘So it’s not a recent thing?’

‘It started in the times of the witch trials, apparently. If a girl was suspected of being a witch, she’d be led into the Labyrinth. If they could find the noose, then her initials would already be on the wall behind, and she’d be forced to hang herself. If they couldn’t find the noose, she was innocent, but she had to find her own way out.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. So then in Victorian times, there was a spate of girls going in to commit suicide.’

‘And this one more recently?’

He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Yes. It was about ten years ago.’

I imagined the cave wall, covered with the initials of dead people. ‘If people kept hanging themselves, why didn’t someone get rid of the damn noose?’

‘They put bars across the cave entrance after… that girl. But you can still get in from above, if you know how.’

*

Two hours later, fully prepped and preened, DCI Richard Atkins and I walked into the incident room back at the Station. The large quantity of cops crammed into a small space had given the room the fugginess of damp trainers and wet dogs, but the electricity of a suspicious death zapped around underneath.

A board at one end was covered with photographs of the dead man and his surroundings. I stepped forward to take a closer look while Richard bustled to and fro pinning names and assignments onto a grey board opposite. Low tech, but at least it wouldn’t crash.

DS Craig Cooper was peering at the photos and invading my personal space. Craig had worked his way up in the traditional manner and seemed to be the worst kind of old-fashioned police bloke – casually homophobic, with a fifty-inch TV, a subscription to Sky Sports, and a plastic-headed wife. I suspected he felt entitled to the job I’d been given, and I didn’t know how to handle him. I folded my arms into a defensive position.

‘Okay!’ Richard strode to the front of the room. He’d removed his jacket, and dark marks stained his armpits. His face glistened. I slid into what I judged was an appropriate second-in-command spot.

‘We have a male in his thirties, Peter Hamilton, found today in a cave house fifteen foot up a cliff face in Eldercliffe quarry.’ Richard looked at his notes. ‘Time of death around the middle of the day. We’re waiting on lab results and the post mortem but early suggestions are he was killed by cyanide poisoning.’

A rumble of voices filled the room. They liked the cyanide, with its hints of Agatha Christie.

‘In a cave house?’ DS Jai Sanghera squinted his surprise. ‘Fifteen foot up a cliff face?’

Jai was a lapsed, un-turbaned and de-bearded Sikh. He’d always appeared mild-mannered, but was apparently prone to occasional explosive incidents which no one had ever witnessed but everyone seemed to know about.

‘Yes, Jai,’ Richard said testily. ‘It’s a cave, and people used to live in it. You have to climb steps to get there. We’re pretty sure he went up alive.’

‘Unless the murderer was the reigning Mr Universe,’ Craig said.

‘Yes, yes, or the victim was a zombie, climbing glassy-eyed and un-dead up to the cave house.’ Richard was in a creative mood.

‘Did it to himself then.’ Craig’s tone was scathing. He clearly had little time for the suicidal.

‘We don’t know. There were some odd things about it. Meg’ll fill you in.’

I moved sideways into the hot spot; steeled myself. An unnerving smirk crept across Craig’s fleshy face.

I told them about the probably poisoned cake, the carving on the cave wall, and the strange fact of the man’s initials appearing under it.

‘Was it home-made or shop-bought cake?’ Jai jiggled his leg up and down as if he was keen to sprint off and get started.

‘Bloody hell, Jai, have you been on the speed again?’ Craig said.

‘We don’t know for sure.’ I ignored Craig. I’d noticed that was what Richard did – his years of experience hadn’t given him a more advanced strategy. ‘The wrapper had a paper label stuck to it saying “Susie’s Cakes” and it had a “best before” date months away.’

‘Interesting,’ Jai said, also ignoring Craig. ‘What’s the history of the cave house?’

‘That bit of cliff hasn’t been quarried since pre-Victorian times. They think the cave house was created in the mid 1800s and people lived in it until about fifty years ago.’

Jai said, ‘I heard it was supposed to be haunted.’

Craig snorted.

‘It could be relevant,’ I said. ‘If it affects people’s behaviour.’

‘It’s why no one goes in there,’ Jai said. ‘No kids or tramps or anything.’

Craig made ridiculous X-Files noises. But Jai was right about no one going in the cave house. There’d been none of the usual beer cans, fag-butts or tortured teenage poetry.

Richard elbowed me out of the way. ‘Thank you, Jai, but I don’t think this man was killed by a ghost. Anyway, back to the cake.’ He swung his gaze around the room like Derren Brown about to reveal something astonishing. ‘We’ve already tried to trace “Susie’s Cakes” and there seems to be no such company. Unless it’s incredibly obscure.’

‘Won’t be obscure for long if they put cyanide in their cakes,’ Jai said. Gentle snickering passed through the room. Richard shot Jai a disapproving look.

‘Okay.’ Jai pursed his lips as if to emphasise that he was now being serious. ‘So someone put cyanide in the cake and made it look like shop-bought so he’d think it was okay and eat it? So, we’re talking murder, not suicide?’

‘Bit hasty there, Jai.’ Craig folded his chunky arms over his fledgling beer gut. ‘It could be suicide but he made it look like murder so his dependants still get his life insurance.’

‘If he gave a shit about his family, he wouldn’t have killed himself,’ Jai said. I took an audible breath before I could stop myself and Jai glanced at me, his face turning purple. I smiled weakly at him and mouthed reassurances. I didn’t want people walking on eggshells around me.

‘Yes,’ I said, trying to take control again. ‘It could be murder or suicide or deliberate contamination of cakes.’

‘If it’s not suicide, it’s probably the wife.’ Richard had recently been through a difficult divorce.

‘Yes, I’m keeping an open mind too.’ I couldn’t let that go, but statistically speaking he was probably right.

‘Who found him?’ Jai was bouncing his leg again, probably just to annoy Craig now.

‘A Labrador. It was after the cake.’

‘Is it okay?’

‘Didn’t think your lot liked dogs,’ Craig said.

I smiled at Jai. ‘He’s fine. We think he only ate—’

‘The dog’s fine, Jai.’ Richard rocked on his heels. ‘It’s admirable that you’re all so concerned about our loyal canine friends, but we do have a dead man as well as a slightly queasy dog.’

‘So he died in a haunted cave,’ Jai said. ‘And there was a hundredyear-old carving on the cave wall that seemed to predict his death?’

I gave a slow, deliberate nod.

Jai had stopped fidgeting. ‘Do we need to call an exorcist?’

*

We ended the briefing and everyone dispersed to do their stuff. I turned for another look at the photographs, and sensed Craig standing behind me, too close again.

‘I hope you’re up to this,’ he said.

I spun round. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

I felt the blush come over me, hot and sharp like needles.

‘Are you alright?’ Craig said. ‘You’re sweating like a paedo in a Santa suit.’

‘Yes, thank you, Craig, I’m perfectly fine.’

He took a step closer. His breath smelt of mint and stale garlic. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

Chapter 3

I retreated to my work-station and sat staring at my screen. Sweat prickled my back. I’d come to Derbyshire to get away from this. To make a new start, wipe the slate clean, and various other clichés. I couldn’t let an idiot like Craig get to me. I sat up straighter in my chair and forced my shoulders back. I’d just have to show them I was up to the job. I had a good brain. I was a good detective.

My little pep talk sounded unconvincing even to me – like those motivational posters you see on the walls of ailing companies, or the pseudo-profound positive quotes on your most depressed friends’ Facebook pages. But I forced myself out of my chair and went to find Jai. He and I were visiting the victim’s wife that evening.

‘What a total arsehole Craig is,’ he said. ‘He’d be having a go at me if he wasn’t so scared of the PC brigade.’

I felt my shoulders soften. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘And if he hadn’t heard I was a psycho.’

I laughed. ‘Maybe I need to get more violent.’

Jai smiled, but then his face creased into concern. ‘Watch him though. He can be a nasty bastard. Just… I don’t know. Be careful.’

*

By the time Jai and I left the Station, the clouds had lifted and a streaky sunset lit the sky as we drove through the rock-strewn hills towards Eldercliffe. Mum lived on its outskirts, so I knew the town a little. Its jumbled, narrow streets hunkered down in the base of the valley, as if defending themselves from the advancing quarries.

We headed away from the main town, up a lane so steep it made my ears pop. On the right was a farm and on the left was the rim of the quarry, the ground falling away behind it into nothingness. Just one house sat on the edge like an eagle’s nest – a cottage made from the same stone as the quarry, as if it had grown out of the rock.

‘That’s his house,’ Jai said. ‘Crazy place.’

‘Yeah, not somewhere to live if you suffer from suicidal thoughts.’ I immediately wished I hadn’t said that.

‘Wife’s a doctor,’ Jai said. ‘Kate Webster. Has she been told?’

I nodded. At least we didn’t have to do that. I pictured Hamilton’s face, lacerated by his own nails. How would you cope with knowing your husband’s last minutes were spent trying to claw his skin off?

We walked up to the cottage, and the door was flung open to reveal a small woman in jogging trousers. Her body was thin but her face was puffy as if it had been lightly inflated.

I showed her my card.

‘Oh, right. I’m Beth. Peter’s sister.’ She gestured us into a long hallway which smelt of beeswax and vanilla. The kind of place where they employed a cleaner.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

Beth gave a quick nod. ‘Kate’s in the living room. Go through. I’ll make some tea.’

We walked into a room dominated by a vast inglenook fireplace and a picture window overlooking the shocking drop into the quarry. The curtains were open to the darkening sky. Two squidgy sofas sat at right angles, one facing the fireplace and the other with its back to the window. There was space to walk around, unlike in my living room where you had to move around in a crab-like shuffle to avoid gouging your leg on the corner of something.

A slender woman stood by the window with her back to us.

‘Dr Webster,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

She turned and gave us a cautious look. Her eyes were red but she looked delicate and composed in her grief, like a Victorian consumptive.

‘It must be a mistake.’ She took a couple of steps towards us. ‘Please tell me you’ve come because it’s a mistake.’

‘I’m sorry. We’ll need to formally identify him, but he had his driving licence on him. And he matched your description exactly.’

A tear dripped onto her T-shirt. ‘What the hell happened to him?’

‘Are you able to answer a few questions?’ I asked. Jai and I walked across the oak-boarded floor and sat on the sofa facing the fire. I hoped she’d follow our social cue. She didn’t.

‘How did he die?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t know yet. When did you last see him?’

She started pacing up and down by the window, shoulders hunched and arms crossed. ‘I saw him this morning. He was working from home which he always does on Mondays. It was all totally normal, for God’s sake. They say he was found in a cave or something?’

‘Yes, it’s about fifteen feet up, cut into the rock.’

‘What the hell was he doing in there? He’s supposed to have a quick walk to clear his head, not sit around for hours in a cave.’

‘We don’t know. Did you know about the place?’

‘I knew there was supposed to be a cave. The locals say it’s haunted. They’re a bit like that round here. They say our house… Oh, never mind.’

Beth returned with a tray of tea and digestive biscuits. She lowered it onto a rather splendid coffee table made from old painted floorboards, and sat down. Kate stepped across the room to sit next to her.

Jai took a mug of tea, got stuck into the biscuits, and made notes.

‘What were you saying about this house?’ I asked.

‘Oh, just that everyone said it was bad luck,’ Kate said. ‘That we shouldn’t come here. But we took no notice. How can a house bring bad luck? But now I’m thinking—’

‘Come on, Kate.’ Beth’s tone was sharp. ‘It’s terrible about Peter, but it’s not the house’s fault.’

‘But what about those other people? Before we moved here?’ Kate turned to us. ‘No one would buy the house. It had been empty for ages.’

Jai paused with his biscuit halfway to his mouth. ‘What happened to the other people?’

‘The man fell off the cliff outside, or threw himself off, no one knew. And then his daughter… Oh, it was horrible.’

‘It’s not relevant,’ Beth snapped. ‘We need to find who killed Peter.’

‘She was only fifteen,’ Kate said. ‘She went off to this horrendous underground cave system on the other side of the valley and killed herself. Everyone said the house was cursed, but we thought we were so clever, we were above all that. We got it cheap.’

‘I remember that,’ Jai said. ‘Section tried to get her out, but—’

‘It’s not relevant,’ Beth said. ‘Kate’s just upset. There’s nothing wrong with the house.’

I remembered Ben Pearson telling me about the girl he’d failed to rescue. ‘Was she the girl who hanged herself in the Labyrinth?’

‘Yes. It was awful. And the Victorian who originally built the house threw himself off the cliff.’ Kate sat forward on the sofa and spoke fast. ‘And other people have died here. Even Peter’s grandmother said there’s a curse. Something to do with witches. She said the spirits of the witches can push you off the cliff out there, so you shouldn’t get too close to the edge. Not that Beth takes any notice when she’s tending that horrendous rock garden.’

‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ Beth snapped.

Kate turned to me. ‘Why do people who live here keep dying?’

Beth folded her arms. ‘My grandmother’s in the early stages of dementia. I can’t believe we’re talking about a ludicrous old wives’ tale when my brother’s just been killed!’

I made a note to talk to the grandmother. My ears always pricked when relatives laid into one another. They’d sometimes forget we were even there. Beth obviously hadn’t forgotten us though. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘This is all irrelevant. What do you need to know?’

I smiled at them both. ‘Do either of you know why he’d have gone in the cave house?’

‘He always liked caves,’ Beth said. ‘But I didn’t realise—’

‘Hang on.’ Kate stared right into my eyes. ‘Was someone else there with him? Is that why he went to the cave house?’

I shook my head. ‘We don’t think so.’

She looked down at her tea. ‘Right.’

‘We’ll need to take his phone,’ I said. ‘And his laptop. And we’ll have to get people to go through the house.’

Kate sighed. ‘Yeah, do whatever.’ She hesitated. ‘Just so you know, there’s, well, emails on his laptop from me saying I’ve had enough.’ She shook her hair off her face. ‘But it wasn’t serious. Normal marital stuff, you know. He’s been difficult recently. But I didn’t kill him.’ She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘If I had, I’d have deleted the emails, wouldn’t I?’

I mentally noted her assumption that she could access her husband’s emails. ‘Where were you today?’

‘What? I was at work all day. You don’t seriously think I might have done it?’

‘Just a formality,’ I said. ‘What did Peter do for a living?’

‘He was a patent attorney. You know, with inventions.’ She leaned forward over the coffee table, took a biscuit and looked at it with horror before dropping it back on the plate. I’d observed with the bereaved, the thin ones never ate the biscuits.

‘It looks like he’d had some chocolate cake. It was in a plastic wrapper saying “Susie’s Cakes” – is that something you bought?’

‘No, never heard of it. But Peter loves cake. He’d never turn it down if someone offered. Was anyone else seen in the woods?’

‘We’re checking that.’

‘I can’t imagine him buying it for himself. There are no shops on the way down there.’ She tapped her fingers against her knee.

There was a buzzy energy about Kate Webster. Not the usual flatness of someone who’d lost a relative. I noticed my toes were curled in my shoes as if I was clutching the floor with them. ‘You say he’d been difficult recently?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Yes. I mean, he’d been grumpy with me. And drinking too much. I thought he was hiding something.’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Oh God, it’s going to turn out he was having an affair, isn’t it? I can’t bear it.’ She rose, walked again to the picture window, and stood with her back to us.

I kept my voice gentle. ‘I’m sorry to ask but I don’t suppose, if he was having an affair, you’d have any idea who it might possibly be with?’

She turned and stood silhouetted against the evening sunset, leaning against the window in a way which made me nervous. ‘Christ almighty,’ she said. ‘Of all the questions you hope you’ll never be asked. Who could your husband be having an affair with, in case they…’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Look, he didn’t socialise on his own outside work and they’re mainly men at his office. There was a client he mentioned a couple of times, Lisa something, but he didn’t even like her. No, he wasn’t interested in her.’ She rubbed her nose. ‘Oh God, he would give that impression, wouldn’t he? I can’t believe this is happening. How can this be happening to me?’

Beth stood and walked to the window, gently touched Kate’s arm, and led her back to the sofa. ‘Peter wasn’t having an affair,’ she said.

I took a biscuit. It seemed to relax people when you ate their biscuits. At least that was my story. ‘Can I ask,’ I said, ‘how was his sleeping? And eating?’

Kate crossed and uncrossed her legs. ‘He was always eating. Loved his food. But actually he’d lost a bit of weight recently. And I suppose he had been a bit more tossy and turny over the last year, always dragging the duvet off me. He’s had a few nightmares. I put it down to work stress.’

I turned to Beth. ‘Did you notice anything?’

She shook her head. ‘He seemed okay to me.’

‘Was he on anti-depressants?’

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘He hated drugs. Ironic, given his job.’ A tiny smile twitched at the edges of her lips. ‘He thought they were a sign of feeble-mindedness.’

‘When did you get worried about his drinking?’

‘I wasn’t exactly worried. But, well, it started about a year ago and it’s got worse recently.’ Her lower lip shook. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘I’d get home and he’d be in front of the TV with a beer. He’d claim he’d only had one but sometimes he’d stagger when he got up. And he was hiding the bottles. And other times he smelt like he’d been smoking. Not tobacco either.’

‘Can you imagine him ever wanting to harm himself?’

‘What? No, no.’ She shook her head like a dog shaking off water. ‘No. He wouldn’t do that to me.’

Of course, relatives always said that. But some of us knew better.

I stood. Something caught my eye in the wood-burner. It was an expensive cast-iron thing with a glass front. The fire wasn’t lit, but inside were several half-burnt logs and a few pieces of paper, visible through the sooty glass. They were almost completely singed black but the end of one piece of paper was still intact and had handwriting on it.

‘What are those papers?’ I asked.

Kate jumped up and lunged towards the fireplace. ‘Oh, nothing!’ She grabbed a poker and reached for the door of the wood-burner.

‘Leave it!’ I shouted, as if she was a dog heading for a picnic.

Beth flashed angry eyes at Kate, who froze in a poker-wielding stance. She turned her head slowly towards me, as if wondering whether I had the right to do this. Presumably, she decided I did; she put the poker down on the hearth and stepped back. ‘Sorry.’ She retreated to the sofa. ‘It’s nothing. Just some old papers I was using as scrap.’

I exchanged a look with Jai. ‘Okay, I’d like our people to see them.’

*

I left Jai to finish the interview, and asked to see Peter Hamilton’s study. According to Kate, he’d usually worked there before he went on his walk, and it certainly looked like he’d been planning to return – no suicidal tidying was in evidence. The room had a slightly musty but not unpleasant smell that reminded me of the libraries of my youth. An antique-style desk was strewn with papers covered with handwritten notes, much crossed out. The messiest page was headed ‘Claims’, and chemical formulae spidered their way across it.

Bookcases lined the walls, crammed with unappealing books about biochemistry and patent law, many covered with a layer of dust. But the bottom shelf caught my eye – a collection of photograph albums. I crouched and gently pulled out one of the albums. It was filled with holiday snaps. Kate Webster and Peter Hamilton, very much alive. All bright smiles, white villages and sunny skies. The other albums were similar – happy holidays, any discord well hidden. I eased out the album that looked oldest. The pages were stiff and the plastic sheets that were supposed to keep the photographs in place had yellowed and lost their stickiness. I turned the pages slowly, holding them at their edges.

The early part of the album included wedding photos – a man and a woman, presumably Hamilton’s parents. A later photograph showed the same couple, with two boys and a younger girl who must have been Beth. The woman now sat flaccidly in a wheelchair. On her knee was a cat of such a vivid orange it stole the light and made everything else look grey. All three children stared adoringly at it.

I flipped through pages of later childhood photographs – scorched lawns and yellow Cornish beaches; no mother in these. Then the university years – punting on the river and lounging in Cambridge college gardens, surrounded by glistening turrets and pinnacles. Most of those photographs featured a rather beautiful girl. Her huge, dark eyes gazed out of the photographs right at me. She was the central point, like the sun to the other people’s planets. She stared at the camera and Peter Hamilton stared at her. Even after I looked away, her face was in my head.

I stood and looked again at the papers on the desk. I lifted the one headed ‘Claims’. Something was written on the back. I turned it gently. One word covered the paper, written maybe one hundred times, in different-sized lettering and at different angles and with different pens.

Cursed.

Chapter 4

We pulled away from Kate Webster’s house. My mind was swirling with witches and curses and poison, and flashes of Peter Hamilton’s blood-stained face. I glanced back towards the cottage, perched resolutely on the cliff with the quarry falling away all around it. An outside light shone on a little rock garden which sprawled over the stone to the side of the house. I pictured the drop onto the rocks far below, and wondered if the cottage would ever surrender itself to the quarry, as if on an eroding coastline.

‘Did you find anything else useful?’ I asked Jai.

‘Not really. Apparently he goes for a walk every Monday when he works from home, but not always in the quarry. He was a greedy sod who’d take cake from anyone, but no one would have wanted to harm him.’

‘Clearly.’

‘All that stuff about a curse on the house was a bit weird. You wouldn’t think a doctor would fall for that.’

‘Or a patent attorney. It’s odd though, if people who live there keep dying. Did you ask if anyone had died recently?’

‘Yeah. No. Last one was that girl ten years ago.’

‘Ben Pearson told me about her yesterday. The duty sergeant. That Labyrinth is supposed to have the initials of the people who died cut into the rock.’

Jai glanced at me. ‘What, like in our cave?’

‘Yes.’ I steered the car down the steep hill towards the town centre, praying we wouldn’t meet anyone coming up. ‘So, it’s pretty strange that the girl came from the same house, don’t you think?’

‘Hmm, yes. And there was something else his wife said.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Okay, so when I asked if either of them knew about the carving in the cave, the wife started saying something that I didn’t quite catch, and the sister shut her up. Then the wife made out she hadn’t said anything. And you know how sometimes your brain pieces together later what someone said – well, I’m thinking she said something about the basement.’

*

I dropped Jai at his house in Matlock and took the A6 towards Belper. It was late and dark and the drizzle had morphed into a diffuse fog that distorted the headlights of the oncoming cars. Either my eyes were getting worse or driving at night had always been an act of faith. I squinted into the gloom and wished I was in bed.

Back home, I let myself into my tiny, rented cottage. The heating was on and the hallway felt cosy for once, the long, rust-coloured rug warming the stone-flagged floor and books sitting in chaotic piles on the shelves. A phone balancing on one of the piles flashed a tiny red light. At what point in my life had answer-phone messages transformed from exciting to depressing? I kicked off my shoes and pressed the button. Mum’s voice. The usual stuff. How was I? How was work? Was I eating? (Seriously, had she not seen this body?) There was something about her voice – high-pitched but breathy, as if she was trying not to be overheard. She’d seemed different recently, as if she was worried about something, but I was damned if I could get her to tell me what it was. Probably just the strain of looking after Gran. A wave of guilt and helplessness washed over me. I probably wouldn’t find time to visit her tomorrow. I’d be up to my neck in the investigation.

I glanced into the living room, then walked to the kitchen with the message still playing. Hamlet burst through the cat flap in a haze of black and white fur. I leaned and scooped him into my arms, somewhat against his wishes, and buried my face in his soft belly. He purred grudgingly and wriggled out of my grasp. I gave him food even though he’d have been stuffing his fat face at my indulgent neighbour’s house all evening, grabbed a glass of water, and sat at the kitchen table with my laptop.

I eventually found it on a website about Derbyshire myths and legends – the story of the Labyrinth, the witches and the initials on the wall, just as Ben Pearson had said. It was classed ‘not verified’. The cave house was also mentioned. It was said to be haunted by a woman as thin as a skeleton, who wailed for her lost lover. I snapped my laptop shut, and rubbed my arms to get rid of the goose pimples. I didn’t believe in ghosts.

I climbed the steep stairs, Hamlet forming a trip-hazard at my ankles, and tried to resist the compulsion to check the upstairs rooms. I had to stop doing this. I closed my eyes and leant against the wall of my tiny landing. I pictured the noose deep inside the Labyrinth. Straight and empty. That other image flickered at the edge of my consciousness. A young girl hanging. I squeezed my eyes tight shut and forced my fists into my temples. She faded away.

I poked my head into the chaotic study and the overflowing spare room, glancing up at the ceilings, as always.

Chapter 5

‘It’ll be that one.’ Jai nodded at a Georgian building which had a smug look and stood out from the shabbier buildings on the street, as if lit from below. ‘You can just tell it’s stuffed full of fat-cat lawyers.’

He was right. The weak morning sun shone on a brass plaque which announced, Carstairs, Hamilton and Swift – Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys. I shoved open the heavy door, and we walked into a surprisingly modern reception.

The receptionist sported the kind of permed hair that surely went out in the eighties, and a badge saying Wendy. I silently applauded Carstairs and Co for employing someone so far from the archetypal Barbie-esque legal receptionist. Her eyes widened at the sight of our ID, and she said, ‘Ooh yes, you’re here to interview the suspects. Let me show you to the conference room.’

She led us towards an oak panelled door on our right. As she reached for the handle, a woman burst through the front door from the road, swerved, and knocked me in the stomach with a pointed elbow. ‘I need to talk to someone about the cases Peter was handling.’ She had one of those sharp, rodenty faces common in the girls who’d bullied me at school.

Wendy turned to her with a tight-lipped smile and said, ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

I bashed the woman with the oak door as we entered the conference room, and added her to the list of suspects.

The room wouldn’t have looked out of place in a minor stately home. Hefty books lined the walls and stern, lumpy-nosed old men gazed disapprovingly from gold-framed portraits.

‘What did I tell you?’ Jai settled himself on an upright chair facing a Georgian window overlooking the road outside.

‘Yeah, you’d be quivering about the charges if you were a client.’ I sat round the corner of the table from Jai, so we weren’t lined up in battle formation, and removed my coat and my special, crazy scarf. It was far too long but my sister, Carrie, had knitted it for me, vowing to keep knitting until she could knit no more, so I wore it even though I had to coil it in a bizarre double loop to avoid it dragging on the floor.

Wendy returned with coffee and biscuits.

‘Do you have a moment?’ I said.

She put her tray on the table and puffed up like a courting bird. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘We were just wondering what Peter Hamilton was like to work with?’

‘Oh, he was very nice. Such a shame. He was the nicest of the three partners. The other two can be terribly difficult. Although poor Peter had been somewhat moody recently.’

I caught Jai’s eye. You take over, and charm some dirt out of her. He stepped in beautifully, with a sympathetic smile and an intimate tone. ‘You must have to put up with a lot. So Peter Hamilton had been a bit moody?’

‘Only in the last six months or so. Snapping at me about things.’

‘Have you any idea why?’

‘Not really. They all get very stressed. And of course the other two partners—’

‘That’s Felix Carstairs and Edward Swift?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, they were concerned about Peter.’

‘What makes you say they were concerned?’ Jai was good. Wendy rested one leg and leant against the door frame as if she was chatting to a friend.

‘They’ve been having meetings, just the two of them. Between you and me, I think they were trying to get rid of him.’ She took a tiny in-breath as if realising the implications of what she’d said. ‘Oh, no, not like that. I mean, trying to get him to leave the firm. I think Peter was behind with his work. Apparently Edward was snooping through his files when he was on holiday. Edward’s a funny one though. A little bit on the spectrum, if you know what I mean.’

‘The autistic spectrum?’

‘A teensy bit.’ She held fingers up to give a visual representation of teensy, and lowered her voice. ‘And make sure you ask Felix about StairGate.’

Jai leant forward to encourage her, and spoke quietly. ‘What was that?’

‘Oh, it’s just what we called it. Like Watergate, you know, but it all happened on the stairs out there. Felix was shouting at Peter and then it was terrible – Peter fell.’ She took a step towards us and whispered. ‘We think Felix must have pushed him.’

‘Really?’ Jai’s tone was conspiratorial.

‘Oh yes, Felix isn’t the easiest man. He ran over a cat in the car park out the back and he didn’t seem upset at all.’

‘That’s not good.’ Jai sat back.

I put Felix to the front of my list of suspects, ahead of pointy-elbowed-woman. ‘And who’s that in Reception?’

Wendy looked like she’d eaten vinegar. ‘The one that’s having a tantrum because her patent attorney had the cheek to die on her? That’s Lisa Bell. I think she’s part of the problem. I heard one of the secretaries saying Peter had been undercharging her, and the other partners weren’t happy.’

So that was the client Hamilton’s wife had mentioned. Lisa something. Could he have been having an affair with her? It would take a brave man to tackle that woman.

An assertive knock rattled the door, and a man strode in like he owned the place, which he possibly did.

Wendy jumped. ‘Oh, I’d best get back.’

The man held out his hand. ‘Felix Carstairs.’ He sat opposite Jai, round the corner of the table from me, and spread himself out, stealing space in an alpha-male kind of way. I could practically see Jai’s hackles rising, but there was nothing overtly offensive about the man. He had a symmetrical face and the sleek plumpness of a well-groomed show pony.

‘Terrible news about poor Peter.’ He spoke with the slow diction of those brought up to think everyone listened to them. Whereas I’d learnt to spit it out quick before someone interrupted.

‘Yes, terrible,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if we ask you a few questions about him?’

‘Of course not. Happy to help.’ Felix smiled, his confidence cocooning him like a magic cloak. He was the kind of person everyone had assumed I would meet at Cambridge, but in reality I’d been drawn to a group of fellow comprehensive school students, as if by an invisible magnet.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Friday. Oh, and I was at work all day Monday. Wendy in reception can verify that.’

Interesting that he was getting his alibi in before I’d even asked. Jai wrote in his notebook and eyed Felix with deep suspicion.

‘Okay, thanks,’ I said. ‘Had you noticed anything unusual about him in the last few weeks?’

‘I wondered if he was a little depressed. It was suicide, I assume?’

I took a bite of a caramel chocolate digestive and settled back in my chair. ‘Were you close?’

‘We were up at Cambridge together. But, you know what men are like – we don’t talk about anything important. I suppose I should have found out more about his life.’ He sounded almost bored. ‘Is there anything else? I have a pile of work to get through.’

‘Peter’s cases? I gather he was behind?’

‘Oh, not especially. We’re just all extremely busy. Taking on any extra work tends to put us under pressure.’

‘So, were you worried about Peter’s performance?’

He looked me in the eye. ‘Not from our point of view. We were a little concerned he was feeling stressed.’

Felix could have been awarded a prize for Most Innocent-Looking Witness Ever. At least according to traditional thinking. No fidgeting, leg-tapping or shifty eyes. It was too good a performance.

‘So, was his behaviour affecting the business?’

‘Oh no. It was his welfare we were concerned about.’ Felix knotted his eyebrows together. ‘We didn’t like to think he was struggling.’

‘But we heard you argued on the stairs and Peter fell?’

Felix stiffened and lost the Mother Teresa look. ‘Who told you that?’ His tone was cold. ‘We hadn’t argued. Peter’s been clumsy recently. I helped him when he fell.’ He seemed to get control of himself and pointedly relaxed back into his chair, but if he was a dog, you would not approach. Jai scribbled something in his notes.

‘What about his charging?’ I said. ‘Were you concerned about that?’

‘Not really. He’d charged out fewer hours recently but it’s normal to have ups and downs.’ He had himself back inside the cocoon, firmly zipped up.

‘So, was there anything else you noticed?’

‘Not that I can think of.’

I fought a wave of annoyance. He was giving us nothing.

‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm him?’

‘No, of course not. But surely it was suicide?’

*

‘I remembered something else,’ Wendy said. We were in Reception arranging a meeting with Edward Swift, the teensy bit autistic other partner, who was working from home. ‘It’s probably not relevant, but a man came here one lunchtime last week asking for Peter. Rather an odd man.’

‘Odd in what way?’ I said.

‘He was wearing a straw boater hat which was very inappropriate, and he had on a floppy coat like tramps wear and shoes that looked too big. He looked like a tramp in fact. And he definitely smelt like a tramp.’

‘And he wasn’t a client?’

She smiled. ‘No. I mean we do get some clients who look like tramps, but he wasn’t one of them. He said his name was Sebastian. I remembered because of Brideshead Revisited. I loved that on the television. Anyway, Peter came down and hurried him out. I heard him say he shouldn’t have come here.’

‘What did you think they were up to?’

‘I really had no idea. He seemed a funny sort of person for Peter to be spending time with. And Peter was angry. He was trying to hide it but I could tell by the colour of his face.’

Chapter 6

‘I bet he’s a shit if you get on the wrong side of him.’

I’d been right. Jai was not a fan of Felix Carstairs. I pulled out of the car park and set off towards Edward Swift’s house. He lived in a much resented new development a few miles south of Eldercliffe.

‘Murderous type of shit?’ I said. ‘Or just your common-or-garden one?’

‘Hard to tell. But if he did murder you, I reckon he’d do it neatly and competently, with no excessive emotion involved.’

‘What, you mean like poisoning in a cave, for example?’

‘That kind of thing. Although with colleagues like Felix Carstairs and clients like that woman in reception, maybe the poor bastard did top himself after all.’

We arrived at Edward Swift’s house – a mock Georgian hunk of a building, squatting at the end of a curved driveway, in a gated complex of similar houses like something from Desperate Housewives.

‘I’ll lead on this one,’ I said. ‘I’m used to strange, slightly autistic types.’

Jai laughed. ‘I’m glad your Oxbridge education wasn’t wasted.’

We pulled up in the expansive parking area and headed for the pretentious, columned entrance. The door opened and a hefty, well-groomed woman took a step towards us. She had the look of someone scaring off raccoons. When she saw our ID, her face softened but it looked fake-soft, like quick-setting concrete.

‘DI Meg Dalton and DS Jai Sanghera,’ I said. ‘Here to see Edward Swift.’

Her cheek twitched. ‘Oh yes. He won’t like being disturbed. He’s doing an urgent draft.’ She had an American accent with a southern twang.

‘We know. Are you his wife?’

‘Yes. Grace Swift.’ She stood stiffly as if wondering whether to let us into the house. Then she relaxed. ‘Sorry, come in, come in. So sad about Peter. What a terrible thing to happen. Edward’s in his office. I’m just with the children in the living room. Actually, I know Alex would love to meet you, if you have a moment?’

‘Alex?’

‘Our son. We home-school him. And he’s decided he wants to be a detective when he grows up.’

‘Right.’ Him and half the other kids in the land. ‘We’ll need to talk to your husband first, then if we’ve got time, we’ll have a chat with Alex.’ I could feel unenthusiastic vibes emanating from Jai, but I thought it was always best to keep wives on side – they often knew more about their husbands’ lives than the husbands themselves did. Besides, Jai was the kid-expert. He had two of his own.

We stepped into a hallway the approximate size of my house. A child of about ten bounced into view. He had spectacularly orange hair and the luminous skin that so often went with that look. ‘Mum! I’ve finished my calculus. Can we do—’ He stopped abruptly and stared at us as if we were biological specimens.

Jai spoke first. ‘Alright, mate?’

The child gave him an uncertain look.

‘Alex, these people are detectives,’ Grace said. ‘They’ve agreed to have a little chat with you if they have time, after they’ve spoken to Dad.’

The child had a bird-like fragility. If he had the misfortune of being good at maths as well as ginger, he’d be the main prey-animal in the playground. Maybe home-schooling made sense. ‘I’m going to be on next year’s Child Genius!’ he said.

I winced as if I’d been caught out. The programme had been a guilty pleasure for me, watching with wine in hand, booing at the most horrible parents. The children were pitted against one another like fighting cocks, trying to win the title of Britain’s cleverest child.

‘Oh,’ I said weakly. ‘Make sure you find time to play outside with your friends as well.’

A flash of annoyance crossed Grace’s face before it reverted to the placid mumsy look. ‘This way,’ she said.

We followed her into a vast kitchen complete with granite worktops, slate floor and the aroma of fresh bread. It was the kind of kitchen you see in those awful, aspirational homes magazines at the dentist, the ones designed to make you dissatisfied with your perfectly adequate house – if indeed you have an adequate house, which I didn’t.

Grace installed us at the table and asked if we wanted coffee. I nodded and she popped a sparkling burgundy capsule into a sleek, black machine.

‘I know they’re an ecological disaster, but…’ She looked round and shrugged. I shrugged back – the shrug that defined the whole of Western civilisation.

She presented us with coffee, disappeared from the room, and reappeared a few moments later. ‘He’s outside staring at his fish. Would you like to go out or shall I bring him in?’

Jai and I exchanged a look. ‘Staring at fish?’ I said. ‘I thought he had urgent work to do.’

‘It’s based on the optimum efficiency of the human mind. He works for a set time, takes a short break, walks, works, stares at his fish. He has a timetable mapped out so he operates at peak performance. He’s a wonderfully diligent and organised man.’

‘Wow. Okay.’

‘Here he is.’

A man stepped through an open patio door from a bright garden and approached the kitchen table, notepad and pen in hand, as if he’d come to interview us. He had a startled look, with prominent raised eyebrows above pale blue eyes, and light blond hair with just a hint of his son’s ginger. ‘Can we be quick?’ he said. ‘I have some urgent drafting to do.’

Grace slipped out of the kitchen.

‘So we gather,’ I said. ‘And we have a possible murder to investigate. So let’s press on, shall we?’

He pulled out a wooden chair and sat facing us. He steepled his fingers in a show of confidence but couldn’t seem to pull it off, so resorted to picking up his pen and making as if to write notes on my performance. ‘If I don’t get this draft done by the end of—’

‘When did you last see Peter?’

He glanced at Jai and then gave me a huffy look. ‘On Friday at work.’

‘And did you notice anything unusual?’

‘No, but I only said hello in the corridor. He looked fine.’ He tapped his pen against the table.

‘Did you and Peter get along well?’

‘Yes, well enough. We went into business together.’

‘But that was five years ago. What about recently? I understand Peter had changed recently.’

Edward cleared his throat. ‘He seemed to have become a little careless, yes.’

‘And what were the implications of that?’

‘It could be very serious in our profession.’

With some witnesses, you could set them going and they’d be off like the Duracell bunny, revealing every tiny detail of the victim’s usually tedious and irrelevant life. The problem was shutting them up, but at least you had something to work with. This was clearly not going to be the case with Edward.

‘Why is it so serious?’

‘Patent work is very deadline-driven. In most branches of the law, if you miss a deadline, you can extend it, no one’s harmed. But we have certain deadlines where if we miss them, that’s it. An invention potentially worth millions isn’t protected any more. And if the client’s disclosed the invention, you can’t ever get valid protection.’

‘Had Peter missed one of these deadlines?’

‘Look I can’t really say much. It’s all confidential. I don’t see what this has to do with his death.’

‘Why? What do you think is relevant to his death?’

‘I really have no idea.’ He wouldn’t catch my eye.

‘So how do you know this isn’t? And don’t you care?’

Edward put his pen down and then picked it up and started the annoying tapping again. ‘Yes, of course I do. I am sorry about Peter but he had been a pain in the neck recently. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.’

‘So, had he missed an important deadline?’

Edward sighed. ‘He may have done.’

‘Where were you yesterday?’

‘I was in work all day. I didn’t even go out at lunchtime.’

‘Why do you think Peter got careless?’

‘I don’t know. I wondered if he was drinking. Not in the daytime but in the evening, and then feeling under the weather in the daytime.’

‘Why were you going through his files when he was on holiday?’

Edward blushed and the pen froze mid-tap. ‘Oh, that.’

‘Yes, that.’

‘I was checking he was on top of his work. Which he wasn’t. Or his partnership duties.’

‘What partnership duties?’

‘Look, can we continue this another day? It’s bad enough having to take on half Peter’s clients without losing more time.’

‘Tell me what partnership duties he’d neglected.’

‘He hadn’t renewed our professional indemnity insurance, which was pretty serious given the state of his work. We trusted each other to do things. You have to in a small firm – you can’t be checking up on each other all the time or you’d never get your work done.’

‘Was that serious? Not renewing the insurance? I imagine it was.’

Edward gave a humourless laugh. ‘You could say so. We’re still a traditional partnership, which means we have unlimited liability. We could be personally bankrupted by one of his mistakes.’

‘Was that what you and Felix Carstairs were discussing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard you had discussions, just the two of you.’

Edward put the damned pen down and looked straight at me, but didn’t quite meet my gaze. ‘We were concerned about Peter’s performance, yes, and this indemnity insurance issue was very alarming.’

‘Did you consider asking Peter to leave?’

‘It’s not that simple. We’d have had to find a lot of money.’

‘Why would you have had to find a lot of money to get him to leave?’ I leaned forward in my chair.

‘We’d have had to buy his share of the business – worth several hundred thousand. And we’d probably have had to pay him a year’s salary, too.’

‘And do you have to buy his share in the business from his beneficiaries now?’

‘Yes. But we have insurance to cover that. He didn’t let that one lapse.’

‘You’ve checked that already?’

‘Of course.’

‘So, it’s actually quite convenient that he’s dead?’

Edward examined his hand, the one without the pen. ‘Yes, actually, it is. It’s easier to pick up his clients between us than to manage his mistakes.’ He wiped his large forehead. ‘Look, they’ve probably told you I’m not good with people and I’m also not a good liar. It is convenient that he’s dead but I didn’t kill him.’

I sat back in my chair. ‘Okay, we’ll leave it at that for today. We may need to talk to you again.’

Edward grabbed his notepad and bolted from the room.

I rocked my chair recklessly onto two legs, and turned to Jai. ‘I wonder how many levels of bluff a man that intelligent could handle.’

‘Enough to fool your average cop,’ he said.

Grace reappeared and offered us another drink, which we declined.

‘Do you have time to talk to Alex today?’ she said. ‘It’s fine if not. I know you’re very busy.’

I grimaced. Did some mental calculations. ‘Okay. I’ll have a word with Alex while my colleague asks you a few questions.’

‘Oh, thank you so much. He’ll be thrilled. Do tell him if he’s being too precocious. We’re really trying to avoid that. It’s just… he didn’t get on well at school. I so want him to have a happy childhood.’ She hesitated. ‘And to be brought up with Jesus in his heart.’ She beckoned Jai from the room and he followed her, glancing back and giving me a theatrical, Don’t-make-me-go-with-the-Nutter look.

I ignored Jai, and sat back and closed my eyes against all the weirdness.

I heard the thud of approaching children. It sounded like at least four. I opened my eyes unwillingly.

Alex appeared in a cloud of ginger. He bounded over and sat on the chair opposite me, his elbows pushed forward onto the table. ‘I’m going to be a detective when I grow up.’

A girl of about fifteen followed, clutching a mug of tea, and sat next to me, legs crossed. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. ‘Lucky you, getting to talk to Alex. He’ll probably ask you to do his stupid logic problem.’

‘This is Rosie,’ Alex said. ‘She comes for extra maths because she’s not that good at it.’

I gave Rosie a sympathetic look.

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘But at least I’m not a spoilt brat.’

Alex’s eyes darted back and forth between Rosie and me. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Mum told me I should think about other people’s feelings. Sorry, Rosie, it’s not your fault you’re no good at maths.’

Rosie laughed. ‘Thanks, Alex. I feel so much better now.’ She looked at me. ‘He doesn’t actually mean to be rude. It’s a disability.’

I smiled at Rosie and turned to Alex. ‘Did you want to ask me about being a detective?’ I was keen to move the conversation away from poor Rosie’s ability or otherwise in maths.

‘Yes,’ Alex said. ‘Do you use deductive logic?’

I felt a frisson of panic. I was used to questions about dead bodies and Tasers. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Maybe more often inductive.’ I wasn’t sure I could fully remember the difference. ‘Why do you want to be a detective?’

‘I want to see corpses and use my intelligence to solve crimes.’

I suppressed a laugh. ‘That’s what we do. Plus a bit of paperwork.’

‘I think I’d be very good,’ Alex said. ‘Rosie and I are arguing about a logic problem. Would you give us your opinion?’

‘Er… I could do with getting going really.’

‘Please,’ Alex said. ‘It won’t take very long.’

I sighed. ‘Okay. Two minutes.’

‘Hurray!’ He whipped three playing cards from his pocket and handed them to me – two kings and an ace. ‘Shuffle them,’ he ordered. ‘Please.’

I complied and passed them back to him. He dealt the cards face down on the table, giving me one card and himself two. ‘Leave your card face down,’ he said, picking up his two cards.

Rosie folded her arms. ‘No one cares but you, Alex.’ But she stayed at the table.

Alex scrutinised his cards and laid one of them on the table, face up. A king. The other card he laid face down next to it. So, there were two cards face down – mine and his – and one card face up, which was a king. ‘What’s the probability of you having an ace?’ he said.

‘It’s got to be fifty percent,’ Rosie said. ‘Two cards face down: one ace, one king.’ She lifted her mug and took a sip.

My mind was occupied with the ridiculousness of being sucked into playing a clearly contentious card game with a suspect’s child. But I still saw it immediately, with that odd brain of mine, sometimes so sharp it cut itself. I glanced at Rosie. I really didn’t want to make her wrong and Alex right. But I couldn’t bring myself to get it wrong either, even in front of children. What did that say about me?

I sighed. ‘It’s one in three.’

Alex threw his arms in the air. ‘Hurray! See! Detectives have good brains.’

Rosie dropped her mug. It crashed onto the floor, flinging tea across the room in an arc and sending shards of porcelain skating across the tiles. She jumped up. ‘Oh God! I’m always dropping things. I hate it!’

Grace appeared in a flurry of mops and reassurances, Jai following behind, raising eyebrows at the carnage. The children slunk off. Grace cleared up the mess while Jai and I packed up our stuff.

‘That didn’t work out so well,’ I said. ‘He didn’t find out much about the job.’

‘Thank you for talking to him anyway.’ She put the mop back in a tall cupboard and smiled at me. ‘It was good of you. I know you must be terribly busy. And sorry about the tea. Rosie can be a little clumsy.’

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘She seemed like a nice girl.’

‘Yes, she is. I’m helping her with maths. It’s a shame – she used to be excellent but she’s struggling now. She’s Felix’s daughter. You know, Edward’s other partner.’

I nodded. The cat-killing, stair-pushing partner who was so determined Peter had committed suicide. ‘Do you teach Alex every day?’

‘No, we share it between a group of parents. It means I can work too. I have a small business. Edward’s happy with the arrangement provided I don’t neglect the household duties.’

Jai shot me a look.

I cleared my throat. ‘Oh, what do you do?’

‘A small jewellers in Eldercliffe. I enjoy it and it’s a little pin money for me. I’m calling in there now actually. I need to catch up on some repairs.’

I’d visited a jeweller’s in Eldercliffe only last week to get a replacement for a brooch Mum had lost. Swift’s Jeweller’s. Of course.

‘I think you’re making a brooch for my mum,’ I said.

Her face lit up. ‘Oh, the one we’ve made from an insurance photo? What a small world! It’s ready actually, we were going to call you.’

‘Great. I’ll call in for it when I’m in Eldercliffe later.’ I stood and placed my mug on the gleaming countertop. ‘What kind of fish are they?’

‘Koi. Do you want to see them? Some of them are quite beautiful.’

I nodded, unable to resist interesting animals. Jai gave me a despairing look, but followed us through the glass doors onto a weed-free sandstone patio overlooking a raised pond about the size of Grace’s kitchen. I peered into the still water. Koi flitted to and fro – mainly silver and orange but some multi-coloured, and one with what looked like an image of a spine running down its back. Their lithe bodies cruised under the surface, clearly visible between bobbing water lilies.

‘They’re stunning,’ I said.

‘Yes, some of God’s most lovely creatures.’

Chapter 7

Outside, it smelt like fresh-cut grass, and the front lawns looked recently manicured, their edges trimmed and compliant. I turned the car carefully, aware that metaphorical net curtains were twitching, and we left the gated complex to set off for the Station.

‘My God,’ I said. ‘Are the 1950s on the phone wanting their good housewife back?’

Jai snorted. ‘But surely every wife asks her husband’s permission before going out to work?’

‘Unbelievable. I’m still in shock. Is she on Valium or something? The effort of keeping my mouth shut almost killed me.’

‘He was weird too,’ Jai said. ‘Seemed quite chuffed Hamilton had done the decent thing and pegged it.’

‘Did you find out anything more from her?’

‘She confirmed he was home all evening on Sunday watching TV. And as far as she was aware, he was at work all day yesterday, but obviously she doesn’t know that. And she comes from Alabama originally.’

I pulled onto a muddy lane, noticing sheets flapping in the garden of a cottage on the corner, and an old wheelbarrow in the driveway stacked with logs. It was reassuringly messy after the clinical pristineness of Edward and Grace’s estate.

‘Alabama? Maybe that explains the Stepford Wife thing?’

‘She was definitely a bit Stepford. Do you think she could be programmed to kill?’

I laughed. ‘That feature’ll be in the next software update. She’d probably lie to cover for him though. All part of being a good little wifey.’

‘And the comment about the child genius having Jesus in his heart.’

‘I know. Sounds painful. Do you think they can sort that with an operation?’ I glanced at Jai, checking if I was offending him. Not clear-cut either way.

‘And you managed to upset the kid so much he chucked a mug on the floor?’ he said.

‘Something like that.’ I pictured Alex’s smug face when I’d confirmed his view of the card game, and poor Rosie’s disappointment. Why couldn’t I have just said I didn’t know? ‘Did Grace tell you anything else?’

‘She met Edward when he was travelling round the US after he graduated. His car broke down when he was passing through her town, and she rescued him, and they were soul mates.’

‘How romantic. Do you think Edward could have done it?’

‘He’s coldly logical,’ Jai said. ‘I could kind of imagine him disposing of the inconvenient.’

‘And he’d do it intelligently, with no unnecessary blood and gore. Just like the other partner. Could they have done it together?’

In Eldercliffe, sandbags were piled high in an alleyway between cottages. I knew during stormy weather, water ran in streams down this road and sometimes into the living rooms of the houses. But I hadn’t heard a storm forecast.

‘Both partners have got a financial motive, if Hamilton had been screwing up at work,’ Jai said. ‘Sounds like something’s changed in the last year with him.’

‘An affair?’

‘Sounds like more than an affair to me.’

‘I don’t know. If he was sleeping with that client who was expressing her grief by complaining loudly about her patent cases and elbowing me in the ribs, it could be quite traumatic.’

‘Love works in mysterious ways.’ Jai wiped at a smear on the passenger window. ‘Or maybe he finished it with her and she bumped him off.’

*

Back at the Station, I was intercepted by Fiona Redfern, the new DC – all young and keen and untarnished by cynicism. She bounced after me as I limped into my room.

‘We found some drugs in his office,’ she said.

I sat heavily in my chair. ‘What? Drugs drugs?’

I waved vaguely at another chair but Fiona stayed standing. ‘Medical drugs. We haven’t identified them yet. Two different types – one looks like it might be an anti-depressant and we’ve no idea about the other one.’

‘Are you sure they weren’t to do with his work? He files patent applications for pharmaceuticals.’

‘They were in a locked drawer with personal belongings and one of the other partners said it wouldn’t be normal for him to have samples of drugs he’s working on. So I don’t think they’re for work. I’m going to talk to his GP’

‘Okay, good. Anything else?’

‘I asked my granny about that cave – you know, the rumours. I know it’s not really haunted, but if people think it is…’

‘It’s okay. I agree. What did she say?’

‘She said the ghost was a healer who lived there in Victorian times. She starved herself to death after her lover died. You can still see her in the cave when the wind gets up in the quarry…’ She licked her lips. ‘Sorry, I know that’s silly. There was nothing recent or relevant.’

‘Okay. Thanks for checking it out.’

Fiona smiled and seemed to loosen up a bit. It occurred to me that she was nervous of me. I didn’t want that. I liked Fiona. I’d even discovered she and I had been on the same march in London, although we hadn’t known each other then. She obviously shared my feelings about a Chinese ‘festival’ that involved boiling live dogs.

‘Don’t worry about telling me stuff that might be silly,’ I said. ‘I want you to say what you think. In fact, if you’re not making ridiculous suggestions on a regular basis, you’re probably not contributing enough.’

She gave an uneasy laugh. ‘Okay. Right. Thanks. Well, we got the results on those papers from the fire in their house.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘The very top of one piece of paper was legible and it just had one word on it. Tithonus.’

‘What’s that?’

‘An ancient Greek in a myth. He got older and older but could never die.’

*

I spent some time sticking information into the computer and browsing through what others had entered. My thoughts kept drifting to the girl in the Labyrinth. Hanging deep inside a cave where they used to take witches, the initials of dead people cut into the rock behind her. The last thing I needed in my head was an image of a girl hanging from a noose, but could it be relevant? She’d lived in the same house as our victim, and it was a strange coincidence that his initials were also cut into the cave wall behind him.

I hauled myself out of my chair and wandered off to track down Ben Pearson, the reactive sergeant from the day before. I found him at his desk, fighting with an online form. He seemed glad to be disturbed.

‘Yesterday’s victim lived in the same house?’ He touched his beard as if it was a lucky charm. ‘As the girl who committed suicide in the Labyrinth?’

‘Yep. His poor wife thinks the house is cursed.’

Ben swallowed. ‘I did hear a rumour. The girl’s father died at the house, of course.’

‘What exactly happened to the girl?’

‘She went in to the Labyrinth. It…’ He scraped a hand through his receding hair. ‘Sorry. It took us too long to find the noose. It’s way deep inside and we kept taking wrong turns, again and again. It was horrendous. Almost as if the tunnels were moving around while we were in there. But she’d found it all right.’

I tried to keep it business-like, to not picture her. But Ben wasn’t helping.

‘The noose is an old, old chain.’ He shuddered. ‘Hanging from a hook high up on the cave roof. And there’s a big square rock under it, almost the height of a man. The noose hangs down above the edge of the rock. So, you can climb on the rock, reach forward, take the noose and put it round your neck. And then just step forward off the rock.’

‘God. And it’s been like that since they used to hang witches?’

‘I think the chain’s from Victorian times. They’ve been hanging witches in there longer than that.’

‘And this girl? She’d… She’d already done it.’

Ben hesitated. He was very still. ‘Yes. We were too late. Took too long finding her. She was gone.’

I was holding it together. Pretending I was okay. But I couldn’t talk any more about the girl. ‘And this happened after her father died?’

‘Yes. He either fell or committed suicide, off the cliff at the side of that house.’

‘Where there’s a little rock garden?’

‘Yes. He didn’t leave a note, but there was something else. I’m not sure if they decided it was relevant.’

‘What was it?’

‘He left a sketchbook full of drawings of the Grim Reaper.’

Chapter 8

I left Ben and headed back to my desk, my mind feeling tangled and confused, as if I was staring at equations I couldn’t solve. I knew a house couldn’t really be cursed, but what if people believed it was? It could be like Pointing Bones or clusters of suicides or the placebo effect. Belief in the curse could make it true. I remembered reading about a man who’d been diagnosed with cancer, and obediently died, only for the post-mortem to reveal that the diagnosis had been wrong. There was no cancer, and the man was in good health, other than being dead. Your own brain could kill you.

‘What were you talking to Tat for?’

I jumped and looked up to see Craig looming over me.

‘Sorry? Who?’

‘Tat.’

I deliberately misunderstood. I wasn’t going to call the poor man Tat, even if his entire body was covered in them.

‘Ben Pearson,’ Craig explained as if to a small child.

‘He was the duty sergeant.’ Why was I explaining myself to Craig? I turned to my screen.

Craig laughed unpleasantly. ‘Don’t try to get him through any metal detectors. It’s not just tattoos. There’s all sorts going on in there.’

I was wondering how on earth to deal with Craig, when Jai appeared. ‘I don’t think Meg’s as fascinated by Ben’s piercings and tattoos as you clearly are, Craig,’ he said. ‘Have you got some kind of homoerotic fantasy going on?’

Craig swore at Jai and sloped off.

‘You handle him so well,’ I said.

‘I’ve had lots of practice. He’s unpleasant but he’s not that bright, fortunately. Did you find anything out from Ben?’

‘There’s something odd going on at that house. The guy who died ten years ago left a sketchbook full of drawings of the Grim Reaper.’

‘Like the carving on the wall of the cave?’

‘Sounded like it.’

‘And his daughter hanged herself in the Labyrinth where initials of dead people are carved into the wall.’

I nodded. ‘You’ve got to admit, it’s a bit sinister. But there’ll be a rational explanation. I’m going to talk to his brother. He’s a doctor. I don’t suppose he’ll believe in curses and witches.’

*

Mark Hamilton’s farmhouse sat at the end of a short, stony drive, surrounded by barns and abandoned machinery. It was in a craggy region to the west of Eldercliffe, and the Peak District hills were visible in the distance, laced over with pale stone walls.

I parked in a gravel area and climbed out of the car, and a bunch of fluffy chickens marched over and gave me a bit of a talking to. They seemed to have something important on their minds, but they scattered when I made my way to the house.

Close up, the house was run-down but lovely, the old stonework held together with crumbly lime mortar and the windows forming odd reflections with their original warped glass. I was just beginning to feel calmed by its demeanour when a ferocious growling erupted from inside and something crashed against the glass of the door. I jumped back. Was he keeping wolves in the hallway?

The door opened a fraction and a man’s face appeared through the gap. He was holding back waves of dogs like an animal-loving King Canute. Tails wagged and tongues lolled. My breathing slowed. ‘Sorry,’ he shouted over the frenzied barking. ‘They’re a bit excited. Hang on, let me get leads.’ But he didn’t actually move.

‘I like dogs,’ I yelled. ‘Don’t worry, assuming they’re friendly.’ One of my senior colleagues in Manchester had told me: ‘If you admire someone’s dog, you own their ass.’ Setting aside the fake Americanism (watching too much CSI), he’d had a point.

The man let the door open. Christ, that was a lot of dogs. Barking and leaping and hurling droplets of slobber at my face. He rushed out after them, flapping his hands. ‘Sorry! Get down!’

His clothes looked like they’d been recycled out of the laundry bin – a look I wasn’t unfamiliar with – and he hadn’t shaved that day.

‘Mark Hamilton?’ I said.

He gave a quick nod. I folded my arms and ignored the dogs, who quickly went from jumping to wiggling and wagging. I showed Mark my card.

He held out a hand, then pulled it back and examined it. ‘No, don’t shake my hand. Just been preparing dog food.’

I smiled and whipped my hand back. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I know it’s difficult but the sooner we can get onto this—’

‘Yes, I understand. Come in. Sorry about the mess. Peter’s death, it’s thrown me. And sorry the place reeks of dog food. I do it in bulk – cook it, bag it up, freeze it. I have so many, it saves money, but it’s a bit gross.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, although there was a rancid smell in the air.

‘It’s taking my mind off things today,’ Mark said. ‘They made me take the day off but I’m not sure it’s good to be at home with my thoughts.’

We waded through dogs into a farmhouse kitchen. I glanced into a pantry rammed full of industrial-looking junk. There were bits of old pallets, the ends of gutters, wellies with their feet chopped off, mouse-chewed cardboard boxes.

‘I can’t throw anything away,’ Mark said. ‘I think it’s almost pathological.’

In the kitchen, piles of papers and cats sat on all the surfaces and more cats covered an Aga. An elderly dog lay in the corner, draped over the side of his basket like one of Dali’s soft clocks. Unwashed crockery filled the sink and a fly graveyard decorated the windowsill. This wasn’t just one day’s worth of mess. Gran would have said he needed a good woman. She hadn’t realised you could no longer rely on women for unpaid cleaning duties.

‘Sit down,’ Mark said, waving his hand in the direction of a scrubbed pine table. All the chairs were covered in papers or cats, some both. Was I supposed to sit on top of them?

‘Oh, you can move her.’ He pointed at a grey cat. ‘Oh no, not her.’ I snatched my hand back. ‘This one. Here.’

I plonked myself down and allowed the ejected cat to climb onto my knee.

‘I’m sorry. I take on far too many animals. Especially the older ones.’ Mark walked to the sink, ran water over his hands and wiped them on his trousers. He’d obviously read the research about excessive hygiene being bad for you. He collapsed onto one of the chairs, lifting and scooping a cat onto his knee in a practised motion.

The formalities out of the way, I said, ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your brother?’

‘You know, I really can’t. He was so normal. Not involved with any dubious characters. Everyone liked him.’

‘There’s been a suggestion he might have been depressed recently? Or possibly drinking too much?’

Mark looked at the cat on his knee and stroked it gently. ‘Yes, maybe he has been a little down.’

‘Do you know why?’

The cat stood, arched its back, and re-settled on Mark’s knee. He rubbed under its chin. ‘Just pressure of work, I think.’

‘And, well, could there be any possibility he was having an affair?’ I tried to say this sensitively but it was hard not to speak ill of the dead when conducting these kinds of investigations.

‘Peter? I’d be really surprised. I don’t know when he’d have time apart from anything else. He was terribly busy.’

‘And what about the relationship with his wife, Kate? Was it good?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’ Mark’s stroking became jerky and the cat looked up at him with an irritated expression.

‘Don’t you work in the same medical practice as Peter’s wife?’

‘Same building, different practices.’

‘And do you get along?’

‘We get along all right, yes.’ He gave a pointed sigh. ‘Look, I’m going to be totally honest here. Peter and I had an argument. I feel terrible. The last things I said to him weren’t nice. But I didn’t kill him.’

‘What was the argument about?’

Mark looked startled as if he was surprised I’d asked this obvious question. ‘Oh, as I said, he’s been very moody recently. It was just about his behaviour.’

‘What had he done, specifically?’

He scraped his chair away from me. ‘Nothing in particular – just general irritability. Work stress mainly, but he shouldn’t have taken it out on Kate or me.’

I spoke very gently. ‘Is there any possibility he could have taken his own life, do you think?’

Mark’s eyes widened. ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t do that. No, I’d feel terrible if he’d done that. After we’d argued. No, he didn’t kill himself.’

There was something I liked about this man, with his chaotic kitchen and impractical quantities of animals. At that moment, I felt like blurting out my own confession. To a stranger, even though I’d told no-one, not even Mum or my oldest friend, Hannah. But of course I didn’t. I kept it professional.

‘What about the rest of your family?’ I asked. ‘Do they live close?’

‘Beth lives in Ashbourne, and she visits Peter and me quite often. Dad lives near Stanton Moor, with Granny in an annexe. I’m afraid our mother died when we were children.’ I remembered the woman in the wheelchair, in the old photograph in Peter Hamilton’s study.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The cat dug its claws into my knee. I tried to shift it into a better position. ‘Peter’s wife said something about their house. About there being some kind of…’ I hesitated to show him I appreciated the odd nature of my question. ‘Curse. Do you know anything about that?’

Mark froze. It was as if the air around us went colder. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’

‘I realise there isn’t actually a curse,’ I said. ‘But sometimes there’s a reason behind these rumours. And Kate said nobody had wanted to buy their house, and there have been a few deaths there.’

‘It’s utterly ridiculous. You know what people are like. They can’t handle coincidences. You always get clusters of deaths sometimes, it’s the way probability works. It’s like these cancer clusters people get so hysterical about. Just the result of randomness.’

‘So you’ve no idea what the so-called curse is about?’

‘Of course not. It’s nonsense.’

‘And what about Peter? What did he think?’

‘I’m sure he heard the silly rumours, but he was a scientist. He didn’t believe in a curse any more than I do.’

*

The road swept steeply down to Eldercliffe, the jumbled roofs and spidery lanes spreading below me like a toy village. The hills rose beyond the town, and the old limestone quarries shone white, as if a monster had taken bites out of the apple-green hillside. I wound my way into the marketplace, and parked on a slope which made me nervous about my car’s handbrake.

I wanted to check Mark Hamilton’s and Kate Webster’s movements for the day before. The surgery where they worked was on a side street which climbed from the town centre, and I struggled up between stone cottages so tiny they looked like Hobbit houses. I wondered if there was a kind of medieval witch trial system in place, because anyone capable of making it up the hill to the doctor’s clearly wasn’t particularly ill.

The surgery sat like an ugly boil amidst the loveliness of the other buildings – a concrete edifice overlaid with square windows like a messed up Mondrian. The early evening sun emerged briefly from behind the clouds as I arrived, sending a shaft of light onto the front of the building and further emphasising its hideousness. I tutted about planning laws, and walked through automatic doors into a spacious reception area that smelt of bleach and sickness.

Both walls were lined with patients – mainly docile-looking older people, but also a child who was removing toys from a plastic box and spreading them around the waiting room with a furious enthusiasm. His hollow-eyed mother glanced up with a dairy-cow expression before returning to her copy of Hello magazine.

I showed my card to a receptionist labelled Vivian. ‘Could I have a quick word please?’

‘Yes. What’s it about?’ The woman folded freckled arms across her stomach.

‘I just need to check Kate Webster’s and Mark Hamilton’s movements for yesterday please.’

The woman sighed audibly. ‘Oh, of course. Dr Webster’s husband.’ She pushed wire-framed glasses up her nose towards her eyes. ‘They’d be prime suspects, I suppose?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper and glanced at the patients sitting glumly in the waiting room. ‘The police always suspect the wife, don’t they?’

‘So, yesterday?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She twisted to look at a screen to her right, and tapped on a keyboard in a slow, two-fingered style. ‘Well, they were both here all day from about 8am to about 5pm, according to the computer.’

‘And did either of them go out at all during the day?’

‘It doesn’t look like it from the computer.’

‘But do you remember?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t remember. I can’t keep track of what they all do. But the computer should say if they went out. Health and Safety. Unless it’s been tampered with, of course.’

Well, she was a loyal employee. ‘Who could tamper with it?’

‘Well, any of the partners, I’m sure.’

I suspected the lovely Vivian was going to be less helpful than she appeared. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘One of my colleagues will come and take a statement from you.’

I retreated through the waiting room and out of the doors, tripping on a plastic lorry which the child pushed into my path. The glass doors shushed to a close behind me, and I glanced backwards. A young woman had followed me.

‘Are you a detective?’ the woman asked. She had long, blonde hair and a charity-shop-chic look.

I nodded.

‘I heard something last week and thought I should tell you, in case it has a bearing on the investigation.’

‘Okay, go ahead.’

‘I’ve got to be quick. I should be inside.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘I overheard Dr Webster, the dead man’s wife, on the phone. I don’t know who she was talking to, but she sounded panicky. I forgot to knock and she slammed the phone down when I went into her surgery.’

I was a big fan of people who forgot to knock. ‘What did you hear?’

‘I heard her say something about typhus, and then she said we need to be careful, the police have been sniffing around. I remembered because of her saying about the police.’

‘She mentioned “typhus”?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘I know times are hard in Derbyshire, but typhus? Surely not. Wasn’t it spread by lice? In medieval times and World War One trenches?’

‘I don’t know. I just do the filing. I’m going to uni next year though and doing law.’ She gave me an appraising look. ‘I might be a detective actually. I heard something else, too.’ She certainly seemed well suited for a career in detection. ‘Something a bit weird.’

‘Weird?’

She nodded. ‘I heard Vivian, you know, the receptionist, on the phone. She sounded upset. She said Dr Webster was doing the Devil’s work.’

Chapter 9

I walked back down to the marketplace, wrapping Carrie’s scarf tightly round my neck against the bitter wind. My car was still in the car park and hadn’t plunged down the hill into the side of a shop, as per my imaginings. I had my hand on my key when I remembered about Mum’s brooch, ready for me to pick up from Grace Swift’s jewellery shop. It was just over the road, and probably due to shut as it was bang on five o’clock. I dashed over the marketplace as fast as my dodgy ankle could carry me, ran in front of a driver dopily looking for a non-existent parking spot, and burst in.

The shop was empty. I glanced back at the door and saw the sign – Open. Oh dear, the other side must have said Closed. But the door had been unlocked, and I needed Mum’s brooch.

‘Grace!’ I called.

No answer. A distinct clunk came from the door. I jumped. It had sounded like something locking. I gave the door a shove. It didn’t move. I twisted the handle and rattled the door, a feeling of unease squirming inside me. I was locked in.

‘Grace?’ I tried to keep my voice calm.

I could hear a ticking noise, like a loud clock. I was sure there hadn’t been any ticking when I’d first walked in. It had started when the door clunked and locked. I told myself to think calmly. There had to be an innocent explanation.

I looked around the small shop. Glass cabinets were filled with standard fare – watches and so on – but one cabinet caught my eye. It seemed to glow. Inside were pendants and bracelets made from a precious stone I didn’t recognise. It had a kind of magical luminance – colours swirling and mixing and seeming to change before my eyes. A top shelf contained pale, bright pieces and a lower shelf darker pieces, both beautiful.

Where was Grace? The hairs on my arms pricked and I remembered there was a murderer somewhere in this unlikely community.

I noticed a door at the back of the shop, behind the till. I walked round and pushed it. It resisted, then swung open with a creak to reveal a small workshop. I stepped in, trying to avoid knocking over any of the vats of noxious-looking chemicals. The air was thick with the smell of burning metal.

Grace was hunched over soldering equipment. She looked up and her soldering iron fell and clanged on the floor.

‘The door was open,’ I said. ‘But then it locked me in.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ Grace stooped and retrieved the soldering iron. ‘I set it to lock at five. My assistant must have left early.’

‘Yes, there was no one around. Aren’t you worried about leaving the shop unattended?’

‘God wouldn’t let me be burgled.’

I replayed the words in my mind, trying to work out if I’d misheard. I hadn’t noticed God taking a hands-on role in crime prevention in the area.

‘And the cabinets are electrified after five,’ Grace said.

‘Electrified?’ I said weakly. Obviously God wasn’t quite up to the job on his own.

‘Yes. With a simple electric fence set-up.’

I remembered the clicking I’d heard in the shop. ‘That sounds dangerous.’

‘Oh no, it’s quite safe. It’s high voltage but the pulse duration is short, so the energy transmitted is low. Like a fence for horses.’ She put down the soldering iron and led me back into the shop. The clicking sounded more ominous now.

‘You’re not going to make me stop are you?’ Grace said. ‘It would only affect someone who tried to steal something. It’s off when the shop’s open.’ She reached forward and touched the edge of the cabinet containing the lovely jewellery. A spark cracked the air and she pulled her finger back sharply. ‘There! I’m still alive. Try it if you like.’

‘No thanks. Look, just make sure no one can wander in the way I did, and put some signs up.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll switch it off and get your mum’s brooch.’ She tapped a code into a keypad behind the counter. The clicking noise stopped. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

Grace reached under the counter and pulled out a box, which she handed to me. I opened it up and the brooch was spot on – exactly like the original. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘Perfect. It was her grandmother’s and she was so upset to lose it. I know it’s not quite the same to have a new one but I think she’ll be pleased.’

Grace smiled, put the box into a plush velvet pouch, and tied it with a silver ribbon. ‘Have one of these too.’ She took a magazine from a pile on the cabinet of lovely things and popped it into an expensive-looking paper bag, with the brooch. ‘I do hope your mother likes the brooch.’

‘She will. I can’t believe she was so careless, but she’s been a bit forgetful recently.’

‘What a shame. Do you see her often?’

‘Not as much as I should.’

‘Oh, I was the same. I should have done so much more for my father when he was still alive.’

Her eyes glistened. I wasn’t sure what to say. I gestured at the cabinet. ‘Your jewellery’s beautiful. Do you make that yourself?’

‘Yes, it’s rather special.’

I walked a step closer to the cabinet. ‘It’s lovely. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Well, it’s a rather unusual type of jewellery.’ She opened her mouth as if to say more, but then hesitated.

‘Oh?’ I leant to peer into the cabinet.

‘You might have heard of it. I call it Soul Jewellery.’

‘No, I haven’t heard of it.’

‘You may have heard the term Cremation jewellery. I know it sounds strange but people kept asking for it. I wasn’t sure at first, but I like it now. It’s made from loved one’s ashes.’

I stepped back. Dead people’s ashes. I shivered.

‘Those ones aren’t for sale, obviously. They’re for the relatives. But do you see the different colours? That tells you so much.’

‘Oh, what does it tell you?’

‘You can see from the colours those who have led good lives versus those who haven’t.’

‘Sorry?’ I glanced at her face. She had the Stepford Wife look again – eyes wide, slightly vacant expression, not a touch of irony. I swallowed. ‘You mean the light ones versus the dark ones?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled and a little dimple appeared in each cheek. ‘Well, that’s how I see it anyway.’

*

As I was in Eldercliffe, I decided to drop Mum’s brooch round. It would be an excuse to check she was okay and moderately assuage my ever-present gnawing sense of guilt.

I drove up the hill and navigated the lanes to the more modern side of the town. Leaving Eldercliffe was like travelling in time, as the buildings progressed from medieval through Georgian and Victorian, past 1930s semis and finally to the ‘executive’ new-builds which sprawled around the town’s edges. Mum lived in the semi-detached zone, in a dull but reasonably affluent suburban street, where men washed cars that weren’t dirty and mowed stripes in their lawns, and women did everything else.

I pulled up outside Mum’s house, and was surprised to see that her car wasn’t in the driveway. She must have nipped to the shops. I decided to let myself in and wait for her.

I walked through the privet-enclosed garden, turned the key and gave the front door a shove. A crash came from the direction of the kitchen. She was in after all – dropping things again. Maybe she’d left the car at the garage.

The door slammed behind me, as if a window was open somewhere in the house. That was strange, in this weather.

‘Mum,’ I called. ‘I’ve got your brooch.’

No answer. That was really odd. Mum must have surely heard the door slam, and would have come into the hallway, or at least shouted a greeting. I hoped the crash hadn’t been her falling. They always said the kitchen was a potential death-trap and best avoided.

I heard a soft thud, like the boiler room door closing. I figured she must be okay if she was fiddling with the heating. I headed towards the kitchen. ‘Mum, are you there?’

No answer.

With a flush of adrenaline, it occurred to me that it wasn’t Mum in the house.

Chapter 10

I froze and stood in the hall, ears straining. I contemplated calling for help, but it would take too long for anyone to arrive and I’d feel an idiot if it was just Mum having one of her moments.

I retraced my steps to the front door and picked up Mum’s cast-iron boot jack. Gripping it in my right hand, I edged towards the stairs. I had to check Gran was okay. She was now a professional ill-person and was virtually immobile, lying helpless in bed. I crept up to her room and gently shoved the door open. She was asleep, snoring gently, and I could see no evidence of an intruder. My own breathing slowed.

I tip-toed back downstairs and paused outside the kitchen. I could hear nothing but my own heart, which was surely beating more loudly than it should have been. I inched the door open.

The room smelt of washing up liquid and vinegar, and under that a trace of burning. There was no one there.

My gaze flicked over the clear work surfaces and tiled floor. All looked normal, except that a window was wide open, leaving gingham curtains fluttering.

I stepped over to the boiler room, clutching the boot jack with rigid fingers, and pushed the door. The room was empty. I rushed to the back door and out into the garden, but could see no one, so ran round the side of the house and looked up and down the road. It was tumbleweed-level deserted.

I stood stupidly in the road, looking back and forth, feeling my breath rasping in and out. Who could have been in Mum’s kitchen?

I hurried back to the house. The study was locked and the TV and DVD player were still in the living room. I checked Mum’s bedroom, and it looked pristine and untouched, her jewellery still hidden in the first place a burglar would look. She kept the study locked up like a fortress but her jewellery was in her underwear drawer. There was something forlorn about her Mum-pants, folded neatly around her rings and necklaces.

I padded back downstairs, still half-expecting to see an intruder lurking in the shadows. But I’d seen enough burglaries – glasses smashed, bins upended, clothes strewn everywhere – to know this wasn’t one. I must have arrived just in time.

I took out my phone to call it in. And had a moment of doubt.

I returned to the kitchen, and noticed Mum’s little metal horse on the floor. It lived on the windowsill, and could have been knocked off by someone climbing through. I looked around with a forensic gaze, but could see nothing else out of place.

Something loomed at the window, visible in the corner of my eye.

I gasped and jumped back before spinning round to look. The neighbour’s cat perched on the sill and stared at me with dazzling green eyes.

I let out a huge sigh. ‘Alfie. Oh my God. Did you jump up onto the windowsill and knock the metal horse on the floor?’

Alfie blinked – a fluffy ball of tabby, admitting nothing.

I sank onto one of Mum’s wooden chairs. It was just the bloody cat. Mum must have left the window open. She’d been absentminded recently. I felt like a melodramatic idiot for charging around the house and garden with an offensive boot jack.

I tried to laugh at myself, wishing someone was there to share the story. High-flying detective terrified by tabby. Hannah would think it was hilarious. What I’d thought was the boiler room door closing must have been Alfie jumping off the windowsill back into the garden. Thank God I hadn’t called it in. I could do without the Pink Panther cracks.

I imagined myself telling Mum, and started to rehearse a comic tale. I felt a coldness inside. No matter how light-hearted I tried to be, she wasn’t going to find this funny. I pictured her face crumpling with anxiety. She’d understand it was the cat, but deep down she’d think it was something else.

I stood and paced the kitchen. I couldn’t tell her. It would be cruel. She wouldn’t feel safe here any more, and all because of the neighbour’s cat. I’d have to keep my mouth shut and pretend it had never happened.

Like someone twisting a knife, a little part of me pointed out that I wasn’t absolutely sure no one had been in the house, that I really should tell Mum and call it in – persuade them to take fingerprints, just in case. Was I being selfish by not telling her? Saving myself the trouble of coping with her if she got scared.

I felt the familiar tearing inside, my job tugging me one way, Mum and Gran the other. The job was like a new baby, demanding total commitment and unsociable hours, especially with the Hamilton case. I couldn’t bear to fail. I had to prove I was good enough for the opportunity I’d been given. If Mum got more anxious, how could I find the time to be with her? And we needed my salary. Without the money I contributed, Gran couldn’t have a private carer. It had been so upsetting for her when she’d had a different one each day, someone she didn’t even know, doing the most intimate and unspeakable things to her.

Alfie jumped down with an un-catlike thud and disappeared into his own garden. I closed the window, found the key in the kitchen drawer and locked it.

The front door clicked. ‘Meg, is that you?’

‘In the kitchen,’ I shouted.

She appeared and gave me a hug. She felt more solid these days – almost my size. She’d always been skinny when I was a child, seeming insignificant next to Dad’s bulk.

‘You left the window open, Mum. You need to stop doing that. I shut and locked it.’

‘Oh, did I? I’ve been a bit forgetful recently.’ She put her bag on the floor and leant against the kitchen counter. ‘I burnt the toast and opened it. I must have forgotten to shut it. I nipped to the garage but they’ve got no milk.’

‘Well, be careful, Mum. I worry about you. Are you alright? You don’t seem yourself at the moment. Are you anxious about something?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, Meg. Don’t fret about me.’ The skin of her face was greyer than I remembered.

Worry nagged at me. ‘I can ask Tracy to do some extra hours.’ I could manage. Just.

‘No, no.’ She turned away from me and fiddled with the kettle. ‘You mustn’t. I’m fine.’

I hesitated. I’d been so sure there was someone in the kitchen. Maybe it wasn’t fair to keep it from her. But, no, I’d been silly. It was only the cat. ‘I’ll nip up and see if Gran wants a word.’

Gran had obviously just woken up. It shocked me each time I saw her now – her face creased like an old apple and her scalp shining through a fuzz of hair, almost like a baby’s head. She’d been so proud of her hair, treating it to blue rinses and Silvikrin hairspray that Carrie and I had secretly mocked.

A cloying smell hung in the air, and a sick bowl nestled half under her bed. She levered herself up on the pillows and fixed me with her still-demanding eyes. ‘Got yourself a new boyfriend yet, Meg?’

‘Hello Gran, good to see you.’ She clearly hadn’t heard me charging around with the boot jack.

‘Better get a move on, all the decent ones’ll be gone. You’ll be on to the second round – divorcees, and they’re a menace with their ex-wives and spoilt brats. And if you want children…’

‘Come on Gran, you know that bit of my brain’s missing. I’m not bothered about having kids.’

‘Ach, you’re probably right. I sometimes wish I hadn’t bothered myself.’ I loved the way Gran came out with such un-grandma-like comments. Her mind was still sharp, although the tact-and-diplomacy-lobes had shrunk.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Most people spend their lives making themselves miserable doing work they hate, to make money for the sake of their kids, and then their kids grow up and do the same thing over again for their kids. I don’t see the point. Besides, I’m quite capable of making myself miserable all on my own, without doing it for the kids.’

‘Ah, well, you modern women, you’re right, you know. Who wants to depend on a man? There aren’t many good ones.’

She stared into the distance. Not that there was any distance in her life any more, stuck in this room, with nothing to look at that was further away than the TV. I couldn’t imagine knowing I’d never again look at the vastness of the sea or even the Peak District views I took for granted.

‘Anyway, how are you feeling? You look well.’ I could smell the lie as it slithered out of my mouth.

‘I’m not going doolally if that’s what you’re wondering. But my damn stomach does hurt and I can’t keep the painkillers down. If I was a dog, they’d have put me down long ago.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Your mum should…’

‘Gran?’

She didn’t reply, and sank lower into the bed. I hugged her, not too tight for fear her bones would crumble. ‘I’ll see you again soon, Gran.’

I crept out and padded downstairs to the kitchen.

Mum made tea and we sat together at the table. A memory from long ago popped into my head – the four of us having supper at our old house. Before Carrie got ill. I’d been a babbler. I’d ask ‘Why?’ until most adults were ready to bash my little blonde head against the table. Except Dad. He’d have answers for every question, and then he’d have some of his own for me. ‘Why do you think the sky’s blue?’ ‘How many stars are in the universe?’ (I guessed fifty, which was a big disappointment to him.) ‘How far away do you think the sun is?’ ‘How long do you think the light takes to get from that star to here?’ Mum and Carrie would sigh, roll their eyes and serve the sprouts.

‘Your dad makes the important decisions in this family,’ Mum used to say. ‘Like whether the universe is expanding and whether we should throw our hats in for string theory or loop quantum gravity. And I make the unimportant ones like what we have for supper.’

‘Here. I’ve got your brooch.’ I fished it out and pushed the velvet bag into her hand. ‘You can forget you ever lost it.’

She opened up the little box, and the brooch sat and sparkled.

‘It’s lovely,’ she said.

I took the box and had another look. ‘Did you know they made jewellery out of dead people’s ashes?’

‘Oh, that’s nice.’

‘Really? A bit ghoulish, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t suggest it for your gran.’

I smiled, wondering if Gran’s ashes would come out light or dark, according to Grace Swift’s insane theory. ‘Mum, is she in a lot of pain? She said we’d have put her down if she was a dog.’

Mum stood and walked to the window. ‘I don’t think she really means that. She can be a bit incoherent.’

‘She was pretty coherent about my lack of a boyfriend. But I was serious, do you need more help looking after her?’

‘No.’ She knew the financial situation. ‘I’m okay. Tracy’s great. She bathes her… and everything. But some days it’s hard. Sometimes I have to force myself not to just shut the door and forget about her.’ She wandered back and sat at the breakfast bar with me. ‘Anyway, how are you?’

‘I’m on this new case. You’ll have seen it on the TV.’

‘I haven’t really been watching the TV. Let’s talk about something other than work.’

‘Haven’t you been following it at all? It’s the most dramatic thing to happen in Eldercliffe for about four hundred years. It’s normally all sheep down mineshafts round here.’

‘I know, love. I don’t like bad news.’

‘He was some kind of lawyer. His wife’s a GP just up the road. Are you at her practice? Kate Webster?’

‘No. I said let’s talk about something else.’

It wasn’t like her to get snappy. I sensed she was hiding something from me. I felt as if the world had lurched, like a ship. ‘Are you alright? Mum?’

‘I’m fine. I don’t know her. I’m at the other doctors’ surgery. I don’t know the name.’ She picked a piece of fluff off her cardigan.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Never heard of her. Poor woman. You’re not working too hard, are you? You know what you can get like. Have you found time to see Hannah recently?’

I felt a stab of guilt. ‘I’ll see her at the weekend. But Mum—’

‘Could you nip out and get me some milk, love?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ The shop was only five minutes’ walk away, although half of this was spent plunging down a perilously steep set of steps to the main road. I sensed she was trying to get rid of me, but when Mum didn’t want to talk, there was little point in persisting. I grabbed one of her coats from the rack by the door, shoved a fiver in my pocket and let myself out the front.

The road was dimly lit and the houses were set back – all in their own lonely spaces, behind hedges and cherry trees, so the street-lamps cast long shadows onto their lawns. This area was a complete contrast to the tiny lanes, steps and alleyways of the old town a few minutes away. I walked in the direction of the main road, still feeling spooked by the Alfie-cat experience. I looked down at the cracked slabs of the pavement. When I was a child, someone had told me if you avoided the cracks, terrible things would never happen to you. I’d always avoided the cracks. So much for that theory.

I thought I heard the patter of footsteps behind me. I whipped my head round but there was no one there. Just the tree branches ruffling in the breeze. I pulled my coat tighter around me and increased my pace.

I reached the top of the steps which tumbled down towards the town centre. They were cut into the rocky hillside which separated the old town from the newer area where Mum lived. Their stone surfaces were worn, their edges curved and uneven. Ornate iron railings had apparently once graced both sides, but they’d been taken in the war to make something deadly, and never replaced.

I paused to curse my bad ankle before tackling the descent. A street lamp shone behind me, and my body cast a spindly, elongated shadow down the steps, my shadow-head almost touching the road far below.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I fished it out. Kate Webster. I touched the screen. Her voice blasted out, high pitched and frantic. ‘I found an email from him. Just now.’

‘Slow down, Kate, it’s okay. What have you found?’

‘I hadn’t checked my emails since before he died. Your lot have got my laptop. I just checked them on Beth’s. He sent one that morning saying…’ She tailed off.

I pressed the phone hard to my ear. Shadow-Meg did the same, her movements exaggerated and distorted by the shape of the steps. ‘What did the email say, Kate?’

I heard the footsteps behind me again. Coming up fast.

Chapter 11

Someone was behind me. I gasped and tried to spin round, but my foot slipped over the curved edge of the top step. My legs shot out from under me and I slammed onto my hip. A flash of adrenaline exploded in my stomach.

There was a burst of frenzied barking and snarling.

I was falling. I tried to grab onto the steps, but my fingers slipped over their smooth surfaces. I crashed all the way to the bottom and bashed my head against the final step with a sickening crack.

I lay crumpled and astonished. Pain stabbed into my ankle, hip, shoulder, and skull.

Something was careering down the steps. I wanted to scream. I couldn’t move. I shielded my head with my arms.

A wet tongue licked my face. I tried to lift my head but a jolt of pain shot through my neck and I sank back down. I heard panting and snuffling.

I lay on the pavement. My throat felt solid right down to my chest and a whooshing noise flooded my ears.

I groaned and levered myself into a sitting position. The world pitched. Moist breath warmed my ear. It was Mrs Smedley’s German Shepherd – Freddie, the escape artist. He licked my face three times, then shot off up the steps.

I tried to piece together what had happened. Someone had run up behind me, really close, then Freddie had appeared and done his wild-wolf impression, I’d fallen down the steps, and the person had run away.

I looked around, my gaze flitting back up the steps, panic just below the surface. I couldn’t see anyone. But what if they came back, now Freddie was gone? My breath came in sharp bursts.

I needed to be on my feet. I needed to be able to run. I hauled myself up and stood shakily with my legs apart trying to get my brain to work. A wave of dizziness came over me like a blanket of mist, and I sat back down on the bottom step.

‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘Fucking hell.’

I knew I should probably call the Station, but what would I say? Someone came up behind me and I fell down the steps, like an idiot? I didn’t even see their face. I’d never hear the end of it from Craig. My new name would be Eddie the Eagle. And besides, I needed to be sick. I had to get back to Mum’s.

I took a first tentative step. Everything seemed to be in working order, albeit painful, so I carried on and started climbing back up towards Mum’s house. One foot after another. My head throbbed and something wasn’t right in my hip either. About ten steps up, I paused for breath and glanced back down towards the road.

I gasped and collapsed onto the step. It was the flashback again, smashing itself into my consciousness like an attack from a vicious animal. First the feet, dangling. Dangling like feet weren’t supposed to dangle, level with my face. Everything wrong – the feet, the ladder, incongruous in the middle of her bedroom. My brain unable to make sense of it. Staring at the feet for an endless moment, a low cry already building in my throat, terrified to look anywhere but the feet. Then the point my gaze flipped up. Carrie’s head slumped forward. The shape of her skull through wisps of hair. Me screaming, climbing the ladder, scrabbling, pulling, sobbing. Then falling. Finally, always the falling.

Chapter 12

Hannah sniffed the air. ‘Ugh! Hospitals. You could have chosen somewhere more interesting for a mini-break. I spend half my life here.’ She wheeled herself up to my bed.

My head was mushy. ‘At least it’s wheelchair-friendly. Anyway, I’m not staying. I hate hospitals.’ They smelt of guilt and dejection. I forced those feelings away and attempted a smile. ‘Nice of you to visit me, Hannah.’

‘I was worried about you.’ She frowned at me. ‘I did have someone else to visit too.’

‘Good to know I’m such a priority in your life. Who were you visiting?’

‘It doesn’t matter. When are they discharging you?’

‘I don’t care what they do, I’m leaving today. I’ve missed a day of work already. I can’t believe I’ve been here last night and most of today. What a waste of time.’

‘What the hell have you been up to anyway?’ As if I’d done it deliberately.

‘I fell down some steps, and bashed my head.’ I swivelled to show the bump.

‘Jesus. How come?’

‘Someone ran up behind me.’ I hadn’t meant to say that.

‘Oh my God. Maybe it was a rapist or something. What did he look like?’

‘I didn’t see. Honestly, it was most likely just some idiot in a hurry. It gave me a fright, that’s all. And I fell down the steps.’

‘Why didn’t they help you then? If it was a normal person?’

She had a point. Something wasn’t right about the whole incident. But the thought of reporting it as suspicious filled me with exhaustion. I had no information. I’d seem pathetic. The last thing I needed now, with Craig hot on my tail, was to appear vulnerable. ‘I’m not saying anything to Work or to Mum about the person coming up behind me. It’ll only worry them. Don’t mention it, Hannah, I mean it.’

‘But it’s kind of scary. What if they’re after you?’

‘Stop it. Seriously.’ I remembered the flashback. It hovered in the back of my mind like a caged animal, scratching to be let out. I couldn’t let it out. I couldn’t go back to how I’d been in Manchester. I was over all that. ‘Anyway, who were you visiting?’

‘Oh, I met someone through that group. She campaigns for stuff for disabled people. She’s had pneumonia and I came to visit her. That’s all.’

‘Oh. You never mentioned her before.’

‘Why do you always have to be so negative?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Hannah, I wasn’t being negative.’

‘Your face says it all. Besides, I know your views. What was it you said about that group? The devout manipulating the disabled?’

That did sound like me. I kept my voice even. ‘Look, I don’t want to argue. Let’s not talk about it. It’s not worth falling out over.’

‘Okay. I know you don’t like that group. But they’re only trying to stand up for vulnerable people and unborn babies who have no voice.’ Hannah swallowed. ‘Nowadays most people would abort a baby like me with Spina Bifida.’

God, I didn’t have the energy today. I shifted on my pillows. ‘I’m not sure that’s true, or a good way of looking at it. You’re—’

‘They showed us pictures of babies at the age they can still kill them.’

‘They’re bloody manipulating you, Hannah, can’t you see it? Did they show photos of babies screaming after their twentieth operation too?’

Hannah shifted her chair back an inch.

I reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I just wish they wouldn’t show that stuff.’

‘They’re trying to make things better.’

I pulled my hand away. I couldn’t understand why Hannah had been sucked in by them, but I didn’t want to repeat the argument.

‘Just forget it,’ Hannah said. ‘You’re right. I did have lots of operations on my spine but I can’t remember. My baby photos would have been more at home in The Lancet than in a family album.’

‘Oh Hannah, I didn’t mean you. Of course I don’t think you should have been aborted.’ I looked over at Hannah, so lovely and full of life. I’d never admitted to her that being paralysed was one of my worst fears; that it woke me sweating in the night, tangled in sheets and gasping for breath; that I probably would abort a baby like her if I ever had to make that terrible choice.

Hannah looked up and I followed her eyes. Jai, striding towards us.

His voice sounded like he was being lightly strangled. ‘Meg, what happened? They say you bashed your head.’

‘I’m okay. It’s no big deal.’

‘I was leaving anyway,’ Hannah kissed me, somewhat frostily, and did a kind of wheelchair handbrake-turn before gliding away.

Jai sat on the chair by my bedside. ‘Seriously, are you alright?’

‘I’m fine. How’s it going with the Hamilton case?’

‘Oh, there’s a suicide note. Richard’s wrapping it up. You don’t need to be involved.’

I sat up, with some difficulty. My brain chugged. I’d forgotten. Just before I fell. The call from Kate Webster. ‘An email,’ I said hesitantly.

‘Yes, an email. All fairly clear cut.’

No, it wasn’t. I was sure it wasn’t clear cut. ‘What did the email say?’

‘It was the usual stuff. Sorry, sorry, you’re better off without me and all that.’

‘How do we know someone hadn’t hacked his account? It just doesn’t have the feel of a suicide to me.’

‘He’d been behaving strangely, acting depressed, saying he was cursed. Richard’s happy with suicide.’

‘Come on, Jai.’ I could feel my brain clarifying. ‘One, have you ever tried to get cyanide? You can’t pick it up from Asda. Two, cyanide’s not a nice way to die—’

‘I thought they put it in those pills for spies.’

‘It’s quick, not nice. And C—’

‘You were doing one, two, three, not A, B, C.’

‘Give me a break. I’ve had a head injury. Three, have you seen where he lives? He could have just chucked himself off that cliff any time. Why bother with cyanide-infused cake?’

‘Trying to make it look unclear so it’s an open verdict and the wife gets the life insurance?’

‘Why the email then?’

‘You make a persuasive case for a woman recently bashed on the head, but it’s Richard you need to convince, not me. And he’s not expecting you in till Monday.’

I sank back on my pillows. What I hadn’t said to Jai was – four, Mark Hamilton is a nice man with lots of dogs and cats, and he had an argument with his brother who is now dead, and I cannot let him think his brother committed suicide if it’s not true. No one should have to go through that.

‘I’ll go in tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And persuade Richard.’

‘Be careful, alright?’ He reached out and touched my arm. I instinctively pulled away and Jai withdrew his hand as if he’d touched a hot stove. I wanted to say sorry, I didn’t mean to pull away, but the moment was gone.

Chapter 13

My eyes flipped open. It was brutally dark – no trace of dawn. Something was pressing on my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, and felt something soft touch my face. I smelt fishy breath. I reached and flipped on the bedside light. Hamlet. He looked into my eyes, purred and kneaded my face. I released my breath.

I’d been released late the night before into the caring arms of my Mum. The medical people had confirmed I wasn’t bleeding from my brain or anywhere more vital, but had told me to come back if I experienced any of a long list of symptoms. They’d allowed me out on the basis that Mum stayed with me overnight and checked I was still breathing and at least normally coherent in the morning.

For a few minutes I lay staring at the ceiling, trying to absorb Hamlet’s feline calm. What would have happened if the dog hadn’t turned up at the top of those steps? Had someone been coming for me? Was it something to do with the Hamilton case?

I slid out from under the duvet and eased myself into a sitting position. I reached for the bedside table and grabbed my painkillers, feeling my brain bounce within my skull when I moved. I gulped down two of the super-strength pills the hospital had doled out.

I crept down my sloping floorboards to dig out clean clothes, feeling like I was on the high seas. The lack of right angles in my crumbling, ancient house didn’t help. Bending over was the worst – my sense of balance was gone and my brain was clearly a little too big for my skull.

Mum was asleep in the spare room, but I could do without her fretting and forcing gallons of tea down me. Besides, it was stupidly-early o’clock, so I left her to it and tottered downstairs and into the kitchen. Hamlet followed me and bumbled around while I made tea, then followed me through to the living room at the front of the house. The heating hadn’t come on yet and it was bone-numblingly cold, but by the time I’d sunk onto the sofa, I was too exhausted to get up again and do anything about it. Besides, Hamlet had parked himself on me and it was a life rule of mine not to move when catted.

A lump of plaster was coming away from the wall in the damp corner. I sighed, reached for the remote and stuck the TV on with the sound down low, praying for a programme that didn’t involve educationally challenged people from Essex copulating on a remote island.

I reached into my bag and fished out the magazine Grace had given me what seemed like weeks ago. Her disturbing but gorgeous jewellery would be a good distraction.

‘Ugh.’ I dropped the magazine. It wasn’t about her jewellery – it was a religious thing, the lead article, ‘How to be a Godly Business Woman’. I kicked it aside and closed my eyes. The pavement rushed towards me. My insides felt untethered as if I was in a lift going down too fast. The memory of the flashback shimmered like a distant threat.

I forced myself to think about the Hamilton case. Pressed my fingers to my temples and started mentally sifting through the evidence. I took a deep breath and realised I was feeling better.

My gut told me it wasn’t suicide. Of course I could never admit that to Richard – he’d accuse me of being illogical. I’d argue it was my subconscious pulling together all the threads and seasoning them with years of experience. I could point him to numerous articles in New Scientist about the supremacy of intuition when there were lots of factors to consider, but if I did, he’d throw something at me. Probably a cactus. Cacti were his thing.

I searched my memory for the word Fiona had mentioned from the paper in Kate Webster’s fire. Tithonus. Why would Peter have scrawled that name on a piece of paper which his wife seemed so keen for me not to see? I reached for my laptop, prised open the lid, and googled it. This was what I needed – to focus on work.

I took a slug of tea and scrutinised the search results. According to the Greek myth, Tithonus was a Trojan, who was kidnapped by Eos (clearly a proto-feminist, reversing traditional gender roles) to be her lover. Eos asked the Gods to make Tithonus immortal. But she only asked for immortality and not eternal youth, so poor Tithonus got older and older but never died. I read that, Tithonus indeed lived forever… but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs… she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs. In some accounts, he eventually turned into a cicada, eternally living, but begging for death to overcome him.

I shuddered, put the laptop down and manoeuvred Hamlet onto my knee. I leant and breathed in his subtle, nutty cat smell. What a terrible story. Poor Tithonus, shut away, suffering behind closed doors so nobody had to witness his torment. It was kind of what Mum had admitted wanting to do with Gran. It sickened me, but I knew it was in me too – the desire to shut away anything too painful to confront.

Hamlet, with blatant disregard for my emotional needs, climbed off my knee and wandered through to the kitchen in the hope of a snack. I followed him through, dished out something exotic and organic for him, and made more tea for myself.

I leant against the sink and stared out into my garden. Took in the cracked patio splattered with puddles, the lawn tangled with weeds, the sprawling hedges, the wisteria that scaled the back wall of the house and leant over as if it was trying to escape into next door’s better-cared-for environment. I noticed the little organised patch I’d created two weekends ago. Dug nicely and planted with three robust, un-killable shrubs. They were looking good.

The sun emerged from behind a slab of cloud, all bright and surprising, beaming through the dust and cobwebs on the kitchen windows and casting shadows on the black-and-white tiled floor.

I spun round, wincing at the pain in my head and hip. Nobody was after me. And I would not let the flashbacks return. I was fine. I’d carry on working and forget all this ever happened. I left Mum an appreciative note and set off for work.

*

I hobbled down the corridor and into Richard’s room. My ankle had flared up in sympathy with my head, and I must have cut a pretty sad picture.

Richard was at his desk, poring over something which he hastily shoved in a drawer. He was shielded by piles of documents, all neatly stacked and aligned in rows in front of him. Each pile was topped with a tiny cactus in a pot, like a prickly paperweight. It was very strange, but we’d got used to it. He looked up at me, but his shoulders stayed low, giving him the appearance of a giant turtle. He invited me to sit opposite him in a psychologically disadvantageous lower chair.

‘Yes. Meg. I wasn’t expecting you in. And seeing you now, you’d better get off home.’

‘I’m fine. I just want to look into the Hamilton case a bit more. Can you give me some time to—’

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