The Hawkshead Hostage

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘You can lay the tables for breakfast and check the cereal. Sugar bowls. The dishwasher’s full. I still haven’t emptied it from this morning. Most of the tablecloths are okay, but one had jam on it. It’ll have to be changed.’ She frowned. ‘I hadn’t realised how much your father did that he’s not doing now. He just sits about. It’s infuriating.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ said Simmy, with a sense of relief. She could lose herself in the details of providing an old-fashioned breakfast for about eight people next morning. Angie used sugar bowls, butter dishes, milk jugs, where almost all other B&Bs had gone over to tiny paper sachets and fiddly plastic pots. It cost her more in wastage and washing-up, but she was determined to maintain her standards, regardless of the rest of the world.

  Half an hour later, she was no calmer and no less guilty. Her thoughts had flittered from Melanie to Bonnie; then her father and Helen Harkness took centre stage. There were unpleasant patterns forming, all involving people suffering from profound distress, caused almost entirely by deliberate malice. Much of her guilt feelings arose from her constant wish to remain detached from unpleasantness. The rest came from the knowledge that she had taken Ben to the hotel and let him get himself abducted as a direct result.

  It was past seven o’clock and she was hungry again despite the snack she’d had in the car, thanks to her visit to the Hawkshead Co-op. The guests had noisily arrived, with far too much luggage and no idea of where they might spend the evening. Simmy had remained in the dining room, invisible, but well able to hear what was happening. Evenings in a B&B were seldom easy. It was one more reason to wonder why people chose them in favour of a hotel. Angie did at least provide a room with a television and lots of games, but she preferred that people didn’t eat in there. They were supposed to go out and patronise one of the many restaurants in the area. The people with small children regarded this as an inconvenience, despite clear advance information that nothing was to be had at Beck View itself.

  But finally all was quiet and she emerged from the room now spread with immaculate tablecloths and everything else in perfect order.

  ‘Can I make a sandwich or something?’ she asked her mother, who was in the kitchen again. ‘Then I should go.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Angie. She was once again slumped in one of the old chairs that stood either side of the Aga. These, as well as the dog, were incongruous elements in a place that was now and then inspected by hygiene officials. The Beck View kitchen was closer to that of a farmhouse than a modern guesthouse, despite the large gas cooker and two big refrigerators. It also had a scrubbed pine table and a walk-in pantry. None of the inspectors found the courage to complain.

  Russell looked up from the other chair. ‘I’ve hardly seen you. Did you say something about the boy, Ben, being lost?’

  ‘I expect they’ve found him by now. It wasn’t much to worry about,’ lied Simmy, her face growing hot. ‘Now, then – I think I’ll have cheese and tomato before I go.’ She bustled about, making a production of her sandwich. ‘Lovely!’ she said, after the first bite.

  She finished it quickly and gathered up her bag. ‘I’ll drop in again, in a day or so. Give me a call if you want anything. Shopping. Sheets changing. I can always come for an hour after work.’ She made herself sound blithe and useful, a sort of parody of a home help. The idea that her own parents, still so young, might need such a thing, made her wince.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ said Angie. ‘See you soon, then.’

  She drove home, up the hill to Troutbeck, more miserable than she could remember feeling since she came to the Lake District.

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday dawned deceptively quietly. Simmy woke early and lay in her tangled bed contemplating the coming day with apprehension. She reviewed her own place in the picture, forcing herself to acknowledge that she had learnt quite a lot about murder in the past nine or ten months. She had seen for herself how people who seemed quite pleasant and normal could take a knife or a bludgeon to another person. And then they could behave with sufficient ordinariness to conceal what they had done. They walked amongst society with nothing to disclose their true nature. Simmy had spoken to some of them, all unsuspecting. Had she, then, also spoken to the killer of Dan Yates? Was it Mr Boddington-Webster, or his wife or the handsome gay chef? The bony Penny or the mother of young Gentian? Perhaps one of the other hotel guests she had mingled with on Monday? What about the smart woman who had seemed so impatient? What a good act that would have been, if so. The list was uncomfortably long and did not include a number of others she had not even met. Better not to even try to second-guess who might want Dan dead. Besides, hadn’t Moxon implied that there were a number of people involved? Her initial assumptions of a feral gang of disaffected youths rampaging the serene Cumbrian countryside had receded overnight. Such an explanation was both too easy and too unlikely for serious consideration.

  At least there was no suspicion resting on Melanie, given what Moxon knew about her from earlier incidents. To some detectives, she might stand out as a person of special interest. Romantically attached to the victim, and therefore prone to jealousy, insecurity, rage, frustration. Technically, for such theoretical investigators, she might come at the very top of the list. But Melanie would never have abducted Ben, causing his mother such distress. And Moxon seemed certain that the crime had not been achieved by a single person. Who in the world could Melanie employ as a sidekick?

  Would Bonnie come to work, she wondered. Would Moxon seek her – Simmy – out at the shop, or ask her to come for an interview at the police station? She ought to get up and find her phone and see whether anyone had left her a message. Unlike many people, she did not take the mobile to bed with her. She left it downstairs, turned off and ignored. Since the loss of her baby she had decided that nothing could be of sufficient importance or urgency to justify a midnight call on a mobile phone. The landline would awake her, pealing up the stairs to her room. So would a loud knock on the door. Only her parents mattered enough for such an arousal, and even they would probably wait until morning for any imaginable communication.

  Heavily she rolled out and blundered to the bathroom. It was fully light, the days still very much longer than the nights. The birds no longer belted out their dawn chorus, but they were out there teaching their young ones the ways of the world, with agitated flutterings in the branches outside her window. July was a time for consolidation, the summer firmly established, the rigours of winter far ahead. Summer flowers were abundant, lush and colourful. Scarlets and vibrant oranges; velvety purples and deep, dense crimsons were all clamouring for admiration in her own garden. She had an especially exuberant clematis romping along her back fence, thick with pinky-purple flowers and deliciously scented. While her garden was far from the perfect creation she had in mind when she moved there, it was certainly a credit to her, after little over a year in the making.

  All of which brought feelings of resentment against the person or persons who had killed Dan. She wanted to immerse herself in her flowers instead of dwelling on the horrors that had been unleashed. The resentment mutated quickly into a determination to find Ben. If he had not turned up, of course. Perhaps all the panic was already over, and nobody had thought to tell her.

  Because there was not a single message on her phone. Nobody had told her anything, or asked her a question, or suggested a course of action.

  There was no other course of action than to go down to Windermere and open the shop as normal. The weather was even warmer than the day before, bringing people out in shorts and singlets, relishing their good fortune. Even less likely to be buying flowers than ever, Simmy thought sourly. They would be taking small boats out onto the water, or packing picnics and heading for Kirkstone and beyond. Detective Inspector Moxon would be sweating in his interview room, or driving around in search of clues to the identities of the killer-kidnappers. Would he go back to Hawkshead, or leave all that to his SOCO people? One thing Simmy had learnt was that a killing com
mitted out of doors was troublesome when it came to finding evidence. Where they might normally erect a tent over the designated spot, in this case that wouldn’t work at all. Even if they discovered flattened grass and footprints under the trees, it would all have been so contaminated and muddled by Simmy and Melanie and Mrs Bodgett – not to mention the trampling down of the fence by the policemen – that little useful information could hope to remain. Poor old Moxon, and whoever his superior might be. They’d be struggling hard to implement any of the usual procedures listed in their books of How to Solve a Murder.

  Which meant, presumably, they would focus mainly on the staff and guests at the hotel. The people who knew Dan and might have some idea as to why he had died in such a terrible way.

  The thing that most hurt her head and scrambled her thoughts was the dual nature of the crime. Murder and abduction. The urgency had to be to find Ben, because that would solve both crimes at the same time. So endless interviews and forensic nit-picking felt like the wrong sort of effort to be making. By the time she was at her shop, she felt like screaming with frustration. It was all a fog, with nothing substantial to go on at all. Even knowing Ben as well as she did was no help. He was not in control. Somebody was hiding him – keeping him from revealing who they were and what they’d done. But they couldn’t hide him for ever. So they would have to kill him. And that made her head hurt a lot more, as well as her heart and lungs and most of the rest of her. The sheer brutality of the thought was enough to make everything inside her go tight and sore.

  Everything in the shop was as she’d left it. Except that there was a hand-delivered letter from DI Moxon’s wife, asking if it would be possible to create and deliver a birthday bouquet for her mother in Newby Bridge, the following morning. At any other time, this would have been a welcome commission. Simmy liked Sue and would have enjoyed making up something special for her. Now it seemed a great effort to even think about it. Limply she turned on the computer, and put in an order for a special delivery of lilies, gerberas and gladioli. Then she phoned the number in the note and confirmed that she would do as requested. It was all she could manage not to leave a message for the detective inspector – knowing he would be sure to keep her informed of any important developments. His wife could not ethically be brought into the matter, anyway, as they both well knew. ‘Thanks a lot,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve got other things to worry about at the moment.’ It was a subtle attempt at sympathy, and Simmy appreciated it.

  ‘We’ve got to make an effort for a person’s eightieth,’ she said staunchly. ‘I hope she’ll have a lovely day. I’ll take the flowers around ten, then.’

  Then she set herself to freshening the displays, putting pots and buckets full of blooms out on the pavement. Bonnie’s perfect window called in vain to unheeding passers-by. What was the point, Simmy asked herself gloomily. If Ben was gone, a bright light would be permanently extinguished, and the world would never be a place to enjoy again. She had thought the same when her baby died, and it had turned out to be very nearly true. But there had been sweet times since then – many of them provided by young Ben Harkness.

  She was aware of a growing need for company. It seemed very unlikely that Bonnie would turn up. Certainly there would be no Melanie. That left her friend Julie, perhaps. Julie was a local hairdresser, who had taken Simmy under her wing and shown her around Windermere in the early months. They ate and drank together at regular intervals, but the friendship never progressed beyond that point. They liked each other, but there was too little common ground for a genuine bond. Simmy was not especially good at female friends, anyway. An only child, she was never sure of the boundaries or the obligations.

  And then there was Ninian Tripp. Ninian had been fading out of her life for a few weeks now, leaving little trace of himself. A self-employed potter, his aversion to commitment was wholesale. Simmy had pretty well given up on any idea of establishing a sensible relationship with him. He clearly didn’t see things as she did, with no thought of ‘settling down’, as one’s mother might say.

  At nine-thirty, however, her solitude was broken by a woman coming into the shop. Simmy looked up and met the tear-blurred eyes of Helen Harkness. Her first reaction was one of resistance. This was going to hurt and she flinched. Then she pushed back her shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘Any news?’ she asked.

  Helen shook her head. ‘I’ve been up all night. I mean – you can’t go to sleep at a time like this, can you?’

  There was little to say to this, so Simmy just shook her head. Here was a very much reduced version of the woman she had seen the day before. Tall, confident, in her late fifties, Mrs Harkness had sailed through life thus far with every expectation of success. Five children and a dependable husband, a thriving professional career – nothing could have prepared her for the events of the past twenty hours or so.

  ‘I mean – Ben’s always been a bit wild. Kept us on our toes with his antics. But we never imagined him as a victim. It’s all wrong.’

  Simmy gave this some consideration. ‘And yet there’s something rather vulnerable about him, I suppose,’ she said. ‘He’s very young. And not exactly physical.’

  ‘I know.’ Again the eyes met Simmy’s. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Speaking plainly. Not trying to pacify me with platitudes and reassurances.’

  ‘Well, you’re Ben’s mother, aren’t you? He must have got his outspokenness from somewhere. How are the others coping?’

  ‘The girls think it’s all rather exciting, although they try not to show it. I made them go to school as usual, with strict instructions not to talk about it. Apparently the police are keeping an embargo on any mention of Ben from the news people. It’s too risky, for some reason. I don’t really know what I think about it – sometimes I think the police don’t believe Ben’s been abducted at all. Wilf’s gone terribly quiet. Their father’s up in Hawkshead tramping round just looking for him. It’s a natural instinct, of course, but how do you search the whole Lake District? He could be anywhere.’

  ‘Have you seen Bonnie?’

  ‘Not since yesterday. She came to the house while the police were still there. I suppose we should be worrying about her. She didn’t come to work, then?’

  Simmy shook her head. ‘She’ll be looking for him as well, I expect. Although I don’t know how she’d get to Hawkshead.’

  ‘There’s a bus. Or her foster mother might take her. I forget her name.’ Helen frowned in alarm at her own memory lapse. ‘Gosh, my mind’s going,’ she cried.

  Simmy laughed. ‘Corinne. She might, I suppose.’ The image of all Ben’s friends and relations scouring the fells for the lost boy was a depressing one. Like a lot of tiny ants trying to cover an entire field. A hopeless quest, as Ben himself might say.

  ‘The trouble is, I can’t see any reason why they would let him go. It’s been going round and round in my head all night. If he saw them killing that hotel man, they’ll never be able to risk him going free, will they?’

  Fresh images of Ben with his tongue cut out, or his brain destroyed in some way, gave Simmy’s insides another twist. ‘We might have got it all wrong,’ she said, hoping that didn’t sound like an empty reassurance. ‘We have been jumping to conclusions with hardly any evidence, after all.’

  ‘I think they must be right, though. What other explanation can there possibly be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must be wondering why I came here. I hardly know myself, to be honest. I just thought you’d probably understand. And you were the last person to see him, according to the police.’ There was no hint of the previous day’s reproach, and yet Simmy’s guilt levels rose significantly at these words.

  ‘I should have kept my phone with me. Then I’d have got his call and none of this would have happened. I keep thinking about how he must have felt when I didn’t answer.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. Would you have just dashed down there right away? And e
ven then, would you have been in time to stop them taking him?’

  ‘I think I would. It’s no distance, after all.’ She remembered how she had delayed for what felt like ages before going down to the lakeside, after hearing Ben’s message. ‘But you might be right. I might have persuaded myself it wasn’t anything very important.’

  Helen sighed. ‘I can’t blame you. I’d have been the same, thinking he was just playing one of his usual games. Although—’

  ‘I know. It didn’t sound like a game.’ She relived the whole episode again, trying to envisage what must have happened. ‘I wonder what they did with him. There must have been a van or something near that farmhouse at the end of the track. Or by the sewage works. There’s space to park there. That’s quite a long way from the lake, though. You can’t get a vehicle across the field. Do you know where I mean?’

  ‘Not exactly. I saw it yesterday, but didn’t take it all in.’

  ‘Well, you go down a track, like a little road, which leads to the hotel and the farm past the water treatment place – whatever it is they do there. The track doesn’t go anywhere else. There must be a small gate or stile or something into the field, if you park there and want to walk by the lake. You’d go past the trees – there’s quite a lot of very dense woodland – and then it’s just more fields and water, with the hotel slightly above you. There’s no road down to the lake that I can think of, for the whole length of it, on that side.’ She remembered something else. ‘What about Colthouse? I still can’t work out where that is. Ben said he and Bonnie are interested in something there and he was going to walk over for a look. Did he do that, I wonder?’

  Helen shook her head helplessly. ‘How would we know, unless somebody saw him? We can mention it to the police, I suppose.’

  ‘It might just confuse them. He was definitely beside Esthwaite when it all happened, because that’s where we found his phone.’