A Cry of Hounds

David McMichael is a doctor living in Northwest England, where he shares his time between the Ribble Valley and Keswick in the Lake District. Whilst now retired from medical practice, he maintains an active involvement in healthcare matters.

His interests apart from writing are family, all forms of the arts and science, nature and the countryside, fell walking, foreign travel, world ecology, and the environment.

He is the author of the novel Shadows in a Photograph, published to high praise in 2016, and of Today and Yesterday, a book of poetry also well-received, which was published by Austin Macauley in 2021.

David McMichael

A Cry of

Hounds

Copyright © David McMichael 2024

The right of David McMichael to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035822133 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035822140 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

"Dark deep the vale in man’s terrain

though vision strong and bright,

blue black the cloud which hides the peak

though he strives to reach the light;

and, whilst quarry in its innocence

flees in frantic bounds,

from men at one another

is heard a cry of hounds."

Chapter One

It would again be a bitter night. Here, on the high fells, the grass and heather already glistened frostily. Washed by the thin slanting light of the setting sun, a cold copper hesitating on the rim of the western fells, the hillside took on an almost eerie iridescence highlighted against the mauve grey of the hollows and shadows.

Across this otherwise apparently empty landscape the fox picked her way, catlike. Her paw marks, placed precisely, one in front of the other, left only a single line of dark impressions on the pale grass, so that those who understood these things would know that no animal other than a fox could have made these tracks. She took her time, pausing now and again to listen, or to lift her head to test the night air. From a distance, down in the valley, dogs barked, but she took no notice. Her head went down, nose to the ground, the movement creating in her reddish-brown fur highlights of gold from the rays of the sun. Night was coming on: in the frost the scent would be good, and soon, with luck, lower down there would be voles and rabbits to be had.

As shadows lengthened, and the valleys went from grey to purple to black, the village nestling below the southwest of the fell took on its evening rhythm. The few normally quiet streets for a while became busy as people returned from their various activities. From behind curtained windows lights came on, warm orange beacons in the cold black of the night, and from a variety of chimney pots thin columns of smoke rose vertically in the still air, only to drift down again in a fine haze across untidily-edged roof slates, as though suppressed by the weight of the cold air above.

Then, for an hour or two the streets became quiet once more, until, as the evening wore on, cars noisily departed, and people individually or in groups made their way perhaps to other houses, to the small village hall, or to the single pub.

The latter, in the main street, had been an inn since the 18th century. A relic of the days when the village had been on a main coaching route, it had originally been called ‘The George’, until a hundred or so years later, for reasons which were not clear, it had been renamed ‘The Hounds and Horn’; but (possibly because of its priapic connotations and an unsavoury reputation in the past) for many generations it had been known in the village simply as ‘The Horn’, or sometimes by the irreverent young as ‘The Curs and Cock’.

It was a long, low building of pleasing proportions in Lakeland Georgian style, with white-washed walls, a stone porch protecting the front entrance, a nearby mounting-block, and a somewhat gauchely painted wooden sign over the door. More or less unchanged, both internally and externally, over the past hundred years or so, it remained a pleasant and popular focal point in the centre of the village.

That evening, as on many evenings in recent months, James Cameron sat on his usual high stool at the bar of ‘The Horn’, his black Labrador curled resignedly at his feet. It was a pleasant seat at the corner of the bar, by the fire, the only stool with a spindle back to it, which was both a comfort and sometimes, later in the evening, a security: one could hook one’s heels on the footrail, lean against the backrest, and the room could sway as much as it liked. It was a seat favoured by many, but Cameron now always thought of it as ‘his’ seat – although, the truth was he would have had to be much older and much more of a ‘character’ before the regulars would be persuaded to regard it in that light. He was working at it.

He stared morosely at his fifth glass of Glenlivet. It was at that in-between stage where the whiskey didn’t taste as delectable as it had in the first three glasses, and not yet as wonderful as it would in the next few.

There was no doubt about it: he was depressed. He recognised the fact even though for him it was a relatively alien state of mind. The evening’s surgery had been the last straw: he never much enjoyed the small-animal work, but this evening had been particularly bad, seemingly full of neurotic owners with their even more neurotic pets. But it had been bad before that, he knew. He supposed, looking back, that what had made it worse this time had been the realisation this morning that it was the ‘Anniversary’ – or rather the suddenness with which the realisation had struck him. He knew that it was twelve months since Carole had left him, but sometimes it seemed longer, sometimes it seemed like yesterday. He still didn’t really know why she’d left; or maybe he didn’t want to think about that, or still couldn’t accept it. He missed the kids. More than anything. More than living alone (although that had now become bad enough), not having Fiona and Donald around gave him a deep aching sense of isolation and desolation. The bloody woman! What right had she to take his children away?

Angrily he pushed his empty glass across the bar. ‘Look lively, Harry, you’re neglecting your duties.’

Harry Naylor came over reluctantly from the other end of the bar. ‘Eh, Sandy, tha’s gaan t’fall off t’bluidy stool yet.’

Cameron regarded him sourly. Whenever Harry wanted to show his disapproval he usually thickened his natural dialect. ‘And you’d laugh your bloody head off, wouldn’t you? Just fill it up.’

Watching impatiently as Harry carefully poured a measure into the glass, he urged, ‘Fill it up, man, fill it up. Doubles are just for starters. Can’t you tell I’m celebrating?’ The bitterness spilled into his voice.

Naylor shook his head sadly. ‘Here, help yerself.’ He left the bottle and walked away.

Cameron looked at the half full bottle for a moment, then irritably pushed it aside. He turned and for the first time that evening peered around the familiar room. As always, his eyes wandered first along the rows of coloured cartoons in plain wooden frames which covered the greater part of the available space on the walls. Painted by a talented local man who had died some years before, they provided splashes of brightness against the drab faded wallpaper, their liveliness and artistry immediately catching the eye. Within those wooden rectangles moved two or three generations of huntsmen and local ‘characters’, some still living, some long forgotten: although from time to time there would be people in this room who would be able to identify most of them. The figures, set in simple scenes of activity, had small bodies and large heads with exaggerated features, and complexions which were portrayed as either bucolic or unhealthily pasty, sometimes with a tinge of green; and from their mouths came ‘balloons’ containing the sort of short, pithy comments which were so typical of the manner in which Cumbrians could, with a few well-chosen sarcastic witticisms, throw scorn on anyone or anything showing any hint of pretension. To Cameron, the cartoons seemed to have borrowed heavily from both Gillray and ‘Spy’ – and with the whimsical painting of foxes and hounds, a little from Disney. But they had such immediacy and vigour that he often felt he wouldn’t have been surprised to meet these cartoon figures walking down the main street.

The room was busy, he saw, as on any Friday evening. Mostly folk that he knew, but with a smattering of weekend visitors dressed casually in cords, jeans, pullovers and anoraks, some of them still wearing their walking boots. The low beamed ceiling reflected the orange glow of the oil lamps (artificial and electric, they were about the only gesture towards modernisation). The furniture – stools, and spindle-back chairs, oak trestle and pedestal tables – had probably been around for a hundred years or more. Generally dark with a century’s accumulation of polish and dirt, the rims of the tables and the arms of the chairs, however, had a golden patina created by the sleeves of countless patrons behaving no doubt much as the present crowd: twisting, shuffling and gesticulating in their talk – their movements mirrored in distorted fashion on the burnished surfaces of brass and copper jugs, pans and ladles dotted around the room, and competing in the kaleidoscope of images from lights, lamps and flickering fire. The men and women here tonight were the same sort of people: farmers, shepherds, craftsmen, straightforward village folk; but scattered amongst them, unseen, were the ghosts of quarrymen and miners, blacksmiths and farriers, coachmen and wheelwrights, and many others, all long gone.

However, the conversation and laughter in the bar tonight was unusually subdued. It seemed to Cameron that the nidus of this restraint lay at one of the tables where some of the locals regularly sat: the table where most nights, as now, Josh Tyson sat and held court for anyone prepared to listen. It was as though a stone of suppression had been lobbed into that area and the ripples had spread to affect the rest of the room. Cameron caught Harry Naylor’s eye and gave a little conspiratorial jerk of his head, then immediately wished that he hadn’t as the room tipped and swayed. The publican finished what he was doing at the far end of the bar, then came over.

‘What’s going on, Harry?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s so quiet in here tonight you’d think everyone’d just come back from a funeral.’

‘Oh, yeah. I dunno. It was the usual noisy crowd earlier on. Seemed to go quiet after yon two came in.’ He nodded towards a table on the far side of the room, near the door. ‘Seemed to bring on a bit of a hush. Can’t really say that I’m surprised!’ He gave a chuckle.

Cameron swivelled round and peered at the table that Naylor had indicated. He’d vaguely noticed the couple when he’d come in, but the woman had had her back to him. Now he looked at them with more interest. A youngish-looking man and woman, conversing in rather desultory fashion, at intervals glancing hesitantly around the room, they looked like husband and wife who were somewhat bored with each other’s company. The man, who sat facing Cameron, was dark-haired, with a suntan which looked as though it had been recently acquired. He wore a well-cut, double-breasted navy blazer, a crisp white shirt, and a carefully knotted ‘club’ tie. The woman was sitting sideways on to Cameron, making it difficult for him to clearly see her features, but there was no doubt about her attractiveness. Her hair, which was possibly a natural blonde, was elegantly piled up in some sort of fashion at the back of her head. She wore an expensive-looking pale brown tweed suit with a skirt so short that, sitting as she was, it revealed most of her thighs. Her shoes, which also looked expensive, had tapering high heels. In this room, dressed like that, the couple had a self-conscious aura of detached arrogance and superiority; they were like flamingos in a duck pond.

Cameron studied them more openly. Conscious perhaps of scrutiny, the woman had turned to face him, her chin lifted as in defiance, and he could see that she was quite a beauty, would attract attention in any room. Her legs were rounded and shapely, gleaming brown and satiny in sheer tights…or stockings. He had a sudden urge to slide an exploring hand up those thighs under that short skirt, to find out. Hell, that would fairly liven the place up!

‘I see what you mean, Harry. Who are they?’

‘They’re staying here. Arrived this afternoon. Mr and Mrs Forbes-Brown.’ He pronounced the hyphenated name with slight disdain. 

‘I think I’ll go and have a chat to them.’ He slid carefully off his stool and walked unsteadily over towards them, carrying his glass and his bottle with him. His dog, having looked up in eager anticipation of leaving, got up to plod resignedly at his heels.

‘Now watch it, Sandy!’ Naylor urged anxiously at his retreating back. ‘Just you go cannily.’

Cameron stopped at the table, swaying slightly. ‘G’d evening’, he said. He spoke with care, aware of the slurring. He glanced at the man, then looked down at the woman, trying not very hard to keep his eyes off her legs.

‘Good evening.’ They spoke together, polite but not enthusiastic, regarding him with unconcealed distaste.

‘My name’s James Cameron.’ Not waiting to be invited, he plumped down into a spare chair, pointedly continuing to look at the woman. He grinned expectantly as he announced, ‘I’ve come to share some crack with you’ – and laughed in delight as he saw astonishment followed by alarm spread briefly across the woman’s face, and heard a strangled gasp from the man. Chuckling still at their discomfort, he said, ‘I see you’re not from these parts. Crack in Cumbria means chat. I’ve come to have a chat with you.’

The woman gave a shaky laugh; her husband merely grunted irritably.

Cameron turned to look at him. ‘I’m sorry if I worried you.’

‘You didn’t worry us. It’s all just so bloody rude, don’t you think?’ The man’s voice was stiff with contempt.

Cameron regarded him more soberly. ‘I suppose it might have seemed that way,’ he said slowly. ‘My apologies. Just trying to be friendly.’

‘Well, we can do without your friendliness, thank you very much,’ the man grated in a low, tense voice. He evidently had noticed that a number of people were gazing curiously in their direction. He clearly was the sort who didn’t like a fuss. ‘You weren’t invited, and you’re bloody drunk! Just kindly leave, will you, before I have the landlord throw you out.’

Cameron, contemplating for a moment the intriguing picture of Harry Naylor getting him by the scruff of the neck to hurl him into the street, immediately felt his own temper begin to rise. It was his local – hell, the amount he used it these days he almost owned it – and who were these damned visitors to try to tell him when he could be in the place and when he couldn’t?

He started to get up, both his fists on the table, but the woman hurriedly intervened. ‘No, please, take no notice.’ She shot a look at her husband. ‘It’s we who should apologise. After all, it is your pub.’

Cameron looked at her suspiciously, wondering in his befuddled state whether she could read his mind. But he sat down again; apart from anything else, the quick movement of rising had been unwise and the room was swaying precariously. She smiled invitingly at him and re-crossed her legs, the hem of her skirt riding up her thighs. That clinched it. He sat back in the chair, a benign smile once more spread across his face. Having splashed a generous amount of whiskey into his own glass, he held the bottle up enquiringly, looking from one to the other; but the couple both shook their heads, silent for the moment.

It was the woman who broke the silence. ‘My name is Melissa…er, Forbes-Brown; and this is my husband, Tim.’ She smiled brightly at Cameron once more, but he couldn’t detect much warmth in her deliciously blue eyes. A bit like cat’s eyes, he thought…wary and watching.

He decided that as far as he could remember he’d already introduced himself, so he simply said, ‘You up here on holiday?’ He was trying to decide how to address them. He’d always found double-barrelled names difficult: the whole name was often a bit of a mouthful, but then he was never sure whether it was alright to use either the first bit or the last bit on its own. He decided he would just call them Melissa and Tim.

They answered him together. ‘Yes,’ said Tim; and – simultaneously – ‘No,’ said Melissa. She glanced at her husband and laughed. ‘That’s to say, we were travelling down from Scotland, and never having been to the Lake District before, we thought we might perhaps just stop over for a day or two.’

Tim, evidently making a bit more effort to be friendly, said, ‘You are Scotch yourself, I take it?’

Cameron guffawed in delight. ‘If I were, I’d be wet, fiery, and living in a bottle!’ He grinned at Tim – but then caught a look from Melissa which seemed to reflect the thought he himself had immediately had, that perhaps the description was a bit too damned appropriate!

‘I think Mr Cameron is trying to say that the word should be Scots, Tim. Scotch is the stuff that he’s busy drinking. Isn’t that right, Mr Cameron?’ She smiled sweetly at him, but there was a hint of malevolence in her eyes.

‘Can’t see the difference, myself,’ grumbled Tim.

‘Quite so,’ said Melissa, and grinned wickedly.

Cameron decided to change the subject. ‘How are you finding it here, then?’ he asked, to neither of them in particular.

‘Interesting,’ said Tim. He managed to make it sound as though the word meant curious, rather than that the place appealed to him. ‘Funny lot. Don’t seem to want to talk to one at all.’

‘Present company excepted, of course,’ said his wife, again somewhat mockingly.

Cameron thought of replying that local people were indeed particular about who they talked to. But he decided against it. In any case, the booze was beginning to get to him, and speech was becoming more difficult by the minute. Even Melissa’s legs weren’t interesting him as much as they did, which worried him. Time he was getting home to bed. But he became aware of Melissa speaking to him again, and struggled to understand what she’d said.

‘Those coloured sketches on the walls are fascinating,’ she repeated.

‘Yeah. They are, aren’t they.’

She tried again. ‘Are they of real live people?’

‘Some of them. A lot of them are of real dead people. And some of them were larger than life, in life,’ he replied.

‘There seem to be a lot of fox-hunting scenes.’

‘Yes, well hunting’s been a way of life here for a long, long time.’ He pointedly lapsed into silence again, gathering himself for the effort of trying to get to his feet.

But he could hear Melissa still prattling on.

‘What?’ he said rudely and impatiently, weariness overcoming him.

‘I said, what’s your dog’s name?’

He could hear the sharpness in her voice. He looked fondly down at the lab, whose head she was stroking, and who was looking expectantly up at Cameron. ‘Oh. Ben.’

‘He’s been very patient,’ she said.

‘He’s not a he, he’s a she.’

‘What?’

‘She’s not a he, she’s a she.’

‘But you said his…her…name was Ben.’

‘Yes.’ He couldn’t be bothered to explain.

Her husband was laughing uproariously. ‘It’s not like you, Johnny, to make a mistake over something like that!’ he said.

It was Cameron’s turn to stare in astonishment. ‘Johnny?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Johnny? I’ve heard of transvestism, but this is ridiculous!’ He deliberately looked her up and down, tipping his head on one side to ogle her hips and breasts in gross fashion – but recoiled as he saw the look of pent-up fury on her face. ‘Oh, oh,’ he said, come on, Ben, my girl, I think it’s time we were going.’ He staggered heavily to his feet. ‘I’ll bid you both good night!’ He turned and walked with careful, measured steps towards the door, waving his arm carelessly at all and sundry in the room, the dog wagging its tail at his heels. A chorus of ‘G’dnight, Sandy’ from various parts of the room followed him out into the night.

Outside, the air had an icy clarity to it: it felt clean and pure, and for a few moments he stood taking in deep breaths of it. Although at the end, there, he’d given an impression of high spirits, he still felt moody and dejected, his head was pounding, and he felt distinctly nauseous. He glanced up the silent street in the direction of his house. There, also, there would be silence and emptiness, and a cold supper; left dutifully with her usual optimism by his kind, elderly housekeeper, Ada Robinson, it would be sitting on the table mocking him. He shivered. The frost was now thick and white on the road, cars, and rooftops standing out against the faint dark outline of the mountains, their tops ghostly with pale remnants of snow. He glanced heavenwards, holding onto the door post for support. In the pure, cold air, and with little in the way of ground-light, the darkness up there had an unusual depth to it: it felt like space rather than a cosy covering. He felt as though if he didn’t hold on he would just float out into it. The stars, too, stood out pure and bright, as though the distant dark canopy of night had in it a million pinholes through which shone the light of the universe.

 He stood in awe for few minutes, until Ben at his feet began to whine, the cold getting to her also.

‘C’mon then, lass,’ he said, setting off up the street. Suddenly clearer in the head, he felt more cheerful, as if his perceived problems had slipped back into a proper perspective.

* * *

Melissa lay in the bath staring up at the ceiling a mere six feet above her. She stared unseeingly at the drab, cream coloured paper, which was peeling away in the corners, and she shivered. The water was as hot as she could stand it, but the small room was every bit as chilly as the equally small bedroom from which she had just come, in spite of the radiators packing out the heat. She wouldn’t have believed until now that nights could be so cold. But the real trouble was the bath. She slid down once more so that her shoulders and boobs were covered, whereupon her knees came up a good six inches out of the water and felt like two icebergs; when she could stand that no longer she forced them back under the surface, with the result that her wet breasts emerged cringing and puckering as the cold hit them. She wondered irritably why they hadn’t simply resorted to putting in a shower instead of feeling obliged to fit such a criminally short bath tub. She allowed herself a brief smile of satisfaction at the thought of Tim trying to fit into it.

Thinking of which, she glanced at her watch at the side of the bath. ‘Half an hour,’ she’d said with emphasis, when she’d left him in the bar, ‘and not a minute sooner!’ At that point she’d been anticipating a relaxing soak in the bath and enough time to get safely tucked up in bed before Tim arrived. As things were, she’d have been better to have stayed in the bar, where at least it was warm, and bugger the bedroom privacy!

She shivered again, but recognised that it was at least partly a reaction to the way things were turning out, and her current conviction that the whole wretched enterprise had been a ghastly mistake…one of her own making, moreover.

If only she hadn’t received that bloody letter, and if only she hadn’t taken it to Cocky in an impulsive fit of enthusiasm. Fully conscious as he was of his authority as Features Editor, the chief could be pretty scathing about other people’s ideas: she’d more or less expected to be turned down with a carefully articulated display of sarcasm, for which Cocky was justifiably famous. She remembered back to when she’d first started the job, five years ago, and she’d asked some of the other girls in the office whether Max Cochran had gained his nickname simply from his surname, or from his manner, or as a result of his reputation with women. She’d been told: ‘All three -- just watch out for him!’ At first, sure enough, she’d been subjected to plenty of innuendo and a number of more purposeful passes from him, just as she had from some of the other men (and one of the women) in the office, but she had rapidly evolved a hard-nosed professionalism which had soon put a stop to that, so that for a long time now he had treated her with a reasonable amount of respect.

Nevertheless, on this particular occasion she’d been surprised when he had echoed enthusiasm for her idea, albeit with a touch of the usual cynicism. ‘If it’s true -- and I say if – then it’ll make a good story in itself. But there could also be hidden agenda here. If I remember rightly, Aubrey Harrison is MP for that constituency and, if you recollect, at the general election he was returned with a very reduced majority: by the skin of his teeth, you might say. If you can come up with some facts it’ll be highly embarrassing for the government, and bloody good copy for us. You’ll have to go undercover of course, and you’ll need a photographer: it’ll be no good without the right pictures to prove it. It’ll have to be someone with undercover experience, as well.’ He’d pondered for a moment, then said, ‘What about Forbes-Brown? You’ve worked with him before?’

She’d nodded mutely. 

‘I know he’s freelance,’ Cochran had continued, ‘but if he’s available you can tell him we’ll pay him the usual rates, plus all expenses, plus a bonus if it comes up with the goods. I think he’ll be just the man for the job and I understand he has all the right equipment.’

Melissa had thought sourly, ‘I know he thinks he has, but for a different sort of undercover work from what, for once, Cocky has in mind! But she’d remained silent.

‘Well, go to it, Johnny,’ Cochran had said, returning his attention to the work on his desk, ‘and good luck! Oh, by the way,’ he’d added, looking up, ‘what cover will you use?’

She’d shrugged. ‘I hadn’t really given it much thought. Tourists, I suppose.’

‘Not many tourists up there midweek at this time of year, and it could well be several days before you get what you’re after. You’ll stick out like nuns in a brothel.’

‘Well, just passing through, then, and decided to loiter for a day or two.’

‘Yeah, that’d probably do. Best to keep it simple. You’ll have to pass as a couple, though: man and wife.’ He’d grinned wickedly. ‘If Forbes-Brown says he can’t come, just explain that to him. He’ll change his mind faster than you can climax! And if he still says he can’t come, let me know, and I’ll come!’ Then he’d become serious for a moment. ‘Think you can handle that okay, Johnny?’

She had nodded firmly. ‘I can handle Tim, no bother, if that’s what you mean.’

He’d laughed. ‘I’m sure you can. I don’t think the man’s been born you can’t handle!’ He’d waved his hand in dismissal.

She’d believed it herself at the time, but right now she felt distinctly vulnerable. She shivered again, looking down at herself: there were whacking great goosebumps all over her arms, and her nipples were sticking up like dried peas… Hell! What time was it! She glanced at her watch. Tim would be any minute, even if he stuck to the agreement. She hurriedly got out of the bath, dried herself vigorously, scattered some talc in the appropriate places, and grabbed for her pyjamas. She looked at them doubtfully. Possessing as she did only two nightdresses, both of which had been bought for their hopeful allure on particular occasions, the previous day she’d gone into Marks’ intending to buy something more suitable for the present situation. She’d meant to get plain-as-possible cotton pyjamas, but somehow she’d come out with this creamy, satiny set which, when she’d tried them on at home, clung to her in the sexiest possible manner, the low cut jacket revealing as much of her breasts as it hid. So, she was determined to be well tucked up in bed when Tim came up.

Stepping into the trousers, she pulled them up, but before putting on the jacket she peered at the faint tide-mark around the bath. Normally she was quite fastidious about such things, but one of the other deficiencies of the bathroom was that there was no lock on the door, and she was damned if she was going to run the risk of Tim catching her leaning over the bath cleaning it. 

At that moment, as if on cue, from the door behind her she heard a slow clap of hands. She whirled round, clutching the pyjama jacket to her chest, to find Tim leaning against the door post, an infuriatingly self-satisfied expression on his face.

‘You pig!’ she shouted at him, ‘how long have you been standing there!’

‘Long enough!’ He grinned. ‘I must say, I don’t know which I prefer, the bottom half with the trousers on, or the top half with the jacket off.’ He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her towards him. ‘I must say you look delectably screwable.’

‘God, you’re a coarse bugger, Tim!’

She twisted away and, turning her back to him, struggled into the jacket.

Next thing, his arms had come around her waist and he was pulling her backwards into him, his breath hot against her neck. ‘Well, if that’s the way you want it, that’s okay with me. I can be as kinky as the next,’ he murmured, pressing up hard against her bottom.

She spun round, her face a few inches from his, and something in her expression must have warned him, because he released her and backed off. ‘Just joking,’ he said lamely.

‘You miserable adolescent!’ Melissa hissed at him in a cold fury. ‘If I ever want your grubby hands all over me, which is highly unlikely, I’ll let you know! In the meantime, just remember, if your tiny chauvinistic brain can manage it, that I’m a colleague trying to do a professional job in difficult circumstances and you’re not being much help. So, if you want to come out of this with your professional reputation intact, mate, you’d better think again.’

She walked past him across the few feet of room to her bed, got in and switched off her bedside light. Closing her eyes wearily, she listened to him prepare for bed, sensing the sulkiness with which he was doing it. Soon, he too had switched off his light, and she could hear him breathing quietly in the other bed, apparently asleep.

She tried hard to get straight to sleep, but her thoughts and emotions were too active. There were aspects to this venture which somehow she hadn’t expected. It was throwing up situations which were new to her, which she didn’t quite know how to handle. The farce of having to share a room with Tim and trying to keep him at arm’s length, as she had been determined to do, was a case in point; and now that her anger had cooled, she could see that Tim had been more realistic about it, although in a distinctly unsubtle manner. It always infuriated her, as well, when men took her availability for granted.

She realised, now, that her presumptions in this project had been flawed from the beginning, and this had led to sloppy planning. Never having been into Cumbria before, she’d vaguely imagined the Lake District to be like the Cotswolds, but with lakes and rather higher hills. She hadn’t been prepared for the grandeur and harshness of these mountains, the coldness of the grey crags, and the wariness and closeness to be found in the people of a small community such as this. She’d argued (and Tim had fairly readily agreed) that they were more likely to be successful in their investigations if they initially put up in one of the smaller villages, where they would presumably be more readily able to chat to the local people. But when they’d arrived they’d been fooled by the Georgian exterior of ‘The Hounds and Horn’, and by the warmth and cosiness of the interior, with its low beams and wealth of country antiques, into thinking of it along the lines of a fashionable Thames-side pub; with the result that they’d come down to dinner looking like a couple of tailor’s dummies compared to the very casual, almost slovenly, wear of all the other people in the place.

Whether as a result of that, or purely because they were strangers there, all attempts at conversation in the bar had resulted in polite, but fairly monosyllabic, replies. The more questions they’d asked, all carefully innocent, the more guarded people seemed to become. Everyone had remained polite but remote. All, that is, except for the big rough-looking bloke who’d been sitting over in the far corner with his cronies, who’d stared a lot at the two of them, making loud comments which were evidently at their expense, and which had been greeted with gales of laughter from the others at his table. And that drunken Scots sod who’d barged in on them. He’d been talkative enough, although still not very informative. With his rather battered-looking features and rough, scarred hands, she’d had him down as a farm labourer or something like that. So, she’d been more than a little taken aback when, on casual enquiry from the pub landlord, she’d learned that he was in fact the local vet. She also discovered that he came into the pub quite regularly; which hadn’t surprised her, but which had given her food for thought. He’d probably still be a shit when sober, if he ever was sober, but he was their only potential contact so far, so maybe he should be worked upon. Certainly he’d shown more than enough interest in her, this evening, so he might perhaps prove to be easy prey.

She turned over, pulling the quilt more tightly around her. The room was becoming chillier by the minute, now that the heating obviously had gone off. She began to wonder if she’d ever be warm again. Over in the next bed, Tim’s stertorous breathing was rising to a crescendo, which added to her growing sense of persecution.

‘Tim,’ she called out in a loud whisper, ‘Tim!’

‘Wha’?‘

‘You’re snoring.’

‘What?’

‘You’re snoring!’

‘Oh… Sorry… It’s frustration, that’s what it is.’

‘Yeah? Well, I’m sure you know what to do,’ she replied dryly. ‘I was just thinking,’ she went on, ‘perhaps tomorrow we should think about splitting forces? Double the spread, as it were. We didn’t seem to be getting very far this evening.’

‘You can say that again. That lot were tighter than a virgin.’

In the darkness, Melissa winced at the obscenity, something that these days she would never allow herself to be seen to be doing among friends and colleagues. She had grown up in a household in which there was little or no swearing or blaspheming: her mother, whatever her faults, had been the gentlest and quietest of women; and her father (in spite of all his faults) even when drunk, as he quite frequently was, would occasionally use only the mildest of curses. Swearing revealed a lack of imagination in the use of the language, he would say. Now, however, after her time in the office, Melissa herself had got so used to hearing and using obscenities that she had even begun thinking in them, something which in her closer moments, she instinctively regretted. For she believed deep down that obscenities used gratuitously were adolescent. Hearing a man like Tim use an expression like that just now, always conjured up for her a picture of little boys peering through a sweetshop window, noses pressed against the glass, lusting after the delights inside that they couldn’t have.

She curled herself up more tightly under the quilt, feeling the cold striking through it. ‘I don’t want flowers,’ she said to the room in general.

‘What?’

‘When I’m found frozen and lifeless in the morning.’

‘I always suspected you might be frigid!’ Tim laughed, with more than a trace of bitterness. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be getting any.’

She presumed he meant flowers.

Chapter Two

Cameron, in the few months since Carole and the children had gone, had fallen into the habit of coming into ‘The Horn’ at the weekends for his lunch. Sundays he would often have lunch in the dining room, but on Saturdays he would usually make do with a bar snack, accompanied, if he was not on call, by a sufficient number of pints of Harry’s excellent ale. Hence, this Saturday lunchtime he was to be found as usual propping up the bar, chatting to Harry Naylor. He had only the haziest recollection of the previous evening so was somewhat chastened by Harry’s succinct but vivid account of events.

‘Best bit of entertainment we’ve had for many a day, Sandy, and that’s a fact! The expressions on the faces of yon two, at times,