Ann Cleeves - The Crow Trap

“So what will you do now?” Neville asked. “Will you try to trace your father?”

“I don’t think so. He sounds a bit of a nerd. He was running a weekend drama course for teachers and that was the only time Edie met him. He already had a wife and family. He never knew about me. It’s not as if I ever really felt the need of a father. I just didn’t like being kept in the dark. But I’ve not told Edie that. I want to keep my options open. She owes me that much.”

They walked on hand in hand like a couple of kids, and the moment when Rachael might have suggested taking him inside Baikie’s had passed.

Vera presumed that they returned to the farmhouse although they couldn’t have gone in through the kitchen, and from where she sat there was no sign that the place was occupied. The evening sun was too strong for the need for lights in the rooms and it was too warm for a fire.

Her phone rang. Ashworth’s voice was insistent and excited.

“We’re on.”

“How many people?”

“Just one.”

“No need to call the cavalry then,” Vera said, stretching her legs, thinking she’d best get dressed. “This one’s ours.”

There was no movement until dusk and then it was cautious, wary, giving the impression of an animal coming out after dark to drink. Suddenly a bank of cloud had appeared and Vera could make out no detail. She saw only the shadow, slightly darker against the grey hill and then she almost dismissed it as a roe deer. She had been expecting something less subtle, more purposeful and confident.

The shape followed the line of the burn from the crow trap to the mine, stopping occasionally. Vera thought this was not through tiredness, though there would be the shovel to carry, besides a rucksack, but to watch and listen. By now it was so dark that Vera had to concentrate very hard not to miss the movement. With unusual self-doubt she wondered briefly if she should after all have asked for help, enlisted the specialists with their night sights and tracking devices. With the technology she would have felt more in control, would have known for certain what she was seeing. Then she thought that the person moving carefully across the hill would have smelled them, knew this landscape so well that an influx of strangers, however well hidden, would have been noticed.

She had an almost superstitious sense that her prey would pick up any movement she made, so Vera stayed where she was, quite still. She knew the destination, knew what would happen there. She had to wait because there was still no proof. It wasn’t against the law to take a walk on a dark night along the burn. At one point she lost the figure completely. She held her breath, peered through the smeared glass into the gloom. Then there was a brief flash of light as a match was struck and the soft glow of candlelight marking the rectangular gap where the door of the mine building had once been.

She spoke to Ashworth, whispering at first, although there was no one to hear her.

“Where are you?”

“At the edge of the forest.”

“Move on now. I’ll see you there. But quietly.”

Deliberately, slowly, Vera pulled on her trousers and laced her boots.

Outside it was still warm, the air smelling of honeysuckle and crushed grass, the scents of summer afternoons. There was no wind to hide the sound of her movement. She didn’t want to risk using a torch but her eyes soon got used to the grey light, the hazy shapes.

She realized as she approached the burn that she was loving every minute of it. She thought this must be how Hector and Connie felt when they raided the Lake District golden eagles, sneaking up to the site, knowing the warden was dos sing nearby in his tent and that the police had promised regular patrols. They did it for this buzz.

Christ, she thought. I must be light-headed. Thinking I can understand that pair. That’s what exer else does to you. And having nothing to eat all day except a packet of biscuits.

Now she could hear water the burn where it was channelled through the culvert to power the engine which had worked the mine. There was the crunch of pebble. She thought it must be Ashworth but when she turned to look there was no movement and it was too dark to see. Tonight the moon was covered by the low, dense cloud which had rolled in like fog.

From the shell of the engine room came another sound, the scrape of metal against stone and soil. Vera moved closer. She was breathing heavily after the walk from the cottage but the noise from the building reassured her that she wouldn’t be heard. At last she was close enough to see.

The woman was standing with her back to the gap in the wall. She wore a long skirt over black boots. She had loosened a flagstone from the corner of the room and shifted it enough so she could dig out the soil underneath. The grave must have been shallow because already Vera saw a fragment of bone, cream as ivory, waxy in the candlelight. The woman squatted and began to scrabble at the soil with her fingers.

Vera was flattened against the outside wall of the building, looking in at an angle through the gap. All she had to do now was to wait for Ashworth. She began to relax.

Suddenly, behind her, so close that it sounded like a scream, she heard a woman’s voice in exclamation. Then loud footsteps and Neville Furness shouting, “Who is it? What’s going on?” Shit, Vera thought. That’s all I need. She’d thought they’d be inside all evening shagging like rabbits.

The woman in the building stood and turned in one movement, giving a throaty growl of astonishment. She picked up the shovel which she’d leant against the wall. She couldn’t see Vera, still hidden outside, but Rachael, silhouetted in the doorway, must have been visible from the light of the candle. The woman moved forward. Before Vera could stop her she lashed out with the shovel. There was the crunch of metal against flesh and bone. Then she ran and seemed to disappear immediately into the darkness.

A second later the scene was hit like a stage by the spot of Ashworth’s flashlight. Neville Furness sat on the grass cradling Rachael in his arms. She was conscious. There was blood, probably a broken nose.

Vera heard her gasping with pain but thought she’d rather have Neville fussing over her than a middle-aged detective. She turned towards Ashworth, blinking in the light.

“Did anyone pass you?”

“No.”

“She’s not headed back for the car then.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Radio for assistance. We’ll need medics for Rachael. Then stay here.

She’s mad enough to come back.”

“And you?”

“I think I know where she’s heading. Friendly territory.”

As she walked off she could hear him shouting at her not to be so bloody stupid, that this was no time to play cops and robbers, they’d get her no bother before morning. But the words seemed very distant, as far away as Neville’s murmurs of comfort and Rachael’s stifled moans. She turned back once to say to him, “Look, I know what I’m doing. This is familiar territory for me too.”

But he was still shouting, his mouth opening and shutting in the torchlight, and she didn’t know whether or not he’d heard.

As she headed up the hill towards the tarn she felt that she did know this place. Better in the dark than she did in daylight. As a child it had always been after dusk or before dawn when she’d come here with her father. The scale seemed different then the tarn had looked like an enormous lake but the geography was the same. They had come here to steal the eggs of black-necked grebe. Her father had paddled into the water in thigh-length angler’s waders. Connie had stood on the bank, clapping her hands in delight.