‘Perhaps check along the shore,’ he said. ‘If Jane Dawson made it down to the tarn as well, she might still be alive.’
Mary-Ellen nodded and disappeared into the trees, while Heck tried his radio again as he stood alongside the corpse, but gained no response, not even a crackle of static. He spent ten minutes on this before finally turning to the trees and calling for Mary-Ellen.
Now she didn’t respond either. He called again.
The maximum depth of the east shore wood could only be fifty yards or so, before the gradient sharpened upward and the mountainous scree became too harsh for any vegetation to have taken root there. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have wandered for a significant distance to the north or south.
‘Mary-Ellen!’ he called again, advancing into the woodland gloom, not liking the way his voice bounced back from the cliff-face towering overhead.
Behind him, the glare of the outboard spotlight penetrated through the trees in a misty zebra-stripe pattern. He moved a few dozen yards north, trying to avoid clattering the loose debris with his feet. That Mary-Ellen hadn’t so much as called back to him was not reassuring. How far could she have ventured in ten minutes? As he sidled away from the boat, the murk thickened. Soon the stanchions of the pines were no more than upright shadows. He halted again to listen – and to wonder for the first time how it was that a female hiker had been shot while rambling in this wilderness, and who by.
‘Mary-Ellen!’ he called, pressing on a little further. At his rear, the glow of the boat’s spotlight had diminished to a ruddy smudge.
He listened again. An incredible silence. Even if the policewoman had been doing no more than mooching about, he’d surely hear her.
But could someone else have heard her too?
Had that person already heard her and taken appropriate action?
As Heck backtracked towards the boat, he tried to calculate how much time had elapsed between now and the gunshot he’d heard the night before. A glance at his watch showed that it was just before nine-fifteen. He’d been disturbed in bed at quarter past midnight or thereabouts. So, nine hours in total. More than enough time for the killer to have long left the area. Assuming he actually wanted to leave.
Heck bypassed the point where the boat was moored. The corpse of Tara Cook lay where they had left it.
It would be impossible to second-guess the killer’s next move, because they had no clue about motive. But just suppose the fatal shot had been fired somewhere much higher up – on Fiend’s Fell for example – and the body had fallen down the cliff-side. With the tarn down here to break the fall, how could the killer be sure the victim was dead? Wasn’t it at least conceivable he would try to get down here, to check out the scene for himself? Heck headed south along the shore, more cold, dark fog embracing him. Even if the killer had clambered down here, nine hours was more than enough to locate the corpse, establish death and high-tail it away again.
Again though, that question – what if he didn’t want to high-tail it?
And what about the other girl? Heck knew one thing for certain – he’d only heard a single shot. Then of course there was Mary-Ellen – where the hell was she?
He stopped again. In this direction, what looked like straight avenues lay between the ranks of waterside trees, though a little further ahead progress was impeded by several trunks that had fallen over. This wouldn’t have been completely unusual in a wood at the foot of a scree-cliff – heavy chunks of rock would occasionally fall, smashing and flattening the timber; but they made difficult obstacles. He climbed over the first diagonal trunk, and crawled underneath the second, increasingly suspecting that Mary-Ellen would not have gone to so much trouble to make a quick, cursory inspection of the shoreline. Beyond the fallen pines, the woods seemed to close in, the rising ground on the left steepening, and on the right falling away towards the tarn’s edge. Heck veered in the latter direction until he was virtually on the waterline. As before, the smooth surface rolled away from him, flat as a mirror, black as smoke. At this time of year there wasn’t a plop or plink; neither frog, newt nor fish to disturb the peace.
Further progress was impossible in these conditions, he concluded.
He turned back, but it was as he stooped to clamber underneath the first fallen tree that he heard the whisper.
If it was a whisper.
It could have been the wind sighing through meshed evergreen boughs. That was entirely possible too. But it had sounded like a whisper.
Heck whirled around, unable to see very much of anything, until …
Had that been a faint, dark shape that had just stepped out of sight about twenty yards away on his left? Heck’s heartbeat accelerated; his scalp prickled.
Suddenly it seemed like a very bad idea to be here on his own, especially as this character was armed. He set off forward, moving parallel with the tarn, heading back in the direction of the boat, eyes fixed on the spot where he thought he’d spied movement. And now he heard a sound behind him – a snap, as though a fallen branch had been stepped on. He twirled around again, straining his eyes to penetrate the vapour, unable to distinguish anything. When he turned back to the front, someone in dark clothes was standing nearby, leaning against a tree-trunk.
At first Heck went cold – but just as quickly he relaxed again.
Recognising Mary-Ellen, he walked forward. For some reason she’d removed her luminous coat. To lay over a second body maybe? Except that these days you weren’t supposed to do that. And now, having advanced a few yards, he saw that he wasn’t approaching Mary-Ellen after all. A bundle of interwoven twigs and bark hung down alongside the trunk. The outline they formed was vaguely human, but was mainly an optical illusion, enhanced by a shaft of light diffusing through the wood from the boat and exposing the place where the bark had fallen, which had created the impression of a face.
Heck heard another whisper.
This time there was no doubt about it.
He glanced right. It had come from somewhere in the direction of the upward slope. Ten seconds later, it seemed to be answered by a second whisper, this time from behind, though this second one had been less like a whisper and more like a snicker – a hoarse, guttural snicker. Heck gazed into the vapour as he pivoted around, wondering in bewilderment if all this could be his imagination.
For a few seconds, there was no further sound. He took several wary steps towards the upward slope, the rank autumnal foliage opening to admit him – and then closing again. Needle-footed ants scurried across his skin as the fog seemed to thicken, wrapping itself around him, melding tightly to his form. For a heart-stopping second he had the overwhelming sensation that someone else was really very close indeed, perhaps no more than a foot away, watching him silently and yet rendered completely invisible. Heck turned circles as he blundered, fists clenched to his chest, boxer fashion. He wanted to call out, but his throat was too dry to make sounds.
More alert than he’d ever been in his life, Heck backtracked in the direction of the waterline; this at least was possible owing to the slant of the ground. When he got there, he pivoted slowly around – to find someone directly alongside him.
‘Coast appears to be clear, sarge,’ Mary-Ellen said.
Heck did his best to conceal his shock – though he still almost jumped out of his skin. ‘What the … Jesus wept!’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Creep up on me, why don’t you!’
‘Sorry