Kitabı oku: «The Devil’s Dice»

For my parents.

Thank you for your support, encouragement, and advice on how to kill people.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Acknowledgements

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue

The man clambered into the cave on shaking legs, sucked in a lungful of stale air and stared wide-eyed into the blackness. When the dark mellowed, he shuffled inside and sank onto the seat that a long-dead troglodyte had hewn into the cave wall. The familiar coldness seeped through his trousers and into his flesh. The discomfort pleased him.

He fished out his torch and stood it upright, so the light beamed up and bounced onto the glistening floor. Bats hung above him, their tiny feet grasping at the rock, furry bodies tucked into cavities.

The solitude was soothing. No judgemental glances from colleagues. No clients clamouring for his attention like swarms of angry insects. No wife shooting arrows of disappointment his way.

He placed the book by his side. Eased the cake from his pocket, pulled open the crinkly plastic wrapper and took the soft weight in his hand. He hesitated; then brought it to his lips, bit firmly and chewed fast. Another two bites and it was gone.

The air went thick. His throat tightened. He leant back against the cave wall. There wasn’t enough oxygen. He gasped. Clamped his eyes shut. An image of his long-dead mother slid into his head. Slumped in her wheelchair, head lolling to one side. And an earlier one – way back when his memories flitted like fish in shining water – smiling down at him and walking on her legs like a normal parent.

He rose. Stumbled to the back of the cave, grasped at the ferns on the wall, fell against them. His stomach clenched and his upper body folded forwards. He was retching, choking.

More snapshots in his head. Kate’s face on their honeymoon. Beaming in the light of a foreign island, laughing and raising a glass to sun-chapped lips. He gasped. Air wouldn’t come. Drowning. That time in Cornwall, still a child. Beach huts against the bright blue sky and then the waves throwing him down. Dragging him along the sea bed, his terror bitter and astonishing.

He crashed to the cave floor. An image of a childhood cat, orange-furred and ferocious, but loved so much. The cat dead on the lane. Now a girl hanging deep in the Labyrinth, the noose straight and still. Please, not his girl.

A terrible burning, like maggots burrowing into his cheeks. He clawed at his face, nails hacking into skin, gouging into eyes.

Blackness coming in from above and below. The image of his mother again, in bed, both emaciated and swollen. Suffocating. Pleading.

Chapter 1

I accelerated up the lane, tyres skidding in the mud, and prayed to the gods of murder investigations. Please bestow upon me the competence to act like a proper detective and not screw up in my new job.

The gods were silent, but my boss’s voice boomed from the hands-free phone. ‘Meg, did you get the details? Body in a cave… almond smell… philosophy book…’

I squinted at the phone, as if that would help. Richard’s monologue style of conversation meant he hadn’t noticed the bad signal. Had he really said ‘philosophy’? Our usual deaths were chaotic and drunken, with absolutely no philosophy involved.

Another snatch of Richard’s voice. ‘Scratches on his face…’ Then the line went dead.

I swerved to avoid a rock and dragged my attention back to the road, which climbed between fields sprinkled with disgruntled-looking sheep and edged with crumbling dry-stone walls. A mist of evidence-destroying drizzle hung in the air. As the farmland on the left merged into woods, I saw a couple of police vehicles in a bleak parking area, and the sat nav announced that I’d reached my destination.

I pulled in and took a moment to compose myself. Of course it was terrible that a man was dead, but if he’d had to die, at least he’d done it in an intriguing way, and when I happened to be nearby. I was an Inspector now. I could handle it. Mission ‘Reinvent Self in Derbyshire’ was on track. I took a fortifying breath, climbed from the car, and set off along a corridor marked with blue and white tape.

The path sloped up towards the base of an abandoned quarry. I trudged through the fallen leaves, the mud emphasising my limp and sucking at my feet with an intensity that felt personal. I needed to rethink my fitness regime, which mainly consisted of reading articles in New Scientist about the benefits of exercise. It wasn’t cutting it in my chubby mid-thirties.

Through the trees I saw the face of a cliff, tinted pink by the evening light. An area around its base was enclosed by ribbons of tape stretched between rocks and shade-stunted oaks, and a police tent squatted just outside. I walked over and encased my genetic matter in a protective body suit, face mask, overshoes and two pairs of gloves.

The duty sergeant was a bearded man who looked slightly too large for his uniform.

‘Sergeant Pearson,’ he said. ‘Ben. No evidence trampled. All under control.’

I didn’t know him, but I recognised the name. According to the (admittedly unreliable) Station grapevine, he was extensively tattooed. Nothing was visible but apparently his torso was completely covered and was the subject of much fascination, which just demonstrated the poor standard of gossip in the Derbyshire force.

‘DI Meg Dalton,’ I said, and looked around the taped area. There was no-one who was obviously dead.

Ben pointed to the cliff. ‘In the cave house.’

A narrow set of steps, smooth and concave through years of use, crawled sideways up the face of the cliff. At the top, about fifteen feet up, a dark, person-sized archway led into the rock.

‘There’s a house up there, burrowed into the rock? With a corpse in it?’

‘Yep,’ Ben said.

‘That’s a bit creepy.’

Ben squeezed his eyebrows together in a quick frown. ‘Oh. Have you heard… ?’ He glanced up at the black entrance to the cave.

‘Heard what?’

‘Sorry. I thought you said something else. Never mind. It’s not important.’

I sighed. ‘Okay, so what about our iffy body?’

‘Pathologist said he died within the last few hours. And SOCO have been up.’ He nodded towards a white-swathed man peering at what looked like a pile of vomit at the base of the cliff.

‘Who’s been sick?’

‘The dog. Seems to have eaten something nasty.’

‘The dog?’

‘That’s how they found the body. Bloke lost his dog. Searched everywhere for it. Eventually heard noises up there.’ Ben thumbed at the gap in the rock. ‘Climbed up, saw the body, found the dog licking something.’

‘I hope it wasn’t tucking into the corpse?’

‘It was a Labrador, so I don’t suppose it would have turned it down. But I think it was the plastic wrapper from a cake or something. Looks like it might have been poisoned.’

‘Is the dog okay? Where’s the owner? Has someone taken a statement from him?’

‘It’s all here for you. They’ve gone to the vet, but the dog seems fine. Only ate a few crumbs, he thought.’

‘Interesting location for a body,’ I said. ‘I’ve always been kind of fascinated by cave houses.’

Ben inched towards the cliff and touched the rock. ‘This area’s riddled with caves. Not many of them were ever lived in, of course.’ He hesitated as if wondering whether to say more, given that a corpse was waiting for my attention.

‘I’d better press on,’ I said, although I wasn’t looking forward to getting my bad foot up the stone steps. Besides, there was something unsettling about the black mouth of the cave. ‘What were you going to say earlier? When I said it was creepy?’

Ben laughed, but it didn’t go to his eyes. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I grew up round here. There was a rumour. Nothing important.’

‘What rumour?’

‘Just silliness. It’s supposed to be haunted.’

I laughed too, just in case he thought I cared. ‘Well, I don’t suppose our man was killed by a ghost.’ I imagined pale creatures emerging from the deep and prodding the corpse with long fingers. I forced them from my mind. ‘I was told the dead man smells of almonds. Cyanide almonds?’

‘Yep, slightly. You only really get the almondy smell on a corpse when you open up the stomach.’ Ben’s stance changed to lecture-giving – legs wide apart and chest thrust forward. I hoped he wasn’t going to come over all patronising on me. I wasn’t even blonde any more – I’d dyed my hair a more intelligent shade of brown, matched to my mum’s for authenticity. But I was stuck with being small and having a sympathy-inducing limp.

‘Yes. Thanks. I know,’ I said, a little sharply. ‘So, do we have a name?’

Ben glanced at his notes. ‘Peter Hugo Hamilton.’

‘And he was dead when he was found?’

‘That’s right. Although I’ve seen deader.’

‘Can you be just a little bit dead?’

Ben folded his arms. ‘If there are no maggots, you’re not that dead.’

‘Okay, I’ll have a look.’ I edged towards the steps and started to climb. A few steps up, I felt a twinge in my ankle. I paused and glanced down. Ben held his arms out awkwardly as if he wanted to lever my bottom upwards, a prospect I didn’t relish. I kept going, climbing steadily until I could just peer into the cave. A faint shaft of light hit the back wall but the rest of it was in darkness. I waited for my eyes to adjust, then climbed on up and heaved myself in.

A musty smell caught in my throat. The cave was cool and silent, its roof low and claustrophobic. It was the size of a small room, although its walls blended into the darkness so there could have been tunnels leading deeper into the rock. A tiny window and the slim door cast a muted light which didn’t reach its edges. I pulled out my torch and swooped it around. I had an irrational feeling that something was going to leap out of the darkness, or that the corpse was going to lunge at me. I scraped my hair from my clammy face and told myself to calm the hell down and do my job.

The dead man lay at the back of the cave, his body stretched out straight and stiff. One hand clutched his stomach and the other grasped his throat. I shone my torch at his face. Scratches ran down his cheeks and trickles of blood had seeped from them. The blood gleamed bright, cherry red in the torch light.

A trail of vomit ran from the side of the man’s mouth onto the cave floor.

I crouched and looked at his fingers. They were smeared red. Poor man seemed to have scratched at his own face. Under the nails were flecks of green, as if he’d clawed his way through foliage.

Resting near one of the man’s bent arms was a book – The Discourses of Epictetus.

A plastic wrapper lay on the stone floor. I could just read the label. Susie’s Cakes. Dark chocolate and almond. I lowered myself onto my hands and knees and smelt the wrapper, wishing I hadn’t given up Pilates. I couldn’t smell anything, but I didn’t know if I was one of the lucky few who could smell cyanide.

I stood again and shone my torch at the wall of the cave behind the man’s body. Water seeped from a tiny crack in the cave roof, and in the places where light from the door and window hit the wall, ferns had grown. Some were crushed where it looked as if the man had fallen against them, and others had been pulled away from the cave wall.

I felt a wave of horror. This was a real person, not just a corpse in an interesting investigation. He was only about my age. I thought about his years lost, how he’d never grow old, how his loved ones would wake up tomorrow with their lives all collapsed like a sinkhole in a suburban garden.

I breathed out slowly through my mouth, like I’d been taught, then stepped closer and pointed my torch at the area where the ferns had been flattened. Was that a mark on the stone? I gently pulled at more ferns with my gloved hands, trying to reveal what was underneath. It was a carving, clearly decades old, with lichen growing over the indentations in the rock like on a Victorian gravestone. It must have been completely covered until the dying man grasped at the ferns.

Something pale popped into my peripheral vision. I spun round and saw a SOCO climbing into the cave house. His voice cut the silence. ‘We found a wallet with his name and photo driving licence. And a note. Handwritten. It said, P middle name.’ He showed me a crumpled Post-it, encased in a plastic evidence bag.

‘Has the back wall been photographed, where he pulled at the ferns?’

The man nodded.

‘Okay, let’s see what’s under there.’ I pointed at the marks I’d seen in the rock.

Together we tugged at the ferns, carefully peeling them off the cave wall.

The SOCO took a step back. ‘Ugh. What’s that?’

We pulled away more foliage and the full carving came into view. My chest tightened and it felt hard to draw the cold cave air into my lungs. It was an image of The Grim Reaper – hooded, with a grinning skull and skeletal body, its scythe held high above its head. The image was simply drawn with just a few lines cut into the rock, but it seemed all the more sinister for that. It stood over the dead man as if it had attacked him.

‘Hold on a sec,’ the SOCO said. ‘There’s some writing under the image. Is it a date?’ He gently tore away more ferns.

I crouched and directed my torch at the lettering in the rock. A prickling crept up my spine to the base of my neck. ‘Not a date,’ I said.

The SOCO leant closer to the rock, and then froze. ‘How can that be? That carving must be a good hundred years old – the writing the same – and covered up for years before we cut the foliage back.’ His voice was loud in the still air, but I heard the tremor in it. ‘I don’t understand… The dead man’s initials?’

I didn’t understand either. I stepped away from the cave wall and wiped my face with my green-stained gloves.

Carved into the stone below the Grim Reaper image were the words, ‘Coming for PHH’.

Chapter 2

I emerged and climbed down from the cave, backwards, trying not to slip on the worn stone. Relieved to be outside, I jumped awkwardly down the final few steps and enjoyed the smell of damp trees and the feel of solid ground and daylight.

Ben sidled up. ‘What do you think?’

What did I think? I had no idea. ‘The dead man’s initials are cut into the cave wall,’ I blurted. ‘But they look like they’ve been there for decades.’

Ben jerked his head back and wiped his forehead. ‘No. It can’t be.’

I felt a shiver of unease. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s…’ Ben took a step sideways. ‘I don’t like to talk about it.’

‘Well, if it might be relevant to our body, you’d better talk about it.’

‘You know the Labyrinth? On the other side of the valley.’

I shook my head. ‘What about it?’

Ben opened his mouth and paused. ‘Okay. It’s a vast cave system below the Devil’s Dice, you know, the rock formation. It’s not a good place. The tunnels go for miles and miles. Some of it’s underwater. And there’s a noose in a cavern deep inside. Teenagers go there to commit suicide.’

I felt a flush of adrenaline, hot then cold. Why was he telling me this? I didn’t want to know.

Ben continued. ‘The rumour is – if you can’t find the noose, it’s your sign you should live.’

I stared at the light filtering through the trees, feeling the familiar thickness in my throat. I couldn’t let it get to me. I was over all that now. Reinvented. I firmed up my stomach. ‘And the relevance of this?’

‘So, the point is, if you can find the noose, they say you find your initials have already been cut into the cave wall behind it.’

‘Cut into the wall by someone?’

‘They’re said to appear on their own.’

‘Have you been there?’

Ben hesitated, then licked his lips and nodded. ‘We tried to save a girl. We were too late. I’m a caver – I should have got to her quicker.’ He looked clammy and kind of avocado coloured. He pressed his hands against his stomach. ‘I could never go back there. Never.’

I tried to stop myself picturing the noose hanging still and straight, deep inside a cavern. My hands clenched into fists, nails digging into palms. ‘And the initials?’

‘Well, there were initials engraved into the cave wall. Lots of them. They looked old. We didn’t check for our girl’s.’

‘So it’s not a recent thing?’

‘It started in the times of the witch trials, apparently. If a girl was suspected of being a witch, she’d be led into the Labyrinth. If they could find the noose, then her initials would already be on the wall behind, and she’d be forced to hang herself. If they couldn’t find the noose, she was innocent, but she had to find her own way out.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. So then in Victorian times, there was a spate of girls going in to commit suicide.’

‘And this one more recently?’

He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Yes. It was about ten years ago.’

I imagined the cave wall, covered with the initials of dead people. ‘If people kept hanging themselves, why didn’t someone get rid of the damn noose?’

‘They put bars across the cave entrance after… that girl. But you can still get in from above, if you know how.’

Two hours later, fully prepped and preened, DCI Richard Atkins and I walked into the incident room back at the Station. The large quantity of cops crammed into a small space had given the room the fugginess of damp trainers and wet dogs, but the electricity of a suspicious death zapped around underneath.

A board at one end was covered with photographs of the dead man and his surroundings. I stepped forward to take a closer look while Richard bustled to and fro pinning names and assignments onto a grey board opposite. Low tech, but at least it wouldn’t crash.

DS Craig Cooper was peering at the photos and invading my personal space. Craig had worked his way up in the traditional manner and seemed to be the worst kind of old-fashioned police bloke – casually homophobic, with a fifty-inch TV, a subscription to Sky Sports, and a plastic-headed wife. I suspected he felt entitled to the job I’d been given, and I didn’t know how to handle him. I folded my arms into a defensive position.

‘Okay!’ Richard strode to the front of the room. He’d removed his jacket, and dark marks stained his armpits. His face glistened. I slid into what I judged was an appropriate second-in-command spot.

‘We have a male in his thirties, Peter Hamilton, found today in a cave house fifteen foot up a cliff face in Eldercliffe quarry.’ Richard looked at his notes. ‘Time of death around the middle of the day. We’re waiting on lab results and the post mortem but early suggestions are he was killed by cyanide poisoning.’

A rumble of voices filled the room. They liked the cyanide, with its hints of Agatha Christie.

‘In a cave house?’ DS Jai Sanghera squinted his surprise. ‘Fifteen foot up a cliff face?’

Jai was a lapsed, un-turbaned and de-bearded Sikh. He’d always appeared mild-mannered, but was apparently prone to occasional explosive incidents which no one had ever witnessed but everyone seemed to know about.

‘Yes, Jai,’ Richard said testily. ‘It’s a cave, and people used to live in it. You have to climb steps to get there. We’re pretty sure he went up alive.’

‘Unless the murderer was the reigning Mr Universe,’ Craig said.

‘Yes, yes, or the victim was a zombie, climbing glassy-eyed and un-dead up to the cave house.’ Richard was in a creative mood.

‘Did it to himself then.’ Craig’s tone was scathing. He clearly had little time for the suicidal.

‘We don’t know. There were some odd things about it. Meg’ll fill you in.’

I moved sideways into the hot spot; steeled myself. An unnerving smirk crept across Craig’s fleshy face.

I told them about the probably poisoned cake, the carving on the cave wall, and the strange fact of the man’s initials appearing under it.

‘Was it home-made or shop-bought cake?’ Jai jiggled his leg up and down as if he was keen to sprint off and get started.

‘Bloody hell, Jai, have you been on the speed again?’ Craig said.

‘We don’t know for sure.’ I ignored Craig. I’d noticed that was what Richard did – his years of experience hadn’t given him a more advanced strategy. ‘The wrapper had a paper label stuck to it saying “Susie’s Cakes” and it had a “best before” date months away.’

‘Interesting,’ Jai said, also ignoring Craig. ‘What’s the history of the cave house?’

‘That bit of cliff hasn’t been quarried since pre-Victorian times. They think the cave house was created in the mid 1800s and people lived in it until about fifty years ago.’

Jai said, ‘I heard it was supposed to be haunted.’

Craig snorted.

‘It could be relevant,’ I said. ‘If it affects people’s behaviour.’

‘It’s why no one goes in there,’ Jai said. ‘No kids or tramps or anything.’

Craig made ridiculous X-Files noises. But Jai was right about no one going in the cave house. There’d been none of the usual beer cans, fag-butts or tortured teenage poetry.

Richard elbowed me out of the way. ‘Thank you, Jai, but I don’t think this man was killed by a ghost. Anyway, back to the cake.’ He swung his gaze around the room like Derren Brown about to reveal something astonishing. ‘We’ve already tried to trace “Susie’s Cakes” and there seems to be no such company. Unless it’s incredibly obscure.’

‘Won’t be obscure for long if they put cyanide in their cakes,’ Jai said. Gentle snickering passed through the room. Richard shot Jai a disapproving look.

‘Okay.’ Jai pursed his lips as if to emphasise that he was now being serious. ‘So someone put cyanide in the cake and made it look like shop-bought so he’d think it was okay and eat it? So, we’re talking murder, not suicide?’

‘Bit hasty there, Jai.’ Craig folded his chunky arms over his fledgling beer gut. ‘It could be suicide but he made it look like murder so his dependants still get his life insurance.’

‘If he gave a shit about his family, he wouldn’t have killed himself,’ Jai said. I took an audible breath before I could stop myself and Jai glanced at me, his face turning purple. I smiled weakly at him and mouthed reassurances. I didn’t want people walking on eggshells around me.

‘Yes,’ I said, trying to take control again. ‘It could be murder or suicide or deliberate contamination of cakes.’

‘If it’s not suicide, it’s probably the wife.’ Richard had recently been through a difficult divorce.

‘Yes, I’m keeping an open mind too.’ I couldn’t let that go, but statistically speaking he was probably right.

‘Who found him?’ Jai was bouncing his leg again, probably just to annoy Craig now.

‘A Labrador. It was after the cake.’

‘Is it okay?’

‘Didn’t think your lot liked dogs,’ Craig said.

I smiled at Jai. ‘He’s fine. We think he only ate—’

‘The dog’s fine, Jai.’ Richard rocked on his heels. ‘It’s admirable that you’re all so concerned about our loyal canine friends, but we do have a dead man as well as a slightly queasy dog.’

‘So he died in a haunted cave,’ Jai said. ‘And there was a hundredyear-old carving on the cave wall that seemed to predict his death?’

I gave a slow, deliberate nod.

Jai had stopped fidgeting. ‘Do we need to call an exorcist?’

We ended the briefing and everyone dispersed to do their stuff. I turned for another look at the photographs, and sensed Craig standing behind me, too close again.

‘I hope you’re up to this,’ he said.

I spun round. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

I felt the blush come over me, hot and sharp like needles.

‘Are you alright?’ Craig said. ‘You’re sweating like a paedo in a Santa suit.’

‘Yes, thank you, Craig, I’m perfectly fine.’

He took a step closer. His breath smelt of mint and stale garlic. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

Chapter 3

I retreated to my work-station and sat staring at my screen. Sweat prickled my back. I’d come to Derbyshire to get away from this. To make a new start, wipe the slate clean, and various other clichés. I couldn’t let an idiot like Craig get to me. I sat up straighter in my chair and forced my shoulders back. I’d just have to show them I was up to the job. I had a good brain. I was a good detective.

My little pep talk sounded unconvincing even to me – like those motivational posters you see on the walls of ailing companies, or the pseudo-profound positive quotes on your most depressed friends’ Facebook pages. But I forced myself out of my chair and went to find Jai. He and I were visiting the victim’s wife that evening.

‘What a total arsehole Craig is,’ he said. ‘He’d be having a go at me if he wasn’t so scared of the PC brigade.’

I felt my shoulders soften. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘And if he hadn’t heard I was a psycho.’

I laughed. ‘Maybe I need to get more violent.’

Jai smiled, but then his face creased into concern. ‘Watch him though. He can be a nasty bastard. Just… I don’t know. Be careful.’

By the time Jai and I left the Station, the clouds had lifted and a streaky sunset lit the sky as we drove through the rock-strewn hills towards Eldercliffe. Mum lived on its outskirts, so I knew the town a little. Its jumbled, narrow streets hunkered down in the base of the valley, as if defending themselves from the advancing quarries.

We headed away from the main town, up a lane so steep it made my ears pop. On the right was a farm and on the left was the rim of the quarry, the ground falling away behind it into nothingness. Just one house sat on the edge like an eagle’s nest – a cottage made from the same stone as the quarry, as if it had grown out of the rock.

‘That’s his house,’ Jai said. ‘Crazy place.’

‘Yeah, not somewhere to live if you suffer from suicidal thoughts.’ I immediately wished I hadn’t said that.

‘Wife’s a doctor,’ Jai said. ‘Kate Webster. Has she been told?’

I nodded. At least we didn’t have to do that. I pictured Hamilton’s face, lacerated by his own nails. How would you cope with knowing your husband’s last minutes were spent trying to claw his skin off?

We walked up to the cottage, and the door was flung open to reveal a small woman in jogging trousers. Her body was thin but her face was puffy as if it had been lightly inflated.

I showed her my card.

‘Oh, right. I’m Beth. Peter’s sister.’ She gestured us into a long hallway which smelt of beeswax and vanilla. The kind of place where they employed a cleaner.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

Beth gave a quick nod. ‘Kate’s in the living room. Go through. I’ll make some tea.’

We walked into a room dominated by a vast inglenook fireplace and a picture window overlooking the shocking drop into the quarry. The curtains were open to the darkening sky. Two squidgy sofas sat at right angles, one facing the fireplace and the other with its back to the window. There was space to walk around, unlike in my living room where you had to move around in a crab-like shuffle to avoid gouging your leg on the corner of something.

A slender woman stood by the window with her back to us.

‘Dr Webster,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

She turned and gave us a cautious look. Her eyes were red but she looked delicate and composed in her grief, like a Victorian consumptive.

‘It must be a mistake.’ She took a couple of steps towards us. ‘Please tell me you’ve come because it’s a mistake.’

‘I’m sorry. We’ll need to formally identify him, but he had his driving licence on him. And he matched your description exactly.’

A tear dripped onto her T-shirt. ‘What the hell happened to him?’

‘Are you able to answer a few questions?’ I asked. Jai and I walked across the oak-boarded floor and sat on the sofa facing the fire. I hoped she’d follow our social cue. She didn’t.

‘How did he die?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t know yet. When did you last see him?’

She started pacing up and down by the window, shoulders hunched and arms crossed. ‘I saw him this morning. He was working from home which he always does on Mondays. It was all totally normal, for God’s sake. They say he was found in a cave or something?’

‘Yes, it’s about fifteen feet up, cut into the rock.’

‘What the hell was he doing in there? He’s supposed to have a quick walk to clear his head, not sit around for hours in a cave.’

‘We don’t know. Did you know about the place?’

‘I knew there was supposed to be a cave. The locals say it’s haunted. They’re a bit like that round here. They say our house… Oh, never mind.’

Beth returned with a tray of tea and digestive biscuits. She lowered it onto a rather splendid coffee table made from old painted floorboards, and sat down. Kate stepped across the room to sit next to her.

Jai took a mug of tea, got stuck into the biscuits, and made notes.

‘What were you saying about this house?’ I asked.

‘Oh, just that everyone said it was bad luck,’ Kate said. ‘That we shouldn’t come here. But we took no notice. How can a house bring bad luck? But now I’m thinking—’

‘Come on, Kate.’ Beth’s tone was sharp. ‘It’s terrible about Peter, but it’s not the house’s fault.’

‘But what about those other people? Before we moved here?’ Kate turned to us. ‘No one would buy the house. It had been empty for ages.’

Jai paused with his biscuit halfway to his mouth. ‘What happened to the other people?’

‘The man fell off the cliff outside, or threw himself off, no one knew. And then his daughter… Oh, it was horrible.’

‘It’s not relevant,’ Beth snapped. ‘We need to find who killed Peter.’

‘She was only fifteen,’ Kate said. ‘She went off to this horrendous underground cave system on the other side of the valley and killed herself. Everyone said the house was cursed, but we thought we were so clever, we were above all that. We got it cheap.’

‘I remember that,’ Jai said. ‘Section tried to get her out, but—’

‘It’s not relevant,’ Beth said. ‘Kate’s just upset. There’s nothing wrong with the house.’

I remembered Ben Pearson telling me about the girl he’d failed to rescue. ‘Was she the girl who hanged herself in the Labyrinth?’

‘Yes. It was awful. And the Victorian who originally built the house threw himself off the cliff.’ Kate sat forward on the sofa and spoke fast. ‘And other people have died here. Even Peter’s grandmother said there’s a curse. Something to do with witches. She said the spirits of the witches can push you off the cliff out there, so you shouldn’t get too close to the edge. Not that Beth takes any notice when she’s tending that horrendous rock garden.’

‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ Beth snapped.

Kate turned to me. ‘Why do people who live here keep dying?’

Beth folded her arms. ‘My grandmother’s in the early stages of dementia. I can’t believe we’re talking about a ludicrous old wives’ tale when my brother’s just been killed!’

I made a note to talk to the grandmother. My ears always pricked when relatives laid into one another. They’d sometimes forget we were even there. Beth obviously hadn’t forgotten us though. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘This is all irrelevant. What do you need to know?’

I smiled at them both. ‘Do either of you know why he’d have gone in the cave house?’

‘He always liked caves,’ Beth said. ‘But I didn’t realise—’

‘Hang on.’ Kate stared right into my eyes. ‘Was someone else there with him? Is that why he went to the cave house?’

I shook my head. ‘We don’t think so.’

She looked down at her tea. ‘Right.’

‘We’ll need to take his phone,’ I said. ‘And his laptop. And we’ll have to get people to go through the house.’

Kate sighed. ‘Yeah, do whatever.’ She hesitated. ‘Just so you know, there’s, well, emails on his laptop from me saying I’ve had enough.’ She shook her hair off her face. ‘But it wasn’t serious. Normal marital stuff, you know. He’s been difficult recently. But I didn’t kill him.’ She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘If I had, I’d have deleted the emails, wouldn’t I?’

I mentally noted her assumption that she could access her husband’s emails. ‘Where were you today?’

‘What? I was at work all day. You don’t seriously think I might have done it?’

‘Just a formality,’ I said. ‘What did Peter do for a living?’

‘He was a patent attorney. You know, with inventions.’ She leaned forward over the coffee table, took a biscuit and looked at it with horror before dropping it back on the plate. I’d observed with the bereaved, the thin ones never ate the biscuits.

‘It looks like he’d had some chocolate cake. It was in a plastic wrapper saying “Susie’s Cakes” – is that something you bought?’

‘No, never heard of it. But Peter loves cake. He’d never turn it down if someone offered. Was anyone else seen in the woods?’

‘We’re checking that.’

‘I can’t imagine him buying it for himself. There are no shops on the way down there.’ She tapped her fingers against her knee.

There was a buzzy energy about Kate Webster. Not the usual flatness of someone who’d lost a relative. I noticed my toes were curled in my shoes as if I was clutching the floor with them. ‘You say he’d been difficult recently?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Yes. I mean, he’d been grumpy with me. And drinking too much. I thought he was hiding something.’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Oh God, it’s going to turn out he was having an affair, isn’t it? I can’t bear it.’ She rose, walked again to the picture window, and stood with her back to us.

I kept my voice gentle. ‘I’m sorry to ask but I don’t suppose, if he was having an affair, you’d have any idea who it might possibly be with?’

She turned and stood silhouetted against the evening sunset, leaning against the window in a way which made me nervous. ‘Christ almighty,’ she said. ‘Of all the questions you hope you’ll never be asked. Who could your husband be having an affair with, in case they…’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Look, he didn’t socialise on his own outside work and they’re mainly men at his office. There was a client he mentioned a couple of times, Lisa something, but he didn’t even like her. No, he wasn’t interested in her.’ She rubbed her nose. ‘Oh God, he would give that impression, wouldn’t he? I can’t believe this is happening. How can this be happening to me?’

Beth stood and walked to the window, gently touched Kate’s arm, and led her back to the sofa. ‘Peter wasn’t having an affair,’ she said.

I took a biscuit. It seemed to relax people when you ate their biscuits. At least that was my story. ‘Can I ask,’ I said, ‘how was his sleeping? And eating?’

Kate crossed and uncrossed her legs. ‘He was always eating. Loved his food. But actually he’d lost a bit of weight recently. And I suppose he had been a bit more tossy and turny over the last year, always dragging the duvet off me. He’s had a few nightmares. I put it down to work stress.’

I turned to Beth. ‘Did you notice anything?’

She shook her head. ‘He seemed okay to me.’

‘Was he on anti-depressants?’

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘He hated drugs. Ironic, given his job.’ A tiny smile twitched at the edges of her lips. ‘He thought they were a sign of feeble-mindedness.’

‘When did you get worried about his drinking?’

‘I wasn’t exactly worried. But, well, it started about a year ago and it’s got worse recently.’ Her lower lip shook. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘I’d get home and he’d be in front of the TV with a beer. He’d claim he’d only had one but sometimes he’d stagger when he got up. And he was hiding the bottles. And other times he smelt like he’d been smoking. Not tobacco either.’

‘Can you imagine him ever wanting to harm himself?’

‘What? No, no.’ She shook her head like a dog shaking off water. ‘No. He wouldn’t do that to me.’

Of course, relatives always said that. But some of us knew better.

I stood. Something caught my eye in the wood-burner. It was an expensive cast-iron thing with a glass front. The fire wasn’t lit, but inside were several half-burnt logs and a few pieces of paper, visible through the sooty glass. They were almost completely singed black but the end of one piece of paper was still intact and had handwriting on it.

‘What are those papers?’ I asked.

Kate jumped up and lunged towards the fireplace. ‘Oh, nothing!’ She grabbed a poker and reached for the door of the wood-burner.

‘Leave it!’ I shouted, as if she was a dog heading for a picnic.

Beth flashed angry eyes at Kate, who froze in a poker-wielding stance. She turned her head slowly towards me, as if wondering whether I had the right to do this. Presumably, she decided I did; she put the poker down on the hearth and stepped back. ‘Sorry.’ She retreated to the sofa. ‘It’s nothing. Just some old papers I was using as scrap.’

I exchanged a look with Jai. ‘Okay, I’d like our people to see them.’

I left Jai to finish the interview, and asked to see Peter Hamilton’s study. According to Kate, he’d usually worked there before he went on his walk, and it certainly looked like he’d been planning to return – no suicidal tidying was in evidence. The room had a slightly musty but not unpleasant smell that reminded me of the libraries of my youth. An antique-style desk was strewn with papers covered with handwritten notes, much crossed out. The messiest page was headed ‘Claims’, and chemical formulae spidered their way across it.

Bookcases lined the walls, crammed with unappealing books about biochemistry and patent law, many covered with a layer of dust. But the bottom shelf caught my eye – a collection of photograph albums. I crouched and gently pulled out one of the albums. It was filled with holiday snaps. Kate Webster and Peter Hamilton, very much alive. All bright smiles, white villages and sunny skies. The other albums were similar – happy holidays, any discord well hidden. I eased out the album that looked oldest. The pages were stiff and the plastic sheets that were supposed to keep the photographs in place had yellowed and lost their stickiness. I turned the pages slowly, holding them at their edges.

The early part of the album included wedding photos – a man and a woman, presumably Hamilton’s parents. A later photograph showed the same couple, with two boys and a younger girl who must have been Beth. The woman now sat flaccidly in a wheelchair. On her knee was a cat of such a vivid orange it stole the light and made everything else look grey. All three children stared adoringly at it.

I flipped through pages of later childhood photographs – scorched lawns and yellow Cornish beaches; no mother in these. Then the university years – punting on the river and lounging in Cambridge college gardens, surrounded by glistening turrets and pinnacles. Most of those photographs featured a rather beautiful girl. Her huge, dark eyes gazed out of the photographs right at me. She was the central point, like the sun to the other people’s planets. She stared at the camera and Peter Hamilton stared at her. Even after I looked away, her face was in my head.

I stood and looked again at the papers on the desk. I lifted the one headed ‘Claims’. Something was written on the back. I turned it gently. One word covered the paper, written maybe one hundred times, in different-sized lettering and at different angles and with different pens.

Cursed.

Chapter 4

We pulled away from Kate Webster’s house. My mind was swirling with witches and curses and poison, and flashes of Peter Hamilton’s blood-stained face. I glanced back towards the cottage, perched resolutely on the cliff with the quarry falling away all around it. An outside light shone on a little rock garden which sprawled over the stone to the side of the house. I pictured the drop onto the rocks far below, and wondered if the cottage would ever surrender itself to the quarry, as if on an eroding coastline.

‘Did you find anything else useful?’ I asked Jai.

‘Not really. Apparently he goes for a walk every Monday when he works from home, but not always in the quarry. He was a greedy sod who’d take cake from anyone, but no one would have wanted to harm him.’

‘Clearly.’

‘All that stuff about a curse on the house was a bit weird. You wouldn’t think a doctor would fall for that.’

‘Or a patent attorney. It’s odd though, if people who live there keep dying. Did you ask if anyone had died recently?’

‘Yeah. No. Last one was that girl ten years ago.’

‘Ben Pearson told me about her yesterday. The duty sergeant. That Labyrinth is supposed to have the initials of the people who died cut into the rock.’

Jai glanced at me. ‘What, like in our cave?’

‘Yes.’ I steered the car down the steep hill towards the town centre, praying we wouldn’t meet anyone coming up. ‘So, it’s pretty strange that the girl came from the same house, don’t you think?’

‘Hmm, yes. And there was something else his wife said.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Okay, so when I asked if either of them knew about the carving in the cave, the wife started saying something that I didn’t quite catch, and the sister shut her up. Then the wife made out she hadn’t said anything. And you know how sometimes your brain pieces together later what someone said – well, I’m thinking she said something about the basement.’

I dropped Jai at his house in Matlock and took the A6 towards Belper. It was late and dark and the drizzle had morphed into a diffuse fog that distorted the headlights of the oncoming cars. Either my eyes were getting worse or driving at night had always been an act of faith. I squinted into the gloom and wished I was in bed.

Back home, I let myself into my tiny, rented cottage. The heating was on and the hallway felt cosy for once, the long, rust-coloured rug warming the stone-flagged floor and books sitting in chaotic piles on the shelves. A phone balancing on one of the piles flashed a tiny red light. At what point in my life had answer-phone messages transformed from exciting to depressing? I kicked off my shoes and pressed the button. Mum’s voice. The usual stuff. How was I? How was work? Was I eating? (Seriously, had she not seen this body?) There was something about her voice – high-pitched but breathy, as if she was trying not to be overheard. She’d seemed different recently, as if she was worried about something, but I was damned if I could get her to tell me what it was. Probably just the strain of looking after Gran. A wave of guilt and helplessness washed over me. I probably wouldn’t find time to visit her tomorrow. I’d be up to my neck in the investigation.

I glanced into the living room, then walked to the kitchen with the message still playing. Hamlet burst through the cat flap in a haze of black and white fur. I leaned and scooped him into my arms, somewhat against his wishes, and buried my face in his soft belly. He purred grudgingly and wriggled out of my grasp. I gave him food even though he’d have been stuffing his fat face at my indulgent neighbour’s house all evening, grabbed a glass of water, and sat at the kitchen table with my laptop.

I eventually found it on a website about Derbyshire myths and legends – the story of the Labyrinth, the witches and the initials on the wall, just as Ben Pearson had said. It was classed ‘not verified’. The cave house was also mentioned. It was said to be haunted by a woman as thin as a skeleton, who wailed for her lost lover. I snapped my laptop shut, and rubbed my arms to get rid of the goose pimples. I didn’t believe in ghosts.

I climbed the steep stairs, Hamlet forming a trip-hazard at my ankles, and tried to resist the compulsion to check the upstairs rooms. I had to stop doing this. I closed my eyes and leant against the wall of my tiny landing. I pictured the noose deep inside the Labyrinth. Straight and empty. That other image flickered at the edge of my consciousness. A young girl hanging. I squeezed my eyes tight shut and forced my fists into my temples. She faded away.

I poked my head into the chaotic study and the overflowing spare room, glancing up at the ceilings, as always.