Copyright © 2021 by Peter Grainger

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  Union Square & Co.

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Union Square & Co. Edition January 2026

  Union Square & Co. is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Union Square & Co. name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. [delete “has been applied for” when CIP data is added below]

  [insert CIP data when available]

  ISBNs: 9781454968818 (ebook)

  E3-20260107-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  DC Smith/Kings Lake Investigation series

  A Sneak Peek of Some Sort of Justice

  Chapter One

  A few miles south-east of the town of Kings Lake, the Norfolk countryside changes. Low hills begin to rise out of the flat, fertile lands of the fens to the west, and the soil becomes lighter, sandy and full of flints left behind by the last of the glaciers, twelve thousand years ago. There is still farming because man is a tenacious being, one who will scratch a living out of almost any landscape, but the range of crops that can succeed in the dry, stony soil is small: some cereals, some vegetables where the watering is easy and the soil a little more forgiving, and livestock have traditionally been a more reliable source of income. Rabbits were farmed in great medieval warrens, and once there were many thousands of sheep on the grassy heaths but today they are few in number and of little importance. Early in the last century, someone discovered that foreign conifers would grow as well as the native Scots pines, and huge plantations began to cover the region known as the Brecks, creating great dark, dry shadows over the land, in which little else could grow. Later, as the many threats to our wildlife became more obvious and urgent, the unique character of the remaining unspoiled places led to more and more of them becoming areas of nature conservation. Today, more than forty per cent of the Brecks are protected for their rare species.

  But there were woods here long before the Forestry Commission imported Sitka spruce – native heathland woods of birch and pine and stunted oak, which thrive on the shallow, flinty soils. Some of these remain, on the nature reserves or as parts of the many private sporting estates which once controlled much of the land – and a few of these estates linger on; large, quiet sandstone houses at the ends of long private drives, behind walls, screened from the prying eyes of the public as they drive along the B roads and wonder who owns all this, and why.

  Wissingham Hall on the historic Swaffham Heath is one such place. The owners, in residence only a few weeks each year, are rumoured to be foreign these days, the Cranwich family having sold up some time in the 1980s to pay taxes and death duties, but in other respects life continues much as it has for the past century. There is a small staff to run the house and the estate, and a manager keeps watch over the tenant farmers, some of whose families have worked this land since the original great house was built in the eighteenth century. That sugar plantations in the West Indies played a part in that building does not seem to have troubled too many, even today.

  All told, the estate commands almost two thousand acres, and the western side contains several of those ancient Breckland woods, of which Spring Covert is the largest. It is a quiet, solitary sort of place. There are thickets of old blackthorn and broad sunlit rides where butterflies abound – White Admirals and Silver-washed Fritillaries, lost from so many English woodlands, have maintained a foothold here for longer than anyone would care to remember, and they were certainly known to the gentlemen who collected in Victorian times. There are no public footpaths, and the nearest single-track road, the one which runs between the little villages of Stone Warren and Langford Tofts, never comes closer than three hundred yards. The eastern edge of the wood contains a short stretch of Drovers Way, one of the oldest of our ancient tracks, used to move cattle around the country and even down to London many centuries before the invention of railways and tarmac. Occasionally a keen amateur historian wanders this way, determined to follow the exact route of those drovers for reasons of his or her own, but mostly Spring Covert is left alone by the rambling British public.

  Those blackthorn coverts hold another secret, another rarity, and on this late May morning it is singing, unseen as always, hidden in the thickest of the thickets – a Nightingale. It is late in the season for daylight song. Perhaps he is without a mate this year. It is surely the most beautiful of our birdsongs and yet it has always a note of melancholy, and those who gave the bird its scientific name felt this too, for he is Luscinia, which in the old Latin means a lamentation.

  Between the blackthorn where he sings and the oaks at the edge of the covert is a small clearing, a little grassy meadow edged with pink and purple foxgloves and studded with ox-eye daisies. In the late morning sunshine there is a hum of bees at the foxgloves, and white butterflies dance in and out of the wood, into and out of the sunlight. There is just one sign that people ever come to this place; on a mossy, square stone slab is a simple glass vase. Inside, it is green with algae. It contains no water – there has been no rain to speak of for weeks – only a few dried stems of flowers that someone must have put there a long time ago.

  Chapter Two

  At a few minutes after noon, the glade had fallen silent. The bird was still there but invisible among the thorns, waiting because there were voices in the wood now, people coming towards the little clearing, and creatures hear us long before we imagine they might do so.

  An old man entered first, a walking stick in his right hand, the left parting the stems of the sallow bushes growing beneath the last of the oak trees. The man held the branches aside, allowing a much younger woman to pass through, and after her came a tall man, also young but polite – he said thank you and stepped forward into the clearing.

  The old man, Jim Goodrum, limped a little as he followed them, and said, ‘So… Here we are, then.’ The accent was local and as strong as it ought to be – he had already informed them with some pride that he’d lived in this parish every one of his eighty-two years.

  The two strangers looked around and then the young woman said, ‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ but there was a note of surprise in her voice, as if for some reason it should not be. The young man put his hands into the pockets of his smart grey trousers, looked thoughtfully around and then said, ‘Where exactly, Mr Goodrum?’

  The pair of them were far too dressed up for coming through the woods but Jim knew they’d been to see the vicar at St Mary’s in Stone Warren – that would be why. He lifted the walking stick and pointed with it towards the other side of the clearing, to the edge of the blackthorn thicket which was now casting a little shade where the foxgloves grew. The young man began to walk in that direction, and the other two followed him.

  When they halted again, Jim Goodrum cleared his throat, half-pointed with the stick and said, ‘As you can see…’

  What they could see now was the stone slab and glass vase in amongst the meadow grass and the delicate white haze of the cow parsley flowers. The girl looked up at her companion, frowning, and said, ‘Odd, if no one knows who she was.’

  The man gave the slightest of shrugs and turned to look at Jim, as if he already knew. Jim Goodrum said, ‘Ah, well… That’s me, see. When all the fuss died down – when I first come back up ’ere, I thought there oughter be something. You know? Just to mark it – the place.’

  The man nod
ded and looked at the little shrine again, and a silence grew in the glade. Somewhere in the blackthorn thicket, the bird would have been watching this odd little gathering.

  Jim said to neither of them in particular, ‘I kept it up for years, whenever I was up this way. No one knew ’cept my missus. She came with me a time or two… Now she’s gone, and tha’s a long old walk, but… I oughter’ve done it, and I’m sorry.’

  He was looking at the little piece of stone as if it marked a neglected grave, as if he was apologising to her, whoever she might have been. The young woman was looking at him now. She said, ‘It was a very nice thing to do, Mr Goodrum. A nice gesture. And it’s helping us, isn’t it, to see the exact spot?’

  She looked up at the tall man again, and he nodded. Then he took a few more careful steps until he was looking down at the tiny monument. He said to Jim, ‘And this is the exact spot?’

  Jim nodded. The man looked around again, slowly and systematically in all directions before he said, ‘Has it changed much? Twenty years is a long time.’

  He had a level, unassuming sort of manner, not like some of the people Jim remembered from the first time; kinder about it all. He seemed like someone you could probably trust.

  Jim answered, ‘Not greatly. Bit more overgrown maybe. But it was always a isolated spot, always… Years and years ago you’d get the odd courting couple in here from Stone Warren or the Tofts. Nowadays they don’t need to sneak off, do they? No shame in anyone no more… Anyway, like I said, it’s pretty much as it was and always ’as been, I’d say.’

  The young man had half-crouched for a moment as if there had been an inscription and he was trying to read it, but the face of the stone was covered only in patches of grey and green lichen. When he straightened up, he said, ‘Mr Goodrum. If your answer to my next question is no, we’ll fully understand. You’re under no obligation to anyone, as I said when we met this morning, and we’re only here informally at present. I’m wondering whether you’d mind answering a few questions about what you saw that morning. Would you mind?’

  The old man said it was a long time ago but there are some things in life you’re not likely to forget. He’d do his best to answer any questions.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Goodrum. From what you’ve already said, you were living in the same cottage where we met you just now?’

  He was, yes, been there almost forty years.

  ‘And what brought you up to this spot that morning?’

  Jim shifted his weight and leaned on the stick – arthritis had twisted him a little but he hadn’t complained once on the walk from their car. He said, ‘I were more keeperin’ than labourin’ in them days. We used to rear all our own birds – now they buy ’em in from God knows where. I had some pens on the other side o’ Spring Covert. There was always a fox earth hereabouts, so I used to keep ’em in check.’

  The youngster was in charge and asking the questions, but the girl was watching and listening just as carefully. She was from away, not a local accent at all, and Jim wondered how people ended up where they did in that job.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Goodrum. On that morning, did you approach from the same direction we’ve just taken?’

  ‘I did, yes. Tha’s always been the way. The other side is arable, all the way down to the road.’

  The young man had a funny, faraway look sometimes as if he wasn’t really taking note of what you said, but the questions were methodical and logical enough.

  ‘And how far away is the road from this spot?’

  ‘A good three hundred yards. I can show you where, if you like…’

  ‘No, that’s fine. So you entered where we did just now, where we first stood. What did you see?’

  In the tiny moment of quiet that followed the question, a large, solitary bumble-bee flew between them, circled the old man as if curious about him, and then travelled on towards the foxgloves. Jim said, ‘I could see someone were here.’

  The man looked back to the edge of the glade and he seemed to be puzzled. After a moment he said, ‘You found the body on the 25th of June, Mr Goodrum. That’s almost a month later than today. We couldn’t see the stone and the vase from that spot over there. And surely in another month the grass, all the vegetation will be even longer, won’t it? Are you certain you could see the body as soon as you came into the clearing?’

  He might look as if he’s away with the fairies but that wasn’t a question Jim had been anticipating from the man who was now watching him closely. He gave it due consideration before he said, ‘Yes, I am. This is dry land on top of the hill. This grass don’t get much longer. I knowed this spot as well as I know my own garden. I could see someone lying in the grass, right ’ere,’ pointing with the walking stick at the slab of stone.

  His questioner seemed satisfied, and said, ‘What time of day was this?’

  All of this would be in the notes, which you’d assume these people would have read – Jim guessed his memory was being tested. He said, ‘Around ten o’clock in the morning. It were already hot, I remember. That were a blisterin’ summer.’

  ‘After you saw someone was here, what did you do next, Mr Goodrum?’

  He told them – he’d approached a few steps closer and said out loud that they were on private property, and they’d better leave. Then he said it again louder because he thought it was someone sleeping, some vagrant come up off the road last night. When there was no response, he went closer. As soon as he could see her face, he knew what he was looking at.

  The man said, ‘What was it about her face?’

  This time the answer took a few seconds to come – ‘She’d been there a day or two at least. Long enough for me to see she were dead…’

  His feelings had been sensed by the man, who said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Goodrum. I know when you got up this morning this was the last thing you thought you’d be doing today. Stop whenever you like. What did you do when you realised the young woman was dead?’

  Jim said, ‘Well… Nothin’ prepares you for it. I mean, I seen plenty of dead things in the woods, but another human…’

  He paused – that sounded an oddly detached word to use. Then he continued, ‘I s’pose I took another step or two. I didn’t really know what to do for a minute. But I remember that’s when I noticed her hands were tied. Her two wrists, like…’

  The young man was looking down at the ground again as if he could see her for himself. Keeping his gaze there, he said, ‘Were they tied in front of her or behind?’

  Jim’s memory was being tested again; the police had brought him back up here later that day, just to the edge of the clearing, and he’d seen all sorts going on, including a bloke taking a lot of photographs. They’d still have all that in their files, wouldn’t they? He leaned the walking stick against his leg and showed them, holding his wrists together in front of himself – ‘Like this they were.’

  ‘Thank you. And you didn’t touch the body at all?’

  No, he said. He thought, do people touch dead bodies when they find ’em? The police at the time had asked him that as well.

  ‘What did you do then, Mr Goodrum?’

  He’d gone back down to the cottage and told his wife. Then he called the farm office and told them what he’d found up in Spring Covert. The manager told him to phone the police and give them directions to his own cottage first, otherwise they’d never find it. Then the farm manager said he’d drive up to the wood across the top field and see for himself, not that he doubted what Jim had just told him.

  The woman had been silent up to that point, but now she said, ‘That was Clive Brand, wasn’t it?’

  Jim nodded – all on the files and they’d read ’em all right. He added for good measure, ‘But you won’t be talkin’ to him about it. He died a few years later. In France, on holiday. A car crash it was. Bound to ’appen, drivin’ on the wrong side of the road.’

  The two of them exchanged a look before the man said, ‘You said the body had been there for a day or two at least. The reports say it could have been up to a week. Is that right, Mr Goodrum?’

  It is, he said, and he knew that conclusion was based mainly on his statements to the police at the time – he’d been in that clearing the week before, on the Saturday. It was a Friday when he found her. Friday the 25th of June.