Mist rolls off the Llangwm fields in thick, grey ribbons, clinging to the rusted iron of the front gate. Tied to the top bar, a yellowed wool cardigan shivers in the dawn breeze. It is a small thing, sized for a girl who never quite became a woman, its sleeves weighted with the damp of the valley.
DI Rhian Lloyd stands perfectly still, her leather boots sinking into the soft verge. The wool is unmistakable, the exact shade of gorse she remembers from the summer Bethan disappeared. Beside the gate, Carys Pryce watches the garment as if it might breathe. The older woman’s skin is the colour of well-worn parchment, her eyes two hard flints set against the morning light. She has waited fifteen years for the valley to give something back, and here it is, offered up on a hinge of salt and iron.
Carys turns her back to walk toward the farmhouse without a word, her boots crunching on the gravel. As she moves, her hand reaches into her apron pocket and withdraws a folded, yellowed envelope. She extends it backward toward Rhian without looking.
