by Rebecca Tope
She went to her former assistant. ‘Have you got your phone?’ she asked. ‘Bonnie will be going mad, wondering where I am.’
Melanie took a breath and gave the question some thought. ‘I think she might have called. Somebody did.’ From a mysterious pocket in her cotton jacket, she extracted a phone. ‘I didn’t think I should answer it.’ She looked at Moxon with a mixture of respect and impatience.
‘It still works, then? It didn’t get wet?’
‘Seems okay.’ Melanie’s voice was flat. She was shivering and plainly shocked.
Simmy felt guilty at her lack of concern for the girl. She took the phone, but made no attempt to use it. Other things must come first. ‘You need to go and change your clothes. Somebody ought to have made you some sweet tea by now. It’s so disorganised,’ Simmy complained. ‘It’s hours since Ben disappeared and nothing at all’s been done to find him.’
‘That’s because Dan’s not here. They’re all incompetent except him.’ Melanie spoke loudly, obviously not caring who heard her.
‘Come with me, then.’ Simmy felt suddenly adult and capable. She led the way through the door she had noticed earlier, into a large office. There were computers, a telephone, filing cabinets, and a long row of keys with big plastic tags hanging from hooks. She pushed Melanie onto a padded, upright chair and looked round for a coffee machine. There was no such thing. Nor were there any spare clothes. ‘This isn’t much use,’ she grumbled.
‘What did you expect?’
‘I don’t know, really. Where do you keep your normal clothes, for a start?’
The girl hesitated and her cheeks went pink. ‘At home. I haven’t got anything here.’ She sounded defensive. Simmy remember that Melanie’s original plan had been to acquire a job that provided accommodation, to enable her to escape from her crowded and noisy family home, but the Hawkshead Hotel had failed her in that respect. She mostly used the ferry across Windermere, and then caught a rare bus to Hawkshead, which saved some time and meant she didn’t need to use a car. Simmy was ignorant of the details, since the girl had ceased to work for her. But in any case home now seemed impossibly inaccessible.
‘They want me to stick around for a bit, but I suppose I could pop into Hawkshead and try to buy you something. You can’t go all afternoon like that. Look at you!’
Melanie’s legs were not just wet but muddy, her shoes ruined. ‘I’m going to leave awful marks on this chair,’ she said. ‘Not that I care.’ She plucked at herself. ‘There’ll be some spare clothes somewhere around,’ she said vaguely. ‘Something I can borrow.’
‘Who from? Mrs Bodgett’s miles smaller than you. Those girls, whoever they are, are little, as well. Not to mention Penny,’ she added with a giggle.
‘There’s another one. Camilla, she’s called. She’s my sort of size. But she probably won’t have anything. And she might not be in today.’ Melanie tailed off, her teeth chattering. ‘I am a bit cold,’ she admitted.
‘And in shock.’ Suddenly, Melanie’s needs dropped down Simmy’s list of priorities. At least she was here and alive. ‘Mel – I have to do something about Ben. His parents ought to know what’s happened. And Bonnie.’ She kept forgetting Bonnie, who had been so cruelly abandoned without explanation, making all sorts of a mess running the shop, no doubt.
‘Yes,’ Melanie agreed. ‘I’ll go to the kitchen and make myself some tea or something. They’ve got a little room where they change. I can borrow an apron.’ A flicker of a smile crossed her face. ‘A big white apron to wrap round me.’
Simmy let her go, and simply sat there for ten minutes, listening to voices and car engines coming from beyond the room. She was shocked herself, with squelching shoes and a fair degree of dampness around the lower legs. Everybody else had allotted tasks, the staff no doubt despatched in all directions to assemble all their colleagues and ready themselves for questioning. The only window looked over the parking area, revealing a steady increase in vehicles containing officials.
Finally she gave herself a shake and lifted up one of the phones on the office desk. She keyed the number for her shop, her heart pounding as she rehearsed what she would say. It was not answered very promptly. ‘Bonnie? Are you all right?’ she began.
‘Sort of. Where are you? Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’
For a wild moment, Simmy wondered whether Ben had miraculously shown up at the shop, telling the story of his adventures to his girlfriend. How else would she know there was something going on? ‘How do you know?’ she asked.
‘It’s obvious. Your phone’s off. Melanie isn’t answering hers. And Corinne came in a bit ago and said there was weird stuff on the police radio.’
Corinne acted as a kind of foster mother to Bonnie. Her social circle included a number of people Simmy regarded as somewhat disreputable. Like Melanie, she knew everybody in Windermere and Bowness, having lived there all her life. Listening to the police radio had become a habit some years ago, according to Bonnie. ‘She’s always expecting to hear something about people she knows,’ Bonnie had laughed. Sometimes she did.
‘Yes, well …’ Simmy said. ‘I’m sorry to leave you on your own for all this time. Have you had any trouble?’
‘Not really. Nobody much has been in. Tell me what’s going on. Why do you sound so peculiar?’
‘The police are here. There’s been a death. I’ve got to answer some questions.’
‘Wow! And Ben? I bet he’s having a right old time, then. He loves anything like that.’
‘Actually … We’ve lost him.’ It sounded ridiculous, as if he was a dog or a carelessly mislaid toy.
Bonnie gave no hint of concern. ‘He’ll be doing his own investigating,’ she chuckled. ‘Who died?’
‘Dan Yates. The under-manager. Melanie’s very upset. She’s in shock. We found him, you see. In the lake.’
‘What lake? I thought you were at Hawkshead somewhere.’
‘Esthwaite.’
‘Oh, right. I always forget about that one. It’s not much of a lake, is it? Did he drown himself in it?’
‘Not exactly. Look, Bonnie – it’s all rather complicated. I have no idea when I’ll be back. You can close up, if you like, and go home. And if Ben calls you, please let me know right away. And the police.’
‘Why do they want him?’
‘He’s missing. He probably saw the people who—’ she stopped herself just in time. ‘He might be a witness to a crime.’
There was a small silence. ‘Missing? Lost? What do you mean? How can he be? Wasn’t he with you?’
‘He went for a walk – down to the lake and to a place called Colthouse. He phoned me about seeing Dan’s body. I missed the call. It was on my voicemail. After that he just – disappeared. We found his phone.’
‘Oh. And you’re scared something awful’s happened to him. No, no. That wouldn’t be it. He’s too clever to let it. He’ll be fine. He’s just tracking them or something. You know what he’s like.’
‘Yeah. You’re probably right. So – if he does phone … ?’
‘I’ll tell you. Is your mobile on again now?’
‘Oh, no. The police have got it. Well, you’d better call the police, okay? I don’t matter.’
‘I will shut the shop, then,’ said Bonnie decisively. ‘And I’ll go and talk to Ben’s mum, if she’s home. She can drive us up to Hawkshead to look for him.’
She made it sound so blissfully simple. ‘I’m not sure …’ Simmy began. ‘Shouldn’t she be told by the police first?’ At some point, she had given the Harkness address to one of the policemen. Helm Road was in Bowness, ten or fifteen minutes’ walk from the centre of Windermere. If Bonnie was determined to go there, nothing Simmy said could stop her. Ben’s mother mostly worked from home, in a very well-appointed office at the top of the house.
‘It’s okay, Simmy,’ said the girl. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
It was tempting to believe her. ‘Oh, well,’ she said feebly. ‘I’m going to be here for age
s yet. I’ll try to catch up with you this evening.’
She was interrupted by the door to the office opening and DI Moxon coming in. His face was a mixture of briskness and solicitude. Their relationship – such as it was – went back ten months or so and she had gradually learnt more about him since then. She had shared her own painful past with him, administered urgent first aid to him, and eventually met a wife she had never suspected existed. She was still not entirely sure that she liked him. He had a strong aura of the police, with the odd lack of human understanding that seemed to go with the job. Much of what she said to him apparently came as a big surprise, although he seldom manifested disapproval or criticism. He seemed to find her instructive, she often felt, with her instinctive feeling for people’s emotional states.
He was even more baffled and amazed by Ben Harkness. Only Melanie gave him any comfort, with her comprehensive knowledge of local networks and connection to elements with which the police were habitually familiar.
The detective was holding a clipboard in one hand, like a charity fundraiser or somebody doing a street survey. It struck Simmy as incongruous, for some reason. ‘Hello,’ she said.
He nodded and said, ‘I’ve just been speaking to Miss Todd,’ he told her. ‘She’s been extremely helpful. I think I’ve got it straight now.’ He tapped the clipboard. ‘Names of all the staff, who was on the premises this morning. List of guests. G5.’
She frowned at him. She’d heard of a G5, but could not remember what it signified. And why was he reporting to her as if she was his superintendent? ‘G5?’
‘The form that has to be completed whenever an unexpected death occurs. Last seen by … Next of kin … Name of his GP. That sort of thing. I always like the G5,’ he finished wistfully. ‘It was a very clever invention.’
‘You can’t have got all that from Melanie,’ she objected. ‘She was in here only a minute ago.’
‘Fifteen minutes at least,’ he corrected her. ‘She’s all fixed up with dry clothes, and wanting to go home. Somebody will take her in a little while. And you’re right, of course. We’ve been talking to several others as well.’
Simmy blinked at the strange rush of time that this implied, but forced herself to stick with the most important details. ‘So who was he last seen by? Dan, I mean.’
‘That’s not certain. Probably Miss Todd, but possibly Mrs Boddington-Webster. He works complicated hours.’
‘He lives on the premises, so I suppose that’s not too much of a problem.’
‘Yes, we’ve looked around his room.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Did you know that Miss Todd has been spending some nights here with him?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t expect I should be telling you, but there’s no way we can stop it coming out. I imagine most of the staff are aware of it, anyway. But she told me that you didn’t know. She seems embarrassed about that. She poured it all out the moment I had her on her own.’ He preened slightly at having elicited such intimate information from a girl he knew had never entirely trusted him. The Todd family had an uneasy relationship with the police, despite Melanie’s dalliance with a constable named Joe.
Simmy hesitated, feeling surprisingly hurt and offended. Why should Melanie tell her who she was sleeping with, anyway? However close their friendship might have been over the winter, it had effectively ended when Melanie moved on with her career. And Simmy was, as she reminded herself regularly, old enough to be Mel’s mother. She reproached herself for her excessive reaction, and fought to stifle the unworthy feelings. ‘Well, that explains why she cried over him,’ she said faintly.
‘How well did you know him?’
‘Not at all. I only met him once, yesterday. He seemed very competent. Professional.’ Melanie had used the word okay about him, she remembered. Typical British understatement, apparently. ‘Have you told Ben’s parents he’s been abducted?’ she burst out. ‘That’s what matters now. I mean – if you find him, you’ll probably find the person who killed Dan as well. Won’t you?’
He raised two steadying hands. ‘That’s rather a leap,’ he said. ‘But yes, one of our people went down to Helm Road an hour or so ago.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Maybe a bit less than that,’ he amended.
‘They’ll be frantic.’
He tilted his head. ‘I’m not so sure. They’ll be used to the boy going off on his own adventures by now. And we certainly won’t be using the word abducted to describe what’s happened.’
‘What else would you call it?’
‘Simply that nobody seems sure of his whereabouts. That we’d like to speak to him about an incident near Hawkshead.’
Simmy sighed. ‘Well Bonnie won’t swallow that, for one. Remember Bonnie Lawson? She and Ben are going out together, or whatever they call it these days. She loves him. She’s going to be searching for him.’
‘So you’ve told her?’ He gave her a heavy look, like a reproachful schoolmaster.
‘I have.’
‘Oh, well.’
‘She’s just as likely to find him as any of us,’ Simmy said. ‘They’ve got a very special bond.’
‘We’ll take all the help we can get,’ he said, with a hint of a smile.
She had to force herself to ask the next question. ‘How exactly was he killed? Dan, I mean. Was it that place on his head?’
He understood only too well how resistant she was to this kind of detail. Detective Inspector Nolan Moxon had a habit of reading Persimmon Brown better than she would have liked him to. Where others might puzzle him, she often appeared to be clear as a diamond. It made them both uncomfortably vulnerable and exposed. She had believed initially that he was simply in love with her, while she found his physical presence faintly repellent. Now she had met his wife and seen that he had a solid marriage despite a recent spell of trouble, it was all more complicated. She liked him better now and felt less sorry for him. He had improved his appearance recently, too. Over the winter he had often seemed a trifle unwashed, his hair greasy and his clothes unchanged. There had been subsequent hints of depression and marital distance to explain all that. Furthermore, there had been an intimacy between them that went beyond the ordinary. They had witnessed each other’s extremes and the resulting relationship could not be denied.
‘We can’t say for certain,’ he said carefully. ‘The police doctor is always very cautious about that until there’s been a proper examination. There is, as you say, evidence of a blow to the head. And he was moved from the attack site to the water. We found the spot where the assault took place.’
‘The place where we found Ben’s phone,’ she said. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t really have touched it.’
He smiled. ‘Anybody would have done the same.’
‘Why would they move him, though?’ She heard the word they echoing. ‘Do you think there could have been more than one of them?’
He nodded. ‘One person couldn’t do it alone.’
Simmy had not even begun to consider this idea. Instantly, it made sense. ‘Of course,’ she nodded. ‘A group, perhaps? Some sort of gang? So some of them killed Dan and dumped him in the lake, while others took Ben away.’ She visualised a bunch of hooded youths, up to something dreadful in the woods when Dan came across them. Perhaps they hadn’t meant to kill him. She almost smiled. It would surely be easy for the police to catch up with a whole gang, and make them relinquish the captive Ben. But then she thought again. ‘But are there gangs around here? In Hawkshead?’
‘Not that we know of. But they come from the cities on motorbikes. Glasgow, even, sometimes.’
‘On their summer holidays?’ She had an image of a battered charabanc full of Glaswegian yobs, waving bottles of beer and looking for trouble. ‘I’m not sure—’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘Neither am I. But we’ve got to start somewhere.’
Outside the office there were raised voices. Simmy realised that she and Moxon were probably monopolising the vital heart of the hotel’s operation, even though the
phone hadn’t rung and nobody seemed anxious to come in. There would be guests returning from their days out on the fells before long, and the manager was unlikely to want them to walk into the maelstrom of a police investigation. If the short-lived hunt for a small girl had raised complaints, how much more objectionable would a murder investigation be!
‘You won’t need to question all the guests, will you?’ she asked.
‘We’ll want to know where they all were this morning. Routine enquiries, as they say.’
‘The management will hate it.’
‘Too bad. A murder enquiry trumps just about everything. Nobody gets a choice in the matter.’
She shivered. ‘It sounds so horrible. My mother would say—’
‘Yes, I know what your mother would say,’ he interrupted. ‘Now, I’d better go and see what’s happening out there.’
She thought of her flowers, now so irrelevant and trivial. She had been so proud of them, only a couple of hours ago. It didn’t seem fair. All she wanted was to carry on her business, bringing colour and scent and beauty into people’s lives. Instead, there was fear and pain and mystery. She got up from the chair and followed the detective into the foyer, where the first person she saw was a woman she had only met fleetingly before. But she knew immediately who it was and the recognition was mutual.
‘Where is he?’ the woman cried. ‘What have you got my boy into now?’
Wordlessly, Simmy just stared at Mrs Helen Harkness, mother of the missing Ben.
Chapter Eight
The injustice of it struck deep. She had been doing the boy a favour, giving him a lift. By rights, it was a job for his mother or father – but they were too busy, otherwise engaged. Moxon came to her rescue. ‘I don’t think Mrs Brown can be held responsible,’ he objected.
‘No, no. I’m sorry.’ Helen’s eyes were wide, her movements jerky. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying. Although …’ She looked back at Simmy. ‘It’s not the first time, is it?’
Simmy couldn’t argue with that. Her very first encounter with Ben had been at the scene of a fatal shooting. Since then there had been other complicated police investigations in which they had been embroiled. Almost from the start, Ben had been passionately interested, deciding that his vocation was as a forensic scientist. Brilliantly clever, his way appeared smooth for the coming years of further education, his eventual career beyond question. He had attracted favourable attention from an American university, with a promise of a postgraduate place some years hence. Meanwhile he was stacking up A-levels, with one more year at school still to go.
