Death on the Lake

by Jo Allen

  Her heart warmed. It would be all right. ‘I’ve never forgotten the threats. I’ve never forgotten how they told me I’d never be free of what I did. I’ve been waiting, ever since then, for someone to come after me and make me pay for saving Elizabeth. And three years ago Elizabeth died.’ She’d nearly told him then but her courage had failed her once again.

  He knew that, too. ‘In a car accident. I read about it.’

  ‘I don’t believe it was an accident.’

  ‘Oh, Miranda!’ He laughed, a soft laugh full of love, even of joy. ‘Is that what scares you? You told the truth. No-one should come after you for telling the truth. And I’ll make sure they don’t. I’ll keep you safe.’

  Miranda’s heart lifted. Why had she ever doubted him? She’d be able to walk the fells without fear, without wondering where death might be lying in wait. She could leave her paranoia behind and know that if a stranger was shadowing her on the hillside it would be someone Robert had put there to protect her. She should have told him the whole story much sooner. ‘Yes. But this is the real confession.’ She drew a long deep breath, would have turned to the gin but somehow her glass was already empty. ‘My testimony at the trial. I made it up.’

  ‘What,’ he said, at last startled, ‘all of it?’

  ‘No. Everything I said was something Elizabeth had told me and I believed her. But no-one else would. If I corroborated her evidence, he wasn’t there to deny it, so I told them I’d seen things I hadn’t seen. Things Elizabeth told me he’d done.’

  ‘You lied in court?’ he asked, his tone light, as if perjury were no worse than the smallest white lie.

  ‘Not about what he did — I do believe he did it all — but that I’d seen him, or heard him. It was the only way to prove she was innocent.’

  ‘Not innocent,’ he observed, lifting his gin and turning the glass against the setting sun. ‘But not guilty of murder.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She looked at him, anxiously. ‘You don’t mind that I gave false evidence?’

  He considered, then laughed. ‘Why would I? If, as you say, your friend was abused, I think you did something heroic.’ He paused. ‘You were on the wrong side of powerful people then, my darling, but you have an even more powerful man by your side now. Me. And who knows? Maybe one day I might ask you to give false evidence again. But this time it would be for me.’

  Sixteen

  ‘George has died,’ Becca said, shouting into the phone though it was more in hope than expectation. The signal was fine down in Wasby but God knew what it was like up in the wilds. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Ryan bellowed back at her. ‘I’m up in the Pennines somewhere. I’m having a blast. I just keep walking with the sun in front of me in the mornings and behind me in the evenings. Eventually I’ll get to the sea.’

  Sometimes Becca thought Ryan’s easy-come-easy-go attitude was fake, put on to make himself seem more charming than he actually was. He’d hardly have got anywhere in the army without being able to know exactly where he was with a map and have a pretty good idea how to get somewhere he recognised without one. At that moment she was only surprised he’d bothered checking his messages and using his limited battery on calling her back. ‘How soon can you get here?’

  ‘Do I need to get back? Has something happened?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t you hear me? I said George has died.’

  ‘Oh, died! I thought you said… well, I don’t know what I think you said. Geez. Hope I didn’t frighten him to death. Your mum would never forgive me.’

  Becca thought that crass. ‘He had a stroke. At least, I’m pretty certain he did, but we don’t know for certain yet. The police haven’t come back about the post-mortem yet.’

  ‘The police? I thought you said it was a stroke.’

  ‘Yes but…oh I don’t know.’ It all came down to Jude again, and his inability to ascribe anything to accident or natural causes when sometimes they should be left well alone. That was what came of believing the worst of human nature. ‘There has to be a post-mortem because he wasn’t under medical care when he died. So we’re waiting on the PM, but I expect it’s straightforward.’

  ‘Why is it a police matter?’

  ‘It’s just routine. It’s an unexplained death. They’re always involved.’ Jude clothed everything in the drab uniform of routine. That hadn’t endeared him to Becca’s mother, who’d always thought him a little over-zealous. Why can’t they let the poor man rest in peace, she’d said, though she knew well enough what the procedure was. Regardless of Jude’s presence there would have to be a post-mortem. ‘I called because I thought you might want to come through for his funeral.’

  ‘You think he’d want me there? He wasn’t exactly charm itself.’

  It was a matter of respect. Once more Becca found herself irritated by Ryan’s clumsiness. ‘Bluntly, I don’t think he’d care one way or another. But since you’ve come all the way across the world to see him and visit the old homestead, I imagined you might want to come.’

  ‘Might be a chance to catch up with all sorts of rellies I’ve never met, I suppose. See if any of them have a good word for me.’ There was crackling sound that might have been Ryan laughing or might have been the wind catching his words. ‘When is it?’

  ‘Sooner rather than later. Mum’s had a word with the undertakers and they think they can find a slot for him on Saturday morning. We’ll confirm it as soon as we get the death certificate. So it’ll probably be then.’

  ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can.’

  ‘If you’re struggling, call me or Mum. We’ll find someone to get over and pick you up, assuming you can get to a road.’

  ‘I’ll hike it back. It’ll only take me a few days. I don’t want to trouble you.’

  That would be a change. Ryan hadn’t shown any previous signs of such consideration. ‘Right. I’ll let you save your batteries, and I’ll text you once I know the time.’

  ‘Cheers. I’ll see you at the church, then. I wouldn’t mind the use of your washing machine. I got washed off the hills in a rainstorm the other night. Had to break into a barn for shelter. But I don’t imagine anyone will mind if I look a bit scruffy.’

  ‘Just give them your cheeky smile and they’ll forgive you anything.’ Becca ended the call.

  Jude would almost certainly turn up at the funeral, because he was meticulous in that sort of social obligation and would have felt he had to appear even if he hadn’t got on so well with the old man. George had a long-ingrained sense of justice which chimed exactly with Jude’s and the two of them seemed to understand one another. The necessary fuss over the post-mortem report, which would have amused George, annoyed her, but she thought she could trust her ex to act like a friend of the family and not draw any attention to his job. He’d appear, sit at the back of the church and if he stayed for the interment he’d be away well before anyone had the chance to talk to him, and he’d certainly be too busy to turn up at the wake.

  If and when he did appear, she’d do her best to avoid him. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment when she thought of how she’d reacted to George’s death, and the worst of it — the very worst of it — was that he’d understood why she’d behaved as she did and wouldn’t hold it against her. She couldn’t afford to be so morally and emotionally obliged to someone in whom she had no part of her future invested.

  I don’t break down, she told herself, knowing her fury with him, and the moment that immediately followed it when she’d turned instinctively to him for comfort, were both the result of what had happened to George, or I shouldn’t. Day after day she went into the homes of the old and the sick and the dying, day after day she sat with patients as they slipped slowly away. It was by no means unusual for her to turn up in the aftermath of death, or do exactly as she’d done with George, sit holding a hand when all was lost and there was nothing to do but wait for an ambulance that had no need to hurry.

  But with George it had been different. His death had been s
o sudden and so unexpected, even though at his age she should never have assumed, when she visited, that she’d find him alive. But at least, she consoled herself as she dashed the back of her hand across her eyes, he’d had his wish and passed away in the house he’d chosen as his place to die.

  Ashleigh walked through the centre of Penrith in the late evening sunlight, brisk and businesslike, on a mission that could have waited. Everything about her life seemed, at that moment, to be profoundly unsatisfactory. Naturally she hadn’t expected the highs of her relationship with Jude to last for ever — she was far too pragmatic for that — but nevertheless the creeping realisation that nothing lasted for ever got her down. Maybe that was the shadow of Scott, sounding so cheerful without her, as if he’d learned to live in a way she couldn’t. Or maybe it was the frustration of work, knowing the accidental death of Summer Raine and the natural passing of George Barrett both seemed like pieces of a jigsaw everyone else wanted to see put back in its box, unfinished.

  It was easiest to concentrate on work. Summer’s clothes. The way George had struggled so hard to tell them something and failed. The fact he knew everything that went on in the dale and yet no-one seemed to have seen Summer walking along the path to her death.

  She’d been working at home, and it was the last of the work emails she’d looked at before shutting down her laptop that had prompted her to head out. Regardless of how her relationship with Jude would eventually pan out, he was the person she wanted to see at that moment.

  ‘Well, hello,’ he greeted her as he answered the door. ‘Come on in and have a seat. I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’ She stepped into the narrow hallway, slipped off her jacket and hung it up, then followed him into the living room, where he was taking one last quick look at the cricket before he turned the telly off. There was a table in one corner and he had his laptop propped up on it. He, like her, must have been spending the evening catching up. ‘Sorry to interrupt. But I wanted to run something past you.’

  ‘You aren’t interrupting. I’m always glad to see you.’

  Thank God in this modern, practical world you weren’t tied to to one perfect relationship, that it was acceptable to move from one to the other and to make what you could with a person who wasn’t, in the end, the great love of your life. If it wasn’t for that she’d have gone mad, because she hated to live, or sleep, alone. She walked over to him to hug him and he held her close, invitingly, and kissed her. ‘If I wasn’t busy working I might suggest something we could do.’

  She decoded the message correctly. ‘It’s work I came over to see you about, as it happens.’ Releasing him, she sat down on the sofa, leaving him plenty of space beside her while he stepped into the kitchen

  ‘Maybe it won’t take long and we’ll be bored,’ he called through with a wink, as he flicked the buttons on the coffee machine.

  She hadn’t intended to stay overnight, but she probably would. ‘The work bit won’t take long. I was just catching up on my emails and there was something I thought you might be interested in.’ Of course she could have phoned him, or forwarded the email, but where was the fun in that? ‘It was a nice evening and not much of a walk, so I thought I’d pop over.’

  ‘You know I always like to see you.’ He came back through and handed her the mug before sitting down beside her. ‘Decaff, of course.’

  ‘Thank God for that. My brain’s been buzzing like crazy all day and now I know something I wish I didn’t.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘George Barrett died of natural causes. A stroke.’ The very naturalness of it irritated her and she could see by the frown on his face that she wasn’t alone. ‘I can’t help it. I can’t let go of the idea there’s someone out there who’s much cleverer than us. I have this terrible sense that the cosmos is laughing at us.’

  ‘The cosmos can laugh all it likes. It’s when the criminals have fun at my expense that it gets to me. You must have seen the PM results, then.’

  ‘Yes, and they were everything they should have been. Straightforward. Severe stroke.’

  ‘Dammit. I don’t know there’s anything more we can do about it. Faye was annoyed enough when I told her I’d made a note of my concerns. Even if somebody did literally frighten him to death, we won’t be able to learn anything from the body. The family will want him buried as soon as possible.’

  ‘Did Becca tell you that?’

  She thought he tensed at the mention of Becca. ‘No. I’m just assuming.’

  ‘We should tell the family. They’ll have seen the report, of course, but they’ll want to know we won’t be taking any action. I expect you want to do that.’

  ‘No,’ he said, far too sharply. ‘Anyone else can do it. I won’t. It’s no big deal.’

  Irked by something she couldn’t identify, Ashleigh pulled at the end of her pony tail. ‘Did something happen between you after George died?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘Unless you count the fact she attacked me in a fit of sheer fury, then flung her arms around my neck in a fit of remorse, apologised profusely, and followed it up with an anonymous complaint about my inappropriate behaviour towards her.’

  She caught her breath. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘But if it was anonymous then—’

  ‘Lorraine bloody Broadbent took great pleasure in telling me all about it. They can’t do anything. But yes. It happened.’ He scowled. ‘There was nobody there but Becca and me, and while I can’t say my version of what happened is exactly the same as hers, I can recognise enough of it.’

  No two people ever gave the same version of an event, or interpreted it in the same way. Becca had been distressed and Jude was always, unequivocally, professional, but the tiniest element of doubt lingered in Ashleigh’s mind. She herself suffered from too much empathy with strangers, a constant weakness that influenced her career. Who would blame Jude for overstepping a line in a genuine attempt to comfort his ex? ‘Did you hug her?’

  ‘In the coldest way I could. Yes. I could hardly throw her off.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  ‘Yes. I know why she did it, of course. Adam must have seen it and he’ll have put her up to it. I expect that’s why she did it anonymously. She’ll guess it can’t go any further and he’ll know I’ll have heard about it. But it’s on file.’ He reached for his coffee. ‘I should have told you at the time. I’m sorry. Let’s not talk about it.’

  He rarely showed hurt. She sensed it was the insult to his professionalism that outraged him, even more than the perceived betrayal. ‘Not if you don’t want to. There’s plenty more to talk about. Two deaths with no evidence, for a start.’

  ‘You know there’s nothing new we can do about either.’

  ‘I think that’s a coward’s answer.’

  ‘I don’t need insults from you, too.’ A half-smile took the sting out of it. ‘It’s purely practical. It’s about available resources and time and priorities. The minute you can come up with something more, or another person dies in an apparent accident in Martindale, I promise you I’ll be crawling all over the place in full Sherlock Holmes gear with my magnifying glass. But until then, we do nothing.’

  The reality was inescapable. ‘I wonder how many criminals get away with it because we don’t have the capability to follow up?’

  ‘You know the answer. Too many.’

  She stretched out a hand and placed it on his knee, receiving return a wry smile. ‘Why don’t I read the tarot for you?’

  ‘You’re a charlatan,’ he grumbled. ‘You know I don’t believe in that garbage.’ But he reached onto the side table where the deck of cards she’d brought back for him from a holiday in Sri Lanka had been sitting gathering dust and handed her the pack.

  They were cheap cards, and had attracted her because of their garish colours and the grey cat that lurked in the corner of every one of them, yawning, stretching or toying with a mouse. They sme
lt faintly of incense, overtones of patchouli and some sort of spice, scents that ought by now to have faded. ‘We’ll just do something simple.’

  ‘Tell the cards I want to know what happened to Summer. And if they come up with the right answer I’m prepared to concede the point.’

  ‘They won’t tell you. If you listen to them they’ll help you think it through for yourself. But what we’ll do is look at the problem, ask for a suggestion and then that will lead us to a solution.’ That was a sensible way of approaching any problem, and one he could hardly object to. ‘Pick three cards and lay them out.’ She made space between them. ‘Here. Here and here.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this.’ He did as he was told.

  ‘Humour me. Good. Now.’ She laid her forefinger on the first card. The paper on the pack was already beginning to peel away. ‘Turn it up and we’ll see what our problem is.’

  ‘I have too many problems.’ He turned the card face upwards and looked at it. ‘Do you know what, Ash? I don’t need a pack of cards to tell me that my main problem is evil.’

  ‘This isn’t evil. You really ought to know better than to take things at face value. The card is the Devil.’ With amusement, she noted that the little grey cat which lurked under the scowling shadow of the Devil wore a vicious expression of its own and had one paw, claws extended, clamped on the dead body of a small bird. ‘All cards have positive and negative associations. In a positive sense this suggests we’re all restricted by other people’s expectations, which to an extent is true of all of us. But today we need to address a problem. And what this card says to me — and to you, if you’ll listen — is that the problem we face is deceit and manipulation, and addictive behaviour.

  ‘Yes, Madame Vera. But seriously — does that tell us anything we don’t already know?’

  ‘Fair point. If I was reading for myself I’d be looking to see what my own demons are, but in a reading like this it tells me I should be looking at the demons of others.’ She thought, briefly, of the Neilson twins and their dabbling in cocaine. Who knew where that would lead? Not everyone was as lucky, or as soundly brought up, as Mikey Satterthwaite. ‘Let’s look at the next one. If you can approach this with an open mind, it’ll help. This will suggest how you might approach the problem. Turn it over.’