by Jo Allen
Aida coughed.
‘Yeah, but not because of my phone.’ Ollie was the one to respond to the cough, looked up, looked over Miranda’s shoulder and saw them. ‘Aida wants you,’ he said, tonelessly. It seemed that the goings-on in the dale had knocked most of the stuffing out of him.
Miranda turned towards them. She was already pale, but what was left of the colour drained away. ‘Chief Inspector. What is it now?’
That was a slip for the normally impeccable Miranda.
‘The chief inspector would like a word with you and Mr Neilson,’ said Aida, as though the situation was perfectly normal. ‘I’ll just go and get him.’
‘We’ll head off, then.’ Ollie was looking for an escape.
‘It’s okay,’ Jude said, as affably as possible with the touch of a man’s newly-dead body still shivering at this fingertips. ‘I’d quite like to have a word with you as well.’
Miranda shooed the twins into the living room, where they sat side-by-side on the sofa at the far side of the room, their faces wearing matching sullen expressions. She seemed to have recovered herself. ‘Do sit down.’
‘We won’t be long, Mrs Neilson.’ Jude sat, and Ashleigh followed his example, only for both to bounce up as Robert Neilson came in.
It was the first time they’d come face to face, such had been Robert’s ability to be out of the dale when anything untoward had occurred. Until that moment there had been no need for Jude, or anyone else, to approach him for so much as a witness statement, even if Faye’s instruction to keep at arm’s length hadn’t been in play. That being the case. Jude’s impression of this kingpin financier, this clever man suspected of involvement in massive fraud, had been one drawn from documented research rather than observation. The photographs he’d seen showed Robert to be a man slight in build, a thin face, fair hair that might already be fading to grey without anyone noticing, but in his presence there seemed a strong sense of purpose. He was a man you looked at with respect. It was clearly Robert from whom the twins got both their looks, though those were coloured by the invigorating freshness of youth, and their attitude. Jude stretched out a hand in response to the man’s gesture of welcome, fascinated. ‘DCI Jude Satterthwaite. We haven’t met.’
‘No, but I’ve heard all about you.’ Robert met his gaze, full on, a searching look. ‘What brings you down here?’
‘Some more bad news, I’m afraid.’ Robert didn’t sit, so Jude remained standing too, and the conversation narrowed to the pair of them in the centre of the room, like two boxers in a ring. ‘I’m sorry to say there’s been another unfortunate incident just down the road.’
Miranda, he noticed, could go no paler. The twins perked up, interested in a degree that suggested innocence.
‘Really?’ Robert sighed, with a trace of irritation.
‘Yes. Someone’s been found dead down in Martindale.’
Miranda moaned, but stopped when Robert darted a glance at her. ‘Who?’
‘We’ve yet to identify the body. But I thought I’d let you know there may be some disruption around the place. I also want to ask if you’ve seen anything unusual.’
‘Unusual? No, not really. Miranda and I walked up the road to the churchyard in the middle of the morning. I wouldn’t normally do that, but Aida — you’ve met Aida, my PA — went down into Penrith on an errand, so I took the chance of a break. But that was all. I have a lot to do, so even that was a luxury. We walked as far as the church, stopped at the gate and came back again.’
‘Did you see anything? Anybody?’
‘Nothing and no-one.’ Robert’s voice was firm and Miranda, when her husband looked across at her, shook her head in obedient confirmation.
‘And what about your sons?’ Jude turned away from Robert and looked at them, crouched on the sofa as if they’d been penned there by an enemy.
‘We were here all morning, weren’t we, Ollie?’
‘Yeah. We daren’t go out of the place for fear of being accused of killing someone.’
‘That’s enough, Ollie.’ There was warning in Robert’s voice.
‘Okay, thank you.’ Jude backed away from any further conversation. He’d got what he came for. ‘Thanks. We need to go back to the scene now, but I wanted to let you know. Someone will be round a little later on to take proper witness statements from you all. Thanks for your time.’
Ashleigh got to her feet and Aida, fulfilling the function of footman, saw them off the premises. As they headed through the gate and back towards the bridge, the graveyard was abuzz with activity.
Keeping in step with him, Ashleigh stopped to flick a look back towards Waterside Lodge. ‘What did you think?’ she asked.
‘I wish I’d had the chance to give them a full cross-examination before they had a chance to cook up some kind of story. Miranda knows something, doesn’t she?’
‘It might just be that what’s happening around here is getting to her. My money says her stepsons are giving her all sorts of grief, so she’ll have that on her mind as well.’
‘You say that, but I bet you think the same as I do. She knows something about what happened, and so does Robert, and their stories will tally in every possible way.’
‘But could she have killed Ryan?’ Ashleigh shook her head. ‘Surely not.’
‘It seems bizarre.’ Jude opened the door of his Mercedes and slid into the driver’s seat, thinking of Miranda and Summer and George, and of the muscular, army-trained Ryan. ‘But no. Surely not.’
Twenty-Five
Faye appeared at the door to the incident room, and Jude’s heart sank. He’d been at his desk a long time with no break, and he wasn’t in the mood for her directness.
She strode across to where he was sitting, at a desk close to the whiteboard. ‘Any update?’ she asked, coming to a halt beside him.
‘Not yet. I’m waiting for Doddsy to come in.’
‘When are you expecting him?’ She glanced at the clock. It was after eight.
‘Any minute. It depends how long the queue is at the pizza place.’
Faye never had much of a sense of humour, and what little she had evaporated under the slightest pressure. ‘I hope that’s a joke.’
‘No. A man’s got to eat. I’ll be here a while. I asked him to pick me up a pizza.’
She shrugged that off. ‘You’re going to have to speak to the media about this fiasco. The media team have arranged a press conference for tomorrow morning, so you’ll have plenty of time to think about what to say.’ Her irritation was unusual, obvious and intense. ‘We can’t go on pretending there’s no connection between these three deaths, although I’d very much like you to keep the line that Summer Raine died by accident.’
At least no-one but Ashleigh and Jude himself had any suspicion about George’s death. That would have whipped up a national level media storm. ‘Fine. I can come up with something bland and uninteresting. But do you want to know my take on the matter?’
‘I think I’d rather not.’ Faye’s expression was grim. She knew how the plot was unfolding and it was at odds with the line she was trying so hard to hold to, that the deaths in Martindale might implicate Robert Neilson in murder before the law had a chance to catch him and a dozen others for fraud.
There was no-one within earshot, but nevertheless Jude lowered his voice. ‘It’s looking ever more like something that involves Robert. But perhaps not in the way I’d thought.’
‘Let’s keep this quiet, shall we?’ Faye motioned him to the door and he followed her out into the empty corridor. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I know you disagree, but I still think there’s something suspicious about Summer’s death. I still think it’s likely she knew something she shouldn’t, or that someone — Robert or Miranda — misinterpreted what she wanted to speak to Miranda about and thought it might be blackmail. But we’ll leave that aside for the minute.’
‘Even if I accept that, you need to explain to me why Robert Neilson would murder Luke Helmsley.’
‘I don’t think he did.’
‘Oh?’
‘It was a military-style execution.’ Jude rubbed his chin with a forefinger as Doddsy so often did, thinking it through. ‘Robert has no military training and that doesn’t strike me as his style. He’d have to get his hands dirty. In any case, he wasn’t there.’
‘He’s never there.’ Faye’s distrust of the cast-iron alibi mirrored his own. ‘Always one hundred per cent provably somewhere else, what’s more. But it might have been done on his say-so.’
‘It might, but I don’t think so. I think Ryan Goodall killed Luke Helmsley. He was certainly lying about his whereabouts, because he’d told his family that he was elsewhere and there’s no proof of where he was.’ Except the tent, and they’d know soon enough if that was his. ‘He’s in the army. There’s a gun in the grave, although I don’t yet know if it had been fired or where he might have got it. He had all the survival skills to make himself scarce in the hills for a long time, and he was well-equipped.’ He thought, briefly, of how Becca would respond to the news. Judging by past experience, he’d get the blame for that, too, as if he could somehow have stopped it.
‘All right. But why did he he kill Luke? I know the man was hardly an innocent, but his crimes aren’t exactly complicated.’
‘Because Luke came across him somewhere he shouldn’t have been and he knew he’d have to stop him talking. Luke wasn’t bright, in an academic way, but he wasn’t stupid either. He’d know when something wasn’t quite right. He’d have heard Goodall had left. Maybe he said something to him. Whatever. He was a risk, he had to be removed, and there was one chance to do it and no chance to dispose of the body.’
‘So what was this man Goodall doing in Martindale anyway? Apart from visiting family, which looks like a smokescreen, if you’re correct.’
‘I don’t know. But as you seem to suspect Robert Neilson of being up to his neck in very large-scale crime indeed—’
‘I don’t suspect anything. Other people suspect it and they’re the ones looking for evidence. All I’m doing is trying to keep you from compromising their investigation.’
He waved the disclaimer away. ‘Right. And had you thought it might be all about Robert Neilson?’
She stared at him for a moment. ‘Well, if he’s up to no good I imagine other people would know it, apart from us. Where there are winners in business there are losers, and losers make enemies. But that doesn’t explain who killed Goodall.’
‘For my money, almost certainly Robert.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ she said, after a moment. ‘But I need to know a lot more than that before you get me involved. Come back to me as soon as you’ve got something a bit more concrete.’ She turned and headed back down the corridor.
Summarily dismissed, Jude went back into the incident room and turned his mind to a press statement. He’d camped out in his preferred place, in front of the white board in the incident room. It was late and the place was all but empty. Faye was right and there wasn’t a lot he could do until they’d gleaned all the evidence they could from the scene, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. On the other side of the room, Chris Marshall was standing next to someone’s desk in deep conversation. There would be witness statements to collect and collate, CCTV cameras to check from the station, an appeal for information from the public to see if anyone had seen anything suspicious, information from the grave and the area around it. And now he’d need to make sure there was a visible police presence in the dale long beyond the clearing of the crime scene, to reassure the local community.
He picked up a marker pen from the desk and added Ryan’s name to the board. Two murder victims for certain, possibly more, and nothing to link them but the location in which they’d been found.
‘Okay, Jude?’ He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t noticed Doddsy coming in, carefully closing the door behind him. ‘This’ll keep you going for a while.’ He unloaded a pizza box onto the desk. ‘I’ll be heading off shortly. I had an early start and I’ve another one tomorrow. What an unholy mess, eh?’
‘It’s all of that.’ Jude took one last look at the board, and all it did was puzzle him more. He was sure, in his heart, that Robert Neilson was responsible, if he wasn’t the actual killer, but he couldn’t see how to make the leap from gut instinct to fact.
Instinct. He was getting as bad as Ashleigh. Next thing he’d be turning over the cards and looking for answers there. He flipped open the box and ripped into a slice of pizza. ’I take it there’s nothing more to be done down in Martindale?’ he said, with his mouth full.
‘Not today.’ Doddsy checked his watch. ‘I’ll pop back down tomorrow and see what’s going on. The body’s on its way to Carlisle now. PM tomorrow morning. I imagine you’ll want to go.’
It was one of the least appealing parts of the job, but had to be done. ‘Faye’s arranged a press conference at eight. I’ll go along after that.’
‘Becca’s parents are going up to the hospital tomorrow to give us a positive ID.’
‘Okay. Thanks for the warning. I’ve spoken to the authorities in Australia and asked them to break it to his parents.’ Strictly speaking they should wait for the official ID but there was no real doubt.
‘And have you told Becca?’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘No.’
‘Don’t you think she’ll expect you to?’
Becca expected a lot of him, even now he owed her nothing. ‘Her parents can tell her, if they haven’t already. I’ll be here late tonight. I’ve other things to do. And no doubt she’d only accuse me of behaving inappropriately again.’
‘She’s going to be withdrawing that complaint, if she hasn’t already.’ Doddsy checked his watch. ‘I’m going to head up and update Faye on my way out. I’ll be in sharp tomorrow. I can head back past Becca’s place, if you want.’
Jude felt a wave of relief. He should’t feel any obligation to Becca after the way she’d treated him but he did. ‘Thanks, mate. Yeah, you get on.’
‘Fine. I’ll be in sharp,’ said Doddsy, for the third time.
‘You can take the briefing meeting if I’m up at the PM.’ Jude sighed, aware his bad temper was getting the better of him, that his frustrations with Faye’s attitude and his anger at the way Becca seemed so suddenly to have turned on him, when the years should have put a gloss of distance on their relationship, were holding him back from what he was doing.
‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
Doddsy passed Tammy on the way out. She offered him the curtest of nods and came straight over to Jude. ‘We’re nowhere near finished down in Martindale, of course. I’ve left a couple of guys down there working on it under lights. But I wanted to pop by the office and pick some stuff up on my way home. I guessed you’d be here.’
‘You know me. I never rest.’ He tried to make light of it, but it was a struggle. Maybe, after all, Becca was right and he just gave the job more time than he could afford. He spent long enough checking the hours everyone else worked, for their own welfare as well as the cost implications, but he never bothered keeping a check on his own.
The look she gave him was sympathetic. ‘Yeah, I know how it is. I thought since I was here I’d brief you on where we are so far. No forensics, of course. Not yet. We’ll get those later. But I daresay you’ll stay awake late fretting about it, or you might as well have all the information I’ve got to play with.’
‘Go on.’
‘I think you’ll have seen the key thing. Whoever killed him had obviously disposed of the body in the only place they could think of — the grave.’
‘I wonder if they meant to come back later and move him.’
‘Maybe. There’s blood on the stone that controls the gate, and on the grass. I’m not the one who makes hypotheses. That’s your job. But it looks pretty clear to me.’
‘Killed on the spot?’
‘Probably. Though quite how someone like that would allow himself to be killed w
ith a stone chained to a gate is beyond me. Maybe the post-mortem will give you an idea.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway. The body was in the grave, but as you’ll have found, not very deep. The gun — I’m not up on guns, but it looked a modern one, a handgun — was in there, too.’
‘Thrown in to be retrieved later?’
‘Possibly. It has all the hallmarks of a temporary disposal of the body for me. And there are a few interesting things, from your point of view at least. One’s that the gun had been fired.’
Jude sat back and looked at her. He said nothing.
‘It would be more accurate to say there was one bullet missing from the chamber. The PM will tell you how he died, but I didn’t see any gunshot wounds. And we haven’t found a bullet.’
‘Okay. So we might be looking for a bullet, or an injured person.’ More than ever he itched to search the Neilson property. Was it possible the missing bullet had been sent to Robert as a threat and so he’d been forced to strike first? ‘What else?’
‘He had two mobile phones on him. Doddsy’s passed them on to the tech guys. We’ve taken dabs off them. I’ll prioritise that for you, but I expect they’ll have been Goodall’s prints only.’
‘And the tent? Was that his?’
‘Maybe. There wasn’t a lot in it. Not even a sleeping bag. Certainly no ID. Just binoculars and cooking gear. Almost as if he was only there for a day. He’ll have dumped the rest of it somewhere I expect, and just done a lightning raid into the dale. For all the good it did the poor sod.’
Jude succumbed to black humour. Becca had wasted time worrying about Ryan not being there for George’s funeral. He’d probably been up on the fellside the whole time, watching the proceedings. ‘Well, well. That’s fascinating.’
‘I thought you’d think so. It’ll be interesting to see what else comes up.’ She turned towards the door. ‘I’ve emailed you some of the pictures we took. See if those offer you any inspiration.’ She whisked out.
Jude sat down for a moment, and thought about it, then got up. ‘Chris. Get home. There won’t be a lot more for you to do tonight.’ Then he headed up to Faye’s office. She, in her turn, was clearing and locking her desk. ‘Can you do one thing for me before you go?’
