Path of Needles (17 page)

Now she was alone with him.

He smiled, a disingenuous smile, nothing calculated in it; he was just a birdwatcher, disturbed in his hobby. He touched a hand to his binoculars again as if they were a talisman to keep the world at bay. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been this way, and I dare say it won’t. My luck isn’t in, it seems.’ He suddenly thrust out a hand, stepping towards her. ‘Bernard Levitt. B, E, R …’ and he spelled it out for her, his whole name, as if she were going to be tested on it later.

She tried not to smile.

‘Oh, it’s quite a serious business,’ he said. ‘I’ve noted several species.
Phylloscopus sibilatrix. Pyrrhula pyrrhula
. Even a rather fine
Muscicapa striata
, which came and sang to me for a time.’

She nodded politely, though she had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Listen,’ he said, and pointed one finger up at the sky.

At first she didn’t know what he meant; then she realised she could hear birds again. Somewhere distant, almost beyond hearing, was a high
snip-snip-snip
, and she pictured something tiny hiding amid the leaves. Over that were laid musical notes, running up and down the scales with joyful abandon. Beneath that was the rasping croak of something black and ragged.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said, and he started to name them for her, Latin names that Alice could connect with nothing:
Streptopelia decaocto
and
Fringilla coelebs, Corvus corone
and
Phylloscopus collybita
, one after the next so that, without thinking about it, she took a half-step back.

‘It’s my hobby, you see,’ he said. ‘I know I take it rather seriously.’

He looked quite crestfallen, and she almost wanted to apologise. Instead she asked, ‘Aren’t you worried, being out here alone?’

‘Oh, you mean—? No, not me. And it’s so quiet here. Really, quite a long way from where it happened. Terrible thing, though. Terrible. Um …’

Alice knew then he was going to ask about
her
, about whether she was afraid, and she found she didn’t want to think about it. It had felt all right when she was alone – better than being here with a stranger. When it was just
Alice and the trees it was comfortable, like being at home; as if it
was
her home.

Levitt still hadn’t got the words out, so she asked, ‘What about the blue bird? Do you think it’ll come here?’

A shadow crossed his face. ‘I don’t know. There are no rules when it comes to the blue bird.’ He sounded almost bitter. ‘It isn’t from these parts; it could be anywhere. But I’m hoping it will come to me eventually.’ He scanned the treetops, light pooling on the lenses of his glasses.

‘Well, I hope so,’ said Alice, thinking of the way it had come to her, and not once but twice. It didn’t seem fair now; he had tried so hard, while she had done nothing to earn the sight of it.

‘Do you, dear?’ He smiled at her.

She glanced at him, looked away. It occurred to her that he was younger than he looked; it was his odd ways that made him seem prematurely old. He stirred, waving his binoculars in jerky movements. She wasn’t surprised he needed a hide if that was how he moved; birds would never come anywhere near him.

She realised that both of them were just standing there in silence. ‘I should go,’ she said, and he smiled and said goodbye. Alice backtracked across the clearing. She glanced around only once, didn’t really take in the hide at all this time; perhaps she wouldn’t have seen it in the first place if she hadn’t looked at that very spot. The thought was disconcerting. Perhaps she had been reckless after all, walking in the woods the way she had.

But Levitt was right, it was a long way to the place the girl had been found; that was on the other side of the lake. It was a long way too from where she had seen the blue bird, and she wondered if she should have told him. On reflection, she was glad she hadn’t. She remembered his brown eyes fixed on her as he recited his dull lists of species. She didn’t want the bird to be reduced to that, categorised and labelled with some Latin name she couldn’t understand. Anyway, she didn’t like him.

Besides, what could he do if she had told him? She’d last seen the bird near where the girl had been found and he couldn’t go looking for it there. The police would be all over it, watching for anything unusual. She wondered what they’d make of Bernard Levitt – but then, they knew of him already; they had taken his details at the lakeside path. And he hadn’t done anything, he was only doing the same as Alice – enjoying the wood as it should be enjoyed, carrying on with life. She looked around and saw that the hide was already lost, blending perfectly with the woodland at her back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The trouble with witnesses, Cate reflected, was that they remembered the aftermath rather than the event itself. She had spent the morning following up on some of the details they’d taken in the woods, accompanied by a rather quiet DC Thacker, and all they’d managed to ascertain was that yes, there had been a disturbance, and that the police had been everywhere, disrupting everything. No one recalled seeing anything strange in the hours before the girl had been found.

Cate hadn’t seen much of Len Stockdale, though she’d heard what he was doing now, and as they drove along the A61 she suggested they call by at Newmillerdam. Dan nodded his assent, indicated and turned in. He was lost in his own thoughts.

The young policeman on the entrance was someone Cate vaguely knew; he waved them through. The sky had brightened since the early morning, but even so it began to spit with rain as Dan pulled into a space. The car park,
usually busy, was a bare lake of asphalt with a few police vehicles at one end and a couple of cars and a solitary van at the other. The police presence at the main entrances must be keeping the walkers away.

She looked towards the gap that led from the car park to the lakeside path and there was Stocky, leaning against a gatepost, his notebook in his hand. He was idly flipping the cover back and forth and scowling; he was facing out across the water and didn’t appear to have seen them yet.

‘I’ll just be a minute, Dan,’ Cate said, but when she stepped out of the car and headed towards her old tutor, the detective followed.

At the sound of their footsteps Stocky turned. He’d put on his friendly face, the one he used for dealing with the public – people he didn’t intend to lock away – but as he recognised Cate his expression changed into something else.

‘Hi, Len,’ Cate called out. She was conscious of Dan close at her heels and felt a momentary irritation – had he been told to watch her, as she had been ordered to keep an eye on Alice?

Stocky adjusted his expression, putting on a wry smile; making an effort, maybe.

‘We’ve been interviewing all morning,’ Cate said. ‘Any joy here?’

He shrugged. ‘None. Freezing my arse off.’

Cate looked around. The lakeside path was almost
abandoned. She could just make out a family on the opposite bank, a woman hastily throwing whole slices of bread to the ducks, as if trying to get it over with, while her children watched.

‘At least you have a nice view.’ She tried a smile.

‘I’d swap it for a comfy police car.’

She didn’t know what to say. She almost wanted to apologise that she wasn’t the one standing there in the cold, but she swallowed it back. Then she remembered the van at the other end of the car park. ‘Whose is that?’

‘Dog walker – Gary Wilson. He said he’d be half an hour and stick to the path. He can’t get up to the arboretum, we’ve got it marked off.’ He snapped out the words.

‘Okay.’

‘That’s about it, apart from the twitchers, chasing some bloody birdie around the woods.’ Stockdale’s tone softened. Now there was nothing for them to do but leave him to it, he was becoming talkative. He gestured towards the slope where Little Red had been found – no, Cate reminded herself,
Teresa
. Teresa King. ‘There are still a couple of SOCOs up there.’

‘Is Heath around?’

He snorted. ‘Haven’t seen him – tucked away in his nice warm office, probably.’ He glanced towards Dan and his eyes slid away. ‘If he’s got any sense, I mean.’

Dan straightened, raising himself to his full height. ‘We’ll go and check on the SOCOs, Cate,’ he said softly.

Stockdale shrugged and looked away, but as they walked
towards the woodland, Cate could feel his gaze on her back.

They headed into the woods, up the slope towards the arboretum. The rain turned into a feather-light mist that dampened their faces and whispered against the leaves. When they emerged into the clearing they found the SOCOs packing up their things and disassembling the tent they’d eventually managed to place around the scene. Soon there would be nothing left but pathways that were a little more deeply trodden than before and a faint imprint among the fallen branches that would soon be covered by new growth. The taint of morbid excitement would linger a while yet. Cate wondered how long it would be before some walker claimed to have seen a ghost, eager to turn the girl’s story into their own. After a time, that would be all that remained: the stories.

Dan greeted the SOCOs. It sounded like things had gone badly for them: they’d found a few footprints near the body and had taken mouldings of them, and found a scrap of fabric that could have been there for years. A wider fingertip-search of the arboretum had turned up more items, discarded sweet wrappers, lollipop sticks, cigarette butts; nothing they wouldn’t have expected in a place like this. It looked like the best chance of finding any real evidence lay with the body itself.

The body itself
, thought Cate:
Teresa King
. Of course, people were impersonalised after death, it was a necessary part of the job, but she couldn’t quite get used to it. It was for
the police to sort out the aftermath; they had to leave it to the families to grieve. And yet there was a sense of sadness hanging over this place.

‘Shall we head down?’ Dan asked. Cate turned and he pointed, not the way they had come but towards a narrow path that led towards the lake. It looked steep, and was shrouded in trees. ‘Short-cut.’

She grinned and followed as he pushed his way between low, wiry branches. Everything was damp; everything dripped. She pictured Stocky, standing out in the open in the rain, the expression that would be on his face. At least it might make him feel better when he saw the state of the two of them. Dan let a branch swing back now and shining droplets flew from it, soaking into her clothes. She could see the lake ahead, glimpses of grey; the slope was beginning to level out. Then she grabbed Dan’s arm.

There was someone below them, walking along the path; she could hear their footsteps. She wasn’t sure why she’d stopped; she had done it without thinking.

‘What’s—?’ Dan started, and she shook her head. She had no explanation to offer; after all, they had let walkers resume using the lakeside paths, wanting the local community to get back to normal as soon as it could.

But the sound of footsteps had stopped too. She peered down through the trees. The lake was like a misted mirror, hazed with light rain. In front of that she could see a patch of the red-brown path, and as she watched, someone stepped into it. Cate recognised them at once.

She started down, strode over a boggy strip separating the wood from the path and landed in front of the walker.

Alice jumped back; her eyes widened, then she visibly relaxed. ‘Cate.’

Cate noted the woman’s surprise and felt unaccountably irritated. Didn’t Alice realise she was playing into Heath’s hands? What had he said – something about her showing up conveniently, in time to see the body? But of course it hadn’t been like that, it was she who’d gone to Alice, wanting to use her expertise. But she couldn’t shift Heath’s words – and the way he’d said them – from her mind.

When she spoke, her voice was abrupt: ‘What are you doing here?’

Alice frowned. ‘I live here.’

Cate looked at the rain-misted lake and the trees; then she glanced up the opposite slope. She couldn’t see Alice’s house, but she knew it was there, just beyond the woods. Of course it was.

‘I always come walking here,’ Alice said, ‘when I want to think.’ She sounded a little hurt.

‘Okay,’ Cate said in a softer tone, ‘but please, be careful, that’s all.’
Watch her
, Heath had said.
Watch her
.

‘I will – although I don’t feel like they’re here any more, do you?’ Alice looked around, her eyes unfocused.

‘They?’

‘Whoever did this – oh, I don’t know. It just feels like
they’ve moved on, doesn’t it? I’m probably being stupid. It’s just that I
always
walk in these woods. I don’t feel like I should let something like this drive me away. What would I do? I’d sit inside and stare at the walls.’

Cate sighed, but it was Dan who spoke: ‘That might be best, at least until this is over. You never know who might be around.’

Alice met his eyes and opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, then she closed it again and looked away. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

Once again Cate felt an irritation she couldn’t explain. ‘You’re getting soaked,’ she said. ‘Maybe you
should
head home for now.’

Alice shook herself, took hold of the jacket that was wrapped around her shoulders and pulled it on. She smiled at Cate. ‘Okay. Well, I’ll see you again.’ She turned and walked away while Cate and Dan remained where they were.

‘She’s an odd one,’ he said.

Cate watched Alice until she reached a turn in the path and was lost to view. She realised the girl would now be within sight of Stocky, that she would have to explain her presence all over again. He would probably be even more blunt than she had been, and she felt a stab of guilt as she remembered Alice’s hurt look. The girl was right: she should be able to walk in the woods that spread from her own back door without having to justify it. She pictured
Heath’s face, sneering. She knew exactly what he’d say if he found out that Alice had been walking in this stretch of the woods:
They like to come back
, he’d say.
They like nothing better than to revisit the scene of the crime
.