The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles From Annie Dalton

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  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

  A Selection of Recent Titles from Annie Dalton

  For children

  ANGEL ACADEMY: LIVING THE DREAM

  CHERRY GREEN, STORY QUEEN

  FRIDAY FOREVER

  INVISIBLE THREADS

  LILAC PEABODY AND HONEYSUCKLE HOPE

  NIGHTMAZE

  WAYS TO TRAP A YETI

  For adults

  The Oxford Dogwalkers’ Mysteries

  THE WHITE SHEPHERD *

  * available from Severn House

  THE WHITE SHEPHERD

  An Oxford Dogwalkers’ Mystery

  Annie Dalton

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Annie Dalton and Maria Dalton.

  The right of Annie Dalton and Maria Dalton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Dalton, Annie author.

  The White Shepherd.

  1. Murder–Investigation–Fiction. 2. Dog walking–

  England–Oxford–Fiction. 3. Suspense fiction.

  I. Title

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8521-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-621-3 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-674-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to Jane Darby and Tim Couché for their useful advice; also grateful thanks to Fiona Ferguson and her niece, the real life Kirsty, and to Jeanette Johnston, for helping us out with Anna’s job-share at Walsingham College. Finally, a big thank you to Sue Chapman for telling us about Lord Dunsany’s story Dean Spanley, from which Laurie Swanson quotes to Anna. Any glaring mistakes are, of course, the sole responsibility of the authors.

  PROLOGUE

  When Anna saw why her dog Bonnie had half-dragged her on to the bright-green spongy ground beyond the trees, her heart started to beat so fast that she was afraid she’d choke. The peaceful sweep of Port Meadow, the nearby allotments with their fading bean flowers and the railway track blurred out of focus along with all their ambient sounds; for a moment she thought she was going to pass out. But Anna had never been much of a fainter so was denied that mercy.

  Random, shocking details jumped out. A single running shoe soaked almost black with blood; more blood welling out through ripped and gory running clothes and streaking the honey-coloured hair that was still pulled back into a ponytail; the trickling little streamlet a metre or so from the bloody head; the contorted features, an agonized mask scarcely recognizable as human.

  A name formed inside her head. Naomi. She instantly recoiled from the thought. How could that mutilated emptied-out thing be Naomi?

  Anna continued to stare down as she tried and failed to make sense of what she was seeing, to understand how this lovely lucid autumn light, which she’d always associated with crisp school uniforms and fresh starts, could be illuminating Naomi’s corpse.

  Then some internal wall dissolved and there were two Annas: the thirty-two-year-old woman, gripping on to Bonnie’s lead with bloodless fingers, and the stoned, terrified sixteen year old, stopped in her tracks by this same slaughterhouse reek.

  A scream exploded in her head. It felt like all those times she had screamed for help in dreams, help that never came, because she could never make her stupid vocal cords work, though inside she was howling like an animal.

  Bewilderingly, help did come. Two women came pushing through the trees, their two dogs straining against their leashes. Anna had seen both dog-owners before, walking separately over Port Meadow. The older woman’s hair was a startling mix of jet black and snowy white, loosely wrapped in one of her collection of gypsy scarves. The younger woman – just a girl, really, Anna thought – had once asked Anna jokingly if she was sure that Bonnie wasn’t a wolf.

  ‘God, oh my God, oh shit!’ the girl whispered now, then shrieked, ‘Buster! Leave!’ frantically reeling in her retracting lead as her tiny apricot poodle went to sniff at the blood pooling around the corpse. Just in time she turned aside, vomiting into the grass.

  The older woman had pulled out her phone. ‘Get me the police! Yes, my name is Isadora Salzman.’ She had one of those actressy voices, the posh side of middle class. Anna saw little tremors running through her.

  The girl straightened up, fumbling for a tissue. Her skin, normally delicate cinnamon brown, had turned ashy with shock. ‘Sorry, I never thought I’d have to see something like this.’ She pressed her hands to her mouth, fighting off another bout of retching. ‘This is exactly why I didn’t want to mind Nick and Leo’s dog,’ she said shakily. ‘I told them, “It’s always some poor bloody dog walker who finds the body, every fucking time.” And now I have.’ Her eyes skittered back to the dead woman, then away. ‘Are the police coming?’ she asked the woman who had phoned.

  She nodded. ‘We’ve got to stay until they get here.’

  No one had bothered to check Naomi’s body for a pulse. Everyone knew she was dead.

  Bonnie had settled at Anna’s feet, calmer after their frantic dash. Keeping her eyes watchfully on Anna, she keened softly, a sound Anna had never previously heard from her rescue dog, and the only sign of her continuing distress.

  ‘I’m Isadora,’ the woman was saying. ‘And this is Hero.’ She reached down to soothe her dog, which was shivering and trying to hide behind her legs. Some type of highly-strung spaniel, Anna thought, its wayward fringe scraped back from its eyes with a bright-pink clip.

  ‘I’m Tansy,’ said the younger woman. ‘This is Buster. This is nuts,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Why are we
introducing the dogs?’ Her eyes veered back to Naomi. ‘Oh God, her poor face,’ she moaned.

  Isadora began untying the knot at the back of her scarf. Today’s headscarf was made of shimmering blue silk. Stooping down, she laid it tenderly over the once-lovely face, and Anna tried not to see the scarlet stains that immediately bloomed. ‘There, my darling,’ Isadora said in the tones of someone settling a child for the night. Anna couldn’t tell if she was trying to comfort the freaked Tansy or the no-longer living Naomi.

  ‘Should you have done that?’ Tansy said anxiously. ‘Isn’t that, like, disturbing the body?’

  ‘Her name was Naomi Evans.’

  Anna only knew she’d said the words out loud when Tansy said, dismayed, ‘Oh my God, she was your friend! I’m so sorry!’

  Anna had wondered if she and Naomi might become friends, but she just shook her head. ‘We spoke a couple of times, that’s all.’ Her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere weirdly distant.

  ‘I used to see her out running,’ Tansy said.

  Isadora nodded. ‘She always seemed so vibrant. So—’ She quickly checked herself, but Anna knew what she’d been going to say. So alive. Instead, she said, ‘What a cruel waste.’

  Tansy was pacing now. She was ridiculously pretty, Anna thought. In her boyfriend jeans and well-washed sweatshirt she could be an off-duty model. ‘I wish I still smoked,’ she said abruptly. ‘Damn it, I wish I had a spliff.’ She gave Anna an anxious glance. ‘Sorry if I’m babbling.’

  ‘I‘m half-Russian. I’m genetically wired to babble.’ Isadora was delving in her bag as she spoke. ‘Would this help?’ She handed Tansy a small silver flask.

  Tansy looked anxious. ‘Are you sure? I’ve just been—’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Isadora reassured her.

  Tansy unscrewed the top, releasing steam and fumes fierce enough to make her eyes water.

  ‘I put a shot of vodka in it,’ Isadora said unnecessarily. She saw their expressions. ‘Hero is an early morning girl. I need a little help to get going.’

  Tansy hesitated. ‘I haven’t touched coffee for months.’ Using a small quantity as mouthwash, she spat it into a bush, then took a grateful gulp. ‘Thanks,’ she repeated more hoarsely before offering the flask to Anna, who took a deep swallow of the joltingly alcoholic contents.

  ‘I can’t look at her, but I’m scared not to look,’ Tansy almost wailed. ‘Could we move away? It feels disrespectful chatting over her body like this.’

  Anna returned the flask to Isadora, who knocked back a serious slug before she said, ‘Also, if we get away from these trees it will be easier to see when the police get here.’

  They couldn’t seem to move. They looked down at the dead woman, taking in her delicate wrist bones, the ruined flesh.

  Tansy said, ‘She’s not wearing her bracelet.’

  The persistent tink-tink-tink of Naomi’s charms as she ran had been like her signature soundtrack.

  ‘She always wore it,’ Tansy said.

  Isadora started peering at the marshy ground around Naomi’s body. Unbound from her scarf, her hair made a tangled cloud around her sharply intelligent face. ‘She was wearing it.’ She pointed into the grass where silver charms lay scattered, winking in the sun like tiny fallen stars.

  They fell silent, not wanting to imagine the final struggle that had caused the links of Naomi’s bracelet to snap. Still in silence they led their dogs a little distance beyond the trees. It was just possible to glimpse the awkward sprawl of Naomi’s legs, her bare and bloodied foot. They could have turned their backs, but no one did. It wasn’t morbid fascination or superstitious fear, Anna thought. It was like they owed it to her.

  Tansy was partly hugging herself, looking young and vulnerable in a way that Anna couldn’t remember feeling. ‘Another person did that to her,’ she said almost to herself. ‘Someone I could have just walked past in the street.’

  Isadora said sombrely, ‘That makes three now.’

  ‘Three?’ said Anna.

  ‘Fatal stabbings,’ Tansy said. ‘A girl was stabbed to death in Magdalen College Gardens a couple of months ago. Then a few weeks later they found that other girl – in South Park, wasn’t it?’

  Isadora gave a bleak nod.

  ‘You seriously hadn’t heard?’ Tansy asked Anna.

  Anna couldn’t tell her that it took all her energy to deal with the personal day-to-day. Other people’s tragedies dimly registered on her radar, but not enough that she would notice an emerging pattern: three young women, three open-air stabbings. ‘I only recently moved back—’ she started to say, but Tansy was already talking.

  ‘They need to catch him before the new term starts and the students come back.’

  Isadora joined in, echoing Tansy’s worries, but Anna had stopped listening. A late butterfly fluttered past. The heat of summer looked to be carrying on into September, and Anna could hear bees buzzing. Cows grazed placidly nearby. How much better to be a cow or a bee, she thought, oblivious to the ugly human drama playing out in a corner of this beauty spot.

  Bonnie sat up suddenly alert, one flawless white ear swivelling to identify a new sound. As the first squad cars streaked into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring, Anna had to force herself not to run, to keep breathing out and in, all the time feeling as if she was trapped in a recurring bad dream – a dream she was powerless to change and from which she was never allowed to wake.

  ONE

  The windowless interview room at St Aldates Police Station had that airless feel that Anna recognized from before, and the same tang of disinfectant. Isadora and Tansy had separately given their versions of the discovery of Naomi’s body. Now it was Anna’s turn to sit at the bolted-down table across from DI Chaudhari, a stocky, weary-looking man in his forties with thick glossy black hair. ‘Apologies that we’re having to talk to you in here. You’re obviously not a suspect. All the care suites are currently in use.’

  The young detective sergeant seated himself next to the DI and flipped back the cover of his notebook.

  At the exact moment Anna had handed Bonnie over to Tansy before she went in, she’d felt herself break into a cold sweat. Possibly, Tansy had noticed, because she’d whispered, ‘That Sergeant Goodhart is annoyingly hot!’ in a misguided attempt to cheer her up. Anna thought that Tansy’s hazel-eyed sergeant looked far better-rested – and far better toned – than the world-weary Inspector Chaudhari. But tired or not, there was no doubt whose show this was. Behind the inspector’s oddly old-fashioned gallantry Anna felt a sly intelligence that put her on her guard.

  She could feel her nerves trying to take over as she told them that her name was Anna Hopkins, that she was thirty-two years old and currently lived in Park Town. This mention of her prestigious North Oxford address sent a faint flicker across the inspector’s features, and Anna felt stung into adding, ‘It was my grandparents’ house. I let most of it out. I live on the ground floor.’ She explained that she had lived away from Oxford since leaving school, but had returned six months ago to take up a part-time post at Walsingham College. ‘I came back because of my grandfather,’ Anna added before the inspector could ask. ‘My grandmother died last year, and he was becoming increasingly frail. He’s the only—’ She stopped, then continued more carefully, ‘He’s my only close family now. I wanted some time with him while I still have the chance.’

  ‘Your grandfather doesn’t live with you?’ the inspector said.

  ‘He lives in a retirement home. He hated the idea of me having to do – personal things for him.’

  The inspector briefly rubbed at his face. Anna had noticed dark pouches of exhaustion beneath his eyes. Maybe he was coming to the end of a long shift, or perhaps he had young children who woke him in the night. ‘So if you could just tell us in your own words what happened this morning when you found the body of Naomi Evans.’

  Anna flashed back to earlier that morning at Coffee on the Green. Sitting at an outdoor table, with Bonnie at her feet, she’d
managed to spin out her skinny latte for twenty minutes before she’d decided that Naomi wasn’t coming.

  ‘Ms Hopkins,’ the inspector prompted.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not quite sure where you need me to—’

  ‘Start wherever it makes sense for you to start,’ he reassured her.

  ‘OK, well, I just recently acquired a rescue dog. She’s a White Shepherd. She’s still young and needs a lot of exercise. I take her to Port Meadow. It’s the nearest place that I can let her off for a good run.’ Anna felt herself suddenly short of oxygen, as if she’d been running. She made herself take a steadying breath before she said, ‘She normally waits for me to unclip her lead. But this morning as soon as we walked into the meadow she seemed unsettled. She started whining – not normal whining, it was a really harrowing sound. I’ve never heard any dog make that sound before. Then she took off with her lead still attached. It was all I could do to hang on. It’s like she knew exactly where she had to go and what she was going to find.’

  ‘And what did she find?’

  ‘She found Naomi lying by this little stream.’ Anna tried to swallow, but her throat couldn’t seem to remember how. ‘She’d been stabbed over and over. There was blood everywhere. It was still flowing from her wounds.’ She glanced across at the inspector. ‘That means it had happened quite recently, doesn’t it?’

  He didn’t answer, just waited. Anna took a sip from her glass of water with its slight aftertaste of dust, while she steeled herself to tell the worst part. ‘Her face was – terribly damaged. Hardly recognizable.’ Noticing that she was unconsciously touching her own face, she forced both hands down into her lap.

  ‘But you still recognized her?’ said the inspector, gently steering Anna’s narrative. ‘You knew Ms Evans, is that right?’