High Island Blues by Ann Cleeves

woodland. He said nothing. The woman gulped a sob and ran off. She was not used to running and she scuttled, clumsily and breathlessly. The man waited until she had disappeared into the trees and then he walked slowly after her.
    ‘Well,’ George said. ‘What a melodrama!’ Because some comment had to be made and the display of emotion always embarrassed him. ‘Were they members of your group?’
    ‘Not exactly,’ Rob said. ‘ Didn’t you recognize him, George? That’s my friend Oliver. The bitch in the flowery frock is Julia.’
    Oliver walked slowly back to the hotel. They had driven to Boy Scout Wood but after her outburst Julia had taken the car. He thought that was just a gesture. She wouldn’t have done anything silly. When he returned to Oaklands she would be ready for dinner, waiting for him. He wondered whether the certainty that she would still be there pleased or dismayed him, but found even that small decision impossible to make.
    He walked through the grid of small streets, avoiding the main road. A boy on a bicycle drove frantically past him then pulled on his brakes outside a house. He had probably been told to be in before dark. There was an oblong of light as the front door opened then the street was quiet again.
    As he turned in the gateway into Oaklands, Oliver wondered why he wasn’t more sorry that Mick was dead. He had hardly thought about the murder all afternoon, except as an inconvenience. Perhaps more than an inconvenience. A risk.
    It was probably because Mick had never given anything of himself away. He hadn’t trusted them. Like me with Julia, he thought ruefully. And look what happened when I tried to confide in her!
    Mick had opened up a bit at college but on that drive through the States he’d been as uptight as ever. Emotionally frozen, Sally might say. She was into psycho babble. Rob hadn’t noticed. He wouldn’t. And Oliver had forgotten how withdrawn Mick had been. Only now he had a picture of Mick in the hire car, always sitting in the back, never speaking, as they drove half-way across America. When they pointed things out to him – an eagle soaring over the red desert, a mountain ridge in the distance – he had turned his head, but he hadn’t really looked.
    Until they got to Oaklands and met Laurie, Oliver thought. Mick had looked at her. He had thawed out after that.
    Oliver walked through the trees and saw the house. There were lights in every window and as he approached he heard the sound of voices and laughter.
    He used the pay phone in the lobby to call his daughter. To put off the moment when he would have to face Julia. Then he went to their room prepared to apologize. Half an hour later, when he led his wife into dinner, no one would have believed that they had been rowing.
    During the meal George was overtaken by a terrible weariness so he could not concentrate on any of the conversations going on around him. He had asked not to be introduced to the West Country Wildlife party and he sat, unnoticed, at the foot of the large table where most of them had been placed. Perhaps because of the contrast between Julia’s exhibition in the wood and the polite and apparently amiable image the Adamsons now presented, it seemed to him that he could not trust any of the courteous exchanges which he overheard.
    After coffee he closed his eyes and almost dropped off to sleep where he sat. When he woke with a start a moment later solicitous faces were turned towards him. As if in a nightmare the gentle profiles of elderly men and women spun around him. He saw them as mocking masks hiding passions of hatred and revenge. Time for bed, he thought. Obviously he was too old to survive jet lag and a carafe of Californian wine without ill effect.
    When he had arrived at Oaklands the hotel had been full. As a favour to Rob, Mary Ann had offered to put him up in one of the staff rooms. These were in a new single-storey block built away from the house and he had to cross the garden to