SHE NEEDED TO be alone. She needed to walk off her anger. William had told her to stay off the moor but she was not afraid, she was angry, burning with it. If any murderer came close to Annie while she was in this frame of mind, he’d best watch himself. She felt a kind of relief as she walked. Going against William’s will, putting herself at risk, was gratifying. It was a small rebellion but a good one.
She took the lower path, the one that climbed more gradually up the hill, passing through Jim Friel’s farmland. The way across the field was stony and wet. The cows tugged at pale, scrubby grass still not recovered from the winter. At the field edge the new growth of wild daffodils bowed their heads and the blossom buds were tight little knots of green on the blackthorn. Tiny flies hovered in the air and the birds were busy in the hedgerows. Annie climbed over the stile and took the path through the woods, cool and dark. The call of a cuckoo echoed amongst the trees and the ground beneath the branches was greening as bluebell leaves fingered their way through the winter’s mulch. She walked on and she saw a figure up ahead, a woman. A large dog bounded around her. As Annie came close, she recognised the woman.
‘Janine!’ she called.
Janine turned. She was wearing jeans and a long, green waxed jacket that had seen better days. Baby Chloe was hooked into a sling carried beneath the jacket.
Janine raised her hand and waved, and then waited while Annie caught up with her.
‘Paul hasn’t banned you from coming up here then?’ she asked.
Janine tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘He says we’re all right if we’ve got Souness with us.’ She nodded towards the dog. ‘He’s a failed police dog but Paul keeps him up to scratch on the commands. He’ll attack if I tell him to.’
‘Is it OK if I walk with you then?’
Janine smiled. ‘Yes, of course it is. It’d be nice to have some company.’
The dog came over and sniffed at Annie. He was a huge German Shepherd. His head came up to her waist. ‘It’s all right, you can pat him,’ said Janine. ‘He’s friendly enough when he’s not working.’
‘Don’t you worry about him with the baby at home?’
‘Oh, he stays outside. In a kennel.’
They walked on uphill, together. They chatted for a while about this and that, and then, as the walking became more arduous, they fell silent. As the two women went higher, the woodland thinned and soon Annie could see the roof of Jim Friel’s cottage over the brow of the hill, and beyond that, stark against the dun-coloured moor-side were the sprawling mineworks, the police vehicles grouped together beside the slurry pond. The sound of a voice projected through a megaphone, strident and dogmatic, occasionally drifted close on the breeze. Still further away, and lower down, the town was a maze of streets and buildings covering the basin of the valley and climbing up its sides.
Annie and Janine avoided the path that most walkers took, the wide path that went around the side of the hill, the one the honeymooning couple had taken the day they found the body. The higher they went, the smaller and less significant the farm buildings and Everwell and the mineworks and Matlow town became. They reached a rocky piece of land, and sat down in the sunlight, dangling their legs over the side of a small overhang. Chloe was asleep in the sling, her head lolling to one side. The dog lay down in the shade with its chin between its paws.
Annie leaned back on her hands.
‘From here, it doesn’t look far from the town to the big houses set back from the lane, does it?’ she said.
‘No, it doesn’t. It can’t be more than a couple of miles.’
Annie pointed. ‘See that house there? The one with the grey roof with the little cottage beside it? That’s Everwell. When I was growing up, that house seemed as distant to me as the moon.’
‘But you knew it?’
‘Oh yes, I knew it. All the town children went up there once a year for the well-dressing – they still do. I always used to sneak a look through the windows.’
‘And you liked what you saw?’
‘I thought it looked like heaven.’
Chloe had woken. She was squirming and whining. Janine pulled her out of the harness and wiped her nose. The baby rubbed at her eyes with her fists. ‘Do you mind if I feed her?’
‘Of course not.’
Annie made a pillow of her jumper and lay back on the rock. The warmth of the sun was making her sleepy. She closed her eyes and listened to Chloe’s whimpering as Janine unbuttoned her dungarees and settled her at the breast.
‘Is your Paul working every hour God sends?’ Annie asked.
‘Mmm. I hardly see him. He’s always promising he’ll do more to help with the baby but he’s so tired when he comes home these days that I don’t like to ask him to do anything.’
‘And I don’t suppose he notices how tired you are.’
‘No.’
‘William never noticed either when Lizzie was small. The men reckon looking after babies is easy.’
They were silent for a while.
‘Paul thinks the world of William, you know,’ Janine said at last.
‘It’s mutual.’
‘Paul aspires to be just like him. He says he’s never met anyone with so much integrity.’
Annie laughed. ‘William has that, all right. But it’s not easy being married to someone who’s so righteous all the time.’
‘No. I don’t suppose it would be.’
Annie listened to the contented sounds of the baby feeding.
‘You used to know Tom Greenaway, didn’t you?’ Janine asked.
‘Yes. We grew up together. Why?’
‘Oh, I just wondered.’
‘Paul’s asked you to interrogate me, hasn’t he?’
Janine laughed. ‘No, not at all. He told me that Tom had had a difficult childhood and I was interested. I trained to be a teacher, you know, before I got married. Tom’s mother died when he was a baby, didn’t she? And his father treated him badly.’
‘That’s about the sum of it.’ Annie picked at little stems of grass beside her. ‘His dad expected Tom to follow the traditional career route for Matlow lads: leave school at the earliest opportunity and go straight up the hill and down the mine, but Tom couldn’t do that. Just the thought of going underground was enough to turn him white as a sheet.’
‘Oh. That must have been difficult.’
‘Tom’s father was a horrible man. He thought Tom’s problem reflected on him. He used to call him his pansy-boy – and worse.’
‘Poor kid.’
‘A lot of people tried to help.’
‘Yes, but children who are told all their life that they’re useless build walls around themselves. They’ll say what they think people want them to say. They often have trouble with the truth, even when they’re grown up. Does that sound like Tom Greenaway?’
‘I don’t know.’
Janine unhooked Chloe from her breast with her little finger and a dribble of milk ran down the baby’s chin. ‘You greedy little pig,’ she said with affection.
Annie wrapped her arms around herself. The sun had gone in and she could feel a chill in the air. She looked back across the moor.
‘We ought to get moving,’ she said. ‘The mist’s coming in.’ She stood up and helped Janine to her feet. Behind them, the dog stretched and yawned.
Annie looked down once more at Matlow town, fading now into the fog, and she wondered if Janine was right about Tom. She remembered the things he had said to her when they were going out together, the promises he’d made to her. Had he just been telling her what he thought she wanted to hear?
Such lovely words he’d said to her. Had every one been a lie?