Death on the Lake

by Jo Allen

  He tamped the tobacco down with his thumb once, twice, a third time. ‘Taking pictures of your house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aye.’ He struck a match and the flame flared up in the gloom. ‘A woman. Parked up at the turning and then walked up to get a good view. She had a camera. Took a lot of pictures. I didn’t think she looked like a drug dealer, though. And I’ve seen her more than once.’

  ‘What did she look like? What was the car like? When did you see her?’

  He considered, puffing slowly on the pipe. ‘A red car. I don’t know the make. I don’t drive now, so why would I? But it was a small one, not a local’s car. Wouldn’t have stood up to the weather.’

  ‘And the woman?’ Miranda found that her heart hurt her, the fear was so great.

  ‘Tall, for a lass, unless she was wearing heels. I couldn’t see. Short grey hair. Quite a bit older than you, I’d say. And in a business suit. That’s why I noticed her.’

  The tension snapped. Miranda’s laugh was far higher-pitched than it should have been, but hopefully George wouldn’t read too much into her sudden hilarity. ‘Oh! That’ll be Aida. Robert’s PA. Sometimes if he wants to spend time here rather than in London she comes up for a few days. She’s at the house just now.’ Something had cropped up, Robert had said, that needed his attention, and Aida had arrived after their evening meal and the two of them had disappeared into his study. ‘It’s why I came out for a walk. Maybe she wants the pictures to show her family where she’s working. And it is very beautiful.’

  ‘Had you worried, there did I?’ He was sitting with his back to the window but she could just about pick out the smile on his face, although the slight red glow from his pipe played tricks with the shadows. If he hadn’t been so old as to be harmless she’d have seen evil in it.

  ‘You did. I was scared someone might be coming to the dale to…’ she paused. ‘To sell the boys drugs.’

  George puffed away. ‘You’re a young woman, Miranda. You’ve a lot to learn.’

  She was forty and already knew more than she could handle, but she let it pass. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye. When you’ve lived as long as I have you’ll know it isn’t strangers you need to look out for. It’s the people under your nose.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Aye. Because there’s trouble brewing in this dale, too. So if I was you it might be others I was looking at. That young buck, Luke. He’s been sniffing around your house. Looking for something to steal, no doubt, though he’s so thick you’ll soon catch him if he tries.’

  ‘Well, thank you for the warning.’ George hadn’t mentioned what Luke had said about seeing her car on the day Summer had died. Was that deliberate? Had he just failed to hear it?

  ‘And not just him.’ George puffed out a long, long cloud of smoke. ‘I saw my great-nephew kicking around that week, too. He’ll be up to no good, just like his granddad. But that’ll be me he wants to do away with, not you.’

  ‘George.’ Her own fears relieved, at least as far as her neighbours went, Miranda felt able to be robust. ‘Why would anyone do that?’

  ‘Wants me in an early grave for my money, I expect. But he won’t get any. He might think I’ll split it with his side of the family because I never had bairns of my own, but why would I? I’ve never met any of them. They’ve been over to England and not troubled to visit. They never even send me a card on my birthday. It’s my niece and my great nieces who look after me. They’ll get the little I’ve got.’

  ‘No flies on you, George. Good for you. You leave it to the people who care about you.’ She stood up, carried her cup over to the sink. ‘I’d better go, before it gets dark.’

  ‘Shall I walk you home?’

  It was a joke, but she would have welcomed the company. ‘That’s very gallant, but I’ll manage. It’s not far.’

  ‘Pop by and see me again some time, if you want.’

  ‘I will. And you let me know if you have any more trouble from Luke.’

  She let herself out and wandered down the path towards the sunset, wreathed in the scent of his pipe smoke and the freshness of cut grass, and headed down towards Waterside Lodge. George’s observations had temporarily lifted the greater weight of nerves that were troubling her, but they didn’t help. Just because you didn’t see someone didn’t mean they weren’t there, but might only mean that they were smarter than you thought. It was a relief when she reached the electric gates, flicked them open with her key fob and stepped inside to safety.

  Thirteen

  Miranda, thought George, was a deeper woman than she wanted people to think.

  It had been a couple of days since his confrontation with Luke and although he’d seen him passing by on the way to and from his work up at the farm, he’d taken care to avoid any sniff of trouble. Luke’s temper was well-known and he seemed on edge, more so than he ought to be now the police appeared to have laid the case to rest. The sad death of Summer Raine had, the local newspaper informed him in a bare inch of type tucked at the foot of one of its inner pages, been referred to the coroner; the inquest had been opened and adjourned. The police cars had gone and the windsurfers, dinghy sailors and kayakers had started out again from the marina, the passing of the poor young woman barely observed. In his old-fashioned way George thought it shocking, but the more pragmatic part of him understood how things moved on, and put younger people under new pressures.

  That was what Miranda had hinted at when she’d talked to him about the strain she was under, but he wasn’t sure he was convinced. There was obviously something troubling her, and he wasn’t so sure it was the boys. If they were hers it would be different, but other people’s children were, at the end of the day, other people’s problems. He regretted having no children himself, and he was lucky he had Becca and, less often, her mother and her sister to come and cheer him up, but he didn’t miss the sleepless nights children would have given him when they were young. And older, too.

  He stared out of the window. The heavy overnight rain had eased and the day had turned rapidly from dark to light. Family entitlement was something you earned, in his book. That was why Sharon’s boy, Ryan, had put his back up so much, swanning up and expecting to be taken into the bosom of the family without making any effort to learn about them or listen to how they did things. And as for that idea of moving in…he’d read about that sort of thing in the paper. Drug dealers moving in with vulnerable people and using their homes to push their wares. Cuckooing, they called it. But if that was what Ryan had been trying to do, he’d been thwarted. I’m many things, George chastised himself, but I’m not vulnerable.

  A sound startled him from upstairs. Upstairs? No-one went upstairs in his cottage. The dust would be as thick as March snow up there, and after he’d gone whoever came to clean up would be able to roll it up like a mat and throw it away.

  At ninety-five he should expect his hearing to play tricks on him. He shuffled his way into the kitchen to fetch his pipe and have a cup of tea. It was nearly ten and Becca, he knew, had every second Saturday off. When that happened, she’d call in and see him in the morning and spend a bit longer with him. He always looked forward to that.

  The noise came again. He shook his head, irritably. It might be a bird, but if it was it must be a hell of a big one. A pigeon, maybe. More likely something had gone wrong with the roof. When he’d moved in all those years before repairs hadn’t seemed too important because he’d expected to be carried out in a box long before he had to deal with that problem. But that was how it went. Life played silly buggers with the smartest plans, and if he’d spent all that money and gone through all the hassle he probably wouldn’t have lived long enough to be grateful there were no raindrops falling on his head; but if the roof had gone he had a problem. The previous night’s downpour would have done a wild winter storm proud, and the rain had hammered so hard on the cottage it had sounded like someone was in the room above his head. The accompanying wind could easily have lifted a tile or t
wo. When it rained again, as it would before another day had passed, he’d have problems. If there was a serious leak, Becca and her mum wouldn’t let him stay there, and if there was one thing he was set on, it was spending his last days in the dale where he was born and the house he’d been born in.

  It would save on the funeral costs, he thought to himself, if they only had to carry the coffin the short distance down the lane to the church.

  Putting the pipe down, he shuffled towards the stairs.

  The last hurrah of the overnight gale was whipping white horses to life on Ullswater as Becca came around the south side of Hallin Fell and down into Martindale. She frowned as she got out of the Fiat, because she’d been right and the car that had been following her for the last mile or so was Jude’s Mercedes, and the woman in there with him was Ashleigh O’Halloran. Her heart flickered in a moment of anxiety, as if she expected him to bring bad luck. Surely there couldn’t have been another mysterious death?

  He stopped his car in the same lay-by. That meant she’d have to talk to him and she wasn’t in the mood — not when she’d failed to find the courage to have that crucial conversation with Adam the night before and so, in consequence, found herself ever more deeply embedded in the wrong relationship. She hated to hurt people’s feelings, and if she’d known how difficult it would be to terminate her relationship with Jude she probably wouldn’t have tried. And it would all have gone toxic. The right thing to do was almost always not the easy one.

  This complicated train of thought, backwards and forwards, didn’t help her out of her present predicament. She was still going out with Adam Fleetwood and, in the immediate future, she would still have to be polite to Jude Satterthwaite.

  ‘Morning.’ She stayed by her car as he and Ashleigh got out of the Mercedes. They were dressed for walking. At least that meant there was no trouble to be had. ‘Off for a walk?’

  ‘Yep.’ Jude opened the boot of the Mercedes and lifted out a small backpack, which he swung over his shoulder, and a pair of walking poles which he handed to Ashleigh. The two of them looked as if they trusted the weather. She was wearing walking trousers and a thin tee-shirt that showed the dark shape of a bra that might have been red, and he’d opted for shorts and a tee shirt. ‘I’ve never taken Ashleigh up onto Beda Fell and Pikeawassa, and as we’ve both managed to get the weekend off together, I thought I’d show her the view.’

  Ashleigh O’Halloran didn’t have the legs of a hillwalker, thought Becca spitefully, though Jude undoubtedly did. ‘It’s going to be a lovely day now all that rain has cleared. It looks as if you might need your sunscreen.’

  ‘Yes, nurse.’ Ashleigh felt sufficiently familiar to risk the joke, and she and Jude exchanged glances and smiles over it. Becca smiled back. She was grown-up enough to understand there was no way back from the way that she’d treated Jude and generous enough to hope he found some kind of happiness with someone else. It was just that she was surprised by the woman he’d chosen.

  ‘Enjoy your walk,’ she said, nodding at them.

  ‘Say hello to George for me,’ Jude said. He divided the people around him but George, who prided himself on his cussedness, liked him, probably because so many other people didn’t. ‘I’d pop in and say hello, but…’

  That would be a recipe for discord. The last thing Becca needed was George telling her she’d let a good man slip through her fingers. ‘I’ve brought him some of Mum’s millionaire shortbread. I didn’t stay long last time, so I owe it to him.’

  ‘I expect we’ll see you around.’

  ‘I expect so.’ She turned and marched up the path, the plastic tub of shortbread under her arm, and rapped hard on the door before she opened it and went in. ‘Uncle George, it’s Becca.’

  There was no answer. Instantly concerned, she lifted her head and listened for the sound of him snoring, but there was nothing.

  He might still be in bed, unable to get up. A slow dread filled her, because she was almost certain she knew what she’d find. She was a district nurse and she stumbled on the dead too often for comfort, but she was used to it. It was different when it was one of your own. She’d feared this moment for a long time. ‘Uncle George?’

  In passing she laid her hand on the kettle and found it just warm, with George’s pipe abandoned beside it. Crossing the kitchen, she opened the door that led out into the hallway and found him, sprawled at the foot of the stairs.

  He was still alive. She saw that immediately as she dropped to her knees beside him but she checked the pulse anyway, and found it weak. His face had collapsed into a travesty even of what it had been before and his skin was grey where it had once been white. Breath rasped in his throat.

  ‘Uncle George, it’s Becca. I’m going to look after you until an ambulance gets here.’ Tweaking his top button free, she rolled him gently into the recovery position, then ran through to fetch a blanket from his bed. On the way back she diverted out into the front garden and looked along to where Jude and Ashleigh were still standing, she tying her walking boot, he watching. ‘Jude!’

  He must have recognised the sound of an emergency, because he turned on the instant. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Yes. George has had a stroke.’ She’d thought she was calm but her own breathlessness surprised her. ‘Can you call an ambulance? I can never get phone signal up here and he doesn’t have a landline.’ He was a stubborn old man who believed his neighbours owed him their help and support and who was determined to die in his house instead of in a hospital. And now he was reaping the whirlwind.

  ‘Sure.’ Jude was already reaching into his pocket for his phone. ‘What else shall I tell them?’

  ‘It looks like a bad one. I don’t think he’s been there too long, and I don’t think he’s hit his head or anything. I’ve put him in the recovery position and I’ll keep him warm.’

  ‘Right.’

  She ran back in, returned to her knees beside him and spread the blanket over him. ‘Uncle George. Can you hear me? It’s Becca.’

  He shifted a little. She leaned in towards him. If she’d been a little earlier she might have got there in time. She might have been able to do more for him. Time was crucial and she didn’t know how long had passed. ‘You’ve had a stroke, but it’s all right. We’ll get you to hospital and you’ll be fine. I expect you’ll be able to come back here before very long.’ A lie, because there was no way anyone would allow him to come back to the house unless he made a full recovery, and she couldn’t see that happening. Over my dead body, she imagined her mother saying, outraged. ‘Can you move your arm?’

  A convulsive twitch of the face was the only reply.

  ‘Okay.’ Watching the second hand on her watch ticking on, Becca understood. The worst was happening and she was watching his life ticking away with it. ‘The ambulance must be on its way by now. Jude called it. You remember Jude? A friend of mine.’ She searched his face for some flicker of recognition and saw nothing.

  ‘Becca.’ From her place on the floor she saw Ashleigh O’Halloran’s walking boots — expensive ones, relatively new — stopping at a discreet distance. ‘Jude’s on the phone to the ambulance now. Is there anything else I can do to help?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ It’s too late. Becca fought back a tear. There was nothing she could do to help him, probably nothing anyone else could do to help him, and all she could offer was calm professionalism and affection to see him out. She didn’t even know if she could deliver that. She reached for his hand and held it, the frail fingers listless in hers. ‘Uncle George. I brought you some of Mum’s millionaire’s shortbread. I’ll make sure we take it in the ambulance so you can have it in the hospital, all right?’

  There was some kind of response, half-cough, half choke. ‘Don’t try to talk. It’s okay.’ Surely it was forgivable to lie to the dying? ‘There will be plenty of time later.’

  ‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea,’ Ashleigh said. ‘The ambulance might be a few minutes yet.’


  ‘I have to stay with him.’

  ‘Of course. But you can have a cup of tea at the same time.’

  ‘When you’re in the ambulance,’ Becca said, aware of her voice beginning to tremble, falling prey to a cold feeling in her gut and a gathering sense of loss that was premature but not by much, ‘I’ll call Mum and get her to come up and meet us at the hospital. And when you’re well enough to have visitors Kirsty will come, too. They don’t really allow babies in the hospital but maybe I can have a wee word with whoever is on duty and they’ll let her bring Rosie in to see you. They might do that, for me. And you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Because she’s such a sparkler, and you always make her laugh.’

  The stone floor of the cottage was cold and hard under her knees. In the kitchen Ashleigh clattered about. Becca’s heart beat heavy and hard and painfully in her chest and George wheezed again, each breath more of a struggle than the last. ‘Uncle George, it’s okay. There’ll be plenty of time to talk later.’

  ‘Okay, Becca.’ Ashleigh was back, and the chink of china on china suggested she’d tried and failed to find a mug. ‘Here’s a cup of tea.’ She set cup and saucer down on the floor.

  It was too quickly made, no doubt, and would taste disgusting, but Becca had done that herself in an emergency. She hated being treated like a layperson when she was the health professional. ‘Thank you.’ Gently, she stroked George’s hand. ‘It’ll be okay. We’ll get you to hospital.’

  ‘I think he’s trying to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’ Becca sat back on her knees, still holding his hand. ‘He shouldn’t talk. Uncle George, it’s okay.’