pursed her lips. ‘Who else knew about that, Eric?’
‘Aside from a select few in the Stranger taskforce, and SCU, no one.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘That intel’s accessible via SCUA and HOLMES 2, but only if you know what you’re looking for beforehand. If I remember rightly, a strategic decision was taken back in 2004 to withhold that specific detail from the public.’
‘That’s correct,’ she said. ‘And no one has reversed that decision at any time since?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Okay, Eric … thanks for that.’ She moved to a big grimy window overlooking Victoria. It was shortly before noon, but the dull, damp greyness of late November pervaded the city. Many shop-fronts were lit, vehicles shunting along Broadway in a river of headlights.
‘Something wrong, ma’am?’ Fisher asked.
‘No, it’s okay.’
She didn’t elaborate, so he shrugged, spun around at his desk and recommenced his homework.
‘But I’m going to be away for a couple of days,’ she added as an afterthought.
He spun back again. ‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Normally, yeah. But at this time of year I’m not so sure. Cumbria.’
He arched a bushy, red-grey eyebrow. ‘You’re not by any chance seeing …?’
‘Don’t ask me that, Eric … okay? Just don’t!’
Immediately, she regretted her curtness. Two and a half months ago, Eric Fisher had only been one of several SCU detectives to express dismay that Heck, in his opinion the most proficient investigator in their team, was transferring north. In fact, despite Gemma having so adversarial a rep inside the National Crime Group that she was quietly referred to as ‘the Lioness’, the normally affable DS Fisher had been so forthright in his view that she’d ‘catastrophically mishandled’ her latest disagreement with Heck that she’d almost suspended him. She’d only resisted that ultimate sanction because she’d known where such impertinence stemmed from – a genuine conviction they were making a big error letting Heck leave.
‘Maybe,’ she admitted. ‘Possibly. Yes alright, probably.’
Fisher nodded, quietly pleased. ‘Cool.’
‘There’s nothing cool about it, trust me,’ she said. ‘I’d much rather stay here.’
‘You going up there alone?’
‘For the moment.’
He seemed puzzled. ‘So … what’s the case?’
‘There isn’t a case just yet. Not for us.’ Understandably, he looked none the wiser. ‘It’s a ghost if you must know, Eric.’ Sensing several others earwigging from different corners of the DO, she lowered her voice. ‘Can you believe that? I’m chasing a bloody ghost.’
Though it was only a journey of twenty-five miles, it took the ambulance two hours to arrive at Cragwood Keld from Kendal. The last few miles saw it crawling along Great Langdale and uphill into Cragwood Vale at less than a snail’s pace. It was the worst fog any of the ambulance crew had seen, but you didn’t play Lewis Hamilton on these roads even in blazing sunshine. It would be similarly slow progress heading back to Kendal; despite having a seriously injured person on board, there would be no police escort to clear the way – Mary-Ellen’s Land Rover was still at Cragwood Ho, and though Heck intended to travel down to the hospital in his own car at the first opportunity, there were a couple of things he needed to do up here first. But at least Tara Cook would now have health professionals alongside her and could be drip-fed painkillers.
Heck stood in the doorway of the nick and watched as the ambulance pulled slowly away, its tail-lights dwindling like fish-eyes sinking into ocean gloom. Only now, outside in the cold again, did it occur to him that he was still wearing damp, musty clothes. He turned to Mary-Ellen. She’d already got changed. Organised to a tee, there always seemed to be a second uniform pressed and ready in M-E’s wardrobe for occasions such as this.
‘I’m nipping to the Section House to get some dry togs,’ he said. ‘Can you knock on a few doors … get everyone over to the pub?’
‘Sure, but I thought you were going down to Kendal with the ambulance.’
‘I’ll follow the ambulance. I want to speak to everyone else first.’
‘No probs,’ she said, eagerly, still enjoying the unaccustomed action. ‘I’ll get up and at ’em.’ She strode off across the road.
It had often struck Heck as odd that an all-action character like Mary-Ellen had consciously sought reassignment to Cragwood Keld. He didn’t buy into her glib explanation that the moment she heard Heck was being posted here, she wanted to hook up with him because she’d read about his antics in the police press. It was a complex deal, swapping forces; the paperwork alone was off-putting. Heck knew, having done it several times. Plus, he couldn’t imagine what kind of action she’d thought she was going to get up here. Then again perhaps, as she’d also once said, she just loved the great outdoors.
‘I should have been a park-ranger, me, sarge,’ Heck remembered her once sniggering. ‘Gimme a horse, some buckskins and a whole range of empty mountains, and you can shag me any time you want.’
Promises, promises, he thought as he headed down a ginnel opposite the station which connected with the village green. So long as she got the villagers together, that would do for the time being. On the right, at the end of the ginnel, was ‘the Section House’, as they called it – a one-up/one-down built of whitewashed stone, which, as it had had no permanent occupant for years, had been refurbished and taken on a long-term rental by Cumbria Constabulary. As police digs went, the Section House was actually pretty good. Okay, it was a bit compact – split-level, with the lounge, diner and kitchen all crammed into a single space downstairs, while the ‘bedroom’ was actually a timber balcony, accessible only by a loft-type ladder. But it was double-glazed and centrally heated, and it had all the mod cons Heck could need.
He scrambled ‘topside’, as he thought of it, stripped off, towelled down, and then pulled on jeans, trainers and a hooded blue sweatshirt. As a rule, Heck tended not to view himself in mirrors anymore than he needed to. He was only in his late thirties, so he was hardly old, but his face had taken more than its fair share of kicks and punches over the years, and these days looked … well, ‘lived-in’ would be a polite way to describe it. At least he still had a full head of black hair, even if it was its usual unruly mop. He dragged a comb through it, before grabbing his phone, his radio and his cuffs, locked up and crossed the leaf-strewn green to The Witch’s Kettle, in which several of the villagers were already waiting.
Hazel and Lucy stood behind the bar, regarding him curiously. As Hazel was the only person offering bed and breakfast accommodation in the vicinity, Heck had rung her shortly after getting back to the nick with Tara, to check no visitors had arrived unexpectedly. The reply had come in the negative, but he hadn’t had time to elaborate further.
‘We
