The Crow Trap Read Free

through an unlearned lesson, so she told him. About the quarry, the planning application, the legal requirement for a survey to assess damage.
    “We’ve been hired to do the survey and the report.”
    “You stay all the way out here on your own?”
    “Only tonight. My colleagues arrive tomorrow.” She looked out of the window at the lightening sky. “Today.”
    “That’ll be Peter Kemp.”
    “No. Peter doesn’t do much casework now. Anne Preece is a botanist.
    Grace Fullweli’s a mammal expert.”
    “Three lasses?”
    “Three women.” “Oh aye.” He paused. “And you have to go out in the hills. Counting things?”
    “Something like that. There’s a recognized methodology.”
    “Isn’t it dangerous?”
    “For women you mean?”
    “Well, for anyone.”
    “We leave a record of our route and the time we expect to be back at base. If there’s a problem the others can organize a search.”
    “I’d not want to be out there without a radio.” He shuddered as if he felt suddenly cold. “I’d not want to be out there at all.”
    She saw that he was prolonging the conversation so he didn’t have to set off up the track alone in the dark.
    “You’re not a country boy,” she said.
    “Does it show?” He grinned. “No. Newcastle born and bred. But Jan, the wife, thought the country would be a better place to bring up the bairn so I put in for transfer. Best thing I ever did.”
    Though now, here in the wilds, he didn’t seem so sure. She’d guessed he was married. It wasn’t only the ring. He had a well cared for, pampered look.
    “Shouldn’t you be getting back to them?” she said. “They’ll be wondering where you are.”
    “No, Jan’s taken the bairn to visit his grandma. They’ll not be back until after the weekend.”
    She felt jealous of this woman she’d never met. He so obviously missed her. And it wasn’t only the freshly ironed shirts and the meals. It was the empty bed and no one to chat to when he got home after work.
    “You don’t mind answering some questions about Mrs. Furness? Now, I mean. It must have been a shock but I’ll need a statement sometime.” “No,” she said. “I’d rather get it over, then I can get some sleep before the others get here. What do you want to know?”
    “Everything you can tell me about her.” I wonder if you’d say that, she thought, if your wife was at home. But she talked to him anyway, because she wanted to tell someone about Bella and what good friends they were. It was like a fairy story, she said. Bella coming out to the farm to look after Dougie’s mother and falling in love with it all, with Dougie and Black Law and the hills.
    They’d married and they really had lived happily ever after, even after Dougie’s stroke.
    “Why’d she kill herself then?”
    She hadn’t been sure he’d been listening. It was the question which had been lying at the back of her mind all evening. “I don’t know.”
    “But the note was her writing?”
    “Oh yes. And not just the handwriting. The way the words were put together. It was like Bella talking.”
    “When did you last see her?”
    “November last year.”
    “Well, that’s it then. Anything can happen in four months.”
    “I suppose it can.” Though she had not thought Bella would ever change. And Bella would realize that she’d not be able to leave it at that. She’d know Rachael would have questions, that she’d not be able to settle until she found out what lay behind it. So why hadn’t she left her more to go on?
    “I don’t like to leave you on your own. Is there anyone you can go and stay with?”
    So I can keep you company, she thought, on the drive to the road.
    “I’ll wait until the others arrive, then I might go to my mother’s, in Kimmerston.” She said it to get rid of him so he would realize she had family.
    Someone to look after her. Afterwards she thought she might go home for a few hours. She’d sort out Anne and Grace in the cottage then she’d go