Free Legacy of Lies by Jane A. Adams

don’t think I understand.’
    â€˜Crows,’ Alec said. ‘He was lying on his back. They go for the eyes.’
    â€˜Oh my God. I never thought.’ She shuddered. She had, in her career, encountered bodies in many states and conditions but that particular variation had escaped her thus far.
    â€˜It must have been a shock for the hikers,’ Alec said.
    â€˜I imagine so. Look, I brought you a copy of the post-mortem report seeing as you asked for it, but I have to warn you, it don’t make pleasant reading. This is the middle of nowhere and there are foxes and badgers and the like. They don’t fuss too much over what they eat.’
    â€˜No, I understand.’ Alec paused, taking this in. Naomi guessed that Fine would not have been as blunt had Alec not been a fellow officer.
    â€˜So,’ Alec said, ‘is it far from here?’
    â€˜About a fifteen minute walk, I’d say.’ Fine turned to Naomi. ‘Now, do you want to take my arm, or Alec’s or something?’
    â€˜Thanks, but no. You and Alec walk on, Napoleon and I will follow. So long as he’s got someone leading he’ll keep me on the path.’
    â€˜If you’re sure. It’s this way then.’
    She heard them set off, feet crunching on stones and then quieter as they reached earth and grass. She urged Napoleon to follow Alec, feeling a little nervous because the place was strange to her and to the dog and, being a route he’d not been trained on, he was effectively as lost as she would have been. She knew from experience, though, that he would be fine if Alec took the lead and she sensed that Alec needed that space, that opportunity to switch into inspector mode and try to separate from the raw emotions that must come with hearing the intricate details of Rupert’s death.
    It was so much harder when it was personal.
    Naomi listened to the landscape: flowing water, bubbling through what sounded like a narrow channel; shrieks of a bird she could not identify; and the cawing of those damned crows. She liked the Corvidae as a group, had a particular affection for jackdaws, but found herself suddenly repulsed by the thought of scavenger crows.
    It was so hot. Wide, open skies and a landscape almost empty of trees made for baking heat and she wished she’d thought to bring a hat. The sound of water, bubbling and trickling on either side of her jarred oddly with the dry heat of the windless day.
    â€˜Was it as hot as this when Rupert died?’ she asked.
    She heard Fine turn. ‘No, we’d had a wet spell. In fact the day he died was a misery. The ground beneath him was still soaking when they lifted him, but the day he was found was nearly as warm as this and he’d have dried where the sun caught him.’
    â€˜Any reason?’ Alec asked.
    â€˜Not really. I was wondering about tyre tracks. But why would he want to come out here on a wet day? Surely there’d be better places to meet someone even if he didn’t want them coming to his home.’
    â€˜Rupert was always eccentric,’ Alec reminded her, ‘and I never knew him mind the rain, even the sort of rain you get round here.’
    Fine laughed at that. ‘You’re on to something there,’ he said. ‘If the Inuit reckon they get fifty kinds of snow, I reckon we get twice that in species of rain. But no, we didn’t find any significant tyre tracks. Tourists and hikers, and locals too, are in and out of that bit of car park all the time. It’d be very hard to tell if Rupert had driven here in his own car, especially as we can’t find it.’
    â€˜Marcus said it was the Austin Healey …’
    â€˜And you’d think that would be easy to find, wouldn’t you, but we’ve had no sightings. Not one. My guess is it’s either parked up in a barn somewhere or it’s under water. Frankly, we don’t have the resources to do more than put out an all