Page 96 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

Herdwick Croft, Shap Fell, Cumbria

Most people experience nature as scenery.

Something pretty. A postcard, or a fleeting moment captured by a smartphone camera.

They go back to their cities and talk about how quiet it was.

How dark the skies were. That the air smelled different.

Cleaner. They talk about how they loved their wild camping weekend and that they couldn’t wait to go back again , their stories carefully edited to avoid mentioning the glamping pods, the shower huts, the free wi-fi, the amenities they’d never admit to being addicted to.

Glampers didn’t glamp at Shap Fell, though.

The harsh moor wasn’t Beatrix Potter’s Cumbria.

It wasn’t photo friendly, not in the way that Catbells or the Old Man of Coniston were.

It was unforgiving. It was a fell with teeth and attitude.

The kind of landscape where Grendel, Beowulf ’s monster, might have summered.

Most of the year, as Poe would be the first to admit, it was a bloody wretched place.

A wet desert, steeped in mist and misery.

The only people he saw hiking up and down Shap Fell were serious about what they were doing.

They had the right equipment, the right footwear.

They knew what to do when things went wrong.

They were Poe’s kind of people, people he would share a pint and a tall tale with in the Greyhound Inn.

Which was why, when he crested the hill that brought Herdwick Croft, his once dilapidated shepherd’s cottage, into view, he knew something was wrong.

He couldn’t see anything, but he knew it, the same way he knew when a suspect was hiding a terrible secret.

Edgar knew it too. They hadn’t been to Herdwick Croft for a few weeks, and the spaniel was ridiculously excited to be going home.

Had probably been looking forward to bullying the sheep and scaring the foxes.

But the moment he saw the cottage, his tail stopped wagging.

Went straighter than a ruler. He let out a low growl.

Poe tapped the brakes on his quad, his transport from the Shap Wells Hotel, and turned off the engine.

He put his hand on Edgar’s back. ‘I feel it too, mate.’ He got off the quad.

Pocketed the key. Said to Edgar, ‘Think you can be quiet?’

The spaniel replied with another long, low growl.

Poe wasn’t due to ruin Ezekiel Puck’s life for another three days. There was no reason for Puck to have turned his sight Poe’s way yet. Plus, Puck was a sniper, not an ambush predator. He didn’t get up close and personal with his victims.

Someone else was in Herdwick Croft.

Poe didn’t know who it could be. His neighbour, Victoria, sometimes popped in, made sure everything was as it should be. But she didn’t visit this late at night, and if she did, she wouldn’t sit in the dark. And everyone else he knew was back at Highwood.

The first-floor light flashed on and off. Whoever was in his cottage had moved upstairs. Poe set off towards it, at a half jog. He wanted to get there before the mystery person was downstairs again. ‘Let’s surprise this prick, Edgar.’

Poe knew the land around Herdwick Croft better than any living person.

Even in the dark, he knew the location of every crevice, every ankle-turning rock granite, every bit of standing water.

He knew where to walk and where not to walk.

And he knew how to approach his cottage in silence.

He reached it in under a minute. He listened at the door but heard nothing.

He turned the handle and nudged it open with his foot.

Still nothing. He stepped inside and quickly made his way to the sink.

He reached underneath and grabbed his skillet.

Twelve pounds of cast iron. A skull-crushing weapon, more useful than a baseball bat.

He gripped it in his right hand. Tested the heft, the weight.

Which was when someone turned on the downstairs light. Poe shielded his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw Matt Towler, Archie Arreghini’s bodyguard, sitting on his sofa. He had a bottle of Spun Gold in his hand. He wiped some froth off his top lip.

‘Let’s not get melodramatic, Poe,’ he sighed. ‘Put the fucking frying pan down.’