“What—?” Heather thought of the heart scratched into the terracotta pot, the sense she was being watched. What did Reave know about that, exactly? “Michael, what do you know? Am I in danger?”

He shook his head, not looking at her.

“Don’t go up there. There’s nothing for you, there. Don’t poke around in stuff that doesn’t concern you, lass.”

But DI Parker had stepped forward, lightly touching the back of Heather’s arm, signaling that today’s session was over. Later, as they walked back to the prison entrance, Heather found herself thinking about Michael Reave’s final words. They had only left her with more questions.

“What about his family? Are any of them still around?”

Parker shook his head. With another session over no closer to any answers, he looked distracted again, impatient to be somewhere else.

“All dead. His mother, as I mentioned before, vanished when he was a kid, and if she’s still alive she’d be very old now, and she certainly wouldn’t fit our profile. There was a father and an older sister, both of whom have a few scattered reports on social services—suspicions of sexual abuse in the family.”

“Jesus.”

“But they’re both dead now, too. Some distant relations, but nothing that leads anywhere.”

Outside, under the cold blue sky, Heather stood alone at a bus stop, still thinking about her mother and the mysteries she had left behind. It was clearer than ever that Colleen Evans had been of enormous importance to Reave, had represented something to him that Heather couldn’t begin to understand. And she had to believe that Colleen had had a similar attachment to him, yet nothing about that fit in with the strict and unbending woman Heather had grown up with. There was something else, some other connection. There had to be.

When the bus eventually came along, Heather got on board without looking at the driver. She found a seat at the back of the bus, got out her notebook, and began writing.

CHAPTER

26

BEFORE

EARLY MORNINGS IN the woods were full of birdsong and light. The muttering from Michael’s graves was at its quietest but he still liked to visit each one, letting them feel his wolf-shape as he passed over—it was important that they knew he was there, no matter how far he travelled these days. On this particular morning, the wood was awash with bluebells, a near-purple haze that peeked around every corner. Michael was considering picking some to take with him on his next outing—he had taken to placing flowers in the mouths of his women, so that a little piece of Fiddler’s Wood would rot with them—when he heard a soft voice calling.

“Is someone there?”

He lent his shovel against a tree and moved toward the sound.

“Hello?”

He saw her long before she ever saw him. There was a girl in the woods, wearing tight blue jeans, mud spattered green wellies and a diaphanous white shirt that floated around her arms. She had pale blonde hair that fell in soft waves across her shoulders, and a pale, slightly pinched-looking face. There were two spots of hectic pink blush on the tops of her cheeks, and she was carrying a battered looking paperback book under one arm. When he stepped out from the trees near her, she startled, almost dropping it.