Rachel stopped at the brow of the hill to catch her breath, a stitch in her side and sweat trickling down her back. Panting, she bent double, touched her toes then straightened up.
It was almost dark and she watched the streetlights come on in the valley below, delineating the ring road and the motorway and the web of residential streets that sprawled up the sides of the hills. Mills and churches and tower blocks were dotted here and there, rising among the terraced housing.
She hadn’t brought a torch and the track back to the car would be treacherous in the gloom, rutted and riven by tree roots and the gnarled heather that clung to the slope.
Rachel felt something nip her neck and waved a hand to swat it away. Gnats.
As the darkness deepened it seemed to bring a silence with it, an interruption of the distant traffic sounds so she could hear the tick of the ground cooling and something rustle in the foliage behind her.
A flash of black disturbed the air by her face and she cried out then felt like a right tit. A bat, that was all. Fetching its supper.
The glow caught her eyes, down in the west of town. A rich orange that reminded her of bonfire night. Looked too big to be a bonfire, wrong time of year – May. Perhaps a car had been torched, the petrol tank going up in flames. Joyriders, some lowlife toe-rags, getting rid of a vehicle used in a robbery. Looks bigger than that, too, she thought, flinching slightly as the bat swooped past again.
A shriek carried on the still air, high and hoarse. Fox, owl? Some predator. She felt her muscles stiffen in her calves and kicked each foot in turn. Time to head back. The thought brought a sullen burn in her guts. Daft. She was just being daft.
As if on cue, her mobile trilled. She yanked it from her pocket. Sean on the display. Her husband. How the fuck had that happened? She knew of course. He asked her and she said no, joked with him, shagged him, kept saying no and he kept on asking until one day, everything else gone to shit and he was still there, kind, shaggable, cheering her on and she had buckled, said yes, defences down.
She read the text: spag carbonara half an hour x.
He was more of a pie and chips, kebab and onion rings bloke. Born on the same estate in Langley as she was. Dragged up like Rachel and her lot had been. And like Rachel he escaped into the police. But since the wedding he’d gone all Jamie Oliver on her. Trying out this and that. Rachel hadn’t a clue why. She’d be just as happy with egg and chips or burger and beans but she went along with it. A phase, she reckoned. Least Sean never had any expectations that she’d be cooking or ironing his boxers or any of that malarkey. That was one thing they had going: he knew the score. He was a PC, the fire-fighting side of crime, out on patrol, while she was a detective on MIT, investigating murder and serious assault.
