The Coniston Case

by Rebecca Tope

  Before they could respond, Goss had taken something from his pocket, and now flicked it open with a shake of his wrist.

  ‘A knife!’ breathed Ben, superfluously. Simmy and he both backed away, holding onto each other like small children. ‘That clinches it,’ Ben added.

  Jasper Braithwaite had not retreated with them. Instead he closed with Goss, snatching in vain at the hand holding the knife. ‘Be careful!’ Moxon shouted at him. ‘Get away.’

  Jasper ignored him and the three men were crowded together with Daisy dancing agitatedly around them. Goss was lunging mindlessly, clearly intent on doing as much damage as possible before he was overcome. ‘Jamey!’ Daisy bleated. ‘Stop it. Oh, please stop it.’

  Shaking off her paralysis, and with no conscious thought, Simmy plunged recklessly into the fray. Where Jasper had failed, she managed to grip the arm behind the knife, and wrenched it sideways. He jerked and writhed and a man cried out in pain. Then Moxon, from a strangely low level, came to her aid, pushing her quarry to the ground and lying across him, leaving Jasper to stamp hard on his arm. The air was full of noise and the smell of male clothes. Hard bodies clashed together. There was something warm in an odd place in Simmy’s middle.

  Agonisingly slowly, the parts separated, the picture resolving into its constituent elements. Daisy was squatting on the ground beside the prone body of her fiancé, a uniformed officer beside her. Moxon was kneeling very close to Simmy, groaning and holding himself very tightly across the chest with both arms. Ben and another police officer were a few feet away, eyes and mouths wide with shock.

  ‘Get me to a car,’ Moxon ordered his men, who responded with belated alacrity.

  ‘Can’t you walk?’ Simmy asked him, shaking her head to clear it.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he gasped. ‘I’ve been stabbed.’

  ‘Oh!’ She knelt up to give him a proper look, her own movements jerky and uncoordinated. ‘That must have been my fault.’ She relived Goss’s flailing arm as she tugged at it, the lethal weapon bucking and flashing towards Moxon’s unguarded chest.

  ‘You … you …’ Moxon was trying to speak to Simmy, but he was obviously having trouble breathing.

  ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you fixed. He’s not going to do it again.’

  ‘You’ve dislocated his arm,’ said Ben admiringly, before coming closer. ‘Simmy … Simmy?’

  ‘I think … it feels as if …’ She looked at a growing patch of blood on her lower left-hand side. ‘I’m bleeding!’

  ‘Oh, God!’ howled Daisy, not because of Simmy’s injury, it seemed, but simply because she could endure no more.

  ‘Shut up!’ grated Goss. ‘Just shut your stupid mouth.’ He looked at Ben intently. ‘You were wrong in just about everything,’ he sneered. ‘All that baloney about the solar panels. Nothing’s going to stop the business now. It’s a gold mine.’

  ‘Not a copper mine, then?’ Ben quipped weakly. His confidence was ebbing rapidly, Simmy noted.

  ‘Ben,’ she said. ‘Do you think we might leave this till later?’

  Goss was sitting up, cradling an arm that certainly looked dislocated. The two policemen were preparing to carry Moxon to their car, leaving the attempted arrest uncompleted. They muttered as to the best means of achieving this, whilst avoiding any risk of further injury. The knife had been abandoned, kicked carelessly under Simmy’s car. She could see it clearly, with blood on it. Jasper was blinking foolishly, kneeling beside his godfather.

  Daisy was the first to see the opening. ‘Jamey!’ she hissed. ‘You can get away now, if you’re quick.’ Apparently his unpleasant snarl at her was already forgiven. ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘I can drive.’

  For a moment, he seemed willing to cooperate. He put his weight on his good arm, and started to gather his tall body together in order to stand up. But the long brown coat impeded him and his knees became entangled. He tried again, and then gave up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to take what’s coming to me. I’m not going to spend years of my life in hiding.’

  Ben was standing helplessly over Simmy, too embarrassed to examine her wound. She found herself oddly disappointed in him. They both looked around for help, and believed they’d found it in the shape of Jasper, despite his dazed appearance.

  ‘Can you go into the hotel?’ she asked him. ‘Find somebody who’s done first aid.’

  ‘What?’ He gave himself a shake. ‘No. You’re all right. It’s him we need to worry about.’ He indicated Moxon. ‘I need a syringe. Could you get the metal case from the back of my car?’ he asked Ben.

  The boy was there and back in seconds, and Jasper revealed an array of medical equipment.

  ‘I think it’s a pneumothorax,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to release the pressure. He’s not breathing.’ He took a large syringe out of the case, and attached a needle from a sterile pack. Then he tore at Moxon’s clothes. It took him five seconds to locate a safe spot and plunge the point into the man’s chest. Simmy instantly revised her opinion of him, in two opposite directions. Firstly, he had become amazingly capable. Secondly, he had become an object of an irrational suspicion. He was, after all, an unknown quantity. If he could pierce flesh with such unflinching deftness, then that surely meant he could perhaps have stabbed Tim Braithwaite just as easily? Don’t be stupid, she admonished herself. The man was a vet. He plunged needles and knives into flesh every day.

  Jasper drew back the plunger, bringing a murky brownish fluid with it, filling the syringe. Withdrawing the needle, he expelled it onto the ground, and then repeated the process. ‘Nasty!’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s working,’ said Simmy, who was now cradling Moxon’s head.

  ‘It’s too small, though. There could be pints of muck in there by now. We need a drain tube to do any real good.’

  Simmy’s head began to swim and she looked round for a substitute nurse, worried that she might cause a fatal distraction by passing out in the middle of the delicate emergency procedure. What was wrong with the uniformed police officers? What were they doing? Why didn’t they make themselves useful?

  Before she could suggest anything, one of the men in question was by her side, staring at the spreading patch of blood. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You can take over. I’m feeling a bit woozy.’

  Gently they changed places, while Jasper watched Moxon’s chest. ‘You need to get him to a hospital,’ Jasper said tightly. ‘He’s still bleeding into his thoracic cavity.’ The second policeman was speaking into a phone, hovering uncertainly over the bizarre tableau at his feet.

  Simmy stumbled towards her own car, pulling open the driver’s door and flopping in. It felt like a haven, despite being cold and shadowy. A large fir tree grew overhead, shutting out the fading light. I wonder what time it is, she thought, before sliding into a faint.

  When she came round, Jasper and Ben were both standing over her. ‘You’re hurt,’ said the vet somewhat superfluously. ‘Let me have a look at it.’ He unceremoniously pulled up her jumper and shirt and examined the wound. ‘It’s very slight,’ he said. ‘Lucky it’s the left side. No vital organs there. But you ought to have it dressed, of course. Someone in the hotel ought to be able to fix it. I’ll go and ask.’

  She took a minute to reacquaint herself with the situation. Very little appeared to have changed since she blacked out. ‘Actually,’ she corrected his retreating back, ‘I’m already feeling a lot better.’ She raised her head ‘Ben – you should go after him. He needs to stay here and make sure Goss doesn’t escape. He might change his mind.’

  Ben laughed. ‘Not much wrong with you,’ he observed. ‘Bossing everyone around.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Simmy.

  Ben looked at Goss, who had got to his feet and was standing only a yard or two away, supported by Daisy. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Hayter and Braithwaite saw me with Selena,’ came the exhausted reply. ‘They gave me a tongue-lashing I won’t soon forget. I told them it
meant nothing. I was more than happy to marry Daisy. Selena and I were just … it was just an old-time’s-sake thing. But they kept on, saying they’d tell Daisy I was rubbish, the wedding was going to be cancelled. She’d never see me again, yadda, yadda, yadda. Her old man wasn’t as bad as yours,’ he told Jasper. ‘Old Braithwaite was incandescent, for some reason.’

  ‘Because he wanted Jasper to marry Daisy, of course,’ said Simmy. ‘And when she chose you, it was a kick in the teeth for them both. Him and his son. No wonder he was so horrified when he realised you were cheating on her.’

  ‘Horrified isn’t the word. He made every sort of threat. Including –’ he looked at Ben ‘assuring me that solar power was doomed to oblivion, taking me with it. He laughed about it.’

  ‘So you stabbed him,’ said Daisy, in a choked voice. ‘A perfectly decent man, who prized truth above everything.’

  Goss did not respond to this, but pursued his own need to tell the story as he saw it. ‘Hayter couldn’t take it, on top of all his other trouble. All this happened in their house, late on Monday night. Hayter went out, and Braithwaite just kept on and on at me, making one threat after another. I got away in the end, at about midnight. Went home, fetched my knife, waited a few hours, and then got back first thing Tuesday. Took him round the back of the house and stuck it in him. He wasn’t even surprised. All he could think of was Hayter and why he’d never come back. Kept saying it must have been the flowers that came – that they were a mockery too far and he couldn’t take any more.’

  ‘Um …’ said Simmy. ‘I know all this is important, but please, would somebody help me?’

  The car that should be containing Moxon was inexplicably still standing empty in the car park. A police officer was bending over the back seat, apparently preparing it to take the detective away, if only somebody could give him the necessary authorisation.

  ‘Oh, damn it,’ said Simmy, ‘what are they waiting for?’

  ‘An ambulance,’ said Ben.

  ‘They should set out to meet it halfway, save some time.’

  ‘They’ll be scared to move him,’ said Ben.

  Jasper returned from the hotel and shouted at the police officers. ‘You need to get him to hospital now. Preferably in a bigger vehicle, so he can lie flat. Better take my Discovery.’

  The officers made no move to comply. Simmy watched as they finally managed to carry Moxon to the big vehicle and laid him in the back. Then she struggled out of her car and caught up with Jasper. ‘Is he any better?’ she asked, peering over his shoulder. What she saw made her yelp with distress. The inspector’s lips were blue, and his breath came in tiny shallow gasps. ‘Oh, God! And it’s all my fault,’ she moaned. ‘Look – I’m going with you. I’ll sit next to him and make sure he’s all right.’ Quite how she planned to do that was a matter she didn’t pause to consider. ‘Just get on with it.’

  ‘But there isn’t room for you,’ said Jasper.

  ‘Yes there is,’ she argued, and slid herself onto the seat, lifting Moxon’s head and shoulders onto her lap. ‘Drive!’ she ordered. ‘Straight to the nearest hospital.’ It felt to her that there had been a dreadfully long delay in getting all this arranged. A lack of leadership, she diagnosed, and a set of events that deviated from any script in the training manual.

  Jasper leaned in after her. ‘His lung’s collapsed,’ he told her. ‘Most of the bleeding’s internal. All you can do is try to keep him breathing. He might be okay if the other lung can function at least slightly. I’d come with you, but I don’t think there’s enough space.’

  ‘Might?’ she echoed bleakly.

  The policeman at the wheel of the car wasted no more time. His partner got onto the phone and somebody medical at the other end started to give advice and instructions, which he relayed to Simmy.

  Simmy found herself ferociously determined to save the injured detective. ‘He’s going to be all right,’ she insisted, at the same time registering his closed eyes, clammy skin and barely perceptible breathing. Unless expert medical help was swiftly available, she could see all too plainly that he would not be all right at all. ‘I can see some movement in his chest. He is getting some air. How long is it going to take?’

  ‘The nearest A&E is Barrow. Best part of an hour away,’ the driver told her.

  ‘Is that where we’re going? He can’t last an hour, can he?’ Panic flooded through her. Moxon was going to die in her lap, crammed into the back of a speeding Land Rover.

  ‘There’s an ambulance meeting us at Newby Bridge. That’s ten minutes away. They’ll keep him oxygenated until they can get him into a theatre.’

  The ten minutes passed like ten seconds, as she watched the faint fluttering of Moxon’s chest. His clothes had been only partly pulled clear, leaving her to watch a window, six inches square, through his shirt. There was only a sprinkling of blood to be seen. The knife had lunged in and out again, doing its damage inside, and leaving a swollen red wound in the middle of the man’s torso.

  At Newby Bridge, people in yellow jackets came and went, handling her with considerably more gentleness than they had earlier in the day when dealing with Joanna Colhoun. While almost all the activity revolved around Moxon, someone took the trouble to examine her own injury, wiping a sharp-smelling fluid across it, and covering it with bright-white gauze. She was very tired, she decided. And she felt rather sick. When someone pushed her down onto a narrow shelf-like bed, she was glad. It had been a very long day, she thought, and nobody could reasonably expect anything more of her.

  She woke up to Melanie’s voice. ‘Sim? Simmy! You can wake up now. I’m taking you home.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Melanie rightly ignored the question. ‘I’ve got your car outside. I hope it’s insured for me to drive.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Who cares? Why does that matter?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just does.’ She felt like a stroke victim or an old woman with early Alzheimer’s. When everything else swam confusingly and terrifyingly before one’s eyes, the clock offered a small point of stability in a shifting world.

  ‘It’s five o’clock, okay? Just after.’

  ‘Thanks. Where are we?’

  ‘Kendal. I was here with Kathy when they brought you in. She’s coming with us as well.’

  ‘That isn’t right. How did my car get here, then?’

  ‘Scott brought it. We couldn’t just leave it in Coniston, could we? Ben and Wilf have gone home.’

  ‘Did they arrest Goss, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  Simmy felt weak. Not only did she have to bring Melanie up to date on the solving of the murder, but she would have to endure the girl’s outrage at yet again missing the final act.

  ‘Goss. Daisy’s fiancé. He killed Tim Braithwaite.’

  ‘“Go green with Goss”,’ Melanie remembered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That flyer, for solar panels. Is it the same bloke?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Simmy. ‘It is indeed.’ Then, ‘How’s Moxon? He didn’t die, did he?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. They’ve still got him under the knife in here somewhere, I think.’

  ‘Not Barrow?’

  ‘Seems not. They can do most things here. They had plenty of time to get ready while you brought him from Coniston.’

  ‘My parents are going to freak.’

  ‘Yup. Ben called me. He says you threw yourself between a man with a knife and DI Moxon. What do you expect your parents to say about that?’

  ‘Did I?’ She tried to recapture the scene. ‘Well, I suppose he’d have done the same for me. It just seemed right, somehow.’

  ‘He loves you, Sim. And you don’t love him. I don’t really get why you’d save him like that.’

  ‘I think you just put your finger on it. I felt so sorry for him. I do hope he doesn’t die.’ She fell quiet, thinking unhappy thoughts for a little while. Then, ‘Where’s Kathy?’ she asked.

  ‘Downsta
irs. We can go now.’

  ‘What about Joanna?’

  ‘I forgot to say. She’s coming as well.’

  They found mother and daughter in the hospital foyer, and went out into the cold dark evening together. Simmy was still trying to recapture the exact sequence of events that would account for so many hours having passed. ‘I’m never going to explain it all to my mum and dad,’ she groaned. ‘I can’t even remember half of it. What happened after we got to the ambulance?’

  ‘You passed out,’ Melanie told her. ‘For most of the journey to Kendal.’

  ‘Did anybody tell you that Jasper Braithwaite jabbed a dirty great needle into Moxon and pulled out a lot of gunk? He’s a vet, so he knew what to do.’

  ‘He seems nice.’

  ‘Daisy was an idiot to pack him in and take up with horrible Goss.’

  ‘Are we going to talk about murder all the way to Windermere?’ asked Kathy.

  ‘Probably,’ Melanie shot back. ‘Why – what do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Jo?’ Kathy queried. ‘Is there anything you want to say to Simmy?’

  ‘Sorry, Simmy,’ said Joanna, like a five-year-old.

  Simmy was bemused. ‘Why are you sorry? What have you done?’

  ‘Well … causing you so much bother this morning. And … I suppose …’ She gulped. ‘Actually, I don’t think I am sorry, really. All I did was fall in love. I still don’t understand what happened with Baz. Mum said he kept her all night in a mine underground. And Melanie says he was secretly digging for copper down there. I can’t believe any of it’s true. He loves me. He’s been risking his job for me.’

  ‘It is true,’ said Simmy. ‘All of it. I don’t think he’s entirely sane, if that’s any consolation.’

  ‘Of course it’s not,’ shouted the girl. ‘Where is he? What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Last I saw of him, he was crying over four flat tyres on his van,’ said Simmy heartlessly. ‘If he stayed there for long, he’ll have been arrested by now.’

  ‘Crying? Oh, poor Baz. He loves that van.’

  ‘Altogether too much love going on around here, if you ask me,’ said Melanie. ‘All it does is cause trouble.’