Ripples (The Blake Harte Mystery Book 3)

by Robert Innes

  “Ignore him,” Blake said, switching off the torch.

  “Maybe it’s a good job that this happened,” Harrison murmured. “Either way, looked like there was going to be a murder of some kind.”

  A few minutes later, Harrison and Blake were sat in the reception area of the hotel. After the arrival of an ambulance and two police cars, the few guests the mansion was housing had gathered in the entrance, watching the emergency services with interest.

  “I’ve never been on this side of the police investigations before,” Blake said to him as he peered outside. “Ushered away from the scene and being told everything is in hand.”

  “Are the police going to want to speak to us?” Harrison asked him.

  “I would think so,” Blake replied. “After all, we were direct witnesses to-“

  He stopped as he saw the two paramedics that had run out of the ambulance when it had arrived, walking back towards their vehicle and climbing into the front. Blake turned his head to Harrison as it began to drive away. “Direct witnesses to the murder.”

  “He’s dead?” Harrison gasped, his eyes wide.

  “The ambulance has driven away. Not a lot they can do to save a dead body.”

  Harrison exhaled and rested his head on the back of the sofa they were sat on. “Poor Rupert. Imagine watching your brother die like that. He must be in bits.”

  “Come on,” Blake said. “We may as well get our interviews out of the way, see if there’s anything we can do for the family.” He stood up and began making his way through the crowd. “As if Rupert and Polly haven’t got enough to deal with. And it’s not going to get any easier for them.”

  Harrison ran to catch up with Blake as they made their way along the gravel path back towards the hut, where Rupert and Polly would be. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean along with the fact that Rupert’s brother has just been murdered, they’ve got his mother dying of cancer upstairs, she’ll need informing, and the fact that they’ll probably both be suspects.”

  “How can they be suspects?” Harrison asked him, confused. “They were both in the hut with us when it happened.”

  “Yes, but they both absolutely hated Duncan. Polly especially. She told me her whole family have done everything they can to make life hell for the Urquharts. I promise you, right now, her head will be all over the place, wondering if any of her own family would be capable of something like this because if I was in charge of the investigation, Polly’s family would be my first port of call.”

  When they arrived at the lakes, the area was cordoned off with police tape. Duncan’s body was being examined by a forensics team. One, covered head to toe in a white overcoat, was standing over Duncan, taking pictures of the stab wounds on his body. Blake glanced at Harrison, who was staring at the body, exhaling slowly. Blake placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a supportive squeeze. It was, after all, hardly the first time Harrison had had to witness scenes like this. The first time he and Blake had met, Harrison’s boyfriend had been in a similar position and as it had turned out, he wasn’t to be the first man in Harrison’s life to meet a grisly fate.

  “Excuse me, sir,” a policeman said, walking across to them, with his arms outstretched in an attempt to block their view of Duncan’s body. “But this area is out of bounds, as I’m sure you can imagine, the family is highly distressed at this time, so if you wouldn’t mind-“

  “Detective Sergeant Blake Harte,” Blake said, pulling his wallet out of his pocket and opening it so that the officer could see his identification. “Don’t worry, I’m not on duty, but I know full well the procedure. Well done by the way, quite right. The only reason we’re here is that we were witness to the murder, so I figured you’d want to get interviewing us out of the way so you can get on with the investigation.”

  “Oh,” the police officer said, his face dropping slightly as he read Blake’s ID. “Well, that’ll be up to our man in charge – I think he’s interviewing the family at the moment but I’ll be sure to tell him-“

  “Blake?”

  Blake turned to where the voice had come from and then smiled happily. “No way. I don’t believe it!”

  “You better believe it, sunshine,” said Sally-Ann Matthews, as she walked towards him from behind the hut, her arms outstretched. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  The officer glanced at Sally, then wandered off, looking bemused.

  “Would you believe this is the holiday I told you about?” Blake laughed, hugging her. “You remember Harrison?”

  “Vaguely,” Sally said, looking slightly sheepish. The last time she and Harrison had met, Sally had been very drunk. “How are you, Harrison?”

  “Not too bad, thanks,” Harrison said, smiling. “How come you’re here though?”

  “I told you, we’re really not that far from where I used to live,” Blake said. “A case like this, I should have realised you’d be one of the first on the scene. It’s seriously so good to see you.”

  “Likewise,” Sally said. “Though I wish it was under slightly better circumstances.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Blake sighed, scratching the back of his head. “I’m glad the family has you on the case. It’s not going to be an easy one, Sally.”

  “Did you see what happened?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is it true what the Urquharts are saying? Some hooded guy walking across the lake?”

  Blake nodded grimly. “Yeah. Wish I could make some sense of it for you, but that is pretty much what happened. Anyway, as I was saying to your colleague, I thought you might want to get interviewing us out of the way.”

  Sally glanced at the hut, looking slightly awkward. “It’s not going to be me interviewing you Blake, someone else is probably going to be wanting to do that.”

  Blake frowned. “Who?”

  The hut door slammed open and a rotund man with a bald head and a long brown jacket strode out. Blake’s heart sank. The man’s intense and disparaging mannerisms were just as present and annoying as Blake remembered. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Do you know him?” Harrison whispered.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Blake replied, glaring at the pompous looking man. “That’s Inspector Gresham. My old boss.”

  “And I’m sure he’ll be absolutely thrilled to see you,” Sally said, grinning at Blake’s irritated expression.

  “Matthews, I’ve interviewed the family,” Gresham said, indicating the hut with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Not a lot of use, the brother is a bit of snivelling wreck at this stage. All I’m getting is this crap about a floating man. Were there any other witnesses?”

  “Hello, Inspector Gresham,” Blake said, with a vague attempt at politeness.

  Gresham stared at Blake with a mixture of surprise and disdain. “Harte. What a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “Likewise,” Blake replied, giving Gresham a small nod. He wasn’t sure whether he was still required to call his old boss ‘sir’ or not. There was a long list of things he would certainly like to call him, but this was hardly the time to start reeling any of them off. “Myself and Harrison here were witness to what happened.”

  “I see,” Gresham said, glancing at Harrison with an air of distaste. “Well, when the wife of the brother in there mentioned a Blake, I certainly didn’t think it would be you I would be talking to. Still, I expect you to give me a slightly more helpful account of events. Matthews, if you’d like to talk to Mr Harte’s-“ he threw another disdainful look at Harrison “-friend here?”

  “Certainly, Sir,” Sally said, clearly trying not to laugh at Blake, who had his eyes narrowed in intense dislike at Gresham.

  “You and me will take a walk this way, Harte,” Gresham said, nodding his head along the path.

  “Do you want to come with me, Harrison?” Sally said, leading Harrison around the police tape and towards the bushes, away from Duncan’s body.

  “See you later,” Blake said. �
�Just tell Sally what you saw. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “No worries. Nice meeting you Mr Gresham.”

  Gresham grunted in reply and clicked his fingers towards the path, before striding off. Blake gritted his teeth and followed the old superior he had hated for so long back along the path.

  If it weren’t for the fact that Blake considered himself to be a consummate professional, he would have made the interview as difficult as he possibly could for Gresham. As it was, once he had managed to catch him up, and be in time with the long strides Gresham was taking, he knew that his hatred for his old inspector was second to finding out who had murdered Duncan Urquhart.

  “So, how long have you been staying here?” Gresham said, pulling out his notepad along with a packet of cigarettes.

  “We arrived last night,” Blake said, eyeing the menthol cigarette Gresham had put in his mouth. “Since when did you smoke?”

  “Oh, I do smoke sometimes, certainly I do, sometimes.” Gresham said, lighting it and inhaling deeply. It did nothing to help the cravings Blake had been feeling for the past couple of hours. “And you got friendly with the family pretty quickly?”

  “You could say that,” Blake replied, pulling his ecig out of his pocket and sucking on it, somewhat urgently. The lemon flavoured vapour hit the back of his throat weakly and unsatisfactorily. “My landlord knows Polly Urquhart and managed to get me a week here cheaply.”

  Gresham scribbled in his notebook. “I take it you’ve come here for a romantic getaway then?”

  “It’s not really a-“

  “Did you manage to meet the victim?”

  “Not directly, no. I saw him arguing with his brother. He didn’t seem to be the nicest bloke in the world, if I’m honest.”

  Gresham put his cigarette in his mouth and inhaled hands free as he continued scribbling in his notebook. Blake had never been able to understand how he could read the scruffy handwriting he always used when conducting interviews. “What were they arguing about?”

  “From what I understand, the Urquharts have only recently started this spa hotel business. Duncan hadn’t been the most supportive, especially seeing as the business hadn’t been going very well. To me, he seemed like a bit of a bully.”

  “Yes, well that was a word I always thought you used a bit too freely, so we’ll discount that,” Gresham said.

  Blake nearly bit his tongue in half. A few years ago, Blake had complained to the superintendent about Gresham’s behaviour towards a young suspect, where he had used every method, short of physical violence, in an attempt to get a confession out of him. Gresham had somehow managed to get himself out of too much backlash over the situation, and, although Blake knew the superintendent would not have explicitly stated that Blake was the one who had made the complaint, he had made it clear that he did not trust or like Blake ever since.

  “So you’re basically saying that the family’s relationship was strained?”

  “Yes,” Blake said tersely.

  Gresham nodded, inhaling on his cigarette again whilst scribbling in the notebook. “Anybody else who you think might have had an issue with the victim? I’m sure you’ve thought it all through.”

  Again, Blake chose to ignore the thinly veiled jibe. “From what I’ve been told, he wasn’t a man with many friends. In fact, if his behaviour that I witnessed was anything to go by, irrelevant as you think it might be, I would be very surprised if he had any friends at all.”

  “And the murder itself? What did you see?”

  “Exactly what you’ve already been told by the family. This hooded figure, who had apparently been giving the Urquharts hassle for months, appeared on the edge of the lake, which the victim was in the centre of, fishing. He or she then, somehow, walked across the surface of the water and from what I saw managed to stab Duncan to death. We all ran outside but by the time we’d gotten out of the hut, he had completely vanished and the victim was just floating in the lake.”

  Gresham took one last drag on his cigarette, then discarded it carelessly into a bush, scribbling frantically. “Disappeared, complete with murder weapon presumably.”

  “I would think so. Have you arranged for any divers to go looking in the lake for any clues as to what might have happened?”

  Gresham glared over his notepad. “Obviously I have begun arrangements for that, Harte, quite obviously. May I ask why you were in that hut in the first place? You’ve got a whole mansion here to wander about in.”

  “Harrison and me were invited to dinner with Rupert and Polly,” Blake replied, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. “There were also two other people with us.”

  Gresham finished scribbling in his notepad and put it back in his pocket, smirking delightedly. “Oh, yes, of course. I thought I recognised him. Your ex missus is here, isn’t he? The one you turned.”

  Blake shook his head in disbelief. “I wonder why your officers don’t like you. It really is a complete mystery to me. Are we done here?”

  “For now, yes,” Gresham replied, walking away back to the hut. “But don’t go anywhere. Ex- officer of mine or not, you’re a direct witness to the crime so I shall want to speak to you again. Until then, Mr Harte.”

  Blake watched him saunter arrogantly away, supressing a huge urge to throw a large stone from the ground at his retreating head. He leant against the wall again and exhaled as he tried to comprehend everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. He had not thought things could get any worse when he came face to face with Nathan, and yet here he was being interviewed by the boss who had tried so desperately to make his working life as difficult as possible, about a murder that, despite the fact that Blake had witnessed first-hand, made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

  “This is the worst holiday ever,” he murmured to himself as he wandered back into the hotel.

  A few hours later, Blake was sitting in the bar, cradling a glass of vodka and coke, far stronger than the one he had been drinking the night before. He glanced up as Rupert approached him, brandishing the vodka bottle.

  “Refill, Blake? May as well take advantage of not having Duncan breathing down my neck anymore-“ he cut himself off halfway through the sentence, possibly feeling like he had come across as harsh or heartless. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Blake said, holding his glass up. “If anybody is entitled to say whatever they want, I would say it’s you. You knew your brother better than anybody else after all.”

  Rupert filled Blake’s glass up and sat down opposite him, looking exhausted. “Three hours I was talking to that inspector. Not exactly the most compassionate man I’ve ever met.”

  “No,” Blake replied. “He isn’t.”

  “Somebody said you used to work with him?” Rupert asked wearily. “I can’t remember who, sorry.”

  Blake nodded. “We’ve got history. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. How are you? Stupid question, I know.”

  Rupert shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, perhaps in an attempt to stop himself from bursting into tears. “Numb. I think that’s the only word I could possibly use at the minute. You could throw anything else at me right now and I don’t think it would make one iota of difference to how I’m feeling.”

  Blake didn’t reply, instead choosing to take a long sip from his glass.

  “Rupert was the most unreasonable, selfish and bullying bloke you could ever meet. I grew up with him, mostly in fear. He was always my parents’ favourite. I don’t care what they said. Duncan was the go-getter. The one out of the two of us they could trust to bring good reputation to the family name.” He shrugged, looking slightly childish as he did so. “What was I supposed to do? I could only just get on with my own life whilst Saint Duncan did no wrong.”

  “Must have been difficult,” Blake said softly. “Has anybody told your mother about what’s happened yet?”

  Before Rupert could reply, Polly walked into the bar, f
ollowed by Harrison.

  “Finally,” Blake said as Harrison sat down beside him. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m alright, I think. After Sally was done interviewing me about what had happened, your old boss then pulled me aside and asked me exactly the same questions all over again. But whenever I told him anything, he was acting like he didn’t believe me. He’s only just let me go!”

  Blake rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that sounds like Gresham. He thinks it’s the best way to get the most honest account out of his witnesses, to try and chip them down till they think they’re a suspect. Don’t let him get to you, he’s just an arsehole.”

  “You need to tell her, Rupert,” Polly said soothingly to Rupert as they pulled apart. “You can’t let that inspector be the one to tell her.”

  Rupert ran his hands through his hair. “I can’t. I can’t do it, Polly. I can’t be the one to tell her that Duncan-“

  He stopped, emotion breaking through his voice.

  “Do you mean your mum?” Blake asked.

  Rupert nodded. “Polly, you’ll have to-“

  “Oh, no Rupert,” Polly said pleadingly. “You can’t expect me to. How I supposed to tell her that her son has been murdered? We don’t even know who did it.”

  “Why don’t you tell her, Blake?” Harrison asked, turning to him. “You’re probably the most tactful person I’ve ever met.”

  Touched as Blake was by Harrison’s accolade, he wished dearly that he had kept quiet, especially once he realised that both Rupert and Polly was looking hopefully at him. “I don’t think it’s really my place to-“

  “Please, Blake,” Rupert begged. “You’re trained in this sort of thing, aren’t you? Being a police officer? I hate to ask, but I…I love the woman dearly, but after all she’s been through these past few years, what with her illnesses and the treatment, and my father’s death. I can’t tell her. I know that must sound terribly cowardly, but…please?”

  Blake sighed as he glanced between Rupert and Polly then back at Harrison who had somewhat sunk into his chair, looking guilty and apologetic. “I have no jurisdiction in this case, you do realise that? If she’s got any questions about the investigation, I genuinely will have no way of answering her.”