Death on the Lake

by Jo Allen

  George was sitting at the table, an empty plate in front of him. He wore every one of his ninety-five years like a badge of honour, tissue-thin skin stretched over a fragile frame of bone, scant white hair that had grown too long, eyes that had once been blue but had faded to the pale colour of melting spring snow, but he nevertheless showed why he was good for many years more. His facial expressions were quick and sharp, his movements slow but precise, and he wore a pair of scarlet braces over his faded checked shirt in some sort of challenge to Father Time.

  ‘Ryan, eh?’ He didn’t get up, though he reached out a frail hand to shake that which Ryan offered him. ‘Your mam didn’t tell me you were coming. Not that she writes to me more than Christmas.’ He sniffed in disapproval.

  ‘Evening George. No, Mum’s not a great correspondent,’ Ryan said, shaking his head. ‘I’m not so good myself, either. I think I maybe forgot to tell her.’

  ‘You forgot to tell your mam you were coming halfway round the world?’ George’s expression cracked into a sneer.

  ‘The world’s a lot smaller than it was in your day, mate. I was due some leave so I thought I’d drop everything and roll. It’s how life is, now. It moves on.’

  Becca moved to the kettle and George’s hand snapped up in a gesture of obstruction. ‘Don’t bother with that. I don’t take anything at this time of night.’

  Unsurprised, yet without any great sense of vindication, Becca registered that she was right and Ryan had struck entirely the wrong note. All to the good. Once they’d got through the minimal painful formalities, they could go home and she might be able to salvage something from her evening. She turned to make herself useful while she could, picked up George’s plate and cutlery and placed them in the sink. ‘There’s a lot of police activity along the lake shore today. Any idea what’s going on?’ And he would know, because even though he barely left the dying house he’d chosen for himself, he would come out of his garden like a spider snapping up a fly when one of his neighbours wandered by, and the couple who kept the next-door farm were in and out every day, keeping an eye on him. In his retirement, George’s whole life was absorbed in other people’s business.

  ‘Aye.’ He perked up at that, turning his attention away from Ryan. ‘Some lass from down at the marina went out for a walk and never came back. The police came up this morning to ask me if I’d seen anything, but she was never by the end of this road. I was looking out this morning and I’d have seen. Tom Fenton reckons she fell in on the way back by the lake path and drowned.’

  ‘Fell in?’ Ryan, clearly determined to make amends by sounding interested, leaned forward. ‘It’s not steep along that way.’

  ‘And how would you know?’

  ‘I walked along that way the other day, when I got here. First thing I did. She might have tried to swim and drowned, but there’s nowhere to fall.’

  Ryan was wrong and there were plenty of places where you could fall, but you didn’t get anywhere with either him or George by arguing. ‘Awful,’ Becca said, to try and make peace. ‘The poor girl. Are they sure she fell in the water?’

  ‘No, but she spent Sunday afternoon drinking with those useless young bucks up at Waterside Lodge so she’ll not have known right from wrong by the end of it.’

  ‘She might have fallen, somewhere. Or wandered off the path.’ Ryan wouldn’t give up. Couldn’t he see he’d already irritated George close to a point way beyond the possibility of forgiveness? ‘She might still be alive. I do know a bit about that, you know, George. Being in the army. I’m a survivalist.’

  ‘I was in the army myself.’

  ‘Yes, but times have changed. You must have done National Service. I signed up as a regular.’ Ryan stretched his hands, flexing his fingers together so that the muscles rippled up to his elbows and onwards underneath the short sleeves of his tee shirt.

  ‘Leave the plates, Becca. Sally can do them in the morning. I’m wanting my bed, and I daresay you’ll be wanting to get home and put your feet up, too.’ He got up from his chair, his movements careful but stable, and turned his attention to the pill box on the table. ‘I’ll take my tablets and be off to bed.’

  Becca poured him a glass of water. ‘At least you got to see Ryan.’ And it been relatively painless.

  ‘Aye. And maybe next time you come skulking up the dale and hanging around near my cottage like you did last week, lad, you’ll call in when it suits me, not when it doesn’t.’

  ‘I wasn’t skulking. I just came for a walk to ease off the jet lag. Got a bus to Pooley Bridge and walked to Howtown and back.’ Ryan stayed seated, even when Becca nodded pointedly towards the door. ‘George, mate. I can see you’re tired. Sorry if we disturbed you. But I wondered about you doing me a favour.’

  That came as no surprise. Becca reclaimed the glass, placed it in the sink and turned to the door. ‘We really do need to go. I’ll call in some time soon, Uncle George. And let me know if you need anything.’

  ‘What I was thinking,’ Ryan pursued, leaning forward, ‘is that I might be able to do you a favour. I like this part of the area. It’s where my roots are. Where my granddad was born.’

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me my family history.’

  ‘No, course not, mate. Sorry. But this is what I was thinking. I could maybe move in with you for a few days. We could get to know one another. I could help you out around the house a bit. Because I need somewhere to stay. I can’t impose on Ruth for any more than a week.’

  ‘Aye.’ George glared. ‘So you think you’re going to come and impose on me instead?’

  ‘I don’t see it like that.’ Ryan had adopted a wheedling tone. ‘I thought we could help each other out. Thought you might be able to tell me a bit about the family and all that sort of thing. I love this place. I want to spend a bit more time here. Get back to my roots. You know?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be a…what did you call it? A survivor?’

  ‘Survivalist.’ Ryan’s face was contorted, a struggle between keeping a charming front to try and improve his chances of getting George onside, and sheer irritation at the way the old man had received his suggestion. ‘I was just trying to help.’

  ‘Help yourself, maybe. If you’re a survivalist and you want to get back to your roots, get yourself a bloody tent and camp out. But make sure it’s somewhere I don’t see you.’

  ‘Come on, Ryan.’ Becca raised her voice, as she might have done with a child who was pushing her patience. ‘I think it’s time to go.’

  He pushed his chair back. ‘Yeah, okay. Sorry for caring.’ A trace of petulance flickered in his voice.

  ‘The only one you care about is yourself. I know why you’re here. You’ve turned up when you’ve never seen me before, out of nowhere, and you’re trying to see what you can get from me.’ George’s voice rose to a shout. ‘Well, you’re wasting your time. I don’t have anything but this house, and if I did I’d be leaving it to people who care about me!’

  ‘Uncle George.’ Alarmed, Becca crossed the room and stood between the two of them. She could see Ryan was twitching with fury but she trusted him not to turn violent with an old man. George was a different matter. He might be too frail to do Ryan any harm but he had a notoriously bad temper and she could see him working himself up into a sufficient state to harm his health. ‘We’re just leaving. Ryan didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘That young lad is just like his grandfather. I never want to see him again.’

  ‘I’ll call in next week.’

  ‘Aye. You know I’m always glad to see you.’

  Thank God the visit was over. Becca ushered Ryan outside and down the path and the two of them lingered for a moment at the roadside while she waited for some sign of contrition from her cousin.

  ‘I ballsed that one up, didn’t I?’ He flipped his hood up against a further surge of rain that rocked and rolled its way across the bleak dale towards them. ‘I thought the old guy would want to get to know me.’

  ‘It’s not your fa
ult.’ Now they were out of the house Becca’s good nature triumphed, as it always did, usually to her detriment. ‘He’s very old, and he hates having his routine disturbed.’ Sometimes she thought their great uncle’s bursts of irrational fury were all he had left, rage his only weapon against impending death. That was why she still kept coming along to see him, despite his undoubted malice.‘Besides, I think you struck a raw nerve with him. Mum says he never got on with your grandfather.’

  ‘You reckon that’s it? That it wasn’t me?’

  ‘I think you probably rushed him a little. And maybe you remind him a little of his brother.’

  ‘You think I do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She considered. The Barrett brothers existed as youths only in one or two sepia photographs, taken before Ryan’s grandfather had died in the 1950s and his widow had emigrated to Australia with their children. Ryan had a long thin face that sat strangely above his muscular torso and bore no resemblance to their matching square jaws, but he had sandy hair and she remembered her mother saying they’d been a trio of redheads. That might go some way to explaining George’s short fuse. ‘I wouldn’t take it to heart.’

  ‘Well, I’m here whether he likes it or not. I won’t bother him again if you think I shouldn’t, but I thought it would be a good thing for both of us. He’s not getting any younger and I won’t be here for ever.’

  ‘I can’t see George agreeing to it, I’m afraid.’ Becca took another look down towards the shore, her thoughts briefly with the girl missing on the lake. The police should come along and ask George about her, because if she’d gone past the cottage and he was awake he’d almost certainly have seen her. The cottage dominated the route down through Howtown to Sandwick and he liked to know what his neighbours were up to.

  ‘Maybe you’re right. And maybe he was right, too. Maybe I should get a tent and camp out for a bit. It’s so different to Down Under. I could learn to love it, but yeah. I don’t need a roof over my head. Not right now.’

  Tactless he might be, but at least he could see sense. On balance, Becca thought she was entitled to heave a sigh of relief this ordeal was over. ‘Since you’re here, would you like to have a quick look at the church.’

  ‘Is it open?’

  ‘No, not at the moment. But we can look at the graveyard. Your grandfather’s buried here. So is mine.’ In time George would be buried next to them in a long-reserved plot, possibly the last of the residents of the dale to find eternal rest within it. Becca’s lips twitched at the thought of the three brothers bickering into eternity. She led Ryan around to the church, through the ancient gate with a heavy stone on a spring to close it. ‘Look how they do this. It’s a self-closing gate? Isn’t it clever? They have to be careful about keeping it closed, or the sheep get in.’

  ‘Doesn’t seemed to have worked,’ he said, looking round.

  The nettles and brambles that burgeoned around the low slate building had been trampled and someone had forced back the branches of an ancient yew tree so that one of them had snapped and hung forlornly, glistening its rain. ‘I expect that’s the police, looking for that poor girl.’

  ‘They’ve made a right mess.’

  They had, but Becca was glad of that. It spared her the thought of stumbling over a body, lying in the long wet grass that whipped around her legs. She led him to the two gravestones set close to the rear wall. ‘Here you go.’

  Frank Barrett had died relatively young and lichen had had the better part of seventy years to climb over the unyielding surface, but his name and his date of birth were clear. There was nothing else, other than the terse note that he was of the parish — no words of love or comfort or regret from his widow and children. There must have been a reason why everyone disliked him, but for all that he was her family. Next time she came, she’d try and remember to bring some flowers.

  Ryan spent ten minutes standing by the grave looking contemplative. Leaving him to enjoy whatever thoughts he could muster of his late grandfather — because something told her he wasn’t usually the thoughtful, sensitive type — Becca strayed out of the churchyard, past a couple of curious Herdwick sheep and up to the top of the rise where George’s house sat. The frantic activity still seemed to be ongoing at the lake, and as she watched a Range Rover eased over the bridge at Sandwick and through the electric gates at Waterside Lodge.

  ‘Okay,’ Ryan said, appearing beside her. ‘That’s me done my duty by the old bugger. I said hello and goodbye to him, and that’s all you can do, isn’t it? It’s not like I ever met him.’

  As they headed back to the car the drizzle turned once more to rain and the wind flayed the drops into slingshots that came at them with force. With relief, Becca made the comfort of the car and as they headed up the dale she saw George, in his eyrie on the front room window, gesturing vigorously. He might have been waving, or he might have been shaking his fist. With George, you never knew.

  Six

  There was no shortage of opinions in and around Pooley Bridge and plenty of folk were keen to share them with the police. Though Summer Raine had passed only briefly through the lives of the villagers, many of them remembered her as an ever-cheerful, ever-bubbly, skimpily-clad visitor from the previous year and had been happy enough to see her back again, some of them for the full force of her personality but others, Ashleigh suspected, for the opportunity it gave them to be scandalised. But most of the flak that was incoming towards the unfortunate Summer wasn’t personal. Most of it was directed towards her boyfriend, Luke Helmsley.

  ‘No-one likes the guy,’ Tyrone said to Ashleigh, handing her a sheaf of scrawled witness statements as she stood beside her parked car in the centre of the village. ‘Have a look through. They say he’s rude. They say he’s aggressive. They say he drinks a lot and drink doesn’t suit his nature. Most of them think he’s done her in, though none of them can say why, or when, or how.’

  ‘Most of them don’t know where she was on Sunday afternoon, then,’ Ashleigh observed, accepting the papers and looking down at the top one, which bore out exactly what Tyrone had just been saying. ‘If they did they’d be putting two and two together and getting five.’

  ‘Doing our job for us, eh?’ Having completed his mission, Tyrone turned back again towards the main street. ‘We’ve spoken to anyone who was up Howtown way and might have seen her, but there’s no sign of her.’

  Ashleigh reviewed the route in her head. She’d never been there but she’d scanned the map. ‘She might have come back along the lakeside path, then.’

  ‘I spoke to a few people who were out on it between about three and five. Nobody saw her.’

  ‘Those boys were lying about how much they drank,’ she said, thinking aloud. And drugs. She was sure there must have been drugs involved. Jude’s refusal to accept it still irritated her.

  ‘She might have been so drunk she went the other way, but if she did that she’d have had to go across the bridge at Sandwick and then she’d have realised.’

  ‘You think? Those boys looked pretty rough when we spoke to them and that was the day after.’ She frowned and recalled the map again. It would have been all too easy for Summer to have disappeared off into the hills.

  ‘We’ll all just have to keep looking.’ Tyrone squinted along to the hills. It was May but the nights were still cold and Summer hadn’t been dressed for the outdoors. She’d been gone for almost forty eight hours.

  ‘Yes. No point in giving up hope.’ Ashleigh checked her watch, her mind already flitting ahead to what would need to be done next. There was a huge area to cover and her gut instinct was that it was fruitless and that drink and drugs and folly had sent Summer stumbling to death by misadventure. If she’d survived, surely someone would have found her.

  Her phone rang. ‘Thanks Tyrone. Keep going. I’ll need to answer this.’ She turned away, raising the phone to her ear. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Bad news.’ It was one of the uniformed policewomen engaged in the search up at Howtown. ‘We’ve found
a body.’

  ‘In the lake?’ Ashleigh’s heart dived into a sick, horrible place. The first knowledge of death, accidental or otherwise, never got any easier, though when she’d joined the force she’d thought it would. ‘Is it Summer?’

  ‘Yes. Young female, long blonde hair. Tattoo of a butterfly on the back of the left thigh, another butterfly on the left collarbone. Naked.’

  Oh God. ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘In the water just off the lake path. Near a spot called Kailpot Crag.’

  Dead, naked. How much were the Neilson twins lying? How far out of hand had their mini orgy got? ‘Any signs of injury?’

  ‘Nothing obvious. But her clothes and her bag were there, all in a neat pile on the shore. Purse and phone on there, so it doesn’t look like anything’s been taken. The bank card is in the name of Summer Raine.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get down there as soon as I can.’ Ashleigh ended the call with a further bout of instructions, even though the constable on the other end of the line would know exactly what to do and would have a uniformed sergeant on hand to ask if she didn’t. ‘Tyrone, you keep on here. They think they’ve found her.’

  She walked round to the driver’s side and slid into the seat, clicking the seat belt fastened before putting in a call to Jude. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard yet. It looks as if we’ve found Summer’s body.’

  ‘No. I hadn’t heard.’ There was pause, as though he was mentally rearranging his day, which would mean that Summer’s death was potentially far more significant than just an accidental death. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Pooley Bridge. They found her in the lake just under Hallin Fell. I’m just heading down there.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll come down and join you. Just to see what’s going on.’

  So she was right. Jude wouldn’t normally ditch whatever he was doing to come and take an interest in the discovery of a body. There were plenty of people on site, apart from herself, capable of doing whatever needed to be done and plenty more to whom he could have delegated the job if necessary. ‘It was at Kailpot Crag, apparently. You know it?’