by Val McDermid
‘The Mormons?’ Jane tried to sound polite rather than baffled by what seemed a complete non sequitur.
‘They’ve got a vast genealogical database. I think the idea is to baptise the dead…’ Barbara’s voice trailed off, distracted by the commands she was typing into a search engine. ‘Now, Dorcas Mason, you said?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Do we have any idea when she was born?’
‘She was working as a maid for the Wordsworth family in 1847, so she must have been at least fourteen by then. So, sometime before 1833.’
‘Let’s start searching at 1800, then,’ Barbara said, typing in the dates and clicking the mouse with a flourish. Seconds passed, then a message appeared on the screen: 1 matches found. Please enter your password to access.
Barbara looked pointedly at Jane. It took her a moment to realise she was supposed to turn away while Barbara entered her personal password. When she looked back at the screen, it showed details extracted from the parish records. Dorcas Mason had been born on 5th April 1831 at Sheepfold Cottage, Cockermouth, in the parish of Brigham to Thomas and Jean Mason. Her father had been described as a farrier, and she had been baptised three weeks later. Barbara turned a triumphant smile on Jane. ‘The miracle of modern technology,’ she announced, as if it were entirely her invention. ‘I’ll print it out for you.’
‘That’s terrific,’ Jane said, her spirits rising at this first official trace of the woman who had carried off William’s mysterious manuscript. ‘And it’s very helpful. But I’m actually more interested in what happened to her later. She supposedly left the Wordsworth household in 1851 to get married. Will there be records of any marriage and children? Of her death?’
‘Of course, my dear.’ Barbara turned back to the screen and entered the search requirements. This time, the wait was slightly longer. And the message less satisfying: 0 matches found. Jane’s heart sank. It felt as if Dorcas had been within reach, only to have been snatched away again.
‘How very annoying,’ Barbara said.
‘Surely she can’t just have disappeared?’
‘Well, no. By this point in time, society was quite well regulated. People didn’t get married and give birth without records of it. Either she was married and had her family in a parish whose records aren’t on the online database–which does happen more often than I would like.’ Barbara made it sound as if this oversight was a personal slight. ‘Or else she married outside the county and moved away.’
‘How would I find out which it was?’
Barbara sucked air over her teeth. ‘Well, you see, the way you’re going about this is rather unusual. Normally, people are working backwards. They know roughly where they’re going because each document provides them with clues for where to look next. Working forward is a different thing altogether, because we have no idea where to start. If she didn’t marry a local man, your Dorcas could have ended up anywhere in the country. Even in Scotland.’ Barbara pronounced the word as if she were speaking of the distant reaches of the galaxy.
‘So what’s my next step?’ Jane tried to keep the impatience from her voice.
‘I’d suggest the County Records Office in Carlisle. They’ve got the hard copies of all the registers. If Dorcas has slipped through the net online, the certificates will still be there. Failing that, you’re going to have to start trawling through the records of births, marriages and deaths at the Family Records Centre, down in Islington in London. You can get professional researchers to do that for you. It doesn’t come cheap, but they are very efficient.’
‘I’ve got that in hand already. One of my colleagues is going to make the searches in London. What about her will? Would that be online?’
‘It depends when she died. Before 1870, women had no entitlement to own property so they couldn’t make a will. After that, only married women could make wills, and even then they could only leave property settled on them for their separate and personal use.’ Barbara patted her on the arm. ‘And I don’t think a serving maid would be in that position, do you, Jane?’
‘Probably not. But there might have been something…’ Jane’s voice tailed off miserably.
‘If there were, it would be in her married name. And since we don’t know what that is, we’re stuck.’ Barbara signed off from the internet with an air of finality. ‘I think the best thing is to hope your colleague strikes it lucky at St Catherine’s House.’
Jane recognised dismissal when she saw it. ‘Thanks, Mrs Field. You’ve been a big help.’ Three minutes later, she was climbing the lane back home, determined not to be defeated. Dorcas Mason’s descendants were out there somewhere. Between them, she and Dan were going to track them down. And when they did, they were going to find out what the Wordsworths had been so determined to keep hidden.
‘Bloody rain. Bloody country,’ Jake Hartnell yelled in exasperation. ‘Who the hell drives around in a tractor at ten o’clock at bloody night? All because I miss one fucking road sign and end up on the road to nowhere.’
Oblivious to his frustration, the tractor continued to crawl along at twenty miles an hour. The road was too winding for Jake to risk overtaking so he kept creeping closer to the tractor only to pull back when its muddy spray obscured his windscreen yet again. What might have been mildly amusing on the Akrotiri peninsula was infuriating in the dark in the middle of the Lake District. ‘God, but this is the pits,’ he complained. ‘What are you doing here, Jane? I’d have thought you’d be glad to get away from this godforsaken hellhole, not run back at every opportunity. Jesus Christ, how could I be so fucking stupid, talking this up to Caroline? I’ve more chance of finding the crew of the bloody Marie Celeste than you have of finding Wordsworth’s lost masterpiece. Bloody tractor.’
After a couple of miles, the tractor finally turned off and Jake roared past. Within minutes, he was on the outskirts of Keswick. ‘Thank Christ,’ he said. He made a couple of passes round the small confines of the town centre before settling on what looked like the most civilised of the hotels. He drove through a narrow archway into a cobbled yard which was surprisingly full. He finally found a space in a far corner and squeezed the Audi in between a people carrier and a Range Rover with an alarming collection of scratches and dents.
There was nobody on reception, though the bar seemed still to be doing a brisk trade. Wearily, Jake rang the bell on the desk. As he waited, he idly flicked through a display of local attractions. Dear God, a pencil museum, he thought. What hope was there for him in a place whose prime wet-weather attraction appeared to be an entire museum dedicated to the insertion of graphite into wood?
At last, a matronly woman emerged and greeted him with a beaming smile. ‘Sorry to keep you. How can I help you, sir?’ she said cheerily.
Jake wondered briefly what medication she was on and whether she could spare any. ‘Have you a room available?’
The woman looked doubtful. ‘Is it just for the one night?’ She opened a fat ledger and ran a finger down the page.
I wish. ‘I’ll be here for a few nights,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure yet.’
The plump finger halted. ‘We’ve got one single left,’ she said. ‘I can let you have four nights.’
‘That’ll do nicely,’ he said, praying that would be long enough to settle things with Jane. He took out his wallet and presented his company credit card. ‘Has it got internet access?’ he said, with no hope of a positive response.
‘You can plug into the phone if you want analog access, but there’s a wireless LAN area just off the Derwent Bar,’ she said, as nonchalant as if he’d asked whether they had running water. ‘Now, do you need something to eat? The kitchen’s closed, but I can rustle you up some soup and a sandwich if you’d like?’
‘That would be wonderful,’ he said, meaning it. ‘And is there any chance of a copy of the local paper?’
Less than an hour later, he was lying back on his bed, stomach full of ham sandwich, leek and potato soup and Theakston’s best bitter. �
�It’s actually called the Keswick Reminder,’ he said to Caroline, who sounded remarkably perky considering it was past one in the morning on Crete.
‘How fabulously Victorian,’ she said. ‘Do they still have the fatstock prices on the front page?’
He chuckled. ‘Not quite.’
‘Still, if one is marooned out there in the sticks, I expect it does contain all one needs,’ Caroline said. ‘So have you learned any more about this body in the bog?’
‘There’s a lot more local colour, but not much detail about the body itself. I suppose the forensic anthropologist hadn’t had much time for tests by the time the paper went to press.’
‘Pity. So have you made contact with Jane yet?’
‘I’ve only just got here, and they go to bed early in these parts,’ Jake protested. ‘Besides, I thought I’d check out the lie of the land first. See if I can have a chat with this Dr Wilde, the forensic anthropologist. Maybe she can narrow down the age of the body.’
He heard Caroline sigh. ‘The body’s not the thing, Jake. It’s Jane’s manuscript that we’re interested in. You need to win her over as soon as you can.’
‘It’s not as simple as it would have been in London,’ he said. ‘It won’t be so easy to get her on her own. And I need to talk to her face to face, one to one. If I turn up at Cold Comfort Farm, I’ll have her dad glaring at me and her mum plying me with home baking laced with arsenic’
‘So what do you propose?’
It was Jake’s turn to sigh. ‘I’m going to have to act like some bloody silly spy. Find a vantage point where I can watch the farm, follow her when she goes out and hope she ends up somewhere I can speak to her.’
Caroline’s voice was rich with laughter. ‘Oh God, I’d love to be a fly on the wall. Jake auditioning for the cloak and dagger.’
‘I’ll keep you posted,’ he said, resentful at her apparent lack of confidence in him.
‘Do. I expect great things of you, Jake. Sweet dreams.’
And she was gone. Sweet dreams, he thought, bouncing experimentally on the overly soft mattress. As if.
A waning moon hung low over the car park, turning the remaining leaves on the overhanging trees into ragged tatters. River shivered as the damp night chill invaded the hotel hallway through the door Ewan Rigston held open for her. ‘Brrr,’ she said, passing him. ‘Nothing like the Lakeland air to make that warm glow disappear.’
‘It doesn’t tempt you to a moonlight stroll round Derwent Water, then?’ he teased, falling into step beside her.
‘You’re not serious?’
He laughed. ‘I’m not dressed for it. And even if I was, I wouldn’t pick a night like this.’ He sniffed the air and pointed up at a mass of cloud shouldering its way over Castlerigg Fell. ‘It’s going to rain.’
‘Better call it a night, then. I wouldn’t want anything to spoil it.’ They’d reached her Land Rover and River turned to face him, suddenly uncertain of what she wanted. ‘I had a great evening, Ewan.’
He inclined his head. ‘Me too. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much.’
His face was in shadow and she couldn’t read it. ‘We could do it again some time?’
‘I’d like that. You could give me an update on Pirate Peat.’
She felt a twinge of disappointment. ‘If you like.’
He leaned against the Land Rover. ‘You know what the locals are saying?’
‘About Pirate Peat? No, what?’
‘They’re saying Fletcher Christian can finally be laid to rest.’
River frowned. ‘Fletcher Christian? As in the mutiny on the Bounty? What’s that got to do with our cadaver?’
‘He was a local lad, Fletcher. And the word round here has always been that he made it back home afterwards. Some say he was a smuggler up on the Solway Firth. And some reckon his family on the Isle of Man took him in.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
River was intrigued. She mentally reviewed what she knew about her cadaver and set it against the little she knew about the Bounty story. ‘I suppose it’s possible. Pirate Peat had been to the South Seas, no question of that. But I’d have to do some research. Check out dates and such.’ She grinned. ‘Now that would really excite my TV guys. I’ll have to tell them in the morning.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed Rigston on the cheek. ‘Thank you for that.’
Before she could move away, he pulled her close. ‘Thank you for this evening,’ he said, his voice low and dark. Then his mouth was firm against hers, the fine sandpaper of his stubble sending a shiver through her that had nothing to do with the cold. Her lips parted and her tongue darted against his. Heat spread downwards from her belly and her hands found their way under his jacket. When they separated, they were both breathing heavily. ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped. ‘I didn’t mean…’
She slid her hand round to the front of his trousers and ran her fingers over the hard outline of his penis. ‘Oh, I think you did,’ she murmured. ‘It takes forty-six minutes to get to my place. How long to yours?’
Two hundred and fifty miles away, a coach lumbered through the outskirts of Oxford. The passengers were an ill-assorted bunch: a minor civil servant who had spent the evening after work at the cinema with a colleague; a handful of students returning from an indie gig in Shepherd’s Bush; three Australian backpackers on the next stage of their world tour; a scatter of couples and singles coming home from an evening out in the big city. Some dozed, some read, some chattered, some stared through their own reflection at the shops and houses that lined the bus route through Headington towards the narrow thoroughfare of St Clements.
The young black kid slouched in a seat halfway up the bus hadn’t merited a second glance from anyone. The peak of a baseball cap cast most of the face in shadow, a sanction against the sort of insolent stare that might have awakened a twitch of apprehension among fellow passengers.
Tenille shifted in her seat and checked the time. The bus was running on schedule. She had no idea what kind of place Oxford was, except there were a lot of students and old buildings. But she figured it couldn’t be that hard to find a quiet corner to doss down in. She didn’t care if she didn’t get much sleep. She’d be on buses all day, she could nap then. Besides, every time she nodded off, she risked those nightmare images of Geno coming back to haunt her. Sleep really didn’t matter. What mattered was staying out of the way of the cops. And she had no doubt she could manage that.
She wondered whether they were looking for her outside the Marshpool yet. She wondered whether they’d been in touch with Jane yet.
But not for a second did she wonder whether she was doing the right thing.
The memory of my brother’s story planted a seed in my head that, no matter how I tried to dislodge it, would not budge. The Middlesex mutiny had failed because there was an insufficient appetite for mutiny among the common sailors. But I was willing to wager that Bligh had damned few supporters among the men. Too many of them had endured his vile tongue and his petty martinet ways. I resolved then and there that if my treatment at Bligh’s hands should become intolerable, I would seek my brother’s solution and accept the consequences, whatever they might be. The following day, the final grain of sand was added to the mountain that was already oppressing me. Bligh accused me in front of the men of being a common thief then punished the whole crew for my alleged crime of stealing his cocoa-nuts. I know not what a stronger man would have done in such a circumstance. I know only that I could no longer bear the weight of his volatility, his vanity and his viciousness.
18
A single road ran through Fellhead. Unless a driver was determined to twist and wind up the side of Langmere Fell and over a difficult, narrow mountain pass, there was only one logical way in and out of the village. Jake set his alarm for six, and by quarter to seven he was at the Fellhead road end, worn out by the previous day’s travelling and feeling aggrieved that Keswick had been unable to supply him with a takeaway carton of decent coffee to kickstart his brain. A thin
drizzle fell relentlessly, cutting visibility and leaching colour from the landscape. Low cloud covered the fell tops and lowland sheep huddled miserably against stone walls and trees.
He didn’t want to drive into the village; there were a few residents who might just recognise him from the previous visits he’d made with Jane. And he certainly had no desire to bump into Judy Gresham popping into the village store. Whatever Jane had said about the ending of their relationship, it wouldn’t have painted him in the sort of light that would endear him to a parent. Instead, he parked in a gravelled area twenty yards up from the road junction, a place where walkers could leave their cars convenient for the footpath that climbed up Langmere Fell.
