Death on the Lake

by Jo Allen

  She helped herself to a sandwich lunch, looking out over the garden and the lake as she ate. In her heart she suspected a bit of a thrashing would do Ollie, in particular, no harm, but it was only part of a lesson they had to learn. And as for herself, well. She had the support of her husband and sharing her fears hadn’t just halved them; it had caused them to melt away. A beautiful day called for the temptation of another carefree walk. Only now she was released from the prison of her fear did she realise how enclosed she’d been in it, how much more she could enjoy the open spaces of the Lakes.

  When she’d cleared away her lunch things, she let herself out of the house and walked down the drive. To her left Hallin Fell rose up, pretending to be far more mighty than its height allowed. She liked it, the way it sat out in the middle of Ullswater’s east shore and offered three hundred and sixty degree views. Today, perhaps, was a day to climb it.

  Heading out of the gate, she hesitated for a moment before turning towards Sandwick. The alternative path was the one that took her along the water’s edge, past Kailpot Crag, and though she’d never have described herself as a sentimental woman it was too soon to walk past the place where the police had found Summer’s body.

  Drowning was supposed to be peaceful. She bit her lip, wondering what she’d have done if the girl had approached her to talk about Elizabeth. Told her everything — or not all of it, not about the lies — probably, because there was so much already in the public domain. Something she could add to a body of research might, in the end, do justice to Elizabeth’s memory. The only concern would be whether it might reawaken ideas of vengeance that should long since have died down, but who was going to pay any attention to a first-person account in a dissertation?

  After all, Miranda told herself as she strode out along the road to where the road curved down into Martindale under George’s cottage, looking somehow deserted even though no-one had been in to close the curtains, the fears that had trapped and troubled her for a decade were groundless and now she could start to live again.

  The narrow banks of the beck pinched it into a gap where the bridge overstrode it, and she stopped to look over the parapet and back down towards the house. Below her, a figure in blue overalls sprawled in the beck, face down, the head tilted at an angle towards the bank.

  As Miranda reached for her phone and dialled the police, the fear came flooding back.

  Eighteen

  ‘Faye wants to show we mean business,’ Jude explained to Doddsy as he swung his car down the ever-more familiar twisting lane past the Sharrow Bay hotel and into the the heart of nowhere. ‘So make yourself obvious.’

  Doddsy was unimpressed. ‘We’re the police. Who do we need to show off to?’

  Jude slowed for a corner, and a Herdwick sheep stared back at him, reproachfully, from the middle of the road. He brought the Mercedes to a stop, waited a second and then nudged forward a foot to give the animal a hint. Faye’s interest in Robert and his financial goings-on remained confidential but her determination was wavering. Even if it turns out to be an accident, she’d said, it’s probably time to let him know we’re watching what happens on his turf. ‘The killer, I imagine. On the assumption that there is a killer, of course.’

  ‘And why on this case more than any other?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ No-one was going to escape by car, so in that sense there was no urgency, but the protection of the scene and the collection of evidence was a priority, and both of those degraded with time. Jude allowed himself to use the townie’s trick of hooting the horn at the sheep, and it did the job, prompting the animal to shuffle off and slither up the bank and under a wire fence. He put his foot on the accelerator and the car slid off.

  ‘Then I’ll guess.’ Doddsy, Jude could tell, was frustrated. ‘Maybe she thinks there’s something else going on, and maybe she’s trying to panic someone.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as someone who might have thought they got away with killing someone. And you know who I’m talking about.’

  The case of Summer Raine had been shunted off to the coroner and once it had gone, Jude had had no time to discuss it with Doddsy — something he would have done, even six months before, over one of their regular pints of a weekday evening. Since Ashleigh had arrived on the scene, and since Doddsy had found himself a partner in the rather surprising shape of Tyrone Garner, the regular drinks had become highly infrequent and the exchange of information they’d facilitated was confined to office hours. Jude made a mental note to do something about it in future. ‘You think somebody did?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact. And so does Ashleigh.’

  ‘And you told Faye. And she must agree with you, or we wouldn’t both be here.’

  ‘She didn’t to begin with, but she may do now.’ Jude slowed again, for the hairpin bends at the Hause, where the road scaled the steep lower slopes of Hallin Fell. ‘This may be unconnected, of course.’

  ‘The call said it looked suspicious.’

  ‘And on further questioning said it looked like a broken neck. But it was Miranda Neilson who found him, and although we don’t yet have a positive identification, the first indication is that it’s Summer’s boyfriend who’s dead.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Doddsy, and descended into a moment of reflection.

  ‘My first reaction,’ Jude continued as they topped the hill past the new church and looked down towards the old, where a police car blocked the way, ‘is to wonder why she immediately assumed he was murdered and called the police, rather than assume it was an accident and call an ambulance. Then I wondered whether it’s significant that it was Miranda who found the body.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Doddsy unclipped his seatbelt as Jude parked the car in the car park at the bottom of the fell. ‘There’s a limited selection of people who live down here, and it’s only a few hundred yards from her front gate.’

  ‘A walker might have stumbled on it, but you’re right. They tend to take the shore road, or go up the fell.’

  ‘Old George would have seen it.’ Doddsy looked at George’s empty cottage. ‘He saw everything. It’s a shame he’s gone.’

  ‘Ashleigh thinks there’s something odd about that, too.’

  Normally Doddsy respected Ashleigh’s instinct, but this seemed to stretch his credulity too far. He shook his head and said nothing.

  They descended the slope. The first car on the scene contained a police constable and a PCSO, one of whom was taping off the scene and the other taking photographs. The first of the locals, alerted by the blue flashing lights, was striding up from the farm to see what was going on. A quick scan of the tarmac told Jude there was unlikely to be much gained from a search of it. It was the quickest and most sensible way to approach the scene and he was keen — more than keen — for a word with Miranda.

  ‘Where’s Mrs Neilson?’ he asked the PCSO.

  ‘She went back to the house. We took a statement from her.’

  Jude cursed, inwardly. Waterside Lodge was on the other side of the bridge, which carried the road over the beck and so controlled the only vehicular route in and out of the dale. Now it was a crime scene and no-one, not even he, could cross it until it had been released. He walked back down the road and looked over the scene from a secure distance. The body lay with the head downstream, and there was no sign of damage on the banks. He turned and looked upstream. Even from a distance, trampled vegetation and a boot-mark in the mud told a tale. However Luke Helmsley had been killed, his body had been neatly tipped down the bank and thrust under the bridge.

  ‘No way that’s a fall,’ Doddsy said to him.

  ’No way at all.’ Jude straightened up and looked back up the road. The next in what would be a lot of police cars was on its way. ‘I’m going to leave you in charge here. I’m going to talk to Miranda.’

  ‘Right. So I’m the one who has to explain to the parents they can’t get their kids from school and the walkers they’ll
have a three-mile detour to get to their cars.’

  ‘Don’t say I never give you the glamour jobs. Tell them we’re doing our best to speed things up.’ Jude grinned at him. Tammy would appreciate the need to get the scene released as soon as possible. ‘And you’re good at controlling chaos.’

  Leaving Doddsy in charge, he doubled back and cut off along the footpath along the base of Hallin Fell. As he walked he cast a long glance back towards the bridge. There was a smattering of cottages around it, almost all of them holiday cottages. Someone might have seen something, but the lack of civilian activity around suggested not. And George’s cottage, the one place where, just a week before, he could have almost guaranteed he’d have a witness, stood empty.

  Waterside Lodge was quiet when he strode up the drive, but there was a sudden, swift movement behind the kitchen window as he approached and Miranda appeared on the step, her finger raised to her lips. ‘Are you the police? I knew you’d come. But can we be discreet? I haven’t said anything to Ollie and Will, yet.’ She offered him her hand.

  ‘Jude Satterthwaite. DCI.’ Her fingers were cold, even in the balmy May sun.

  Letting go, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘This is so awful. Is it murder?’

  ‘We won’t know until we get the post-mortem results.’ It could hardly be anything else, but there were times when it was convenient to hide behind the shields of evidence, fact and confirmation.

  ‘Seriously, Chief Inspector.’ Miranda looked at him with scorn. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

  One look told him that wasn’t the case, even if he hadn’t taken the trouble to read up about her as background to Summer’s death. ‘Shall we go inside? I’d like to ask you a little about how you came to find the body.’

  Miranda, he was sure, had intended to keep him on the doorstep, but she shrugged and led the way into the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry. My manners deserted me. I’ve already told your call handler and given a statement to the police constable over there. It isn’t difficult. I was coming out for a walk and I stopped to look over the bridge. And I saw…’ her lip quivered a little. ‘Well. You’ve seen it, no doubt. And I called 999.’

  ‘Okay.’ He’d get the details from the PC, or from Doddsy, on his way back. ‘Then let me ask you something. Did you try and get him out of the water?’

  ‘No. Why would I? I mean, you aren’t meant to touch a body, are you?’

  ‘No. You aren’t. But I wondered what made you think he was dead.’

  ‘Oh.’ Doubt ran through that single syllable. ‘Do you mean he might not have been? But he must be.’

  ‘It certainly looks like it now. But I wondered why you thought he was at the time.’

  ‘But he just…he just looked dead. His face was in the water. Jesus.’ She put her hands to her mouth, and subsided gently onto one of the kitchen chairs. ‘I never thought. Poor Luke.’

  ‘And what made you sure it was Luke Helmsley?’ He tried to be gentle with her, not just because she was so clearly in shock but because he sensed she was the sort of witness who would close up on principle if someone put her back up.

  ‘Of course I assumed it must be. Because of the overalls. And the hair colour. And because…well.’ She looked down at her feet and then back up. ‘You’ll have to know, I suppose. Luke was around here at lunchtime. I’m afraid he had a bit of a run-in with my stepsons.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I don’t know what it was about. Only that they fell out and they came to blows. Of course, Luke was more than capable of looking after himself, and the fight broke up when I came out. The twins sustained more damage than he did, I think. Luke was rather abusive to me and threatened me when I tried to smooth things over.’

  ‘In what way?’

  She twisted her fingers together. ‘He said that if I wasn’t careful, Summer wouldn’t be the only person to be found floating in the lake. But then he left — back to work, I thought — and I went back into the house. The twins went back before me, and they were in the house from then on. They’re here now, playing some video game, I think. I had a cup of coffee and came out afterwards for a walk and I came to the bridge and I—’ Words failed her. She nodded towards the bridge.

  ‘Then I think the obvious thing for me to do is talk to your stepsons.’ He paused. ‘I’m guessing Mr Neilson isn’t home?’

  ‘No. He had business in Newcastle today and left earlier on, about nine o’clock I think. I called him immediately after I’d dialled 999 and he’s already on his way back.’

  Robert Neilson, out of the dale again at the crucial time. Faye would be interested in that. Though of course you could turn that around and argue that whoever had killed Luke — and in his mind there was no doubt that it was no accident — had made sure Robert was elsewhere before they did so. ‘Right. Then I’ll talk to the two boys, if I may.’

  Miranda bounced to her feet and went into the hall, with Jude following her. ‘Ollie! Will! Can you come down here, please?’

  A head appeared at the top of the stairs, swiftly followed by a second. ‘Everything okay, Miranda?’

  ‘Everything is not okay. The police are here and they want to talk to you.’

  The two of them came skidding down the stairs at that, like a pair of five year olds, wide-eyed. One of them had a swelling bruise under his right eye, the other a split lip from which blood still trickled. ‘We haven’t done anything. Jeez, Luke didn’t call the police did he? It was only a joke. It was him who started it.’

  ‘No,’ Miranda said, sounding suddenly weary, ‘he didn’t call them. I did. Because,’ (she gave Jude a quick look as if challenging him to stop her) ‘when I was out for my walk I came across Luke—’

  ‘We don’t know what happened.’ Jude decided to cut her off before she used the word murder and freaked them out. ‘We found his body underneath the bridge at the entrance to Boredale. I’m just asking around to find out if anyone saw anything. Nothing more, at this stage.’

  ‘Like you did with Summer?’ one of the boys asked, and the other nudged him rather too obviously. From outside the sound of a distant siren split the air, some emergency vehicle coming late to the party, and they exchanged glances again.

  ‘Yes.’ Jude introduced himself, and caught the look that flicked between them as they registered his rank. Twins. If they had anything to do with it they’d have sorted their stories beforehand, just as they so obviously had done over Summer. For a moment he was tempted to interview the two of them together, just so he could try and read their interaction, intercept the secret signals they were bound to have, but in the end he decided against it. The chances were that they’d be able to read one another’s minds, pick up on each other’s cues, without him seeing anything though it was right under his nose. It was better to take them separately, to see if there were any differences. ‘I’d like a quick word with you, a witness statement. You know the drill by now, I expect.’

  ‘Shall I start? I’m Ollie.’ The one with the bruised cheek put himself forward with the sort of grim determination you might see on a family trip to the dentist, the child who always goes first to get the misery out of the way. ‘We’ll go to the kitchen. That’s where we were before.’

  They went through to the kitchen and sat down, Jude making notes while Ollie rattled through an account of his and his twin’s actions. ‘It was childish, I know. But Will and I had had a couple of beers and we thought it would be funny to hang around in the lane and see if anyone came along that we could jump out on. Miranda said we were immature and I suppose you think she’s right.’

  Jude declined to comment. ‘Go on. What happened?’

  ‘We saw Luke come along, but before he got to us he turned up to the house. The main gates were locked, so he jumped over the wall and went up to the house. There was no-one in, and we reckoned if he was there for a long time he’d have broken in to see what he could get, so we hung around to see. But he was back down the drive straight away.’ There was almost a trace of d
isappointment in his voice.

  ‘Any reason why you supposed Mr Helmsley was going to break into the house?’

  Ollie had the grace to look ashamed. ‘No, not really. Except he obviously hates us, and I think the only reason for that is because we’ve got so much and he’s got so little. But Dad started off here just the same as everyone else. It’s not our fault he made so much money.’

  ‘I see.’ Luke’s record of violence was unblemished by greed but driven, by all accounts, by jealousy. It was possible the one might spill over into the other but, in the context of the case, irrelevant. ‘And so you jumped out on him.’

  ‘Yeah. We played with the gates a bit, and he looked confused. And them we jumped out and he got angry and went after us. And of course we didn’t run away.’ Ollie fingered the bruise. ‘He has a devil of a temper.’

  ‘And then what happened? How did the fight end?’

  ‘Miranda came along and interrupted it. She sent us back into the house, and we stayed there.’ Ollie met his gaze with impudence. ‘Getting our story straight, as it happens. For Dad, not for you. Because we weren’t expecting anything to happen to Luke and we didn’t think the police would come.’

  If their father was the martinet Faye seemed to think, the boys would do well to find some way to appease him. ‘Did you overhear any conversation between Mrs Neilson and Mr Helmsley?’

  Ollie shook his head. ‘We were just glad to get out of it. Ran back to the house like a pair of rats and stayed there. He can pack a punch, Luke.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go over it once more to make sure there’s nothing I’ve missed. And then I’ll let you go and I’ll have a chat with your brother.’

  ‘Inevitably,’ Jude said to Doddsy as they stood a little way up the hill and waited for the doctor to certify Luke Helmsley as dead, ‘the twins had identical stories. But that’s not really surprising. I suspect it would have happened even if they hadn’t had time to agree something. And although I’m prepared to be wrong, I’m inclined to think it wasn’t them.’