The Coffin Trail

by Martin Edwards

She shimmied between the cottage wall and the barricade. ‘I knew I’d regret that cream cake for elevenses. Back to the diet tomorrow, strict rations. But a drink would be lovely. Only one, mind, as I’m driving.’

  She took a seat on the wooden patio chair that he’d unfolded for her. Her figure didn’t suggest any need to diet: she’d poured herself into charcoal jeans and a purple jersey with a generous v-neck. Lucky Marc Amos, to have this woman as a workmate and Hannah Scarlett to come home to. For a few minutes the three of them sipped from their glasses and chatted idly about the cottage renovations and shared complaints about the unreliability of tradesmen. Miranda didn’t mention Wayne, of course; the previous afternoon’s trauma seemed already to have faded into the faraway past.

  ‘I hate to intrude on you like this,’ Leigh said. ‘I don’t mean to presume on such a brief acquaintance.’

  ‘We’re glad of any visitors,’ Miranda said. ‘It’s so lovely here, but I’ve not acclimatised to the isolation yet. When the workmen finish for the day, the place is as quiet as a cemetery. One of these days, when we’re sorted, we’ll have a housewarming and you can consider yourself invited.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’ Leigh put her glass down on the paving. ‘Although your hospitality isn’t making it any easier for me to ask the favour that brought me here.’

  ‘Ask away,’ Daniel said.

  She cleared her throat. ‘The police have been questioning my sister and me this afternoon. Just because we were both working at The Moon under Water at the time Gabrielle Anders stayed there. I finished early at the bookshop so that I could meet them at home. Two constables, they’d already brow-beaten Dale. Resurrecting the past. Talking about the statement she gave after the girl was found murdered.’

  ‘It’s a cold case,’ Daniel said. ‘You’ve seen the publicity about this new team the police have set up? I’m sure the questions are merely routine.’

  ‘Dale and I were wondering why they’d chosen to dig up that particular cold case. Cumbria isn’t exactly a hot-bed of crime, but surely there are plenty of old inquiries that failed to produce an arrest or conviction. Why pick on that one?’

  ‘They’re not focusing simply on the Anders murder. It’s one of several they are reviewing.’

  With a sharpness he hadn’t heard from her before, she snapped, ‘Then you’re already aware they are looking at the case?’

  He drained his wine, barely noticing the flavour, just relishing the lift that the alcohol gave him. Miranda’s face had creased with anxiety but he could see no good reason to dissemble.

  ‘It’s no secret, I did talk to Hannah Scarlett.’

  Leigh leaned forward so that their faces were close together. ‘Have you any idea of what you’re doing?’ she said bitterly. ‘Any idea about the can of worms you’re opening?’

  For a split second he thought about Tash’s fear that Jean Allardyce had gone missing. Even if she had, it couldn’t be down to him in any way. Could it? ‘Sorry, I don’t follow.’

  ‘Can’t you imagine the disruption and upset this kind of thing causes?’

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ he said. ‘When we talked in the pub, I thought you agreed that Barrie was an unlikely killer.’

  ‘Barrie’s dead.’

  ‘Does that make everything all right?’ Miranda gave him a baleful glance, but he plunged on. ‘His reputation doesn’t matter, is that it? It seems to be a widely-held opinion in Brackdale. If he wasn’t guilty, fine, no problem. He was an oddball, anyway, a loser. So who cares?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’ Leigh flushed. ‘Okay, Barrie was one of life’s scapegoats, but it’s not the real issue. By encouraging the police to dig over old ground, you’re opening a Pandora’s box. Who knows what may fly out?’

  ‘The police are perfectly capable of turning up stones without my egging them on. Hannah Scarlett is a good detective.’ A good detective. He realised that he’d borrowed the phrase she’d used to describe his father and added quickly, ‘A woman her age doesn’t make Chief Inspector without being quick on the uptake.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Leigh said slowly. ‘She is a good detective.’

  ‘Well, then. What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Daniel,’ Miranda said. ‘This isn’t helping…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Leigh said. ‘I’m not offended. In fact, you’re absolutely right. I am afraid, though not for myself. Afraid that innocent people will get hurt. People I care for. That’s why I came to ask you a favour.’

  ‘You can always ask.’ Daniel ventured a smile to take the chill off his words.

  ‘The favour is this. Can’t you give up on trying to fight Barrie’s corner? You know and I know what he was really like, why not leave it there? If you insist on re-opening old wounds, even more innocent people will suffer, and how can that help Barrie? I know your heart’s in the right place, and I don’t mean to be patronising when I say that. The truth is, though, you’re simply making matters worse. If you have any influence with Hannah, please try and persuade her to concentrate on something more worthwhile.’

  ‘Even if I wanted to do that,’ he said, ‘why should she listen to me? My only connection with her is that she worked with my dad. She strikes me as very much her own woman. You can bet she’ll make up her own mind about what she does.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Leigh swallowed the rest of her wine. ‘She is her own woman.’

  ‘In any case, if there’s one man who has a chance of talking her round, surely it’s Marc Amos. Or have you talked to him and got nowhere?’

  When he’d met her previously, she’d seemed poised and self-confident, but now her voice was low with despair. ‘You don’t understand a thing, do you? Oh God, I should never have blundered in here. I’ve only made myself look ridiculous.’

  Miranda reached out an arm, as if to offer consolation, only to find herself clutching at air as Leigh scrambled to her feet.

  ‘I must go. I’ve said too much already. Thanks for the drink. I shouldn’t have disturbed your evening. Sorry.’

  Daniel watched as she pushed and shoved her way blindly past the makeshift barricade, scratching her arm on a protruding length of timber as she made good her escape.

  ‘Leigh,’ he called, ‘can we talk about this? Please?’

  She didn’t look back, just shook her head and hurried around the corner of the building and disappeared from view. He was about to follow, but Miranda’s shaking voice halted him in his tracks.

  ‘Happy now? Or won’t you be satisfied until your obsession with what happened all those years ago has antagonised every single person in this bloody valley?’

  After Eddie finished, they ate a scratch meal together in silence. The food tasted of dust. Whilst Daniel was filling the cafetiere, Miranda announced that she had a migraine and was going to bed. Left to his own devices, he swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of coffee, slung the crockery in the new dishwasher, and decided to go for a walk. The evening was mild and another hour’s exercise before darkness fell might help to set things in perspective. He felt a sort of kinship with those sci-fi movie heroes who slay the wicked alien only for the creature to spring back to life, more fearsome than ever, in the final reel. This new life was turning out to be even more complicated than the old.

  Their bedroom door was shut. He tapped gently and said, ‘I’ll be out for an hour. Going to clear my head.’

  No reply.

  He padded down the stairs again and put on his jacket and boots. He’d decided on a circuit of the Fold, taking in the pack horse bridge, a stretch of the beck and the disused corn mill that Tash Dumelow was planning to paint. An undemanding ramble, a chance to sort things out in his mind.

  A bright red tea rose was coming into bloom by the side of the path. The memory came back to him of his grandmother, who had stayed with the family the Christmas before she died. He would have been ten years old and he always associated her with the aroma of cigarette smoke blended with talcum powder. She was a shrewd Lancast
rian who must by then have realised that her life would soon be destroyed by the cancer eating at her lungs.

  ‘Promise me this, you two,’ the old lady wheezed one night while he and Louise were reducing each other to tears of rage over some petty juvenile dispute. ‘Life is shorter than you realise. You must remember to stop and smell the roses.’

  It was the last conversation he could recall having with her. Time to take her advice, he thought, pausing to inhale the rich scent. As he unfastened the gate, he turned over in his mind the conversations he’d had with Jean Allardyce and Tash Dumelow and Leigh Moffat. So much for being a stranger in Paradise. As a boy, life had seemed simple to him, no more than a steady and straightforward ascent of a mountainside to gain greater and greater heights. And then his father had deserted them and he’d discovered that the way forward was barred by crevasses as deep as they were dangerous.

  From out of nowhere came the muffled blare of Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Great Escape, wildly incongruous in the calm of the clearing. He hadn’t even realised that he’d left the mobile in his jacket. By the time he’d finished fumbling in his inside pocket and fished it out, the ringtone was silent.

  Who could have called him? It was late for one of the tradesmen to get in touch and there weren’t many other possibilities. When they’d moved here, they’d bought each other new mobiles, ditching the old numbers that former colleagues knew by heart: all part of the plan to cut themselves off from the past.

  As he pressed the button to check, the phone rang again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘So you’ve nothing further to add?’ Nick Lowther asked.

  Tom Allardyce’s expression remained impassive. Except, Hannah thought, for a hint of scorn in the way the corners of his lips turned down. Grudgingly, he’d led them into the kitchen, a large well-proportioned room commanding a view of Underfell and the coffin trail that wound down from the slope beyond. At least he was house-trained to the extent of leaving his boots in the back porch before venturing on to the well-scrubbed green linoleum tiles. Half a dozen towels were hanging over a huge old-fashioned wooden clothes horse to dry and the rich smell of baked bread lingered in the air. Before taking a seat at the table occupying the centre of the room, Hannah had run her fingertips along the rims of half a dozen Port Meirion plates displayed on a tall pine dresser. Not a speck of grime. Whatever Jean Allardyce had done with herself, she hadn’t forgotten the dusting before her departure.

  ‘Don’t reckon I have.’

  ‘And you can’t tell us when we may be able to speak to your wife?’

  ‘No.’

  Hannah stood up. ‘In that case, Mr Allardyce, we won’t be troubling you any further.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. I can get back to my work.’

  ‘For the moment, I should say.’ Hannah forced a sweet smile, hoping to provoke him. ‘For the time being, you’re quite free to carry on cleaning your car.’

  ‘It’s a job to be done,’ he said, as if stung. She exulted inwardly at having dented his calm. So that was his weakness. He didn’t like it to be suggested that he shirked his duties. ‘One of the many. I was up in the fields before six this morning. And you ask me where Jean is! I haven’t got the bloody time to be looking after her as well as everything else.’

  ‘When your wife gets back,’ Nick said, ‘can you ask her to give us a ring?’

  ‘Assuming she does get back,’ Hannah added.

  Allardyce glowered. ‘And exactly what d’you mean by that?’

  Hannah didn’t reply, just allowed her gaze to settle on the farmer, letting him exercise his imagination.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Nick watched as the collie raced after the departing Mondeo, barking furiously.

  ‘I’d say the dog’s marginally preferable to his owner. At least with our four-legged friends, what you see is what you get. Allardyce gives nothing away.’

  ‘He stuck to his story about the night Gabrielle was killed. Hear no evil, see no evil. Backed up with a convenient alibi from his good lady.’

  ‘Not quite so convenient for him if she’s vanished.’

  ‘What do you make of that? Something or nothing?’

  ‘I wish we had tapes of those calls. Perhaps we should have set the hotline up differently. Run it into the main switchboard so that we could have automatic recording. Then we’d know if Jean Allardyce was the woman who phoned us.’

  ‘Wisdom of hindsight,’ Nick said. ‘Don’t reproach yourself. It’s an utter waste of energy.’

  ‘All right, if she is our caller, then why would she go missing? That’s what bugs me.’

  ‘Early days yet. According to Allardyce, it’s only a few hours since he last saw her. Barely long enough for a serious shopping trip, never mind anything more life-changing. Maybe she’s playing hookey for once in her life. For all we know, she has a secret lover lurking in Staveley or Troutbeck or somewhere.’

  ‘She’s not the type.’

  ‘Is there a type?’

  Hannah gave him a sharp glance, but he was concentrating on the road ahead. ‘Anything’s possible. As I remember, she wasn’t bad looking, in a bloodless sort of way. Good complexion, I rather think she had an enviable pair of boobs, but her cardigans were so shapeless, it was hard to tell. If you ask me, the mere thought of an assignation with a lover would have scared the living daylights out of her. Quite apart from fear of what hubby would do if he found out. Did you see that dog-eared Mills and Boon next to the coffee machine? My guess is that she got her fix of romance strictly secondhand.’

  ‘What would have prompted her to ring the hotline, if she’d kept quiet about something important the first time around?’

  ‘Allardyce gave us one interesting titbit. She served Daniel Kind and his partner when they came to dine with the Dumelows. Could be Daniel said something that pricked her conscience. Especially given that she didn’t share her husband’s hostility to Barrie Gilpin.’

  ‘So that’s why you asked him about Ben Kind’s son?’

  ‘Elementary, my dear Lowther. Even though Allardyce says he’s sure that Barrie killed Gabrielle, she may have suspected there was more to the murder than met the eye. Don’t forget, if she has been keeping back important information about the case, it may have nothing to do with her husband.’

  ‘Her cousin Joe Dowling, then?’

  ‘Or Simon Dumelow.’ As their car rounded a bend, Hannah caught a fleeting glimpse of the Sacrifice Stone outlined against the sky. ‘Consider this. If she caused strife for her employer, it wouldn’t only be her job on the line. Her husband would finish up right behind her in the dole queue. That’s the sort of prospect that may have been weighing on her mind. It could explain why she told Linz that we should forget about her earlier call.’

  ‘Isn’t Dumelow supposed to be in a business meeting today?’

  ‘With his accountant in Manchester, or so he told his wife. If Jean Allardyce hasn’t turned up by tomorrow morning, I’ll ask Maggie to check him out. Has he really been closeted in some high-powered boardroom wheeler-dealing? He wouldn’t be the first man to lie to his wife about his whereabouts.’

  ‘You don’t think he and Jean Allardyce…?’

  ‘It seems unlikely he’d leave his gorgeous wife for her. But who knows?’

  ‘Maybe she’s just so sick of Allardyce that she’s decided to jack the marriage in.’

  ‘With no clue or warning? She hasn’t left any note or word of explanation. Unless he’s found one and is keeping mum.’

  ‘Which isn’t impossible. Anyway, in her shoes, would you want to provoke a man like Allardyce any further if you were running out on him?’

  ‘It might be the best chance I’d ever had. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold and all that. On the other hand, I don’t think I’d hang around to wash his towels and the kitchen floor, let alone start baking bread before I packed my bags and left.’

  The minute she walked through the door of their cottage, even before she set eyes on
him, she knew that Marc was in a temper. No Poirot-like powers were required to reach this conclusion; it was enough to hear her partner stomping around on the creaky upstairs floorboards. The slamming-shut of the bathroom door merely confirmed her deduction.

  In the early months of their relationship, when she’d first encountered his propensity for acting like a spoiled teenager each time something didn’t go his way, she’d allowed his moods to rattle her. Eventually she’d realised this was the reaction he sought, whether or not consciously. Her most effective retaliation was to feign indifference. These days, pretence wasn’t often required; ignoring him and getting on with what she wanted to do was becoming easier all the time. As she made herself a toasted cheese sandwich, she wondered if this pattern was common to all couples. Perhaps it was a sign of maturity, that one could still love a man whilst finding his habits and behaviour a source of recurrent irritation.

  She couldn’t be sure, though; this was by far the longest and most intense relationship of her adult life and she didn’t have much first-hand experience to measure it by. Her father had succumbed to prostate cancer when she was eleven and although her hazy memories suggested that her childhood belief that her parents were devoted to each other was not far off the mark, her mother had re-married within twelve months. The step-father had proved to be an alcoholic and Hannah and her elder sister hadn’t shed many tears when his liver had packed up permanently. While she’d been at university, her mother had died of pneumonia and her sister had emigrated after meeting an Italian on holiday. Isobel had divorced Silvio after a couple of years but had stayed on in Rome, teaching English as a foreign language, leaving Hannah to make her way in the police force. Apart from a couple of fellow students and (a big, big mistake that made her go cold simply to recall the gleeful gossip that her surrender provoked) a handsome but boastful fellow police cadet, she’d slept with no one but Marc. Listening to fellow women officers, she’d sometimes wondered if she was missing out. Too late to worry now. She was doomed to respectability. She was a Detective Chief Inspector.