Simon Beckett - The Chemistry of Death

'Not much. Just that you'd had a bad experience, but she didn't say what.'

Jenny smiled, plucking at the grass stem. 'Good old Tina,' she said, dryly but without rancour. I waited, letting her make up her mind whether to say more or not.

'I was attacked,' she said after a while, keeping her eyes on the grass. 'About eighteen months ago. I'd been out with some friends and caught a taxi home. Like you're supposed to. Streets not safe and all that. It had been someone's birthday, and I'd had a bit too much to drink. I fell asleep, and when I woke up the driver had parked and was getting into the back with me. When I put up a struggle he started hitting me. Threatened to kill me, and then…'

Her voice had grown unsteady. She paused for a moment before continuing, in control again.

'He didn't actually get to rape me. I heard some people nearby. He'd parked in an empty car park, and this group were cutting across it. Just fluke, really. So I started yelling and kicking on the window. He panicked, pushed me out of the car and drove off. The police said I'd been lucky. And they were right. I'd come out of it with just a few cuts and bruises, it could have been a lot worse. But I didn't feel lucky. I just felt scared.'

'Did they catch him?'

She shook her head. 'I couldn't give them much of a description, and he drove off before anyone could get his number. I didn't even know the name of the taxi company, because I'd flagged him down in the street. So he's still out there somewhere.'

She flicked the grass into the water. It floated on the surface, barely making an impression.

'It got so I was afraid to go out. I wasn't frightened of seeing him again, it was just… everything. It was like, if something like that had happened for no reason once, it might again. Any time. And so I decided to get out of the city. Go and live somewhere nice and safe. Saw this job advertised and ended up here.' She gave a crooked smile. 'Good move, hey?'

'I'm glad you did.'

The words were out before I knew it. I quickly looked out across the lake, anywhere but at her. Idiot! I fumed. Why the hell did you say that?

Neither of us spoke. I turned to find her watching me. She gave me a hesitant smile.

'Want a crisp?' she asked.

The awkwardness passed. Relieved, I reached for the wine.

In the coming days I would look back on this afternoon as one last glimmer of blue sky before the storm.

The next week passed in a state of limbo. A subdued tension filled the air like ozone, a dull anticipation as everyone waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

The general mood matched the landscape, flat and becalmed. The weather continued as hot and unblemished as ever, without any hint of gathering clouds. The police investigation ground on, producing no sign of either suspect or victim, and the streets became noisy as every child of school age celebrated the start of their long summer break. I returned to my normal hours at the surgery, and if there were more patients now asking to see Henry, or an element of reserve in many of those I did see, I chose not to notice it. This was my life now, and Manham, for better or worse, my home. Sooner or later even this would pass, and then some sort of normalcy would return.

That was what I told myself, anyway.

I saw Jenny regularly over the following days. One evening we drove out for dinner to a restaurant in Horning, where the tables had linen cloths and candles, and the wine list was more than a choice between red or white. It already seemed as if we'd known one another for years instead of having just met. Perhaps that was partly because of what we'd each been through. We'd both experienced a side of life that was a foreign country to most people, discovered how tenuous was the line separating the everyday from tragedy. The knowledge bonded us like a private language, unspoken most of the time, but there nevertheless. It had seemed natural to tell her about my history, about Kara and Alice, and about the forensic work I'd been carrying out for Mackenzie. She'd listened without comment, only briefly touching my hand when I'd finished.

'I think you're doing the right thing,' she said, allowing the contact to linger a moment before quickly moving her hand away. And then, without awkwardness or embarrassment, we'd started talking about something else.

Only on the way back was there any tension. Jenny withdrew further into herself the closer we drew to Manham. The conversation that had been effortless first became stilted, then dried up altogether.

'Is everything OK?' I asked as I pulled up outside her house.

She nodded, but too quickly. 'Well, good night,' she said in a rush, opening the car door. But she hesitated before she climbed out.

'Look, I'm sorry, I just… I don't want to hurry into anything.'

I nodded, numbly.

'No, I don't mean… It's not that I don't want…' She drew a deep breath. 'Just not yet, all right?' She gave me an uncertain smile. 'Not yet.'

Before I could answer she'd leaned into the car and given me a kiss, a fleeting brush of her lips, before hurrying into the house. I felt breathless, buoyed and guilty at the same time.

But her words stayed with me for another reason. Not yet. That had been the answer Linda Yates had given me when I'd asked if she'd dreamed about Lyn. I saw her again one afternoon, during the lull when the entire village was waiting for something to happen. She was hurrying along the main street, a look of preoccupation on her face, and didn't notice me until she was a few feet away. When she did she pulled up short.

'Hi, Linda. How are the boys?'

'Fine.' I was about to go on, but she called me back. 'Dr Hunter

I waited. She darted a quick look around, making sure no-one was in earshot. 'The police… are you still helping them? Like you said?'

'Sometimes.'

'Have they found anything?' she blurted.

'Come on, Linda, you know I can't tell you that.'

'But they've not found her yet? You know. Lyn?'

Whatever her reason for asking, it wasn't idle curiosity. Her anxiety was unmistakable. 'Not as far as I know.'

She nodded, but didn't seem reassured.

'Why?' I asked, although I was already starting to suspect.

'Nothing. I just wondered,' she mumbled, already scurrying off.

I watched her go, disturbed by the encounter. I had the uneasy impression that she hadn't been looking for news so much as confirmation. And I didn't need to be told why. Like Sally Palmer, Lyn Metcalf had finally made an appearance in her dreams.

But I quickly dismissed the notion. I'd been living in Manham too long if I was starting to believe in premonitions, or attach importance to dreams. Hers or mine. It was easy to be complacent. My own sleep had been undisturbed recently, my waking thoughts ones of Jenny and the future. It was as though I was surfacing into the air again after a long time underground. Selfishly, in spite of everything, it was hard not to feel optimistic.

Then, midway through the next week, the inertia broke. The body of the young man was identified when his dental records provided a match with those of a 22-year-old man. Alan Radcliff had been a postgraduate ecology student from Kent who had disappeared five years earlier. He'd been in the area, studying the countryside around Manham. At some point, he'd become a part of it. When his photograph was released a few people in the village could even remember him: a good-looking young man with an engaging smile. For a few weeks while he camped out on the marshes he'd become a familiar face in the village, brightening the days of the village girls before he moved on.

Except he hadn't gone anywhere.

Manham reacted to this new development almost without comment. With the victim's identity and connection to the area now known, no-one needed to state the obvious: the body's location couldn't be dismissed as a coincidence. The village could no longer distance itself from this very literal skeleton from its past.