Death on Coffin Lane

by Jo Allen

  There couldn’t be much that was more stressful than dealing with Cody Wilder in the immediate run-up to a major presentation, even without the added piquancy of death threats from person or persons unknown. ‘So what do we conclude?’ Jude asked. ‘That he just cracked?’

  ‘It looks like it. Chris found out a little bit about what might have driven him over the edge, and I expect the coroner will be very interested in it, as will the boy’s parents. But it’s not enough for a criminal prosecution.’

  Jude looked across the table at Chris, who was looking down at his laptop. ‘I think you’ve probably guessed. When his parents said she was a sexual predator they weren’t far off the mark. According to one of her previous researchers, sexual favours are a de facto part of the job. I didn’t get the impression that that necessarily bothered that particular young man, and he certainly didn’t seem to think anyone else was bothered about it either. Sex with a dominant older woman? Turns some people on, I suppose.’

  ‘But maybe not Owen?’

  ‘Maybe not. Or maybe it did, and maybe he got tired of it and she wouldn’t let go, or vice versa. I’m not sure I’d be in a hurry to get on the wrong side of her if she was my boss. Either way, it seems to me that she has some questions to answer, if only of her own conscience.’

  Silence. Everyone was looking at Jude, expectantly.

  ‘You’re not happy, are you?’ Doddsy picked up an empty coffee mug and sighed into its depths. ‘There aren’t even any biscuits. I had a packet. God knows who ate them. We should make an incident board for that, too. I can think of a few suspects.’

  On the matter of Doddsy’s missing biscuits, Jude’s conscience wasn’t entirely clear. It would certainly be a case more easily solved. ‘No. You’re right. I keep telling myself it’s straightforward, but I can’t convince myself.’

  ‘What have we missed?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve missed anything, but you know me. I can’t abide a coincidence.’ Two deaths, so close in time and space. And the medication. What did you say the toxicology report said?’

  Flicking through a pile of notes, Doddsy read out the relevant section of the report. ‘Double dose. Technically an overdose.’

  ‘But he could have taken more. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. He had two weeks’ supply of tablets in his room.’

  ‘Okay. So why didn’t he just take the whole lot? Isn’t that very much easier than finding a rope and then jumping off a table?’ And if you wanted to kill yourself, why wouldn’t you do it the easy way?

  Doddsy laid his notes down. ‘You don’t want me to pass that on to the coroner, then.’

  ‘I don’t think we can. Not without the answer to that question.’

  There was an awkward silence. Doddsy broke it. ‘We’ll leave it live, then. See if anyone can come up with some answers.’

  ‘What about Lynx?’ Ashleigh, who’d been hitherto silent, moved the conversation on. ‘I know we have the PM results, and I know Tammy’s finished on the crime scene.’

  Jude would have liked to get Tammy down to talk them through it, clear, concise and always ready to answer questions, but she’d been busy elsewhere. ‘Did you speak to her, Doddsy?’

  ‘Yes. We had a long and interesting chat. But I’ll do the PM first. That was interesting too.’ He consulted his notes. ‘Multiple blows from a large knife. Blade around six inches. Struck by a right-handed person, from above and behind, to the right.’

  ‘Someone taller than him?’ Chris nodded. ‘How tall was he, anyway?’

  Jude checked his notes. In his mind, the figure of Lynx, at a safe distance on the day of Cody’s lecture, ducked back out of his sight. Was he shy, or a man with something to hide? ‘He was just under six feet, which would imply someone much taller. That said, and bearing in mind where he was found, it seems more likely that he was bending over the woodpile when he was attacked. In which case, that doesn’t tell us anything about the height of his attacker.’

  ‘He died where he was found,’ Doddsy confirmed. ‘The time of death is put at about eight o’clock, give or take half an hour. That’s the crucial thing, I think. It would have been dark, or more or less. There might have been a little light in the eastern sky, and some light from the fire or the brazier, both of which had gone out by the time he was found but were still hot, so would have been alight when he died.’

  That meant there would have been enough light for someone to see a figure but not necessarily identify it. ‘What did Tammy have to say? Anything specific?’

  ‘We won’t know about the forensics until we get the results back from the lab. Similarly, with the toxicology tests. I think we know what they’ll show, because there was a stash of weed under the floorboards of his tent. Not that that’s really a surprise.’

  When Jude first visited the camp, there had been the faintest scent of marijuana about it, and rather to his shame he’d chosen to conclude that it wasn’t strong enough for him to be certain, that he didn’t need to get involved. He’d thought of Mikey, and his brother’s youthful misdemeanours. It had taken him a long time to learn the consequences of being heavy-handed.

  Lynx had learned, too. When the place had been flooded with police the previous week, the only fragrance drifting out from the camp had been the unmistakably innocent smell of woodsmoke. Maybe if they’d gone into the hippy camp on a drugs bust, he’d still be alive. They’d never know. ‘Did the findings confirm the PM?’

  ‘Pretty much. The way the body was found seems to indicate that Lynx had gone there of his own accord and that he was surprised by someone as he bent over the woodpile. There were marks going down to the water but the ground was too soft to get any decent footmarks.’

  Jude looked across at the photos pinned onto the board. Even with decent equipment, the greyness of the weather in Grasmere meant that the pictures appeared in monotone, like arty prints on sale in the village’s many galleries, and the images of Lynx’s lifeless body reminded him of the covers of paperback thrillers. There were no pictures of Lynx alive.

  ‘What else did she come up with from Lynx’s tent?’

  ‘There were no finger-marks, but someone had been looking for something. Not the drugs, obviously, unless there were more. If that was what they were after, they’d have taken them.’

  Jude took the conversation back a stage. ‘Think about the half-light when he died. Could it have been mistaken identity?’

  ‘You meant someone thought they were killing Storm? Or Raven?’

  ‘Possibly so.’ Jude doodled a picture of a campfire on his pad, deep in thought. There were so many options, so many possibilities. Which of them would lead to the truth? ‘On balance, I think not. If so, why search the tent?’

  ‘A red herring.’ Chris looked cheerful, as though the discovery of the marijuana had confirmed his view of the doubtful nature of the Grasmere camp. ‘Or one of them could have done it.’

  Sitting back, Jude chewed the end of his pen, thoughtfully. His gut told him that neither Storm nor Raven was capable of such violence even if they’d shown any particular dislike for Lynx, and their tolerance and forbearance of him, as of anybody else, was both admirable and difficult to fake. ‘They could. Let’s think that one through. Ashleigh.’ She’d been mainly quiet until that point, but silence didn’t mean a lack of engagement, just that she was someone who processed information internally whereas the rest of them tended to think aloud. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Too many.’ She folded both hands in front of her, like a schoolteacher in a bad mood. ‘I can’t sort out what’s going on. Too many people are lying.’

  ‘You have to be sure before you can accuse anyone of that.’ Chris, who was sometimes inclined to patronise his superiors, shook his head.

  ‘I am sure. Raven offered to read the tarot cards for me, and I said yes.’ She avoided Jude’s eye, as if she wanted to keep her own relationship with the tarot a secret. ‘My grandmother used to read the cards, so I know a bit about them. Anyway, wha
t Raven turned up was a completely random selection.’

  ‘Surely it’s that anyway?’ Chris flipped the cards aside, his youthful impatience showing through.

  Ashleigh ignored him. ‘The story she proceeded to spin me wasn’t explicit. I think she’s too clever for that. But it pointed us to a strong woman up a hill.’

  ‘Cody Wilder.’

  ‘Yes. And there was a mention of a tall man who’d made a long journey.’

  ‘Brandon?’

  ‘I think that’s what she wants us to think. She claimed she saw a man fitting Brandon’s description in the woods on the day Owen died. I went back and showed her a picture of him, and she gave us a positive ID.’

  ‘You checked Brandon’s stated flight time against the passenger lists, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. He flew out from Chicago on the Thursday morning, as he said.’

  ‘So Raven can’t have seen him.’ Ashleigh sighed. ‘Maybe she was mistaken, but I think she was deliberately pointing us towards him. And then, there was that reference to a man in the woods.’

  ‘The man that Storm saw.’

  Ashleigh folded her lips together. She liked Raven, Jude knew, just as he did, and he could tell how hard she was fighting to retain her objectivity. ‘The man he says he saw. Because this man was specifically covered in the door-to-door questionnaire and nobody we’ve spoken to saw anyone fitting anything like the vague description Storm gave us of him. He’s the only one who says he saw him. Even Raven says she never saw anyone. And there’s something else.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s been cold. It’s been wet. What do we know about Storm and Raven? We know they reject most of the things we think of as necessary. We know they keep the place tidy—’

  ‘They aren’t what you’d call clean, though, are they?’ Chris shook his head over this shortcoming.

  There was, indeed, a faint human smell that hung around the camp, and about its occupants. ‘They don’t really have the options, to be fair.’ Jude sighed. ‘If they want to have a bath or wash their clothes, they have to make a huge effort. Sometimes the Gordons help them out.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point.’ Ashleigh nodded. ‘After I’d been to see Raven and she’d read the cards, I went along and looked to see what I could see. And do you know what I saw?’ She looked around the table at their expectant faces. ‘Look at the pictures of the site.’

  They turned to look at the board. ‘Clothes.’ Doddsy wrinkled his face, as if a missing piece of Auntie Gladys’s puzzle had revealed something surprising and unpleasant.

  ‘Yes. On the line. Drying. They’re a man’s clothes and they weren’t there the day before.’

  ‘It’s always bloody wet up here.’ Chris was a southerner at heart. ‘No chance of getting them dry. So why wash them unless you’ve got something to hide?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  A theory formulated in Jude’s brain. ‘Let’s see. Both Storm and Raven claimed they were in their tent asleep at what we know is the time of his death. They wake up with the light, they said. But that might not be true.’

  ‘It surely can’t have been Raven who killed him.’ Ashleigh gave them all an apologetic glance, as if she were aware of her own vulnerability, her tendency to care too much. ‘Whoever killed him must have been strong, and she’s incredibly slight. She couldn’t have inflicted injuries like that. But if Storm killed Lynx, he might have persuaded her to lie to cover his tracks. And they’d have pointed us to Brandon because it was easy. He stands out like a sore thumb so she could be reasonably certain her description would point us towards him.’ Raven so obviously adored Storm, and the two of them lived in their own world, wrote and abided by their own rules. ‘If he did do it and she knew, I don’t think she knew straight away. She’d have backed up his story about a man in the woods.’

  There were more questions than answers. Jude looked at the clock. ‘I don’t know if there’s much more to gain from this tonight. Time to head off. We’ll reconvene at some point in the morning.’ They could stay there all night chewing over the possibilities. ‘The main thing to come from this is that we need to find out everything about Lynx, and why someone might have wanted to kill him.’

  ‘Leave that with me.’ This was exactly the kind of challenge Chris relished.

  ‘One last thing.’ Jude motioned Ashleigh back, as the other two got their coats. Chris’s last glance over his shoulder and a half-wink to no one in particular indicated that the relationship, though not public knowledge, was now an open secret in the office. ‘I meant to ask you. Cody Wilder. She’s emailed me to say that she’s giving her interview to this journalist tomorrow and has invited me to send any one of my detectives along to sit in. What do you think that’s about?’

  Deep in thought, Ashleigh twined the end of her ponytail around her finger in a way he could never stop looking at. ‘One of two things. Either she genuinely does want to save the effort of having to go through the story of her life twice, or else she doesn’t want to be on her own with the woman.’

  ‘I think it goes without saying that I’d like you to do it.’ Chris and Doddsy had left the room, and so he felt emboldened to smile at her in a way he might not have done in their presence.

  ‘One thing’s for certain.’ She pulled on her coat and picked up her bag. ‘I’m not likely to allow my sympathy for Cody Wilder to affect my judgement.’

  ‘Excellent. I don’t know whether she’ll take questions from you, but you might learn something.’ Ashleigh was a good listener and an instinctive judge of character, of right and wrong, someone who knew when she was in the presence of a liar. They could do with more people like that.

  ‘I’m worried about Cody,’ she said out of the blue.

  ‘Oh?’ He turned to watch her as she slid her arms into her coat and buttoned it up, tempted to wait and walk down to the car park with her, but equally sure that someone, somewhere would think it didn’t look good.

  ‘Yes. Tyrone said she laid into a complete stranger in Grasmere today. Over her dog, and the fact that the woman’s kid was playing with yew berries. He thought he was going to have to go over and intervene, but her brother sorted it out and took her off. Perhaps it isn’t surprising the pressure’s getting to her.’

  ‘All the more reason to catch whoever killed Lynx.’ And to find out if anyone had killed Owen. ‘Good luck with it. I’ll see you back in the office tomorrow.’

  She whisked out of the room. He locked the drawer of his desk, picked up his laptop bag and followed her.

  ‘Isn’t DCI Satterthwaite taking you home for a personal debrief tonight?’ Superintendent Groves was saying to Ashleigh, with his meaningful chuckle. He must have been walking along the corridor as she walked out and she couldn’t have seen him, or she’d surely have dodged back into the office.

  Annoyed, Jude took a few long strides along the corridor. ‘No, Ashleigh and I are going our separate ways this evening. Another day we might not. Is there a problem with that?’ He strode on, leaving Groves in his wake.

  It took Ashleigh a few sprinted steps to catch up with him. ‘Thanks for that, but really. I could—’

  ‘Yes. But why should you?’ Did he really care whether people thought his behaviour towards her was unprofessional? It was a whole lot better than what he’d just witnessed. ‘That wasn’t okay.’

  ‘He’s harmless, Jude. He’s like that with everyone.’

  ‘He isn’t like that with me.’

  ‘You know what I mean. With every woman. People just learn to ignore it. And anyway, he won’t do anything. The whole place has worked out we’re sleeping with each other by now. Did you really think they hadn’t?’

  They’d reached reception by then, and headed out into the car park. Ashleigh’s car was parked closer to the building than his, so they paused for a moment next to it. ‘It’s better that I said something than you.’

  ‘If the secret’s out, perhaps you can kiss me goodbye in the car park without caring?’ />
  He laughed at her, but he accepted the invitation, though it only partly eased his irritation at Groves’s attitude. The dislike between him and his boss was mutual, and Groves wasn’t a man to forget an insult, but he was ready enough to take that on.

  It had always been like that. When he stopped to think about it, he’d seen those attitudes, whether conscious or subconscious, casual or crassness disguised as clumsy wit, but he’d never done anything about it before.

  Times were changing. Groves would retire in a year and then they could all start anew with someone who wasn’t a dinosaur.

  11

  The detective sergeant, thank God, arrived before Fi Styles. True, there was something of the devil and the deep blue sea about the interview and when she reflected on it, Cody, more than a match for either woman, could only imagine that the police presence had somehow made her more nervous than she felt.

  ‘I must have been mad,’ she said to Brandon as she watched Ashleigh stepping smartly up the path. ‘Why did I agree to speak to the journalist anyway?’

  ‘Honey, you agreed to speak to her so she’ll shut up and go away. And she will.’

  She might, but Cody couldn’t quite rid herself of the fear that Fi Styles’s terrier-like determination to get an interview owed less to her plan for a scoop for the arts section of the national papers and more to a desire to dig out something that might have wider and, for Cody herself, more damaging implications. An ambitious journalist was one thing. Cody’s own conscience, only just waking from a lifetime of slumber, was quite another. And there was that telling little line that had caught her unawares – Fi Styles’s claim to be a friend of Owen’s.

  Maybe that was all it was — a claim, and a false one. One thing was sure. She didn’t know which and she didn’t dare be wrong. ‘And the detective?’

  ‘It saves you having to talk to the police separately and having her here will stop your journalist getting too stroppy with you.’

  Nothing ever fazed Brandon, who had an answer for everything. She smiled at him. ‘You’re right. It’s an hour of my time. The police are taking a while to decide Owen killed himself, but they’ll get there, and then we can go.’