The Sleeping and the Dead
Page 31
‘Arthur.’
Porteous nodded. ‘Later Frank had second thoughts and told Hunter what he’d done.’
‘And Arthur told Hunter to kill her?’
Porteous didn’t answer directly. ‘Hunter recognized the name. Got greedy.’
‘How did you work it all out?’ In time to save my daughter.
‘Dr Cornish had saved a book from Redwood. It was a record of all the kids she’d worked with, but Arthur’s name was in the staff register at the back. I missed it first time. And his car was seen close to Alec Reeves’s house on the night he was murdered. By then Arthur was panicking, desperate to throw suspicion elsewhere. Like Mel, Alec was starting to ask questions . . .’
There was a silence. ‘Rosie’s tough,’ Porteous said. ‘Brave. She’ll be OK.’
Perhaps, Hannah thought. But will I? She looked out over the flat water to the hills on the opposite bank. In a few weeks her reckless daughter would be away to university. She’d live on her own and Hannah wouldn’t know where she was or what she was doing. Hannah would retreat to the safety of the prison with its rules and its walls, but Rosie would dance and shimmy through the strange town in the south and there’d be nothing Hannah could do to protect her.
As Peter Porteous filled her glass his hand touched hers. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘She’ll be OK.’
Yes, Hannah thought. Of course we will. Both of us.
The Sleeping
And The Dead
Ann Cleeves lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and their two daughters. As a member of the ‘Murder Squad’, she works with other Northern writers to promote crime fiction.
She is also the author of the Inspector Ramsay series. More recently she has turned to writing psychological suspense novels, of which The Crow Trap was the first, followed by The Sleeping And The Dead. Her latest novel, Burial of Ghosts, will be available in Macmillan hardback in early 2003.
By the same author
A Bird in the Hand
Come Death and High Water
Murder in Paradise
A Prey to Murder
A Lesson in Dying
Murder in my Backyard
A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy
Another Man’s Poison
Killjoy
The Man on the Shore
Sea Fever
The Healers
High Island Blues
The Baby-Snatcher
The Crow Trap
First published 2001 by Macmillan
This edition published 2002 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-54052-0 EPUB
Copyright © Ann Cleeves 2001
The right of Ann Cleeves to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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