Death in the Woods: A DCI Jude Satterthwaite novel (The DCI Satterthwaite Mysteries)

by Jo Allen

  ‘Excellent.’ Ashleigh reached out for the mug of tea Storm had delivered to her and which must surely be cold by now, but she sipped at it without showing anything other than enjoyment. ‘I’ll get this typed up and send someone down with it for you to sign, if that’s all right. I might have some more questions later on. But nothing more just now.’

  For all her otherworldliness, Raven wasn’t simple. She could have initialled the woman’s notes — they were clear enough — and been done with it, but there must be something else going on. Perhaps it was the girl. Perhaps she was missing, or in trouble. But her courage failed her, and she didn’t ask.

  Seven

  In summer, when the Lakes were heaving with tourists and only the early bird captured a parking place, Jude headed east on his days off. Up in the Pennines, even in peak holiday season, you could walk for miles without seeing anyone, a perfect opportunity for reflection. There was plenty for him to think about — Mikey, mainly, though Ashleigh’s inability to let go of Scott and his own failure to cut himself free of Becca troubled him too.

  His and Ashleigh’s situations with regard to their exes were, he thought, different. He and Becca hadn’t been married, and their relationship had never been as toxic as everything suggested Ashleigh’s marriage to the possessive Scott had become. He never actively sought out Becca’s company, nor she his, but she lived opposite his mother and so they regularly met.

  It had been four years, he reminded himself as he drove round the series of hairpin bends that twisted down the western edge of the Pennines and into the low-lying haze that smudged one of the best views in England. Four years since he’d suspected Mikey of involvement with soft drugs and challenged him, ending by marching him down to the police station at Hunter Lane to hand them over. It had been an act of good faith, but it had come back to bite him in ways he’d never expected. Sometimes he thought if he had his time over again he’d have waited to find out where the drugs had come from — but that would have brought him a greater dilemma and one he still wasn’t sure he’d have been able to handle. Justice had been done in the end and the dealer, Adam Fleetwood, had earned himself a six-year prison sentence for drug dealing, for resisting arrest, and for actual bodily harm when one of the arresting officers had sustained a broken collarbone. It was unfortunate for everyone that Adam had once been a close friend of Jude’s.

  Adam was out now, half his sentence served; he was fully rehabilitated and a valued part of the local community, but Jude retained a deep cynicism about the respectable face Adam presented to the world. He’d known the man long enough to recognise his determination for revenge on his former friend. Adam rented a flat almost opposite Jude’s house and sat in the living room or the tiny front garden, ever obvious. He was responsible for low-level harassment, a steady drip-drip of unsubstantiated anonymous complaints that trickled in to the Professional Standards Department until their patience with Jude wore thin, even though everyone knew, even if they couldn’t prove, the source of the complaints. And there had been Adam’s calculated wooing and winning of Becca. That had been a short-term relationship and was over, now, or seemed to be. It would be good to know which of them had finished it and why, but Jude didn’t ask and no-one told him; whenever he saw Becca she was her usual thoughtful self and Adam persisted with that smiling facade and its underlying menace.

  On impulse, he pulled the car over in a lay-by and reached for his phone, dialling his brother’s number. It rang and rang and rang, and finally switched to voicemail. ‘Mikey. I was trying to haul you out for a walk, you lazy sod. You might even have enjoyed it. But if you fancy a pint later on, give me a shout.’

  He started the car again and pulled out, moving slowly along the winding road and settling in behind a lumber lorry. There was a reason he was going over old ground years on, fruitlessly, and that reason was Mikey, who hadn’t replied to his older brother’s message that morning, his suggestion that they head up to the hills for a walk or at the very least off to some pub for a bite of lunch. The death in Cave Wood, coming so soon after two other apparent suicides, had set Jude’s conscience jangling. Mikey was the same age as those who’d found modern life too hard to live and might just have been prodded towards ending it. His refusal to acknowledge Jude’s messages and texts was both routine and understandable, a rejection of an older brother’s attempt to do the job of a father. It was yet another olive branch offered, yet another resounding silence in reply, but the worm of worry still gnawed at him.

  He took the scenic route, intending to wind through the villages of Kirkoswald and Lazonby, but at Glassonby he turned off and headed up towards Long Meg. A walk down past the scene of the latest suicide was unlikely to tell him anything he didn’t already know, but it was action of some kind.

  Up in the gateway to the New Agers’ field, Ashleigh’s car was parked. He hesitated for a moment, then turned the car and retraced his route to the Little Salkeld road. It was as well he’d split with Becca; there was every chance the relationship wouldn’t have survived Ashleigh’s arrival in his workplace.

  At that thought he allowed himself a wry smile. No-one could be sure how they’d react in an alternate set of circumstances. Would he have found Ashleigh so irresistible if it wasn’t for the empty space Becca had left in his life and in his bed? And earlier? How would he have acted if he’d known it was Adam supplying Mikey with drugs? Would he have been so robust if he’d known how Becca would respond? He’d never know.

  Parking the car where he’d left it on the day after Charlie Curran’s suicide, he flipped Ashleigh a quick text. Just down by the old mine if you’ve time to come down when you’ve finished. Then he got out of the car, stretching in the sunshine. The riverside path was busy at the best of times and the local tragedy had attracted more interest. His Mercedes wasn’t the only car parked down at the mine, and there had been more vehicles up by Long Meg and her Daughters. Word got around. He could hardly criticise people for being ghoulish when he was there himself, looking to see what there was to see.

  ‘Afternoon.’ He nodded to a man with a dog, received an acknowledgement in reply and set off along the river where a young woman was sitting with her back to a tree, flicking away at her phone. Ever suspicious, Jude took a second look to see what that was all about, and the girl returned his interest, scrambling to her feet and coming toward him. There was a faint scent of marijuana on the air, so faint he was able to pretend to himself, without qualms, that it was only his imagination and so he could ignore it. If he’d learned one lesson from Mikey’s experiences, that was it.

  ‘Hi,’ the girl said, brightly. She stuck her phone in her pocket but kept her forefinger on it, as if she was afraid of being disconnected from it. ‘I think I know you. Aren’t you Mikey Satterthwaite’s brother?’

  Usually people who said I know you followed it up with you’re the detective. Jude allowed himself a smile and made a note to tell Mikey, if he ever managed to catch up with him. ‘That’s me. And what about you? Are you a friend of his?’

  ‘Izzy Ecclestone. I know him from uni. We locals have to stick together up in the big city.’

  Mikey, who had just graduated from Newcastle University, was twenty-one but this girl, with her wraith-like figure and her pale face, barely looked eighteen. ‘Nice to meet you, Izzy.’ The name meant nothing to him. Mikey never mentioned his university friends.

  She fidgeted. The phone in her pocket buzzed with a notification and the finger on it twitched, but she managed not to allow it to distract her. ‘You’re a detective, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s me.’ They stepped off the path to allow a woman with a Labrador to pass them.

  ‘Then you’ll know. This is where that boy killed himself, isn’t it?’

  ‘Up in the woods, yes.’ That much was public knowledge.

  ‘And there were the others, weren’t there? Do you know about them?’

  How did you deal with that? Jude opted for the straightforward lie. ‘I’m not up on the d
etails. But if it’s any comfort I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.’

  ‘I’m not. But my mam and dad are on my back about it all the time.’ Izzy tossed her head and a stray ray of sunlight bounced off the array of silver studs in her earlobe. She jerked her head back towards the woods. ‘Why do you think he did it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘All these young people killing themselves. It’s interesting, isn’t it? I was reading a blog about it this morning. It’s quite exciting, in a way, that it’s happening here.’ Her bright-eyed stare dropped away from him, as if she remembered who he was and that she shouldn’t have been talking so carelessly to him. Izzy might be fascinated by death, but it appeared she still had some sensitivity. ‘I suppose I’d better go. My mam will be going mental. I didn’t tell her where I was going. I never do.’ She was digging the phone out her pocket as she spoke, curling her fingers around it as she jogged the first few steps down the path. ‘Tell Mikey I’m asking for him,’ she said, over her shoulder.

  All across the Eden Valley, parents would be going mental, as she’d put it, when their teenage children did what teenage children always did, and went out without telling them where they were going and when they’d be back. Jude watched Izzy disappear around the turn in the path and frowned. There had been a fevered look about her, a dangerous intensity. Maybe that was down to the marijuana he’d rather not know for certain she’d been smoking, but even so it could lead to dangerous thinking. It might be worth asking Mikey if he could shed any light on her.

  The woman with the Labrador had barely gone twenty yards down the path before she turned and strode back towards him, an obvious change of plan that left the dog gambolling on ahead of her, as if it expected to be followed not led. ‘Excuse me. Did I hear you say you’re a detective?’

  ‘In the day job, yes. But I’m an ordinary human being on my days off.’ He smiled at her, telegraphing as politely as he could that he wasn’t going to chat about it. He was well enough known in the neighbourhood, to the point of acquiring local notoriety that wasn’t entirely in his favour, but most people left him to his own devices when he wasn’t on official business.

  The deflectionary tactic failed him. He could guess from the way she stared at him, from the flick of the fingers that summoned the Labrador to heel, that she wasn’t used to being trifled with. ‘Good. Then you can tell me whether I should worry about my son and what to do about it if I should.’

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at her. This question was going to keep coming at him from every concerned parent even if there were no more unexpected deaths, and he’d need an answer for it in future. Just then, he didn’t have one. ‘I don’t think I know your son.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’ She shook her head at him with a scowl. ‘What matters is, he’s nineteen and in the Co-Op this morning someone was telling me there’s an epidemic of teenage suicides in the area. Is that right?’

  ‘We treat them as unexplained deaths,’ Jude corrected her. That was the official line and the one that the newspapers, sticking to the required guidelines, were reporting. Everyone locally would know the deaths were suicide and the bush telegraph would no doubt have embroidered the stories well beyond any hope of accuracy, but he wasn’t going to join in.

  ‘But they’re suicides, yes?’

  ‘That’s for the coroner to decide.’

  ‘And has there been an inquest?’

  ‘Only for the first one.’

  ‘And was that suicide?’

  Jude sighed. ‘Yes.’

  The dog, bored, ran off in fruitless pursuit of something unseen, completed a figure of eight movement around two trees and flopped down on the path at his owner’s feet, panting. The woman ignored it. ‘So should I worry about Josh?’

  There was a catch in her voice and at this first sign of vulnerability, Jude’s initial irritation softened. ‘I honestly don’t know. Do you worry about him anyway?’

  ‘Oh, of course I do. He’s like all kids of that age. A bright enough boy, but he never tells me anything important. And he spends far too much time on his computer.’

  ‘Don’t they all?’ Jude turned towards his car. Ashleigh hadn’t replied to his text so either she hadn’t received it or else she’d headed straight back to the office. He hoped it wasn’t because something else had come up, and if it had then the something else wasn’t the untimely death of someone else’s child. His time was his own so it might be worth drifting on up to the New Agers’ camp to see if she was still there. ‘I can’t advise you. You can only do what you think is best.’

  ‘It’s hard enough being a parent as it is,’ she said, aggrieved, ‘never mind with all this going on.’

  They were almost back at his car by then. He clicked the door unlocked from a distance. ‘Enjoy your walk.’

  ‘I’m heading back up the road myself.’ Regardless of his reluctance, she fell into step beside him. ‘I don’t mean to sound brisk. I do apologise for that. But Josh is all I have, so I have to look out for him. Without being a control freak, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed, placing a mental bet on the fact that it was exactly what she was.

  ‘His father’s worse than useless for that.’ She snapped her fingers and the dog drifted to heel. ‘Is it three teenage suicides there have been? I’m not a local here. I’m up for the summer. We arrived last week. All that talk in the shop freaked me out, but you’ll know. So you can just tell me and save the hassle of looking up the facts in the local rag.’

  ‘There have been three incidents,’ Jude said, ‘and I can tell you there’s no evidence they’re in any way connected.’

  ‘These things can become self-fulfilling. Can’t they?’

  ‘I think it’s been known.’

  She sighed. They reached the Mercedes and she clicked the lock on the Range Rover parked next to it. ‘I’d better introduce myself, I suppose. My name’s Geri. Geri Foster. I’m up here for the summer to spend a bit of time with my mum. And you are?’

  He couldn’t decide whether her directness amused or annoyed him. ‘My name’s Satterthwaite.’

  ‘A detective, you said. Rank?’

  ‘DCI.’

  ‘Senior, then. So it’s more serious than you’re letting on.’

  She opened the boot of the Range Rover and the dog jumped in. Jude got into the Mercedes and negotiated the narrow track up into Little Salkeld and Geri Foster followed him, up into the village, out again and down the dead end that led to Long Meg. Jude parked in the field, where the skeleton of a long-dead oak tree commanded the centre of the stone circle. Two older trees, living but contorted with time and weather, grew a short distance away. Geri pulled up beside him. He got out; she did the same.

  ‘Looks like we’re going to the same place,’ she said to him.

  ‘I doubt it.’ She was irritating him, now, not least because she clearly knew he wasn’t giving her the whole story and seemed to think she was entitled to it. He turned his back on her and strode off.

  Ashleigh’s car was still in the gateway to the New Ager’s field and he could see her, standing talking to Storm outside one of the tents. He paused at the gate just as the dog bounded up to it. When he opened the gate the dog dashed through and Geri caught him up and came through beside him. ‘I think we are. But there’s nothing serious going on in Cave Wood, of course, or so you say. So what’s so important up here?’

  ‘I thought I’d check in with one of my colleagues.’

  ‘Just routine, eh?’ She was regarding him keenly.

  ‘It’s not even routine. I was passing.’

  Ashleigh looked up as the dog bounced past, jumping up at Storm and almost knocking him flying. Storm’s gaze went past Jude to Geri and the nod he gave her was that of a conspirator. He turned his attention to the dog. ‘Whoa, Burma. Down, girl. No need to get excited.’

  ‘Indigo?’ Raven’s voice emerged from inside the tent, pitifully thin and shot through with inc
redulity. ‘Is that you, Moppet? Is it? Really.’

  ‘Yep.’ Brushing the dog aside, Geri lifted the flap of the tent and disappeared inside. ‘It’s okay, Mum. You’re not hallucinating. I came as soon as I got your message. How are you doing?’ The tent flap dropped shut behind her.

  ‘That’s my daughter,’ Storm said, by way of explanation, but the shiftiness of his stance gave him away as the worst sort of conspirator. He turned his attention to the dog, petting it until it dropped down at his feet. Something was going on.

  But the pieces slotted into place. Geri Foster must be the woman summoned by Izzy Ecclestone’s note. On the other side of Storm, Ashleigh nodded briefly, as if she’d made the same connection. ‘That’ll be nice for you both, to see her.’

  ‘Aye.’ Storm was till looking Jude up and down. He’d always been jittery around authority. ‘Are you up here on business? Don’t tell me there’s anything else—’

  ‘No. I’m on a day off, but I was just passing and I saw Ashleigh’s car so I thought I’d stop by and see what the chat is.’

  ‘There’s none up here,’ Storm said with a sigh. His gaze was still on the tent but he reached down to give the enthusiastic Burma a casual caress.

  ‘I’m finished here,’ Ashleigh said. ‘Thanks for your time, Storm. I know it’s been a pain for you, but hopefully that’s an end of it. We’ll leave you in peace.’

  Jude, who liked Storm, raised a hand to him in salute and they drifted off out of the field, stepping along the lane towards Long Meg and out of earshot of the camp.

  ‘You’re suppose to be having a day off,’ said Ashleigh, checking her phone for messages. ‘Can’t you keep away?’

  ‘From the job, easily. From you…’ He smiled at her. ‘Not so easy.’

  ‘Go on with you.’ She returned the smile. ‘He didn’t buy that stuff about you just passing, you know. No-one just passes here. I spoke to Raven and I think she’s okay about what happened, even though she’s so physically frail, but she didn’t have anything concrete to say. Nothing that sheds light on Charlie Curran, anyway, though she did say something that worried me.’