He visited when he could, which, given the schedule of a member of the Garda Siochana’s undercover drug squad, was not often. They had met when he’d attended an FBI course at Quantico. One of the instructors, an old college friend of Jane’s, had invited them both to dinner and the spark had been instant. Within weeks, she had sold her estate in New England and bought the property in Ireland. It was only after she’d made the move that she discovered the unexpected bonus of the tax exemption the Irish state extended to writers. Now she was as settled here as she’d ever been anywhere.
And when Pierce was travelling undercover, she would sometimes take a room in the same hotel. Being a recluse had its advantages. No one recognized her the way they might with other best selling authors who appeared on chat shows and full-colour jacket photographs. Producing ID for Margaret J. Elias, her given name, had never raised so much as an eyebrow with hotel clerks. In two days, proofs finished and sent off to New York, she’d be flying out to Morocco to meet him. She could hardly wait.
After a long tack, she went about and cut a course at right angles to her previous direction. It would bring her nicely round the headland and into the bay, where she’d lose some of the wind, allowing her plenty of leeway to alter her heading to take the boat back out towards the centre of the lake.
Coming into the bay, she noticed a dinghy tacking erratically back and forth across the line she planned to take. With a touch on the tiller, Jane adjusted her heading, hoping the dinghy sailor would respond accordingly. But suddenly, the small boat heeled over in a capsize, catapulting the man at the helm into the water. Within seconds, the wind had carried the dinghy in one direction, the current had swept the man in the other.
Calling down the wrath of the gods against fools who didn’t know what they were doing on the water, Jane started her engine then hurried forward to lower the sail. Inside a minute, she was motoring slowly towards the bobbing orange life jacket that was all she could see clearly of the idiot who obviously didn’t know how to handle his boat.
Coming alongside him, she set the engine to idle and dropped the swim ladder at the stern. The man swam clumsily round to the back of the boat and hauled himself out of the lake, icy water streaming from him. “Thanks,” he gasped, unfastening his life jacket and slipping one hand inside it.
“I guess you don’t know these waters,” Jane snapped, turning away to put the engine back in gear.
She never saw the cosh as it arced through the air towards the base of her skull.
NINETEEN
From below, the two women on the sheer side of the hill looked like a pair of cursors moving diagonally across a muted green screen. They had climbed swiftly from the Wye Valley at Litton Mill through the trees that lined the old railway, then out on to the bare hillside where even sheep preferred not to scramble among the limestone outcroppings. They reached the highest point of the climb and Fiona, who was quicker on her feet over the familiar terrain, chose a boulder with enough of an edge to perch on while she waited for Caroline to pant her way up the last twenty yards. She looked down at her companion with an affectionate smile.
When Fiona’s sister Lesley had been an undergraduate at St. Andrews, she’d learned as much about herself as she had about her studies. One of the things she’d discovered was the direction of her heart. At the time of her murder, she’d been tight in the grip of first love. The revelation of its nature had been another aspect of her death that her parents had found difficult to cope with. For Fiona, though, it had come as no surprise that the person who was sharing her sister’s bed was another woman. Lesley hadn’t actually told her in so many words, but Fiona had understood the meaning of the way she spoke about her friend Caroline Matthews.
Because their relationship had been clandestine, Fiona was also the only person with whom Caroline could properly grieve. It was no surprise that out of grief, the bond of friendship had been forged. Now, twelve years later, Fiona and Caroline met whenever Caroline was in London, and they communicated irregularly by phone and e — mail. And at least three times a year, they met to walk in the Peak District.
Caroline had remained in St. Andrews and was now a lecturer in mathematics. She had moved on, as Fiona had. But for both of them, the loss of Lesley was an undercurrent that would forever inform the tenor of their emotional relationships. And the debt of guilt that both bore about Lesley meant they would never let each other down.
Caroline reached the crest, scarlet and panting. She collapsed on a boulder near Fiona, her breath ragged and shallow. “Oh God,” she gasped. “I am so out of condition. The summer was such a washout, we hardly got out on the hills at all.”
“Sounds like you’ve not been to the gym either,” Fiona commented.
Caroline pulled a face. “Julia’s started going to a step class in her lunch hour, so she’s knocked the gym on the head. And we both have so many work commitments, she gets pissed off with me if I spend our two free evenings a week down the gym. I keep telling myself I’ll get up early and go before work. But somehow, I never manage it.”
“You’d feel better if you fitted it in.” Fiona opened her rucksack and took out her water bottle.
“Fiona…” There was a warning in Caroline’s voice.
Fiona laughed. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m not your mother. Shut up, Fiona.” She extended a hand and Caroline gave her a gentle smack on the wrist. It was an old routine, born of the early days of their common grief, when Fiona had fussed around Caroline as a substitute for the caring she could no longer offer her sister.
Fiona took a swig of her water, offering it to Caroline, who shook her head. “If I start drinking in these temperatures, I’ll want to pee within five minutes. And I can’t see a single bit of shelter for the next half-mile.”
“As long as you don’t get dehydrated.”
“Fiona!” This time it was a shout. “You are not my mother. Behave.”
“Sorry. It’s living with a man that does it. Especially one who spends half his time inhabiting a parallel universe.”
“Presumably one where somebody else always remembers to pick up the dry cleaning and puts food in front of him at regular hours?”
Fiona grinned. “It’s not that sort of thing Kit forgets. It’s stuff like being so engrossed in his work that he suddenly looks at the clock and realizes he was supposed to pick me up ten minutes ago. Or missing his stop on the tube because he’s busy having a conversation with himself and coming round to find he’s in Kennington when he should be in Leicester Square.”
“How is he, anyway?”
Fiona got to her feet, stuffing her water bottle into her backpack and shouldering it. “Bloody-minded as ever.”
Caroline, now breathing normally, stood up, giving Fiona a speculative look. Fiona wasn’t given to bad-mouthing Kit. And besides, if she had to divide the bloody-mindedness in that relationship between them, she’d have to award Fiona the lion’s share. As far as Caroline had observed, Kit was pretty laid back. In debate, he was quick and decisive, but never attacked the way Fiona could if she sensed weakness in the opposition that could be bulldozed aside. “Sounds like he’s rattled your cage,” she said cautiously as she fell into step behind Fiona on the narrow track that cut across the shoulder of the hill above the spectacular curve of Water-cum-Jolly Dale.