A Deadly Affair in the Dales

1

One of life's little tricks, Ali suspected. You got the thing you wanted only to find it wasn't quite what you were expecting.

For as long as she could remember, she had dreamed of becoming a police officer, one day returning home to Heft to pound her local beat. Now here she was. Sergeant Ali Wren and her springer spaniel, PD Wilson, getting to grips with their new patch - and finding Heft busier than Harrogate, where they had come from. A good deal busier, in fact. Remarkable that a remote town in rural North Yorkshire (population 1,923) could be so demanding of its local constabulary. Not that she had any regrets. Heft, home, was where she wanted to be. It was just taking some getting used to.

She woke early. Sunday, and the promise of that rarest of things, a day off, as evidenced by the single blank square amid a sea of scribblings and crossings-out on her calendar. Calls were on divert to the station at Skipden and she was free to go where she pleased - do anything, do nothing. In theory. Since Ali and Wilson were Heft's sole police presence, a day off - a real day off, one that elicited no appeals for assistance, no complaints, not a single report of a crime being committed - could not be taken for granted. Ever. Which was why she and Wilson were heading out of town before Heft was awake, intent on a good long tramp in the May sunshine. No interruptions. 'We're unavailable,' she told Wilson. 'They'll have to manage without us.' Wilson, ever the optimist, looked up from his breakfast and wagged his tail.

She made a sandwich, cutting thick slices from a seeded sourdough loaf, feeling a stab of disloyalty as she did so. Usually, Ali bought her bread from Hooley's, but there was a rival over the road now, Rise, a so-called 'cakery-bakery', fast getting a name for its artisan loaves and fancy pastries. The menu changed weekly: choux buns oozing apple crumble and custard, lemon meringue confections, croissant cubes, dainty tarts filled with chocolate and pistachio. Ali had succumbed to wafer-thin slices of pastry layered with almond, topped with crisp meringues, sticky raspberry jam. Too good to eat. Almost.

For Evelyn Hooley, proprietor of Heft's long-established, family-run bakery, the arrival of the newcomers had caused consternation, Rise regarded as an intruder, unwelcome. Of late, barely a day went by without Evelyn complaining of some new baking-related outrage. As if by virtue of existing, the rival bakers were somehow breaking the law.

Now tables and chairs had appeared on the pavement in front of the new shop, prompting Evelyn to protest: 'Is that allowed? Is it even legal?' Ali had promised to look into it. It was, it turned out, news Evelyn didn't take well. 'What are they, a bakery, a café?' Both, it seemed.

Evelyn was in her sixties and well thought of in Heft. Strong and lean from years of heaving sacks of flour about, she cut a dash in her shop uniform of tailored boiler suit, Hooley's embroidered on the breast pocket, her blonde hair styled in a flattering pixie cut. Ali thought back to the day before, Evelyn's latest call. 'Have you seen what they've done? Only copied our pies!'

For almost a century, the supremacy of the famous Hooley Heft - tender beef from an award-winning local herd, heritage potatoes, rich gravy, encased in buttery shortcrust pastry - had gone unchallenged. And Hooley's boast to bake 'the best bread in Ravensdale' had long been accepted as fact. Now, Rise had produced a pie they were calling a 'Hefty', one which to the untrained eye bore a striking resemblance to Hooley's well-known bake and, if that weren't enough, a sign had appeared in the window of the newcomer, promising 'the finest bread in Ravensdale'. Finest in an eye-catching, cursive script.

Evelyn was livid. She complained, citing theft of copyright, fraud, provocation. 'If that's not a shot across the bows, I don't know what is.'

Ali endeavoured to tread carefully. In the interests of maintaining good community relations, she took seriously every grievance laid at her door, even those that weren't strictly police matters, listening, remaining impartial, doing all she could to calm frayed tempers. Usually it was enough and had worked well in a dispute between neighbours threatening legal action over the hedge that ran along their shared boundary. Ali's softly, softly approach had taken the heat out of things. Evelyn, though, would not be placated. And now, unfolding at an alarming rate on Heft's main street was what Ali had begun to think of as the Battle of the Bakers. A flour-power struggle, her husband Nick called it.

She wiped down the kitchen bench, popped a capsule in the espresso machine and put the sourdough back in the bread bin next to a crust from one of Hooley's farmhouse loaves. Nothing could compete with Evelyn's white bread. It made the best toast. Ali sighed. The friction between Hooley's and Rise was not really her concern. It wasn't an offence to open a bread shop. And yet. What if things escalated, threatened the harmony of the high street? Wasn't it her duty to do what she could to keep the peace?

'The best thing about Sunday is that the bakers are shut,' she told Wilson. He thumped his tail on the floor in agreement.

She spread mayonnaise thickly onto the bread, cut slices of cheese, a tomato, wondering what Evelyn might say about the local law enforcement patronising the enemy. It didn't bear thinking about. Hooley's didn't sell sourdough, though, and Ali still shopped with Evelyn, the custard tart on the kitchen counter proof, if needed, of her continuing loyalty.

She glanced at the clock. Early, not yet seven. Not too early for a work call, though, a knock at the door. It wouldn't be the first time.

This is what happens when you live on the patch, she told herself. Once you make yourself accessible, approachable, your mobile number displayed in the window of the Post Office, on the noticeboard outside the church hall next to signs for Italian conversation and Tai Chi classes. Day, or night, on duty or not, she and Wilson could be called upon, summoned from their beds even in the small hours.

Nick had sensed her desire to be so accessible might make privacy hard to come by, but when he said so Ali simply shrugged. She wanted to know the people she was serving, she said, wanted them to know her - to feel she was a presence, there for them. He raised an eyebrow at that. There's knowing, he said, and then there's a bit too knowing.

'In The Beat,' Nick told her, 'the local bobby never gets a minute's peace.' Nick was Location Manager on a long-running police drama series set in the Dales in a different time, silly and nostalgic.

'It's made up, The Beat,' Ali had countered. 'Not real life.'

Nick simply said, 'If you ask me, real life can be a whole lot weirder.'

He had a point.

Ali's predecessor, Barry East, a cynical PC who'd done his thirty years and couldn't wait to retire, was not exactly complimentary about the people of Heft. 'A bolshy lot, never backward in coming forward.' Complaints (whether or not they fell within the remit of the police, he said, mildly outraged) came in thick and fast. The best thing she could do was find somewhere to live out of town to avoid being bothered at all hours. Ali had told him she really didn't mind. It was why she was there, why she had chosen to relocate from Harrogate to Ravensdale, return to the town she knew, one that knew her. She had found space for an office at home, just big enough for a desk and a filing cabinet. Skipden, the nearest station, located twelve miles away, could be reached in under half an hour, and once a week she reported in person to the Chief Superintendent there. Otherwise, her base was Heft, an arrangement that suited her perfectly. She wanted to be visible. At the heart of things. She wanted - and her predecessor had laughed when she said this - to make a difference, however much of a cliché that might seem.

From the kitchen window she could see the bird feeders, a pair of bullfinches on the sunflower seeds, a blackbird underneath, and, beyond, the crag. She thought back to house-hunting with Nick, finding it disheartening initially, thinking they'd never find anywhere as nice as their place in Harrogate. He was confident, his work in TV, scouting for locations, giving him access to a useful network of contacts, including local estate agents, which was how he'd heard about Larkspur. The name alone was almost enough for Ali. A stone-built cottage, on the edge of Heft. Fruit trees at the back, a rose-strewn archway leading to a hidden nook, a summer house. Cold Beck at the end of the garden. It was perfect.

As Nick (and, in fairness, PC East) had warned, the downside of returning to live and work in Heft was quite how readily the locals called on their new sergeant and her dog for assistance. Even off duty and out of uniform - whether attempting a swift drink in the Fox & Newt with Nick (almost unheard of), a hurried dip in the River Lune (ditto) or walking Wilson - she had learned to be braced for a tap on the shoulder.

All manner of incidents came her way, many of which would not have got a look-in at her old station: vehicles minus the required Blue Badge occupying the disabled bay at St Michael's, a wing mirror damaged in the awkward little car park behind the hair and beauty salon,...