The Hawkshead Hostage

by Rebecca Tope

  Then she was passing the marinas and jetties that formed the southern fringe of Ambleside, curving around the very northern tip of Lake Windermere, and into the twisting little lanes that led to Hawkshead. It was a total of nine miles, and it always took at least twenty minutes. She had to follow behind two cars obviously driven by visitors, so her predicted time of arrival in Hawkshead was exceeded slightly. Ben was standing conspicuously in the entrance to the car park, scanning every vehicle with close attention.

  ‘Had a good holiday?’ she asked him, once he was settled, his rucksack at his feet.

  ‘Sort of. Not exactly a holiday, though. We walked eighteen miles a day for three days, most of it uphill.’

  ‘How many of you?’

  ‘Five. Me, Wilf, a guy called Tom and two brothers, Mo and Sid. Really they’re Mohammed and Sayeed. They’re from Sheffield. Wilf met them a while back. Tom’s my age. He’s here with his family on holiday, but didn’t want to spend the whole time with them.’

  ‘Sounds like a good group.’

  ‘They were okay. I chatted a lot to Tom, and he’s quite bright. He’s from Derby. I’ve never been to Derby,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘How did he get together with you, then – he just walked up to you and asked if you’d take him, or what?’

  ‘More or less. We were in Coniston on the first day, and he got talking to us. We’d got space in one of the tents, so we said okay. No big deal.’

  Simmy reflected wistfully on the spontaneous freedom this implied. ‘I suppose he had a phone with him, so he could keep his parents posted.’

  ‘Yeah, but he only called once, I think.’

  ‘So you had a good time.’

  ‘Pretty much. Although the food was rubbish. Burnt sausages, most of the time.’

  ‘You poor thing. You do seem to have lost a bit of weight, I must say.’ She threw a quick look at his bare legs, which had very little flesh on them. ‘Nice and brown, though. I don’t remember it being sunny.’

  ‘We had one nice afternoon. Unless it’s scorching from the campfires. Or just dirt.’ He licked a finger and rubbed it on the skin above his knee. ‘It does come off a bit, look.’

  She laughed. ‘Maybe you should go down to the lake for a wash while I do my flowers. The hotel’s grounds go right to the edge.’

  ‘Sounds nice. But I might wander over to Colthouse. I want to see if there’s a path through the woods, or if you need to go around the road.’

  ‘Why? What’s there? I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Mostly it’s a Quaker meeting house and burial ground, but there’s an Ann Tyson’s House there as well.’

  ‘Sorry, Ben. None of these things mean anything to me. Well, Quakers, a bit …’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a thing I’ve got going with Bonnie. I’ll be sure to be back at the van in plenty of time. I know you’ll be ages.’

  In two more minutes they were at the gateway leading to the hotel. ‘Better not park right in the middle of all these Rovers and things,’ she said. ‘It’ll lower the tone.’

  ‘BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Subaru,’ he noted. ‘Can’t see a Rover.’

  ‘Smart, is all I mean. My dad always says you can’t get better quality than a Rover.’

  ‘He has no idea,’ sighed Ben.

  Simmy laughed again. It was good to spend a few minutes with the boy, after not seeing him for over a week. He was always good company – unpredictable, funny and immensely knowledgeable. The fact that she was easily old enough to be his mother seldom presented any difficulty. There had been times when he had felt like the parent and she the child.

  ‘Do you want help with the unloading?’ he asked, with a wary glance over his shoulder at the contents of the van.

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll have to do it all in the right order. You go and have your walk, if you’ve really got that much energy. I don’t expect anybody would mind if you took the path down to the water. Or you could just stay here and have a little nap.’

  ‘Can’t do that. It’s no distance to Colthouse from here. Even round the road can’t be more than twenty minutes.’ He got out of the van and stood admiring the lake, stretching away to the right. ‘I quite like Esthwaite,’ he said. ‘It’s so unglamorous compared to most of the others.’

  ‘I’ll probably only be about an hour, so don’t go far. If I can’t find you, I’ll come down to the lake and look for you. It’s a nice day for a change.’

  ‘It would turn nice, just as I’m going home. It was cold and windy all the time we were in the fells.’

  He moved off at a trot, down the moderate slope to the edge of the water. As far as Simmy could see, there were no paths in the direction he’d indicated. Instead there was a fenced-off area of woodland that looked impenetrably dense. The lake lapped almost imperceptibly against the grassy bank. She watched Ben for a moment and then got straight to work.

  The next forty minutes were spent in total concentration on the flowers. The black vase had been set aside as destined for the dining room on Friday, so she used two of the rose bowls from the dairy. Somebody – presumably Dan – had brought them into the foyer for her. On closer inspection, she liked them less. They were certainly in keeping with the house – florid Victorian pinks and greens decorated them and their pedestals. One had a long crack in it, and the other looked as if it had been washed in a very hot dishwasher, leading to a patchy fading of the design. They were not a matching pair, and not of the best quality. She would use them for this week, while searching out something better for the future. Her friend Ninian Tripp could make himself useful in that department, even if he wouldn’t have time to fashion something himself. He was a potter, after all, with vases one of his best lines. In time, he could very likely produce a set of perfectly gorgeous items for the hotel.

  Thoughts of Ninian always brought their own special set of frustrations. He and Simmy were conducting a sporadic relationship, for which neither of them seemed to feel a great deal of commitment. It was agreeable to spend a night in his isolated little house on Brant Fell with trees all around. It was equally agreeable to have somebody to eat and chat with at the end of a day’s work in the shop. But Ninian would never be an object of great passion; nor would he qualify as a father to any baby she might yet manage to produce to compensate somehow for the poor, lost little Edith. As the months rolled by, Simmy increasingly gave up any hope that such a child might ever exist. She was thirty-eight already. Surely her destiny was firmly set now as a flourishing businesswoman with a growing complement of friends in this beautiful part of England that she was still getting to know?

  She completed the display for the reception first. Tendrils of scented honeysuckle wove amongst the cool shades of eucalyptus and the bolder allium. The primulas were tricky to position and certain to go limp by Friday. The colours were a risk – not many people would dare combine the orangey shades of honeysuckle with mauve and purple, but – as one of her tutors had often said – in nature almost any combination could be found, so there should be no firm rules when it came to arranging flowers.

  Upstairs in the solar, she worked faster, the finished effect clear in her mind’s eye. The shape was the thing – a semicircle to represent a rising sun – with the colours falling easily into place. Set against a wall, only one face of the display would show, so she was able to keep it almost two-dimensional. When she stepped back to assess it, she was impressed by her own work. It was undeniably flamboyant, celebrating the light and heat of summer, certain to warm the spirits of anybody who saw it.

  She had left her phone, with notebook and wallet, in the van. Carrying her bag of oasis, ribbons, ties and other necessities, she went back to the vehicle. Nobody had spoken to her, and she had not set eyes on Melanie. A few guests had drifted past her in the reception area, but said nothing. A woman she supposed was Mrs Bodgett appeared from a room and fiddled with a few things behind the reception desk, at one point. She looked to be about thirty-five, with enormous false eyelash
es and a lot of make-up. She smiled and mumbled something, but it was hardly a conversation.

  Out of habit, Simmy switched on the phone, and within a few seconds it gave the little song that told her she had a message. Bonnie, she supposed, with a question about the shop. It was voicemail, not a text, which suggested it might be urgent. With a sigh, Simmy put the phone to her ear, reluctant to discover what mistake the girl might have made without having recourse to advice.

  ‘Simmy!’ came a high-pitched voice, full of panic. ‘There’s a body here. Under the trees, at the very top end of the lake. I don’t know what to do. Well, I’ll have to call 999. Who knows when you’ll get this … Hey!’ The phone went silent in her hand, even though she continued to listen for further speech.

  It was Ben. The last syllable had been closer to a scream than a shout. For quite a long moment, Simmy merely sat there, inwardly cursing. Because her first reaction was that the boy was having a laugh, playing a joke on her. There had been bodies before, associated with flower deliveries and malign uses thereof. Not until that final word did she understand that this was real, and that the boy was not merely panicked but terrified.

  Chapter Five

  She ran back into the hotel, intending to find Melanie. But then she realised that help and reassurance were luxuries she could not rely on. Something terrible had happened to Ben, and suddenly it was as if her own most beloved child was in danger. His cry of Hey! echoed in her mind, swelling with a host of dreadful implications. He had been alarmed, angry, shocked and scared. It was all in that one little word.

  The woman with the exaggerated lashes was standing in the foyer, gazing with modified rapture at Simmy’s flowers. Her head was on one side, and a hand extended as if – outrageously – to adjust a bloom. ‘Help!’ cried Simmy, ignoring pangs of embarrassment at her naked emotion. ‘Something awful has happened – is happening – down by the lake. I’ve had a message. We need to call the police. Quickly.’

  The woman fluttered the heavy black fringes over her eyes. They made her look like a caricature of a doll, itself already a caricature of a real child. They made one doubt whether there was a fully formed functioning individual behind them. ‘What?’ she said.

  Penny was behind the reception desk, watching dispassionately and making no move to intervene. Simmy ignored her instinctively. Instead she waved her phone in the painted face before her. ‘A dead man!’ she shouted. Then she took a breath and understood that it was down to her. She squinted down at the screen and pressed the 9 digit three times. It was not the first time she had done this, but it still felt imbued with horror. Her stomach churned and her legs trembled.

  When it came to explaining her problem, she floundered. ‘A friend just phoned me to say he’s found a dead body, in some woods on the banks of Esthwaite. Then he broke off, as if he was being attacked.’ That was what she should have said. But it didn’t come out like that. ‘He’s just a boy,’ she repeated. ‘He said somebody’s dead. It’s by the lake. I’m at a hotel.’ Phrases emerged that made perfect sense to her, but were clearly gibberish to the woman at the end of the line who repeatedly urged Simmy to calm down and to give helpful details such as her actual position. ‘Is somebody injured?’ she asked. And, ‘Can you see what’s happening from where you are?’

  This seemed to go on for hours, before Mrs Bodgett snatched the phone away from her and tried in turn to provide useful information. Given that she still had little idea as to precisely what Ben had said – or who Ben was anyway – she did not do very much better than Simmy had.

  ‘We should go down there and see for ourselves,’ Simmy said, when the emergency person finally agreed to send a police car to investigate. ‘Where’s Melanie?’

  ‘In the office.’ The woman gestured at a door across the hallway, which Simmy had barely noticed. In other hotels she had known, the office had generally been visible by anyone standing at reception through a glass partition or suchlike.

  Penny leant forward. ‘Who is this Ben person?’ she asked in her high voice. ‘Not one of our guests?’

  ‘He’s a friend of mine. He came with me.’

  The gesture of neck and chin clearly said, Oh well – not a problem for the hotel at all, then. Simmy felt hot and angry, but said nothing. Panic levels were subsiding, but there was still a great choking cloud of anxiety about Ben’s welfare. Melanie would understand, and even assuage to some extent. ‘Can you fetch her?’ she asked. ‘Please.’

  Her plea was acted upon by the manager’s wife and suddenly there was the big dependable young woman standing right in front of Simmy, calmly prepared to hear whatever might be said. ‘Listen,’ said Simmy, holding out the phone. ‘It’s a message from Ben. On the voicemail.’

  Melanie competently accessed the recording, a frown deepening on her face. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘That sounds bad.’ She blinked in rapid thought. ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Doesn’t it tell you?’

  Melanie listened again. ‘Eleven thirty-two.’ She looked at the clock above the reception desk. ‘More than half an hour ago. We’ll have to go and see what’s happened.’ She frowned even more deeply. ‘That’s plenty of time for him to run back up here, isn’t it? Do you know where he went exactly?’

  ‘Something about a place called Colthouse. But he says he’s near some woods, doesn’t he?’

  ‘There are trees at the top end of the lake. It’s all very close. About two minutes’ walk from here. Where’s Dan?’ Melanie addressed the receptionist, wife of the manager, and apparently sole representative of the senior staff. ‘Where’s your husband? Who’s here?’

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ said Mrs Boddington-Webster. ‘Jeremy went into Hawkshead, and Jake doesn’t come in today. The lunches are all done in advance on a Tuesday.’

  ‘What about Dan?’

  ‘Good question.’

  ‘Come on,’ urged Simmy. ‘We have to find Ben. He sounded so … desperate. Didn’t he?’ She appealed to Melanie for confirmation.

  ‘He did rather. Not like himself. Something obviously scared him.’ The girl’s face had been steadily paling since she’d heard Ben’s message. ‘Why hasn’t he come back, or phoned again?’

  ‘I daren’t even think,’ said Simmy. She began to leave the building by the front door.

  ‘No, not that way. It’s much quicker to go out of the back,’ said Melanie, already leading the way. The others followed her out, across the gravelled area, past the stables and down a gentle slope to the lake, barely seventy-five yards distant. It was actually part of the hotel’s grounds until the final few yards, the water lapping almost imperceptibly at the grassy edge. The ground was unusually flat for the area; no great rising fells or dense woodlands bordered Esthwaite, which dreamt away the days in a glassy calm. As before, there were two or three small rowing boats sitting motionless on the water, with anglers in them.

  ‘Won’t those people have seen anything going on?’ asked Simmy. ‘Should we shout to them?’

  ‘They won’t take any notice,’ said Melanie. ‘They ignore everything happening onshore. I think half of them are asleep most of the time, anyway.’

  ‘Trees. Ben said there was a body under trees at the top end of the lake.’ Simmy had been repeating the words to herself as they ran down to the water. ‘Must be over there.’ She pointed to her left, where a small path wound its way amongst a scattering of rocks towards a patch of woodland. She could see a dead tree and a section of new-looking fencing on either side of it. There was a small field between where they stood and the trees, containing several cows. ‘Do you think a cow attacked Ben?’ It was a hopeful, almost comical, idea. The ‘Hey!’ that she had heard might have been addressed to a belligerent animal. ‘He might have climbed a tree to escape.’

  Melanie made a sound of restrained derision at this. The trees were not large, on the whole, and even if one had proved climbable, they both knew that Ben would not run away from a cow. He would stand his ground and shout a
t it until it backed off. There were no calves to be seen, and all country people knew that the only cattle to be feared were protective mothers and dairy bulls.

  It was the manager’s wife who made the first discovery. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, as she bent down and picked up a black, rectangular plastic object from beside a tuft of long grass. ‘Is this your friend’s?’

  Melanie snatched it and flittered a thumb over the screen. No buttons these days, Simmy noted, with a sense of never having a hope of keeping up. Even in the midst of her horrified suspicions, she could hear her mother commenting on how useless the gadget actually was, however passionately it might be vaunted as indispensable.

  ‘Yes, it’s his,’ said the girl. ‘So he was definitely here.’

  ‘And just as definitely taken away against his will,’ flashed Simmy, impatient with Melanie’s faint attempt at being positive. ‘He’d never go without the phone if he could help it.’

  ‘So where’s the body he was talking about?’ asked Mrs Bodgett.

  They all scanned the ground, moving to the fence and gazing at the dense undergrowth between the trees. ‘Nobody could get through there,’ said Melanie.

  ‘No,’ Simmy agreed. ‘How far does the wood go?’

  ‘Not very far,’ said the manager’s wife. ‘There’s a tarn through there, called Priest Pot. You can’t see it from here – or anywhere, really. It’s surrounded by trees and rushes and stuff.’

  ‘Which way is Colthouse?’

  The woman pointed. ‘Over there. Why?’

  ‘Ben said he might go there.’

  ‘Well, he’d have to go round by the roads. Past the sewage works, up to the recreation field and it’s just a little way to the right from there. There’s not really any sort of shortcut, that I can think of.’