‘Crikey, Dee,’ he muttered, reaching a finger out to touch the photo on the screen as he stood to go. ‘What have you got yourself into?’
He shut down the computer and when he left the room, it was exactly as it had been. Apart from one thing. The little red light blinking under the desk.
* * *
Her phone buzzed within minutes of her arriving home. Her security system had been activated. She knew what to expect before she logged on but even so, it was still a blow.
Samson O’Brien in his old-fashioned clothes, sitting in her office and trying to access her computer, unaware he was being videoed by a camera inside the monitor.
The swine! All that chit-chat before she left the building, the offer to have dinner together – it had all been a smokescreen. He’d simply wanted her out of the way so he could go snooping.
Cross with herself for not having seen through his charm, she watched him check the window behind him, ever wary. Then he tried to enter a password.
Her date of birth. What did he take her for? An idiot? He tried again. Tolpuddle. She laughed, the dog in question nudging her leg. Then, his last attempt, Carrots. The name of the rabbit she’d got for her sixth birthday. How the hell did he remember that? A flash of affection cut through her anger, but soon evaporated as Samson reached for the desk drawer.
She’d forgotten about the printouts of the client records she’d hastily hidden away.
He pulled them out. She heard him murmur Martin Foster’s name, a frown forming as he stared at the last piece of paper, his mobile already in his hand, fingers typing. Then the soft curse.
He knew. He reached out and touched the screen, the microphone catching his words and transporting Delilah back to an idyllic childhood. Dee. That was what Samson and Ryan had always called her when she was a kid tagging along after them.
It was what she felt like right now. A child out of her depth.
The screen on her mobile went black and Delilah knew she was going to spend the rest of the night wondering what to do next. Wondering whether it was time to ask Samson to help her.
* * *
‘It’s me. Samson O’Brien.’
Standing in the first-floor kitchen, he waited a moment, knowing there would be panic at the other end of the phone in a house where no one ever called. When the rapid breathing had eased a bit, he continued.
‘I need your help. Can you come with me tomorrow morning?’
Silence while a mental calendar was consulted. All those things to reorder in a mind that didn’t like reordering.
‘It won’t take long,’ he coaxed. ‘And we’ll be going on the Royal Enfield…’
Immoral, probably. To tempt like that. But he needed this expert help. He counted to five and then heard the stuttering reply.
‘Eight o’clock? Sure. I can pick you up at eight. See you tomorrow.’
There was no goodbye. Just the relieved click of a receiver being replaced in the cradle. Samson O’Brien continued to stare out past the initials covering the window to the town below.
Whatever he’d been expecting when he made the difficult decision to come home, it hadn’t been this. To be wondering what his best friend’s sister was doing up to her neck in murder.
11
At eight o’clock, with the fells dark and sombre in the cold, grey morning, the streak of scarlet as the motorbike turned into the yard was like a flash of autumn in the middle of winter. Samson pulled up by the barn and before he had even got the stand down, George Capstick was hurrying towards him, a mixture of apprehension and excitement twisting his face.
‘Ida says I have to have a helmet,’ he blurted out, ignoring Samson’s outstretched hand.
‘Here.’ Samson passed him his spare. ‘Did Ida say anything else?’
‘I have to be home by lunchtime. And no speeding.’
Samson nodded, keeping his smile in check as George swung his leg over and settled on the seat. When Samson revved the engine and rode out onto the road, the high-pitched, delighted laugh of his passenger mingled with the roar of the bike as it tore away out of Thorpdale.
* * *
Eight o’clock and Delilah was only just getting to work. So much for an early start. She let herself into the quiet building, the smell of air freshener and floor polish wafting down the hallway, helping to clear the fug in her head.
Not enough sleep. Too much family.
The evening before had been awful. Gathered around the large kitchen table at Ellershaw Farm, the Metcalfes had presented a model picture of familial bliss for anyone peering in the window. Delilah’s parents, Peggy and Ted, had been seated at opposite ends; Will, his wife, Alison, and their two children were down one side; Delilah, Ash, Nathan and Lucy down the other. Only the two middle brothers, Craig and Chris, had been missing, Craig in London and Chris in Leeds. Both were too busy to make it home on a weeknight, something Will couldn’t help commenting on.
Ryan, too, of course. He’d been missing. That middle peg which had kept the family tethered. Since his death it felt like all of them had been left flapping in the wind.
Not that outsiders would notice anything. The table piled high with food. The surface chatter, which touched on nothing substantial. But beneath that, to an experienced observer, the signs were there.
Peggy Metcalfe was unable to sit still, keeping herself busy loading plates or clearing dishes while her husband sat at the furthest distance from her, a benign smile on his face hiding a heart that was broken. And a gaze that kept wandering to the door, as though expecting his middle son to walk in at any moment.
As for Will, expression thunderous, he snapped and snarled at his sister and was barely gracious with his wife. Sensing the tension like wild animals, the kids had vacated the table as soon as possible, taking an equally brooding Nathan with them. For once, Delilah had been glad to see the back of her nephew, the teenager having spent the entire meal either sniping at his mother or with his attention glued to his mobile. Although no one could blame the lad for being morose. He was still coming to terms with the magnitude of losing his father.
Delilah, for her part, had been too preoccupied to rise to any of Will’s loaded comments, which was probably just as well after her loss of temper at lunchtime. But it meant she was poor company. Meanwhile Ash, in that maddening laid-back way of his, ate heartily and passed witty remarks like a man dining at his London club.
So it fell to Alison and Lucy to make conversation and cover the cracks, in the way that in-laws do when confronted by their spouse’s feuding relatives. Delilah wondered if they returned home from these family gatherings of late to inspect their offspring like a mother looking for lice, hoping not to find any signs of those stubborn Metcalfe characteristics.
When Ash offered Delilah a lift home, she’d been grateful to get away. An hour later, she was lying in bed and unable to sleep, her thoughts skittering, anxious adrenalin coursing through her from the day’s investigations. She’d finally drifted off in the early hours only to fall into fractious dreams, none of which she could remember, and had stayed in their thrall while the alarm beeped fruitlessly on the bedside table. It had taken the sudden weight of Tolpuddle on her legs to rouse her. And she’d woken with murder on her mind.
Gritty-eyed and crotchety, she made her way up the stairs to her office. A cup of tea. Then she would feel a bit more like facing the world and trying to discover why her clients kept dying.
* * *
The motorbike sped north, away from Bruncliffe, the fells lining the route as it snaked further into the Dales. Easing up as they passed through villages, increasing the speed once back on the open road, before long they saw the multi-arched span of Ribblehead Viaduct scything through the landscape ahead of them in an expanse of grey stone.
London had little to compare with this, thought Samson, taking in the structure which fitted so snugly into the hills. He turned right for Hawes and the road began to climb, open land stretching around them, dark and brooding in t
he reluctant morning. Greys and subdued greens, the occasional patches of conifers almost black, and the walls … always the walls dancing over the fields, cutting up into the fells. God, how he’d missed this.
Then the road was dipping again, dropping down towards Hawes and their turn-off, a narrow lane winding towards the village of Gayle, the engine noise bouncing off the stone walls hemming them in. Twisting and turning, cutting through the cluster of houses and across the river and then up the sharp hill at the back. He remembered this. Remembered coming here with his father.
Over the crest of the hill and the dale extended, Wether Fell looming above them on the left. A tap on his shoulder and George’s arm was pointing at a collection of buildings down on the right.
The farm.
‘Let’s just hope someone’s home and willing to talk,’ Samson muttered into his helmet. He turned the Royal Enfield onto the track and headed for their destination.
* * *
By nine o’clock, Delilah was looking for patterns. Something in the way the three men had behaved, either at the Speedy Date night or on the website, that might have some relevance to their untimely passing. Something that might have triggered their deaths.
Murder. That’s what she was presuming. No more time for coincidences.
It sounded so preposterous in the cold light of a Bruncliffe morning as she bent over her desk, Tolpuddle snoring lightly in the corner. But she needed to rule it out; needed to be certain that Mrs Hargreaves was wrong. Because if it transpired that the butcher’s wife was right, then it opened the door to the awful possibility that Tom and Martin had also been killed. And perhaps that more Dales Dating Agency customers were in danger.
Skimming through her paperwork, Delilah pulled out the seating plan from the last dating event. She’d hired the upstairs function room at the Coach and Horses, the pub’s location on the high street and cosy decor making it more suitable than the outdated Fleece – not to mention the friendlier staff. With the twelve tables laid out in a horseshoe, the women had been given the outside seats, and therefore a view of the entire room, and the men the inside, changing tables every four minutes. So the seating plan in her hand was only an initial one. But it showed that the three men she was focusing on had been placed apart: Richard at the second table, Tom at the fourth and Martin at the ninth. As they hadn’t followed each other directly along the conveyor belt of dates, hopefully that meant the idea of someone simply killing all the male participants in order could be ruled out. And as far as Delilah could tell, the irregular spacing of the three unfortunate clients at second, fourth and ninth didn’t lend itself to any mathematical basis for their deaths, either.
Not sure whether to be relieved at her deductions or appalled that she was considering such dire scenarios, she moved on to open the client files on the computer. Martin and Tom had been attending their first Speedy Date night; Richard had been on his second. No connection there then. So what about the night itself?
When she’d set up the Dales Dating Agency two years before, it had always been her intention to introduce live events, knowing that for some of her clients, real-life interaction would be more of a draw than the virtual sort. But with plenty of farmers amongst her clientele, she’d been determined that the evenings wouldn’t become like Skipton auction mart, with men bidding on the best-looking beast or vice versa – particularly as many of her customers would be from the same area and would possibly know each other already. The last thing she wanted to do was make things awkward for people bumping into each other at Bruncliffe market on a Thursday.
So she’d kept it simple. An even number of guests, a low-key setting, a relaxed atmosphere … and a way of tracking your ‘dates’ that didn’t reduce them to a score out of ten.
In a twist on the traditional score card used by most speed-dating companies, she’d come up with the idea of date cards: a set of small cards prepared for each participant with their name, age and key interests typed on the back, which, at the end of a four-minute segment, they simply swapped with their date. Then, when the evening was over, the participants returned home, logged on to their account on the agency website and, on the basis of the cards they’d collected, decided on their next step.
Again, Delilah had tweaked the standard formula. Rather than the sterile ticking of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ boxes to signify an interest in someone, which seemed so clinical after such a short amount of time, there were three straightforward choices. If you wanted to follow up your brief liaison with a particular person, you clicked on a box entitled ‘I’d like to see you again’. If you were unsure, you simply chose ‘Looking forward to catching up at the next date night’. And if you were certain you never wanted to see the person ever again, you clicked ‘Thanks for a lovely evening’.
Polite. Friendly. And as most people plumped for the more affable middle option when lacking in interest, not only did the agency benefit from repeat business, but no one was left feeling rejected. At least that was the plan. Although, thought Delilah, if someone was bumping off the participants, it was possible she might have to revise that!
Knowing that nothing untoward had occurred on the evening in question – no heated disagreements between dates, no cross words exchanged during the hour of mingling at the bar afterwards – Delilah focused on the online accounts for the three dead men. If there was anything to signal a potential link between them, it would be in there.
A whine from the dog basket drew her attention away from the screen, and Tolpuddle, heavy head on paws, eyes looking mournfully up at her, whimpered again.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
The dog’s eyes flickered to the stairs and back to her, followed by another sound that was almost a snivel.
Samson. The bloody hound was missing Samson.
She stood and crossed to the window, staring down into the backyard where an empty expanse of oil-stained concrete told her the office downstairs wasn’t occupied. Nine-thirty and he wasn’t in. Had he discovered something? Found enough in his brief incursion of her office to set him off on a trail?
She returned to her desk with even more urgency, still hoping that the Dales Dating Agency wasn’t embroiled in what could be Bruncliffe’s first serial killing.
That would kill her business stone dead, for sure.
* * *
Samson had no idea how to play this. Turning up out of the blue to a farm he hadn’t visited since he was a nipper, and in the wake of such tragedy. There was every chance they would chase him out of the place once they realised why he was here.
He rode slowly up to the farmhouse, a well-kept home in a courtyard of barns and outbuildings, and parked the bike next to a Land Rover. As he waited for George to get off, he saw the door of the rear porch open, a large man staring out at them.
‘Get lost!’ the man shouted, flapping his arms as though they were crows on newly sown fields. ‘We’re not willing to speak to you.’
George Capstick, helmet in hand, began to rock sideways, a soft mewing sound issuing from his tight lips.
‘Mr Alderson?’ Samson swung his leg over the bike and took his helmet off, a hand stretched towards the irate farmer in the hope of calming both him and George, all the while thinking that this had been a massive mistake.
The man clenched his fists and began to cross the yard. George rocked even faster, head held unnaturally still atop his swaying body.
‘I said get lost,’ snarled the farmer. ‘We’ve had our fill of reporters. Now go, or I’ll let the dogs out.’
‘We’re not—’ Samson broke off as George began scurrying towards the nearest barn and disappeared inside.
‘Where the hell’s he going? Oi! Get back here!’
‘George? It’s okay, George, he won’t harm us.’ Samson ran after his old neighbour, not sure of the validity of his promises, given the angry shouts behind him. Or what had possessed him to bring George Capstick along on a mission so delicate. ‘George—?’
He stopped abr
uptly in the doorway, the farmer slamming into the back of him and knocking his breath out in a sudden burst. He fell forward onto a hay bale, leaving a clear view for the man behind.
‘What the—?’
‘A Little Grey! You’ve got a Little Grey!’ George Capstick, face alight, was sitting atop an ancient tractor, running his hands over the steering wheel, his eyes caressing the squat grey machine. ‘TE20 Standard wet-liner inline-four engine can I start it?’
Mr Alderson stood, mouth open, the artless enthusiasm of the man on the tractor deflating his anger. ‘It doesn’t work … it was a project – my son…’ His lip quivered.
‘2088cc three-point linkage four-speed gearbox…’
‘We’re not reporters,’ Samson said gently, while George continued to rattle off unpunctuated statistics in the background.
‘So I gather,’ said the man next to him, a small smile appearing as George now wriggled under the tractor, an enthusiastic stream issuing forth from his new position on the ground. ‘What are you then?’
Samson took a deep breath. ‘I’m here … I want to talk to you about your son’s death.’
The smile disappeared, replaced by wariness. And a visible struggle to control emotion. ‘What about Tom?’
‘It’s complicated. Perhaps there’s somewhere better we could talk? Privately?’ Samson gestured at the figure leaning in under the raised bonnet and muttering away.
The farmer stared at George, then back to Samson. ‘You’d best come inside then.’
‘I’ll be back in a minute, George,’ said Samson, happy to see his former neighbour too engrossed in the old tractor to reply as the farmer led the way out of the barn. The conversation that was about to take place wasn’t something the unique mind of George Capstick needed to hear.
* * *
Three men. One evening. And a mountain of data to comb through.
Even though Delilah had kept the system simple when she designed it, both for the users and the administrator, it was still going to take a while. By mid-morning, though, she felt she was getting somewhere.
Date with Death Page 15
