The Calling of the Grave (25 page)

    'David,
wait—

    But I
was already sliding back the bolts on the front door and stepping outside.
There was nothing to see but fog. The air was damp, scented with loam and
rotting leaves. I shivered, wishing I'd thought to grab my coat. The fog soaked
up the lantern's beam. Keeping close to the side of the house, I began making
my way towards the sitting room. The poker felt flimsy in my hand, and I was
already beginning to think this wasn't such a good idea.
What are you going
to do if there
is
someone out here? What if it's Monk?

    But
it was too late now. Up ahead I could see a misty glow that must be the
sitting-room window. I picked up my pace, keen to get it over with.

    And
something moved on the ground at my feet.

    I
stumbled backwards, raising the poker as I thrust out the lantern. There was
another flurry of movement, and then the light and shadows resolved themselves.

    Caught
in the lantern's beam, an owl blinked up at me.

    I
lowered the poker, feeling stupid. The bird was ghostly pale, its face almost white.
It was hunched on the grass below the window, wings splayed out awkwardly at
its sides. The dark and alien eyes shuttered in another slow blink, but it made
no attempt to move.

    'It's
a barn owl,' Sophie said from behind me.

    She
startled me: I hadn't heard her approach. 'I thought you were waiting inside?'

    'I
didn't say that.' Sophie had more sense than me, enough to pull on a coat. She
crouched beside the injured bird. 'It's lucky the window didn't break. Poor
thing. The fog must have confused it. What do you think we should do?'

    'It's
probably just stunned,' I said. The bird was staring straight ahead, either
determined to ignore us or too dazed to care. 'We shouldn't move it.'

    'But
we've got to do something!'

    'If it
struggles we might hurt it even more.' Besides, injured or not, the bird was
still a predator. Its beak and claws were no less sharp.

    'I'm
not leaving it out here,' Sophie said, in a tone I was beginning to recognize.
I sighed.

    'Have
you got a blanket or something?'

    The
owl flapped a little as I cautiously covered it with an old towel, but quickly
subsided. Sophie suggested leaving it just inside the kiln, propping the door
open so it could fly out when it had recovered.

    'What
about your pots?' I asked.

    'They're
insured. Anyway, it's an owl. It can see in the dark.'

    The
bird was surprisingly light as I carried it into the kiln, the rapid tattoo of
its heart thrumming under my hands. Inside was damp and musty with the smell of
old bricks. My footsteps echoed as I set the owl on the floor and removed the
towel. We hadn't turned on the light, and its pale feathers were almost
luminous in the darkness.

    'Do
you think it'll be all right?' Sophie asked as we returned to the house.

    'We
can't do any more tonight. If it's still there in the morning we can call a
vet.'

    I
locked and bolted the front door, giving it a tug to make sure. Sophie shivered
as she rubbed her arms.

    'God,
I'm frozen!'

    She
was standing very close. Looking at me. It would have been natural to take hold
of her.

    'It's
late,' I said. 'You go on up, I'll see to things down here.'

    She
blinked, then nodded. 'Right. Well . . . goodnight.'

    I
waited while she went upstairs, then went through the rooms, angrily turning
off the lights. I told myself I'd done the right thing. Sophie was scared and
vulnerable, and things were complicated enough already.

    But I
wasn't sure whether I was angry because of what had almost happened, or because
I hadn't let it.

    I lay
awake in the single bed, listening to the night-time silence of the house and
thinking about Sophie. I finally fell asleep, only to be half-woken by a noise
from outside, the sharp cry of either predator or prey. It didn't come again,
and as sleep reclaimed me I forgot all about it.

    Next morning
I woke early and padded downstairs in the cool and quiet house while Sophie
slept. I made myself a cup of tea as the sky gradually lightened, thinking
about the past twenty-four hours. Normally I'd have turned on the radio to
listen to the news, or gone online. But I didn't want to disturb Sophie and the
house didn't have Wi-Fi. Instead I sipped my scalding tea at the kitchen table
and watched the day slowly begin.

    The
morning chorus of birdsong reminded me of the owl. Pulling on my coat and boots,
I went outside. The fog had lifted, although there was still an early haze,
part drizzle, part mist. It frosted the branches of the apple trees, beading
the cobwebs with quicksilver as I crossed the wet grass.

    The
sitting-room window had a dusty smeared mark where the owl had flown into it,
but the only other sign of the bird was a few delicate pale feathers on the
floor of the kiln. They could have been dislodged by the impact, although there
was another, less happy explanation. There was no shortage of foxes around
here. With the kiln door left open the injured predator could easily have
become prey.

    I
wandered around the kiln. The scaffolding and props wedged against the walls
had been here so long they might almost have grown out of the structure. Some
sections of brickwork had been repointed with fresh mortar years ago, or even
decades by the look of things. But most of it had been left to crumble away,
and I guessed that the loose brick where Sophie kept her key was only one of
many. Renovating the kiln, let alone getting it working again as she hoped,
would be a big and expensive job.

    She
would have to sell a lot of pots.

    Still,
she was obviously talented. The crockery, bowls and vases stacked on the
shelves were all simple yet striking designs. I ran my hand across the mound of
hard clay on the workbench. It was made up of unused scraps that Sophie had
slapped together and left to dry, but even that could have been an abstract
piece of art.

    I
gave it a pat and went back into the house.

    Sophie
still wasn't up, which was good: she needed the rest. I was hungry and debated
making breakfast but decided to wait for her. I was only a guest and wasn't
sure how she'd feel about my making myself at home.

    It
was late before I heard her moving about upstairs. By the time she came down
I'd put the kettle on and had a mug of tea waiting.

    'Morning,'
I said, handing her the mug. 'I wasn't sure if you were a tea or coffee person
first thing.'

    She
looked bleary-eyed and a little self-conscious. She was wearing an oversized
sweater over her jeans, hair pulled back and still damp from the shower. 'Tea's
great. I save my real caffeine fix till I'm working. Did you sleep well?'

    'Fine,'
I lied. 'How are you feeling?'

    'My
cheek's still sore, but other than that I'm OK.'

    'Can
you remember anything yet about what happened?'

    'What?
Oh . . . no, still blank.' She went to the fridge. 'How about the owl? Is it
still there?'

    'No,
I checked earlier. It's gone.'

    She
grinned. 'See? I told you it'd be all right in the kiln.'

    I
didn't mention the feathers on the kiln floor. If Sophie wanted a happy ending
I wasn't going to spoil it for her.

    'No
bread for toast, I'm afraid, but I can offer you bacon and eggs,' she said,
opening the fridge. 'Scrambled all right?'

    I
said it was. 'I thought I'd set off back before lunch,' I told her, as she
cracked the eggs into a bowl.

    She
paused, then continued beating the eggs. 'You're leaving?'

    'I
might as well. The police'll have to relaunch the search for the Bennett twins
now Monk's been digging on the moor.'

    I was
surprised they hadn't contacted us already. Even if they hadn't found Monk
after our sighting the day before, I'd have expected someone to have been in
touch to take our statements.

    'I
suppose so,' Sophie said. 'Not as if there's anything keeping you here, is
there?'

    She
had her back to me. The frying pan clattered on the range. The silence
stretched and grew heavy.

    'I
can stay longer. If you're bothered about being here by yourself, I mean.'

    'Why,
just because someone attacked me?' She slapped rashers of bacon into the pan,
the hot fat setting up an angry hissing. 'I expect I'll get used to the idea. I
don't have much choice, do I?'

    'It
was probably just a burglary that went wrong, like the police said.'

    'Well,
that makes me feel much better, doesn't it?' She stabbed a fork into the bacon
and flipped it over as though it were to blame. 'I used to feel safe here. Even
though it was the middle of nowhere, I never once felt threatened like I did
living in a city. But that's my problem, not yours.'

    'Look,
I know how you must feel—'

    'No
you don't.'

    I
hesitated. This wasn't something I'd planned to go into, but I knew that if Sophie
wasn't careful the assault could become a trauma she'd never recover from.

    'Actually,
I do. I was stabbed after a case the other year.'

    She
turned to look at me. 'You're not serious?'

    So I
told her about the events on Runa, and how Grace Strachan had turned up on my
doorstep months later, returning from the dead to plunge a knife into me.

    'And
they never caught her?' Sophie asked, her eyes wide. 'She's still out there?'

    'Somewhere.
The police think she left the country soon afterwards. She and her brother were
rich, so she probably had access to bank accounts no one knows about. Chances
are she's in South America or somewhere by now.'

    'That's
awful!'

    I
shrugged. 'Looking on the bright side, she probably thinks I'm dead. So there's
no reason for her to try again.'

    I
felt a superstitious unease as soon as I'd spoken.
Don't tempt providence.

    Sophie
had moved the pan from the heat. She looked down at it, troubled. 'I'd no idea.
And now I've dragged you into all this.'

    'You
didn't drag me into anything. And the reason I'm telling you this is because
everything points to your attack being a one-off. Whoever did it can't have
really wanted to hurt you, or . . . Well, you'd have got more than a fractured
cheek.'

    'I suppose.'
She looked thoughtful, but there was still a shadow in her eyes. Abruptly, it
was gone. She turned the heat back up under the pan and gave me a mischievous
grin. 'Anyway, let's have breakfast. Then before you go you can show me your
scar.'

    But her
good mood didn't last. She grew distracted again, pushing the food around
listlessly on her plate. I offered to help with the dishes, but she declined. I
got the impression she wanted some time to herself, so I left her in the
kitchen and went to shower and pack my things.

    I
wondered if it was only now dawning on her that she wouldn't be part of any
search operation this time round. For whatever reason, finding Zoe and Lindsey
Bennett's graves had become a personal crusade, but Sophie wasn't a BIA any
more. Her involvement had effectively ended the moment we'd found the holes
left by Monk at Black Tor. Now the police would take over and she'd be nothing
more than an onlooker.

    Letting
go was never easy.

    I
took my bag downstairs. The radio was playing when I went into the kitchen.
Sophie was standing by the sink, her hands motionless in the water.

    'Is
there anything—' I began.

    'Shh!'
She silenced me with a quick shake of her head. For the first time I paid
attention to what was being said on the radio.

    '. .
.
police haven't released the victim's identity, although they confirm the
death is being treated as suspicious. In other news
. . .'