Restless Dead (Harry Grimm Book 5) by David Gatward (best love novels of all time .txt) 📕

‘And what did you do?’ Matt asked.

‘I’m an inquisitive old bugger,’ James said, ‘so I had a look.’

‘Could it have been your daughter or her husband?’ Harry asked.

James shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

Harry nodded at this but thought he might check himself. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked.

‘Pat and Dan, they wouldn’t come down here,’ James said. ‘They’ve no need. And Ruth and Anthony are over in the cottage.’

‘Ruth and Anthony?’ Harry queried.

‘My youngest daughter and her son,’ James explained. ‘They live in the small house next door. You’ll have seen it as you came up the lane.’

‘So, you went to the window and saw something,’ Matt said, attempting to keep James focused on what he had called them out for.

‘And there was nothing there,’ James said. ‘So, I went outside, just to make sure. We’re right out in the country here. And I know there’s the main road at the bottom of the front garden, but round here, we’re pretty exposed. It’s just wilderness, isn’t it? And anyone could just walk in off the fells if they really wanted to.’

Harry said, ‘And that’s when you saw . . .’

‘I know, it sounds crazy,’ James said, shaking his head. ‘But it was her, my wife, I’m sure of it. It’s not like she’s someone I wouldn’t recognise, is it?’

‘Did you see her face?’ Harry asked.

James paused, then said, ‘No. I just saw her going over towards the house. Well, not the house exactly, but the bit in the middle, between the two.’

‘Can you describe who you saw exactly?’ Matt asked. ‘What they were wearing?’

As James started to answer, Harry gave a nod to Matt to continue and turned and headed back outside. Behind him, he could feel the presence of the hills, as though their ancient silence was something ringing inside his head. He turned to stare at them, able to make them out only as a thicker darkness than that which sat above in the sky. It was lonely out here, he thought, and he wondered how he would cope if he’d seen an intruder. Throw in a recent bereavement and he fully understood why James Fletcher had been so bothered by it. It was obvious that what he had seen hadn’t been his wife, though there was clearly no convincing the man otherwise. But that didn’t matter, Harry thought. Something had spooked him, the man was adamant he had seen a figure in the garden, and if all their presence did was reassure him, then that was a job well done.

Harry looked over towards the house, his eyes tracing the building’s lines along to where they were cut off so abruptly by the space between it and the smaller cottage by its side. Leaving James in the more than capable hands of his detective sergeant, he took a stroll over to have a look for himself.

Between the larger main house and the smaller cottage, Harry found the darkness of the night to be, if at all possible, even thicker, and he wished that he had brought a torch with him. He pulled his phone out, flicked through to the light, and switched it on, but the faint beam did little if anything to cut through the blackness that seemed so thick now that it was as though he was wading through it.

The walls of the two buildings loomed over him and Harry felt then, for the most fleeting of moments, that he was being watched. Quashing this unease immediately, remembering numerous other times back in the Paras, when the dark had played tricks on his mind in considerably more frightening conditions, Harry forced a laugh, but it came up out of him like a thing broken and afraid. Just what the hell was wrong with him? he thought.

The space between the buildings wasn’t simply a flat area of ground, as Harry had expected it to be, but a sunken garden, as though there had once been a cellar between the buildings perhaps, though that did strike him as a little odd. There was a small flight of stone steps leading down into a courtyard of flagstones populated by potted plants. It was an odd space, Harry thought, and only added to the eerie feel of the place, and he couldn’t escape the sense of unease tracing its thin, cold fingers of bone down his spine.

‘Boss?’

Matt’s voice had Harry stop and he turned to see his detective sergeant at the top of the stone steps, accompanied by James Fletcher, approaching him, the beam from the torch cutting a bright stencil of light out on the ground.

‘So, this person you say you saw, they went down here, then,’ Harry said, walking back up to meet Matt and James. ‘Between the houses? Bit dangerous isn’t it?’

‘There are lights,’ James said. ‘Solar ones, but they’re not very good if there’s not been that much sun.’

‘Perhaps you should think about replacing them,’ Harry suggested.

‘I followed her,’ James said, ‘down to where you were a moment ago, then out the other side, but when I got to the lawn, she was gone.’

‘And how far away from this person were you when you chased after them?’ Harry asked.

‘She was just entering this bit here, the cut-through between the houses, when I came out of my shed,’ James said.

Harry walked back down into the sunken garden, then out the other side until he was at the front of the house. Lights splayed out across the lawn from the windows, and above, he caught the faintest glimpse of the moon as it peaked out from behind a thick cloud, only to disappear again immediately after, as though trying to stay out of sight.

Matt and James joined Harry.

‘It’s a lovely place, Mr Fletcher,’ Harry said, facing the house now, then he pointed at the cottage, which lay to their left. ‘That looks to me like it used to be attached, to the main house, I mean.’

‘It was,’ James said. ‘The sunken garden was a bit