Death on the River: A gripping and unputdownable English murder mystery (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 2)

by Clare Chase

  At that moment, she looked up in the direction of Fen Ditton and caught her breath. Blake. What the hell was he doing there? She could see him across the meadow, outside a house that was out on the edge of things, just like hers, side on to the plain. He had a young girl in his arms and was lifting her high into the air and then swinging her down again. The girl threw her head back and laughed – a look of glee on her face. And in that second a petite woman appeared at the house’s door, slamming it shut behind her. Tara watched the woman for a moment, observing Blake and the child. There was an odd stillness about her. Then Blake realised he had company and brought the girl down one final time, took her hand and walked towards a car, where the woman joined them. Suddenly he turned in the direction of the meadows and she was afraid he’d see her.

  Not that it would matter. It wasn’t as though she was spying on him. She’d had no idea he lived in Fen Ditton. It was weird that his house was almost a pair for hers – except that hers was further out on a limb. That had to be a metaphor for her life. How ironic.

  But she didn’t want to be seen. The picture of his family life she’d just witnessed seemed so intimate somehow. She tried to ignore the weight that she suddenly felt in her chest. In a second she’d tugged up the collar of her coat and turned quickly towards Bea, her head down.

  Her relative’s face looked more relaxed than she’d seen it in a while. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For saving this up until you were back. But I can’t tell you how much it’s helped, tackling it together.’

  ‘I’m glad. And I’m glad to be here.’

  She nodded. ‘Shall we go home now?’

  ‘Yes. I can make you hot chocolate at my place before you go back to the fray.’

  Bea rubbed her hands and pulled her right-hand glove back on. ‘That sounds like a plan.’

  Back at the cottage, Tara had to warn Bea about the ice on the tiles, but she didn’t explain her suspicions about how it had come to be there. Unlike Tara’s colleagues, Bea would take it seriously, and the last thing she needed was more worry.

  Instead, she ushered her inside, put the kettle on and went to drag a fan heater out of the under-stairs cupboard. ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘and I’ll point this at your feet.’

  Bea rolled her eyes. ‘I still can’t believe you’ve moved back here.’

  But Tara guessed it wasn’t just the lack of creature comforts that made Bea wonder. People tended to imagine that having been stalked in her teens, and targeted by a killer, she’d want to avoid such a secluded location. Who would hear her if she screamed? But Tara saw it the other way round. Out where she was, in the open, it was easier to spot anyone who’d singled her out. In the centre of the city, the malignant stranger that meant you harm could be the person who’d just rented the flat one floor down. But there were other advantages to being away from the hubbub too. When she’d moved to Suffolk to do her police training she’d had to rent the bottom half of a semi-detached house in suburban Ipswich – the income she’d got from letting out her Cambridge cottage had barely covered her mortgage, so upgrading hadn’t been an option. The person upstairs had been a web designer who preferred working at night. To loud music. She’d missed the tranquillity of her home on the common. She valued her own space. She couldn’t say that to Bea, though. Not now. Not when she was suddenly in the same position against her will: all alone except for her paying guests.

  ‘I’m fond of this place,’ she said instead. ‘It’s like living in the countryside, being out here by the river and the meadows. And I can play my music as loudly as I like if I’m feeling cross. I’m definitely doing any potential neighbour a favour.’

  She put chocolate powder into their mugs, ignoring the stingy instructions advising three heaped teaspoons per serving, and added the boiling water.

  ‘I’m not looking forward to Christmas,’ Bea said suddenly, her eyes fixed determinedly on a knot in the table’s wood.

  ‘That’s hardly surprising. Mum will want you to go to them, of course.’ She was due back from Madeira the week before, and she’d get someone in to help with the preparations, anyway. (‘Fiona from the village is very willing, and she’s fine really, so long as I give her plenty of clear instructions and something decent to wear when she arrives. I call it a uniform to avoid offence.’)

  Bea nodded, her head still down. ‘She’s asked me. But I’ve got guests booked in. I don’t want to lose them. I’m doing them a champagne breakfast and a Christmas lunch. But I’ll have the evening to myself.’

  Tara could hear the wobble in her voice. ‘I’ll come and help you,’ she said. ‘And then we can watch films and get squiffy.’

  She put the mugs down on the table and sat opposite Bea, who looked up at last. Her eyes were red and her cheeks blotchy, but she smiled. ‘Thanks, darling, but your mother will definitely want you there.’

  ‘Officially yes, but in all honesty, no. She’ll be relieved if I say I can’t come.’ Her mother wouldn’t acknowledge it, even to herself, but Tara knew her shoulders would relax just a little if her awkward elder child wouldn’t be at the dinner table, saying all the wrong things. ‘You’re my perfect excuse, so please don’t let me down.’

  Bea put her head on one side.

  ‘You of all people know I mean it,’ Tara said. And she did. Her stepfather Benedict’s put-on heartiness, together with stilted conversations with her half-brother, Harry – the wanted child – weren’t something she felt she ought to have to deal with over the festive season. What’s more, her mother had told her that Harry had applied to study at Cambridge the following year. If he got in she’d have to deal with him at closer quarters, running the risk of bumping into him in town. She ought to keep her distance whilst she still could.

  It was time to move the conversation on, before Bea could argue the point further. Tara distracted her with news of her visit from Monica Cairncross, and what she’d found out since. Officially, she shouldn’t discuss work, but thanks to Wilkins, some of what she’d found out had been through her own private efforts anyway. As for the rest – well – she trusted Bea; she was family, and there was no way she’d pass on the details to anyone.

  ‘Dr Cairncross is very determined,’ Tara said, when she’d summed up what the woman had said.

  ‘Might be guilt.’ Bea sipped her chocolate. ‘Maybe she feels responsible for her brother’s death in some way. People don’t always think rationally when they’ve lost someone.’

  ‘True.’ Tara paused for a moment. ‘But she didn’t seem overwhelmed with grief. It’s something else that’s driving her. It’s as though she’s on a mission. She’s furious and she’s out for justice.’ She pulled a face. ‘She clearly hates her sister-in-law and her niece. They’re prime suspects as far as she’s concerned. Only there’s no hard evidence of a crime. But – I don’t know – I feel as though there’s something odd going on.

  ‘As for Ralph Cairncross, I can’t help wondering what he was like as an individual.’ She told Bea about the opening of his final novel: the fit man in the warm seas swimming towards the snake that would kill him.

  Bea shivered. ‘That sounds rather warped to me. I remember reading about his death in the papers, of course. The coverage was hard to avoid, what with him having been well-known.’

  ‘Have you read any of his books?’

  Bea gave her a look. ‘No – to be honest. From the reviews, I always suspected I’d find them difficult to appreciate, and what you’ve just told me confirms my opinion.’

  Tara smiled for a moment. ‘I can understand that.’ But although she’d got no desire to acquire any more of Cairncross’s work, the passage she’d read had stayed with her. Why had it been so powerful? The intensity of the language? Its sensuality? Or simply her shock at the man’s actions? She wished she could banish the image from her head. ‘We can have an online snoop at Ralph Cairncross and his family, if you like. And I’m researching what remains of the group he was party
ing with the night he died too. Monica Cairncross says Ralph called them “the Acolytes”.’

  ‘Odd.’ Bea looked up from her drink and met Tara’s gaze. ‘Aren’t they the people who help in church?’

  Tara nodded. ‘Or at least, that’s one of the meanings. I had to look it up. The primary definition was “someone who helps an important person and supports their ideas, often without ever criticising them”.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound all that healthy.’

  ‘No, that’s what I thought. And given the high esteem Monica held her brother in, I get the impression that’s the meaning she meant. And that she doesn’t think there’s anything odd about him having had that sort of following.’

  She saw the ghost of a smile cross Bea’s lips. ‘You’re getting me intrigued now.’

  That was all to the good. Any kind of diversion at a time like this was worth grasping. Tara fetched her laptop from the cupboard where she kept it and set it down on the kitchen table.

  She moved round so that she was next to Bea, and they huddled together to see the information Tara brought up. Ralph Cairncross’s page on his publisher’s site included a potted biography, with photographs of him as a young man and then one that had been taken just a year before. His face had been hauntingly beautiful in his twenties, though dissolute-looking by his fifties.

  ‘He looks like a drinker by the later picture, doesn’t he?’ Bea said. ‘There’s still some sort of magnetism about him there, though.’ She sighed. ‘It’s so odd, seeing how someone changes over time like that. All that youth and promise – that sort of freshness someone has – and then seeing things start to crumble.’ She looked down at her own hands. ‘I wonder what he’d have looked like if he’d lived until he was ninety.’

  ‘From the sound of his lifestyle, I guess that wasn’t on the cards.’

  ‘No.’ She frowned, her eyes scanning the text. ‘Just as well, looking at his views on aging.’

  Ralph Cairncross had courted controversy, something the publishers had made even more of than the awards he’d received. He’d declared publicly (around ten years earlier) that people past a certain age lost their usefulness and elasticity of mind. It had caused a media storm, and was pretty ironic given he’d been approaching that age himself when he’d died. What would he have done at that point? Announced that he’d changed his mind? Or just withdrawn from public life to enjoy the mountains of cash he’d amassed by being such a notorious figure?

  ‘I don’t think much of him, based on this,’ Bea said. ‘Having just lost someone who would have valued his later years – and been rightly valued by others during them – I find his views repellent.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  When Tara explored the other search results Google had come up with, she could see that his notoriety had brought a lot of attention with it. He’d been followed by the press and lauded by several critics, despite his abhorrent opinions. It looked as though he’d lived a rock-and-roll lifestyle. Perhaps it went some way to explaining the loyalty of the group of young Acolytes who’d been prepared to trail round in his wake. They’d probably enjoyed seeing their photographs in the papers and being plied with free champagne at the glamorous receptions their mentor had taken them to. She could see they’d been in evidence a lot of the time.

  Tara tried to imagine being prepared to suck up to someone like Ralph Cairncross in return for reflected glory and free booze, but failed. His followers would have to have been gullible, shallow or cynical, she reckoned. Or maybe just too young to have seen the man for what he was. She returned to the Google homepage, where she entered his wife’s name instead. Monica Cairncross had said she was called Sadie. They read the results in companionable silence. She turned out to have quite a web presence too. Apparently, she’d been a professional flautist when she was younger, but her career seemed to have stopped abruptly when she’d hit thirty-five. What had happened? There were still recordings of her work on sale on Amazon, and photographs of her in the Albert Hall during the Proms.

  Tara glanced to one side. Bea was just as absorbed by the text as she had been.

  ‘Odd, isn’t it?’ Tara said, when her mother’s cousin glanced up. ‘It looks as though she was riding high, until that cut-off point. And now she doesn’t even have a Facebook page.’

  ‘What about the daughter?’

  Twenty-year-old Philippa. Tara performed the search. She had a Facebook page all right, but she’d taken care of her privacy settings. They could only see her profile and cover photos, and she’d been circumspect with those. Just the side of her face complete with sunglasses for the former, and a fenland landscape for the latter. But when Tara looked more closely she was almost certain it was the Forty Foot Drain. The picture had been updated two months previously. She glanced sideways at Bea. ‘That’s where her father died. What kind of daughter would choose to update her cover photo to an image like that, given the associations it must have?’

  ‘What kind indeed?’ Bea frowned, then sighed. ‘This is interesting. Let me know what you come up with, would you? But I’d better be getting on now. I’m going to slow-cook boeuf bourguignon for the hungry hordes tonight.’ She caught Tara’s look. ‘No. I know what you’re going to say, but I don’t want help. You need to have a weekend, and I – well – I need to get used to the new status quo. And if I can’t manage then I need to form a plan of campaign.’

  Bea stood up and fetched her coat from the hall and Tara hovered, waiting to hug her goodbye. The snow started again as her mother’s cousin exited the house. Tara watched the person who’d been a tiny tower of strength during her childhood make her way resolutely back towards the Green Dragon Bridge.

  After she’d gone, Tara reached for her Kindle and opened up Ralph Cairncross’s book again. It gave her an eerie feeling, as though just by looking at the dead man’s words she was opening up a link between them that made her uncomfortable.

  She shook off the response. She wanted to know more about the man the author had been. What better way than to examine the very last book he’d written? She scrolled back from where the file opened, so that she could look at his dedication. It might show who he’d been closest to at the time.

  But the words just raised more questions.

  To T, who managed to escape unscathed. You are blessed indeed.

  What the hell did that mean?

  Nine

  Tara got up early on Monday morning and headed to Addenbrooke’s before going into the station. It was one more bit of official digging she could do before Blake told her to stop – possibly on the sneaky side, but worth it.

  Now she was sitting in the hospital branch of Costa opposite Agneta Larsson, the pathologist who’d been in charge of looking into the circumstances of Ralph Cairncross’s death. They hadn’t met properly before, but Tara had seen her in court. She’d been the pathologist on the Samantha Seabrook murder case too.

  All around them vignettes played out: a woman pulling clothes for a newborn baby from a Mothercare bag, ready to show to her companion; an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, each clutching tissues, their eyes red; a nurse sipping hastily at his steaming cup of coffee between regular glances at the clock on the wall.

  Agneta Larsson looked tired, but her eyes had that slightly startled appearance that came from already being well-stoked with caffeine. She was nodding, sending her blonde hair over one eye. ‘Yes, I remember it all very clearly, as a matter of fact.’ She sighed. ‘Just such a waste, you know? So unnecessary.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘So, what can I tell you? The blood alcohol was very high. If his sister says he regularly went out and drove in that state then I am honestly surprised he lasted as long as he did.’

  ‘You think she might be wrong?’

  Agneta shrugged. ‘Others said it too – he regularly drove when he’d been drinking.’

  That was true; the part of the statement Tara had read backed that up. The Acolytes had been so used to it that only one of them had tried to discourage him from setti
ng off.

  ‘But,’ Agneta said, ‘I would be surprised if he regularly drank so very much and then took the wheel.’

  ‘I see.’ If he’d had more than usual that night, Tara wondered why.

  ‘It was certainly enough to explain his accident and for the coroner to record misadventure. But I don’t believe it was the only factor, as I said in my report.’

  The report Wilkins had prevented her from reading. ‘Could you explain?’

  Agneta nodded. ‘Ralph Cairncross was covered in bruises, of course. Some were consistent with his crash. For instance, I believe he knocked his head on the steering wheel. He might have been unconscious as his car sank. It was summer and he had his windows down. The water would have rushed in very quickly.’

  For a second Tara’s mind ran back to when she’d thought she was going to drown. She remembered the feeling of unbridled panic, the struggle and the burning sensation in her lungs as she ran out of air. The clutch of her would-be killer’s hand on her ankle, dragging her further down. She looked up and realised the pathologist was watching her with recognition in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Flashback? I should have thought.’ She knew the story, of course. Tara had only just escaped ending up on her slab.

  Tara shook her head. She wanted to move the conversation on. ‘You were telling me about the bruising on Ralph Cairncross’s body?’

  ‘Sure.’ The pathologist took a sip of her coffee. ‘So as I said, some were consistent with the impact he’d have received from the crash. But several were not. The odd ones out made me think he’d thrashed around in the car in a very uncontrolled way – I’d guess just before his car left the road.’