We’d booked into a little guesthouse in the village, two streets over from the cottages Angus had once owned. One of them had become a bed and breakfast place, but staying there would have been too much for me. All the same, I stopped the car on the road outside for a moment. The two houses hadn’t changed much. One had grown a small extension and the creaky old wooden gate at the front was gone. The hedges had grown but not as much as I would have thought. Or was it just that I myself was taller? I could see my old bedroom window from where I was parked. I wondered what the reaction would be if I knocked on the door and told the occupants there had been a murder in their front room.

Becca had been sleeping deeply, lulled by the movement of the car. She woke up quite suddenly with a snort. “Ugh,” she said, wiping her hand across her face. “Sorry, I was fast asleep. Where are we?”

I put the car into gear and drove away. “Nowhere,” I said, “It doesn’t matter.”

The owner of the guesthouse was an elderly, bespectacled lady. I saw her looking at my scar as we signed the guest register.

"It's from a car accident", I said and smiled inwardly when she blushed and muttered something to cover her confusion. It no longer bothered me when people looked. Why would I care what they think?

We ate at the local pub that evening, the only one in the village, still thronged with ruddy-faced walkers sinking pints of stout. Afterwards, we walked slowly back to the guesthouse.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” said Becca, puffing a little as we climbed the stairs to our rooms.

“Thanks, but no,” I said. I smiled at her. “Seriously, thanks, Becs. I do appreciate you being here, more than you might think. But I have to do this on my own.”

I gave her a quick hug and she hugged me back. I could feel the tight roundness of her belly; the hardness of it was always a small shock.

“Have you thought of a name, yet?”

She put her hands on her bump, moving them in a slow circle. “Not yet.” She looked at me, considering. “Maybe I’ll call her Jessica.”

When the time was right, I got up off the bed where I’d been lying, and put my shoes on. I pulled on a coat and picked up my torch. I checked my watch again. Then I left the room, quietly, shutting the door behind me.

The night was cool but not cold, the night sky huge, indigo-hued and ragged with rapidly moving clouds. A thin slice of moon shone little light over the dark countryside and I was glad of my torch. I made my way up the track, stones slipping under my feet. Every noise I made sounded loud in the expectant hush of the countryside. As I reached the end of the track, my teeth began to chatter.

The stones looked so small. I walked over to the Men-an-Tol and put my hand on it, feeling the chill of it beneath my palm. Through the hole, I could see a few faint stars twinkling against their black velvet backdrop, before they were blotted out by cloud. I held my breath. If there really had been a ritual to take me back in time, to whisk me back to that night before everything fell apart, would I perform it? Would I have been able to stop what happened, a ten-year-old child? Perhaps somewhere, in another universe, perhaps I had. In this one, all I could do was watch the sky through the hole in the stone and mourn my friend.

“I’m sorry, Jessica,” I said. I whispered it to the night and the stones and the sky. “Wherever you are. I’m sorry.”

My farewell said, I turned and made my way back to the track. I kept my eyes on the small circle of light cast by the torch. I didn’t look behind me.

THE END

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Have you met Detective Sergeant Kate Redman?

The Kate Redman Mysteries are the bestselling detective mysteries from Celina Grace, featuring the flawed but determined female officer Kate Redman and her pursuit of justice in the West Country town of Abbeyford.

Hushabye (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 1) is the novel that introduces Detective Sergeant Kate Redman on her first case in Abbeyford. It’s available for free!  Read the first two chapters below…

HUSHABYE

(A KATE REDMAN MYSTERY)

 

CELINA GRACE

 

© Celina Grace 2013

Prologue

 

Casey Fullman opened her eyes and knew something was wrong.

It was too bright. She was used to waking to grey dimness, the before-sunrise hours of a winter morning. Dita would stand by the bed with Charlie in one arm, a warmed bottle in the other. Casey would struggle up to a sitting position, trying to avoid the jab of pain from her healing Caesarean scar, and take the baby and the bottle.

You’re mad to get up so early when you don’t have to, her mother had told her, more than once. It’s not like you’re breastfeeding. Let Dita do it. But Casey, smiling and shrugging, would never give up those first waking moments. She enjoyed the delicious warmth of the baby snuggled against her body, his dark eyes fixed upon hers as he sucked furiously at the bottle.

She didn’t envy Dita, though, stumbling back to bed through the early morning dark to her bedroom next to the nursery. Casey would have gotten up herself to take Charlie from his cot when he cried for his food, but Nick needed his sleep, and it seemed to work out better all round for Dita, so close to the cot anyway, to bring him and the bottle into the bedroom instead. That’s what I pay her for, Nick had said, when she’d suggested getting up herself.

But this morning there was no Dita, sleepy-eyed in rumpled pyjamas, standing by the bed. There was no Charlie. Casey sat up sharply, wincing as her stomach muscles pulled at the scar. She looked over at Nick, fast asleep next to her. Sleeping like a baby. But where was her baby, her Charlie?

She got up and padded across the soft, expensive, sound-muffling carpet, not bothering with her dressing gown, too anxious now to delay. It was almost full daylight; she could see clearly. The bedroom door was shut, and she opened it to a silent corridor outside.

The door to Dita’s room was standing open, but the door to Charlie’s nursery was closed. Casey looked in Dita’s room. Her nanny’s bed was empty, the room in its usual mess, clothes and toys all over the floor. She must have gone into Charlie’s room. They must both be in there. Why hadn’t Dita brought him through? He must be ill, thought Casey, and fear broke over her like a wave. Her palm slipped on the door handle to the nursery.

She pushed the door. It stuck, halfway open. Casey shoved harder and it moved, opening wide enough for her to see an out-flung arm on the carpet, a hand half-curled. Her throat closed up. Frantically, she pushed at the door, and it opened far enough to enable her to squeeze inside.