Dead End

by Dead End (retail) (epub)

  ‘I don’t know, let’s find out. It’s my treat.’

  They drove on in silence.

  The Peak’s Bay Hotel sat tucked away behind tall alpines, low junipers, ferns and rhododendrons, just as Kelly had left it that afternoon, though coming here for pleasure rather than work made it feel less stuffy. The gardens gave off the whiff of a natural approach: they embraced the fauna of the area, but behind the apparent relaxed efficiency, a team of gardeners ploughed away every day of the year to produce a haven of peace and tranquillity, with a touch of the luxurious. As soon as they entered the great gateway, Kelly and Wendy breathed easier. Birds twittered and hopped between branches, and swooped over the car as it slowed on the gravel. Kelly pushed thoughts of the missing girls out of her mind as much as she could.

  The car park was full of Range Rovers, BMWs and Mercedes. Here, guests could pretend that they could still reach an untouched wilderness, despite their real lives being shackled to traffic, chaos, pollution and noise. Some came for one night only, all the way from London, just to breathe. Others came from further afield, from the USA and Europe, as they did every year, hiring the same suites for weeks at a time.

  Kelly understood. Some nights in London – usually in summer – she’d thrown her bedroom window open to suck some air, only to be met with a sauna-like mix of petrol, pavement and piss. Disappointed, she’d closed it again and switched on a desk fan. This evening as they got out of the car, the air from the lake assaulted her, and it resembled pure wet rock, cooling and fresh. Wendy didn’t notice, not having ever been without it.

  The day they’d scattered Dad’s ashes, they hadn’t dressed so smartly. They’d posed as walkers, casually checking out the shoreline and grabbing a coffee. Non-residents could pop in any time for lunch, dinner or simply a drink, but only those wearing suitable attire could enter the dining room. That had suited them. The beach was private, and because they’d paid for coffee, they were left alone. They found the bench that Wendy and John used to love, overlooking the lake, and sat for a while, Wendy in the middle of her two daughters. After a while, she took the urn and disappeared behind a rhododendron bush. She was only gone for minutes; when she returned, she nodded and they left. The deed was done. Dad was at peace. Secretly.

  ‘This is nice,’ Wendy said now.

  They had a table by a window overlooking the lake. Kelly was itching to check her phone, but she’d have to wait until she went to the toilet; now was not the time. A steamer chugged slowly on the lake, heading west to the Howtown jetty. It’d be the last of the day; it was only when the summer season kicked in that they ran until sundown. She wondered if Hannah and Sophie had used the steamers, and realised that if they’d caught one to Glenridding from Howtown, they could have gone much further afield. But Garth had told her they’d left at night, way after the steamers stopped. The two girls were striking, and there was a good chance that the amorous young lads who came and went, working the steamers from now until September, might remember them.

  Wendy coughed.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, I’m …’ Kelly started to say.

  ‘Thinking about a case,’ Wendy finished for her. Kelly smiled.

  ‘You’ve got me there, sorry.’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d managed to contact any of your old friends,’ Wendy said. It was a strange thing to say, though not entirely unexpected. Apart from her Saturday pool nights with Andy and Karl, she hadn’t really bothered to look up old acquaintances. Partly through fear of rejection – she was the one who’d left – and partly through nonchalance. She’d pushed her run-in with Michelle Hammond to the back of her mind.

  ‘I think they’re all busy, Mum,’ Kelly said weakly. It was true. She’d bumped into a few old school chums casually, and everybody knew she was back, but after the obligatory ‘Good to see you!’, ‘You look so well!’, ‘How was London?’, ‘You have how many children?’ it became tedious. She wasn’t about to tell her mother what Michelle had said.

  She was aware that Wendy thought her aloof, but that had been years ago. She’d been mortified when her mother set up play dates for her with her friends’ kids. All had ended in disaster. Kelly preferred listening to music, cycling to the lake; and later, smoking fags and playing pool, none of which was on her mother’s agenda. Now she felt the same disapproval. Well, at least she had a boyfriend. Kind of.

  Her mind turned to Johnny, and she softened. She’d been unkind. He’d done nothing wrong in trying to help Nikki. Not only that: her sister had agreed to see him again. He kept surprising her and she liked that.

  ‘Mum, I’m happy as I am. I don’t need loads of friends. You know that. Gaggles of girls is Nikki’s thing.’

  ‘And look, they’re all there for her, right when she needs them,’ Wendy said. Kelly had no idea where her mother got her information from. She flicked her ponytail absent-mindedly.

  ‘And that’s great, Mum. I’m pleased for her. I really am.’ Wendy clearly had no idea that Nikki’s so-called friends had one by one slowly abandoned her.

  ‘But what would you do if …’ Wendy began.

  ‘If what, Mum? If I was hurt or in trouble? I’d cope,’ Kelly said.

  The menus arrived. Wendy’s eyes were drawn straight to the prices. A starter of scallops and caviar with pea and mint puree and cauliflower spray came in at twenty-four pounds.

  ‘Mum, have what you want. It’s a treat. We won’t get to do this often. I was given a pay rise recently and this is my celebration,’ Kelly lied. ‘You love crab, don’t you? Look, there’s a crab ravioli.’ She could see Wendy noting that the crab ravioli in question, floating on a lake of lobster bisque, came in at thirty-two pounds as a main course. She took the menu off her mother.

  ‘I’ll order,’ she said.

  The waiter returned and Kelly gave their order. A sommelier came to the table and enthused about a Sancerre. Kelly asked to try it, and Wendy simply nodded. She’d clearly seen the eye-watering price.

  ‘You’ve got to admit it’s good, Mum.’

  ‘How do you know so much about it, Kelly?’

  ‘London is full of restaurants like this, though they’re not so much up their own arses. Besides, I have nothing else to spend my money on – you know, like kids.’ She’d expected to get some kind of maternal pull plaguing her by thirty, as had happened to her friends, but she never had. Now, at thirty-eight, she doubted she ever would.

  Their starters arrived. Kelly had ordered the scallops for her mother and lamb croquettes for herself.

  ‘Isn’t that Wasdale Hall?’ Wendy asked. Kelly followed her mother’s gaze across the lake. She wondered what Zachary would be dining on tonight. She couldn’t imagine him in a place like this, but she’d also wager that he’d have no problem holding his own.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘I was there yesterday.’

  ‘Really?’ Wendy stopped eating and put down her fork. For a woman who’d baulked at the price, she was doing a good job of cleaning her plate. She took another gulp of wine, and Kelly thought she’d have to order another bottle. It came in at sixty-four pounds; the sommelier would be only too happy to oblige.

  ‘Why were you there?’ Wendy asked. It was a strange question. The earl’s death had been all over the news, as well as the coroner ruling it suspicious. Surely it was obvious that someone would investigate it.

  ‘It’s my case, Mum.’

  Wendy’s mouth remained open.

  ‘Mum?’ Kelly said.

  Wendy gulped another half-glass of wine. Kelly was becoming concerned that she wouldn’t be able to get her back to the car. She wasn’t even sure if it was all right for her to drink on the new drug.

  ‘I knew him,’ Wendy said.

  Chapter 30

  The autopsy had been carried out sixteen years ago, but it was still fresh in Ted’s mind.

  The corpse was a mess. The propellers had ripped his skull apart, and there was tooth and bone embedded deep in the brain and the chest.

  A kayaker had
made the discovery. He’d alerted a local angler, who’d recognised the boat with its outboard motor still running beneath the surface, churning the bloody water, making it look like beetroot soup. The body had floated away and was making its way into the middle of the lake, and the police had to move swiftly to close it for the day. They’d faced angry steamer owners, swimmers and anglers, but it was non-negotiable. By the time a boat crew fished him out, he’d been nibbled by carnivorous perch, greedy for breakfast. One of the officers had vomited, only adding to the fish’s grim meal.

  It took them three hours to perform the autopsy, and they’d taken over three hundred photos.

  So when Ted received the call at the coroner’s office in Carlisle, he remembered the case straight away. He also remembered the sensationalism surrounding the death of a well-respected local man, and how the media ran the story for weeks as the Cumbria Constabulary deliberated its verdict. It was eventually decided that the death had been an accident. A particularly nasty accident. But not everyone believed it.

  * * *

  Oliver Fitzgerald had been a congenial man. He was an award-winning angler at only twenty-three, a keen golfer, and a regular fixture at the Pooley Bridge Inn, where he played snooker and chatted up barmaids spending their summers earning money for their next term at university. Like his father, he was tall, strong and imposing, and he regularly waited until closing time to take young students to clubs in Penrith, or back home for other activities. He had free rein at Wasdale Hall. His father didn’t complain; it pleased him that his son was so virile.

  Xavier-Paulus had waited fifty-five years to sire children, and when Delilah gave him twins in 1977, he’d pushed anew for a divorce from his estranged wife. To no avail. Alas, Delilah would never be his legally betrothed, but she’d brought renewed glamour to Wasdale Hall as friends from London encamped for weeks at a time, sending the Lakes’ social circle into a whirl. It was after one of those summer balls that Delilah had conceived, down by the shore of Ullswater, as the water lapped her ankles and the shingle scraped her back.

  * * *

  ‘So was it a straightforward boating accident, in your opinion?’ Kelly asked the pathologist over the phone.

  ‘I was never convinced, if I’m honest,’ Ted replied.

  ‘Really? Why is that? It was ruled an accident at the time.’

  ‘I know but there were a couple of things that were odd.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Kelly.

  ‘Firstly, Oliver was an accomplished sailor. He was only twenty-three, but he grew up on the lake. He had a string of Royal Yachting Association qualifications. Secondly, there were no signs he had tried to save himself, and that was unusual.’

  Kelly moved her ponytail to one side and sipped her coffee. She had five minutes to herself in her office, and the door was closed. She calculated that sixteen years ago Ted would have been a more junior pathologist, and that was why the signature on the post-mortem report was from another coroner, now deceased.

  ‘So if it wasn’t an accident, then what do you think it was?’ Kelly valued Ted’s input. She respected him and spoke to him like an inquisitive daughter asking for help with her homework.

  ‘Suicide,’ said Ted.

  ‘Seems to run in the family,’ Kelly commented. ‘Why wasn’t this taken into account at the time?’

  ‘I wasn’t in charge back then. I was still learning. I was experienced for sure, but seniority in the world of pathology comes late, Kelly. It’s a bit like being a high court judge; you have to be geriatric before anyone respects your judgement taken on its own.’

  ‘Did you vocalise your dissent?’

  ‘Yes, but I was overruled.’

  ‘But everything you’ve just told me makes absolute sense. I don’t care how senior the coroner was, how could he be so obtuse?’

  ‘The service is more – how shall I put it – transparent today. A few high-profile litigation cases have brought liability to the forefront.’

  ‘So the coroner fucked up – excuse me – and got away with it?’

  ‘Nothing was proven, you have to remember. There was evidence that Oliver was highly emotionally unstable at the time, but the family didn’t even question it. In this case, I can’t give you a definitive opinion. It’s a science, Kelly; there are facts and then more facts – the way they’re interpreted is your job.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It was a bit of a media circus, I remember. The family has such a sad history. There was some argument – and there’s only gossip to fill in what it was about – but Oliver’s sister and mother left and never came back. I read they died in a road accident. That was when the earl shut himself off.’

  ‘And the raucous parties stopped,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Who told you about all that?’

  ‘How come you know so much about the Fitzgerald family, Ted? Don’t tell me you attended all those debauched parties as well, or are you just a keen historian?’

  He fell silent.

  ‘Ted? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. I think we were momentarily cut off.’

  ‘So, did you?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Party at Wasdale Hall?’

  His silence said it all.

  ‘Ted! My mother told me last night that she’d been there too. God, you lot! Dark horses. Did you meet her? I know you met my dad. People say I look just like her when she was my age.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure, Kelly. I definitely remember meeting your father; he was very tall, wasn’t he? Everybody knew about the parties. The Fitzgeralds were our celebrities. Tittle-tattle about them was nothing out of the ordinary. Besides, I’m a bit of a boffin when it comes to Cumbrian heraldry. You know we have some of the oldest families in the UK up here in the sticks?’

  He’d changed the subject and distracted her with the word ‘boffin’; she hadn’t heard it in years and it amused her.

  ‘Are you down in Penrith any time soon? I could do with going over both reports with you, and perhaps reminiscing about some of the goings-on at Wasdale Hall,’ she said.

  ‘Erm … actually, Kelly, I’ve got a very important meeting on Monday, which I need to prepare carefully for. I’m happy to look at my diary after that, though,’ he said.

  Ted Wallis had never needed to consult his diary so carefully before, and Kelly was taken aback.

  ‘That’s absolutely fine, Ted. You let me know. Bye, then.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, and hung up.

  Kelly stared at the phone. Her thoughts drifted to her mother, and what she’d told her about one summer evening in 1975.

  Chapter 31

  Delilah Mailer sprayed Amazone by Hermès onto her clavicles, watched keenly by Xavier, who hung about at the foot of their bed smoking a Players No. 6. The scent was a new release, and she’d had it decanted into a turquoise and rose Victorian atomiser at Harrods. The top notes were of hyacinth, shrouded with jasmine and just a hint of lily, and finished with cedar. Xavier was fully dressed, but he was waiting for Delilah to fasten his tie, as she always did. She knew it wasn’t that he couldn’t do it himself; more that he enjoyed being close to her.

  She was wearing claret: his favourite. The silk gown clung to her body, and her skin, kissed by summer, glowed toffee-like, framed by her golden hair. It had been pinned up and bejewelled with garnets. She took his cigarette and puffed on it. She was ready.

  Downstairs, music played and staff busied themselves with the final preparations. Food was laid out on tables covered in white cloths, and wine from the cellar had been decanted. Delilah had taken care of the guest list, as she always did, and Xavier had no idea who was coming. They came up here for the summer, to escape the smog of London, but Delilah soon became tired of the local accent and the lack of finesse. Throwing an annual ball was her way of relieving the boredom, and occasionally she’d find someone to rouse her interest.

  There were some familiar faces, and some new ones too. Delilah worked hard at getting to
know the who’s who of the north-west, and it was usually a smattering of doctors, lawyers, bankers, army officers, Yanks obliging their wives with a trip to little England, and the odd politician. It wasn’t London, but she always pulled it off.

  As Delilah tied Xavier’s black silk tie – he never wore anything with colour – his hand wandered to her hip and he looked her in the eye.

  ‘Xavier, we haven’t time,’ she said.

  ‘There’s always time,’ he said, undoing her handiwork.

  * * *

  They wafted downstairs as the first guests arrived; people invariably turned up on time in these parts, unlike London where everybody was late. A few seasoned regulars acted as chaperones to others, less accustomed to Xavier Paulus II and his elegant mistress. Guests were usually brought to Xavier; Delilah, on the other hand, needed no introduction. She moved around the room looking for someone to make her laugh, someone to light her cigarette or pour her another brandy. She was equally generous to female and male guests, as she found them all fascinating, but it was the gentlemen who lingered around her longest.

  No matter how many times John Porter had told his wife that she was the most beautiful woman in the room, when Delilah Mailer walked towards her Wendy felt a mixture of unimportance, awkwardness and featurelessness, as if all her shine had been sucked away in one turn of blonde curls. John soon forgot his promise to stay by his wife’s side, and no one noticed her make her way out to the garden to get some air. Her jaw ached from smiling when she didn’t want to. Her emerald dress felt tight and her skin clammy. She lit a cigarette and walked through the garden towards the fountain. No one else was around, and the noise of laughter, music and clinking glasses faded the further away from the great house she went.

  There was no doubt their hosts were generous. She’d eaten smoked salmon pâté, sausages wrapped in delicate pastry, the softest beef on tiny rounds of bread with a tart sauce dabbed on top, strawberries with pink cream, avocado mousse and oysters. She’d suffer tomorrow, she thought. Her head was woozy too. She’d opted for the cocktails rather than the wine, thinking this to be the wiser choice, but whatever was in the pink liquid with flecks of gold in it had gone straight to her head, and she needed to sit down. No one sat down in the great hall; they all stood talking and laughing, or else dancing and spinning until they fell over. It seemed she was the only one tired of it all.