He was nearly at the end of the path when George Blackwell called him back. ‘That new man in Anna’s life . . .’

Perez stopped sharply and turned back. ‘Yes?’

‘I think he must have been a Stonebridge man. Local, you know. During that last phone call she said she’d decided to stick it out in the village. She’d been thinking of leaving, of finding a new job somewhere else because she wasn’t happy. But she told me she didn’t think she’d be moving after all because now she had something to keep her there.’

11

The Watcher

It was mid-morning in Stonebridge when Jimmy Perez got back from Berwick, and the sun was shining on the gleaming snow. He felt as if he was returning to another world, though Berwick was hardly more than an hour away. He saw this village as a place full of secrets where nothing was quite as it seemed.

On the drive back he’d been trying to piece together all he’d learned about Anna. He was convinced now that she hadn’t committed suicide. She was a kind woman who cared too much about her daughter and her parents to leave them. And it seemed she’d been getting happier. She had passed the worst crisis of her depression.

But still there were too many unanswered questions for him to make up his mind what had happened to her. Who was the new man who’d become a part of her life? Perez had assumed that if she’d been having an affair with a man in Stonebridge, then the lover had been Tom King. But perhaps she’d been seeing someone quite different. Perhaps the note arranging a meeting on the night of her death had been for this other person.

Now Perez sat in his car outside the Stonebridge Hotel and considered what to do next. On impulse, he started the engine again and drove towards the farm where Gail lived. Gail was a local and a gossip, and if anyone knew who Anna had been seeing, it would be the farmer. She would have heard any rumours.

Perez found Gail mending a hen house in the orchard by the side of the yard. She looked up when she saw him. ‘One of the planks is rotten. A bloody fox will get in if I don’t fix it. Do you mind if we talk out here?’

‘That’s fine.’ He leaned against one of the trees. ‘It’s possible that Anna was having a relationship with someone other than Tom King. Had you heard anything about that?’

She straightened her back. There was still a hammer in her hand and it made her look fierce, like a female warrior from the Norse tales he’d read as a boy. ‘No! Who was she seeing?’

‘I was hoping that you might be able to tell me that.’

‘It must have been a married man,’ Gail said. ‘There’d be no need for secrecy if he was single. She’d have known that there were rumours about her and the doctor. Being seen out with a single guy would have stopped them once and for all. That would have been a good thing as far as she was concerned.’