Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  This stake-out business wasn’t as easy as he had hoped. Ryan turned the engine off, and in no time the car was stone cold again. He decided to give up for the night, and maybe come up with a different plan. Because for all he knew Wayne might have been chatting away to Adam online or on the phone for all he’d know about it sitting out here. Maybe they never even met at all.

  But Ryan had the beginnings of an idea. What if he was able to force Wayne to meet Adam face-to-face somehow? It would have to be something that would be guaranteed to get Adam into the open. But Ryan was too cold to think clearly, so he started the car again, scraped the condensation off the windscreen, and drove home.

  Sunday, 12th December

  The house was quiet whenHall came down for breakfast. The kids were still fast asleep, and as he put on his walking gear he was reminded of when the kids were small, as he often went walking on his days off. It had been a good way to get to know the eastern fringes of the Lakes, the Dales and the Pennines. He felt a bit stiffer, and a good bit thicker round the middle as he bent down to tie his worn old boots, but a good few years had passed since he’d walked really regularly.

  When he got in the car and backed out of the drive he put a Stones album into the CD player, foundGimme Shelter, and played it loud as he drove the mile or so to the Scout Scar car park. It was a lovely morning, not a cloud in the sky and frost still holding hard on the shadowed ground, and Hall found himself looking forward to the walk.

  He’d been tempted to text Ian Mann and ask him to come along, but he hadn’t. And as he parked up in the almost empty car park he wasn’t certain that he’d made the right decision. Anything Hamilton said would have no evidential value of course, but Hall didn’t see him as a credible suspect, so that wasn’t his concern. He just wondered why he’d suggested it to Hamilton in the first place. Now he was here he could really have done with a walk on his own.

  But it was too late for second thoughts, because Hamilton’s Range Rover crunched over the bare limestone of the car park and pulled in. Hamilton was obviously as punctual as Hall was, even on a Sunday.

  They shook hands, and agreed to walk along Cunswick Scar, back across the golf course to town, grab a coffee and a bacon roll, then walk back out to Scout Scar, along the top and back to the cars. It wasn’t a marathon, but there were lovely views to the Langdales in the first part of the walk, and an equally enjoyable stroll above the Lyth valley to finish. They set off, saying little and settling into a strolling rhythm.

  ‘Did you sleep all right?’ asked Hall.

  Hamilton shook his head.

  ‘No. I could go the GP and get some pills I suppose, but you can’t rely on that forever, can you?’

  ‘I agree, but it might help for a while.’

  ‘But that’s the problem. Like I said, this is never going to get any better. For the rest of my life this is going to be the first and last thing that I think about every day. So I might as well get used to it I reckon. I need to be strong for Lucy, that’s my other daughter. She has to be my priority now.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Totally gone into herself. No surprise really, but her mum is doing her best. It was strange, but when my wife first left the kids didn’t tell anyone at school. Just kept it to themselves for weeks and weeks. They must have been ashamed of us. It really hurt when I found out. But when I thought about it I realised that, in their position, I’d have done exactly the same thing.’

  ‘So I guess the best thing to do is try to help her through this. Keep the routines going, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I’m going to try to go into work tomorrow actually. I probably won’t get anything done, but that’ll be my staff’s problem. They’ve been great actually. I’ve had dozens of phone calls and emails, but that’s the thing about a family business I suppose. We all know each other.’

  They walked on in silence for a while, climbing gently until they reached the top of Cunswick Scar, and the views opened up to the west. Hall had seen it hundreds of times, but he was still moved by it.

  ‘Work and family, where would we be without them?’ said Hall eventually.

  ‘I know what you mean. By the time you’re our age they define your life, don’t they? Sometimes, if I have to go to the Post Office in town I see a couple of people I’ve known since I was a lad, and who I know haven’t worked in years. Not since the shoe factory closed. I sometimes wonder how they manage to go on, day after day.’

  ‘They do all right though, don’t they? I’ve noticed some of the young coppers at work becoming really angry about it actually. They work long hours, can’t afford to buy a place of their own in town, don’t even have the kind of security that we used to have in the job, and they get pretty pissed off when they see the way that some of our regular customers seem to live.’

  ‘I do know what they mean, but I wouldn’t want to swap places. Mind you, I inherited a thriving business. Two generations of my family worked umpteen hours a week for well over 60 years to build it up. That’s why I’ve always been determined not to let them down.’

  ‘No chance of that, surely?’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. Our Swedish competition have hurt us over the last couple of decades, and the internet hasn’t helped either. Just walk into one of our shops and you’ll see that the customers are older than our staff, and that’s saying something. So I don’t think there’s a long term future in it, and my job is really to manage the decline and get the best out of it for my staff. I want to try to get a good few more through to a decent retirement age.’

  ‘You’re not worried about the money?’

  ‘No, not for a minute. Even after the divorce I’ve got a decent level of pensions and investments outside the business. And because I’m now effectively the sole shareholder the value that’s left in the business when it does close, like the premises that we own and a few other assets, will all be mine. It may take a bit of time to realise, especially because of the way the economy is, but some of the sites have very significant value.’

  ‘So why did your brother want out? He disagreed with your strategy, wanted to get out faster perhaps?’

  Hamilton walked on silently, and Hall wondered if he’d crossed a line of some sort. He remembered one occasion, as a young Detective Sergeant, when he’d asked an old hill farmer who’d had some Swaledales nicked how many sheep he had, and been surprised at the curt reply he got. It was only later that he found out that it had been exactly like asking the man how much cash he had in the bank.

  But John Hamilton didn’t seem remotely offended, and they walked for a minute or two before he replied. ‘My brother just has a different way of seeing things, I suppose. He’s eight years younger than me, and by the time he came back from university my grandfather had died,and it was him who’d set the tone for the whole business. Simon just missed out on that I suppose. Anyway, Simon thinks I’m a dinosaur, and that we should have levered up on the back of the existing business and got involved in developing flats in Leeds and Manchester. At the time I thought he was probably right from a financial perspective, we’re talking about a few years back now, but he’s turned out to be dead wrong. He needed to cash in his shares in our business just to get the banks off his back.’

  ‘And he wasn’t happy with what he got?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. But it was all done completely fairly. We had the business independently valued, but it turned out to be much less than he’d banked on - probably literally. He’s hardly spoken to me since, and to be honest I was surprised when he came round a couple of nights ago. But it was great to see him of course.’

  ‘We saw him round at your ex-wife’s too.’

  ‘That’s good. He seemed to blame her for the low payout he got as well, so I think they fell out too.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Simon convinced himself that the fact that I had to fund my wife’s divorce settlement was behind the valuation of the business, and the offer that was made to him for his shar
es. But of course it wasn’t. They weren’t connected at all.’

  They walked on, stopping at the western end of the fell and looking out at the Langdales in the distance. Cloud was just starting to bubble above the Pikes. ‘Anyway, you seem very interested in my business. Is that professional interest?’

  ‘Not really, though of course the more background I have the better. But you’re certainly not a suspect in my mind. If you were then I wouldn’t be able to be doing this today.’

  Hamilton seemed reassured. ‘You know it’s a funny thing about money. I’ve never been poor for a single day in my whole life, so this isn’t based on personal knowledge, but I think money changes from being a force for good, something liberating, to the exact opposite at the very the moment you go one single pound overdrawn.’

  They walked back across the golf course, waiting for a group to play past and onto the green. Like Freemasonry the Golf Club was another career enhancing club that Hall had never felt the slightest urge to join. One way back into town was down through Serpentine Woods, but Hall turned down another path before they reached the woods. Hamilton didn’t comment.

  They walked on in silence for a minute, Kendal spread out in the valley below them, with the Howgills piling up behind. Hall mentioned that he’d met Robert Preston. Hamilton didn’t offer any comment. ‘I understand he’s in the property game too’ prompted Hall.

  ‘So I gather. When I knew him he was more or less an odd-job man, but since he’s hooked up with Amanda he’s gone up in the world. A bit late to that particular party I’d have thought, but what do I know?’

  ‘What do you know?’

  Hamilton looked across at Hall. He smiled. ‘Good question Andy. Believe it or not, next to nothing. As soon as I’d satisfied myself that he was a safe person for my kids to be around I made a conscious effort to know as little as possible about him.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I suppose I realised that there was just no point dwelling on what had happened, and trying to work out why my wife preferred someone else, because it wouldn’t make any difference if I did know, and I never could anyway. Half decent marriages don’t just crumble when someone else comes along, it takes time, thousands of tiny reasons. And of course it takes two as well. So if you want a bit of advice I’d be inclined to avoid any off-duty sleuthing into your wife’s affairs, or should I say affair?’

  Hall looked straight ahead, and kept on walking.

  They found a cafe, ordered coffee and bacon rolls, then walked up Beast Banks, skirted round the housing estate where Hamilton lived, and he pointed out where it was as they passed.

  ‘I remember this estate going up in the eighties’ commented Hamilton, ‘just before the last big financial crash. We wondered who was going to buy them, but of course it was great for business, because they all needed new furniture. That was probably the last time that I could honestly say that the business was really expanding. It bought my wife a couple of new sports cars before we had the kids, anyway.’

  ‘Has Kendal changed so much?’

  ‘Massively. When I was a kid there weren’t many offcomers, especially retired folk like we have now. Without being funny I don’t think many folk lived long enough after they’d retired to move up here from the industrial towns. Then, in the eighties, things started to change, and over the last twenty years we’ve seen lots of older people moving in. The big hospital opening was the best thing that had happened to us in years, because it was like having a good school, it acted as a magnet for older people. But I’m not sure what’s here for the young ones now, and I always expected my kids to have to move away. Do you?’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose so. But it’s less of an issue for me because I’m not Kendal born and raised.’

  ‘But you’d like to stay?’

  ‘Well I certainly intend to finish my service in Kendal. I’ve missed the boat in terms of promotion already, but that was my choice. I wanted the kids to have stability as they were growing up, and there are plenty of worse places to live if you’re a copper. Someone once told me that they’d heard Kendal called ‘the graveyard of ambition’, and it was years before I knew what they meant.’

  ‘And after you retire?’

  ‘Who knows? I think I’ll try to get through the divorce, get the kids safely away to university, then have a rethink. I did have a few ideas of things that me and my wife could do together, but they’re not going to happen now.’

  They walked on in silence again, towards the covered viewing point that everyone called the mushroom because of its distinctive shape on the skyline, and then Hall found himself speaking. ‘I’ve spent half my life making plans, even though someone in my job should know better. I suppose it’s in the genes, or maybe something that we just inherit from our own parents. Perhaps they just lived in more certain times.’

  They walked the rest of the way without saying much at all, shook hands at their cars and went their separate ways. Hall played the stereo loud as he drove home, and decided that he’d just go into work for a couple of hours. He knew that his phone would have rung if there’d been a development, but perhaps someone had missed something. The thought made him edgy.

  Ian Mann went for a long morning run that finished at the Police station. He showered, dressed and headed for the office. To his surprise Ray Dixon was already in. His shift didn’t start for an hour yet.

  ‘You’re in early because you need your overtime signing, are you Ray?’

  ‘Holidays in the sun don’t pay for themselves Sarge. No, I’m off as of the end of the shift for a week, and since we’re going abroad the boss said it was OK. So I’ve just been pulling everything together. Do you want to go through it all?’

  ‘Just give me the summary Ray.’

  ‘Well, I did what the boss asked and I talked to everyone caught on CCTV after Amy drove by. Total waste of time. One said that she almost drove into a big car that pulled out in front of her from the side of the road at the top of Beast Banks, but that was all. None of them saw Amy park her car, or turn off onto Queen’s Road.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘That’s it Sarge. I’ll send you an email with the status of the rest of my follow-ups, and you can divvy them up as you like. I won’t be sorry to get away from this case for a few days, I can tell you.’

  Mann took the bait. He was curious.

  ‘Why’s that then Ray?’

  ‘It’s posh people, they make me nervous. You know where you are with our usual low-lifes. They fall out with each other, get up to all sorts, then one grasses up the other to us. We nick that lot, they blame the others, so we nick them too. By the time it’s come to court their kids are shacked up together and they’ve no idea what they said in their statements. But at least you know where you stand. They just say what’s in their heads that second. But this lot are different. They’re careful, they’ve got too much to lose. They think about the future, about the implications of what they say and do. They don’t even swear at us. It’s not natural Sarge.’

  ‘Ray, you do know your pension is index-linked?’

  ‘You bet I do sarge. I got a projection just last month actually.’

  ‘Well that makes you middle class in my book. And where are you going on your holidays then?’

  ‘Spain.’

  ‘Whereabouts? The Costa? High rise just handy for the English bars?’

  ‘Not a chance sarge. A little village near Granada. Lovely place, especially off season.’

  ‘Stop it Ray, you’ll be telling me about the olive oil and the sweet little man who cleans out the pool next. I told you, we’re all middle-class now, even you. And I started out as a squaddie with no qualifications, and look at me now. One day I might even get the key to the senior officers’ khazi.’

  Fortunately, it was Jane Francis rather than the Super who walked in as Mann was speaking. ‘Bring us back a rafia donkey’ called out Mann, and Dixon flicked him the Vs as he left.

&
nbsp; ‘What’s new Jane?’

  ‘Not much Sarge. The techies took a look at John Hamilton’s laptop, and he wasn’t online between 6pm and after 11pm, and as he said he did use the online telephone directory later on.’

  ‘So we haven’t got him online anytime around Amy’s death. Anything else?’

  ‘He browsed a fair bit of porn, they’re going through it now. They’ll have a full report tomorrow.’

  ‘Anything we should be concerned about?’

  ‘It’s not my area Sarge. I’ve got a print out of the URLs if you want them.’ she grinned. ‘They might mean something to you Sarge.’

  ‘You cheeky mare. No, I’ll wait for the report I think. So what’s your work plan for today?’

  ‘I’m just about to start on John Hamilton’s emails. I’ve only just started, but they mainly seem to be about settees. Can’t see any about pouffes though.’

  ‘Very droll Jane. That’s top of the bill material, that is. Or it was in 1974.’

  Ryan had been giving a lot of thought about how to get Adam out into the open. He had no idea how dangerous Adam might be, nor how many other people worked for him. So it had to be something that Adam would be bound to think of as important enough to deal with himself. And since Ryan knew nothing about him that had to be drugs or money, and plenty of one or both.

  One option would be to steal from Wayne, and it wouldn’t be difficult. He was an addict, and he was lazy. But Ryan quickly excluded that option, for two reasons. First, he didn’t want to involve anyone else, and he still couldn’t see himself actually hurting Wayne if it came to it. Second, and more importantly, would Wayne have enough gear or cash to get Adam’s attention? Ryan doubted that.