Chapter 23

She didn’t feel like an imposter as she stood on the ridge and watched the cottage through a pair of binoculars. She wasn’t just a busybody raking through people’s lives or an ex trying to find out why she’d been jilted. She was a private detective with a client who wanted the answer to a question: what had happened to the missing Cobalt 60?

Her engagement meant more than that. Maybe it was a legacy of years of police work, but she’d always assumed people would believe there was no smoke without fire. Dr Abiola was trusting her, and had said she believed Harri was innocent. It gave her hope for the future, because she’d feared wherever she went people would tar her as a killer and assume she’d been responsible for the death of Alan Munro, but this quieted that worry. At least some people were prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. It was a tiny beacon of hope after so many weeks of darkness, and she was determined not to betray the faith of someone who’d believed in her.

Harri had parked her car on a farm track on the other side of Hen Cloud, the rocky outcrop east of the Asha family home, and had hiked a mile to her vantage point. The rugged countryside was a mix of gritstone cliffs, stretches of colourful gorse, and fields of short grass, cropped by small herds of sheep and cattle. There were a few horses and ponies, but in the main this was functional farming land or wilderness, a disorganized patchwork patterned by crooked drystone walls that crisscrossed the landscape.

Harri was hunkered beside one such wall and rested her elbows on it to help support her binoculars. She’d been watching Longhaven for over an hour, and her patience was finally rewarded when Ben Elmys led Elliot Asha from the house. The two of them exchanged words that had become indistinct by the time they reached Harri. They climbed into Ben’s black Land Rover Defender, and moments later, it was a speck on the winding lane that snaked east towards the main road.

Once the car was out of sight, Harri climbed over the wall and crossed a patch of gorse to the footpath that led to the cottage. The black grit trail was bordered by purple wildflowers, and bees and butterflies took flight as she passed. The cottage didn’t look as inviting from the rear. There was a small patio and a garden of wild grass and flowers that stretched from the back of the house to the drystone wall that delineated the edge of the property. The back garden looked neglected and in danger of going to weeds.

Harri kept her eyes on the lane as she hurried down the slope. She reached the stone stile, climbed over the wall, crossed the overgrown garden and the moss-covered patio and went to the back door. She produced a set of picks and solved the Yale lock.