The Hiker

Prologue

Castor tossed his head, batting her in the shoulder, nostrils flaring.

‘I know, but it has to be done.’

She rubbed the cream into the scratches on his flank. It was still a mystery how he’d come by them a couple of days before. Her mother thought it must have been barbed wire, though Alice didn’t see how it could have made such markings, not unless he’d somehow collided against it in a really strange way. There were five diagonal gouges, side by side. Not deep, thankfully, but it would prevent her from riding in the short time they had left together.

Castor stamped and snorted.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Alice. ‘It can’t hurt that much!’

She had a clue, of course, and she suspected his mood didn’t have a great deal to do with the injury. Castor had always been able to read her, better than any human being, and certainly better than anyone in her house. In many ways, he was her closest friend on the estate, his stable a refuge, away from the dark, joyless rooms and watchful staff.

He lowered his nose again, resting it in the crook of her neck, as if to say sorry for the outburst.

‘I’m going to miss you,’ she said.

His breath warmed her neck.

The new term at St Hilary’s started in two days – nine weeks away from home and the stables. They had horses at school too, dreary and stubborn things, not like Castor in any way. Riding them was joyless, for all concerned.

The creak of the stable door made her half turn.

‘Will you be hacking out, miss?’ asked a familiar, gruff voice. ‘I could saddle Pollux.’

‘No, Bill. Not today. I thought I might go for a walk.’

‘I’ll let your mother know,’ he said.

She bit her lip. Why can’t they leave me be for ten minutes? ‘You don’t have to do that. I’m not going far.’

‘Clag’s coming in,’ said Bill. ‘Could be heavy.’

‘I’ll take my coat. I know the way.’

When she was sure he’d retreated, she ran a hand along the underside of Castor’s jaw. The stallion’s pulse was strong and fast.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, to comfort herself as much as him. ‘I’ll be back later.’

He snorted a soft breath. They’d been inseparable, from the moment he took his first wobbling steps in the stables. The mare who’d birthed him, Ariadne, had bled out the same night, and Alice had been the one who had cleaned him up, then sat beside him with the bottle, every three hours, a ten-year-old keeping the newborn foal alive. Neither Mr Farrah nor her parents had had great hope, but she’d proved them all wrong. She was the first and only person to ride him – he’d thrown her cousin Fiona, who fancied herself the better rider; Alice had tried not to laugh. Over time, as they began to jump, their bond had only grown.

Last year, when her parents had revealed their scheme to send her off to board, Alice had spent a whole night in the stable, wet face buried in Castor’s neck, his scent the only thing keeping her anchored in the world. Their relationship had changed. Not a surrogate mother and child any more; something more like siblings. With no brother or sister, it was Castor who she’d poured out her secrets to – her hatred of her parents, her friends and enemies at school, the boy she was in love with. Even if he didn’t understand the words, she knew from his kind and patient gaze that he understood something.

Alice left the stable, casting a brief look towards the house, scanning for silhouettes of figures lurking in the many windows. Pollux – her mother’s horse and Ariadne’s first foal – wouldn’t do for the place she was going. She took the south-western path, alongside the old dyke, one of the many earthworks that had survived the estate’s long history. It followed the camber of the slope, before striking gently uphill to higher moorland, where the bridleway, a public footpath, would take her towards the village. The sky above was bruised, promising rain, maybe even a storm, but she could feel the wind at her back, moving it away.

She prayed Daniel had been able to get away too, because if he hadn’t, she didn’t know what she’d do. They hadn’t been together for three days, since a few snatched moments behind the barbecue stand at the village summer fête, and those seventy-two hours had been dreadful, cooped up in the house, trying and failing to complete her French assignments, thinking only of the next time she’d be able to see him.

Checking her watch, she saw it was quarter to two. She was running late, so she decided to come off the bridleway, skirting through the old quarry. Not only was it a shortcut to their meeting spot on the outskirts of Hartsbridge, the contours of the landscape were such that she couldn’t be seen, or potentially followed, from the manor. She was sure that one or two of the regular staff knew about her relationship, and she wouldn’t put it past her parents to have a spy. Not that they’d see it that way.

She gazed back towards the house as she reached the crest above the quarry, or to where the house had been, and she saw she needn’t have worried – Bill was right about the clag. A thick white mist had taken it completely. The moorland vanished into the sky and it looked like the edge of the world. For a moment, Alice let herself fantasise that she could go back and find it truly disappeared, an empty space where the looming walls once stood, all traces of the buildings and its inhabitants gone. What she would do then, she didn’t know. The taste of imagined freedom was strange and intoxicating.

Her boots disturbed loose slate chips as she descended through the old workings. The slag heaps and crumbling chimney of the smelting house were all that remained of the former ironworks – the river that once flowed through had long ago been redirected to the new reservoir further down the valley. Her friends from school, some of them wealthy themselves, always found Brocklehurst Hall and the surrounding estate fascinating, set among the sweeping Pennine moorland. They were mostly from the city. She tried to explain it was actually very boring and lonely.

A skitter of rocks somewhere at her back made her stop and turn, heart spiking. It was a sound that made no sense, because out here she was alone, moving through the landscape. She saw no one else on the path though.

The first spots of rain began to fall, spattering on her Barbour coat. She scanned left and right. Down below, by the trickle of the brook, were the ruins of several stone huts, their walls and roofs collapsed. Looking at them, she had the first, curious sensation that she was not alone. Beneath the stillness, something else lurked.

‘Hello?’ she said. Maybe one of the staff had followed, after all. Mr Farrah had been watching her saddle up. He was always watching her.

Further down the slope, she heard the snick of stone on stone.

‘Danny?’ she said. There was no answer. ‘Danny, if that’s you, this isn’t funny.’

The desperation in her own voice appalled her. There was no reason at all for Danny to be out here. He couldn’t even have known she’d come this way.

Her eyes locked on the dilapidated buildings. No more than old workshops, or tool sheds, unused for two hundred years or more. There were shafts running under the ground, Dad said, but they were sealed up.

Under the gap in a slate roof, something moved quickly. A black form, right there, now standing completely still. Her breath caught, trying to make sense of it. Her mind thought ‘sheep’, knowing full well there were no flocks this high. It moved again, disappearing into the hidden recesses of the old shelter.

For some reason, she couldn’t budge. Sheep didn’t move like that. Curiosity, or fear, pinned her to the spot. Her eyes were fixed on the roof, daring herself, and the world, to show the thing again.

It did. This time, it hesitated there. Just blackness, crouched in the ruins. She was more sure than ever that she was looking at an animal. At fur. And much bigger than a sheep. Not a farm creature at all. It was too furtive. Something deep in her being – the instinct of prey in the presence of a predator – told her it had been watching her for some time. It told her to run.

She began to climb the slope, as quickly as she could. She heard the shifting of stones behind her, and realised it had emerged. But when she looked back again, she couldn’t see anything.

‘Dan!’ she shouted. Hoping he might miraculously appear.

The slope was steep, and her hands gripped at anything they could to haul her higher – rock or heather. The mist had thickened as she came out of the gully. She couldn’t see ten metres and now that blank canvas filled her with despair. Which way was the house?

‘Help!’ she screamed. Her voice came out in a thin cry, like her throat was being squeezed. Still, she tried again, calling into the mist.

She looked back, but there was nothing. No, not nothing. She heard more steps, irregular and quick. Breathing too – grunting, heavy breaths of something massive, chasing her down.

She turned and was about to scream again, when fire raked down her back, ripping through her jacket. A weight forced her to her knees, her hands shooting out to break the fall, but the pressure was too much. The scream became a wail as her face buried in the heather. The grunting, growling, filled her ears, and when she tried to roll over, its bulk pressed her into the ground. She managed to turn her head a fraction, before something pushed it down, so hard she feared her skull would crack. She felt its breath on her face.

‘Please …’ she said. ‘Please don’t.’

And then, first in her peripheral vision, she saw its teeth and all the fight left her body as the stories of the schoolyard came flooding back. The nightmares she’d had as a child, buried, she thought, forever.

Something from the past, that didn’t belong here.

Chapter 1

SARAH

‘The police are here to see you.’

And with those words, a normal day in the office is anything but. My first instinct is a client. Some enraged, slighted husband, backed into a corner, has taken things too far. It happens rarely, but there was an horrific incident, when I was just starting, involving acid …

‘Ms Kline?’ says the receptionist. ‘Shall I send them up?’

‘Did they say what it’s about?’

A pause, then, ‘Apparently it’s a personal matter.’

My hand tightens on the phone and a series of horrendous images flick through my head, like the slides in some hellish PowerPoint presentation. Doug lying on a roadside somewhere, surrounding by broken glass. Bystanders, one or two already pulling out their phones in macabre fascination. A panicked driver saying how he wasn’t going fast, how the man came out of nowhere, how he didn’t see him until it was too—

‘Thanks, Nia. I’ll meet them at the elevators.’

The line goes dead, and I’m left with tingling fingers, my lips suddenly cold. Shock. The blood responding to my panic, taking evasive action from my extremities to the vital organs.

A personal matter. It has to be Doug. The scenario seems inevitable – a logical progression from dread to doom. The slide show flashes up a police officer crouched at Doug’s side, reaching into his jacket pocket. Then the organ donor card he carried in his wallet. I’m listed as his next of kin. That’s why they’re here. He must have been out for a lunchtime run – part of the latest marathon-training cycle – pounding the city streets on his way to one of the big parks, veering off onto the road to avoid the flow of pedestrians. The roads are all busy round his office. Motorcyclists tearing between cars in a blind rush, impatient taxi drivers pulling daring manoeuvres, tourists in hire vehicles trying to get to grips with London traffic. Those bus drivers, looking for a yard’s advantage and trusting any Londoner to have their wits about them. And Doug – my Doug – probably thinking about keeping his heart rate stable, or his running form, or listening to his earphones, his mind on other matters entirely. He might not even have known what hit him. Just a screech of brakes … then nothing. The sort of thing you read about all the time on the news, and thank God it’s not you or yours.

I split into two people. One’s detached, almost indifferent. A protective measure to find space, to keep calm, to take a step back. This cool and collected version of me drifts towards the window and watches the other, pale and waxy as a corpse herself, plucking her coat from the back of her chair and rushing from the room. It wonders how that woman will cope if a week before her wedding some terrible accident has befallen her fiancé. She’ll be this tragic stereotype – the woman who buried her husband on the day intended for her nuptials, dress never worn, gifts returned, future cruelly snatched away.

A few seconds pass, and I follow the other me down the hall.

Katriona comes out of the loo, and we almost collide.

‘Sarah!’

‘Shit. Sorry.’

‘Are you okay?’

The shadow me thinks Katriona’s looking radiant as always, and wonders the name of the perfume she’s wearing and where she got those blue teardrop earrings (are they genuine sapphires?), but the real me – the flesh and blood, trapped in the moment, the one with the heart thumping like a drum – doesn’t have time to take that sort of thing in at all.

‘Er … yes.’ I don’t want to explain. I can’t really, until I know what’s going on.

I sense Kat’s eyes following as I keep going, and the dread in my gut is like a rock, making it hard to walk. My visitors – the police – will have to have passes issued, then there’ll be a wait at the bank of elevators. I picture two of them. Their grim, apologetic faces, like undertakers. Men with black hair and black eyes and black clothes. Crows seated on a branch, surveying carrion.

From the elevator lobby on the fifteenth floor, a huge window gives a view across the city. Soaring glass and metal sprouting like exotic plants among a bed of regular Georgian grandeur. It’s normally a comforting view – the potent, thrusting city in which I dwell – but my nerves are fizzing with anticipation and it looks fragile today. Vulnerable. If Doug’s been hurt, none of it matters. I think of a mushroom cloud bursting silently in the distance over the rooftops and await the shock wave roar that will sweep me, and everything else, away in glass and fire and dust.

The numbers over the elevator doors provide an illuminated countdown. At 14, a light chimes, and the doors open.

Their faces are not quite as lugubrious or commiserating as I expected. A man and a woman; he in his forties, she a decade or so younger. He’s tall, pale and thin, with a wet-shaved head and a neatly trimmed beard. She’s Asian, short, hair in a tight plait, and carries a document case, which looks curiously old-fashioned. Both are wearing the same sort of plain and discreet office clothes as everyone on my floor. Almost, anyway. Even if I didn’t know they were police officers, there’s something not quite right about them. His tie knot droops a half-inch, revealing his top collar button, and his cuffs are buttoned too. Neither would be acceptable among my colleagues: they teach you how to dress in law school and if you don’t fit in on that score, you’ll find someone has a quiet word. Cufflinks are a must and top buttons should only make an appearance two drinks into a work night out. She’s smarter, but the jacket isn’t tailored properly – too short at the wrists. Her shoes are flat, so though we’re probably the same size, I feel like a giant in my heels. Ungainly too – at a distinct disadvantage in this encounter.

‘Ms Kline?’ says the man.

I nod and hold out my hand. ‘Is it Doug?’

The officers share a confused glance with one another.

‘Doug?’ says the man.

‘He’s my fiancé. Is he okay?’

He shakes his head. ‘Ah, no,’ he replies, before adding, ‘I mean, this isn’t about your fiancé.’

My hand goes to my chest, in a way that shadow-me briefly considers theatrical. ‘Oh, thank God. I thought …’ My mind hits reboot. ‘What is it, then?’

The woman smiles reassuringly. ‘This is just a routine enquiry.’ She lifts the document case a fraction, in a gesture that seems involuntary. ‘Is there somewhere private we could talk?’

I’m forgetting myself. The elevator lobby is no place for this sort of conversation. ‘Of course. Follow me.’

I take them back to my office. Through the partition, a couple of the associates on my floor look up with idle curiosity. The police officers probably look like auditors of some sort. They have that slightly worn and weary look of those who sit in cramped, poorly lit offices drinking lukewarm coffee and spilling sandwich crumbs onto their paperwork.

I close the door and gesture to the two seats opposite mine. There’s a picture of Doug and me on the desk, half-reclining on a gondola beneath St Mark’s. It was the night he proposed. I’m laughing wildly, because I was tipsy and because the gondolier had pretended he was about to fall in with my phone in his hand. I normally move it when clients visit, as a matter of course. Divorce lawyer rubbing in her happy relationship gives the wrong impression.

‘I’m Sergeant Sadler,’ says the man, taking a chair. His accent is pure south London, but his pronunciation is clipped, like he’s putting on airs. ‘And this is Constable Sanjit. We wondered if we could ask you a few questions. It’s about your sister, Gemma.’

‘Gemma?’

The name comes out of my mouth like it’s a foreign word I’m learning for the first and the officers look at each other quickly, before returning their gazes to me.

‘You do have a sister called Gemma Kline?’ says Sadler.

‘I did … I mean, I do,’ I say. ‘Look, sorry. I haven’t seen her for a long time. We’re not really close. Is she all right?’

My brain is still playing catch-up with this sudden, unexpected change of direction. Of course this is about Gemma. It would hardly be the first time she’s got herself in trouble with the law. I remember picking her up from the station when she was fifteen on a Friday night, when Mum was in no fit state to drive. A fight. Someone had been bottled, if I recall correctly. Gemma hadn’t been directly involved but proved difficult enough with the attending officers for them to place her in custody.

Constable Sanjit has placed the document case on her lap, and taken out a notebook and pen from her inside jacket pocket. ‘When you say, a long time?’

I note they haven’t answered my question. In fact, they seem a little impatient. Blunt, even. Like I might be the problem here. I choose not to rise to it.

‘Over five years,’ I say. I look at the electronic calendar on my desk. It’s the ninth of September. Mum’s funeral was in February – a blustery, wet, miserable day that I’d obviously rather forget. We’d sheltered under bucking umbrellas and the wreath blew off the coffin as they carried it into the crematorium. I was crying and Doug rushed forward to pick it up. ‘Five and a half.’

‘You haven’t spoken at all since then?’

‘Not once.’

If they’d seen the argument we had afterwards, they’d understand.

‘Look, what’s this about? Has something happened to her?’

Sanjit closes the notebook and looks to the sergeant. He gives a discreet nod. Then she breathes a long sigh through her nose, before her sad brown eyes rest on me. ‘We’re assisting Durham Constabulary in their enquiries into the movements of a man called Mark Lake. We believe he was in a relationship with Gemma.’

The name rings a bell. ‘She had a boyfriend called Mark. The last thing I heard, Gemma lived down on the South coast though. Not up north. Nowhere near Durham.’

‘That’s right,’ says the constable. ‘We traced Mark’s current address in Brighton. Gemma lived there with him, but we haven’t been able to locate her.’

‘So she’s missing?’

‘No one has reported it,’ says Sadler. ‘However, there’s evidence to suggest Mark, and maybe Gemma, were in some sort of trouble.’

They’re playing their cards close to their chest, and I’m not inclined to give them much in return. Not least, because I can’t. I’m struggling to work out how they’ve even found me. ‘Trouble as in danger?’

The two officers share a conspiratorial glance. ‘Durham found Mark’s car,’ says Sadler. ‘It had been set on fire, we think deliberately.’

I remember the one time I met Mark. Part of me is impressed that they’re still together. Let’s just say he didn’t seem like a keeper. The thought he might be involved in petty criminality is hardly inconceivable.

‘Maybe it was just stolen?’ I suggest.

‘There was a man’s body in the driver’s seat,’ says Sadler, not missing a beat.

‘Oh, God. You mean he’s …’

‘Deceased, yes. A post-mortem on his body has proved inconclusive, but Durham have no reason to believe it isn’t Mark. He’s not been seen for several days either.’

A silence falls over the office, before Sanjit adds, ‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.’

She’s misread me, I think. I didn’t know Mark well enough for his death to have much of an emotional impact. ‘Do you think Gemma’s okay?’

Sadler stiffens, a flicker of challenge in his posture. ‘We don’t know what to think, which is why we need to find her.’

‘I’m sorry – I don’t think I can help. When did this happen – the fire, I mean?’

‘A little over a week ago,’ says Sadler, without checking any notes. ‘Do you have a number for Gemma?’

I fish out my phone. ‘I did. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s changed.’ I find it under ‘Sis’ and read it to them.

With her book open, Sanjit says, ‘It’s the one we’ve got from the flatmates, boss.’ She looks up at me. ‘We’ve tried the number. It’s disconnected.’

I can sense the meeting winding up already. Sadler puts his hands on his knees to stand. ‘Thank you for your time, Ms Kline.’ He fishes out a card from his pocket and places it on the table. ‘If she does get in touch, do give us a call.’

‘I will.’ I briefly inspect the card. ‘Actually, how did you find me? I mean, I’ve really had no contact with Gemma for years.’

Sanjit, standing also, now opens the document case, a little clumsily. ‘We found this among her possessions in Brighton.’

She pulls out a white card that glitters slightly. It’s the wedding invite I sent to her with a letter, after much deliberation, about two months ago. With the likelihood of her address being out of date, I never expected it even to reach her, let alone for her to reply, and we haven’t left a space for her in the seating plan. I’m not sure why I bothered. Conscience, maybe – some last vestige of sisterly affection. Or perhaps it was spite. A note to say ‘I’m doing fine, thanks’. Hard to tell sometimes, when it comes to Gemma, how I really feel. It’s always been like that.

‘Out of interest, why is it you didn’t keep in touch with your sister?’ asks Sanjit.

‘It’s complicated,’ I say.

The constable smiles. ‘I get it. I’ve got a sister too. Three actually.’

As I’m showing them back to the elevators, her boss casts a glance around the office. ‘What is it you do for a living?’ he asks.

It’s not a question I relish answering, but I’ve learnt the best thing to do is be vague. ‘We’re a family law firm,’ I say, ‘specialising in divorce.’

I see a cloud of confusion on Sadler’s face. You don’t get an office in this building doing run-of-the-mill separations. He’s not wearing a wedding ring, and I make a guess he’s probably on the other side of a marriage gone sour. I press the button to summon the elevator.

‘We tend to represent partners exiting high net-worth relationships.’

That seems to satisfy him. His mouth twists in distaste. Lawyers generally sit somewhere high on polls of most hated professions, somewhere above conveyancing solicitors and thankfully below ambulance chasers.

‘We’ll be leaving you to it, then,’ he says, stepping into the elevator. ‘Good luck with the wedding, by the way.’

I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a joke, but I raise a smile anyway as the doors close in front of them.

Walking back to my office, I think of the last time I saw my sister.

Chapter 2

SARAH – FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

‘Listen, I spoke to a couple of estate agents.’

I turn to Gemma. She’s wearing jeans and a black hoodie and Doc Martens. ‘Seriously, not now, all right.’

Her thick kohl is smeared down her cheeks. It makes her look like she’s been crying, but it’s more likely the weather. It’s been pissing it down all day, and despite the expansive black umbrella, my shoes are soaked