LITMIR.BIZ

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you reply when I shouted?’

      ‘Sorry.’ Mary-Ellen shrugged. ‘Never heard you.’

      ‘Hmmm. Suppose these acoustics are all over the place,’ he grunted. They trudged back to the boat. ‘You didn’t hear anything else, though? No one farting around?’

      ‘Farting around?’

      ‘Whispering … chuckling.’

      She looked fascinated. ‘For real?’

      ‘Shit, I don’t know.’ He glanced back into the opaque gloom. ‘More atmospheric weirdness, maybe. Or the local wildlife. The main thing is there’s no second corpse?’

      ‘Didn’t find one.’

      ‘Well we can’t get any help up here to do a proper pattern-search until this weather clears.’

      They’d emerged onto the bank, back into the glare of the outboard’s spotlight. Tara Cook lay as before. Heck angled back towards her, and knelt. He didn’t want to disturb the scene more than he already had and would avoid making further contact if possible, but it had belatedly occurred to him to check for any lividity marks, maybe even signs of rigor mortis, as either of those could give a clearer indication how long the girl had been dead. He reached down towards her and suddenly the body twitched. Heck froze. For several helpless seconds he knelt rigid, as, without warning, the ‘corpse’ reached a violently shuddering hand towards his face, and drew five carmine finger-trails down his cheek. Still, neither he nor Mary-Ellen were able to respond.

      Tara Cook’s head now lolled onto her shoulder. Her puffy eyes were still swollen closed, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, she opened her mouth. A low moan surged out, along with globs of fresh blood, which spattered down the front of her filthy cagoule.

      ‘Good Christ!’ Mary-Ellen breathed.

      ‘Good Christ indeed!’ Heck said urgently. ‘She’s only bloody alive!’

      As they worked frantically on the girl, her moan rose in volume and intensity until it was a prolonged, keening screech, which rebounded from the cliffs overhead and all across the misted, semi-frozen lake.

       Chapter 4

      ‘Gemma Piper,’ came the voice on the line. It was clipped, efficient. Time hadn’t softened that aspect of his ex-boss’s personality. Not that much ever did.

      Time, though. It had actually only been two and a half months since he and Gemma had had the mother of all fall-outs, yet in some ways, it seemed like a lifetime.

      ‘Ma’am,’ he said.

      ‘Heck?’ He couldn’t tell whether she was pleased to hear from him or not. The probability was she was more surprised. ‘Where are you calling from?’

      ‘Cragwood Keld nick, South Cumbria.’

      ‘Oh … right.’ Perhaps she’d fleetingly wondered if he was back down in London for some reason.

      ‘Currently buried in the muckiest November fog I’ve ever seen,’ Heck added. ‘The whole of the Lakes is in lockdown at present, ma’am. Nothing’s moving.’

      She’d sounded curious about his call, but her patience, as always, was wearing thin, especially now he’d got onto the weather. ‘What can I do for you, Heck?’

      ‘We’ve just had an attempted double homicide.’

      ‘I see. Local to your subdivision?’

      ‘Right on it.’

      ‘Good job they’ve got you there.’

      ‘Thing is, ma’am, I think this one may be of interest to you.’

      ‘You said two attempted homicides. Have you actually had any fatalities?’

      ‘Not sure.’

      ‘Doesn’t sound like an SCU job, Heck. Give it to South Cumbria Crime Command in the first instance. That’s what they’re there for …’

      ‘No … I think it may be of interest to you, as in you personally, rather than SCU.’

      ‘Okay …?’ Now she sounded cautious, not to say sceptical, but she knew Heck well enough to at least give him a hearing. ‘Go on …’

      ‘It was a blitz attack, seemingly without motive. Two girls hiking in the Langdale Pikes got themselves lost in the fog. The next thing they know, they’re being followed by someone who attacks them. The first one he beats down with a stone. The second one he shoots.’

      There was a lengthy pause. ‘This is news to me. When did it happen?’

      ‘Last night, around midnight.’

      ‘Nasty stuff, but I still don’t see …’

      ‘Two female hitchhikers alone on a dark night? Getting jumped by a single assailant, who takes one of them out ASAP with a lump of rock?’

      ‘That would be a common sense strategy for any random attacker attempting to overpower two people at the same time.’

      ‘I’m not sure this is a random attacker, ma’am. While he was stalking them through the fog, the assailant was whistling something.’

      ‘Whistling?’

      ‘It was a song you’re quite familiar with … Strangers in the Night.’

      Now there was a much longer pause, and the sound of paperwork being shuffled. Heck could picture Gemma filching a pen from her drawer, shoving documentation aside as she opened a fresh daybook on her desk. Gemma was in the habit of starting a new log for every crime that was referred to her personal office. ‘Give me the details, Heck.’

      He told her what they knew, which in truth wasn’t very much. Namely, that Tara Cook and Jane Dawson had gone astray while following a challenging route through the Langdale Pikes, at which point they’d been assailed first by that eerie whistling, and then by a strong, stocky figure, whose physical features had not just been concealed by fog, but by a full head mask and heavy outdoor clothing. He’d beaten Jane Dawson savagely – though whether it was to death was as yet unknown, as the sole witness, Tara Cook, had fled, only to be shot from behind. She’d survived the wound, but in a subsequent delirious state, had fallen down a waterfall, finishing up in Witch Cradle Tarn, where Heck had found her only an hour and a half ago.

      Gemma listened long and hard, clearly undecided about the import of what he was telling her. While she tried to make her mind up, Heck glanced back from the Cragwood Keld front desk into the rear office, the little bit of floor space in there now taken up by a camping bed, on which the casualty, her more serious wounds dressed and bound, was reclining. Mary-Ellen was crammed in there alongside her, scribbling anything Tara could recollect into her pocketbook. The ambulance scheduled to take the casualty down to the Westmorland General Hospital, in Kendal – the nearest medical facility capable of dealing with a gunshot wound – had still not arrived. Nor had any supervision units from Windermere. In the meantime, they’d done the best they could, bringing Tara Cook directly back to Cragwood Keld in the police launch, which was now tied up down at the public jetty near to The Witch’s Kettle, and applying as much first aid as possible. Their cause was assisted by Tara Cook’s apparent determination to survive. She’d suffered a nasty-looking wound, but in reality the attacker had only winged her, which was understandable in such poor visibility. This started Heck thinking again.

      ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘the Stranger was never accounted for, was he?’

      ‘Heck … that was ten years ago. And I shot him through the left side of his chest. That wound had to be fatal.’

      ‘But you didn’t see him die. The Stranger taskforce never found his body, and they dragged that mire for days afterwards.’

      ‘Why

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