Henry rolled out of bed and showered again just before seven a.m. When he came back into the bedroom, Diane had gone. The duvet was still pulled down and he could see the indentations left by her head and body in the pillow and mattress. He was guiltily grateful she wasn’t there, even though sleeping with her had been wonderful.
He had a fleeting image of Alison, but then wiped that from his mind.
In terms of Diane, he was far beyond worrying about what other people might think, but what did bother him was the possibility of drawing her into a relationship with an older man – a substantially older man at that. He was just into his sixties, she late thirties, and he didn’t want to get her involved in something that had no hope of going anywhere.
‘Well, at least you’re not skirting around the subject,’ she said.
It was a quarter of an hour later and they had met up in the restaurant, which had just opened. A couple of the local gamekeepers were already tucking into large breakfasts in preparation for their day ahead.
Henry and Diane were drinking coffee, and the young waiter had just delivered breakfasts for them. Henry was on a small version of the full English, Diane the vegetarian.
‘Look,’ Henry said, knowing he had probably phrased things all wrong and got her back up. He sighed as he tried to get it a bit better. ‘I think you are amazing, Diane. You’re a great detective … I think you’re beautiful … I didn’t even think I was capable of getting an erection like that anymore …’
She held up her hand – the number-one police stop sign – and said, ‘Well, you did. Impressive, too.’
‘Thank you,’ he said modestly. ‘It’s just, I like you too much to let you get involved with an old guy with a gammy knee, who probably hasn’t stopped grieving for his wife or fiancée – so a guy with psychological issues, too – who, on the one hand, can’t believe his luck … God, last night was fabulous, Diane …’ He closed his eyes for a delicious moment, visualizing her rising above him, moving rhythmically, and him trying not to come within about ten seconds. He opened his eyes again, seeing her smirking across the table, and continued, ‘And on the other—’
‘Stop again,’ Diane ordered him.
He did and bit off a chunk of toast.
Their eyes blazed.
‘Look, Henry … I like you a lot and I’m the one who chose to rub Deep Heat into your knee last night … well, at least that’s how it started.’
And it was. She had entered the bedroom as he’d been applying the ointment, knelt down in front of him and started to rub it in for him. That was when he realized erection problems were a figment of his imagination.
‘But I chose to come in uninvited, then we chose to sleep together – and that’s it! We were both exhausted, we’d both been through a hell of a lot yesterday, and we both needed it for that and various other reasons. But the main reason is that we like each other, isn’t it? Fancy each other? Y’know, basic man-and-woman stuff?’
He nodded. That was true.
‘Plus I’m no spring chicken,’ she admitted. ‘Yes, I’m obviously much, much younger than you …’
‘Isn’t that creepy, though? The age thing?’
‘If you were twenty years younger and I was twenty years younger, it’d be even creepier, so no. But what about my colour? Is that something that worries you?’ Diane’s family roots were Ugandan.
‘No,’ Henry said simply.
‘Right, OK, so where are we?’ she asked. ‘One-night stand or the start of something amazing?’
‘Uh, one-night stand which is the start of something amazing?’ Henry ventured.
‘Done.’ She raised her coffee mug; Henry did the same. ‘Shall we go for that walk?’
It transpired that Diane had a very well-equipped boot in her Mercedes. As well as a complete change of clothing, including night attire, she also had walking boots, a pair of Wellington boots, an umbrella, overcoats and rainwear, plus all the other things a good detective worth their salt would have: a box of disposable gloves, a first-aid kit, a portable fingerprint kit (which was out of date but serviceable), two torches, a small tool box, a digital camera and a mini scene-of-crime kit which contained all kinds of useful items.
‘Where do you put your shopping?’ Henry asked.
‘Front passenger seat. I shop alone,’ she told him.
Henry was already in his walking shoes as he waited for Diane to put hers on. As she did, he turned and looked at Hawkshead Farm, the home of John and Isobel York – and Beth. It was a lovely house, beautifully converted, but now a place that had housed violent death. Henry wondered what its future would be. Would someone have the courage to buy it, should it ever come on to the market? Or would it just be left to rot and deteriorate?
He turned back to Diane who had been perching on the open rim of her car boot while she put her walking boots on. She stood up, slammed the boot shut and hitched on her rucksack.
‘Ready,’ she declared.
They set off up the driveway towards the house.
They walked between the house and garage, past the large old barn and then over the expansive lawn, the grass now unmown for weeks, up to a low wall at the back of the garden which was the dividing line between it and the moorland beyond. Henry recalled that John York owned quite a lot of this moorland, too.
They stepped cautiously over the wall, and Henry lowered himself carefully down so as not to jar his knee, then began to walk up the steep slope towards the crest of the hill.
The fresh air filled his lungs, and for once in a long time he felt very alive, glancing regularly at Diane who was either alongside him or in front. He could feel the rhythm of his heartbeat and the expansion of his lungs, and although his knee was hurting, despite a couple of painkillers and another application of Deep Heat, all was good.
At the crest, they stopped and looked down the hill at the back of the farm. Beyond that, the view across the valley was stunning in the early morning.
‘After the briefing I’ll arrange for a support unit team to search this properly,’ Diane said. ‘Not sure there will be anything to find after a month, but you never know.’
‘Tick in the box,’ Henry agreed. He scanned full-circle, enjoying the view as much as anything, but also knowing how vital this walk was in trying to relive and recreate Beth York’s last minutes alive, even though how she actually arrived at the small lake was still hypothetical at the moment.
‘We’re presuming she left the house, legged it over the garden wall, then ran up the hill, maybe to where we are now,’ Diane speculated. She did a three-sixty turn, then pointed down the hill in the general direction of the lake, which could not be seen from their current position. She pointed to a wooded area in the distance. ‘What’s that?’
‘Azers Wood,’ Henry said.
‘Oh, yeah, that’s where I parked when I came round to see you and Jake. Looks different from up here.’
‘And where Tom and I parked for our fishing trip.’ Henry was not really familiar with the area and he tried to work out the geography, guessing the lake was somewhere in between where they stood now and the wood. ‘So …’ He spun around. ‘Out of the house and up here.’
‘Yep.’
Diane had her phone out and was taking photographs. A crime scene investigator would be visiting later and would be asked to do much the same thing, but would get better photographs.
Henry watched her and she caught him looking.
‘Stay professional,’ she warned him.
‘Gotcha.’ He forced himself to look away, took a few steps down the hill, then stopped suddenly, looking down into the deep grass at his feet. ‘Diane,’ he hissed.
He stepped across and looked to where he was pointing.
‘Wow,’ she said.
It was a strip of duct tape.
‘We’re definitely on the right track,’ Henry declared.
After deciding it would be better to seize the tape now, Diane photographed it in situ, then dropped it into an evidence bag without touching any of the surfaces. Henry continued to look around as she did this.
‘Not sure there will be anything of value on it after all this time,’ she mused doubtfully.
‘You never know. If nothing else, we should be able to identify it as being from the same roll of tape that was found on Beth’s wrists or not, plus if the killer didn’t wear gloves, it’s possible there could be a fingerprint on the sticky side of the tape.’ Henry looked down the hill towards Azers Wood, his jaw rotating thoughtfully. A hundred or so yards away was a low wall dividing two fields, which Henry assumed Beth must have crossed on her journey to Rushbed Crag overlooking the lake, over which she had tumbled.
Once Diane had sealed the evidence bag and labelled it up, she put it into her rucksack, and they carried on their journey towards the wall which was constructed of intricately laid dry stone, slotted in expertly like a jigsaw.
The wall was about four feet high and wasn’t easy to climb over, but they managed and continued towards the lake, keeping it slow, letting their eyes search the grass as they went.
‘If Beth was shot on the edge of the precipice, it might be worth cordoning off an area behind it for a nose-to-ground fingertip search to see if we can find any of the shell casings that might have been ejected from the gun. Again, needle in a haystack and all that, but it needs doing – that’s if the gun was an automatic and spent shells were ejected and the killer wasn’t holding a plastic bag over the gun to catch them.’
‘Gosh, you know a lot about guns,’ Henry said.
‘I once went on a firearms familiarization day. That’s the extent of my knowledge. I found out two things. One, I couldn’t hit a barn door from ten feet, and two, firearms scared the hell out of me.’ She looked at Henry. ‘You’ve used guns in anger, haven’t you?’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ He didn’t elaborate. ‘But mostly people have shot at me.’
‘I saw the scars,’ Diane said.
They continued to walk, up to the moment Henry stopped unexpectedly, turned slowly on his heels, frowning, thinking he had seen something out of the corner of his eye. He looked back towards the wall he and Diane had just climbed over.
He wasn’t sure.
Diane had walked on a few steps before realizing she was alone.
‘What is it, Henry?’
He shrugged, but then began to walk back towards the wall, then veered left slightly and stopped. He had seen something.
An empty plastic water bottle in the tall grass.
Diane caught up with him and dropped down on to her haunches to look more closely. ‘It’s got a chocolate-bar wrapper screwed up inside it.’
‘What do you think?’ Henry asked.
‘I’d say that anything we find up here that shouldn’t naturally be here, we seize for evidence and examine. Can’t do any harm.’
Before touching it, she took a series of photographs of it where it lay, then she picked it up and slid it into an evidence bag, sealed it and signed the label.
She looked up at Henry. ‘Should I say “bingo” at this point?’