Carefully locking the car, she went to the back door of the house. It was the door she always used when she visited her sister, and besides she had a spare key so she could water the plants or feed the dog when Rebecca was away.
Dawn could think of only two possibilities. Most likely, her sister had gone out somewhere and forgotten to take her mobile phone. The garage door was closed, so she couldnt tell whether Rebeccas car was there or not. Everyone forgot their mobile now and then. It was even possible to forget your mobile and not remember to switch on the outside lights when you left the house.
There was also a chance that Rebecca was ill. She suffered from migraines sometimes, and she might have taken her tablets and gone to bed to sleep it off. Probably she wouldnt have heard the phone that way. Dawn imagined her sister lying in her bedroom upstairs, and felt slightly reassured. It was something that could be dealt with.
Even as she tried the key in the lock, Dawn knocked on the back door, knowing it was a useless thing to do. Obviously, Rebecca wouldnt be sitting in the house with all the lights out.
But the key wouldnt turn. Dawn pulled it out, looked at it with the torch to make sure she had the right one, and tried again. She rattled it backwards and forwards, and found it turned to the left quite easily, then back again. The door hadnt been locked.
With a sense of dread, Dawn turned the handle and pushed the door, jumping a little at the soft tearing sound as the seal parted. It was only then that it occurred to her she ought to have gone in through the front door, where the controls for the burglar alarm were located. But she knew with a cold certainty by now that the alarm wouldnt go off.
Sure enough, the house was completely silent. Dawn called her sisters name, listening to the waver in her own voice. She called again, a bit louder, trying to sound confident.
Sure enough, the house was completely silent. Dawn called her sisters name, listening to the waver in her own voice. She called again, a bit louder, trying to sound confident.
Rebecca? Are you home?
Rebecca could have forgotten to lock the back door too, she thought. If she was in a bad state with one of her migraines, all that sort of thing could have gone out of her head. Andrea would be very cross with her mum when she found out.
But Andreas worries kept going through Dawns mind. Though she knew there was no logic to it, she had to pluck up courage to switch on the light inside the house. She had come into the utility room, and the fluorescent light flickered and gleamed suddenly on the innocuous shapes of a couple of chest freezers, an automatic washing machine and a tumble drier. Through the door at the far end was the kitchen, still in darkness, and past that the hallway and the stairs. She could hear one of the freezers humming, perhaps a faint trickle of fluid. The house was very warm and airless, warmer than Dawn would choose to have her own home.
She crossed the utility room to the kitchen doorway and reached for the light switch. But she stopped. The hum of the freezer wasnt all she could hear. There was another sound, quite close by. It was just a slight movement, nothing but the tiniest scratch of something hard against the tiles.
Rebecca? Are you there?
She was answered by a noise that chilled her skin, despite the warmth of the central heating. It was a whimper. A small, pitiful whimper, so quiet that if she hadnt been standing still she might not have heard it at all. It was no more than a tiny sob, an involuntary release of sound into the silence of the house. Even now, Dawn might have convinced herself that shed imagined it. But then it came again. And the noise wasnt ahead of her, in the darkened kitchen. It was behind her.
Dawn spun round, staring at the bright, white surfaces of the utility room and at the back door, which she now realized she had left open.
Whos there? she said, finding a strength and authority she hadnt known she possessed.
She shone her torch at the back door, but it made no impression on the darkness outside. She listened carefully, holding her breath. And gradually, her attention focused on one of the freezers.
The unit stood a few inches away from the wall. Dawn thought it had always been like that, but she wasnt absolutely sure. It was quite a large one, too, because Rebecca liked to buy organic meat in bulk from a local farm shop. It would take some strength to move it when it was full. So probably there had always been that slight gap between the freezer and the wall.
Dawn looked at the back door and decided to leave it open. She glanced around for a weapon, but could see nothing. Instead, she took a firmer grip on her torch and walked towards the freezer. She was about to open the lid when she heard the noise again. A soft brush against the wall, a scratch on the tiles. Something was behind the freezer.
She leaned over and shone her torch into the gap. Dust had gathered on the back of the freezer, although it hadnt been in place all that long. In among the pipes and cables she saw what at first appeared to be an old-fashioned fur muff jammed into the narrow space. It was brown and white, it smelled of urine, and it trembled when the light hit it.
Oh, my God. Milly.
It took Dawn a couple of minutes to prise the elderly Shih Tzu from behind the freezer, where she had crammed herself into an impossibly tiny ball. The dogs claws scratched frantically on the tiles and wall in an effort to prevent herself from being dragged into the light.
Milly, you poor old thing. What happened to you?
As far as she could tell, the dog seemed physically unharmed. But when she saw how terrified the animal was, Dawn hardly needed to look any further. She knew without a doubt that her sister must be dead.
On the way back from Castleton, Ben Cooper drove past the Hope cement works and over Pindale to reach the Eden Valley. A tiny hamlet lay at the foot of Pindale, with a restored mine building and a camp site. But few people took this route the road was single track, and too steep and narrow to make for comfortable driving if you didnt know it well.
Further on, he crossed the Roman road, Batham Gate, and joined the B6049 south of Bradwell. After a few more miles, he crested the final hill and looked down on Edendale.
The Eden Valley lay at a sort of geological collision point where the two halves of the Peak District met. On one side were the limestone plateaux and wooded gorges of the White Peak, with its patchwork of fields and quiet villages. Enclosing them on three sides like the fingers of a hand were the higher slopes of the Dark Peak. Its barren peat moors were scattered with gritstone outcrops, eroded into the grotesque and sinister shapes that had created so many folk legends.
For Cooper, the White Peak and Dark Peak carried an irresistible symbolism they represented light and dark, good and evil. Because of Edendales location, he sometimes got the idea that he was literally walking the line between good and evil as he moved about the landscape. But the line wasnt so clear-cut as it might at first appear. Those dark outcrops of twisted rock had a tendency to erupt in places you didnt expect them. There was always a kind of darkness lurking just below the surface, ready to thrust its way into the daylight.
Cooper drove into the centre of town and reached his flat in Welbeck Street. He could see thunder clouds approaching in the west. They seemed to hang on the horizon for a while until they amassed a large enough bulk, and then they moved to blot out the sky. When he got out of the car, he could feel the air already becoming heavier and more humid. People would be going around saying Its going to break with a note of relief in their voices.
With no tenant upstairs since the departure of his American neighbour, the house was strangely silent. Cooper still hadnt got used to coming home every night to an empty flat, with the post still lying on the doormat and an unwashed coffee mug standing in the sink from breakfast. He hadnt brought much with him from Bridge End Farm either, only his PC and a few prints, and of course the framed photograph over the fireplace the one showing rows of police officers lined up in their uniforms, with Sergeant Joe Cooper standing in the second row. It had been taken at some formal occasion a few years before his fathers death.
Living alone had many advantages. On his days off, it hardly seemed necessary to Cooper to get dressed or have a shave. He could slop around in an old T-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms for as long as he liked. He could sit at the kitchen table and drink coffee and eat toast all morning, if he wanted to. And living on your own was nothing unusual these days. Soon, nearly half the country would be living alone.
Still, he couldnt help the rush of pleasure when the first thing he saw as he entered the flat was a black cat coming towards him from the kitchen, its fur warm and its yellow eyes gleaming expectantly. Randy had changed into his summer coat, and now he was sleek and dark, and obviously not as big a cat as hed have everyone believe.
The rumbles Cooper could hear now werent really a storm, more of a warning that the rain was coming. And come it did, within a few seconds. Instantly, the downpour was so heavy that it sounded as if the river had burst its banks and was surging across the gardens, threatening to flood the houses at the bottom end of the road.
In the kitchen, the noise of the rain was deafening as it fell on the glass roof of the conservatory. Above the sound, he heard the wooden frames of the windows cracking as they cooled and contracted. Cooper fed Randy and walked back into the sitting room. After the cat, the second thing he saw in his flat that night was the green light flashing on his answering machine. It was blinking at him in a way that could mean only one thing. Yet again, a small piece of darkness was about to thrust its way into the daylight.
In the kitchen, the noise of the rain was deafening as it fell on the glass roof of the conservatory. Above the sound, he heard the wooden frames of the windows cracking as they cooled and contracted. Cooper fed Randy and walked back into the sitting room. After the cat, the second thing he saw in his flat that night was the green light flashing on his answering machine. It was blinking at him in a way that could mean only one thing. Yet again, a small piece of darkness was about to thrust its way into the daylight.