Ann Cleeves - The Crow Trap

“You’re having a dramatic time of it,” he said, as if he envied her.

Perhaps that was what being a GP was about for him. It entitled him to star in his own action movie.

They went out onto the hill just before dawn. With such a detailed record of Grace’s movements they said they would easily find her. Even if she’d strayed away from her planned route there’d be no problem. The doctor carried a folded stretcher which poked out of the top of his rucksack.

Rachael watched them from her bedroom window. They didn’t invite her to go with them and she didn’t like to suggest it. The cloud was still thick and low, with a drizzle, so they soon disappeared. She must have dozed, although she was sitting upright in a chair, because she was suddenly aware of their return. She looked at her watch. They’d been gone for two hours. There were four of them, walking in single file.

The doctor still had the poles of the stretcher poking above his shoulder but she couldn’t see Grace.

She went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. Before going they had made jokes about having the tea ready on their return. The gas was so slow that she was still there when they came in. There was hardly room for them all to stand in the tiny kitchen. She could feel their heat after the walk, smell the wax on their boots.

“Did you find her?” Then this seemed a ridiculous question because Grace obviously wasn’t there. “I suppose the others are still searching.”

“We found her,” the doctor said.

“How is she?”

“She’s dead.”

It was, she thought, like Bella all over again. I know now, she thought, what it’s like to be mugged. You’re kicked. It hurts. You think it’s over, roll away, gather yourself to get up, then someone comes at you and kicks again. And all the time you know it’s your own fault.

“How?”

“We can’t say,” the doctor replied. “Not yet.” As he put his arms round Rachael to support her she wondered, bitterly, if this was excitement enough for him.

Anne

From the moment she saw Grace outside Kimmerston station Anne knew that they weren’t going to get on. Something about the skinny bitch got right up her nose. Something about the way she sat there, staring straight ahead of her as if nothing in the world deserved her interest, as if she was the only person who mattered. Anne shouldn’t have had to provide the taxi service in the first place. Peter had been going to do it but he’d phoned her at the last minute and turned on the charm which, according to gossip, had turned on the frigid Rachael, but which didn’t work on her.

“Well,” she’d said, ”s hardly on my way.” Because she lived in Langholme, the nearest village to the study site and Kimmerston was thirty miles away.

“Come on, Anne. You don’t really mind, do you?”

“I’ll be putting in a claim for the petrol.”

She hadn’t felt she could refuse. Not at the moment.

She’d cut it a bit fine and was ten minutes late arriving at the station. Grace was already waiting outside. It was midday and the station was deserted, unkempt. Last year’s hanging baskets were still full of brown moss and dry stalks and a couple of empty coke cans lay in the gutter. Anne thought viciously of what she’d like to do to kids who threw litter around. Grace must have realized that this was her lift but when the car pulled up she didn’t move from the wrought iron bench where she was sitting. She was lost, apparently, in a world of her own. Or perhaps she just couldn’t be bothered to shift her arse. Anne had to wind down the window and yell, “Are you waiting for Peter Kemp?”

Then Grace uncoiled her long legs and stood up. Not hurrying, though Anne was waiting with the engine revving. Anne got out and opened the boot and Grace dumped in her rucksack without a word, without even a smile.

Sod you then, Anne thought, but she wore politeness automatically, like the very expensive perfume her lover provided. She held out her hand across the gear stick.

“Anne Preece,” she said. “I’m the botanist.”

“Grace Fulwell, Mammals.”

“Not one of the Fulwells?” Anne said jokingly, because clearly Grace couldn’t be one of the Fulwells or she’d have heard of her. “Holme Park Hall? Lords of all they survey.”

Grace looked at Anne strangely.

Supercilious cow, Anne thought. She had come across people like Grace before. They got a couple of degrees then believed they were better than anyone else. It didn’t help that she was a good ten years younger than Anne and now she said, “Sorry. Why should you have heard of them if you’re not local? The Fulwells are a big family in this part of the county. They own most of the Uplands. Or that’s how it seems.”

“Do they?”

“Mm. They’re neighbours of mine. Sort of.”

Grace turned away with a pained expression. “Oh,” she said, “I see.”

“Have you come far?” “Just from Newcastle. Today.” Which really told Anne nothing.

On the way to Baikie’s Anne tried to make conversation but was answered in monosyllables, so she, too, lapsed into silence. They were driving through Langholme when Grace suddenly sat upright. It was as if she’d woken with a start from a deep sleep.

“Where is this place?” she demanded.

Anne told her.

“Langholme?” She sounded astonished, disbelieving.

“I should know, I’ve lived here for ten years.”

“It’s just that it’s not what I expected,” Grace muttered.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, something smarter, I suppose. Something prettier.”

“God, where would you get that idea?”

There was nothing pretty about Langholme. The terraced houses were built along a ridge, exposed to the northerly wind. The pub’s paintwork had faded as if it had been sandblasted and at the garage the petrol pumps had rusted. The place had more in common with the Durham pit villages to the south than with pictures advertising the National Park in the Northum-bria Tourist brochure.

“Of course,” Anne went on, realizing at once how defensive she must sound, ‘ don’t actually live in the village.”

And as the road dipped past the church and a belt of woodland at last provided some shelter, Anne pointed out the Priory. The marital home.

The pale stone of the house was partly hidden by trees, but there was a perfect view of the garden. Anne slowed the car so Grace could admire it. Even so early in the season it was looking bloody good. It had taken ten years of hard labour but it had been worth the effort. Grace hardly looked up.

And Holme Park Hall?” she asked. “Where is that?”

Anne ignored her. She had to concentrate anyway on the OS map. She’d never driven to Black Law before. The other contracts she’d worked for Peter Kemp had been on the coast and she and Jeremy weren’t really on socializing terms with Bella and Dougie Furness. They didn’t mix in the same circles. If Bella and Dougie mixed at all. In the village they had something of the reputation of keeping themselves to themselves. Bella wasn’t in the WI and she never went to church.

Though thinking about that now, Anne remembered that she had seen Bella in church once.

She had a sudden picture of the woman hunched in a big coat on the back pew, her breath coming in clouds, tears streaming down her cheeks. It must have been last Christmas, the kids’ Nativity play, the usual thing out of tune Away in a Manger’, Mary and Joseph awe struck by stardom, the angels fidgeting with their glitter wings and tinsel haloes. It was always a tear-jerker. Even Anne occasionally wondered at Christmas if she’d missed out by not having kids.

Presumably that was what had got to Bella too. By the time she’d met Dougie she must have been a bit old to think about starting a family.