Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(38)

21


Bella Jones was woken just after eight by her dog, Callie, licking her hand, and the thump of her tail on the bedclothes. Bella lived near the village of Buckfastleigh, in a tumbledown mauve-colored cottage.

They followed the same routine every morning. Bella rolled out of bed, dressed, and took Callie out before either of them had any breakfast. Bella’s small cottage backed onto the eastern side of the Dartmoor National Park, and this was her route onto the moor each morning. As soon as the gate was open, Callie ran out, sniffing the air after the storm.

It had rained heavily, and the soggy moorland had almost made Bella turn back, but Callie had the new scents kicked up by the storm in her nose, and she ran off toward the colossal fallen tree on the Roman road.

Bella had lived in this part of Devon all her life, and the ancient hornbeam tree had remained a constant on the landscape for the past sixty years. Today, however, it looked like a giant who’d keeled over and died.

“Oh, bloody hell,” said Bella, shocked and saddened to see the tree had fallen.

Callie ran ahead barking and stopped beside the wide hole left by the ripped-up roots. It was her angry, scared bark, which came out at a loud, yippy register.

It took a minute for Bella to reach Callie. The hole left by the tree roots was more than three meters across, very deep, and half-filled with rainwater. The root structure poked out from a muddy wall on the other side, stretching as many meters high and blocking out the light. Callie barked and shifted on her paws at the edge of the hole, causing large chunks of wet earth and grass to fall away and land with a splash in the muddy water.

“Heel; back!” said Bella, stepping away from the crumbling edge and seeing that Callie was dislodging the earth underneath her paws.

Bella managed to hook the end of her walking stick under Callie’s collar, but Callie kept snarling and barking into the hole, and the hackles were up on the buttery-yellow fur on her back.

“It’s just a tree,” said Bella, understanding that seeing it from this bizarre new perspective might be a first for her beloved dog. The wall of wet earth and twisted roots looked alien to Bella too. There had been many times on their regular walks where Callie had seen something out of the ordinary and barked; most recently, a black bin liner caught on the edge of a barbed wire gate had floated, billowing full of air, in the breeze, like a mysterious hunched-over figure in a black cape.

Bella gripped the stick with both hands and dug in her heels to pull Callie back. She followed the dog’s gaze downward, and that’s when she saw the hand protruding from the dark, wet earth. Above it were an arm and the side of a face with its eyes closed. The rain had washed away some of the dirt, and the skin was pale and gray.

“Come on; back, Callie, back!” cried Bella, managing to pull Callie clear from the edge of the hole. The hair on the back of her neck stood up in the cold.

Bella didn’t scare easily, but she had to take deep breaths and fight the urge to be sick as she found her mobile phone in the folds of her coat and called the police.





22


The Moor Side housing estate was a grotty place with an air of menace. Kate parked her car on the edge of the estate and walked the last two streets to the high-rise tower block where Marnie lived. There were two burned-out cars in the car park and a group of young guys hanging around, sitting on a low wall, smoking. The lift was broken, but there was no one on the stairwell up to the second floor.

A tiny woman answered the door. She was barely five feet tall. She was painfully thin and leaning on a crutch. Her hair was bright red and styled poker straight in a bob with a blunt fringe. She wore a long multicolored tie-dyed skirt and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. She had pale hazel eyes, and her skin was bloodless, but her welcome and her smile were very warm.

“Really good to meet you,” she said with enthusiasm. She led Kate through a narrow hallway filled with laundry drying on clothes racks, past a closed living room door, into the kitchen.

“I’ve got a couple of hours before I’ve got to pick the kids up from school,” she said. Like Bev, Marnie had a strong West Country accent. “Tha’s them both,” she added, indicating a photo on the fridge of a boy and a girl sitting on the swings of a park with Marnie in between them. It was a bright, sunny day, and they were all wearing baseball caps.

“They’re so cute at that age,” said Kate.

“I know. They think everything you do is wonderful . . . I’m waiting for that to wear off. How old is your son now?”

“How did you know I had a son?” she asked.

“I’ve read all about you,” said Marnie.

“He’s nineteen,” said Kate, wondering what Marnie had read. “Just back from uni.”

“What’s he studying?”

“English.”

“Do you have a photo?” she asked, a little too eagerly.

“I don’t, I’m afraid,” she said. Marnie looked disappointed as she put a cup of tea in front of Kate. She propped her crutch up against the radiator and sat down in the chair opposite. It was a warm, cozy little kitchen, with fogged-up windows from condensation.

“Thank you,” said Kate, taking a sip of her tea.

“Is Bill paying for it, the investigation?” asked Marnie. She’d quickly assumed a familiarity, like they were close friends.