Death in a Lonely Place by Stig Abell

Author:Stig Abell [Abell, Stig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-12T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

Monday, 8.30 a.m.

It is good to be back at home, walking the land once more. They had passed a quiet weekend at Livia’s house, after a noisy and welcome reunion with Diana. More play in the snow, more hunkering away from the world. The uneasy sense of strangeness they had experienced lingered in their minds, unspoken, then had been displaced mostly for the while, just a low hum in the background drowned out by Diana’s joyfulness and the bustle of domestic life.

Jake had slept last night at Little Sky, alone in bed, having drunk slightly more red wine than he was used to. It didn’t help him sleep, and he had been up before first light for a penitential run and plunge in the lake. The temperature had risen to just above freezing, and the wind had fallen off, so the snow was soft underfoot, almost slush, made luminously bright by the rising sun, first crimson then burnt orange fading into a mild and humble yellow.

He had planned as he ran, trying to establish what he would do next, and how he would – in the end – extricate himself from the situation. Laura was safe. His cold cases were just that: cold, frigid, beyond resuscitation. No Taboo was a problem for someone else, if it was a problem that could be solved at all. And yet. There was Charles with the motley eyes, the knowingness of Martinson, a houseful of brittle, amoral folk. That guard, Smits, made rich and powerful by his own malignity, squatting hidden within the prison system.

After his hot shower, steaming like a cauldron in his courtyard, Jake had dressed and sat down in front of the kitchen stove, whittling wooden pegs for the treehouse. But he couldn’t settle. Which is why he is now tramping the ground on one of his lower fields, the river no more than a distant bootlace in the corner, discarded amid an expanse of mottled green dusted with white. A mist gathers in the bowl of the land beneath him, thick as swirling smoke. He sees a skip of movement, a magpie hopping on the wintry ground, the white of its belly merging with the snow, purple and black above like a priest’s robes. He’d read once that magpies were thought to be unlucky because their plumage was not all black, their piebald appearance a sign they had refused to go into mourning for the death of Christ. Something unbelievable like that. Or was it that one magpie was bad luck, but two were a sign of fortune? He watches this living omen for a second, and feels a curious sense of relief when another drops down from the trees, a flutter of muted feathers. They scratch around companionably. Two for joy. He hopes it is a sign.

There is more weather coming, Livia had told him, the rise in temperature was an illusion, a false hope that the stormy period was over. By nightfall they would be in the grip of the freeze once more.

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