by Rebecca Tope
But this was not a normal evening. Her only wish was to escape to the peace and solitude of her own cottage in Troutbeck. So, steeling herself against pangs of guilt at her heartless behaviour, she did exactly that.
She took the easternmost road to her village – the one that carried on to Kirkstone Pass and Ullswater once it had passed Troutbeck. In summer it was well used by visitors in cars or hiking, with a few on horseback for good measure. To her right rose fells and crags which she had yet to properly explore. Paths led up and over the top, then down into Kentmere, which was also little known to her. By road it was a long and tortuous distance away. On foot it was an easy hike. She and her father had resolved to do it one summer weekend but all such plans were on hold until his state of health could be ascertained. A better map reader than she was, he needed to be in full possession of his wits before such a venture could be attempted. She would never dare to go by herself.
She returned to her cottage with a mixture of relief and self-reproach. It was disgraceful of her to walk away from so many distressed and needy people, for no reason other than that she had had enough. Ben was still missing – that was the most stark fact of all. His claim to be ‘okay’ was decreasingly reassuring as night approached. Where was he? What was he doing? Where would he sleep? Had he had anything to eat? These maternal anxieties made her think of Helen and how much more acute they must be for her. There was a high chance that he was no longer okay, of course. If he was shadowing people he knew to be capable of murder, then he was obviously in real danger. And yet Moxon had seemed to drop all concern for the boy, once he heard the tale of the note on the windscreen.
A concern that would surely revive once he got the message about Ninian’s sighting. Again, Simmy felt guilty. She should have made a better effort to contact the detective, trying different numbers, making it seem more urgent. But then – why should she be the one to do it? It was Ninian’s sighting, not hers.
Because she cared intensely about Ben, of course. Because principled jibbing at doing Ninian’s work for him could lead to resulting harm for the boy. Ben was worth a hundred Ninians. Even Ninian himself would agree to that.
But there really was nothing more she could do that evening. She scrambled three eggs for herself, and ate them quickly. Her phone was switched off, a deliberate refusal to participate any further in the convolutions centred on Hawkshead. She would go to bed insanely early and hope for better news in the morning. ‘I’ll be far more use after a good night’s sleep,’ she muttered to herself. Sometimes she wished she had a cat to talk to. It would make her feel less crazy. But cats killed too many things, and were really not ideal as companions. She drifted off to sleep thinking sadly that cats and dogs were all basically substitutes for wholesome human relationships. And she did not want an animal to remind her of how defective she was in that department.
Chapter Seventeen
Bonnie felt tight with frustration. Her skin was stretched with it. Her breath came shallow and quick. Nobody – not even Ben’s mother – understood how serious and urgent everything was. First, she absolutely had to see Ben’s photos, even though she could no longer be sure of their usefulness. Could a picture prove anything more to her than it did to the police? And if there was, by some miracle, a shot of the killer with or without an accomplice, then Moxon and his mates would have homed in on it and be sending out appeals for help in catching the person concerned. Which was not happening, because she had just spent twenty minutes simultaneously watching the TV news channel and listening to the local radio. Corinne was keeping a close watch on her, saying almost nothing.
It was five o’clock when this surveillance eased up a bit. ‘Better get something on for supper,’ said Corinne. ‘Is there anything you fancy?’
She instantly saw her chance. ‘Is cottage pie too much to ask?’
‘It’ll take a while. I’ll have to start from scratch. Wouldn’t you rather have something from the freezer?’ Against all appearances, Corinne was a very good and generous cook. Catering for her multifarious foster children had been one of her greatest strengths. ‘Give them some decent grub and you’re halfway there,’ she said to the social workers when they marvelled at her creations.
‘I can wait,’ said Bonnie, with a fleeting pang of shame.
‘Okay, then.’
It was her own fault, thought Bonnie. Corinne ought to know by now how essential it was to watch her oldest charge. Bonnie had run away before, several times, though not for a few years now. The others had all been too young to contemplate an escape – and none of them wanted to leave anyway. Bonnie had no problems with Corinne, either. It was just that she needed to be somewhere else and this need outweighed her loyalty to her carer. I’m seventeen, she thought fiercely. Old enough to do as I like. A sentiment that Corinne generally agreed with.
She waited five minutes and then slipped quietly out of the house, and began trotting southwards towards the police station. It was a zigzag route through streets of houses, before emerging onto the main road leading down to Bowness. Moxon probably wouldn’t be there, she knew, and the whole place could have already closed up for the evening, but she had to try. It was unfair of them to ignore her the way they had. She was determined to make a nuisance of herself until they were forced to take notice. What, after all, did she have to lose? Until she had Ben right there in front of her, she wouldn’t be able to rest.
The police station was open. The desk was manned by a buxom female constable Bonnie had never seen before. Her hair was wound into a lump at the back of her neck, and her skin looked as if she’d been unwisely exposing it to the sun. ‘I’m Bonnie Lawson,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m helping with the business in Hawkshead. I think Inspector Moxon wants to see me. Is he here?’
The woman was unimpressed. ‘You think he wants to see you? How does that work, then?’
‘He might have forgotten to send a car for me. We have to look at some photos together.’ She stood as tall as she could, but was still humiliatingly small. At least her voice emerged clear and loud. She had always been able to use her voice to good effect.
‘What’s your address?’ asked the desk person.
Bonnie gave it. ‘I believe Mr Moxon lives quite close to us, actually,’ she added. It was mischief, she knew. Not just the Mr, but the implication that there was a social connection between them.
Doubt flickered gratifyingly in the officer’s eye. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, and disappeared through a door behind her into realms that Bonnie had never entered. She was gone for over five minutes, which was a long time to hover in a reception area that was depressing in its efforts to provide information and reassurance.
When the woman came back, she was nicer. Her wide face had softened and she was holding a sheet of paper. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Now I understand who you are.’ She consulted the paper. ‘Your boyfriend’s the one who’s gone missing. DI Moxon did leave a message about you, as it happens.’
So why wasn’t it here on the desk, in case I came in? Bonnie wanted to ask. This was a murder investigation, after all. Vital testimony could be lost unless every member of the team was completely up to speed with who was who. She could organise the whole business better herself, she was sure. And with Ben at her side, the two of them could probably solve every crime in Cumbria, given the resources the police had access to.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘What’s the message?’
‘Listen – it’s not meant for you directly. It’s just that your name’s here amongst a lot of other stuff. He says he’s coming back here around five-thirty, and will catch up with you then. He’s been in Hawkshead all day, at the hotel there.’
‘I know he has,’ said Bonnie patiently. ‘I was with him for some of the time.’
‘Yes, well, there’s a whole lot going on. They’ve cancelled our leave this week.’ A flash of resentment told Bonnie that this WPC had been personally inconvenienced by the Hawkshead business. ‘The incident room up there is being wound up tomor
row and everything’s coming back here. It’ll be easier, then.’
‘Will it?’ Bonnie had a strong sense that it ought to be the other way around – every police officer should be taken to Hawkshead, where they could search harder for Ben. ‘I don’t see how.’
The woman sniffed, as if to say, Well, I don’t intend to explain it to a slip of a thing like you.
‘It’s five-thirty now,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for him.’ And she sat down on a moulded plastic chair under a noticeboard full of well-intentioned homilies about locking up your possessions, or marking them with SmartWater. The impression this gave, which was much discussed by Corinne’s friends and relations, was that the police were devoting considerably more effort to persuading people to protect their property from theft than to tracking down objects that had actually been stolen. Once it was gone, that was that. It didn’t make for friendly relations.
But when someone was violently murdered, they had to step up and activate whatever detection skills they possessed. Ben, Simmy and Melanie had been involved in no fewer than four murder investigations over the past year, with Ben’s resulting opinion of the police a confused mixture of fascination and contempt. He could do better, he insisted. Not only that, but he would. He was going to devote his life to the science of solving crimes, especially murder.
But Ben’s interests ranged wider than that, hence the 1780 game and all its ramifications. It was, she knew, partly intended as diversion and education for her. Something the two of them could engage in together, a special project just for them. And as a bonus, if it were to be finished, it might raise some income. There was a big market for video games, and although amateurs seldom succeeded in breaking into the commercial side, if anybody could, it was Ben Harkness.
Her hunches of that morning were still sustainable, she believed. Ben had been focused on the game when he went to Colthouse. And while he definitely had discovered Dan Yates’s body, and very likely stumbled upon the killer or killers, he might well be intending to weave his observations into the game somehow. But here she floundered. Would he really put her and his family through such anguished worry for such a reason? Surely not! He was much more likely to be exercising his civic duty as he saw it, by following the criminals and gathering evidence against them.
Then Moxon arrived and interrupted her swirling repetitive thoughts. He came in with another man, ushering him with that firm manner that the police adopted. It combined respect with a clear assertion of authority. The man was familiar to Bonnie, but she could not immediately place him. Tall, quite old, with a neat grey beard and old-fashioned clothes. She gazed up at him from her chair, until the memory clicked into place. He was one of the guests from the hotel who had been on the lawn that morning.
‘Miss Lawson,’ Moxon greeted her without surprise. Somebody must have phoned to tell him she was there, she supposed. ‘Can you give me ten more minutes, while I take Mr Ferguson through? It’s quite important.’
She shrugged and smiled, mainly for the benefit of the woman on the desk. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Except Corinne might be worrying about me, I suppose. I didn’t tell her where I was going.’
‘Call her then.’ He scanned her hands for the expected phone, raising his eyebrows when it was not in evidence. ‘Where’s your phone?’
‘Here.’ She took it from the pocket of her jacket. ‘I’ll tell her you want to talk to me. How long do you think we’ll be?’
He said nothing, but tilted his head and uttered a little laugh. She had seen him do the same thing with Ben. It indicated amused exasperation at their cheek, while at the same time taking them rather more seriously than most senior policemen would.
She let him go, wondering about Mr Ferguson. Had he killed the under-manager? It seemed highly unlikely. Easier to believe that he had glimpsed some shadowy figure amongst the trees on the edge of Esthwaite and come forward to offer a vague statement. Or overheard some suspicious-sounding conversation that had only now come to mind. Whatever it was, Moxon wasn’t going to tell her – unless the old bloke was arrested and charged and the whole thing solved by bedtime.
At last, she was seated in front of a laptop looking at the pictures from Ben’s phone. A computer techie in Kendal had captured eight images from the memory and had added times and dates to them before transmitting them to the laptop in Windermere. There was the tied-up clump of ferns in the burial ground, timed at 11.26. Then pictures of the burial ground itself with its plain stone grave markers; the stone trough in the farmyard with the ancient black pump placed above it; a granite rock on the side of a grassy track followed a few minutes later. She peered closely, wondering about its significance. There were faint letters scratched onto it. ‘That’s F and C, isn’t it?’ she asked Moxon.
He had obviously not seen the letters before. ‘Looks like it,’ he agreed. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Fletcher Christian,’ she said promptly. ‘He’s in our game. He was at school with Wordsworth, you know. But not in Hawkshead.’ She frowned. ‘It’s just another picture we can use at some point. All the animation’s going to be based on what’s really there, you see. It’s much more multilayered than ordinary games. You can take it to the actual places. I mean – you will be able to. It’s going to be awesome,’ she sighed.
Moxon sighed even more loudly. ‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’
‘Never mind. It’s nothing to do with the murder. The time’s still before he called Simmy, look.’
But then the next picture jumped fifteen minutes and was unavoidably relevant. It showed a man lying prostrate on the ground with shadows from overhead trees making patches across his torso. His face was turned sideways, but easy to recognise. Moxon was plainly uneasy at letting Bonnie see it. ‘This is the one we’re most interested in,’ he told her. ‘Although it doesn’t show anything immediately helpful.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Except, of course, that we never saw him in this position. He was in the lake when your friends found him.’
‘Typical Ben, taking a picture,’ she said, feeling somewhat light-headed. ‘Before he called Simmy, I suppose.’
‘Two minutes before. Which seems rather a long time, wouldn’t you say?’
Bonnie looked up at him, where he stood at her shoulder. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Look at the next picture.’
It showed a more distant view of the body, with trees behind it. Ben had evidently retreated a short distance away from the woods for this picture. ‘There’s a rough field between the trees and the road,’ Moxon said. ‘With a path that runs up to the hotel.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She brought to mind the terrain she had covered that morning. ‘You’ve got it all taped off now.’
The next picture was almost exactly the same, but the one after that seemed to be much closer to what she and Moxon had been looking for. Tilted at a crazy angle, it was a smudgy shot of a pair of human legs encased in trousers and wearing sturdy brown walking shoes. ‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘That must be the killer! Those are men’s shoes and trousers, aren’t they?’ She leant closer to the screen. ‘You can tinker with it and get the colour and material, can’t you?’
‘The trousers are some sort of cotton. Not denim,’ he said. ‘And the shoes are fairly distinctive.’
‘Quite smart, then. Likely to be one of the guests at the hotel.’ She paused, trying to think. ‘Is that why you’ve brought Mr Ferguson in? To compare his clothes with the picture?’
‘Quite definitely not,’ said Moxon firmly. ‘He came of his own accord.’
‘I hope he’s told you something useful.’ She looked up hopefully, but Moxon’s face remained bland, and he said nothing. She sighed and looked back at the pictures. ‘That’s the last one, then? So when did he call Simmy and leave that message? You can’t take a picture and talk on the phone at the same time.’
He nodded. ‘The call comes between the last two pictures. He must have acted very quickly to get this final shot.’
/> ‘So we know there was some sort of struggle, do we? Doesn’t this picture prove it? And if there was, we can’t be sure that he is okay, after all.’ A twist inside her made her gasp. ‘They might even have killed him by now.’
Moxon merely watched her, with a patient sort of sympathy.
Her head was buzzing. ‘Ben’s not okay,’ she said flatly. ‘I never really thought he was. I can feel it. He’s in real trouble.’
The detective was being oddly calm. She wanted to smack him, make him react more urgently. He moved away from her and glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘It’s a lot more than twenty-four hours now,’ she insisted. ‘Isn’t that when you start to take this sort of thing more seriously?’
‘This is no “sort of thing” I’ve dealt with before. He’s not a missing person as such.’ He rubbed his cheek, like somebody trying to wake himself up. ‘Trust your Ben to land us with something new. We’re not at all sure what the best procedure might be.’
She stared at him. Was he admitting weakness? Even failure? ‘He’s a hostage,’ she said. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘In a way, perhaps. We have absolutely no way of telling whether he’s acting independently, or whether he’s under duress. But there’s been no ransom demand. No threats. Just that strange little note on your mother’s car in Hawkshead.’
Normally Bonnie would have said, She’s not my mother, but she let it pass. Corinne was the closest she was ever going to get to a maternal presence in her life, anyway. Moxon knew that. He probably said it deliberately.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘And that must have come from Ben. Who else could it have been?’
‘I agree. But he might have been forced to do it.’
‘That’s not the way that Barnaby boy made it sound. I can’t work it out. The photos don’t really help, either.’ She had turned on the chair, sitting sideways and looking at him. She felt like a proper adult, taken into the confidence of a senior police officer. It was an extension of the way Ben made her feel. They both treated her like a serious person with important things to say. It was intoxicating. She felt ready for anything. For some reason it made her think of Melanie Todd, who had not shown herself half as strong when events turned nasty.
