‘I’ve prioritised three women who were spoken to during the original investigation for re-interview.’ When Les cleared his throat loudly, Nick added, ‘Obviously, the list isn’t cast in stone. We have to start somewhere, but remember that our caller may be someone who’s never blipped on to the radar screen.’
‘And the three are?’ Bob Swindell asked.
‘Jean Allardyce, wife of Tom. We spoke about him before. She gave her husband an alibi for the murder.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t kosher?’
‘Maybe. Even so, we can’t rule out the Moffat sisters, Dale and Leigh. The DCI and I are proposing to see Allardyce this afternoon, after we’ve talked to Dowling. Bob and Linz, can you make arrangements to interview the Moffats?’
‘For those of you who don’t know,’ Hannah said, ‘Dale Moffat worked at the pub at the time of the murder and so did her sister. Dale was a cleaner, Leigh looked after the kitchen. Nowadays Leigh runs the café in my partner’s bookshop. He’s known both of them since way back. That doesn’t affect in any way how you two conduct your inquiries. No soft-pedalling because of it, okay? I simply wanted you to be aware.’
‘What about the lady of Brack Hall, Natasha Dumelow?’ Les Bryant asked. ‘Doesn’t she fit the – profile?’
‘She’s an off-comer. As far off as Moscow. She’s lived in England a long time, she speaks the language fluently, but you wouldn’t say she has a local accent. A long shot, at best.’
‘All the same, I wouldn’t mind interviewing her,’ Bob said with a lascivious grin. ‘I remember seeing a photograph of her in the Westmorland Gazette when she put on an exhibition of her paintings a few months back. Very tasty.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Hannah said, ‘but the bad news is, DS Lowther and I are scheduled to interview the Dumelows tomorrow. The husband’s not available today, doing some deal to make himself even richer, I suppose. The good news is, the Moffats are both attractive ladies. See how much we look after your welfare, Bob?’
‘I owe you one, ma’am.’ Bob treated Gul to a wink. He’d been playing the field ever since coming home early from a shift because of a migraine and finding his wife in bed with her best friend’s husband.
‘Happy with all that, Les?’ Nick wasn’t above having a dig at the team’s guru and Hannah made a note of something else she would have to watch. The team couldn’t afford to splinter into two camps, believers and sceptics.
Les Bryant scratched himself under the armpit. ‘Police work’s all about making choices. Only snag is, the choices need to be right. Bear in mind, if our mystery caller is frightened for a reason, she may be at risk herself – even if Gilpin did kill Anders.’
The room fell silent. Already, people had acquired the habit of listening to what Les Bryant said with close attention. He seemed to take it for granted.
‘Most of all,’ he muttered, ‘We don’t want another body turning up, do we? Whether or not it’s draped over some ancient monument.’
In the car on the way to Brackdale, Nick asked, ‘You think he could be right?’
Hannah exhaled. ‘If the woman was telling the truth the first time she called, the answer’s bound to be yes. Talking out of turn may have alerted the man she suspects. If he’s violent…’
‘Allardyce, in other words?’
‘Let’s keep an open mind.’ How many times had she heard Ben Kind say that? And how many times had she thought about him since his son had introduced himself on the phone? ‘Don’t forget that Joe Dowling has a record.’
‘Thumping a lad who’d broken into the pub he used to run in Penrith, ten years back? Plus a not guilty verdict on a charge of fiddling his VAT? It’s not quite the same.’
A thin drizzle was falling as they rounded the bend between the fells and followed the road into the valley. Brackdale was lush, although Hannah knew that the farmers would start worrying at the first hint of a dry spell. Yellow poppies bloomed on the grassy verge. Ahead lay the whitewashed cottages that marked the outskirts of the village. Easy to see why Marc loved Brackdale, but she’d never wanted to spend time here since the death of Gabrielle Anders. By day it was peaceful enough, but in her memories it remained a crime scene sheeted in darkness. Try as she might, she’d never been able to rid her own mind of the glare of the arc lights, cutting through the night to illuminate the bloody corpse on the Sacrifice Stone.
As the wipers thrashed across the windscreen, she said, ‘I remember taking Dowling’s statement. Another thing I remember is that I didn’t take a shine to him. He fancied himself, but he had a face like a fox. I can still picture it, fixed in a permanent leer as he studied my boobs.’
‘It’s just the effect you have on red-blooded Englishmen, ma’am.’
She shot him a sidelong glance. ‘Very funny. Don’t forget, he was a red-blooded Englishman who had this gorgeous young tourist staying under the same roof. When he said he’d barely noticed Gabrielle since her arrival, I wanted to smack him, just for insulting my intelligence.’
‘He admitted talking to her. The landlord and the guest, he was doing the hospitality bit to perfection. You can’t criticise him for it.’
Hannah said stubbornly, ‘I wouldn’t like to be a chicken caught by that particular fox. Like Allardyce, he’s someone we’d have looked at more closely, if it hadn’t been for the hue and cry over Barrie Gilpin.’
‘Is that why you want to talk to them both yourself?’
She stretched in the passenger seat, as if flexing her muscles. ‘You disapprove?’
His gaze was fastened to the road. ‘Course not. But you must admit, this is a tad unorthodox.’
‘So what? The way I see it, this is a lucky break.’
‘Best to make the most of it, then.’
‘Too right. How often in this job do we get a second chance?’
‘She was a sweet girl.’ Joe Dowling’s eyes kept darting between Hannah and Nick. He might have been a bookmaker, calculating odds. What can I say that will put me in the clear? ‘What that lad did to her was – unspeakable.’
‘You got to know her well, then?’ Hannah said.
‘No, no, I wouldn’t say that,’ he said hastily. ‘Like I told you at the time, in a place like this, guests come and go. We see so many of them. You chat to everyone, try to make them feel at home. I mainly remember the complainers, to be honest.’
Hannah doubted that honesty was second nature to Joe Dowling. ‘The people who make trouble?’
‘Yeah, the world’s full of them. You must find the same, in your job.’
‘Too right.’
‘The typical guests, now, they become part of the furniture. We’ve had people stay here half a dozen times or more over the years and yet I wouldn’t recognise them if they walked through that door. The only reason Gabrielle Anders stood out was…’
As his voice trailed away, Hannah said, ‘Because she was murdered?’
‘I hate to say it, but yes.’
Dowling fiddled with the zip on his fleece. It bore a picture of a submerged moon. Hannah had him down as a man who cared about appearances, yet never managed to capture quite the right look. Sad, really.
‘So glamorous young women are constantly stopping off here on their own?’ Nick’s eyebrows went up. ‘Only to blend in with the mahogany in the snug?’
They could hear Kylie Minogue warbling on the saloon bar jukebox, the dance rhythms thudding through the thin partition. The three of them were closeted in a cubby-hole piled high with cardboard boxes full of potato crisps, perched on stools around a formica-topped table that might have been at the cutting edge of contemporary design forty years earlier. The air was ripe with the aroma of cheese and onion and smoky bacon.
‘I can’t understand why you’re asking these questions.’
‘As I explained on the phone,’ Nick said, ‘we’ve been tasked with reviewing the original inquiry.’
‘Everyone knows Gilpin killed her. Your boss was involved, weren’t you, love?’
; ‘I’m not your love, Mr Dowling,’ Hannah said in a frozen voice.
‘Well, anyway, there’s nothing more I can tell you now. It’s old news as far as I’m concerned. Gilpin’s dead and buried, but he killed her, you mark my words.’
‘Pure speculation,’ Nick said. ‘Barrie Gilpin was never charged, let alone convicted. And now further information has come to light.’
‘What information?’
Nick returned his gaze. After a few moments, Dowling lowered his eyes.
‘This is all down to that Daniel Kind, isn’t it?’ he grumbled, turning to Hannah. ‘His dad was your boss, wasn’t he?’
‘Why do you mention Mr Kind?’
‘He’s stirring up bother.’
‘What sort of bother?’
‘He was in here the other night, insinuating that Gilpin was set up. Which is another way of saying that the girl was killed by someone else. Maybe someone who’s still around in the village. That’s not very nice, is it? And no good for my business, either. People take offence.’
‘People?’
‘Tom Allardyce, for one. This Daniel Kind was pulling his plonker, so to speak. Big mistake, in my book. Not a good idea to get the wrong side of Tom.’
‘He has a violent temper, doesn’t he?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s no secret, cousin Jean’s felt the back of his hand more than once. Though maybe sometimes she asks for it. Not the brightest button in the box, isn’t our Jean.’
Hannah strove to keep her tone civil. ‘It isn’t impossible that Barrie Gilpin was innocent.’
‘Oh, for Chrissake,’ Dowling said. ‘Ask yourself what game Kind’s playing. You know he bought Mrs Gilpin’s cottage for a song? Nobody wanted it, because of what happened. Now he’s aiming to up the value of the place by persuading everyone that Gilpin didn’t kill the girl.’
‘You seriously believe that?’
‘Yes,’ he said, all righteous defiance. ‘I seriously do. He’s having you on. All this isn’t about sorting out some old miscarriage of justice, it’s about a property speculation.’
Nick said, ‘You haven’t told us anything about the girl yet. What was she like?’
‘Pleasant enough, as far as I can remember.’
‘She was a looker.’
Dowling shrugged. Over-elaborately, Hannah felt. ‘Plenty of good-looking women come to the Lakes, Sergeant.’
‘She’d spent time in America, hadn’t she?’
‘Las Vegas. I recall we spoke about the weather one morning at breakfast, when it was pissing down outside. The city’s slap bang in the middle of the Nevada desert, isn’t it? She loved the year-round sun, said it made such a change from the long, dark winter nights she’d grown up with.’
‘So why come back to England?’
He picked at his nose, as if as an aid to thought. ‘She’d made a few quid working on the Strip and she said she wanted a holiday. The climate here may be lousy but at least you don’t keep tripping over Elvis Presley impersonators. As far as I know, she was touring round and looking up friends.’
‘Did she tell you anything else?’
‘We talked about slot machines. At the time I was thinking of hiring a couple of one-armed bandits for the saloon. She’d worked in bars and hotels, she’d even trained as a croupier at one point. The tips they get are unbelievable. I remember asking if she thought Blackpool would ever take off as a casino resort, but she laughed fit to burst. Said it would need more than a spot of global warming for the Fylde Coast to match Vegas.’
‘Apart from that?’
‘Nothing springs to mind. She’ll have chatted more to the staff than to me. I was rushed off my feet, since my wife wasn’t around to share the load.’
Nick made a show of leafing through papers on a clipboard. ‘You said in your statement that Mrs Dowling was on holiday. Did she not return?’
‘Oh aye,’ Dowling said. ‘I suppose there’s no harm telling you now. Glenda had got herself mixed up with a bloke who owned a bed and breakfast in Coniston. Don’t they say love is blind? No sour grapes, but the man was built like a brick shit-house and he looked like one and all. She came running back here in the end.’
‘This was after Barrie Gilpin’s death?’
‘Yeah, a fortnight later, maybe. It didn’t work out. In the end she moved in with a salesman from a car showroom in Barrow. I’m well rid of her, to be fair. ’Sides, I fell on my feet with Lynsey. Lovely girl. Very giving.’
‘You told us before that on the day of the murder, you didn’t see Gabrielle Anders after breakfast.’
‘Right. I served her, that I do remember. She asked for hash browns, said she’d developed a taste for them in the US of A. I said we only did a full English. It was like a little joke we had going.’
Hilarious, Hannah thought, a real rib-tickler. ‘Did she say what she’d be doing that day?’
‘Let me see.’ He made a pantomime of trying to collect his thoughts. ‘I think she was going to see the Dumelows. As you know, Mrs D was an old pal. I don’t recall anything else.’
‘And what did you do later that day?’
‘I was here all the time, as far as I can remember. Matter of fact, I wasn’t feeling well.’
‘You told me last time your stomach ulcer was troubling you.’
‘Been a martyr to it for years,’ he insisted. ‘Off and on. Too much to worry about, that’s my problem.’
‘You served behind the bar from half-five to six, according to your statement. After that, the pain was too much and you had to go up to bed. You said you left the staff to look after everything downstairs.’
‘As far as I can remember.’
‘So you don’t have a witness who can account for your movements after six o’clock?’
‘I don’t need one. I never touched that girl. I was in bed.’
‘Alone?’
He treated her to the foxiest grin in his repertoire. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘So no one can vouch for where you were or what you were doing?’
‘Trust me, you’re barking up the wrong tree.’
‘Trust you, Mr Dowling? All right, which tree should we be barking up?’
Dowling pursed his lips, as though measuring the likelihood of being penalised for what he intended to say. They could almost hear the grinding of cogs in his brain.
‘Far as I’m concerned, Barrie Gilpin killed that girl, end of story.’
‘But if he didn’t?’ Nick asked.
Hannah watched as he wavered before speaking, like a poor swimmer hesitating on the edge of a deep, deep pool.
‘If he didn’t…then my money’s on the chap who was pouring vodka and lime down her throat the night before she died.’
‘Tom Allardyce?’
A throaty chuckle. ‘No way, that girl was out of Tom’s league. Whatever he may have liked to believe.’
‘Who, then?’
Joe Dowling’s face folded into a nervous smirk. ‘His lordship.’
‘His lordship?’
‘Well, that’s how he’d like us to think of him. The squire of Brack Hall, I mean. Simon Dumelow.’
‘Diversionary tactic?’ Nick asked as they strapped themselves back into the Mondeo. ‘The stuff about Dumelow, I mean.’
‘What else? The first time Dowling told me about his ulcer, I wasn’t convinced. Second time around, it sounds more convenient than ever.’
Nick looked over his shoulder as he eased the car out of its parking space and into the road. ‘Do you reckon he killed her?’
‘Part of me wishes he had. I’d love to read him his rights, see that sly little grin wiped off his face.’
‘And Simon Dumelow?’
‘The first question is whether Dowling has any reason to hold a grudge against him. Besides, what was he saying? Not that she took her friend’s husband up to her room. Simply that she let him buy her a few drinks one night when Natasha was under the weather.’
‘Any evidence that Dumelow fancied Gabrielle
? Or vice versa?’
‘Nothing that I recall. He struck me as pretty uxorious.’
‘Sorry? You forget I’ve not swallowed as many dictionaries as you.’
‘A man who loved his wife,’ she said with exaggerated patience.
‘Blimey,’ Nick said. ‘We don’t come across many of them, do we?’
‘Except for you.’
When he didn’t come straight back with a smart rejoinder she was disconcerted. Maybe she’d been tactless, perhaps for once he and Becky had quarrelled. Better carry on talking.
‘After Gabrielle turned up on their doorstep, the three of them spent time together, but whenever Simon was working, Natasha took her touring around the Lakes. She had no family here and probably not too many real friends. She said she was thrilled to see Gabrielle again. At one time they’d been inseparable.’
‘Gabrielle didn’t have any close ties either, as far as I can tell from the file.’
‘No. During her time in the States, she’d had plenty of boyfriends, but nobody even semi-permanent. She wasn’t the type to settle down, according to Natasha, she liked to drift from one place to another. At the funeral, the saddest thing for me was that there wasn’t anyone to mourn her, really mourn her, other than Natasha.’
‘The two of them were very close?’
‘No suggestion they had a lesbian affair, if that’s what you mean. But while they were in Leeds, they’d fought together to make headway in a tough business. Not that either of them achieved much success. Pretty faces and blonde hair aren’t everything, even in that game.’
‘What do we know about their time as models?’
‘Not a lot, that’s why I asked Les Bryant to make enquiries via his own contacts in West Yorkshire Police. See if we can pick up anything in Gabrielle’s past that might have a bearing. Natasha admitted that they saw the seamy side of life while they were struggling to make ends meet.’
‘Modelling was a euphemism for prostitution, then?’
‘The way Natasha put it, they preferred the company of generous men. She implied that Gabrielle may have gone the extra mile, but where do you draw the line between being nice to a rich bloke and screwing for money? In the end, they both decided to get out.’
The Coffin Trail Page 18
