“Was your dad OK after this morning?” asked Breen.
Tozer nodded. “He said he was checking some cows for mastitis, but I think he was finding some reason that he didn’t have to talk to me. I swear he used to talk all the time when we were kids.” She chewed on her sandwich some more. “Sometimes I find myself wondering if he’d be hurt as bad if it was me that was dead. I’m not sure he would. Alex was his favorite, see?”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” she said. “It’s always like that, really, isn’t it? There are always favorites.”
“I don’t know. I was an only child.”
“This the right one?” said Tozer.
Breen looked at the yellow notepaper in front of him that the lawyer had given them. “According to the map.”
“Funny-looking place.” Tozer peered at it through the trees.
The Last Resort turned out to be tucked away from the road. A chocolate-box wooden house, green and white paint peeling. It sat on the bank above the lane, hidden by trees. They had parked the Morris on the edge of the narrow lane, close enough to the hedge to let other vehicles pass, but only just.
“We should have told Sergeant Block we were coming out here,” said Breen.
“Why?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“This is 1968, sir. There aren’t any ‘supposed to’s’ left.”
“That’s not true.”
“What’s the chances we find anything up there, anyway?”
The gate to the footpath that led up to it was not locked; the path was choked with fallen leaves.
“Do you think there’s anybody in?”
“Doesn’t really look like it.”
The chalet’s faded curtains were closed. Breen went to the front door and knocked, then called, “Hello?”
Nobody answered. He walked round the wooden building. There was a fresh log pile stacked against the back wall in readiness for winter. Lying on an unruly lawn, a fallen tree trunk had been carved into the shape of a Picasso-ish reclining nude, arms stretched above her head.
“No sign of anyone,” said Tozer, face pressed up against a windowpane.
At the rear of the house, a series of water butts gathered rain from the roof, green mold streaking down their sides.
“Well, it was worth a try, I suppose,” said Tozer. “What now?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could go for a drive on the moors. See if we can find somewhere to have a bit of lunch.”
A jar full of paintbrushes stood on a bench, filled with more rainwater.
“Well? What else is there to do? It’s not like the Constabulary want us poking our nose into any of this anyway.”
From the back of the house, a pathway led into the woods. Breen was in his brogues. He wished he’d brought a pair of Wellingtons from Tozer’s collection.
“Where are you going?”
“Just looking around.”
The path was narrow and led to a small stream that cascaded down the hillside. It was dammed. Someone had built a small pool into the surface of the hill, collecting the brown water off the moor. Dark leaves rotted below the surface.
“I expect she used to swim naked here. What do you think?”
She had followed him down the path.
“I imagine her as being the kind of woman who swims naked,” said Tozer.
The path continued up the hill.
“Nobody would see you here,” she continued. “You could pretty much do as you please. All them orgies that solicitor was talking about, probably.”
Breen followed the path up past the stream, skidding on the rocks and mud in his leather soles. The place was dank and rotten underfoot.
“Oh, wow. There are little sculptures here,” said Tozer. “Did you see them? They’re a bit overgrown.”
Breen was walking up the pathway, about twenty yards away now, in the thick woods. The light filtered down through autumn trees. Something caught his eye among the bracken and bramble that lined the narrow path. Leaning down, he picked up a piece of rubbish that someone seemed to have dropped by the pathway. He unfolded it carefully and held it up to the light.
“Tozer?” he whispered.
She was too far away. “Oh, Lord. Naked people. Little statues of nudie people dancing.”
“Shh.”
“Nobody’s got bosoms that big. Not even Jayne Mansfield.”
“Tozer. Quiet,” he hissed.
“What?”
He held up the piece of rubbish and waved it at her.
Through the branches, she looked at him, puzzled. “Wait there,” she said, starting to crash through the undergrowth towards him.
He held his finger up to his mouth but it didn’t lessen the noise she made tramping through the undergrowth.
“What is it?” she asked when she was next to him.
He held up the wrapper.
“So?”
He pulled out his notebook awkwardly and thumbed through it, then opened the page. “See?” he said. He held the page book towards her.
“I can’t really read that.”
“Rich Tea biscuits,” he said.
Abruptly, she burst out laughing, loudly enough to startle a magpie that flapped up into the tree canopy. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The shot was not loud, but it felt like it was close. A muffled pop that could have come from yards away.
Tozer’s laughter stopped dead. She dropped down onto her hands and knees and crawled to the tree behind which Breen was sheltering.
“It might just have been someone hunting pigeons,” she whispered.
“It might.”
They were pressed against each other. Breen was conscious of the bony warmth of her, her short breaths. After a minute, she said, “How long are we going to stay here?”
Breen said nothing.
“What if we go back to the car and find a phone? Then call up the Devon and Cornwalls?”
“Like you said, it might just have been someone hunting pigeons.”
“Or rabbits.”
“Right.”
“Want me to go?”
He shook his head, then peered out from the tree. “You reckon it came from over there?”
She nodded. He stood up. “Hello?”
No answer.
“Hello?” he called again.
The usual sound of the woodland had reasserted itself. A two-note birdsong. They had heard nobody moving, nobody running away.
He moved forward; the crack of a stick underneath his foot almost made him throw himself to the ground. “Is there someone there?”
Nobody answered; nobody moved.
“What was that, then?” Tozer finally said. “I could have sworn that gun was close.”
Gaining confidence, they spread out, peering behind the larger trees, into thickets of bramble. The woods were a long strip of land, maybe thirty yards wide, that stretched around the contour of the hillside. Breen saw small, strange, brightly colored fungi, orange tentacles forcing their way through the leaves, big blobby pale lumps, small bright red upturned cups. There were small piles of droppings, and the half-eaten carcass of a wood pigeon. The rich smell of rot. But no sign of another person; not even a sign of footprints or broken branches. The biscuit wrapper must have just been a coincidence.
“That was weird,” said Tozer.
Breen wondered if they had imagined it. Or maybe it was some strange trick of the local air currents that had made a distant hunter’s shot seem closer than it was; maybe the air really was thicker in Devon.
“I’m hungry,” said Tozer. “Can we get some lunch?”
They started to retrace theirs steps back towards the pool and the small chalet.
“I thought she’d be here,” said Breen.
“The locals are probably right. She’s long gone. We should go. It’s starting to rain, I think. I just felt a raindrop.”
They walked back, past the chalet to the car. The key was stiff in the lock, and Tozer spent some time struggling with the door. When she opened it and leaned across the seats to open Breen’s door, he noticed some color in her hair.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“Where?”
“On your head,” he said, getting in beside her.