by Jo Allen
The deck wasn’t complete that way, but it removed any chance that particular card would remind her of her folly. She smiled, shuffled again and began to deal.
Twenty-Eight
When it was all done, when Vanessa had been questioned and released on bail, when Leslie’s fingerprints had been taken and matched with those found at the scene of Richard Stoker and Finn McDougall’s murders, Jude found himself at home on a bright summer evening. The charge sheet for Leslie’s case was in Doddsy’s hands and that for Vanessa, which promised to be more complicated, was one he was inclined to put aside. As Becca had kept telling him, you could work too hard.
Maybe now he’d learned the lesson, but it was too late. If things had gone differently he might have called her and suggested a walk or a drink, but he couldn’t see how they could ever resume the comfort of their former relationship, or even their friendship.
Ruefully, he thought of Ashleigh. When they’d parted in the car park after work he’d asked her, without intent, what she was planning for the evening and she’d shrugged and not answered. What had she been thinking in the shade of the Sentinel Tree? What damaging ideas had Vanessa fertilised in her brain? They’d been together for the best part of a year and he knew her weaknesses well.
He sighed. It was none of his business. If she wanted his help or advice, she’d have to ask.
There were, he judged, two hours of good daylight left, and he decided to take advantage of them and go out for a run. In the mood to punish himself, he set off up the hill, along Beacon Edge, towards Great Salkeld. It was a dozen miles or so, something he was more than capable of, though he hadn’t run that far in a while. He’d pay the price for it in the morning, on top of the aches he still carried after the tussle with Josh and his father.
There were a dozen other places he could have run, but he turned his face to the east, strangely drawn towards the River Eden, as though he had some unfinished business. But as he ran, with the wind behind him and the declining sun on his back, nothing came to him.
Why would it? There was nothing to finish. Vanessa had confessed and no-one else need die. His concern for Mikey, and for himself, was unfounded. A wave of relief washed over him and he laughed as he ran.
At the turning point in his route, just before the village of Great Salkeld, he saw a familiar figure. It wasn’t the Geri Foster he might have expected, striding along the roadside holding the dog to heel. This Geri Foster was shuffling along with one hand up to her face, dabbing at her eyes, and the Labrador on its extending lead was gambolling as far away as it wanted.
He slowed as he approached, to make sure he had some breath left to speak to her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Oh,’ Geri said, stopping by the roadside and stuffing the tissue into her pocket. ‘It’s you. Tired of bringing the guilty to justice, are you?’
‘I’m never tired of that.’ He stopped. She’d been crying. ‘Are you okay?’ he repeated.
‘Do I look okay?’ She shortened the lead, pulling the dog back under her control, turned and headed down towards the lane towards her cottage. ‘No. I’m not. I know you think I’m a callous bitch—’
‘I’ve never said that.’ Despite himself, despite the awareness that every step he took away from home was another step he’d have to take back and that the mile he’d have to go to be sure Geri was all right was a two mile addition and would end with him running in the dark, he followed her.
‘No, you never have, but you must think it. You think I only care about myself. And Josh.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Gone to the pub.’
‘Right.’ At least he’d be spared the awkwardness of that encounter. Even if he weren’t the subject of a criminal charge for assault, Josh would be understandably hostile.
They walked in silence for a while, at a brisk pace. Geri had her back to him again and was feeling in her pocket for the tissue. Her voice was gruff. ‘Sorry. I’ve had gin and it always makes me teary. I thought I’d walk it off.’ She yanked the lead and brought the dog, already tiring, to her side. ‘I’m worried about my mum, that’s all. I’ve given Dad a phone in case he needs me, and I charge it every time I visit, but he never calls me or answers when I call him. I know Mum’s dying and I know she’s quite happy to die, but I’m not happy to let her. How can I watch her fade away in that filthy field when she could be so comfortable with me? If she insists on refusing treatment, fine. That’s her right. But at least she’d be warm and comfortable.’
Jude thought of Raven, content to see the stars at night and walk in the woods, saving Izzy Ecclestone’s life through warmth and common sense, not psychiatry. ‘She’s living her life the way she wants to.’
‘I know she is. And I feel frustrated that she is, and that she won’t let me help. Normally I wouldn’t give a toss what people think but I hate the idea people will look at me and think I’m the selfish cow who left her mother to die in a tent in the middle of a muddy field. And I think I’d even cope with that, if it wasn’t for all these poor kids killing themselves. And with all these awful suicides I worry about Josh, because he’s all I’ve got. This is all such a bloody mess.’ The sniff turned to a sob.
The last thing Jude wanted was to get himself caught up with Geri and her worries. He looked to the west, where the light was fading and a stripe of purple cloud had settled like a weight on the hills. ‘I can reassure you on that score, at least.’
‘Oh, right.’ Geri was recovering herself now. ‘You’ve managed to find some miraculous solution have you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. But I think we’ve found out what caused it and put a stop to it.’
They were in sight of Geri’s cottage now. Jude half-turned, checking the distance, resenting it. He should have made his run shorter and turned earlier for home. Now he was lumbered with too many difficult questions on top of Geri’s self-pity, but he kept walking. She intrigued him, and he had nothing else to do.
‘Oh, you’ve fingered Vanessa, then, have you?’
That surprised him. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘You have, then. It came to me in a flash, earlier on today. That was one of the other reasons I hit the gin. I don’t often do that, but I couldn’t bear the thought that something might happen to Josh, especially when you so obviously suspected him of having something to do with it. And then I understood. Pointing the finger at him that way. It must have been a grudge against me. I was going to call you tomorrow, when I’d sobered up.’
‘Why would she have a grudge against you? If it was anybody, she had a grudge against Steven Lawson.’
‘It comes to the same thing.’ They’d reached the gate to her cottage now and she opened it, slipping the dog’s lead. ‘Come in and have a beer, and I’ll tell you about it. Josh can drive you home when he gets back.’
‘Not if he’s been to the pub.’
‘He doesn’t drink.’
‘I’d still rather not. I can’t accept favours from someone who’s charged with assault.’
‘It’s a lift, not a brown envelope full of cash. Why do you have to be so pure? Have a soft drink, at least. You look as if you need it, if you’ve run all the way from Penrith.’
A cold drink on that warm evening was undeniably welcome. He followed her into the house. ‘So what’s the story with Vanessa?’
‘You obviously haven’t checked on her background.’ She turned to him with a malicious smile. ‘Not doing your job, Chief Inspector.’
Vanessa’s cunning had been to entrench herself among the good guys. They’d had no reason to check out anything more than her professional credentials. That would change. Her background and motivation would form a key part of the prosecution case, one of the main topics for him to delegate the next day. ‘Not yet. Do you want to make it easy for me?’
‘Well, why not?’ She opened the freezer, dropped some ice into a glass. ‘Apple juice? You know my views on sex, of course. Easy come, easy go. It works for me.’
�
��Glad to hear it.’ It hadn’t for him. He couldn’t manage a relationship without emotion, without love, and now he knew he didn’t want to. ‘It doesn’t for everyone.’
‘I know that now. When I had an affair, if you want to call it that, with Steven, he was also seeing Vanessa. She’s much closer to his age than I am. I knew about her and it didn’t bother me. I never saw the relationship as a serious thing and neither did he. He’s much more in tune with my thinking on that than you are.’
Jude, drinking the cold glass of apple juice, suppressed a wry smile.
‘The trouble is, Vanessa isn’t on the same wavelength. It was after her marriage broke down and she was looking for another relationship. She thought he was serious about her and she blamed me for breaking it up. Wrongly, of course. Steve’s never committed to anything in his life and she was foolish to think he would, but love is blinding. She got jealous. They fell out. He left her. And she accused me over it and told me that one day I’d pay.’
‘And you think that twenty years after—’
‘She has a hell of a long memory.’
And she could bear a grudge. It would be interesting to know when Vanessa learned about her father’s murder of two of Lawson’s classmates. Was it possible Steven’s casual approach to relationships had spared him from becoming close to Vanessa and, possibly, from becoming the third of her father’s victims — or the first of her own? ‘Did she know he’s wanted for murder?’
‘I doubt it. He went about under a different name. Not many people have memories that long and that sharp.’ Geri sighed. ‘She’s a clever one, Vanessa. And cold. And she has power. It’s the reason I hate therapists so much. It’s why I thought she might have something to do with it. Because she has power and she knows how to use it.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m pretty damned sure you’re the same, but you use your power for good. She uses it to feed her pride and her ego. I can’t tell you how much that scares me.’
‘You might have mentioned it to me.’ Jude finished the apple juice and put the glass down.
Geri’s phone, on the dark wooden dresser, rang and she snatched at it. ‘Dad. You’ve remembered how to use the phone. Wonders never cease. Is Mum all right?’
Jude moved a step closer, but he didn’t need to. Storm, who’d probably never used a mobile phone, was shouting. ‘No, she’s fine! But there’s a car up at the stone circle!’
‘It’ll be a dog walker,’ said Geri, soothingly. ‘You must know that.’
‘No! It’s been abandoned! The driver’s door is open!’
‘There’s no need to shout,’ said Geri, with exasperation. ‘I could probably hear you without this thing. Right. Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ said Storm, calming down. ‘Someone’s taken our washing line. And I don’t know what to do.’
‘Taken the washing line?’ She looked across at Jude, in obvious alarm. ‘Well, I—’
‘The car,’ Jude prompted her. ‘What’s it like? What’s the number?’
‘It’s black. A little black car. It says Fiesta on the back.’
Jude had felt the first feelings of panic even before Storm reeled off the registration plate. His fingers were already flicking at his phone. ‘That’s my mum’s car.’
‘Your mum?’ Geri looked at him again, this time in astonishment. ‘Why would your mum—?’
‘It’s not her. She’s away. It’s Mikey.’
She looked blank.
‘My brother.’ The phone rang, but Mikey didn’t answer. He waited until it flicked to voicemail. ‘Mikey, ring me back. I need to talk to you.’ Then he stuck it in his pocket. ‘I’ve got to get over there.’
‘Who’s that with you, Indigo?’ said Storm, plaintive and confused.
‘It’s Inspector Satterthwaite. Never mind why.’
Jude went to the window. Less than a quarter of a mile away as the crow flew, Mikey could be in Cave Wood, thinking — doing — the unthinkable. By road it was five miles at least. But the river was low. ‘I’m on my way over.’ He turned to Geri, who’d already picked up on what was going on and had opened the back door for him. ‘Can I get down to the river from here?’
‘Yes. There’s a path of sorts, but it’s steep and—’
‘Great. Call 999, tell them what’s happening, and to send someone over to Cave Wood.’ He jogged down to the end of the garden, down the steep slope, pausing to call Mikey once more. ‘Mikey. I’m on my way. But I need to know you’re all right. For God’s sake, call me!’
Nettles and brambles snagged at his bare calves as he careered down the slope to the edge of the river. After all, he’d misjudged Vanessa. Nicholas might have thought kindly of his mother but his father was a different matter, capable of thick-skinned insensitivity and a blithe lack of awareness of other people’s feelings. It would be too cruel if Mikey were the final, innocent, sacrifice to her vengeance and her vanity.
The irony was that his father, who thought mainly of himself, would get over his loss very quickly.
Jude inched over the cobbles at the water’s edge. It had been dry and the water was low, but the channel deepened in the centre and the water funnelled into a treacherous flow. On days like this the Eden was benign, but he knew it to be full of tricks. He stepped from stone to stone, until eventually he had to go deep. Water filled his shoes. Mid-calf, then knee deep. Behind and above him, Geri was shouting something into the phone, but he couldn’t make out the words.
‘Mikey!’ he shouted, but there was no answer.
In the middle of the flow the cold water reached his waist. Jude waded on, as fast as he dared without losing his footing. If he fell he could get swept yards down the river before he regained his footing. Testing the next step, he slipped as the stone gave way under him. Struggling for balance, he struggled and managed to regain his footing, taking a huge stride out of the worst of the current and praying that his foot made stable ground. It did, but his phone slipped from his hand and into the water. He didn’t stop to retrieve it but jumped for the bank.
On dry land, he shook himself like a dog while he tried to work out where Mikey might have headed. Lacy’s Caves? But he’d taken the rope. So into the woods, then. Or the Sentinel Tree. Mikey had been spending time with Izzy. Hadn’t she said something about it being the route to the underworld, accessible only to the dead? Crazy, of course, but now she had to be taken seriously.
‘Mikey!’ Somewhere up on the hill a dozen crows rose with an angry clatter from the dense trees. Had Mikey disturbed them? Above him, in that direction, the river bank was steep and he set to scrambling up it. On a normal day there would be plenty of walkers on it but this late in the evening it was a silent, desolate place. In the woods above him a magpie chattered its annoyance. He followed its cry. ‘Mikey!’
‘Jude?’ Mikey answered him, bewildered but thank God, definitely Mikey. And close. ‘What the hell are you—?’
He crashed towards the voice and broke through a barrier of brambles. In a clearing, Mikey stood with a hand on a tree, shocked.
Jude got to him, grabbed him by the shoulders, needing to feel he was real and alive. ‘No, what the hell are you doing? How could you put me through this? What will Mum say? What will she do?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Mikey shook himself free. ‘It’s Izzy.’
‘What?’
‘Izzy. I’ve lost her.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We were supposed to be going to for a drink. I went to her house to pick her up and there was nobody there. Her parents are out. And her bike had gone. I knew she’d be here and I thought I saw her in the trees so I went after her, but I can’t find her. We have to stop her, Jude. We have to. I don’t know where she is.’
But Jude could guess. ‘Up at the stone circle,’ he said. ‘She’ll have gone back to the tree.’
Izzy sat with her back against a slender birch tree as the spliff in her fingers burned down. She felt pleasantly content, and the flurry of excitement in her belly was
the promise of a new adventure. It would be a wonderful thing to die.
‘Izzy! Where the hell are you?’
She liked Mikey Satterthwaite. It was strangely touching that he cared so much for her he didn’t want her to die. In another world, an alternative one that she wanted to live in, she’d have been happy to open up a bit more to him, but there was so much in this world to be afraid of. If you loved someone — if you even cared for someone — all you did was add to the grief around you because, sooner or later, you were going to die.
Surely sooner was better.
She stood up, a little unsteadily, and crunched her way over the soft leaves underfoot towards the edge of the trees. She hadn’t had to go far in once she’d realised Mikey was looking for her. That was the wonderful thing about the trees. They were her co-conspirators, sheltering and protecting her.
In the middle of the stone circle, the Sentinel Tree beckoned her towards it, its bleached limbs pink in the setting sun. She walked up to it and placed her hand against its smooth, dead trunk. Who knew what had killed it while the two on the other side of the stone circle clung on, thickened and distorted with age? Disease, maybe; or perhaps trees, like people, sometimes lost the will to live.
She untwisted the rope from around her waist. It was part of death’s plan for her, waiting in the field behind Storm and Raven’s tent and all she’d had to do was lift it down. Eden Whispers had told how those who wanted to make a success of suicide checked their knots and she’d done that before she’d smoked her joint, while she was in control of her senses and unlikely to make a mistake. With the rope gripped in her left hand, she began to scale the tree.
‘Izzy? Where are you?’
