Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Paul Finch 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

Cover design © Andrew Smith 2014

Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007551279

Ebook Edition © July 2013 ISBN: 9780007551286

Version: 2017-11-14

Dedication

For my children, Eleanor and Harry, with whom I shared many a chilling tale when they were tots, but whose enthusiasm is as strong now as it ever was

Contents

Cover

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

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue
August, 2004

The girl was quite content in her state of semi-undress. The man wasn’t concerned by it either. If anything, he seemed to enjoy the interest she attracted as they drove from pub to pub that sultry August evening.

They commenced their Friday night drive-around in Buckfastleigh, then visited the lively villages of Holne and Poundsgate, before penetrating deeper into Dartmoor’s vast, grassy wilderness, calling at ever more isolated hamlets: Babeny, Dunstone and finally Widecombe-in-the-Moor, where a posse of legendary beer-swilling reprobates had once ridden Uncle Tom Cobley’s grey mare to an early grave.

The girl was first to enter each hostelry, sashaying in through the guffawing hordes, and wiggling comfortably onto the most conspicuous bar stool she could find, while the man took time to find a place in the car park for his sleek, black and silver Porsche. On each occasion, she made an impact. The riot of noise under the low, gnarly roof-beams never actually subsided, but it never needed to. Looking was free.

She wasn’t behaving overtly flirtatiously, but she clearly revelled in the attention she drew. And why not? She had ‘all the tools’, as they say. A tall, willowy blonde, her shapely form showcased to perfection in a green micro mini-dress and strappy green shoes with killer heels. Her golden mane hung past her shoulders in a glossy wave. She had full lips, a pert nose and delicate, feline cheekbones. When she removed her mirrored shades, subtle grey shadow accentuated a pair of startling blue eyes. In each pub she made sure to sit prominently: back arched, boobs thrust forward, smooth tan legs sensually crossed. There was no denying she was playing it up, which was much appreciated by the taproom crowd. For the most part, these were beefy locals, countrymen to the last, but there were also visitors here: car-loads of lusty lads openly cruising for girls and beer; or bluff, gruff oldsters in denims and plaid shirts, down in Devon for the sailing, the fishing, or the moorland walking. They might only be away from their wives for a few days, but they too revealed an eye for the girls; in particular, an eye for this girl. It wasn’t just that she smiled sweetly as they made space for her at the bar, or that she responded with humour to their cheeky quips, but up close it could be seen that she wasn’t a girl after all – she was a woman, in her late twenties, and because of this even more of a taunting presence.

And still the bloke with her seemed oblivious to – or maybe was aroused by – the stir his girlfriend (or perhaps his wife, who knew?) was causing. He was well-dressed – beige Armani slacks, a short-sleeved Yves St Laurent shirt, suede Church’s brogues – and of course, he drove an impressive motor. But he was plumpish, with pale, pudgy features – ‘fucking snail’, as one leery barfly commented to his mate – and a shock of carroty red hair. And he drank only shandies, which made him seem a little soft to have such a tigress on his arm – at least from the locals’ point of view. And yet by the duo’s body language, the man was the more dominant. He stood while she sat. He bought the drinks while she disported her charms, leaning backward against the bar, her exposed cleavage inviting the most brazen stares.

‘Got a right couple, here!’ Harold Hopkinson, portly landlord of The Grouse Beater, said from the side of his mouth. ‘Talk about putting his missus on show.’

‘She’s loving every minute of it,’ Doreen, his foursquare wife, replied.

‘Bit old to be making an exhibition of themselves like that, aren’t they?’

‘Bit old? They’re just the right age. Where do you think they’ll be off to next?’

Harold looked surprised. ‘You don’t mean Halfpenny Reservoir?’

‘Where else?’

‘But surely they know? I mean …’ Harold frowned. ‘Nah, can’t be that. Look, she’s a bonnie girl, and he likes showing the world what he’s got.’

Doreen pulled another pint of Dartmoor IPA. ‘You really believe that?’

Briefly, Harold was lost for words. It all made an unpleasant kind of sense. Halfpenny Reservoir wasn’t Devon’s number one dogging location – it was a long way from anywhere of consequence – but it was well-known locally and it got busy from time to time; at least, it used to get busy before the panic had started. He eyed the fulsome couple again. The woman still perched on her bar stool, sipping a rum and lemonade. Now that he assessed her properly, he saw finger and toenails painted gold, a chain around her left ankle decorated with moons and stars. That was a come-on of sorts, wasn’t it? At least, it was according to some of his favourite websites. Of course, it wouldn’t have been unusual at one time, this. The swinger crowd would occasionally trawl the local boozers en route to Halfpenny Reservoir – somewhat more covertly than this, admittedly, but nonetheless ‘displaying their wares’, as Doreen liked to call it, looking to pick up the passing rough that seemed to be their stock-in-trade.

Things were markedly different now, of course. Or they should be.

‘They must be out-of-towners,’ Harold said. ‘They obviously don’t know.’

‘They’d have to be from another planet not to know,’ Doreen replied tersely.

‘Well … shouldn’t we tell them?’

‘Tell them what?’

‘I don’t know … just advise them it’s a bad idea at the present time.’

She gave him her most withering glance. ‘It should be a bad idea at any time.’

Harold’s wife had a kind of skewed morality when it came to earthy pleasures. She made her living selling alcohol, and yet she had a problem with drunks, refusing to serve anyone she suspected of sampling one too many, and was very quick to issue barring orders if there was ever horseplay in the pub. Likewise, though she consciously employed pretty local girls to work behind her bar, she was strongly antagonistic to ‘tarts and tramps’, as she called them, and was especially hostile to any women she identified as belonging to the swinger crowd who gathered for their midnight revels up at the reservoir – so much so that when ‘the Stranger’ had first come on the scene, targeting lone couples parked up late at night, she’d almost regarded him with approval.

Until the details had emerged, of course.

Because even by the standards of Britain’s most heinous murders, these were real shockers. Harold couldn’t help shuddering as he recalled some of the details he’d read about in the papers. Though no attack had been reported any closer to The Grouse Beater than a picnic area near Sourton on the other side of the moor, twenty miles away as the crow flew, the whole of the county had been put on alert. Harold glanced around the taproom, wondering if the predator might be present at this moment. The pub was full, mainly with men, and not all of the ‘shrinking violet’ variety. Devon was a holiday idyll, especially in summer – it didn’t just attract the New Age crowd and the hippy backpackers, it drew families, honeymooners and the like. But it was a working county too. Even up here on the high moor, the local male populace comprised far more than country squire and Colonel Blimp types in tweeds and gaiters; there were farm-labourers, cattlemen, farriers, hedgers, keepers; occupations which by their nature required hardy outdoor characters. And hadn’t the police issued some kind of statement about their chief suspect being a local man probably engaged in manual labour, someone tough and physically strong enough to overpower healthy young couples? Also, he was someone who knew the back roads, so was able to creep up on his victims unawares, making his getaway afterwards.

There were an awful lot of blokes satisfying those criteria right here, right now.

The more Harold thought about it, the more vulnerable the young couple looked in the midst of this rumbustious crowd. Even if the Stranger wasn’t present, the woman ought not to be displaying herself like that. The man should realise that several of these fellas had already had lots to drink, especially those who were openly ogling; he should know that temptation might get the better of them and that it would be so, so easy just to reach out and place a wandering hand on that smooth, sun-browned thigh. If that happened there might be trouble, swingers or not, and that was the last thing Harold wanted.

‘We have to say something,’ he muttered to Doreen, after they briefly stepped away together into the stock-room.

‘What?’ she sneered. ‘Casually tell them all the local dogging sites are closed? How do you think that’ll go down? They might just be show-offs. Might just have come out for a drink.’

‘But you said …’

‘Just leave it, Harold. We don’t need you making a fool of yourself. Again.’

‘But if they are swingers, and they go up there …?’

‘They’ll be taking a chance. Like they always take chances. Good God, who in their right mind would go looking for sex with strangers in the middle of nowhere?’

‘But darling, if they don’t know …’

‘They’re adults, aren’t they! They should make it their business to know.’

Three minutes later – much to Harold’s relief – ‘the adults’ left, the woman swaying prettily to the pub door, heads again turning to watch, the man digging a packet of cigarettes from his slacks as he idly followed. In some ways it was as if they weren’t actually together; as if the man was just some casual acquaintance rather than a partner, which was a bit confusing. Still, it was someone else’s problem now.

Harold edged to the diamond-paned window overlooking the pub car park.

The duo stood beside the Porsche, the man smoking, the woman leaning on the car with her arms folded, her bag dangling from her shoulder by its strap. They chatted together, in no apparent rush to go anywhere – perhaps they were just a dressy couple out for a few drinks after all? Harold felt a slow sense of relief. Probably a nice couple too, when you got to know them; it was hardly the woman’s fault she was hot as hell.

It was approaching nine o’clock now and the sun was setting, fiery red stripes lying across the encircling moorland. Maybe they were all set to go home? But then, when the man was only halfway through his cigarette, he stubbed it out on the tarmac and placed it in a nearby waste-container. And when they climbed into the Porsche together and drove away, it wasn’t along the B3387 to Bovey Tracey, or even back through the village towards Dunstone and ultimately Buckfastleigh – it was along the unnamed road that ran due northwest from the pub. The next inhabited place it came to was Beardon, some fifteen miles away.

But long before then, it passed Halfpenny Reservoir.

It had been a vintage August day in the West Country, but the heat was finally seeping from the land, the balminess of the evening receding. An indigo dusk layered the hills and valleys of Dartmoor.

By the time they reached the reservoir it would be near enough pitch-black.

The woman checked their rear-view mirror as they drove. Fleetingly, she thought she’d glimpsed headlights behind, but now there was nothing; only the greyness of nightfall. Ahead, the road sped on hypnotically, the vastness of the encircling moor oppressive in its emptiness. Tens of minutes passed, and they didn’t spot a single habitation – neither a cottage, nor another pub – though in truth they were too busy looking for the reservoir turn-off to indulge in any form of sightseeing. Even then, they almost passed it; a narrow, unmade lane, all dry rutted earth in their headlights, branching away between two granite gateposts and arcing off at a slanted angle amongst dense stands of yellow-flowered furze.

They slowed to a halt in the middle of the blacktop.

‘This must be it …?’ the man said. It was more a question than an observation.

The woman nodded.

They ventured left along the rugged route, bouncing and jolting, spiky twigs whispering down the Porsche’s flanks, following a shallow V-shaped valley for several hundred yards before starlit sky broke out ahead; the radiant orb of the moon was suspended there, its reflection shimmering on an expansive body of water lying to their right. Like most of the Dartmoor reservoirs, Halfpenny Lake was manmade, its purpose to supply drinking water to the surrounding lowlands. A row of wrought-iron railings flickered past in the glow of their right-side headlamp as they prowled the shoreline road, and the solid, horizontal silhouette of what looked like a dam blocking off the valley at its farthest end affirmed the mundane purpose of this place.

There were several sheltered parking bays along here, a dump site for used condoms, dog-eared porn mags and pairs of semen-stained knickers – though any such debris now would be old and rotted; there was no one present to add new mementoes.

Apart from the man and the woman.

They parked close to the entrance of the second lot, and there, as per the manual, turned the radio down – it was tuned to an ‘easy listening’ station, so was hardly intrusive in any case – opened all the windows, and climbed into the back seat together. Here, they sat apart – one at either end of the seat, exchanging odd murmurs of anticipation as they waited for their audience.

And so the minutes passed.

The stillness outside was near absolute; a gentle breeze sighing across the heathery moorland tops, groaning amid the tors. The couple’s gaze roved back and forth along the unlit ridges. The only movement came from tufts of bracken rippling against the stars. It was almost eerie how peaceful it was, how tranquil. A classic English summer’s night.

All the more reason why the fierce crackle of electricity jolted them so badly.

Especially the man, who stiffened and fell back against the nearside door.

It happened that fast. He simply froze, his eyes glazed, foam shooting from his rigidly puckered mouth. Then the featureless figure outside who had risen into view from a kneeling posture and reached through the open window with his Taser, now reached through again and opened the door.

All this happened too quickly for the woman to take it in. Almost too quickly.

As the lifeless shape of her beau dropped backward again, this time out onto the gritty tarmac, his head striking it with brutal force, she grappled with her handbag, unsnapping it and fumbling inside. It was a quick, fluid motion – she didn’t waste time squawking in outrage – but their assailant was quicker still. He lunged in through the open nearside door. In the dull green light of the dashboard facia, she caught a fleeting glimpse of heavy-duty leather: a leather coat, leather face-mask, and a leather glove, as – POW! – his clenched fist caught her right in the mouth.

She too slumped backward, head swimming, handbag tipping into the footwell, spilling its contents every which way.

With thoughts fizzled to near-incomprehensibility, the woman probed at her two front teeth with her tongue. They appeared to wobble; at the same time her upper lip stung abominably, whilst her mouth rapidly filled with hot, coppery fluid. She coughed on it, choking.

And then awareness of her situation broke over her – like a dash of iced water.

She was lying on her back, but the intruder was now in the car with her, on the rear seat in fact, already positioned between her indecently spread legs. With one gloved hand, he kept a tight grip on her exposed upper left thigh; it was so high, his thumb was almost in her crotch. With his other hand, he was slowly, purposefully unfastening his coat.

From some distant place, the woman heard a new song on the radio. A rich American voice poured through the nicely central-heated car.

Wondering in the night what were the chances …

A beastly chuckle, hideous and pig-like, snorted from the leather-clad face. Still dazed, the woman strained to see through the greenish, pain-hazed gloom. Frank Sinatra, she recalled. One of her father’s favourites. Old Blue Eyes, The Voice, the Sultan of Swoon …

‘Looks like they’re playing my tune,’ the intruder said, as the final button snapped open and his coat flaps fell apart. If she’d had any doubts before, she had none now.

Strangers in the night …

He hadn’t spoken before. Not a single word – not to her knowledge. But then who would know? The weird sex-murderer who’d begun his crimes by attacking anyone he encountered who was out after dark, but had then begun stalking lovers’ lanes and dogging spots all over Devon and Somerset, had not left a single living witness. All those he’d targeted had been eliminated with precision, ruthlessness, and great, great enjoyment; the men with skulls crushed and/or throats cut, the women sexually mutilated in a ritual that went far beyond everyday sadism. Each one of them, man and woman alike, subjected to one final desecration, when their eyes were stabbed and gouged until they were nothing but jelly.

We were strangers in the night …

‘Definitely my tune.’ He chuckled again, using his left hand to fondle the array of gleaming implements in his customised inner coat lining: the tin-opener, the screwdriver, the mallet, the hacksaw, the razor-edged filleting knife.

The woman could barely move, yet her eyes were now riveted on his eyes: moist baubles framed in leather sockets; and on his mouth, the saliva-coated tongue and broken, stained teeth exposed by a drawn-back zipper. But that voice – it could only have been a whisper in truth, a gloating guttural whisper. But she would remember it as long as she lived.

It was Scottish.

The Stranger was a Scotsman.

The key thing now, of course, was to ensure that she did live.

Perhaps he was too busy drawing out that first instrument of torture – the tin-opener, an old-fashioned device with a ghastly hooked blade – to notice her right hand working frantically through the debris littering the footwell.

As he raised the tin-opener to his right shoulder – not to plunge it down as much as to tease her with the terror of it – her fingertips found something she recognised.

He kept her pinned in place with his other hand, a grip so hard in that soft, sensitive spot that it was now agony, as he crooned along to the tune.

They’d first dubbed him ‘the Stranger’ in the West Country press because of the sex-with-strangers scene he’d so viciously crashed. It now seemed even more appropriate. ‘You’re a taunting, godless bitch,’ he added matter-of-factly, still in that notable accent. ‘A whore, an exhibitionist slut, a prick-teasing slag …’

‘And a police officer,’ she said, pointing her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 straight at his face. ‘Move one muscle, you bastard … open that filthy yap of yours one more time, and I’ll put a bullet straight through your fucking skull!’

The expression on his face was priceless. At least it probably would have been, had she been able to see it. As it was, she had to be content with his sudden almost-comical paralysis, the whites of his eyes widening in cartoon fashion around his soulless black pupils, his gammy mouth sagging open between zippered lips.

‘Yeah … that’s right,’ she said, thumbing back the pistol’s hammer. ‘The fun’s over. Now drop that sodding blade.’

Of course, it couldn’t be over in reality, and her heart pounded harder in her chest as this slowly dawned on her. He couldn’t let it end like this – so abruptly, so unexpectedly; or in this fashion: trapped like a rabbit by one of the frail, sexual creatures he so brutally despised. Warily, she transferred the .38 from her right hand to her left, keeping it levelled at him as she lay there. With her empty right hand, she again reached into the footwell. Her radio was down there somewhere, but she was damned if she could find it. All the time, he sat motionless, nailing her with that semi-human gaze, strands of spittle hanging over his leather-covered jaw. And now she saw his mouth slowly closing, those discoloured teeth clamping together in a final, hate-filled grimace. He wasn’t frozen with shock anymore, she realised; he was taut with tension – like a spring set to uncoil.

‘Don’t you do it!’ she warned, but it was too late; he arched down with the tin-opener, intent on ripping her wide apart with its wicked, hooked point.

BANG!

The slug took him in the left side of his upper chest, just beneath the collar bone, flinging him backward out of the car and down onto the tarmac, where he lay silently twisting alongside the prone form of Detective Constable Maxwell.

She found the radio and slammed it to her lips as she threw herself forward through the cordite. ‘All units, this is DC Piper! Converge on Halfpenny Reservoir! Repeat, converge on Halfpenny Reservoir …’

Her words tailed off as a stocky figure rose to its feet outside. For a half-second she tried to kid herself that this was Maxwell, though she knew it couldn’t be. The DC’s head had struck the tarmac with a hell of a whack.

Without a word, the figure swayed around and blundered across the car park.

‘Repeat, this is DC Piper! Decoy unit Alpha. One shot fired. Suspect suffering a chest wound, but on foot and mobile.’

There was a scrabble of static-ridden responses, but even as Piper watched, the lumbering form of the Stranger scrambled over the car park’s low perimeter wall, the dark blot of his outline swiftly ascending through the furze on the other side. He was hurt badly; that was clear – he lurched from side to side, but kept going in a more or less straight line, uphill and away from her.

‘Suspect heading west … away from the reservoir, over open ground,’ she added, clattering onto the tarmac in her tall, strappy shoes. ‘We need an ambulance too.’ She dropped to one knee to check the carotid at the side of Maxwell’s neck. ‘DC Maxwell is severely injured … he’s received a massive shock from some kind of stun-gun and what looks like a head trauma. Currently in a collapsed state, but breathing, and his pulse feels regular. Get that ambulance here, pronto! In the meantime, I’m pursuing the suspect, over.’

She hurried across the car park, but once she was over the wall into the furze, her heels sank like knife-blades in the soft earth. She kicked the shoes off as she ran, flinching as twigs and sharp-edged stones spiked the soles of her feet, and thorns and thistles raked her naked legs. Very briefly, the Stranger appeared above her as a lopsided silhouette on the night sky. But then he was gone again, over the ridge.

‘Get me that back-up now!’ she shouted into her radio.

‘Gemma, you need to hold back,’ came a semi-coherent response. ‘DSU Anderson’s orders! Wait for support units, over!’

‘Negative, that!’ she replied firmly. ‘Not when we’re this close.’

She too crested the ridge. The starlit moor unrolled itself: a sweeping georama of grass and boulders, obscured by patches of low-lying mist but rising distantly to soaring, tor-crowned summits. On lower ground now, but a hundred yards ahead of her at least, a dark blot was struggling onward.

The ground sloped steeply as she gave chase, ploughing downhill through soft, springy vegetation, shouting that he was under arrest; that he should give it up.

Perspectives were all askew, of course, so she wasn’t quite sure where she lost sight of him. Though he wasn’t a vast distance ahead, curtains of mist seemed suddenly to close around him. When she reached that point herself – now hobbling, both feet bruised and bleeding – she found she was on much softer ground, plodding through ankle-deep mud. He ought to have left a recognisable trail, but it was too dark to see and she had no light with which to get down and make a fingertip search.

Further terse orders came crackling over the airwaves.

Again, she ignored them. It occurred to her that maybe the suspect was wearing a vest and therefore not as badly injured as she’d thought. But if that was the case, why had he fled … why not use the advantage to go straight on the attack, ripping and mauling her in the car? No – she’d wounded him; she’d seen the pain in his posture. If nothing else, that meant there’d be blood.

Unless rain came before the forensics teams did.

‘We need the lab-rats up here ASAP!’ she shouted, cutting across the frantic exchanges of her colleagues. ‘At least we’ll have his DNA …’

There was a choked scream from somewhere ahead.

She slowed to a near-halt. Fleetingly, she couldn’t see anything; liquid mist, the colour of purulent milk, drifted on all sides. But had that cry been for real? Was he finally succumbing to his wound? Or was he trying to lure her?

There was another scream, this one accompanied by a strangled gurgling.

She now halted completely.

This was Dartmoor. A National Park. A green and hazy paradise. Picturesque, famous for its pristine flora and fauna. And notorious for its bottomless mires. The third scream dwindled to a series of choked gasps, and now she heard a loud sploshing too, like a heavy body plunging through slime.

‘Update,’ she said into her radio, advancing warily. ‘I’m perhaps three hundred yards west of the reservoir parking area, over the top of the ridge. Suspect appears to be in trouble. I can’t see him, but it’s possible he’s blundered into a mire.’

There was further insistence that she stop and wait for back-up. Again she ignored this, but only advanced five or six yards before she found herself teetering on the brink of an opaque, black/green morass, its mirror-flat surface stretching in all directions as the mist seemed to furl away across it. She strained her eyes, but nothing stirred out there; not so much as a ripple, let alone the distinctive outline of a man fighting to keep his head above the surface.

There was no sound either, which was worrying. Dartmoor’s mires could suck you down with frightful speed. Their bowels were stuffed with sheep and pony carcasses, not to mention the odd missing hiker or two. But all she could identify now were the twisted husks of sunken trees, their branches protruding here and there like rotted dinosaur bones.

Even Detective Constable Gemma Piper, of the Metropolitan Police – wilful, fearless and determined – now realised that caution was the better part of valour. Especially as the mist continued to clear on the strengthening wind, revealing, despite the darkness of night, how truly extensive this mire was. It lay everywhere; not just ahead of her but on both sides as well – as though she’d strayed out onto a narrow headland. It was difficult to imagine that even a local man could have lumbered this way, mortally wounded, blinded by vapour, and had somehow avoided this pitfall. And if nothing else, she now knew their suspect was not a local man – but, by origin at least, from the other end of the country.

As voices sounded behind her, torches spearing across the undulating landscape, she sank slowly and tiredly to her haunches. The delayed shock of what had nearly happened back in the Porsche was seeping through her, leaving her numb. In some ways she felt elated; she’d almost nailed the bastard … but not quite. It was like a no-score draw after a football match. It was a result of sorts, but it was difficult to estimate how much of one.

Within an hour, the Devon and Cornwall Police, with assistance from Scotland Yard, had cordoned off this entire stretch of moor, were searching it with dogs, and had even brought heavy machinery in to start dredging the mire and its various connected waterways. At the reservoir car park, the conscious but weakened form of DC Maxwell was loaded into the rear of an ambulance. Gemma Piper meanwhile sat side-saddle in the front seat of a police patrol car, sipping coffee and occasionally wincing as a medic knelt and attended to her bloodied feet and swollen face. At the same time, she briefed Detective Superintendent George Anderson.

The hard-headed young female detective, already impressive to every senior manager who’d encountered her, had just assured herself a glowing future in this most challenging and male-dominated of industries. But of the so-called Stranger, the perpetrator of thirteen loathsome torture-murders – as reported in the Dartmoor Advertiser: ‘These crimes are abhorrent, utterly loathsome!’ – there was no trace.

Nor would there be for some considerable time.

Chapter 1
Present Day

There was no real witchcraft associated with this part of the Lake District. Nor had there ever been, to Heck’s knowledge.

The name ‘Witch Cradle Tarn’ had been applied in times past purely to reflect the small mountain lake’s ominous appearance: a long, narrow, very deep body of water high in the Langdale Pikes, thirteen hundred feet above sea-level to be precise, with sheer, scree-covered cliffs on its eastern shore and mighty, wind-riven fells like Pavey Ark, Harrison Stickle and Great Castle Howe lowering to its north, west and south. It wasn’t an especially scary place in modern times. Located in a hanging valley in a relatively remote spot – official title Cragwood Vale, unofficial title ‘the Cradle’ – it was a fearsome prospect on paper, but when you actually got there, the atmosphere was more holiday than horror. Two cheery Lakeland hamlets, Cragwood Keld and Cragwood Ho, occupied its southern and northern points respectively. For much of the year the whole place teemed with climbers, hikers, fell-runners and anglers seeking the famous Witch Cradle trout, while kayakers and white-water rafters were catered for by the Cragwood Boat Club, based a mile south of Cragwood Keld, near the head of Cragwood Race; a furiously twisting river, which poured downhill through natural gullies and steep culverts before finally joining the more sedately flowing Langdale Beck.

The single pub at the heart of Cragwood Keld only added to this homely feel. A rather austere-looking building at first glance, all grey Westmorland slate on the outside, it was famous for its smoky beams and handsome oak settles, its range of cask ales, its crackling fires in winter and its pretty lakeside beer garden in summer. Its name – The Witch’s Kettle – owed itself entirely to some enterprising landlord of decades past, who hadn’t found The Drovers’ Rest to his taste, and felt the witch business a tad sexier, especially given that most visitors to the Cradle were always awe-stricken by the deep pinewoods hemming its two villages to the lakeshore, and the rubble-clad slopes and immense granite crags soaring overhead. Its inn-sign was a landmark in itself, depicting a rusty old kettle with green herbs protruding from under its lid, sitting on a stone inscribed with pagan runes. It was just possible, visitors supposed, that current landlady, Hazel Carter, might herself be a witch – but if so, she was a far cry from the bent nose and warty lip variety.

At least, that was Heck’s feeling.

He’d only been up here two and a half months, but was already certain that whatever magic Hazel wove, it was unlikely to be the sort he’d resist easily. Not that he was thinking along these lines that late November morning, as he entered The Witch’s Kettle just before eleven, made a beeline for the bar and ordered himself a pint of Buttermere Gold. It was early in the day and there were few customers yet. Only Hazel was on duty. Like Heck, she was in her late thirties, but with rich auburn hair, which she habitually wore very long. She was doe-eyed, soft-lipped, and buxom in shape, a figure enhanced by her daytime ‘uniform’ of t-shirt, cardigan and jeans.

They made close eye-contact but only uttered those words necessary for the transaction. However, as she handed him his pint and his change, the landlady inclined her head slightly to the right. Heck pocketed the cash and sipped his beer, before glancing in that direction. Beyond a low arch lay the pub’s vault, which contained a darts board and a pool table. One person was in there: a young lad, no more than sixteen, with tousled blond hair, wearing a grey sweatshirt, grey canvas trousers and white trainers. He looked once, fleetingly, in Heck’s direction as he worked his way around the pool table, ignoring him thereafter. All the youth had seen, of course, was a man about six feet in height, of average build, with unruly black hair and faint scars on his face, wearing jeans, a sweater and a rumpled anorak. But he’d probably have paid more attention had he known that Heck was actually Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg of the Cumbria Constabulary, that he was based very near here, at Cragwood Keld police office, and that he was on duty right at this moment.

To maintain his façade of recreation, Heck found a seat at an empty table, pulled a rolled-up Westmorland Gazette from his back pocket and commenced reading. He checked his watch as he turned the pages, though this was more from habit than necessity. He felt he was following a good lead today, but there was no great pressure on him. Ever since being reassigned from Scotland Yard to Cumbria as part of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ new Anti-Rural Crime Initiative, Heck had been well-placed to work hours of his own choosing and at his own pace. Ultimately of course, he was answerable to South Cumbria Crime Command, and in the first instance to the CID office down at Windermere police station; he was only a sergeant, when all was said and done. But as the only CID officer in the Langdales – the only CID officer in twenty square miles in fact – he was out here on his own as far as many colleagues were concerned: ‘Hey pal, you’re the man on the spot,’ as they’d say. There were advantages to this, without doubt. But it was never a nice feeling that reinforcements were always a good forty minutes away.

Heck’s thoughts were distracted as two other people came down the stairs into the taproom. It was a man and a woman, the former in his mid-thirties, the latter in her mid-twenties, both carrying bulging backpacks. The woman had short, mouse-brown hair, and wore a red cagoule, blue cord trousers and walking boots. The man was tall and thin, with short fair hair. He too wore cord trousers and walking boots, but his blue cagoule was draped over his narrow, t-shirted shoulders. Neither of them looked threatening or in any way unwholesome; in fact they were smiling and chattering brightly. At the foot of the stair, they separated, the man heading to the bar, where he told Hazel he’d like to ‘settle up’. The woman turned into the vault and spoke to the youth, who pocketed his last ball and grabbed up a backpack of his own.

The trio left the pub together, still talking animatedly – a family enjoying their holiday. As the door swung closed behind them, Heck glanced over the top of his newspaper at Hazel, who nodded. Leaping to his feet, he crossed the room to the car park window, and watched as the trio approached a metallic-green Hyundai Accent. He’d been informed by Hazel beforehand that this was the vehicle they’d arrived in two weeks ago, and had already run a check on the Police National Computer, to discover that its registration number – V513 HNV – actually belonged to a black Volvo estate supposedly sold to a scrap merchant in Grimsby nine months earlier. Without a backward glance, they piled into the Hyundai and pulled out of the car park, heading south out of the village.

Heck hurried outside – it was only noon, but it was a grey day and there was already a deep chill. Thanks to the season, the village was quieter than usual. Beyond the pines, the upward-sweeping moors were bare, brown and stubbled with autumn bracken.

Heck climbed into his white Citroën DS4, starting the engine and hitting the heater switch, but resisted the temptation to jump straight onto the suspects’ tail. At this time of year, with traffic more scarce than usual, it would be easy to get spotted. Besides, there was only one way you could enter or leave the Cradle – via the aptly named Cragwood Road, a perilously narrow single-lane which wound downhill over steep, rock-strewn slopes for several hundred feet, sometimes tilting to a gradient of one in three – so it wasn’t like the suspects could turn off anywhere, or even drive away at high speed. Of course, once the trio had descended into Great Langdale, the vast glacial valley at the epicentre of this district, it was another matter. So Heck couldn’t afford to hang back too far.

As such, he gave them a thirty-second start.

It was about three miles from the village to the commencement of the descent, and Heck didn’t see a single soul as he traversed it, nor another car, which was comforting – though it was useful to be able to hide among normal vehicles, an open road was reassuring in the event you might need to chase. As he began his descent, he initially couldn’t see his target, but he refused to panic. The blacktop meandered wildly on its downward route, arcing around perilous bends and through clumps of shadowy pine. But when he finally did sight the Hyundai, it had got further ahead than he’d expected. It was diminutive; no more than a glinting green toy.

Heck accelerated, veering dangerously as the road dropped, taking curves with increasingly reckless abandon. He tried his radio, but received only dead-air responses. There was minimal reception in the Cradle, the encompassing cliffs interfering so drastically with signals that most communications from Cragwood Keld nick had to be made via landline. But it would improve as he descended into Langdale. In anticipation of this, he was already tuned to a talk-through channel.

‘Heckenburg to 1416, over?’ he repeated.

He’d descended to six hundred feet before he gleaned a response.

‘1416 receiving. Go ahead, sarge.’ The voice was shrill, with an Irish brogue.

‘Suspects on the move, M-E … heading down Cragwood Road towards the B5343. Where are you, over?’

M-E, or PC 1416 Mary-Ellen O’Rourke, Cragwood Keld nick’s only uniformed officer – she was actually resident there, bunking in the flat above the office – took a second or two to respond. ‘Heading up Little Langdale from Skelwith Bridge, sarge. They still in that green Hyundai, over?’

‘Affirmative. Still showing the dodgy VRM. I’ll give you a shout soon as I know which way they’re headed, over?’

‘Roger that.’

As Heck now descended towards the junction with the B5343, he had a clear vision both west and east along Great Langdale. This was a vastly more expansive valley than Cragwood Vale, its head encircled by some of Cumbria’s most impressive fells; not just the craggy-topped Langdale Pikes, but Great Knott, Crinkle Crags, Bowfell and Long Top – their barren upper reaches ascending to dizzying heights. By contrast, its floor was flat and fertile, and perhaps half a mile across, much of it divided by dry-stone walls and given to cattle grazing. Down its centre, in a west to east direction, flowed Langdale Beck, a broad, rocky river, normally shallow but running deep at present after a spectacularly soggy October and November. A hundred yards ahead meanwhile, at the end of Cragwood Road, the Hyundai passed onto the B5343 without stopping, following the larger route as it swung sharply south, crossing the river by a narrow bridge. Still hoping to avoid detection, Heck dallied at the junction, watching the Hyundai shrink as it ascended the higher ground on the far side.

‘Heckenburg to 1416?’

‘Receiving, sarge … go ahead.’

‘Suspect vehicle heading south along the upper section of the B5343.’ He glanced at his sat-nav. ‘That means they’re coming your way, M-E.’

‘Affirmative, sarge. I’m headed in that direction now. You want me to intercept?’

‘Negative … we haven’t got enough on them yet.’

There was only one patrol vehicle attached permanently to Cragwood Keld police station: the powerful Land Rover Mary-Ellen was currently driving. Decked in vivid yellow-and-turquoise Battenburg, it was purposely designed to be noticeable on these bleak uplands; it even had a special insignia on its roof so air support could home in on it – but that was less useful on occasions like this, with stealth the order of the day.

‘M-E … proceed to Little Langdale village, and park up,’ Heck said. ‘That way, if they reach your position and we still don’t want to pull them, you can get out of sight.’

‘Wilco,’ she replied.

Heck hit the gas as he accelerated onto the B5343 and followed it across the valley bottom, taking the bridge over the beck. The Hyundai was still in sight, but high up now and far away; a green matchbox car. Shortly, it would dwindle from view altogether. Heck floored the pedal, the dry-stone walls enclosing the paddocks falling behind, to be replaced by swathes of tough, tussocky grass, which sloped steeply upward ahead of him. The fleecy white/grey blobs of Herdwick sheep were dotted all over the valley’s eastern sides, several wandering across the road as he accelerated, scattering and bleating in response. Officially, the B5343 no longer bore that title at this point – it was now significantly less than a B-road, but it never rose as high as Cragwood Road, and in fact levelled out at around seven hundred feet. Once again, it banked and swung, though Heck kept his foot down, managing to close the distance between himself and the Hyundai to about four hundred yards.

The ground on the right had now dropped away into a deep, tree-filled ravine, through the middle of which a smaller beck tumbled noisily, draining excess water from Blea Tarn, the next lake on this route, located about five miles ahead. Before that, approaching on the right, there was another pub, The Three Ravens. In appearance, this was more like a Lakeland cottage, low and squat, built from whitewashed stone. Despite its dramatic perch on the very edge of the ravine, a small car park was attached to one side of it, though only one vehicle was visible there at present: a maroon BMW Coupe.

Heck glanced at his watch – it was lunchtime. This was the time of day the bastards usually pounced. His gaze flitted back to the Hyundai, the tail-lights of which glowed red, its indicator flashing as it veered right into The Three Ravens car park, pulling up almost flush against the pub wall.

Heck smiled to himself. They’d sussed this spot out previously, and knew where the outdoor CCTV was unlikely to catch them.

‘Heckenburg to 1416, over?’

The response was semi-audible owing to the higher ground, filtered through noisy static. ‘Go ahead, sarge.’

‘We’re on, M-E. Suspects have called at The Three Ravens pub, overlooking Blea Tarn ghyll. If I’m right, they’re going to hit their next target somewhere between here and the tarn. It’s perfect for them. Five miles of the remotest stretch of road in the Langdales. In fact, I think it’s a must-hit. They won’t want to chance it after that … too many cottages.’

‘Received, sarge. How do you want to play it, over?’

‘Bring your Land Rover up the B5343. Wait on Blea Tarn car park. But tuck yourself out of the way in case they carry on past, over.’

‘Roger, received.’

Heck proceeded past The Three Ravens car park, catching sight of the lad from the Hyundai loitering about, now with his sweatshirt hood drawn up, while the two adults entered the pub, no doubt to size up any potential opposition. Mindful of indoor CCTV, the girl had affected a blonde, shoulder-length wig, while the man had donned a woolly hat with what looked like ginger hair extensions around its rim. Heck could have laughed out loud, except that unsophisticated precautions like these often hugely aided criminals. Though not on this occasion, if he could just get his timings right. Feeling that old tingle of excitement – something in distinct short supply these last two and a half months – he scanned the roadside verges for a lying-up point. A couple of hundred yards further on, he spied a break in the dry-stone wall on his left, a farm track leading through it and dropping out of sight into a hollow. Heck swung through and swerved down the stony lane, only halting among a thicket of alder, where he threw his Citroën into reverse, made a three-point turn and edged back uphill, halting some forty yards short of the gate. Jumping out, he climbed the rest of the track on foot, dropping to a crouch behind the right-hand gatepost and watching the road.

He wasn’t sure how long this thing would take. If his suppositions were correct, the first thing this crew would do was establish whether or not their potential target was likely to be easy: an elderly couple or someone travelling alone would be preferable. Under normal circumstances they’d then ascertain which car in the car park belonged to said party. This was more simply done than the average member of the public might imagine, especially at a time of year when there were fewer cars to choose from. Maps and luggage, for example, would indicate visitors rather than locals; an absence of toys would suggest older travellers, which in its turn might be confirmed by evidence of medication or a choice of music or reading material – it was amazing what you could learn from the books and CDs that routinely littered footwells. In this case of course it would be even easier than usual – there was only one car. After that, it was a straightforward matter of disabling the car in question – previously this had been done by inflicting small punctures on the tyres with an air pistol – and following until it pulled up by the roadside.

A low rumble indicated the approach of a vehicle. Heck squatted lower. A soft-topped Volkswagen Sport roared past, leaves swirling in its wake. It was running smoothly, with no sign that it was suffering any kind of damage.

Heck relaxed again, ruminating for another fifteen minutes, reminding himself that patience and caution weren’t just virtues in this kind of work, they were essential. So much of the success enjoyed by professional criminals was down to the fear they created with their efficiency – the way they came and went like ghosts, the way they knew exactly who to victimise, exactly where to find such easy prey, exactly when to catch it at its most vulnerable. It bewildered and terrified the average man and woman; it was as though the felons possessed supernatural instincts. Yet in reality it owed to little more than thorough preparation and a bit of basic cunning, and in the case of distraction-thieves like this particular crew, a quick glance through the windows of a few parked cars. In some ways, that was impressive – you couldn’t fail to admire someone who was so good at what they did, even something as callous as this – but it didn’t make them the Cosa Nostra.

The radio crackled in his jacket pocket. ‘1416 to DS Heckenburg?’

‘Go ahead, M-E,’ he replied.

‘In position now, sarge.’

‘Stay sharp, over.’

‘Roger that.’

Another vehicle was approaching, this time minus the low, steady hum of a healthy engine. Instead, Heck heard a repeating metallic rattle – as if something was broken. He tensed as he lowered himself. Two seconds later, the BMW Coupe from The Three Ravens car park chugged past, its driver as yet unaware he had two slow-punctures on his nearside. Unaware now maybe, though not for long.

Heck tensed again, waiting. The thieves wouldn’t have dashed straight out of the pub in pursuit of the BMW’s occupants – that might have attracted attention – but they wouldn’t want to let them get too far ahead either. And right on cue, only half a minute later, the Hyundai itself came slowly in pursuit.

Heck dashed back to his Citroën, gunned it up the track to the main road and swung left. It was only a matter of distance now. With a single deflating tyre, it was possible an innocent motorist would keep driving, failing to notice, but with two, that was highly unlikely. Around the next bend, the road spooled out clearly for about two hundred yards, at the far end of which Heck saw the BMW wallowing to a halt beneath a twisted ash. The Hyundai prowling after it hadn’t reached that point yet, but was already decelerating.

Heck hit the brakes too, swinging his Citroën hard up onto the nearside verge so that it was out of sight. He jumped out, vaulted over the wall, and scrambled forward along undulating pasture, staying parallel to the road but keeping as low as he could.

This was the ideal spot for an ambush, he realised. Brown Howe was a lowering presence on the left, Pike of Blisco performing the same function on the right. Utter silence lay across the deserted, bracken-clad valley lying between them. The dull grey sky tinged everything with an air of wildness and desolation. No tents were visible, no hikers; there wasn’t even a shepherd or farm-worker in sight.

Heck advanced sixty yards or so, and moved back to the wall, where a belt of fir trees would screen him. The two cars were still visible, the Hyundai parked directly behind the BMW. Four people now stood by the vehicles’ nearside. A dumpy balding man and a thin white-haired woman, both in matching sweaters, had clearly been the occupants of the BMW. But Heck also saw the girl in the blonde wig, and the lean young man in the woolly cap, who even now was stripping off his cagoule, no doubt offering to change one of the BMW’s mangled tyres. Heck could imagine the advice he’d be giving them – mainly because the exact same spiel had been dealt to those others who’d suffered this fate in the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District.

‘A double blow-out’s a bit of a problem,’ the good samaritan would opine. ‘But if you use the spare to replace the front one, you should be able to get down to the nearest town, where a garage can fix the rear one for you.’

Wise advice, delivered in casual, friendly fashion – and all the while, the third member of the trio, the youth, who the victims wouldn’t even know was present, would be sliding unobtrusively out of the back of the Hyundai’s rear and crawling around to the target vehicle’s offside, from where he could open the passenger door and help himself to whatever jackets, coats, handbags and wallets had been dumped on the back seat. A classic distraction-theft, which even now – as Heck watched – had gone into play. The lad, still in his neutral grey clothing, snaked along the tarmac, passing the Hyundai on all fours.

Heck stayed in the field but ran forward at pace, climbing a low barbed-wire fence, and hissing into his radio. ‘Thieves on, M-E! Thieves on! Move it … fast!’

Mary-Ellen responded in the affirmative, but it was Heck who reached the scene of the crime first, zipping up his anorak as he jumped the wall and emerged on the roadside, coming around the twisted ash before anyone had even noticed.

‘Afternoon all,’ he said, strolling to the rear of the BMW, where the youth, still on hands and knees, but now with a purse, a wallet and an iPad laid on the road surface alongside him, could only gaze up, white-faced. ‘This is illegal, isn’t it?’

The elderly couple regarded Heck in bemusement, an expression that only changed when he scooped down, caught the lad under his armpit and hoisted him into view. At once the younger couple reacted; the girl backing away, wide-eyed, but the bloke turning and sprinting along the road.

He didn’t get far before Mary-Ellen’s Land Rover, blues and twos flickering, spun into view over the next rise, sliding to a side-on halt, blocking the carriageway. The thief fancied his chances when he saw the figure who emerged from it: a Cumbrian police uniform complete with hi-viz doublet, utility belt loaded with the usual appointments, cuffs, baton, PAVA spray and so forth, but with only a young woman inside it – probably younger than he was in fact, no more than twenty-three, and considerably shorter, no more than five foot five. Of course he didn’t know PC Mary-Ellen O’Rourke’s reputation for being a fitness fanatic and pocket battleship. When she crossed the road to intercept him, he tried to barge his way past, only to be taken around the legs with a flying rugby tackle, which brought him down heavily, slamming his face on the tarmac. He lay there groaning, his fake head-piece hanging off, exposing the fair hair underneath. Mary-Ellen knelt cheerfully on his back and applied the handcuffs.

‘Sorry folks,’ Heck said to the astonished elderly couple, as he marched past, driving the other two prisoners by the scruffs of their necks. ‘DS Heckenburg, Cumbrian Constabulary. We’ve been after this lot for a little while.’

‘We’ve not done nothing,’ the girl protested. ‘We were trying to help.’

‘Yeah, by lightening these good people’s load while they were on their holidays,’ Heck replied. ‘Well don’t worry, now you’re going on your holidays. At Her Majesty’s pleasure. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence … in case you were wondering, you’re getting locked up for being a set of thieving little scrotes.’

It was mid-evening when the arresting officers finally returned from Windermere police station, where they’d taken their prisoners for interview and charge. While Mary-Ellen headed to Cragwood Keld nick to sign off and close up for the day, Heck made his first port of call The Witch’s Kettle, not least because on a cold, misty autumn night like this – the chill in the air had turned icy – the warm, ruddy light pouring from its windows was very alluring. Inside, a big fire crackled in the grate, throwing orange phantasms across the olde worlde fittings.

Lucy Cutterby, Hazel’s only barmaid, was alone behind the bar, reading a paperback. ‘Hi, Heck,’ she said, as he approached.

Lucy was nineteen and worked here for bed and board only, because she was actually Hazel’s niece, taking a year out to do some hiking, climbing and sailing and to get in some additional study time before she went to university, where she hoped to take a degree in Sports Science. At present, she looked trim and athletic in grey sweats and white plimsolls, her lush tawny hair worn high. With her blue eyes, pixie nose, and rosebud lips, Lucy had been a welcome addition to the pub’s staff. Hazel assumed she’d attract men to the pub in droves, but on a night like this they’d be lucky to attract anyone. At present only a handful of customers was present: Ted Haveloc, a retired Forestry Commission worker, who now worked on everyone’s gardens; and Burt and Mandy Fillingham, who ran the post office which also doubled as the village corner shop.

Lucy nipped upstairs to get her aunt, who trotted down a few minutes later. ‘And?’ Hazel asked, looking vaguely uneasy.

Heck shrugged off his anorak and pulled up a stool. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘You arrested them?’ She looked surprised, but still perhaps a little shaky. Hazel was every inch a local lass – she was well-travelled but had never actually lived outside the Lake District, as her soft Cumbrian accent attested – and the thought of serious crime visiting this peaceful quarter was something she evidently wasn’t getting her head around easily.

‘All three of them,’ Heck confirmed. ‘Caught ’em in the act.’

She served him his usual pint of Buttermere Gold. ‘So what was it all about? Or aren’t you allowed to tell me?’

‘Suppose you’ve a right to know, given the help you’ve provided. Several times in the last fortnight, tourists up here have been waylaid by distraction-thieves. It happened in Borrowdale, near Ullswater and down in Grizedale Forest. The usual form was the visitors stopped for lunch somewhere, but no sooner had they got back on the road than they had to pull over with a couple of flat tyres. A few minutes later, a young bloke and his girlfriend would conveniently stop to assist. Once these two had driven off again, the tourists found valuables missing from their vehicles.’

Hazel looked fascinated, and now maybe a little relieved that the crimes in question weren’t anything more violent. ‘I’ve heard about that on the Continent.’

‘Well … it if works in France and Spain, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work here. Especially in rural areas. All we knew was that the suspects were driving either a green or blue motor, which might have been a Hyundai. The victims were never totally sure, and we only got rough glimpses of it on car park security footage … on top of that we only ever had partial VRM numbers, and they never seemed to marry up. You won’t be surprised to learn that after we arrested this lot, we found dozens of different plates in the boot, which they changed around regularly.’

‘So this was like their full-time job?’

‘Their career. The way they made their living. Anyway …’ He sipped at his beer. ‘As the crime spree only seemed to start around here two weeks ago, I made a few enquiries with other forces covering tourist spots – and I got several similar reports. A young male and female distraction team targeting motorists out in the sticks. It was always the same pattern. The boy offered to help with the tyre change, while the girl stood around chatting. In no case did the spree last more than two weeks.’

‘They only booked in here for two weeks,’ Hazel said.

‘They never outstay their welcome. The upshot was I canvassed all the hotels and bed and breakfasts.’

‘And that worked?’ She looked sceptical. ‘I mean, even in the off-season there are thousands of young couples who come up to the Lakes.’

‘Yeah, but not so many who’ve got a gooseberry in tow.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘You may recall … I didn’t ask you if there were any adult couples staying here. I asked if there were any adult trios.’

‘Ohhh.’ Now Hazel looked impressed. ‘Who’s a clever boy?’

‘It struck me there’d have to be a third thief, someone concealed in the Hyundai. He would do the actual stealing while the others put on their show.’

‘And one such trio was staying here,’ she said. ‘And they even drove a Hyundai.’

‘And the rest is history.’ He smiled. ‘Mind you, I’m not saying we didn’t get lucky that they happened to be rooming right here.’

Hazel continued mopping the bar. ‘So long as they’re gone. I mean I hope they haven’t left anything behind … I wouldn’t want them coming back.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that. Quite a few forces want to talk to them. They’ll be in custody a good while yet.’

Realising he hadn’t paid for his pint, he pushed some money across the bar-top, but she pushed it back. ‘On me. For a job well done. I’ll tell you what … I’d never have had them pegged for criminals. Bit of a curious mix, I suppose … mid-thirties, mid-twenties and a teen, but they didn’t seem rough.’

‘Successful crooks are rarely dumb. You want to infiltrate quiet communities, it doesn’t make any sense to ride in like a bunch of cowboys. Not in this day and age.’

‘Makes you realise how vulnerable we are up here, though.’

‘Nahhh,’ came a brash Irish voice. Mary-Ellen had materialised alongside them, now in a black tracksuit with ‘Metropolitan Police’ stencilled across the back in white. She leapt athletically onto the bar stool next to Heck. She was toothy but pretty, with fierce green eyes and short, spiky black hair. A champion swimmer, fell-walker and rock-climber, she radiated energy and enthusiasm – even now, at the end of a long, tough shift. ‘You’ve got us two, haven’t you?’ she chirped. ‘We’re a match for anyone.’

‘And here’s the other girl of the moment,’ Heck said. ‘Wouldn’t have been able to do it without her, either.’

‘What’ll you have, M-E?’ Hazel asked.

Mary-Ellen gazed at Heck with mock astonishment. ‘You buying, sarge?’

‘I’m buying,’ Hazel said. ‘You two have taken some nasty people off the streets today. Our streets. And with the bad weather due, they could have been stuck around here for God knows how long. Who knows, we could have been murdered in our beds.’

‘Don’t think they were quite that nasty,’ Mary-Ellen replied with her trademark rasping chuckle. ‘But I’ll have a lager, cheers. I’ll tell you what … felt good getting our hands on some proper villains for a change, eh?’

‘Too true,’ Heck said, peeling away from the bar and heading to the Gents. ‘Excuse me, ladies … too sodding true.’

Neither of the women chose to comment on that parting shot.

Mary-Ellen was a newcomer to the Lake District herself, having transferred up only a couple of months ago from the Met, just half a month after Heck in fact. But despite spending her last four years in Britain’s largest urban police force, she had worked exclusively in Richmond-upon-Thames, a well-heeled area with relatively low crime rates, and lacked Heck’s experience of inner-city policing and major investigations. But given that the most serious crimes they tended to have to deal with up here involved low-level drug dealing, thefts from gardens, and the occasional drunken incidents in pubs – she could understand how he might be feeling a little restless. He’d taken to this distraction-thefts enquiry giddily, like a kid in a toy shop, and had almost seemed disappointed they’d closed the suspects down so quickly. Of course, from Hazel’s perspective, the whole thing had been fascinating but also a little unnerving – not just because it had revealed the presence of real criminals, but because it had allowed her a first glimpse of Heck’s edgier, more adversarial character. In the real world, the handsome, homely landlady – newly divorced, thanks to her beer-bloated rat of a husband running off with one of his barmaids two years ago – should be the apple of every single bloke’s eye. The problem was that there weren’t that many single blokes in the Cradle. As such, it was perhaps no surprise Hazel and Heck had gravitated towards each other. But Mary-Ellen couldn’t help wondering how long it could last.

Not that it was very clear to anyone, Heck included, what he and Hazel’s actual relationship was.

Heck himself pondered this as he stood washing his hands in the bathroom. It had occurred by increments, if he was honest. With near-reluctance, as though both parties were trying to avoid being hurt, or perhaps trying to avoid hurting each other. But the mutual attraction had steadily grown: the furtive looks they’d exchanged, the occasional touching of hands, Heck finding himself perched comfortably at the end of the bar where the till and telephone sat, a position of familiarity that wouldn’t normally be reserved for everyday customers. Despite all that, there were some confidences he wasn’t yet prepared to share with Hazel – primarily a concern that he was wasting himself out here in the boondocks. Partly this was through fear. Hazel was so proud of this small, successful business she ran. She adored her tranquil life in Cragwood Keld, this ‘haven in the mountains’ as she called it. The idea of moving anywhere else was hardly likely to appeal to her. In that respect, Heck’s increasing boredom with his current post was a subject he never gave voice to.

‘Will I have to give evidence?’ Hazel asked when he returned to the bar.

Heck pondered. ‘Shouldn’t think so. I mean, there’s nothing they could cross-examine you on. I enquired if you knew anyone matching a certain description. You did and gave me a statement. After that, you had no further involvement. In any case, they’ve already coughed to the distraction-thefts up here in the Lakes, so the chances are that part of the case won’t go to trial.’

‘I may need that from you in writing if I’m not going to worry about it,’ she said, moving away to serve Burt Fillingham.

‘So what do we think?’ Mary-Ellen asked Heck. ‘Good day?’

‘Very good day.’

‘Hazel’s right about the weather. Forecast’s terrible. Freezing fog up here tonight and tomorrow. Maybe even longer. Visibility down to a few feet.’

‘Great. Life’ll be even quieter.’

‘Hey …’ She elbowed him. ‘A few detectives I know’d be glad of that. Catch up on some paperwork.’

‘To catch up on paperwork, M-E, you first have to generate it.’

She regarded him appraisingly. As a rule, Heck didn’t get morose. But he was leaning towards glum at present. ‘Heck, didn’t you volunteer for this Lake District gig?’

‘Yeah … sort of.’ He waved it away. ‘Sorry … quiet is good. Course it is. Means low levels of crime, people sleeping safe in their beds. How can I complain?’

She chugged on her lager. ‘It won’t be cakes and ale. There’ll be accidents. People’ll get lost, get hurt … there’s always some bellend who’ll come up here alone, whatever the weather man says.’

Heck pondered this. It was true – the fells were no place for inexperienced hikers, especially in bad weather. And yet all winter the amateurs would try their hands, necessitating regular and risky turn-outs for the emergency services. If this coming winter turned particularly nasty, the Cradle itself could face problems. With only Cragwood Road connecting it to the outside world, snow, sleet and even heavy rain had the potential to cut them off. The predicted fog would be even more of a nuisance as it might prevent the Mountain Rescue services deploying their helicopter.

‘I think I can safely say,’ Heck concluded, ‘that even I would rather be tucked up warm in bed than dealing with that lot.’

‘I’m sure that’ll be an option,’ Mary-Ellen said, as Hazel came back along the bar.

‘Looks like there won’t be much custom in here for the next few days,’ Hazel commented.

‘Just what we were saying,’ Mary-Ellen said, drinking up. ‘Anyway, I’m off. Thanks for the beer.’

‘Bit early …?’ Heck said.

‘True Detective’s on satellite again tonight. Missed it the first time round.’ She sauntered out of the pub. ‘See you later.’

‘True Detective …?’ Hazel mused. ‘Isn’t that the one where they were after some kind of satanic killer?’

‘Seem to recall it was,’ Heck replied.

She mopped the bar-top. ‘Not the kind of thing we get up at Witch Cradle … despite the name.’

‘So I’ve noticed.’

‘These sneaky buggers pinching people’s handbags and wallets are about the toughest we’re used to up here.’

‘Let’s hope it stays that way.’

She gave him a half-smile. ‘Yeah … course you do.’

‘Hey, I may surprise you.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m adaptable. The quiet life has its attractions.’

‘Such as?’

He shrugged. ‘We’re all adults. It’s not like we can’t find ways to fill these long, uneventful hours.’

Hazel smiled again, saucily, as she pulled Ted Haveloc a pint.

Outside meanwhile, a front of semi-frozen air forged its way across the mountains and valleys of northwest England, sliding under the milder upper air and gradually forming a dense blanket of leprous-grey fog which, in a region already famous for having very few streetlamps, reduced visibility to virtually nothing. The scattered towns and villages were shrouded. Cragwood Keld – a hamlet of only fifteen buildings – was swamped; one house couldn’t see another. And of course it was cold, so terribly cold, with billions of frigid water crystals suspended in the gloom; every twig, every tuft of withered vegetation sprouting feathers of frost. By eleven o’clock, as the last few house-lights winked out and the full blackness of night took hold, the polar silence was ethereal, the stillness unearthly.

Nothing stirred out there.

These were foul conditions, they’d say.

It was a foul night all round.

The foulest really.

Abhorrent.

Loathsome.

Chapter 2

‘We just have to get to lower ground,’ Tara said tiredly. ‘Then we can flag a car down or something.’

‘I agree that’s the obvious solution,’ Jane replied, vexed, ‘but don’t keep saying it over and over, as if it’ll be some kind of doddle and that it’s somehow stupid of us to not have done it already. For the last three hours, the only way to get to lower ground has been over precipices or down vertical drops.’

Tara made no initial response, mainly through guilt.

It had been her idea to finish their week-long camping trip by taking a well-trodden hilltop path from Borrowdale, over High Raise and Great Castle Howe, and down into Great Langdale. On paper it had all looked so straightforward; in fact easier than that, and probably very rewarding. After a difficult week, it had felt as if she was plucking victory from the jaws of defeat. The campsite at Watendlath hadn’t been all they’d hoped for, primarily because it was late November and the tourist season was long over. A few other hardy campers were present – hardier than Tara and Jane, it had to be said – but the site was largely empty, and its facilities operating at a reduced level; the toilets and showers were open, and that was about it. The weather conditions, while not exactly disastrous, were testing; the mornings damp and cold, the afternoons slightly drier but still cold, and the nights, freezing. On top of that, they were not experienced at this sort of thing. Their tent was old and somewhat mouldy; it was also single-skinned, which offered them zero protection against insects and condensation; they’d brought foam mats instead of truckle-beds, and their sleeping bags were old and filled with duck-down, which when it got damp stayed damp – and it had rained several times already that week; boy, had it rained.

None of this had made for a comfortable time. But worse still, they were bored. Neither Tara nor Jane classified themselves as party girls, but they were on their holidays and would have liked a drink now and then. Unfortunately, they’d used up all their spare backpack space on food supplies, and had assumed before arriving there’d be somewhere close by where they could stock up on booze once they’d got here – but there wasn’t and neither had a car, so they couldn’t just drive out. Jane had her iPad, so they could watch movies and listen to music – at least that had been the plan, but the device’s battery had died within a day and Jane had neglected to bring her charger.

As such, Tara’s sudden suggestion that they stop moping around the camp and actually get up into the wilderness – do some real walking, get some proper exercise and fresh air – had seemed like a godsend. It wouldn’t even be that difficult, she’d said, as they pored over a map on the fourth morning. Watendlath to Elter Water was not a great distance. The guidebooks described it as a ‘challenging route’, but they weren’t looking for a stroll in the park. If it took them all day, so much the better – they had nothing but time anyway. Once they reached Elter Water, they could catch a bus to Ambleside, stay overnight in a B&B, and head for home by train.

‘I mean, how difficult can it be to just check the weather forecast?’ Jane grumbled as they trudged doggedly on, their backpacks jolting their aching spines.

‘With what, Jane?’ Tara retorted. ‘The club and bar were closed, so we had no access to a telly. Our phones aren’t getting any signal up here. No one was selling newspapers on the site, and even if there’d been sufficient Wi-Fi for your iPad to be any use, the bloody thing ran out on us …’

‘Alright, alright, for Christ’s sake!’ Jane’s face reddened, and not just from the unaccustomed exertion.

On all sides, meanwhile, the midnight fog hung in impenetrable drapes. At this height and temperature it was like movie fog, a dense, grey mantle that rolled and twisted, obscuring everything. There hadn’t been any sign of this when they’d set off that morning, in broad daylight – it had been clear as a bell. But even if it had still been daylight now, only a few yards of harsh, rocky ground covered with frost-white tussocks would be visible. And of course, it wasn’t daylight; it was dark, which didn’t so much obscure the surrounding landscape as obliterate it. Naturally, they’d neglected to bring a torch. The last few occasions they’d needed light – to try to make sense of a dog-eared map, which was now next to useless anyway, as some time back they’d unconsciously veered off the flinty footway that was their prescribed route – Tara had switched her phone on, using the dull glow of its facia. She was increasingly reluctant to do this now, as she didn’t want to run its power down. It would be typical of their luck if they suddenly entered a better reception area and were able to make an emergency call, only for the battery to die.

The guidebook had predicted the journey would take six hours, meaning they’d finish well before nightfall, but they’d now been struggling along for at least twelve.

‘Look …’ Tara tried a more placating tone. ‘If we can’t find our way down to a road, we should maybe think about pitching the tent. Just camp for the night. Hopefully this fog will have lifted by morning.’

‘Newsflash, Tara … it’s perishing bloody cold!’

‘So we wrap up.’

‘Everything’s wet, you dozy mare! We’ll die from bloody hypothermia.’

Their voices echoed and re-echoed, creating the illusion they were in a chasm rather than on some open hillside. It was more than uncanny.

‘Jane, it can’t be a good idea to just keep ploughing on. We don’t know where we’re going, and this ground seems to be sloping upward.’

‘We can hardly pitch the tent when we can’t see our hands in front of our faces,’ Jane said. ‘Anyway, what if the fog hasn’t gone by tomorrow? We’re up on the fells, remember … not in some nice park a few yards from your mum and dad’s nice little middle-class house.’

‘Alright! You don’t need to be such a bitch about it.’

‘Anyway, what good is sitting tight going to do? No one’ll come looking for us, Tara, because no one fucking knows we’re here. Didn’t it ever enter that air-filled brainbox of yours to tell someone what we were planning? And I don’t mean that bloody campsite owner. I mean someone who might actually care about us, who might actually have been listening when you were talking to them. Like our fucking parents, perhaps! I mean, Jesus, how difficult can it fucking be …?’

‘Alright, I said! Christ’s sake, Jane … I’m in as much danger as you are!’

Jane muttered some incoherent, vaguely foul-mouthed response, and they trod along in silence for a few more minutes, hearing only their own grunted exertions and the hollow thuds of their feet. Fleetingly, oddly, Tara was uncomfortable with the otherwise complete silence. It was a stupid thought, of course. There was no one else up here, but why did she get the sudden feeling their latest outburst, which would likely have been heard for miles and miles on a night like this, might have drawn the attention of someone listening? Even if it had, that ought to be something they’d want – and yet there was a brief queasy sensation in her tummy.

‘Sorry about the airhead thing,’ Jane muttered self-consciously.

‘It’s alright,’ Tara said. ‘Sorry about the bitch.’

Tara Cook and Jane Dawson were able to converse like this, one minute at each other’s throats, the next offering consolation, because they were close enough to be sisters, having grown up together in Wilmslow.

Jane was now a sales assistant at Catwalk, a clothing retailer whose branded products were strictly mid-range, while Tara had a bar job but was also studying for her PhD at Manchester Met. Money was tight for the both of them and, wanting to get away for a bit, it had been Tara’s idea that they visit Cumbria.

‘Let’s just put everything on hold for a few days,’ she’d said enthusiastically. ‘Let’s go camping in the Lakes. We both love it and it will do us a world of good.’

It was true, they did both love it. As children they’d holidayed in the Lake District many times with their respective families. But on those occasions, they’d stayed at hotels, rented cottages, or bed and breakfast accommodation. More to the point, they’d travelled up here in June, July or August – not November. Even so, Jane had thought the idea a good one.

‘Let’s do it,’ she’d said.

It hadn’t been difficult arranging it, given it was the off-season, and they’d been able to sort everything out that same evening. It was going to be great, Tara said.

It scarcely felt that way now: lost, frozen and well over a thousand feet up, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the ground was indeed sloping upward again. It had been difficult enough coping with loose, ice-slippery stones, and clumps of spiky mountain grass – so much so that they hadn’t initially noticed the shallow upward incline – but now it was steepening sharply. In addition, the fog seemed to be thickening, which was hardly helped by the clouds of soapy breath billowing from their lungs. Even walking shoulder-to-shoulder, they were only aware of each other as featureless phantoms.

‘Look Tara,’ Jane said, unconsciously lowering her voice. ‘We need to get real about this. We’re in pretty serious trouble here.’

‘I know …’

And Tara did, though perhaps only now was it really dawning on her. When you were down in the Lake District’s lower country on a bright summer’s morning, taking tea and crumpets in whitewashed villages, it seemed such a benign environment. The stories you heard about people getting lost on the fells and dying from exposure surely applied to another time and another place.

And yet suddenly, bewilderingly, that time was now and that place was here.

The oft-quoted phrase, ‘how did we get into this mess’, occurred to her with shocking force. It felt as if they’d led themselves blindfolded, for several hours, to this apparent point of no return.

‘Well if we’re not going to camp, we have to keep moving,’ Tara said, doing her best to stay upbeat. ‘That’ll help us stay warm.’

‘And will wear us down,’ Jane argued, seemingly unaware she was contradicting her own position of a few minutes earlier. ‘Reduce our ability to resist the cold. I can barely feel my hands and feet as it is.’

Tara knew what she meant. It was just before twelve o’clock now, but the temperature would continue to drop until well into the early hours.

‘Can’t feel our hands and feet, can’t see our hands and feet more like,’ she mused. ‘We’re disappearing by inches.’

‘Not funny, Tara, Jesus!’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘At least the slope’s levelling off.’

Thankfully, the gradient had flattened out again, and a second later they walked into a dry-stone wall. It came to roughly chest-height on Tara, higher still on Jane, and yet the fog was so impenetrable they blundered into it with enough force to induce pain and surprise. Tara switched her phone on. It created a minor capsule of dim aquamarine light around them, and shimmered over the smooth, neatly stacked stones. The wall led away to left and right, quickly vanishing.

Tara switched the light off again, plunging them back into darkness.

The wall wouldn’t be difficult to scale, though both of them were aching and bone-weary, but at least it was a solid fixture, and it broke the surreal monotony of this place – not that it was something to actually be reassured by. Hundreds of miles of dry-stone walls snaked across the Lake District National Park, through the lower valleys, up the teetering fell-sides, across the desolate tops of ridges and plateaux. Sure, it was a sign that civilisation wasn’t too far away – as the crow flew, or if you were on horseback. Not so much if you were a tired, and increasingly cold and disoriented foot-slogger.

‘So do we climb over it and keep going?’ Tara wondered.

‘Why?’ Jane asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why climb over it? Why not follow it?’

‘It won’t lead to a farmhouse, or anything like that.’

‘At least we’ll know we aren’t walking in fucking circles.’

‘Jane …’ Tara tried to remain patient. It served no purpose to stand here sniping at each other in the murk. ‘Look … people don’t walk around in circles, okay? Not in real life. That only happens in the movies.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ … we’re lost in the middle of nowhere, and you’re giving me Halliwell’s fucking Film Guide.’

‘Jane, come on …’

‘I’ve got a film for you, Tara. The Shining. Remember that … when he got lost, and in the morning he was dead, covered in ice?’

‘That was up in the mountains.’

‘We’re in the fucking mountains!’

‘Not in Colorado.’

‘Look, Tara … below zero is below zero, whether it speaks with a Yank accent or Cumbrian.’

‘Jane, panicking won’t help.’

‘I’ll tell you what … let’s get over this blessed wall. We have to do something soon, or I’m going to smack you one.’

Jane’s voice had taken on a new, shrill intensity. Tara imagined that, were she to switch her phone on again, she’d see eyes like polished marbles straining from her friend’s long, boyish face; the skin stretched like shiny parchment over those unattractive, hard-angled bones.

That was when they heard the whistling.

Or rather, Tara heard it.

‘Wait, shhh!’ she said, fumbling at Jane’s arm.

‘Don’t shush me, Tara!’

‘No, listen.’

Because she was in such a state that she’d grab at any straw, no matter how slender, Jane allowed her friend to speak. But of course, she heard nothing herself.

‘Yeah, great … the silence that signifies impending doom.’

‘No, I heard something.’

‘What?’

‘Listen!’

They fell quiet again, and now indeed there was something – a tune of some sort. At first it was very faint, as though being carried on the breeze. Except that there was no breeze. And the longer they listened, the clearer it became. Incredible though it seemed, someone relatively close by was whistling. Both of them recognised the tune, though neither could initially put a name to it, and now they were too excited to try.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Jane said. ‘Where’s it coming from?’

‘Over there, I think.’ Tara indicated the other side of the wall.

‘Hello!’ Jane shouted at the top of her voice. ‘Hello, is someone there?’

‘Jane, don’t,’ Tara said.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t … nothing. It’s just silly.’ The misgivings Tara had briefly felt, about how vulnerable they were trekking through this endless gloom, had returned; suddenly, pinpointing their exact location seemed like a bad idea. But surely that was folly – a fear born of some ancient animal instinct, whereas logic advised that if there was someone out there, they should draw attention to themselves as soon as possible. ‘I just thought …’

‘Shhh!’ Now it was Jane’s turn to hit her friend’s arm. Whoever the whistler was, he was persisting with it. He sounded closer, and yes, it did seem as if he was somewhere on the other side of the wall.

‘Hello!’ Jane shouted again, attempting to scramble up the bricks, which wasn’t easy with feet numb inside frozen boots. Tara switched her phone back on, so they could identify hand and footholds. Jane reached the top of the wall first, and straddled it. ‘Excuse me, we’re lost! Can you help us?’

The whistling ceased.

‘He’s heard us,’ she said.

‘Hello!’ Tara called.

The only reply was another dim echo of their own voices.

Nevertheless, they were sufficiently re-energised to clamber down the other side of the wall. ‘Whoever it is, he probably can’t believe there’s someone else up here,’ Tara said, laughing with relief. ‘Excuse me … we’re over here! I’d like to tell you which direction, but …’ she laughed again, ‘I don’t know.’

The whistling recommenced. Now they were on the other side of the wall, it sounded as if it was coming from just ahead of them, but a way to the left.

‘What the hell is he still whistling for?’ Jane said. ‘Didn’t he hear us?’

‘Oh God,’ Tara replied. ‘Suppose he’s got earphones on, and he’s whistling along to a song.’

‘Oh shit. Okay … we’ll just have to find him.’ Jane started forward urgently, hoisting the straps at her shoulders with gloved thumbs.

‘Strangers in the Night,’ Tara panted.

‘What?’

‘That song he’s whistling … it’s Strangers in the Night. You know, the old Frank Sinatra number.’

Jane listened, and she too recognised the timeless ditty. ‘Yeah … what a choice of song for a place like this. Quite apt for us though, eh?’ She chuckled, though there wasn’t much humour in it. ‘Come on, Tara … we’ve got to find this guy.’

Tara also adjusted her pack, and hurried in pursuit. Again they were blundering through foggy blackness, their feet crunching on clumps of frozen grass. But the whistling was getting louder, clearer. Perhaps somewhere just ahead there’d be a campsite, maybe containing two or three climbers or fell-walkers. Their hi-tech canopies would be arranged around a small, neat fire. The guys themselves would be lean, rugged outdoor types, probably bearded, stoking the flames, eating peanuts, chocolate and other energy-enhancing foods, drinking hot coffee from a thermos flask; maybe it was laced with rum or whiskey to give it some bite.

But Jane and Tara found no such campsite.

They’d walked in what they were certain was the right direction for a good hundred yards, increasingly tired and irate again. And still the unlit reaches of fog extended on all sides of them. The whistling persisted somewhere ahead, but how far ahead they had no clue. And now, very abruptly, it ceased. Despite their own heavy breathing, the silence was ear-ringing.

‘Hello!’ Jane shouted again, with more than a touch of her normal petulance. ‘Newsflash … there are people lost out here!’

They waited but there was no response.

‘Come on, mate! You must have heard us by now!’

The whistling recommenced somewhere behind them. Strangers in the Night again. But now at a slower pace – deliberately slower, for effect.

‘Is this guy taking the piss, or what?’ Jane said, glancing backward.

‘It must be the acoustics,’ Tara replied. ‘This landscape’s really weird like that. I’ve heard stories about people hearing voices that have come from miles away.’

‘Great, Tara. That’s all I needed to know.’

‘But listen …’

‘Now what?’

‘It’s moving.’

The whistling continued – very clear, very precise, a slow and highly tuneful rendition of Strangers in the Night, but as Tara said, it was drifting from left to right, as though the whistler was strolling casually in that direction.

‘Another atmospheric effect?’ Jane wondered tartly. ‘Or some dickweed playing stupid games?’

‘Why would someone be playing games?’ Tara asked, though it was a question she was posing to herself as much as Jane.

‘Let’s just find the bastard.’

They pressed on, heading right. As they did, the whistling steadily reduced in volume, as though the whistler was retreating from them.

‘Hey, wait up!’ Jane bawled hoarsely. ‘You fucking idiot! We need help!’

‘Jane, that’s not the way you do it,’ Tara hissed.

‘Wait ’til I get hold of him, then you’ll really hear something.’

The whistling stopped. They slid to a halt.

‘Christ,’ Tara said. ‘It’s like he just heard us.’

‘Good, that’s the idea.’

‘Jane, I’m not sure about this …’

The whistling recommenced – closer than it had been, but now on their left.

‘What the hell?’ Jane said. ‘Why is he walking around us?’

‘Maybe he isn’t … maybe it’s like I said, the acoustics.’ But from the tone of her voice – a breathless quaver – Tara knew she wasn’t making a convincing case.

‘Okay,’ Jane said tersely but quietly, as if she too was suddenly unnerved by this curious behaviour. ‘Let’s go back to the wall.’

‘The wall?’

‘Put it between him and us … whoever he is.’

‘I don’t know the way back to the wall. I don’t know the way anywhere. We’ve got turned around at least two or three times now.’

‘This way.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s as good as any.’ Already walking, Jane scrunched the shoulder of her friend’s orange cagoule in a talon-like grip. Tara fell into step beside her. Fleetingly, their fatigue was forgotten. It was all about covering distance now. ‘Let’s just accept that he’s an arsehole,’ Jane said under her breath; then louder, over her shoulder: ‘You arsehole!’

‘Jane, no!’ Tara’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Look … he’s as blind as we are up here. Let’s just walk away … right away. We keep it down and he won’t even know we’ve gone.’

They strode quickly and quietly, the only sound their short, sharp breathing. They’d covered maybe a hundred yards unimpeded, their concern ebbing a little – when they head the whistling again.

No more than twenty yards to their right.

Almost on a level with them.

‘Oh shit,’ Tara whimpered.

They sped up until they were almost running, as a result of which Jane tripped, falling full length. Tara stooped and groped around for her in the murk. ‘You alright?’

‘I’m alright, for Christ’s sake! Just keep going … we have to keep moving.’

But the whistler was moving too, circling around behind them, still treating them to Strangers in the Night, though now at a raised tempo.

‘Okay, okay,’ Jane said. ‘He goes left, we go right.’

She hooked onto Tara’s cagoule again. They moved away, following a diagonal line. Both were now saturated with sweat, their lungs pumping. They again tried to move stealthily, only to find themselves on a loose, stony surface, which clattered and scraped under their soles.

‘Oh, bloody hell!’ Jane squealed.

It was scree; masses of broken rocks ramped sharply uphill in front of them.

‘This way!’ Tara said, pulling Jane in a different direction, but stones continued to crack and tumble beneath their boots, creating a racket that would carry across the night. ‘He’s stopped whistling at least. Probably lost track of us.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He can’t not know where we are with all this hullaballoo.’

‘Maybe he’s just had enough then?’

Panting hard, the blood pounding in their ears, they forged on. They were on higher ground now, the chunks of debris larger. Soon they were having to pick their way between them rather than scrambling over them, though this at least was a quieter process. In fact, colossal boulders now lay in their path, which afforded a sense of protection. They slid between them in single file, their waterproofs hissing on the rugged stone.

‘Don’t worry, this is all good,’ Tara whispered. ‘Crooked passages. He can’t come on us by surprise in one of these. We can lie low. Get down, wait a few minutes …’

‘We should press on,’ Jane said, in front, slapping her hands along the surfaces to either side.

‘Let’s at least stop, see if we can hear anything.’

They halted again, their breath furling in semi-frozen plumes. It took several seconds for the noise of this to subside, and then there were several seconds more of nothing – before they heard the whistling.

It was just above their heads.

They glanced upward.

He was only vaguely visible – an apelike silhouette crouched on top of the boulder on their left. His huge, misshapen head, almost certainly hooded, was inclined down at them. He stopped whistling half a second before he dropped. It was impossible to judge how big or heavy he was, but when he crash-landed on top of Jane, who, though stocky of build was only five feet four, she collapsed beneath him with a muffled shriek. Tara, standing rigid and helpless, didn’t quite see what happened next, though she heard it: a succession of heavy blows. She thought a brawny arm was rising and falling, and maybe that was a jagged stone clutched in its gloved hand. With each impact, Jane gave a low, tortured moan.

‘Stop … please,’ Tara stammered.

The flurries of movement ceased. With a creak of waterproofs, the muffled shape turned its heavy, brooding head towards her. She heard a thud as the stone was released, saw an arm slide out of sight, heard a distinctive click. Tara knew very little about guns, but she’d seen enough of them on the television to recognise when a firearm was being cocked.

That was the tipper. The moment the adrenaline broke her paralysis.

She twirled around, fighting back along the crooked defile into open space, and there barked her shins against low, unseen edges. She barely felt the pain; the main problem was that she fell sideways, winding herself, another sharp stone digging into her hip. From here, she scrambled along on her hands and knees, sensing rather than seeing the humanoid form emerging from the defile behind her. She knew it would be pointing the gun in her general direction. Tears streamed down her face as she jumped to her feet and started running again, blindly but desperately, putting as much distance as possible between them: ten yards, twenty, thirty, forty. Surely she was out of sight now? He couldn’t see her to shoot. Fifty yards, sixty …

Heck’s eyes flirted open.

A first he wasn’t sure what had disturbed him. Then he realised: a distant noise like a reverberating boom.

A gunshot … maybe.

He pushed the quilt aside, sat up and took his watch from the bedside table. Its neon numerals read: 00.18.

He hadn’t been asleep long. He got up, wandered across the bedroom and shifted the thin curtain. It was impossible to see anything out there. The fog was like grey sediment swirling in liquid.

‘What is it?’ Hazel asked sleepily.

‘Dunno. I thought … Did you hear something?’

‘Outside?’

‘I thought so.’

‘Like what?’

‘Not sure. Gunfire perhaps.’

She yawned. ‘That wouldn’t exactly be unusual around here.’

‘No,’ Heck conceded. He was still getting used to the idea that a much higher percentage of the population of this rural county held shotgun licences than they did back in the cities where he’d formerly worked. ‘Bit late at night though, isn’t it?’

‘Car backfiring?’

‘Perhaps.’ He hung around at the window a few moments, until a gentle susurration from the pillow indicated Hazel had gone back to sleep. Eventually, wondering if he’d dreamed it, he drifted back to bed.

Tara covered another fifty yards before she realised she’d been shot.

Initially it had been like a blow on the back of her shoulder. A hard one, of course. It had driven the wind out of her, but sheer terror kept her on her feet, kept her motoring forward. Now however, very suddenly, her strength was draining, an intense pain spreading through the top right quarter of her body. The arm itself had turned numb – she had no sensation below the elbow. Under her clothing, that whole side of her body swam with hot fluid.

‘Please,’ she mumbled as she lost the coordination of her limbs. Her balance was all out, her legs wobbling. She realised the darkness filling her eyes was no longer just the darkness of night and fog. When she tottered over the precipice, she could hardly be blamed, because she hadn’t even seen it.

Only vaguely aware she was falling, Tara spun downward for half a second, caroming outward from a jutting overhang made spongy by grass and rotted ferns, turning somersaults though icy emptiness, before hitting another shelf. This blow was phenomenal in its force, but again cushioned by sodden vegetation. Instinctively, she tried to grapple with it, but in mid-somersault all this did was wrench her left shoulder out of its socket and snap her humerus. In freefall again, she was engulfed by roaring, ice-cold water, and then hit by mud and rocks angled sharply downward, so that she slid on her back, until a heavy stone caught her feet and flipped her forward. Craggy edges tore at her ribs and rent her face, and then she was in mid-air again, descending through icy spume, the ear-pounding thunder of which overwhelmed all her senses.

Chapter 3

‘It came over the wire during the early hours,’ Mary-Ellen said to Heck as he checked into Cragwood Keld police station at eight the following morning.

It wasn’t a real police station. It was located at the west end of the village, on a residential cul-de-sac called Hetherby Close, and was no more than a detached, whitewashed cottage which had been adapted for police use about ten years ago. It had stood empty for much of that time, only opening a few months back as part of ACPO’s new rural crime initiative. A Cumbria Police noticeboard and an emergency phone stood on the front lawn, and wanted and mis-per posters decked its porch, but though it had a small front desk just inside the glazed front door – which was only open to customers temporarily, as Mary-Ellen had to patrol as well as answer call-outs – there was no facility to hold prisoners. The main office, where Heck and Mary-Ellen’s desks faced each other over about three yards of carpet space, was in the rear of the building, where a large bay-window overlooked what had once been a garden, but was now a covered storage area for rescue and road-traffic equipment.

Heck yawned as he sipped his cup of tea.

Mary-Ellen read on through the email. ‘Ambleside Mountain Rescue got a call from the owner of a campsite up at Watendlath. He’s a bit concerned about two girls – a Jane Dawson and Tara Cook. Seems they checked out of his site a day early, said they were spending the last night of their holiday at Stagshaw View, which is a B&B in Ambleside. Then they set off on foot. He reckoned they must have been planning to yomp it through the northern Pikes. Trouble is, that was before the fog came down. He was already a bit worried, because he’d been observing them during the week and reckoned they were the most unprepared backpackers he’d ever seen. Around ten o’clock, when he saw what a pea-soup we were getting, he called Stagshaw View and was told the girls had never arrived. Called again at midnight, and at two – got the same response. He had emergency numbers for them – their own mobiles, which they weren’t answering, and numbers for their parents back in Manchester. He got in touch with them too, but they hadn’t heard anything from their daughters and didn’t even know they were missing. Now of course, the mums and dads are panicking.’

‘To be fair, we don’t know they’re missing yet,’ Heck said. ‘Not for sure.’

‘They still haven’t shown up.’

‘If they got caught in the fog last night, they might just have camped.’

‘The campsite owner said they wouldn’t have stood a chance. Anyway, this fog’s scheduled to last another day and night at least.’

Heck glanced through the connecting door to the front desk, and beyond that through the glazed front door to the outside, which was still concealed by an opaque grey curtain. It would be pretty nightmarish up on the fells, especially for someone with no experience and poor equipment.

‘If they were headed to Ambleside from Borrowdale, that’s some distance from here,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but Mountain Rescue reckon it wouldn’t have been difficult for them to get turned around in the fog. They’d most likely have tried to come around Ullscarf and Greenup Edge, rather than go over the top. If they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces by then, it would have been easy to mistake High Raise for Calf Crag. If they did, that would bring them over Pavey Ark and down through Fiend’s Fell to the east side of Witch Cradle Tarn. And in reduced visibility, well …’

She didn’t need to elaborate. Heck was no mountaineer, but he’d been up there just to acclimatise himself to the region, and Fiend’s Fell would be no laughing matter in fog. A notch in the White Stones crags, in appearance it was very dramatic – a vast, bowl-shaped grassland, windswept and strewn with boulders, and yet it ended abruptly, the land dropping precipitously away into the Cradle. There were various routes down from there – chimneys, ravines and even waterfalls – but these were strictly the domain of skilled and experienced climbers, not weekend adventurers.

‘Think we should get the launch out?’ Mary-Ellen asked.

‘Yeah.’ Heck finished his tea at a gulp. ‘I do.’

In times long past, further back than anyone living in the Cradle could remember, Cragwood Ho, at the north end of Witch Cradle Tarn, had been little more than a remote farming community. Back in the day, when no one even maintained the roads leading up to this place, let alone provided gas, electricity and hot water, it must have been a spectacularly isolated spot.

It certainly felt that way today. ‘The Ho’, as it was known locally, was three miles due north of ‘the Keld’, and connected by a single-track lane, which proceeded in a more or less straight line along the tarn’s edge, occasionally looping inward amid dense stands of pine and larch. Always to its left stood the steep, scree-cluttered slope ascending to Harrison Stickle. Though narrow, the road was usually bare of traffic during the off-season, and relatively safe. Though on this occasion, with visibility so appalling, progress was reduced to a torturous crawl. Veils of milk-white vapour reduced their vision to two or three yards, while even full headlight beams failed to penetrate more than a foot or so beyond that.

‘Anyone lost on the fells in this is gonna be in real trouble,’ Mary-Ellen said, zipping her black anorak. The Land Rover was warm inside, but it had a chilling effect just peering into the shifting blankness.

‘Yep,’ Heck muttered.

‘Especially if they’re new to the area.’

He nodded again. The Pikes were not hugely extensive, but they were dominant features even in the dramatic heart of the Lake District; colossal granite pyramids, with deep, wooded glens knifing through the middle of them, and fast becks tumbling and cascading down their rolling, rocky slopes. A playground for the fit and energetic, certainly; but a trackless region too, which required knowledge and athleticism to navigate on foot. And now, of course, something else had occurred to him.

‘I don’t want to overstate the importance of this, M-E, but just after midnight last night I heard what sounded like gunfire.’

She glanced sidelong at him as she drove. ‘Where?’

‘Up in the fells.’

‘Any particular direction?’

‘Impossible to say. It was only one shot too, so … I don’t know, I might have been mistaken.’

Mary-Ellen pondered this.

‘You didn’t hear anything?’ he asked.

‘Nah. Hit the sack well before then. You know me. Sleep like a log.’

They cruised on at a steady six miles per hour, though even then it felt as if they were taking a chance. When a stag emerged from the fog in front of them, they had to jam on the brakes. The majestic beast had simply stepped from the vapour, little more than an outline in the misted glow of their lights, just about identifiable by its tall profile and the handsome spread of its antlers. It stood stock-still for a second, and then galloped off into the roadside foliage.

‘Probably the last living thing we’ll see out here,’ Mary-Ellen commented, easing back onto the gas.

‘Don’t know whether to hope you’re right or wrong,’ Heck replied.

He’d often heard the saying ‘no news is good news’, and couldn’t think of any dictum more worthless. At present, for example, they had almost nothing to go on. Before setting out, he’d checked with Windermere Comms, and had been given an update, which was mainly that there was no update, though they’d also been informed that, owing to the conditions, effective Mountain Rescue operations would be difficult – they might even be suspended – and it was certainly the case that no RAF helicopters could go up. Despite everything, it was deemed unlikely the two girls would have strayed from their intended route as far west as the Cradle, which was kind of encouraging, though the downside of this was that no extra bodies were being sent over here to assist. In the event there was a problem, Heck and Mary-Ellen were pretty much on their own.

Perched on the northernmost tip of Witch Cradle Tarn, Cragwood Ho was the archetypical Lakeland hamlet. Of its four houses, only two were occupied full-time. The empty units comprised a stone-built holiday let, once a working stable but still in the ownership of Gordon Clay, a farmer over Coniston way, and at this time of year almost always closed up, while the other, another former farm building, was now used as a second home by a family from south Lancashire. Aside from the Christmas season, this second house also stood unused during the winter months. Both of these premises were located on the west side of Cragwood Road. The hamlet’s only two permanent residents lived on the east side of the road, next door to each other, right on the tarn’s shoreline.

Cragwood Road itself ended in Cragwood Ho. As soon as it passed through the small clutch of houses, it ascended a few dozen yards into a gravelled parking area, where all further progress by normal vehicle was blocked by a dry-stone wall with a gate and a stile. Beyond that, a treacherous footway, the Cradle Track, snaked its way up into the Pikes; at its lower section this was just about wide enough for vehicle use, but most of the time the gate was kept barred. The car park was usually full during the spring and summer, walkers and climbers viewing this as the most immediate access to the Central Lakes massif, while the early autumn saw no shortage of visitors either. But at present, as Heck and Mary-Ellen coasted up into it, the Land Rover’s tyres crunching to a halt against its rear wall, they appeared to be alone.

Visibility was still negligible. They couldn’t even see the entirety of the car park. Further wafts of milky vapour flowed past as they climbed out, pulling on their gloves and woolly hats. As usual, Mary Ellen was in uniform, while Heck, as a CID officer, wore his regulation sweater, canvas trousers and walking boots, though on a day like today both also pulled on hi-viz waterproof overcoats with POLICE stencilled across the back in luminous letters.

‘Quiet as the bloody grave,’ Mary-Ellen said, her voice echoing eerily.

Heck took the loudhailer from the boot. ‘At least if these lasses are stuck somewhere nearby, it shouldn’t be difficult getting them to hear us.’

They set off down the side path which dropped steeply from the car park, and led along the front of the two houses on the water’s edge.

The house on the right was called Lake-End Cottage, and its inhabitant was a certain Bill Ramsdale, a onetime married man and academic who now, in his mid-fifties, had become a reclusive loner and apparently, a writer, though Heck had never seen his name in a bookshop, either online or in the real world. His house was a small, scruffy cottage, the downstairs of which was almost entirely taken up by his study, but it was also surrounded by acres of untrimmed lawn, which rolled impressively down to the waterside and terminated at a private jetty. Given the usual prices in the Lake District, such a plot ought to have cost him a pretty penny. Whether he was rich or poor, Ramsdale was notoriously ill-tempered about his privacy. Twice he’d been spoken to by Mary-Ellen for showing a belligerent and even threatening attitude to hikers who’d strolled down across his land to the tarn’s edge, unaware they were trespassing thanks to most of his perimeter wall having collapsed and his grass being overgrown.

The second resident, Bessie Longhorn, was an altogether more likeable sort. Just turned twenty, she was a little rough around the edges – only poorly educated, and thanks to a lifetime of semi-isolation in the Cradle, minus a fashion sense or any real knowledge about youth culture in general – but she was a friendly kid and always eager to please, especially when it came to Heck. Bessie’s cottage, formerly a farmhouse and so considerably larger than Ramsdale’s, with numerous run-down outbuildings attached, belonged to her mother, Ada, who was only sixty-five but in poor health and residing in sheltered accommodation in Bowness. For obvious reasons, Ada considered it important that Bessie get used to being independent, even though this meant the younger woman didn’t get to visit her old mum as often as they’d both like. For all that, Bessie was a happy-go-lucky character, who filled her time doing odd jobs for the residents of Cragwood Keld at the other end of the tarn. She’d once offered to help Ramsdale by mowing his unruly lawn, but the surly neighbour had responded by telling her to ‘keep the fuck away’, so now Bessie, who was reduced to tears quite easily, did exactly that.

Perhaps the task she prized most highly was minding the keys to the police launch. This was convenient for all concerned because the boathouse in which the launch was kept was part of Bessie’s property. Approximately the same size and shape as a suburban garage, the boathouse was propped up on stilts and in a generally dilapidated condition, its timbers tinged green by mildew – but it was better than nothing. The cement path leading down to it crossed the middle of Bessie’s neatly-trimmed back garden, so it was always necessary to call on her first.

They halted before walking up Bessie’s front path, and looked towards Ramsdale’s house, his presence indicated by a very dull glow from one of its windows and the pale smoke issuing from its chimney.

‘Wouldn’t have liked to be one of the two girls if they came looking for help and knocked on that miserable sod’s door,’ Mary-Ellen said.

‘Neither would I, now you mention it,’ Heck replied thoughtfully. ‘But it’s a good point.’ He veered back along the road and down the path towards Ramsdale’s house. ‘Go and check with Bessie, would you?’

‘Who the fuck is it?’ came a muffled response to Heck’s full-knuckled knock.

‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg, Mr Ramsdale,’ Heck replied. ‘Cragwood Keld police station. Can you open up please?’

What Heck always thought of as a guilty silence followed. Whenever you arrived at someone’s house and announced yourself as a copper, it was the same – whether it was some flash manse in the suburbs, or a scumhole bedsit in the urban badlands. Everyone, it seemed, no matter what their station in life, had some itsy-bitsy secret that occasionally kept them awake at night.

A chair finally scraped on a stone floor and heavy feet thudded to the door. It opened, but only by a few inches, and Ramsdale’s big frame filled the gap. He wasn’t just burly, he was tall – at least six-three – and permanently dishevelled, with a head of shaggy, iron-grey hair and an unkempt grey beard, all of which when combined with his tarnished earring, had a distinct air of the scuzzy. Today’s attire did little to offset this: a shapeless white t-shirt stained by tea or coffee, baggy stonewashed jeans torn at the knees, and a pair of floppy, moth-eaten slippers. He also smelled strongly of tobacco. And it wasn’t just the householder who was a less than wholesome sight. Heck caught a glimpse of the room behind. There was a desktop computer on a table and a wall of lopsided shelving crammed with buff folders, while the floor was buried under a mass of disordered paperwork.

‘How can I help, detective?’ Ramsdale asked, regarding Heck over the tops of his reading glasses. His anger had abated a little, but his tone implied hostility.

‘Just a quick one really, Mr Ramsdale. We’ve got two people missing in the Pikes.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘You’ve heard about it already?’

‘No, but it’s the silly season, isn’t it? Same thing every year. First bit of really bad weather and all the idiots come out to play.’

‘Yeah, well … we’re pretty worried about these two. Their names are Jane Dawson and Tara Cook. Young girls, both aged twenty-four. They were last seen yesterday, rambling south from Borrowdale. As far as we know, they weren’t planning to come down into Langdale, but they could easily have got lost up on the tops. Just wondered if you’d seen or heard anyone coming down the Cradle Track late last night?’

Ramsdale remained blank-faced. ‘I’m hardly likely to, am I?’

That was a fairer comment than it sounded. The walls in these old farm cottages were several feet thick, and at this time of year all doors and windows would be closed, while both Ramsdale’s house, and Bessie’s house next door, were a good fifty or so yards from the parking area at the foot of the Track.

However, Ramsdale’s scathing tone provoked Heck into prolonging the interview. ‘They’d have had to be well off-course, I suppose …’

‘That could never happen, could it?’ Ramsdale scoffed. ‘Bunch of kids left to their own devices. Fucking up.’

‘These weren’t kids, sir.’

‘Oh, excuse me. Twenty-four years old. I bet they’ve seen everything.’

‘It just struck me that if they did get lost and come down this way, it would be the middle of the night … so they might have knocked on the door, asked for shelter.’

‘Nobody did. I just told you.’

‘Maybe a drop of tea … to warm them up?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Or just to ask directions. I’m sure even you wouldn’t have had a problem providing those, Mr Ramsdale.’

Ramsdale smiled thinly. Despite his blustery exterior, he was no bully; he didn’t reserve his anger for those who couldn’t fight back. But he was intelligent enough to know not to get on the wrong side of the Cumbrian Constabulary. ‘Like I say, no one came here. But if you want to do a thorough job, Detective Heckenburg, it might be worth having a word with Longhorn next door.’

‘That’s already in hand, Mr Ramsdale. Just out of interest … you’re not going away anywhere are you?’

Ramsdale looked puzzled. ‘No.’

‘Good.’

‘Why?’

Heck shrugged as he backed away along the path. ‘We’ve got to stay on high alert until these girls are found. That means maintaining contact with all persons of interest.’

‘Persons of interest?’ Ramsdale’s cheeks reddened. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Do I look like I’m laughing, Mr Ramsdale?’

The tall figure in the cottage doorway diminished into the fog as Heck walked back to the road. There was a thumping CLAP! as the door was slammed closed.

Heck turned in along the next path, and found Mary-Ellen and Bessie Longhorn standing by the side of the house, the exterior of which – mainly whitewashed pebble-dash – had been more recently maintained than Ramsdale’s.

‘This is a right how’d-you-do, isn’t it, Sergeant Heckenburg?’ Bessie said with her characteristic froglike grin. She was about five foot seven and of stocky build, though much of this was running to plump, with a mottled pink complexion and an unruly thatch of thinning gingery hair. As usual when outdoors, she wore an old duffle-coat and a shapeless chequered hat, which Heck suspected might have enjoyed a former existence as a tea-cosy. An electric torch was clutched in Bessie’s mittened hand.

‘Sure is, Bessie,’ Heck replied. ‘You got that right.’

Her cheeks turned a ruddy hue at the sound of her own name on Heck’s lips. It was Mary-Ellen who’d first concluded that their local handywoman liked the ‘tall, dark-haired detective sergeant’, and though it was something he hadn’t noticed before then, the impression was now impossible to shake.

‘I’ve got the keys for you,’ Bessie said, jangling said articles as she turned and led them primly down the cement path, the angled outline of the boathouse materialising ahead of them.

‘Bessie didn’t see or hear anything,’ Mary-Ellen said.

‘Dead quiet round here last night,’ Bessie said over her shoulder.

‘Mr Ramsdale didn’t hear anything either,’ Heck responded.

‘It’s a bad business, isn’t it, Sergeant Heckenburg?’ Bessie chattered as he unlocked the corrugated metal door. ‘If these lasses haven’t come down from the fells by now, something bad must have happened to them.’

Heck didn’t initially reply. There was something vaguely disturbing about that simple and yet undeniable logic.

‘Lots of places up there where they could just have got lost, Bessie,’ Mary-Ellen said. ‘It’s not necessarily bad news.’

The door creaked open on the boathouse’s fetid interior. Bessie lurched in first, switching on her torch. The Witch Cradle Tarn police launch was actually a small outboard now adapted for official purposes. Despite it almost never needing to be used, it was old and in degraded condition, its hull scraped, its metalwork tarnished. Only its recently applied turquoise and yellow Battenberg flashes looked new. For all this, it was more than adequate to take them across the tarn to the east shore, which the two missing girls, if they’d followed the route Heck and Mary-Ellen suspected, might well have descended to, or in the worst-case scenario, could have fallen down to. The boat currently sat between two concrete piers, normally in about four feet of mucky brown water, though at present, owing to the heavy autumn rain, the tarn’s level was significantly higher.

Bessie handed the keys to Mary-Ellen, and walked to the end of the starboard pier, where she used a crank-handle to raise the roll-up door at the entry-port for the boat.Mary-Ellen climbed aboard, taking the wheel. Heck untied the mooring ropes, then jumped aboard as well, and the craft rumbled to life.

‘Just give us a knock when you get back, so I can lock up,’ Bessie called as they chugged out into the chill, foggy air.

‘No probs, Bessie!’ Heck called back, to which she no doubt blushed again.

With the tarn already having risen to its winter levels, the normal straight channel they’d follow for about a hundred yards through dense bulrushes before reaching open water was almost hidden. Only the tips of browning vegetation were visible, which made it considerably more difficult to steer along, especially in this monotone gloom. The last thing they needed was to get ropes of rotted herbage meshed around their propeller. But as with so many outdoor pursuits, Mary-Ellen was more than a dab hand. She stood at the helm, keeping them on a dead-straight course as they processed forward. If visibility had been bad on land, it was even worse over frigid water. Within seconds of solid ground disappearing behind them, they found they could see no distance in any direction. The outboard’s headlights were already activated, but Heck turned on the prow spotlight as well. This normally drove a broad wedge of luminescence for several hundred yards, though on this occasion it revealed nothing and in fact was reflected back on them with interest. He turned the spot on its pivot, but wherever it pointed there was a glaring backwash from the semi-liquid whiteness, every tendril of fog, every twist and spiral glowing as if phosphorescent.

‘East shore?’ Mary-Ellen asked, raising her voice over the engine.

‘Yeah, steady as you go though.’

‘Steady as I go.’ She cackled. ‘Aye aye, skip …’

‘You know what I bloody mean.’

Despite the potential seriousness of the situation, Mary-Ellen bawled with raucous laughter. ‘Only funning. Hey you’re my line-manager, Heck … I would never take the piss out of you for real!’

Mary-Ellen might only have been in the job four years, but she was a copper through and through. With a dark sense of humour and generally relaxed persona, she enjoyed her work and didn’t get fazed by its more onerous prospects. She had that all-important burning desire to ‘get up and at ’em!’, as she was fond of saying, and that was something Heck heartily approved of. You couldn’t play at being a copper; to be effective in the job, you had to fully absorb yourself in it. So many learned that on the first day. Those with sense got out quickly; those who hung on, looking constantly for inside work, only made life difficult for all the rest. Not so Mary-Ellen. Her previous beat, Richmond-upon-Thames, was pretty sedate by normal London standards, though it also encompassed both banks of the Thames and boasted over twenty miles of river frontage, so she was no stranger to pulling bodies out of the drink – which gave an additional explanation for her irreverent attitude now. That said, she was still unlikely to have scoured any body of water quite like this one.

Witch Cradle Tarn was the child of a geophysical fault long predating the glaciers that had broadened out the valley above; it was a cleft in the mountains formed by ancient tectonic forces, and for its size it was astonishingly deep – nearly seven hundred feet – and abysmally cold. Its sides shelved steeply away beneath the surface, but its eastern shore, which was almost flush against the cliff-face, was heaped with glacial scree, which intruded some distance into the water itself, creating semi-invisible shallows comprising multiple blades of rock, none of which were marked by buoys and any one of which could pass through the keel of a boat like a knife through the belly of a fish.

For several minutes they ploughed through turgid mist, Heck only sighting the surface of the tarn if he glanced over the gunwales, where it flowed past as smooth as darkened glass. The fog shifted in bizarre patterns and yet remained impenetrable. The quiet was unearthly. Even the drone of the engine was muffled, and yet whenever they spoke a word, it echoed and echoed.

‘You really thought you heard a shot last night?’ Mary-Ellen asked.

‘I dunno.’ Heck shrugged again. ‘Strange sounds in these mountains. I’ve only been here two and a half months, but I’ve already realised how deceptive things can be.’

‘Sure you weren’t dreaming?’

‘I can’t definitively rule that out, either.’

‘I can make some calls later, if you want,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a list of all licence-holders.’

‘Yeah, do that. Ask some searching questions – like what the hell they thought they were doing discharging firearms in the wee small hours. Go at them hard, M-E. Make it sound like we know they were up to something. Even if they were shooting rats in a barn or something, they’re unlikely to cough unless we press them, and we can’t dismiss them from any enquiry otherwise … unless we find something nasty out here of course, in which case it’s a whole new ball game.’

Heck didn’t hold out much hope for that, but they were now approaching the tarn’s eastern banks, so Mary-Ellen cut the engine and lifted the propeller, letting them drift inshore. There were no proper landing places on this side of the tarn, no quays, no jetties – in fact there were no paths or roads either, though it wasn’t impossible to explore this shore on foot. Further back from the water’s edge, pines grew through the scree, creating a narrow belt of woodland. This was just about visible as Mary-Ellen kept a steady course from north to south, the vague outlines of trees standing spectral in the mist.

‘Jane Dawson! Tara Cook!’ Heck said, putting the loudhailer to his lips. ‘This is the police … can you hear us?’

He waited thirty seconds for a response, but there was nothing. Without the engine, the silence was immense, broken only by the lapping of wavelets against the rocks.

‘Jane Dawson, Tara Cook!’ he hailed again. ‘This is the police. Can you respond please? Even if you’re injured and unable to speak … throw a stone, bang a piece of wood on another piece of wood. Anything.’

The lack of response was ear-pummelling.

‘Can you get us a tad closer inshore?’ Heck said.

‘I’ll try. Just be prepared for the worrying sound of grinding, cracking timbers.’

‘Don’t even joke about that.’

‘Who’s joking?’

They veered a few yards to port. Heck could clearly see the submerged juts and edges, like serrated teeth, no more than a couple of feet below the surface. Meanwhile, the rocks exposed along the waterline were piled on top of each other haphazardly and yet resembled those huge, manmade defences that guarded the entrances to Elizabethan-age harbours.

‘Okay, that’s far enough,’ he said, grabbing the boat-pole.

Mary-Ellen corrected their course. They continued to glide forward, veils of murk opening in front of them. The shore and its rows of regimented pine trunks was a little more visible, but not greatly so.

‘Perhaps start up the engine, eh?’ Heck said over his shoulder. ‘The noise might let them know we’re here.’

Mary-Ellen complied, while he hailed the girls another five times, always leaving thirty-second breaks in between. All they heard in response was the dull chug of the engine, until a few minutes had passed and this was subsumed by the rumble of churning water. Just ahead, the fog cleared around a protruding headland of vertical rock with a greenery-matted overhang about thirty feet above. Thanks to the heavy autumn rain, one of many temporary rivulets descending from the surrounding fells was pouring down over this in a minor cataract. The space beneath the overhang was filled with shadow. Heck directed his spotlight into it, just able to pick out a few clumps of shingle against the innermost wall. Normally, if memory served, there would be a small beach there, but the tarn’s high level had inundated it. Either way, no one was taking shelter.

They pressed on, the cataract falling behind them, its roar dwindling into the all-absorbing vapour. They’d now traversed a quarter of the tarn’s length.

‘Starting to think this is a long shot,’ Mary-Ellen said. ‘Couldn’t we be more use back at the nick, manning the phones?’

‘Let’s go down as far as the Race,’ Heck replied. ‘After that, we’ll come back … hang on, what’s that?’

Mary-Ellen stared where he was pointing, catching a glint of colour in the grey; a flash of orange. It could have been anything, a tangle of bobbing rubbish, a plastic shopping bag scrunched between two semi-submerged rocks – except that you didn’t as a rule find shopping bags or any other kind of rubbish in Witch Cradle Tarn, which normally was far beyond the reach of unconscientious slobs. Of course it could also have been a cagoule, and now they looked closely, they could distinguish a humanoid shape; two lengths of orange just below the surface (legs?), the main bulk of the orange (the torso?) above the water-level, thanks to the two boulders it was wedged between. When they drew even closer they saw that it wasn’t solely orange either, but spattered black and green by moss and dirt, and streaked with crimson – as was the third length of orange (an arm?) folded over the back of it.

‘Christ in a cartoon …’ Heck breathed. ‘They’re here! Or one of them is!’

Quickly, Mary-Ellen cut the engine again. ‘The anchor!’ she shouted.

He scrambled to the back of the craft, took the small anchor from the stern locker and threw it over the side, its chain rapidly unravelling. Other items of kit were also kept in the stern locker, including a zip-lock first-aid bag and two sets of rubberised overalls and boots, which the crew were supposed to don if they ever needed to wade out into deep water. There was no time now for a change of costume, but Heck grabbed the first-aid kit and moved to the gunwale, peering down. Heaped scree could still be discerned below. It wasn’t just jagged and sharp, it would be loose, slimy – ultra dangerous. But again, this was no time to start thinking about health and safety. Heck pulled on a pair of latex gloves, before zipping his phone inside the first-aid kit and then climbing over the gunwale and lowering himself down.

The tarn’s gelid grip was beyond cold, but now the adrenaline was pumping. Heck’s boots found a purchase about three feet under. Holding the kit above his head, he pushed himself carefully away from the craft, pivoted around and lurched towards shore. Behind him, he heard Mary-Ellen shouting into the radio, asking for supervision and medical support. It was a futile gesture – there was usually no radio up here, but it had to be worth trying. A second later there was a splash as she followed him over the side. They struggled forward for several yards, closing the distance between themselves and the body – but actually making contact with it wasn’t easy, as it was lodged at the far end of a narrow passage between rocks, the floor of which constantly shifted, threatening to collapse at either side, creating suction currents strong enough to pull a person under. To counter this, they clambered on the rocks along the edges, slick and greasy though these proved to be.

It was indeed a body, by the looks of it female, but in a woeful state: much more heavily bloodied than they’d seen from the boat, at first glance lying motionless and face-down in the water, its string-like fair hair swirling around its head. At the very least, its left arm, the one folded backward, was badly broken, while the other was concealed from view because the bedraggled form was wedged on its right side.

Heck leaned down, placing two fingers to the neck. It was ice-cold and clammy; there was no discernible pulse.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. He felt around under the face to check the nose and mouth were elevated from the water. Now that it was slopping and splashing, it covered them intermittently, but it hadn’t done this sufficiently to wash away a crust of congealed blood caking the nostrils and lips. Heck scraped what he could of that away, to free the air-passages. ‘I know it’s non-textbook,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got to move her from here right now. If we don’t, she’ll drown. You got a filter valve?’

‘In the first-aid kit,’ Mary-Ellen said. ‘Hang on, you’re saying she’s still alive?’

‘Dunno, but she was still bleeding when she washed up here. Here!’ He tossed his phone over to her.

‘Heck, there’s no signal …’

‘Never mind that, get a couple of quick shots – the body and the location where we found it. Every angle. Hurry.’ Mary-Ellen did as he asked. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We can’t drag her, so we’re going to have to lift. Take her legs.’

Mary-Ellen plunged into waist-deep water, and manoeuvring herself into place, wrapped her arms around the body’s thighs.

‘Try and keep her horizontal, okay?’ Heck said, sliding his own hands under the armpits, supporting the casualty’s head against his thigh. ‘Minimum twisting and turning. Her left arm’s bent the wrong way over her back – looks horrible, but it’s best to leave it that way.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘Okay … three, two, one …’

The girl’s body lifted easily. She wasn’t particularly heavy. But on raising her above the water, Heck saw something that shook him. The cagoule fabric covering her front right shoulder had burst outward, along with tatters of the woollen and cotton layers worn underneath, and what looked like strands of muscle tissue. Below that was a crimson cavity, from out of which red-tinted lake-water gurgled.

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘I think … I think she’s been shot!’

‘What?’

He craned his neck to survey the back of the victim’s right shoulder, and spotted a coin-sized hole in a corresponding position.

‘She’s been shot from behind.’

Mary-Ellen had turned chalk-white. ‘You serious?’

‘Quick, get her to shore.’

They splashed through the shallows until they mounted a low, shingle embankment a few yards in front of the pines, and laid the lifeless form carefully down. Heck applied the sterile valve and they attempted resuscitation – to no effect. They persisted for several minutes longer, still to no effect. No matter how good a copper you were, unless you also held a medical degree, you weren’t qualified to pronounce death – but this girl was just about as dead as anyone Heck had ever seen. Aside from the gunshot wound, she’d been severely brutalised, suffering repeated contusions to face and skull. That didn’t necessarily mean she’d taken a beating; it might be in accordance with the girl having fallen. The only way down to the tarn from the east fells was via steep gullies and perilous slopes.

Either way, this was now a crime scene.

‘I shouldn’t really do this,’ Heck said, feeling carefully into the girl’s pockets, ‘but on this occasion, establishing ID is pretty vital.’ He extricated a small leather purse containing credit cards. The name on all of these was Tara Cook.

‘So where’s the other one?’ Mary-Ellen wondered, giving voice to Heck’s own thoughts. He glanced at the foggy woods. Thick veils of vapour hung between the trunks. Nothing moved, and there was no sound.

‘Jane Dawson!’ he shouted. His voice carried, but still there was no response.

‘We need to get up on the tops and have a look,’ Mary-Ellen said.

Heck disagreed. ‘Two of us? Covering all those miles of empty fells? In fog like this? Be the biggest waste of police time in history. Besides, this is now a murder scene. We need to preserve it, and start the investigation. We also need to alert the local population – we don’t know if this danger has passed yet.’

‘I hear all that, Heck, but the other girl’s still missing. We can’t just ignore her.’

Heck chewed his lip with indecision. That Tara Cook was dead, a clear victim of homicidal violence, did not bode well for the vanished Jane Dawson. But climbing the fells to look for her – just the two of them – would be a hopeless, pointless task even if there hadn’t been dense fog. To have any hope of getting a result in these conditions would require extensive search teams experienced in mountain rescue, not to mention dogs, aircraft, the lot. But Mary-Ellen was right about one thing – they couldn’t just do nothing about the missing girl.

‘Perhaps check along the shore,’ he said. ‘If Jane Dawson made it down to the tarn as well, she might still be alive.’

Mary-Ellen nodded and disappeared into the trees, while Heck tried his radio again as he stood alongside the corpse, but gained no response, not even a crackle of static. He spent ten minutes on this before finally turning to the trees and calling for Mary-Ellen.

Now she didn’t respond either. He called again.

The maximum depth of the east shore wood could only be fifty yards or so, before the gradient sharpened upward and the mountainous scree became too harsh for any vegetation to have taken root there. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have wandered for a significant distance to the north or south.

‘Mary-Ellen!’ he called again, advancing into the woodland gloom, not liking the way his voice bounced back from the cliff-face towering overhead.

Behind him, the glare of the outboard spotlight penetrated through the trees in a misty zebra-stripe pattern. He moved a few dozen yards north, trying to avoid clattering the loose debris with his feet. That Mary-Ellen hadn’t so much as called back to him was not reassuring. How far could she have ventured in ten minutes? As he sidled away from the boat, the murk thickened. Soon the stanchions of the pines were no more than upright shadows. He halted again to listen – and to wonder for the first time how it was that a female hiker had been shot while rambling in this wilderness, and who by.

‘Mary-Ellen!’ he called, pressing on a little further. At his rear, the glow of the boat’s spotlight had diminished to a ruddy smudge.

He listened again. An incredible silence. Even if the policewoman had been doing no more than mooching about, he’d surely hear her.

But could someone else have heard her too?

Had that person already heard her and taken appropriate action?

As Heck backtracked towards the boat, he tried to calculate how much time had elapsed between now and the gunshot he’d heard the night before. A glance at his watch showed that it was just before nine-fifteen. He’d been disturbed in bed at quarter past midnight or thereabouts. So, nine hours in total. More than enough time for the killer to have long left the area. Assuming he actually wanted to leave.

Heck bypassed the point where the boat was moored. The corpse of Tara Cook lay where they had left it.

It would be impossible to second-guess the killer’s next move, because they had no clue about motive. But just suppose the fatal shot had been fired somewhere much higher up – on Fiend’s Fell for example – and the body had fallen down the cliff-side. With the tarn down here to break the fall, how could the killer be sure the victim was dead? Wasn’t it at least conceivable he would try to get down here, to check out the scene for himself? Heck headed south along the shore, more cold, dark fog embracing him. Even if the killer had clambered down here, nine hours was more than enough to locate the corpse, establish death and high-tail it away again.

Again though, that question – what if he didn’t want to high-tail it?

And what about the other girl? Heck knew one thing for certain – he’d only heard a single shot. Then of course there was Mary-Ellen – where the hell was she?

He stopped again. In this direction, what looked like straight avenues lay between the ranks of waterside trees, though a little further ahead progress was impeded by several trunks that had fallen over. This wouldn’t have been completely unusual in a wood at the foot of a scree-cliff – heavy chunks of rock would occasionally fall, smashing and flattening the timber; but they made difficult obstacles. He climbed over the first diagonal trunk, and crawled underneath the second, increasingly suspecting that Mary-Ellen would not have gone to so much trouble to make a quick, cursory inspection of the shoreline. Beyond the fallen pines, the woods seemed to close in, the rising ground on the left steepening, and on the right falling away towards the tarn’s edge. Heck veered in the latter direction until he was virtually on the waterline. As before, the smooth surface rolled away from him, flat as a mirror, black as smoke. At this time of year there wasn’t a plop or plink; neither frog, newt nor fish to disturb the peace.

Further progress was impossible in these conditions, he concluded.

He turned back, but it was as he stooped to clamber underneath the first fallen tree that he heard the whisper.

If it was a whisper.

It could have been the wind sighing through meshed evergreen boughs. That was entirely possible too. But it had sounded like a whisper.

Heck whirled around, unable to see very much of anything, until …

Had that been a faint, dark shape that had just stepped out of sight about twenty yards away on his left? Heck’s heartbeat accelerated; his scalp prickled.

Suddenly it seemed like a very bad idea to be here on his own, especially as this character was armed. He set off forward, moving parallel with the tarn, heading back in the direction of the boat, eyes fixed on the spot where he thought he’d spied movement. And now he heard a sound behind him – a snap, as though a fallen branch had been stepped on. He twirled around again, straining his eyes to penetrate the vapour, unable to distinguish anything. When he turned back to the front, someone in dark clothes was standing nearby, leaning against a tree-trunk.

At first Heck went cold – but just as quickly he relaxed again.

Recognising Mary-Ellen, he walked forward. For some reason she’d removed her luminous coat. To lay over a second body maybe? Except that these days you weren’t supposed to do that. And now, having advanced a few yards, he saw that he wasn’t approaching Mary-Ellen after all. A bundle of interwoven twigs and bark hung down alongside the trunk. The outline they formed was vaguely human, but was mainly an optical illusion, enhanced by a shaft of light diffusing through the wood from the boat and exposing the place where the bark had fallen, which had created the impression of a face.

Heck heard another whisper.

This time there was no doubt about it.

He glanced right. It had come from somewhere in the direction of the upward slope. Ten seconds later, it seemed to be answered by a second whisper, this time from behind, though this second one had been less like a whisper and more like a snicker – a hoarse, guttural snicker. Heck gazed into the vapour as he pivoted around, wondering in bewilderment if all this could be his imagination.

For a few seconds, there was no further sound. He took several wary steps towards the upward slope, the rank autumnal foliage opening to admit him – and then closing again. Needle-footed ants scurried across his skin as the fog seemed to thicken, wrapping itself around him, melding tightly to his form. For a heart-stopping second he had the overwhelming sensation that someone else was really very close indeed, perhaps no more than a foot away, watching him silently and yet rendered completely invisible. Heck turned circles as he blundered, fists clenched to his chest, boxer fashion. He wanted to call out, but his throat was too dry to make sounds.

More alert than he’d ever been in his life, Heck backtracked in the direction of the waterline; this at least was possible owing to the slant of the ground. When he got there, he pivoted slowly around – to find someone directly alongside him.

‘Coast appears to be clear, sarge,’ Mary-Ellen said.

Heck did his best to conceal his shock – though he still almost jumped out of his skin. ‘What the … Jesus wept!’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Creep up on me, why don’t you!’

‘Sorry … heard you clumping around. I presumed you heard me.’

‘Well, I bloody didn’t!’

‘Getting jumpy in your old age, or what?’

‘Don’t give me that bollocks. Why didn’t you reply when I shouted?’

‘Sorry.’ Mary-Ellen shrugged. ‘Never heard you.’

‘Hmmm. Suppose these acoustics are all over the place,’ he grunted. They trudged back to the boat. ‘You didn’t hear anything else, though? No one farting around?’

‘Farting around?’

‘Whispering … chuckling.’

She looked fascinated. ‘For real?’

‘Shit, I don’t know.’ He glanced back into the opaque gloom. ‘More atmospheric weirdness, maybe. Or the local wildlife. The main thing is there’s no second corpse?’

‘Didn’t find one.’

‘Well we can’t get any help up here to do a proper pattern-search until this weather clears.’

They’d emerged onto the bank, back into the glare of the outboard’s spotlight. Tara Cook lay as before. Heck angled back towards her, and knelt. He didn’t want to disturb the scene more than he already had and would avoid making further contact if possible, but it had belatedly occurred to him to check for any lividity marks, maybe even signs of rigor mortis, as either of those could give a clearer indication how long the girl had been dead. He reached down towards her and suddenly the body twitched. Heck froze. For several helpless seconds he knelt rigid, as, without warning, the ‘corpse’ reached a violently shuddering hand towards his face, and drew five carmine finger-trails down his cheek. Still, neither he nor Mary-Ellen were able to respond.

Tara Cook’s head now lolled onto her shoulder. Her puffy eyes were still swollen closed, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, she opened her mouth. A low moan surged out, along with globs of fresh blood, which spattered down the front of her filthy cagoule.

‘Good Christ!’ Mary-Ellen breathed.

‘Good Christ indeed!’ Heck said urgently. ‘She’s only bloody alive!’

As they worked frantically on the girl, her moan rose in volume and intensity until it was a prolonged, keening screech, which rebounded from the cliffs overhead and all across the misted, semi-frozen lake.

Chapter 4

‘Gemma Piper,’ came the voice on the line. It was clipped, efficient. Time hadn’t softened that aspect of his ex-boss’s personality. Not that much ever did.

Time, though. It had actually only been two and a half months since he and Gemma had had the mother of all fall-outs, yet in some ways, it seemed like a lifetime.

‘Ma’am,’ he said.

‘Heck?’ He couldn’t tell whether she was pleased to hear from him or not. The probability was she was more surprised. ‘Where are you calling from?’

‘Cragwood Keld nick, South Cumbria.’

‘Oh … right.’ Perhaps she’d fleetingly wondered if he was back down in London for some reason.

‘Currently buried in the muckiest November fog I’ve ever seen,’ Heck added. ‘The whole of the Lakes is in lockdown at present, ma’am. Nothing’s moving.’

She’d sounded curious about his call, but her patience, as always, was wearing thin, especially now he’d got onto the weather. ‘What can I do for you, Heck?’

‘We’ve just had an attempted double homicide.’

‘I see. Local to your subdivision?’

‘Right on it.’

‘Good job they’ve got you there.’

‘Thing is, ma’am, I think this one may be of interest to you.’

‘You said two attempted homicides. Have you actually had any fatalities?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Doesn’t sound like an SCU job, Heck. Give it to South Cumbria Crime Command in the first instance. That’s what they’re there for …’

‘No … I think it may be of interest to you, as in you personally, rather than SCU.’

‘Okay …?’ Now she sounded cautious, not to say sceptical, but she knew Heck well enough to at least give him a hearing. ‘Go on …’

‘It was a blitz attack, seemingly without motive. Two girls hiking in the Langdale Pikes got themselves lost in the fog. The next thing they know, they’re being followed by someone who attacks them. The first one he beats down with a stone. The second one he shoots.’

There was a lengthy pause. ‘This is news to me. When did it happen?’

‘Last night, around midnight.’

‘Nasty stuff, but I still don’t see …’

‘Two female hitchhikers alone on a dark night? Getting jumped by a single assailant, who takes one of them out ASAP with a lump of rock?’

‘That would be a common sense strategy for any random attacker attempting to overpower two people at the same time.’

‘I’m not sure this is a random attacker, ma’am. While he was stalking them through the fog, the assailant was whistling something.’

‘Whistling?’

‘It was a song you’re quite familiar with … Strangers in the Night.’

Now there was a much longer pause, and the sound of paperwork being shuffled. Heck could picture Gemma filching a pen from her drawer, shoving documentation aside as she opened a fresh daybook on her desk. Gemma was in the habit of starting a new log for every crime that was referred to her personal office. ‘Give me the details, Heck.’

He told her what they knew, which in truth wasn’t very much. Namely, that Tara Cook and Jane Dawson had gone astray while following a challenging route through the Langdale Pikes, at which point they’d been assailed first by that eerie whistling, and then by a strong, stocky figure, whose physical features had not just been concealed by fog, but by a full head mask and heavy outdoor clothing. He’d beaten Jane Dawson savagely – though whether it was to death was as yet unknown, as the sole witness, Tara Cook, had fled, only to be shot from behind. She’d survived the wound, but in a subsequent delirious state, had fallen down a waterfall, finishing up in Witch Cradle Tarn, where Heck had found her only an hour and a half ago.

Gemma listened long and hard, clearly undecided about the import of what he was telling her. While she tried to make her mind up, Heck glanced back from the Cragwood Keld front desk into the rear office, the little bit of floor space in there now taken up by a camping bed, on which the casualty, her more serious wounds dressed and bound, was reclining. Mary-Ellen was crammed in there alongside her, scribbling anything Tara could recollect into her pocketbook. The ambulance scheduled to take the casualty down to the Westmorland General Hospital, in Kendal – the nearest medical facility capable of dealing with a gunshot wound – had still not arrived. Nor had any supervision units from Windermere. In the meantime, they’d done the best they could, bringing Tara Cook directly back to Cragwood Keld in the police launch, which was now tied up down at the public jetty near to The Witch’s Kettle, and applying as much first aid as possible. Their cause was assisted by Tara Cook’s apparent determination to survive. She’d suffered a nasty-looking wound, but in reality the attacker had only winged her, which was understandable in such poor visibility. This started Heck thinking again.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘the Stranger was never accounted for, was he?’

‘Heck … that was ten years ago. And I shot him through the left side of his chest. That wound had to be fatal.’

‘But you didn’t see him die. The Stranger taskforce never found his body, and they dragged that mire for days afterwards.’

‘Why would he suddenly reappear now?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d be interested in finding out.’

‘Did he try to rape or rob these girls?’

‘We don’t know what he did with the girl he clobbered. We haven’t been able to get up there yet, and there’s no sign of a body down at this level.’

‘You say he shot the second girl? Well that wasn’t the Stranger’s MO, Heck. He never carried a firearm.’

‘Which he’s probably always considered a big mistake. I mean, it all went swimmingly for him until the night he met a nice-looking chick packing a .38.’

There was another long pause. Gemma was the arch-professional. Not just a top-notch administrator, but a highly organised investigator. She rarely let emotion get in the way of cool-headed logic, but he knew she’d been haunted all her career by the very close call she’d had at the hands of the Stranger back in 2004.

Despite that, she was clearly making an effort to be realistic. ‘Heck, as far as British law enforcement is concerned, the Stranger is dead. Not just because he suffered a deadly wound, but because no further victims were reported.’

‘Suppose he modified his MO. Suppose he didn’t just start carrying a gun when he went on the job, suppose he cleared off to another part of the country to do it. I mean, we know he’s a Scot. Up here in the Lakes, he’s only an hour from the border.’

‘Ten years ago, Heck …’

‘Yeah, but like you say, you shot him. Suppose he survived but was badly damaged. It might have taken a decade for him to recover his health.’

She sighed, though it didn’t sound like a sigh of frustration; more a sigh of puzzlement. ‘Heck … what do you want me to do about this?’

‘Well, now you mention it … nothing.’

‘Come again?’

‘I’m drawing this to your attention, ma’am, because I still respect you. And because I’d like to think we’re still friends to some degree. Plus I thought you might be interested. And you are, I can tell. If you remember, the Stranger taskforce never publicised that intelligence about the Frank Sinatra song.’

This was another key factor in Heck’s thinking. The original investigation team had avoided any public mention of Strangers in the Night. Firstly on the grounds the song was actually irrelevant to the case at the time, but secondly because cranks had a habit of putting themselves forward as serial killer candidates, so it was always useful to withhold one small detail.

‘What’s the current status of the enquiry?’ Gemma asked.

‘It’s not even started. I’ll be accompanying the casualty down to Westmorland General just as soon as the ambulance gets here. And then liaising with DI Mabelthorpe from Windermere nick.’

‘And this assault happened around midnight?’ She sounded unimpressed. ‘That’s almost eleven hours ago. Life moves at a slower pace up there, eh?’

‘Ma’am, we only found Tara Cook an hour and a half ago. And this fog is literally so bad we can’t get a chopper up to examine the main crime scene. In fact, we don’t even know where the crime scene is. Tara Cook reckons they’d been wandering for hours, lost, when they were attacked.’

‘Heck … this couldn’t just be some wandering maniac?’

‘The chances of that are a hundred to one, ma’am. First of all that any such person would exist up here without us already knowing it, especially as he’s armed. Secondly that he could have run into these girls in the fog purely by accident.’

‘You think he’d stalked them from earlier?’

‘Somehow or other he must’ve known where they’d be. I mean, stalking would be the Stranger’s style, wouldn’t it? From what I remember. He used to pick his targets in the pubs around the West Country, followed them for a couple of hours before they’d parked up somewhere and got down to it …’

Gemma went silent again, and this time he heard her fingers hitting a keyboard. The Serial Crimes Unit, which she headed, was one of the busiest offices in Scotland Yard’s elite National Crime Group. It existed solely to investigate or assist in the investigations of series or clusters of connected violent crimes, wherever in England and Wales they might occur. It was a near-certainty she’d have other important tasks to be getting on with as well as this.

‘Anyway, that’s it, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d give you a heads-up …’

‘And this suspect was definitely whistling Strangers in the Night? The witness is quite sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You didn’t prompt that from her in any way?’

‘Definitely not.’ Tara Cook had begun mumbling the moment Heck had carried her out to the boat and laid her on the deck, but they’d been halfway across the tarn, en route straight to the Keld, before he’d realised what she was actually saying. With her reeling senses and battered mouth, it had been difficult getting anything intelligible from her. She’d clutched at him and Mary-Ellen with hands like talons, burbling, weeping, showing remarkable animation for someone so badly hurt. ‘Din’ see his face. No face … but that song. Stran’ in the Ni’. Kept on whistling it while he was creeping after us. Strangers in the Night …’

‘That was the main thing she remembered about him,’ Heck said. ‘The song. Absolutely petrified her. Sounds like he was playing cat and mouse with them for quite a while before he struck.’

As he relayed all this, Heck wondered again about his own experience on the tarn’s east shore, specifically the chuckle he thought he’d heard. Hadn’t Gemma once described her assailant on Dartmoor as having a snorting, pig-like chuckle? Of course, there was no guarantee he’d actually heard anything. He’d been so isolated at the time by the mist and the trees and the icy, ear-numbing silence that his senses had been scrambled.

‘I’m not sure I’ll be part of this investigation once it kicks into action, ma’am,’ he added. ‘But if you’re interested, I’ll try and update you regularly.’

‘Do that by all means … if you wish.’

‘Excuse me?’ he said. ‘If I wish?’

‘The song’s most likely a coincidence, Heck.’ By her tone, she was quite decided on that. ‘For all we know, your perp could be some kind of crooner obsessive. And the fact he ran into two girls is exactly how it sounds – he ran into them. He got lucky.’

‘Just like the Stranger did ten years ago, you mean? Having carefully trawled for his victims first.’

‘Heck, it’s more likely some opportunist headcase than a middle-aged madman who survived a bullet wound in the chest and a dunking in a Devonshire swamp, and then suddenly, over a decade later, decided to recreate the best night of his life four hundred miles away on a frozen mountaintop.’ She paused. ‘Don’t you think?’

Heck was unwilling to admit that what she said made pretty good sense. Because still, some deep gut instinct advised him there was much more to this.

‘Like I say, ma’am, I’ll keep you informed.’

‘And like I say, Heck … if that’s what you want.’

‘I thought you liked to get ahead of the game, Gemma?’

‘I’ve always been a believer in the Golden Hour principle.’

‘And what about the JDLR principle? Remember that, from when you were a street cop? Just Doesn’t Look Right.’

She sighed. ‘I’m onside with that too. How could I have tolerated you for so long if I wasn’t? But the thing is, Heck … I’m not your supervisor anymore. You need to address these concerns to this DI Mabelthorpe. If there is something in this for us, I’m sure we’ll get the message through the usual channels.’

‘Okay,’ he said, disgruntled. ‘See you around, ma’am.’

‘Yeah. See you, Heck.’ And she hung up.

When Heck ambled back into the rear office, Mary-Ellen was gazing expectantly up at him. Though she’d only been a kid at the time, she knew all about the infamous Stranger enquiry. There was barely anyone in Britain who didn’t. She hadn’t leapt excitedly a few minutes ago when he’d first mentioned there were possible similarities between that case and this, but she was clearly fascinated to know more.

‘What does Superintendent Piper think?’ she asked.

Heck shrugged. ‘She doesn’t want to know.’

‘But what does she actually think?’

He chuckled without humour. ‘That’s always tougher to ascertain.’

Chapter 5

It might have been a signature of the Stranger that he always destroyed his victims’ eyes by stabbing or gouging, but he wasn’t alone in that, Gemma reminded herself. Okay, it wasn’t a common feature of serial sex murders, but occasionally the eyes had it – so to speak. And yet considering this was such a momentous thing to do, quite often those responsible would offer only garbled explanations as to why.

One had professed an ancient, long-discredited belief that an image of the last thing the victim saw before death would be imprinted on the internal optical structures, allowing identification of the murderer on the pathologist’s slab – though no one had taken it that seriously, given this was the educated twenty-first century. Another had described it as a convoluted act of remorse, saying he’d sought to remove all sense that his victims were human beings. ‘As the eyes go, so goes the soul,’ he’d whined in a voice that almost pleaded for his interrogators’ sympathy. ‘It’s easier to tear and mutilate a doll than a living person.’ A third had adopted the polar opposite viewpoint, coldly claiming his victims’ eyes as trophies, and keeping them in jars on the shelves in the ‘workshop’ located in his cellar. The idea they were somehow sentient had excited him. In his eventual confession, he’d admitted: ‘I was aroused by the thought they were being protractedly tortured, trapped indefinitely in sealed glass containers, unable to vocalise their suffering, unable even to blink away the sight of me, their captor, in my endless triumph.’

Gemma hadn’t memorised any of these details, but then she didn’t need to. Even before Heck had hung up, she’d accessed Serial Crimes Unit Advisory, or SCUA for short – the unit’s own intelligence databank, and now called up one case file after another on the screen in her office. Purely on principle, she would never have let Heck know she was doing this. He’d always been a chancer; he took risks and gambles, but so often they paid off because his instincts were very well-honed. She’d benefited from them hugely, but that didn’t mean she could openly approve of this approach, even indirectly, by attaching undue credibility to it. But it was unfortunate, or maybe fortunate depending on your view, that Heck hadn’t mentioned anything about the assailant up in the Lake District going for his victims’ eyes – if he had, that would have been a smoking gun no one could ignore. In the original Stranger investigation, the aspect of the eyes being attacked had been of crucial importance.

Gemma opened the files in question, for the first time in quite a few years. Immediately, all kinds of memories flooded back. The crime scene photographs ensured that, along with the hundreds of statements taken, the intelligence and analysis reports and the many, many names involved – not just the other officers on the case, but the victims and their families, and the numerous suspects who’d slowly, steadily and very frustratingly been ticked off the list as their alibis checked out. She imagined she could smell again the rankness of the reservoir that stifling hot night, could hear the wind whispering through the thick, dry grass on the Dartmoor ridges, could feel the heat rising from the sun-beaten landscape. But more than anything else, she could clearly visualise that bestial, leather-clad face with its frothing, gammy-toothed mouth. Despite the many awful things she’d seen since then, the small hairs at the nape of Gemma’s neck stiffened at the mere memory.

It didn’t affect her quite the way it used to. She didn’t dream about the Stranger anymore – at the end of the day he had given her a soaring career, so she could hardly complain. But like so many other cases for which no real and satisfactory solution had been provided, the subject came up in conversation with discomforting regularity. There’d never been anything to suggest the killer was still alive, but perhaps deep down it wouldn’t have surprised her if something did. Very little about that enquiry had actually been straightforward. The guy had murdered indiscriminately, yet at times had behaved more like a professional assassin than a sex case, never leaving a trace of physical evidence, covering his tracks with amazing skill. And yet all the way through he’d behaved as if he was on a kind of learning curve, constantly modifying and adjusting his methods – so much so that in the initial stages of the investigation, before Gemma was actually attached, West Country police forces hadn’t immediately been sure they were dealing with a serial killer. Had it not been for the brutal stabbing of all the victims’ eyes after death, which rapidly became the Stranger’s trademark, they might have set up separate enquiries.

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