Someone Who Isn't Me Danuta Kot (best books to read .TXT) 📖

trail after another, overwhelmed by a new place and the variety of new smells. She wandered along behind him, her hands in the pockets of her waterproof. The phone call with Dev had been depressing. Did she really want to put herself through that rigamarole of office politics, work in a job that paid her for three days and expected her to be on call for seven? Idly, she played with the idea of retiring, of spending her days walking with Milo, enjoying the changing seasons, living at a slower pace than she had for most of her life, just enjoying the time she had left.

But that was old-woman thinking. She’d tried that, hadn’t she, living in that isolated little cottage outside Whitby, and it had driven her mad. She was loving this walk, but only because it was a treat for her to have some time to herself. If it was always like this, then it wouldn’t be the same. Anyway, why was she letting herself be influenced by Dev Johar’s attitude? He was wrong, she knew he was wrong, and she’d make him admit he was wrong.

And Poppy…?

Today was not a work day. She’d think about Poppy tomorrow.

Without really planning it, she had been following the line of one of the drains. It ran right down to the shoreline. Letting her curiosity guide her, she followed the grassy path, keeping a wary eye on Milo who was trotting happily beside her. The drain was deeper here and she really didn’t fancy fishing him out of it. They crossed what looked like a sluice gate – of course, when the tide was high, the water could run back from the estuary onto the land – and followed the drain down to the shore.

There was something flapping in the wind. As she got closer, she saw yellow and black tape and the words ‘Crime Scene’. Much of the tape must have been taken down – this was just a piece left behind – but it brought back to her Catherine Ford’s story of a body found down near the water.

This must be Spragger Drain sluice.

But she hadn’t talked about a crime, just a death. And Kay had assumed an accident.

The other night came back to her; the sound of a door closing softly, Kay sitting in the kitchen, her eyes fixed on the door as the footsteps came closer…

She clipped on Milo’s lead and, moving slowly, she walked towards the embankments. There was a hard-standing at the end of the drain, cut by a deep culvert. The tide was out. Below her, the foreshore was strewn with rocks, green and covered with wet seaweed, gleaming in the watery light.

The tracks of birds marked the wet sand, and a single line of footprints showed a walker had gone that way not long before. She looked west and saw that a path ran along the top of the embankment. You couldn’t get down to the foreshore from here – it was a steep drop – but further away along the path, it would be possible.

They could walk along here, she and Milo, but not now, not today, so close to the reminders of a death.

The almost monastic silence of Sunk Island seemed suddenly not peaceful, but sinister.

She shook herself. This was the same kind of thinking that led teenage girls to scream hysterically about ghosts and demons. Hadn’t bad things happened at her cottage? Didn’t bad things happen everywhere?

It was just that this was such a bleak and lonely place to die.

The clouds were closing in fast. She needed to get back. It took her a moment to get her bearings – the estuary behind her, the house – not visible, but surely over there. Calling to Milo, she set off again across the fields.

She followed the track further inland then turned west. Unexpectedly, in this flat, open landscape, she found herself walking towards a copse of trees. Soon she was in among them – the ground was covered with the dead leaves of last winter and the branches made spider webs against the sky. There were old buildings here – ruins with lichened stone walls, thick and windowless.

She’d heard about this – a gun battery built over a hundred years ago to defend the mouth of the Humber. The trees must have grown up since the last war, as they obscured the view across the estuary.

Milo, his energy spent in his initial mad run, was walking quietly along the path. He wandered among the buildings, his nose to the ground, and she meandered behind him. She’d have to come here another day when she had more time, bring some sandwiches and a flask and explore these buildings properly. She called Milo, who was showing interest in some steps that led downwards into darkness, and turned inland. She looked at the sky. The clouds were gathering and the light was fading.

She didn’t want to find herself out here in the dark, away from shelter once the rain started. Time to head back to the house.

Something was blowing across the ground, something yellow. At first, she thought it was more of the crime scene tape, but as she got closer, she saw it was an empty plastic sack, bright yellow with a picture on the front.

She knew what it was before she picked it up.

She had seen one just like it a couple of days before, in the fuel store at her house.

A compost bag.

Chapter 21

Bridlington

Becca’s head was pounding as she stuck price labels on tins and pushed them onto the supermarket shelf. Andy was dead.

Bryan’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘Becca. Those tins do not go on that shelf. And those are not reduced. What do you think you’re doing? You need to buck your ideas up if you want to keep on working here. Get all this stuff off the shelves now and do them again, right?’

She hadn’t slept last night, just lain there listening to the