The Coffin Trail E-Book

Martin Edwards

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Lake District Cold-Case Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 463

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Oxford historian Daniel Kind and his partner Miranda both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy a cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District. But though they hope to live the dream, the past soon catches up with them. Tarn Cottage was once home to Barrie Gilpin, suspected of a savage murder. A young woman's body was found on the Sacrifice Stone, an ancient pagan site up on the fell, but Barrie died before he could be arrested. Daniel has personal reasons for becoming fascinated by the case and for believing in Barrie's innocence. When the police launch a cold case review, Brackdale's skeletons begin to rattle and the lives of Daniel and DCI Hannah Scarlett become strangely entwined. Daniel and Hannah each find themselves risking their lives as they search for a ruthless murderer who is prepared to kill again to hide a shocking secret.

Leseprobe

The Coffin Trail

MARTIN EDWARDS

Dedicated to Helena

Contents

Title PageDedicationPrologueChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourAuthor’s NoteAbout the AuthorBy Martin EdwardsCopyright

Prologue

Barrie could see the woman stretched out on top of the Sacrifice Stone. Moonlight played upon her pale skin and long fair hair.

She is waiting for me.

He broke into a run. The trail was steep. Usually he counted every pace up to the top of the fell. Safety in numbers. But tonight he wasn’t counting, tonight he could do anything. His shirt was damp and the cotton stuck to his chest. In the night sky, an owl’s wings flapped. Breathing hard, he halted. The moon dipped behind a cloud. In the distance he could hear the waters of Brack Force slapping the rocks. Straining his eyes in the gloom, he made out the slender motionless form of the woman. She was so patient.

‘I kept my word,’ he said.

His throat was parched and his voice sounded scratchy. He’d never had much to do with pretty women, but he knew that they liked to be wooed. Petted. They treated it as a game. Paying compliments didn’t come naturally to him. He’d never bought anyone flowers in his life: what was the point? All the same, he’d been rehearsing words of admiration over and over in his mind. If you wanted to win, you had to play by the rules, even if they didn’t make sense.

Pebbles crunched under his feet. Even now, she remained perfectly still. Most people baffled him, but young women were the worst. They never behaved as he expected. He whispered her name, then called it aloud. Nothing. The only sound, the only movement, came from a fox that had ventured far from its lair. Perhaps she was testing him, maybe she wanted to see whether his desire would overcome his nerves, but it wasn’t what she’d promised.

She should be waving me on.

He caught a whiff of sourness in the air.

This isn’t right.

Two strides brought him close to the Sacrifice Stone. Just then, the moon gleamed and he glimpsed bare flesh. At once he saw that something terrible, something beyond words, had been done to her. His stomach was strong, but the sight made him retch.

He reached out – he could not help himself – and his fingertips brushed against her. The skin was chill and sticky and wet. He stepped back hastily, as if bitten by an adder, and wiped his fingers on his sleeve. She was covered with blood and now so was he.

‘But you said…’

Of course she didn’t reply. She was dead and everyone would say that he had done it. That he had killed her. He didn’t understand anything, except that he was in danger. Panic began to choke him. Who would believe that she had begged him to come? A teacher had once said he lacked imagination, but he could see the future unfolding with the vividness of colour pictures in a horror comic strip. He had been a fool. He had been betrayed.

Tears stinging his eyes, he stumbled along the rocky ridge. In blind haste, he clipped a cross-wall built to shelter visitors to the summit and cut his knee, but he hurried on. Time was short. The wind smacked his skin as if punishing him for stupidity, but he paid it no heed. He couldn’t go home. Home was where people would come to find him. To escape, he must find a safe way down. He was aiming for a dip between the crags and the chance of shelter in the next valley.

His breath came in short gasps. Spots of rain greased his hair. The ground was like glue under his feet. Ahead, a familiar squat cairn loomed out of the darkness and he yelped in frustration. He was exhausted, yet so far he had covered little more than a mile. Not far enough, not nearly far enough. His cheeks were moist and he knew he was crying for himself, not for the dead woman. Soon people would be chasing after him. Whenever something bad happened, he was blamed. What could be worse than this?

No one knew Tarn Fell better, he thought of it as his back yard, and yet in his distress he was unsure which downward track to take. As the ground fell away, his foot slid. For a moment he thought he’d turned his ankle, but it was all right. Facts, he would cling to hard facts. People mocked him for his love of facts, but facts weren’t like women. They were safe – and they never let you down.

Four, five, seven, ten. Safety in numbers. He paused. There was so much that he knew by heart and yet the shock of finding the woman’s body had emptied his brain. No, it was all right. Fourteen, seventeen, nineteen, eighteen, fifteen, eleven, seven and six. Those were the average daily temperatures in the Lakes, from January to December inclusive.

He stopped to peer over the precipice. Darkness, punctured only by a light in the lonely farmhouse far below. Thunder rumbled and he counted three seconds until the lightning flashed. The rain began to sheet down, sharp and unforgiving. He was close to the heart of the storm.

Now – the four highest mountains, in order of height. Feet, not metres. Scafell Pike 3210. Scafell 3162. Helvellyn 3118. Skiddaw 3053. The numbers soothed his brain. Lists and figures were a comfort, you always knew where you were with them. As a child, when his mother had shouted at him, he’d taken refuge in his bed and pulled the blankets over his face, reciting to himself the latest data he’d stowed away. He started to pick his way down the narrow path. Wait – he’d blundered on to the Devil’s Elbow, a zigzag route winding between two deep fissures carved by frost and rain.

No point in tears. In a downpour so fierce he could see nothing. The fells were safe, Wainwright used to say, as long as you watched where you put your feet. Suddenly the path convulsed over a mass of shattered rock. The rain had made it more dangerous and he found himself slipping. He threw out an arm and grabbed a clump of heather, striving in vain to break his fall.

A phrase his mother used came spinning into his mind. Rolling down the hill, she liked to say, Barrie’s always rolling down the hill. It was her way of describing what he was like when he went on and on about trivial things that meant nothing to her. Now he was rolling down the hill for real.

The ravine gaped in front of his eyes, a harsh mouth waiting to swallow him. He pitched into it, arms and legs smashing against stone as he fell. His forehead caught on a ledge which gouged his flesh. The pain was cruel. He screamed for help, but there was nobody to hear. He didn’t pray – he’d never been able to imagine God – but he told himself that he would survive the drop. Even if his body was wrecked beyond repair, he was going to live. People would be searching for him. Safety in numbers. He would be rescued. He could not simply be left until he starved. Or froze to death.

Chapter One

Forget about the murder. It’s history.

Daniel tightened his grip on the steering wheel as the Audi jolted over potholes in the winding lane, his palms sweating. Miranda thought he was so cool, so relaxed, but it was an illusion. Might a conjurer feel like this when walking onto the stage? Fearing that his magic wouldn’t work, that when he whipped the cloak away, his audience wouldn’t gasp, but merely yawn? The car eased over the top of the fell and Daniel held his breath. At last Brackdale revealed itself. Unfolding below them, luxuriating in the sunshine.

‘A hidden valley!’

Miranda’s delight made him shiver with relief. This was the moment he’d yearned for. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her leaning forward in the passenger seat, craning her long neck so as to drink in the scene. Stone buildings squeezed around a spired church and its lush graveyard, and on the other side of the village, a jigsaw puzzle of fields and copses spread out across the hollow. Quarry workings, deserted and melancholy, pock-marked the far end of the valley, yet he wouldn’t have loved Brackdale as much without its scars. Steep surrounding crags closed in together beyond the dead industrial remains. There was no through road. Miranda was right: a casual visitor would never guess that the valley existed. Tarn Cottage was concealed from view, as if by pale plumes of smoke. But Daniel knew that no fire burned, it was only the blossom of damson trees.

‘Look over there!’ Miranda was excited, he was aware of her tensing beside him. ‘That weird stone on the summit.’

The boulder was shaped like an anvil, stark against the sky. Even on this innocent spring morning, its grey bulk loomed dour and secretive. Without thinking, he said, ‘I climbed up there once. People round here call it the Sacrifice Stone.’

‘Really?’ Her voice rose. ‘Go on, tell me more.’

He’d said too much. That was the trouble with the valley; it seduced you into betraying what was on your mind. Laughing, he changed the subject. He must focus on the here and now, not let anything darken a perfect day.

They shuddered over a cattle grid; it would be a miracle if the car’s suspension survived the weekend, but who cared? As they joined the road on the far side of the village, dry stone walls gave way to hedgerows smudged by the gold of willow catkins. A mile further on stood a wooden sign with worn lettering. He could barely make out the words Tarn Fold. Next to it a gleaming estate agent’s sign pointed towards the woodland: Cottage for sale by private treaty.

It must be Tarn Cottage. Had to be. There was no other dwelling down the track. His skin tingled: soon he would see the old place again. He parked on a square of turf where the asphalted lane became an unmade track. Miranda leaned towards him, eyes closing as they always did when she was aroused. Her perfume had a heady jasmine fragrance. They kissed and he put the cottage out of his mind until she pulled away.

‘Time to explore.’

As he led her across an old packhorse bridge, they heard the faint splash of a fish in the beck. Past a ruined corn-mill, the route forked, and, without hesitation, he headed towards a coppice of beech and ash. Wrens murmured in the trees. He’d read that birdsong is quieter in the countryside: no need to compete with city noise. Above the track, sinuous branches arched to form a green tunnel. He had a sudden fancy that he and Miranda were people in a story for children, passing through a portal into another world.

A breeze set the trees swaying, as if to to the rhythms of a samba that only they could hear, and he glimpsed the whitewashed walls of the cottage. Beyond, he remembered, lay the barn and the bothy. When they reached the clearing, they stopped a few yards from the gateway at the end of the track, taking in the luscious air. A board freshly painted in a blinding shade of yellow bragged that Tarn Cottage “presented outstanding potential for sensitive refurbishment.”

Ground elder and nettles had colonised the gravel path that curved towards a front door from which green paint was peeling. At least the tracery of the mullioned windows was intact. Moving closer, they could see the slope of the garden down to a reedfringed tarn. Sunlight glinted on the water. Further on, the land rose towards the lower reaches of the fell. They paused, no longer able to hear the rushing of the beck. The breeze had dropped, the birds had lost their voice.

For a long time, neither of them broke the silence. Daniel slipped his arm around Miranda’s waist and felt her trembling. It wasn’t in her nature to be uncertain. Perhaps, like him, she felt as if she had arrived at a sort of holy place. The two of us are worshippers, he thought, we’re here to make our devotions. And now we are overcome by awe.

‘How could anyone live here and not be at peace?’ She was whispering, even though no one could hear.

‘Maybe we ought to put in a bid.’

‘Oh God, yes,’ she murmured. ‘Let’s do it.’

Her smile was dreamy. He’d seen it before, in her flat in London, moments after they made love for the first time. She could ask for anything, he would give it gladly. Seizing his hand, she gripped it tight.

‘Let’s do it,’ she said again.

‘But…’

‘No buts, Daniel. I mean it.’

‘You’re not serious.’

Her eyes opened wide. ‘Believe me, I am.’

He tried being logical, though this was no time for rational argument. ‘You work in London. I’m in Oxford. It takes almost as long to drive up here as to fly the Atlantic.’

‘You weren’t talking like that a couple of days ago.’

‘You weren’t talking about buying a holiday home then.’

‘Not a holiday home.’ She pinched his arm. ‘Listen, remember when I read out my horoscope last night, that stuff about making a new start? We could make it here. Sell up everything and move into Tarn Cottage.’

‘You’re joking.’ His mouth was dry. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I’ve never been more serious,’ she said. ‘I hate my job, and the college is stifling you. Listen to me, Daniel. Life is short, we don’t get second chances. Let’s escape from it all, make a fresh beginning together. We could be so happy here.’

He took a step away and stared at her flushed cheeks. Once such intensity would have scared him, now it made him giddy with desire. She lived by instinct and he adored her for it. For too long he’d played the sober academic, weighing evidence with cool scholarship before proceeding to a measured judgement. But reason was a ball and chain. Even though he’d never been able to get Brackdale – and Barrie Gilpin – out of his mind, it had taken him twenty years to return. Miranda was different. From the moment she’d seen the cottage, she had fallen head over heels.

‘It’s not exactly Islington.’

‘Thank God.’

‘Didn’t you once tell me that anywhere north of the Wash was like a foreign country? You’ve never even lived in a small town. You’re a Londoner, the city’s part of you.’

‘Parts of it I hate. The greed, the dirt, the crime. The newspaper placards screaming Murder of Woman – Witnesses Sought.’

‘But…’

‘Hey, I thought you’d understand, that you’d want this as much as me.’

A gust caught the damson petals. Daniel watched them flutter in the air like crystals of snow before they merged with the wood anemone carpeting the ground beyond the little wood.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Are you up for it?’

If I say no, he thought, will things ever be the same between us? I mustn’t mess up, the way I messed up with Aimee.

He swallowed hard. ‘Sure.’

Flinging her arms around him, she kissed him with a fierce hunger. Unbuttoning his shirt, unbuckling his belt, pushing him backwards and down. The grass smelled damp but they didn’t care. The two of them were drunk with passion for each other. Her skin tasted sweet. He’d never experienced this before Miranda: not such abandonment. Surrendering to the will of another human being. Until now he’d always kept control.

Later, stroking his chest with warm fingertips, she said, ‘You’ve never been able to get this place out of your mind, have you? I love that. That kind of obsession.’

Obsession? Yes, he supposed she was right. He ought to tell her that once, in this quiet and lovely place, a woman had been savagely murdered. But this moment was too precious. He would never forgive himself if she took fright and fled, vowing never to return. She was impulsive, he could never quite be sure how she would respond. He could tell her later.

Their pilgrimage had come out of the blue. Miranda had been trying for a late booking at a hotel on the Riviera that a friend claimed was the last word in luxury. She was desperate to take a break from London. At a party a few weeks back, Tamzin, her editor at the magazine, had made a pass following too many glasses of wine. Perhaps Miranda’s rebuff had been scathing, she really couldn’t remember. Ever since then, Tamzin had subtly set about making her life hell. When told that the hotel was full, Miranda burst into tears. Daniel threw out a suggestion, scarcely imagining that she’d say yes.

‘Why go abroad? We could stay in England, off the beaten track. How about the Lakes?’

‘Windermere?’ she asked, making it sound as remote as the Sea of Azov.

‘Too many tourists. But there are plenty of out of the way places. I stayed up there as a boy, it’s where we had our last family holiday before my father left us. I always wanted to go back.’

‘You mean – you’d like us to take a break up north?’

‘It’s not the Arctic Circle. Who wants to spend fifteen hours at an airport when air traffic controllers go out on strike? Even with all the motorway jams, the Lakes are only a few hours’ drive away. Where better to get away from it all?’

‘Doesn’t it rain a lot?’

‘You know what they say in the Lakes? There’s no such thing as bad weather. Only bad clothing.’

She laughed. ‘Okay, you win. I’ve never been there before, not even as a kid. My parents used to take us to France every year. Besides, I was never keen on Wordsworth and all that. We had daffodils in our front garden at home, they were my mother’s pride and joy. I never saw any need to visit Grasmere to see them in their thousands.’

‘There’s more to the Lakes than rain and daffodils. Forget Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter. Think Coleridge, think De Quincey, think…’

‘All right, all right, any moment now you’ll be reliving battle scenes from Swallows and Amazons.’ She was laughing already and he knew he’d persuaded her. ‘Okay, I admit it. When I was a kid, I couldn’t help liking Arthur Ransome’s books. And it’s silly, travelling the world and ignoring your own back doorstep. Even if I don’t get the chance of a tan. Let’s do it.’

Now here they were in Tarn Fold. Talking about junking their jobs, their homes, and moving up here. Unreal, but so was the whole of their affair. They had fallen for each other in the course of a single evening. He’d met her at a party thrown by his publishers at Soho House. At seven that evening they were strangers; they parted next morning as lovers. Her spontaneity was a gift. It turned him on, the way she let herself be swept by a tide of passion.

‘I just can’t believe…’

‘You must believe,’ she said quickly. ‘Swear to me you won’t change your mind?’

‘I swear,’ he said. ‘You know I wanted you to share this place with me.’

She put her head on one side, as though trying to decipher an inscription in Sanskrit. ‘I’ve never seen you like this before.’

‘You’ve never come here with me before.’

Taking a pen out of the pocket of her Levis, she scrawled the estate agent’s name and number on the back of her hand. ‘Fine, we’ll call at the branch and arrange to view.’

He couldn’t help grinning. ‘You really are set on this, aren’t you?’

‘Once I start on something,’ she said, ‘nothing will stop me.’

It wasn’t precisely true. A month ago she’d begun to write a novel, about some other young journalist who lived in Islington and suffered from lesbian harassment, but she’d never made it beyond chapter one. Last night in the hotel she’d talked of pitching a feature to a broadsheet about alternative therapies. Over breakfast, she wondered about yet another variation on a favourite theme: Diana: how she taught us to get in touch with our emotions.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘we’d better get a move on. We mustn’t lose out.’

She skipped off towards the car and he tramped after her in a blissed-out daze. Anyone would think they were both high on something.

‘This whole valley is a Shangri-La,’ she said as they left Tarn Fold behind. ‘If only the people here were immortal. It’s too beautiful a place to die in.’

He switched on the CD player and started humming to Norah Jones. Anything to avoid talk of death. As they passed through Brack, he pointed to a window above the front door of a large pub on the main street. The Moon under Water. From it hung a ‘bed and breakfast’ sign.

‘That was my room,’ he said. ‘I shared with my sister Louise. She kept me awake, telling me stories from a book my parents bought us. Legends of Lakeland, it was called. Tales about stone circles that came to life and rivers that wept.’

Beyond the church, the road narrowed. Purple aubretia and white alyssum spilled from cracks in the walls. On the verges, poppies were starting to bloom. A lane led off to a squat pele tower that formed the centrepiece of Brack Hall, another curved towards the hall farm and the fell beyond. He remembered clambering halfway up to Priest Edge with his father, to an embankment within which an irregular pattern of marked-out footways was all that remained of a hut village constructed by ancient Britons. According to Ben Kind’s books, fewer folk lived in the valley now than during the years BC.

‘My father and I used to roam around here while my mother and sister went into the town to shop.’

‘Your old man was a policeman, you told me. Was that difficult?’

‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘I was fascinated by the stories he told.’

‘But your mother, did she have a tough time?’

He hesitated. ‘The week we came home, he told mum that he was seeing someone else. The affair had been going on for some time, but she didn’t have a clue. He might have walked out sooner, but the holiday was booked and he didn’t want to wreck it for all of us.’

‘And you never saw him again?’

‘No, my mother would have regarded it as a betrayal. Louise backed her to the hilt. We both had to promise never to speak to him again. It was a long time before I broke my word.’

By evening, Miranda’s plans for the cottage were well advanced. They were staying in a hotel on the outskirts of Keswick, halfway between shimmery Derwentwater and the brooding heights of Skiddaw and Blencathra. The restaurant occupied an airy conservatory and over their meal they’d watched the sunlight streaking the lake, then marvelled at a sky so red as to delight even the gloomiest of shepherds. The dinner would have had Egon Ronay drooling. As they drank a final glass of Chablis in the low-beamed bar, Daniel felt light-headed, as if a hypnotist had put him in a trance of happiness. Viewing was scheduled for half-nine tomorrow. No one else had put in a bid. For Miranda that meant the cottage was as good as theirs.

‘Did I ever tell you I’ve written for home magazines about interior design? The importance of lighting and colour and stuff.’

He waved at the ‘to-do’ list she’d scrawled on the hotel notepaper, and her lavish sketch of their redesigned living accommodation. Already everything was planned out in her mind. The bothy could provide additional guest accommodation and she’d decided the barn could be split into two offices: his and hers. In their new lives they could work from home and be together all the time.

‘You saw how rundown the place is,’ he said. So far words of caution had blown away like leaves in a gale, but he dreaded her distress if it all fell through. She cared so much about everything. In her vulnerability, if nothing else, she reminded him of Aimee. ‘The garden’s bad enough; who knows what a survey might show?’

‘Come on, loosen up. Anything can be fixed.’

‘It’ll cost a small fortune.’

‘Have you checked house prices here? You could buy a mansion for the cost of a terrace in Islington. Well, almost. Anyway, we’ll have plenty of cash to spare when we sell our old homes. Money isn’t a problem.’

He swung back on his chair and tried another tack. ‘Country living is different. Winters are hard. Ever tried unblocking a septic tank?’

She giggled. ‘I’ll learn to love it. Hey Daniel, relax. This is going to be wonderful. Trust me.’

* * *

The ruddy-faced estate agent smelled of bacon and burned toast and looked like a prime candidate for a coronary. Tubby and panting and over-dressed in tweed suit and camel coat, he was yet naked in his desperation to earn commission on the sale. A fast man with a superlative, he didn’t seem to realise that all he needed to do was to let the cottage and its setting sell themselves. The sun gatecrashing through the faded blinds was so strong that Daniel needed to shade his eyes. The cottage hadn’t been occupied for months; although the windows were flung open, a mustiness hung in the air. Who cared? One glance at Miranda’s face was enough to tell him that Tarn Cottage was everything she’d yearned for. It’s going to be all right, he said to himself. We can make it happen.

Wherever they looked, work needed to be done. The window-frames were rotten and the cellar was a damp dungeon cluttered with chunks of coal. The bedrooms were dingy, the bathroom a claustrophobe’s nightmare. Doors creaked and the staircase railing twitched neurotically at a touch.

‘Character!’ the agent declared, as the rusty handle of a kitchen drawer came away in his hand. ‘You won’t find anywhere like this in – where was it, again?’

‘Islington,’ Miranda said. ‘You’re right. I live in a flat opposite an all-night diner. This is very different.’

‘And you’re from Oxford, Mr Kind?’ The agent tried to shove the handle surreptitiously inside the drawer whilst he was speaking, but he lacked legerdemain and it clattered on to the uneven slate floor. ‘This is a marvellous place for getting away from it all. And if you need someone to keep an eye on your bolt-hole while you’re away, we can arrange it for a modest fee.’

‘We want to live here permanently,’ Miranda said. ‘Forever.’

‘Even better!’ The agent beamed. ‘It’s all the rage nowadays. Downshifting. Well, there’s nowhere lovelier on God’s earth than the Lakes. And Brackdale’s very much off the beaten track, as you can see. Yet you’re not cut off. You can be on the motorway inside twenty minutes. Think about that!’

‘Thanks, but I’d rather not,’ Miranda said, glancing through the kitchen window that overlooked the tarn. ‘My God! That’s a heron by the water’s edge – Daniel, do you see?’

The estate agent’s head jerked, as if on a string. ‘Where? Oh dear, I must have missed it. Never mind. They’re like London buses, there’ll be another along in a minute! You’re rubbing shoulders with Mother Nature here, make no mistake! The water’s fresh from a spring on the hillside. Marvellous!’

They went out to look at the barn. It had double doors, high beams, and a wooden ladder that led to the old hayloft. In his enthusiasm, the agent climbed up a couple of rungs, clutching at the frayed rope to steady himself, before descending rapidly when the ladder shivered under his weight. ‘Couple of loose brackets,’ he said, mopping his brow. ‘Nothing to worry about. The thrill of starting from scratch. The world’s your oyster. You can design everything exactly the way you want it. No need to put up with someone else’s tastes.’

Daniel shrugged. It didn’t matter: the spell was unbroken. No stopping now, they had gone too far. He’d make an offer even if the outbuildings were a jumble of stones.

Misunderstanding, the agent gabbled. ‘As I said, there’s a healthy discount factored into the asking price to allow for renovation expenses. You’ll have realised that already, if you’ve been looking around in the area. Tarn Cottage is exceptionally competitive. Oh yes, we’re expecting a lot of interest. A very great deal of interest indeed. The basic structure’s as sound as a bell. All the place needs is a bit of fine tuning. You’re lucky to have spotted it so soon after it came on to the market.’

They stood outside the bothy, under the shade of a damson tree. Daniel remembered telling Barrie Gilpin a story from the guidebook he’d been studying conscientiously. Supposedly, damsons were named by the Crusaders, who brought them back to England from Damascus. He could still recall Barrie’s shrugging: so what? Whatever they’d shared, it wasn’t a fascination with history.

The path to the tarn was criss-crossed with brambles and the long grass cried out for a scythe. The layout of the grounds was bizarre. As a boy, Daniel had taken its charm for granted, now its eccentricity intrigued him. Paths wound aimlessly, with no obvious destination, and at one point the picket fencing inexplicably changed into a stretch of dry stone wall. Two spiky monkey puzzle trees thrust out of a tangle of ferns and an old cracked mirror was nailed to an ivy-clad trellis with an arch that gave onto the waterside. Everything seemed to lack rhyme and reason, yet it struck Daniel that the garden must have been planned like this for a purpose. He could not guess what it might be.

‘You say the lady who owned the cottage died recently?’

‘Yes, it’s been in her family for generations. In the end she finished up in a nursing home. Cancer. Dreadful business. She left it to a distant cousin who is settled in Yorkshire. She gave us instructions to sell a week ago, so you’ve timed your enquiry to perfection. There aren’t many homes in Brackdale, and a little gem like this comes on to the market only once in a Preston Guild.’

‘So what can you tell us about Tarn Cottage?’ Miranda asked idly.

The agent cleared his throat noisily. Daniel guessed that the man intended to be economical with the truth. He wouldn’t want to risk the sale, not with two people up from the soft South who wanted to live the dream.

‘Well.’ The agent ran a pink tongue over fat lips, choosing his words with a cabinet minister’s care. ‘I never knew the family that lived here, but I suppose they were just ordinary folk. It’s very quiet, you can see for yourself. Can’t imagine anything out of the ordinary happening in a sleepy spot like Tarn Fold, can you?’

Except murder, Daniel thought. Of course it was history, but he still couldn’t get it out of his mind. He of all people knew how much the past mattered.

Chapter Two

‘Daniel, is this wise?’ the Master asked.

‘Unlikely.’

‘But you intend to go ahead anyway?’

‘That’s right, Theo.’

Theo Bellairs sighed. They were taking Lapsang Souchong upstairs in the Master’s Lodgings, just as they had done on the day of Aimee’s death. Daniel had always had a sneaking affection for the sitting room and its atmosphere of sinful, old-fashioned luxury. To be enfolded by the vast leather armchairs was like succumbing to the embrace of comely if ageing courtesans. The room smelled of old Morocco-bound books and the tang of finest Spanish sherry; he associated it with learned conversation about Swinburne and Gerard Manley Hopkins and with slyly obscene jokes veiled by elaborate aphorisms.

Since Theo’s election as Master, the room also reeked of his cats, a pair of promiscuous Persians called Cesare and Lucrezia. Daniel had first come here as a shy undergraduate, to a cocktail party thrown by one of Theo’s predecessors, and to submit to the ritual of ‘handshaking’, when Theo, as his tutor, gave the Master an end of term report on his progress. Now he had succeeded Theo as Blenkiron Fellow in Modern History. They were colleagues, if hardly equals in the hierarchy of academe. Yet his stomach had lurched as he climbed up the worn stone steps to the Master’s door, as it had on his very first visit. He needed no reminding that he was embarking on an adventure. On something like a whim, he was giving up academic tenure, and an accompanying level of job security that most people would kill for.

Theo put down his cup with the reverence that Crown Derby deserved and strode to the seat in the bay window overlooking the spreading oaks of the Great Quadrangle. Settling himself on the velvet cushion, he folded one long skinny leg over the other. He was only a year away from retiring to the villa in Nice that he shared with his partner, a mediaevalist called Edgar, yet every movement was invested with a youthful grace. He was wearing one of the white suits for which he was renowned. Daniel had always wondered how Theo managed to keep them so clean; if he’d risked dressing in anything similar, it would be filthy within an hour. Grubbiness was alien to Theo; he was never besmirched by so much as a single cat hair.

He beckoned Daniel to join him. Down in the quad, a group of rugby players was heading for the Buttery bar, and a young man in a college scarf was running after a girl with red-rimmed eyes who was blowing her nose and pretending not to notice him.

‘Look at them, Daniel. Do you recall how it felt to be eighteen? Your early struggles with Tocqueville stick in my mind. Remember telling me that you intended to change subjects, that you wanted to study…ah, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics?’

He rolled the words out as if they were exotic profanities. Daniel couldn’t help smiling. ‘And I remember your telling me to have patience.’

‘And I was right, was I not?’

Conversing with Theo was like playing chess with Capablanca. You always had to anticipate the move after next to have a prayer of staying in the game. In his mind, Daniel heard Miranda’s words.

‘Yes, but life is short.’

‘It may feel longer for those who fritter away the opportunities that it affords.’

‘Sorry, but I didn’t come here to be talked round. You gave me time to think over my decision. I’m grateful, but my mind’s made up.’

Incapable of crude exasperation, Theo fingered his cravat. ‘You always had a streak of stubbornness.’

He’d once employed the same tone to criticise a truncated account of the coal mining industry’s role in Britain’s industrial development that Daniel had dashed off during an essay crisis prompted by a hectic affair with a girl from St Catz. That was the first time Daniel had heard the advice that Theo gave to all his disciples: to quote from one source is plagiarism, to quote from several is scholarship.

‘And it’s no good telling me that a man who’s tired of Oxford is tired of life.’

‘Yet of course it is true. Oxford is unique. Look out of the window, Daniel.’ Theo’s tone became warm although he was not, Daniel thought, a warm man. For all his many acts of personal kindness and his unfailing manners, he always seemed remote from the quotidian. Quotidian was, Daniel thought, the right word: very Theo. Theo simply did not do emotion; according to Edgar, he loved his cats more than any human being, and Daniel wasn’t sure that Edgar was joking. ‘The brightest and the best come here to learn from us. We owe it to them to give them what they seek.’

‘They seemed to manage well enough when I was away.’

‘We are about to start Trinity Term, Daniel. As you well know, the custom is to give notice during Michaelmas, so that interviews for a replacement may be conducted during Hilary with a view to an appointment commencing at the start of the new academic year.’

‘Sorry, Theo, but you won’t be short of strong candidates available at short notice. Have a word with Pederson, he’s chafing to move back from Wales. Or how about…’

Theo put up a mottled hand. It was more like a claw, these days, Daniel thought. ‘Enough. I hope this isn’t a delayed reaction to Ernst Walter’s boorishness?’

Last summer, an argument had raged in the Senior Common Room about Daniel’s entitlement to a sabbatical. The guiding principle was that one was eligible for a term away from college after completing six years as a tutorial fellow. Daniel had spent his sixth year as a visiting fellow on the other side of the Atlantic. A law don called Ernst Walter Immel had complained that a year’s absence from Oxford should not be permitted to count towards the entitlement to yet more leave, but Theo had ruled in Daniel’s favour. The deal was that he’d continue teaching until the end of Hilary. By giving notice now, Daniel could honour his side of the bargain and still leave college at Easter.

‘Much as I hate college politics, I promise that wasn’t the reason.’

‘What of the response to your television series? Petty jealousies are always vexing.’

Daniel’s scripts had been edited by ratings-driven zealots. The book on which they were based proclaimed a parallel between historical research and the work of a detective; the rewrites transformed it from a light academic essay into a quasi-crime show. The producer said this made the programmes more accessible and the viewer figures left him salivating with delight. A couple of reviewers from rival faculties of history, on the other hand, had frothed with rage. The focus on history as popular entertainment was symptomatic of collapsing educational standards and they made it pretty clear that Daniel was personally to blame.

‘By the time the editors had done their worst, the series didn’t feel as though it had much to do with me.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re planning a new career as a –’ Theo’s cough became a choke, as if at the horror of it, ‘– a celebrity?’

‘Been there, done that. Never again.’

Theo’s saurian eyes narrowed. ‘Do tell me, then. How is the new book progressing?’

‘So-so.’ Not at all was the truth, but he refused to allow Theo to score too many points. Time to score one himself. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Indeed.’

A rival from Cambridge had savaged Theo’s last book in The Times Literary Supplement. Although he had brushed off the assault with his customary suavity, during the past decade he had published nothing but a handful of articles in obscure journals. No ego, Daniel knew, is as easily bruised as an academic’s.

‘But will pursuing this rural idyll provide fresh inspiration?’

Put with such urbane irony, the idea sounded absurd. ‘I want to make a new start, simple as that.’

‘There was a dreadful rumour – scurrilous, I’m sure – that you might be moving to Harvard.’

‘Your grapevine’s as efficient as ever. God only knows why you were never recruited by the security services.’

‘How do you know that I wasn’t?’ Theo’s eyebrows might have been designed to be arched. ‘So – Harvard?’

Daniel shook his head. His series had been shown in the States and picked up a couple of awards, although to his chagrin one of them came in the category of Best Docu-Crime. For a few weeks Harvard’s extravagant offer lingered in his mind, until he met Miranda and everything changed. Only yesterday he’d received a chaser from the Americans, but at once he’d scribbled a reply saying how flattered he was, but no thanks. He was going to extend his break from teaching for a while. Stay in England and write another book. Perhaps they might come back, putting even more dollars on the table, but it would make no difference.

‘So you said no?’

‘This really isn’t about money.’

Theo sniffed. ‘Have I ever mentioned that your famously vague, rather dishevelled charm can be a little wearisome on occasion? When it acts as a cloak for intransigence, for instance?’

‘Thanks for pointing that out, Theo,’ Daniel said easily. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

There was a scuffing at the door and Lucrezia made an entrance, heading for Theo’s lap. ‘There, there, my pretty. Now look, Daniel, you don’t have to resign. Why not get the best of both worlds? Pursue your rural dream and remain on the Faculty. Keep the flat. Rent it out, become a filthy capitalist. If you come back in Michaelmas, you won’t have to do much teaching. For goodness sake, sixteen lectures for the university over the space of a year are scarcely going to wreck your work-life balance. You’re hardly likely to succumb to occupational stress on the –’

‘It’s not about the teaching, either.’ Daniel couldn’t ever recall interrupting Theo before. It simply wasn’t done, it was worse than singing bawdy songs during a sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to you or to the students if my heart wasn’t in my work. I just want a break, end of story.’

‘The sabbatical wasn’t long enough for you?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m well aware that I’ve not done enough for college lately. Better to resign than deprive a worthier candidate of a place at high table.’

Theo kept probing, like a dentist seeking evidence of decay. ‘I’m glad you want to write. But with the greatest of respect to the libraries of Cumbria, they can scarcely match the resources of the Bodleian. Why not research your book here?’

‘I’ve spent almost half my life in Oxford. I’m stale. Believe it or not, I’ll be a better historian when I’m living in the Lakes.’

‘Recharging the batteries?’ Theo winced at the cliché even as he uttered it. ‘Well, it is not for me to suggest that you’re being self-indulgent, but you might spare a thought for the college. We’ve lost Quiggin and Kersley this year already.’

‘Sorry, but we’ve bought the cottage. I never realised conveyancers could move so quickly. Miranda is up there already.’

‘You’re sacrificing a great deal for her. I hope she’s worth it.’

Daniel was supposed to be laid-back, the newspapers said that was his style, but Theo knew better than anyone how to get under his skin.

‘Thanks for your concern, but yes.’

Theo stroked his cat, spoke softly to it. ‘He doesn’t love us any more, Lucrezia. He’d prefer to run off to the back of beyond with some girl he’s picked up. He met her on the rebound and now his heart is ruling his head. Or if not his heart, some other part of his anatomy.’

‘It’s not on the rebound.’

‘No?’ Theo flicked an imaginary spot of dust from his immaculate cuff. ‘Are you sure about that, Daniel? Can you put your hand on your heart and say that this – this frolic has nothing to do with what happened to poor Aimee Durose?’

The question stung like a wasp. ‘Aimee has nothing to do with this.’

‘You’re going into hiding.’

‘I want to do something different.’

‘It’s the same thing.’

Daniel shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

‘The truth is, that you blame yourself, isn’t that right?’ Theo’s voice was barely audible now, but Daniel had never known it sound so harsh. ‘Be honest, admit it. All this nonsense about recharging batteries may fool your new girl, but it doesn’t fool me. This is all about you and Aimee and your ridiculous guilty conscience.’

‘I’ve never known a place as quiet as this,’ Miranda said.

‘Can’t I hear someone drilling in the background?’ Daniel said into his mobile. He was draped over an armchair in his college room, on the top floor of staircase fourteen. Below in the Great Quadrangle, a lawnmower roared. In his mind he pictured the grounds of Tarn Cottage, untamed and yet oddly suggestive of an elaborate and long-forgotten design.

‘Too right. The builders are working upstairs and any minute now, I expect them to smash through the bedroom wall. I should have bought ear-muffs. At least the electrician has sorted the wiring now and the shower’s working too. I must have sluiced myself under the jet for a quarter of an hour this morning. It was just like washing away my old life. But – you should have been here last night.’

‘Wish I had been.’

She giggled. ‘It was as silent as – well, a graveyard. In the evening, I went out for a walk, just a ramble around the tarn. It was so eerie, with an owl hooting and twigs cracking. This sounds silly, but I felt nervous, knowing there wasn’t another person within a mile of the cottage.’

‘Sounds like heaven. Remember when the woman in the flat upstairs from you was burgled? And the boy stabbed by the racists while you went out to the kebab house?’

‘Of course you’re right,’ she said. ‘Funny thing is, I’ve never felt as alone as I did last night.’

‘You won’t be alone for long,’ he said. ‘The sooner I pack up here the better. Theo’s cutting up rough and I can’t really blame him. I didn’t make a good job of explaining myself to him.’

‘Maybe you should have been cryptic,’ she said. ‘It worked for me.’

He laughed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

When Miranda had announced that she was leaving the job, Tamzin had jumped to the conclusion that she was planning to bring a claim for sexual harassment. Without any prompting, the company offered a severance payment, ‘in full and final settlement.’ Her response didn’t mask her contempt, and senior management, in panic mode, increased the golden handshake by fifty per cent. Better than winning the lottery. ‘Anyway, I’ll have said my last goodbyes by the time you get back here.’

‘I can’t wait to see you again,’ she said softly. ‘This really is a different world, you don’t realise until you spend a few days here. It’s not just that you can’t drive fast down the lanes and that the hills mess up the TV reception. I keep thinking I’m a different person. When I called the plumber on the phone, I was tempted to make up a new name for myself. A new identity for a new life.’

‘Please don’t change,’ he said. ‘It’s you I want, no one else.’

During a break from the tedium of packing books, he glanced through the Oxford Mail and an article about people-smugglers caught his eye. It was so easy these days to buy a new identity. With a few keystrokes, an internet surfer could acquire a fake driver’s licence, eulogistic job references, a sheaf of utility bills for a false address. Miranda’s fantasy had lodged in his brain. What would it be like, to take on a different name? How did it affect the way you felt inside, pretending to be someone that you were not?

He was jerked out of his reverie by a fierce knocking at the door. The caller strode in without awaiting a response. Gwynfor Ellis seemed to fill the poky room. No one could doubt that his hefty frame and battered features belonged to a veteran rugby player. Few who did not know him would guess at his unrivalled knowledge of Celtic history or at the delicacy with which he pored over ancient texts.

‘Thought I’d better come and see for myself,’ he said, nodding at the boxes of books piled high on either side of the window. ‘See whether you’d change your mind before you succumb forever to the embrace of Satan, masquerading as The Good Life. I was looking out from the library window and saw you leaving Theo’s. He’s pissed off with you, that’s for sure.’

Daniel spread his arms. ‘He thinks I’ve let him down. Possibly he’s right and I should have hung around longer. I owe him a lot, no question.’

‘I’d say you’ve repaid the debt over the years. Of course, opinion in the SCR is divided. You’ve replaced the new building programme as the hot topic in college. It’s just as well you’ve been lying low. Most of the fogies think you’ve lost your marbles, giving up your fellowship in return for a lifetime’s servitude of doing-it-yourself.’

Daniel groaned. The scions of the Senior Common Room loved nothing better than trashing the reputations of absent friends over tea and scones. Whenever he thought of them – which wasn’t often – he not only remembered that Lewis Carroll had been an Oxford don, but also guessed what inspired the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

‘What they don’t realise is that Miranda loves nothing better than slapping paint on walls. She’s in her element already, organising the tradesmen. With any luck, the makeover will be half-finished by the time I move up there.’

‘You’ll be lucky. It took Debbie and me six months to get one small bathroom sorted.’ Gwynfor hesitated. ‘Tell me it’s none of my business, but…is Miranda running away from something – or someone?’

‘Of course, it’s none of your business,’ Daniel said calmly. ‘Listen, she was in a relationship for a few years. He was married with three kids. Eventually his wife found out and gave him a her-or-me ultimatum. He chose to stay married. My lucky break, but it shattered Miranda’s confidence for a while. I understand what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong.’

‘Question is, do you really need to make a complete break? Why can’t you leave yourself a bit of wriggle room?’

‘Sorry, it’s like a Mills and Boon romance, but we want to make a commitment to this.’

Gwynfor stared. ‘Commitment? Daniel Kind? Am I hearing right?’

Daniel grinned. ‘Past performance is no guide to the future, as the investment folk say. Wriggling’s off the agenda. Miranda had enough of that with the married man and all the reasons why the time was never right for him to pack his bags and leave his family.’

‘But in case things don’t work out up north?’

‘Cumbria isn’t on the other side of the globe.’

‘It’s further away than you think. And I’m not talking miles on the clock.’

‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s something I have to do.’

‘Well, Miranda is a gorgeous lady.’

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘She is.’

‘Think of all those disappointed fans of yours. The porters were complaining they couldn’t cram all the mail into your pigeon-hole. And what will the two of you do for money?’

‘I’ll start writing again, when I’m ready. A proper book, not a TV script. And I’ve sold the house in Summertown for twice the price that the two of us are paying for this cottage. Miranda’s flat is still on the market, but we haven’t even needed a huge loan. So the cash won’t run out in a hurry. It’s not as if I earn a fortune as a college fellow.’

‘Tell me about it. All the same, you’re committed and she isn’t?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. We’re going into this together, the cottage is ours in equal shares. She’s passionate about Brackdale, the move was her idea. I tried to talk her out of it.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind.’

‘The more I think about it, this isn’t so much getting away from it all. It’s more like going back home.’

Gwynfor stabbed a thick index finger at the wall posters advertising a musical at the Playhouse, a performance of The Real Inspector Hound in the Newman Rooms, a Balliol concert. Daniel had taken Aimee to each of them.

‘This is where you belong. Oxford gets inside you, there’s no resisting it. You’re part of the place and it’s part of you.’

‘That’s what I used to think,’ Daniel said. ‘But now I’m breaking free.’

‘Something I need to tell you,’ Daniel said, switching off the car radio. ‘I should have mentioned it before, but the time never seemed quite right.’

After a final weekend in Oxford, they were caught in a tailback on the Thelwall Viaduct, on the way back to their new home. Three lines of vehicles stretched ahead of them, as far as the eye could see. In a minibus in the adjoining lane, a group of teenage girls were waving their arms in the air and singing to pass the time. Rudimentary lip-reading suggested a tribute to Abba’s greatest hits.

Miranda took a breath. ‘If it’s about Aimee, you don’t need to say any more, okay? That’s all in the past. What went on between you and her – it’s private. It doesn’t affect you and me.’

‘It’s not about Aimee.’

With a wicked grin, she said, ‘Listen, I already worked out that you weren’t dressing down for the benefit of the TV ratings. No image consultant required, you really are that scruffy.’

‘Lucky that unkempt was fashionable at just the right time. No, it’s about the cottage.’

‘Oh, is that all? Break it to me gently. Does the roof need replacing? Some bad news in a secret codicil to the survey that I wasn’t allowed to see?’

‘The roof’s fine. This is to do with the cottage’s history.’

‘You’ve been investigating?’ She smiled. ‘Does it have a ghost? The spirit of an old farmer’s wife who fell in the tarn and was too plump to climb out?’

‘No ghost,’ he said. ‘At least – not exactly.’

‘What, then?’

He swallowed. ‘All those years ago, when we took a holiday in Brackdale, I made friends with a murderer. He lived at Tarn Cottage.’

‘Jesus.’

‘But he was only thirteen years old. He’d never done anyone any harm in his life. What’s more, I’ve never believed he was capable of murdering anyone.’

‘A miscarriage of justice?’ She was at once sympathetic, ready to be outraged. Her research for a series of articles about women falsely accused of killing their children had robbed her of faith in the judicial system. She cared passionately for life’s victims; it was one of the things he loved about her.

‘He was suspected of murdering a young woman, a tourist. But the case never came to court. He and I met while my dad and I were out walking. Our first full day in the Lakes. His name was Barrie Gilpin and he lived in Tarn Cottage with his widowed mother. We talked and started playing together. I could tell he was different, but I didn’t know quite why. I’d never heard of autism and he had a mild form of it. We were two loners who sort of hit it off together. We saw each other every day, he became part of our family for a fortnight. When we were leaving, I made a promise to write, to stay in touch. Then my father left home and our world fell apart. I let Barrie down. I never wrote that letter.’

‘You can’t take the blame for that. Don’t always be so hard on yourself.’