A crimson footprint.
Or half a footprint. The front half of a solid boot on the paving slab where the gravel of the ginnel gave way to the smooth surface of the narrow pavement. From a large foot, certainly not the size five trainers of his landlady. Nor his own size elevens. This was at least a twelve if not a thirteen.
Samson crouched down to get a better look, rubbing his fingers across the stain and getting a sour odour. Not blood, but wine.
He looked from the print back up the alleyway. Had he been too hasty in his conjecturing regarding the nocturnal movements of Delilah Metcalfe? After all, the mere-accident scenario didn’t explain the site of the spilled food. Didn’t explain why she’d walked past the back gate of the office instead of going straight in. And now, here was evidence of someone else in the ginnel, close enough to Delilah when she dropped the wine to have stood in it while it was wet and then transferred it here. Next to the bin where the takeaway had been deposited.
So Delilah had met someone. A big person. Probably male. There weren’t many in their acquaintance who matched that criteria. Delilah’s brother Ash maybe? Or the gamekeeper, Gareth Towler? But why would an encounter with either of them have resulted in Delilah’s subsequent behaviour?
Maybe she’d been surprised enough to drop the food. Then they’d walked down here together . . .
No. Not together. Or at least, if they had, where were Delilah’s matching footprints? Because surely if the person she’d bumped into had managed to get his shoes covered in wine, she would have done the same. Yet there was only one print. So either Delilah had avoided stepping in the incriminating liquid or . . .
She’d been carried.
He jerked upright, heart pounding, the rational side of his brain already dismissing his theory. The cautious side aligning it with the trouble he knew was brewing. Was it here? Had Delilah been caught up in it? But if so, why hadn’t she said anything when she returned to the office yesterday evening? Surely if there’d been a skirmish in the ginnel she’d have said something.
Or would she? From the minute he’d returned to Bruncliffe and bumped into the little sister of his best friend – or rather, bumped into her fist as she greeted him with that infamous temper of hers – he’d had no cause to doubt her. But now?
A heavy weight landed against his thigh, Tolpuddle having come to stand against him, leaning into his side. And Samson started laughing at his own overreaction.
He was getting paranoid. Every aspect of his life overlayed with mistrust by the sword hanging over him.
‘You’re trying to tell me I’m mad, aren’t you?’ he said, patting Tolpuddle’s grey head. The dog – Delilah’s dog – was as loyal as they came. He’d proven that again and again in the short time Samson had known him. He’d also shown himself to be a solid judge of character, and he was besotted with Delilah. But despite the Weimaraner’s vote of confidence, Samson was still beset with unanswered questions as the two of them walked back up the ginnel. Questions that left a residue of suspicion about whether or not Delilah Metcalfe could be completely trusted.
Delilah was reeling. All her planning the night before. The long hours spent at her kitchen table, trying to come up with a way to save Samson. A way that she could be sure he would be safe. The frantic messages sent out to gather people together. The effort of getting them to agree followed by Joseph’s dramatic revelations about Samson’s past. All for nothing.
She’d thought she’d have a few days, that DC Green’s warning of imminent danger had been exaggerated and that they’d at least have the weekend before anything happened.
But it wasn’t to be. Delilah stared at the blunt text. It was happening. It was real. Someone was coming to Bruncliffe to kill Samson the following day.
She didn’t have a clue how DC Green knew this. She wasn’t even sure that the detective wasn’t behind it, the entire scenario of enlisting Delilah’s help simply a ruse to get even closer to Samson. But Delilah wasn’t in a position to start second-guessing. In fact, given the text, she wasn’t in any sort of position at all.
The message blurred, tears forming behind her tired eyes, the emotion of the past twenty-four hours catching up with her. She wasn’t aware of the buzz of voices in the room. Or even that they suddenly went silent.
‘So that’s it? Tha’s quitting at the first hurdle?’ Ida Capstick had appeared by her side, thin features scrunched up in disapproval. ‘Thought tha was a Metcalfe, lass? Tha’s made of sterner stuff than this.’
‘But there’s not enough time to prepare—’
A snort of derision met Delilah’s protest. ‘We’ll just have to work harder.’
‘Ida’s right.’ Lucy was on the other side of her. ‘Whatever you’ve got planned, we can do it.’
Delilah glanced down at the notes she’d brought with her and then at the earnest expressions watching her from around the room. Less than twenty-four hours to pull this off. A bunch of amateurs trying to outfox a professional killer, all willing to put their faith in a scheme she’d concocted in the small hours.
She cleared her throat and began speaking.
‘So, does everyone know what they’re doing?’
A succession of nods and shouts of acknowledgment met Delilah’s question, the sullen atmosphere that had prevailed in the bar at the outset having been replaced with a current of excitement.
It had taken a mere ten minutes for Delilah to outline her plan. It had been met with stunned disbelief, followed by a barrage of questions. Which was typical of Bruncliffe folk, not ones for taking on a task without having fully examined it from all possible angles. And the task before them had a lot of angles, most of them sharp enough to cause harm.
With the final query dealt with, Delilah had quickly assigned duties to everyone there and was about to dismiss her troops.
‘Right, well if anyone wants out, now’s the time to say it. Because I can’t promise you that this isn’t going to be dangerous or that someone won’t get hurt.’ She let her gaze brush over the faces before her, coming to rest on a young woman sitting at the nearest table, one hand cradling the swell of her stomach beneath her dungarees, the other clasped tightly in that of the man next to her. ‘Gemma, Jimmy? Given your situation, are you sure you want to go through with this?’
Gemma gave a soft laugh. ‘Are you serious? After what Samson did for us in the winter? Pregnant or not, I reckon I’ve as much chance of winning the Malham show with that cross-eyed tup of mine as I have of persuading Jimmy to stop at home tomorrow.’
A burst of laughter met her pronouncement, Jimmy Thornton grinning at her with a mixture of pride and love.
‘Besides,’ continued Gemma, ‘a place that doesn’t stand up for its own isn’t the kind of world I want to bring this little one into.’
Delilah nodded, her throat tightening, the maelstrom of feelings which had held her in its grasp since the events of the evening before threatening to spill over. She hastily turned her attention back to the room.
‘Okay, well it looks like we’re all set. But if anything crops up, just ask, because we can’t afford to get this wrong. Ida will be holding the fort in my office and manning the phones, so she should be your first port of call, all right?’
Standing to one side, Ida glowered at the audience.
‘And remember,’ concluded Delilah, ‘not a word of this leaves this room. Samson can’t know what’s going on, so it’s best if no one outside of those of us gathered here knows either. So limit communication and make sure any contact comes through the WhatsApp group Arty and Joseph have set up for us. That way we know it’s genuine and we can all see what’s going on.’
There was a murmur of assent and then the scrape of chairs as people began to prepare to leave, the tension palpable in the worried expressions most of them were wearing.
‘Just one last question.’ Clive Knowles, a farmer from out beyond Horton, got to his feet. ‘What sort of a bloody hitman works weekends?’
The ensuing laughter was loud enough to be heard outside the Fleece, where Mrs Pettiford, the town bank clerk and resident gossip, just happened to be passing, heading down Back Street to the wool shop at the far end on her morning break. Checking her watch, she let out a loud tut. Not even ten o’clock and folk were inside the pub, carousing. What on earth was the town coming to?
She was even more indignant a minute later when she reached her destination and was met with a locked door, a handwritten note taped to the glass informing her that there would be no possibility of buying wool for another hour. Which meant she’d have to return on her lunch break.
Bemoaning what could only be perceived as a slip in standards, Mrs Pettiford made her way back to the bank.
In the yard behind the office building, unlike a lot of Bruncliffe that morning, Samson was hard at work. He’d returned from his inspection of the ginnel tormented with questions and so had decided to set about fixing Ida’s puncture outside in the warm sunshine, in an effort to rid his mind of the suspicions that were plaguing him.
It hadn’t proved as straightforward as he’d expected.
For a start he’d struggled to loosen the rear wheel, Ida’s brother George having clearly tightened it with a vengeance the last time he worked on it. Then it had taken several attempts to prise the tyre from the rim, Tolpuddle’s ears twitching at the muttered expletives that had accompanied each failure. And when he’d finally taken out the inner tube, Samson had discovered two fresh punctures amidst a circle of rubber already covered in patches. Hot and bothered and grumbling at the Capstick siblings’ parsimonious nature, he’d pulled off his jumper and set about adding another couple of repairs to the tally.
By the time he’d finished and put the wheel back on, amazed at the weight of the ancient bike and that Ida managed to ride it all the way from Thorpdale into town each day, surprisingly Samson was in a better frame of mind. He sat on the concrete paving next to Tolpuddle, the grey shape of the dog stretched out alongside the scarlet splash of the Royal Enfield.
‘Don’t know what got into me,’ he murmured as he stroked the lean flank of the recumbent Weimaraner, his mind wandering back to the ginnel and the misgivings his discoveries had triggered. ‘Delilah’s as good as they come. I’m sure there’s some other explanation for what happened last night.’
Tolpuddle sighed in response.
For a few minutes, Samson sat there, head tipped back, eyes closed, luxuriating in the sensation of the sun on his bare arms as he tried to remember when he’d last been outside without multiple layers on. From the fells up above came the haunting call of a curlew, and he felt his lips lift into a smile, the dejection that had been hanging over him from the evening before subsiding. This was as fine a birthday present as could be had.
Filled with the good humour that a sunny May day in the Dales brings, he got to his feet and headed for the porch. He had work to do. After the hectic last week that had seen the Dales Detective Agency caught up in the trauma surrounding the unexpected demise of the town’s mayor, it was time to return to a case there had been no chance to dwell on of late.
Finding the person who’d tried to frame his godson.
Two months on since someone had seen fit to stuff a load of ketamine in Nathan Metcalfe’s school locker and, while the lad had been cleared of any connection to the drugs thanks to Delilah’s wizardry with computers, Samson was no closer to identifying the culprit. That knowledge sat heavy on his shoulders.
So far, he’d focused his investigation on discovering who had manufactured the locker units in order to ascertain how easy it would be to duplicate the keys. But it was like wading through treacle. Reluctant to approach the school outright, given the possibility that someone in that community could well be involved, he’d resorted to cold calling local manufacturers, leaving a spate of messages, many of which went unanswered.
But with his court case scheduled at the end of the coming week, this loose end needed tying up if he was to keep his promise to Will Metcalfe that he would get justice for Nathan. Because if things went badly in front of the judge, Samson was fully aware he might not be coming back to Bruncliffe. And it would be next to impossible to fulfil that promise if he was languishing inside a prison.
So, a morning spent on the phone. It wasn’t the most exciting of prospects, but it was for a good cause. And then perhaps a bit of digging into the origins of the holdall full of cash which Nancy Taylor, widow of the aforementioned mayor, had found in her husband’s wardrobe and wanted Samson to investigate. A hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds hidden away. Getting to the bottom of that might liven things up a bit.
Plus there was still the delight of telling Ida her bike was fixed to look forward to. Maybe he’d try and persuade her to upgrade to a newer model while he was at it. Perhaps even an E-bike.
Grinning at the thought of Ida flying down the dale, battery-assisted, Samson let himself into the building. He was quiet. Not deliberately so. It was more a matter that he was alone, Tolpuddle still slumbering in the back yard. And so as he walked through the downstairs kitchen and out into the hallway, he came upon Delilah without her knowing.
She was outside his office, something in her hand. In an instant his suspicions were back.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked, his focus pointedly on the mobile she was holding.
‘Yes, fine. I just thought . . . this was on your desk.’ She held out the phone. The one his old boss, DI Warren, had given him. The one that was his early warning system, the link to his past that would alert him when the threatened trouble finally materialised. ‘I thought DI Warren said you were supposed to have it on you at all times.’
He stared at the phone. And then at her, a slight flush on her cheeks. But she held his gaze, her hand steady as she offered him his mobile.
‘Thanks. You’re right. Best to keep it with me.’
‘Cuppa?’ she asked breezily, already heading for the stairs.
‘Great. Cheers.’
Samson watched her go, his mind churning. Because he’d been pretty sure Delilah hadn’t been coming out of his office as she’d maintained. She’d been about to go in. In which case, how come DI Warren’s mobile had already been in her hand?
He thought of the crimson footprint in the ginnel and, in the chill of the hallway, his good mood of moments before dissipated. It wasn’t improved when, seconds later, the front door opened and DCI Frank Thistlethwaite walked in.
‘Is it done?’
With her heart still thumping from her close encounter with Samson, Delilah had barely made it to the upstairs kitchen before her phone rang, the caller dispensing with the niceties.
‘Did you get the tracker in place?’ DC Green continued.
‘Yes,’ snapped Delilah, turning her back to the door and lowering her voice. ‘It’s done.’
‘And he doesn’t suspect? Because that’s vital. He mustn’t know about this.’
Delilah thought about Samson’s steady gaze boring into her as she’d stood outside his office, hands sweating, almost caught in the act.
‘He doesn’t suspect a thing,’ she lied.
‘Good. Let’s keep it that way.’
‘And the text you sent? You’re sure? It’s happening tomorrow?’ Delilah couldn’t prevent a note of panic from creeping into her voice.
‘I’m sure. But there’s no need to worry.’
‘I beg to differ. It’s not your life on the line.’
‘Thanks to that tracker, neither is Samson’s. We’ll be watching him like a hawk. Nothing is going to happen to him. So please, just step back now and let us take it from here.’
‘I don’t really have a choice,’ said Delilah.
She ended the call, stomach churning. Aware of the huge risk she was taking. Risking Samson’s life with what she was planning. But like she’d told the detective, she didn’t have a choice. Because despite DC Green’s protestations, Delilah didn’t trust her an inch.
As dawn had been breaking that morning, when Delilah had finally collapsed into bed after hours of frantically wracking her brains for a solution to the catch-22 situation she’d been placed in, sleep had eluded her. Instead she’d lain there thinking over her abduction and DC Green’s reasons for it.
What if there was no hitman? What if it was DC Green and whoever she was working with – the mysterious aftershave wearer who’d chosen to remain in the shadows of the barn – who’d stolen the drugs and were in cahoots with organised crime outfits?
If that were the case, by complying with what had been asked of her, Delilah would be handing them Samson on a plate. Placing him in danger, rather than keeping him safe.
It was those concerns that had steered Delilah onto the course she now found herself on. All she could hope was that the events she’d set in motion wouldn’t backfire. Because if it turned out that DC Green was one of the good guys, Delilah was about to derail everything the policewoman had organised . . .
Which could have catastrophic consequences. Deadly ones, in fact.
Trying to keep a lid on the swell of panic building in her chest, Delilah turned to reach for the kettle. And saw DCI Frank Thistlethwaite standing in the kitchen doorway.
She jumped, startled. How long had he been there? And how much had he overheard?
‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, thick dark eyebrows drawn together in concern as he leaned against the door frame.
It would have been so easy to say no. To walk over to him and lean her head on his chest and tell him everything. He was a Thistlethwaite after all, born in Leeds but to a son of Bruncliffe, a cousin and an uncle still living in the town. She should have been able to confide in him.
But over the last few days, trust had become a commodity in scant supply. For this was a high-ranking detective who, she happened to know, had asked the local constabulary to keep tabs on Samson. Who had ingratiated himself into Delilah’s life with what had appeared to be interest on a personal level, and which she’d almost succumbed to. But which she now caught herself wondering about – were Frank Thistlethwaite’s motives always what they seemed?
Yet another person she had to be wary of. She didn’t know how Samson had lived the covert life he had with the NCA, harbouring suspicion about everyone he met, knowing they might suspect him in return. She’d been carrying this burden for less than a day and already she was hating it.
Raising the smile that had become her mask, she replied to the handsome detective. ‘I’m fine. Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Just . . . you looked worried.’ He was doing that thing Samson did, studying you with such intent that you felt your entire soul was on display. Clearly a technique they taught at police college.
‘Not at all. Couldn’t be finer.’ She turned up the wattage on her smile.
He smiled back. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to be intrusive. Samson said you were putting the kettle on so I came up to see if I could grab a cuppa too.’
‘Tea?’ She was already reaching for the teapot.
‘Please, milk and two sugars. And if I said I was here on business,’ continued Frank with a grin, ‘would I be entitled to a couple of biscuits?’
Delilah laughed despite herself. And then immediately remembered. This was someone she couldn’t afford to let her guard down with. Her caution appeared justified when she followed him out of the kitchen a few minutes later and caught the distinct scent of cedar in his wake.