A Stone's Throw

1 For the dozenth time in an hour, Nathan Stone stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his forehead. The heat, which the weather people had failed to predict until yesterday, four days after the start of his holiday, was mostly to blame for how he felt, but Nathan couldn’t deny that being out of shape played a part as well. He felt glad that he had chosen such a quiet location for his holiday as he sat on a moss-covered boulder a short distance from the bank of the river. There was no-one around to see him as he sweated and breathed heavily, and no-one to notice that it was almost five minutes before he felt sufficiently recovered to push himself up and continue his walk. Fortunately, he had only a little farther to go before he reached his destination, the waterfall that cascaded down from the moor above the wooded valley through which he was trekking. Once he made it to the waterfall and got a picture to prove he had managed the four-mile walk, he could turn around and head back to the small hotel where he was staying. The fact that it was likely to be another hour and a half, if not more, before he reached the hotel didn’t bother him, nor that it would be dusk by then. He was on holiday and had all the time in the world — that wasn’t quite true, he had nine days before he had to return to work, but that was as good as having all the time in the world — and he was having a good time, the first good time he could remember in a while. He was surrounded by the beautiful countryside of Devon, he had no investigations to worry about — when not on holiday he was a detective inspector in the town of Branton, which meant he was surrounded by death and violence more often than he liked — and he had seen numerous animals and birds, including a few birds of prey. He had even seen a couple of foxes, or it might have been the same fox seen twice. Foxes were not a surprising sight to him. Though he came from an urban environment, he had seen many a fox while working night shifts, there had even been one that made regular appearances in his back garden, when he had a back garden. He had lost the garden, along with the house it was attached to, in the arson attack that had killed his family. It took him barely a second to get from foxes to his family, and a similar length of time to go from a reasonable mood to being overcome by grief. It had been less than a year since his wife and children perished in the flames that left him without a home or a family and his sense of loss remained as strong as ever, with only the occasional distraction to take his mind from it. Fortunately, a distraction appeared just then to help him out. Out the corner of his eye, Nathan saw a blur of movement and automatically turned his head to try and identify it. His first thought was that it was a domestic cat, which would have been surprising enough given that they were several miles from the nearest house, but when the creature slowed, enabling him to see it better, he realised it was too big and the wrong colouring. Many reports of ‘beasts’ roaming the moors had appeared online and in the news over the years, but they were always big cats, jaguars or similar-sized creatures. What he saw was bigger than a domestic cat, but far too small to have given rise to the stories he had heard. Nonetheless the size and colouring made it clear that he was looking at a wildcat of some kind. The sight was so startling that for almost a minute all he could do was stare at the creature that, after its initial burst of speed, was now strolling casually along the riverbank. Once he recovered from his surprise, Nathan fumbled to get his camera out of its case, so he could record the sighting. The noise of the camera turning on cut through the silence of the woods, though, and by the time Nathan got the camera up all he was able to snap was a blur as the feline darted away in alarm. When he checked the picture, he saw that it was as bad as he had feared. If he showed it to anyone and tried to convince them that it was a wildcat, he would be looked at like he was trying to pass off a bright light in the sky as a UFO. Disappointed, he remained where he was for a couple of minutes in case the cat was going to reappear. When it didn’t, he continued to the waterfall, so he could get the picture he had been after in the first place. He then turned around to head back to his hotel, where he planned on getting some much-needed rest. ** NATHAN BLINKED RAPIDLY to adjust his eyes to the sudden gloom and gave an involuntary shiver as he stepped from the blazing heat of outside into the foyer of The Moor’s Edge hotel, where it was at least ten degrees cooler. Cooler it might be, but it was also stuffier, and Nathan was glad to step into the path of a fan that was circulating air when he reached the reception counter. He couldn’t help reflecting that if there had been a breeze while he was in the woods the day would have been almost perfect. “Good evening, sir.” “Hi,” Nathan returned the receptionist’s greeting. “Could I get my key please, room thirty-four.” “Of course.” The young man reached behind him to take down the key from the appropriate hook — The Moor’s Edge still used metal keys, rather than the electronic keycards that more and more hotels were adopting. “You have a message, sir,” he said, handing over a folded-up slip of paper along with the key. “Thanks.” Nathan took both the message and the key and left the foyer. He waited until he reached his room on the third floor to read the message that had been left for him, not that he expected it to be anything private. It turned out to be nothing important. All it said was that his friend, Louisa Orchard, had been trying to get hold of him and was worried because she had only been able to get his answerphone. A quick check of his phone revealed that he had two bars and an almost full battery, so he didn’t know why Louisa hadn’t been able to get hold of him. He reasoned that his signal must have disappeared while he was hiking through the countryside; given how far he had been from the village, where he only got half a signal, that seemed likely. He debated whether to call his friend back but decided against it. He was sure she had only been calling to check up on him, so there was no reason for him to rush to get in touch. He would call her in a while, and there was every chance that she would try again to hold of him if she didn’t hear from him quickly enough for her liking. It had been the same every day since he arrived in Donningford, Devon, either Louisa or his sister had called to make sure he was okay. They, along with his friend and occasional partner, Detective Sergeant Stephen Burke, had cajoled and almost bullied him into taking this holiday, so he could get some rest and relaxation and start to put the loss of his family behind him, yet they couldn’t help checking up on him constantly. He knew why they felt the need to hear his voice at least once a day — they were afraid that he would reach a low point and harm himself. He was past the point of doing that, though. He couldn’t say that he was okay with the murder of his family, he doubted he would ever be able to say that, but he no longer felt the intense grief over the death of his wife and kids that he had immediately following their loss, and he no longer wished to end his life and join them in whatever place a person went to after death. He was too hot and sticky to deal with his friend and her concerns just then. He was more interested in cooling down after his walk. Stripping off, he headed into the small en-suite bathroom that had convinced him to take a double room rather than a single, so he could clean off the sweat from his hike in the sun and freshen up before he went down for dinner. It wasn’t his normal habit to take his phone with him when he went for a shower, but he thought it best to do so, just in case Louisa tried calling him again. He wouldn’t put it past her to call the local police and have them track him down if she went too long without being able to get hold of him.