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set back from the road. FLINT HOWE GARDEN DESIGN. So even after all these years, Peter Flint had kept the memory of his partner alive in the name of the business. She wasn’t naïve enough to write off suspects on the basis of knee-jerk amateur psychology, but it didn’t seem like the act of a man with murder on his conscience.
    The lane forked and she followed the sign marked OLD SAWREY ONLY. As she climbed the hill, she passed a scattering of houses before seeing a building perched on the brow, overlooking the lake and forest and fells beyond. The Heights looked like a small and ancient village pub with a conservatory extension tacked on at the front to enable diners to make the most of the view. Tubs overflowing with yellow and purple pansies bordered a pathway connecting the restaurant to a large detached house, set further along the slope. The grounds of house and restaurant were divided by willow screening. The car park was almost deserted and Hannah reversed into a space between a purple Citroën and a board outside the canopied entrance displaying times of opening. The restaurant was shut to customers for another couple of hours. Above the door a notice confirmed that Isobel Marie Jenner and Oliver Cox were licensed to sell intoxicating beverages. Sothe widow and the chef were still together after all these years.
    As Hannah switched off the ignition, the restaurant door opened and a solidly built young woman in a white T-shirt and denim jeans hurried out. She reached the Citroën and fumbled in a battered bag for the key. Her face was blotchy and her eyes full of tears. With a start, Hannah recognised her. The red hair was shorter than in the photograph she’d studied earlier in the day, but the blue eyes and jutting jaw were unmistakable.
    The woman in distress was Kirsty Howe.

Chapter Four
    The giant hog bared its teeth at Kirsty Howe. She halted on the pathway between the trees, then took a pace towards the beast. For all her distress, she could not help smiling as she reached out and patted its head.
    She loved Ridding Wood. Since childhood, she’d felt safe here, surrounded by the weird creatures carved from wood and iron. For all their fangs and contorted faces, they never hurt you as people did. In her early teens she’d confessed to Sam that she thought of the sculptures as friends, each with a pet name, but he’d taunted her without mercy. Now she knew better than to share secrets with her brother, but to this day, she remembered what she used to call the hog.
    ‘Hello, Boris. How are you today?’
    Babyish, Sam would say, but she didn’t care. This leafy haven was her second home, a refuge she escaped to when things went wrong. After her father’s death, she’d wandered around the by-ways of Grizedale Forest for hours, struggling to reconcile herself with what had happened, and there was scarcely a route that she did not know by heart. She liked to come here for the setting ofthe sun, when families had returned home and hikers had tramped on. Even on a summer afternoon, with whooping kids on the hunt for wild animals along the sculpture trail, the exercise soothed her as words of comfort never could. She drank in the soft air and the mossy smells, she swayed to the music echoing through the woodland, as unseen wanderers struck the huge wooden xylophones standing beside the route to the stream. Even today, with the words of the cruel letter burning in her brain, Ridding Wood did not fail to work its magic.
    She ran her hands over the hog’s back, careless of splinters. She envied artists, people who began with a blank canvas or page or a block of marble and had the talent to create something fresh. Imagine the sense of freedom it must give. Whereas she stayed in Old Sawrey, waiting at table and yearning for something that always seemed tantalisingly out of reach. Wanting it so badly that someone who must hate her had noticed, and was tormenting her because of it.
    After blundering out of the