by Gwen Moffat
The ledge was wide but it sloped gently, no hazard to a person on foot but the angle would have increased the impetus of a car breaking through the wall. Where there were fissures in the crag below small trees were rooted but there was none big enough to stop the MG. One raw snag marked a sapling that had snapped on impact. Above that point was the gap in the wall, the ledge littered with large stones. On the side of the wall that fronted the road a solid metal barrier had been erected, like a double crash barrier. Locking the stable door, she murmured, studying the wall either side of the gap, squinting along the line, looking for bellying. The ground here had been trampled by many people, imprints in the dust clear in the light of the setting sun. And if that hadn’t been in her eyes she would have seen a figure sitting in a rudimentary shelter on the far bank of the river, watching with all the interest of a fisherman observing the behaviour of a large trout.
She retreated, climbed the padlocked gate and came back to the gap. The sun was slipping below a wooded hill but the river reflected the sky. Bats were taking over from the sand martins, jinking above the water. A snipe thrummed unseen. Miss Pink, studying tarmac, could see no skid marks on the road, and she saw that where the wall was intact it was solid. The river at this point was deep enough that the driver would have been submerged even if the MG hadn’t turned turtle. Strapped in her seat, drunk, Isa wouldn’t have stood a chance if she’d been alive. But she wasn’t alive, she was dead when she hit the water, in fact she was dead when she went through the wall.
Miss Pink walked back to her car slowly. She stared at the bulk of the fells against an apple-green sky, not seeing them, thinking about the hyoid … She remembered Eleanor’s saying ‘high – high’ and herself explaining about the hyoid. How many people knew about it? If he hadn’t known, the man who strangled Isa, he would have expected the death to pass as an accident: she was drunk, she couldn’t drive well, she crashed through a wall. A wall that was solid, no sign of bellying. He must have started the MG’s run from back here, a hundred yards or so up Waterhouses Lane … no, too far, only a few yards were necessary; once he’d aimed the car at the gap it needn’t be going at more than walking pace – he’d be pushing it – because it didn’t have to break through the wall. He’d already made the gap, pushed down the stones.
The murder was premeditated then but the killer was cutting it fine, someone could have come along when he was dismantling the wall, or when he was pushing the MG. What are we looking at here, she wondered: a psychopath? In Borascal? She conjured up images of the contenders, those she had met and those she was aware of. Walter: the husband always the first suspect; Honeyman – her eyes narrowed in unconscious imitation of his; Swinburn and the curiously peasant behaviour involving the weekly tenner to the mother of his bastard. There was Blamire, the mountain rescuer, Dwayne Paxton and his reckless liaison with a fifteen-year-old, now there was one who gave no thought for the consequences. And those were just the men; women could be as tough, tougher, look at Phoebe Metcalf. But Phoebe came a cropper at the end (thoughts going off at a tangent, a corollary of old age), she’d fallen in the quarry … down a steep slope … and drowned. How odd. It had been a curious coincidence to have two violent deaths in four days but two drownings? She shook herself, feeling the cold metal of her car under her hands, recalling her to the present. The first death was an accident, this one was murder, by strangling. A woman could strangle a drunk but could she dismantle a wall? No doubt; if she had the strength to strangle … wait, she’d missed something. Another car was needed in order for the killer to get away, moreover someone had to drive the MG to this spot – unless Isa had been strangled here. But even if that were the case the killer still had to get home. Which argued either an accomplice or that he – or she – lived close enough that a second vehicle wasn’t necessary. Borascal was about three miles distant. He wouldn’t be able to keep to the lanes for fear of showing up in headlights so he’d take to the fields and footpaths. Therefore a local man, not necessarily from Borascal but local.
The stars were starting to appear, Venus brilliant in a tinted shell, no fiery shades tonight. Miss Pink’s engine caught and her lights lit up a grove of sycamores. The lights were observed by the occupant of the fishermen’s shelter who stood up stiffly and reached for his mobile.
Chapter Eleven
Walter was home again, exhaustion lines etched in his face. Forcing himself to respond to Gemma’s solicitude, he picked at his stuffed chicken thighs until she told him to leave it, wasn’t there anything she could get for him?
‘Another whisky,’ he said.
She brought the bottle. He’d already had a large one after the police dropped him off; she guessed a second would knock him out, which was probably for the best. He’d aged ten years in the last two days, and he wouldn’t tell her anything except that he’d talked to Sewell, as if she didn’t know that. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask, and some information to impart, but she saw that she’d have to wait. She reached for his plate and started to eat his portion.
At breakfast time he was no more communicative, at least to start with. It was Saturday so she didn’t ask if he were going to the office. He looked a little better this morning: bathed and wearing clean clothes, smelling of aftershave rather than someone else’s cigarette smoke, but his eyes were washed out and still he wouldn’t talk. The initiative had to be hers.
‘Rosie Winder came back yesterday.’ He looked puzzled. ‘The police sergeant,’ she explained. ‘It was her day off really and she wanted to find a cottage to rent – she said. Actually she was after information.’
‘It’s to be expected. There’d have been more police here yesterday but there’s another – death – in Bailrigg. Sewell told me. They’re short-handed.’
‘Dwayne Paxton made a play for her.’
‘For who?’
‘Rosie, the policewoman. She looks quite cool in proper clothes, a belt you’d die for. Dwayne was bowled over. Isn’t that a scream?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, he told her he took girls to Blind Keld, asked her to go there with him.’
‘He does!’ He was concerned. ‘Did you ever …’
‘Go to Blind Keld?’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not interested in Dwayne. He’s history as far as I’m concerned. But he knew Isa.’
He looked at her like a sick dog. ‘Isa? And Dwayne?’
Gemma was frightened but she stuck to her guns. ‘You knew – well, if you didn’t, you know now. You didn’t do it so it was someone else, right? But there was more than one chap, Wally.’ The emphasis was not only in the tone but in the fixed stare that was trying to force it home on him.
He sighed. ‘Yes, I knew.’
She gaped: the forceful woman reverted to a child. ‘You knew?’ It was a whisper.
He nodded helplessly. ‘Guessed, suspected, who cares? Sewell guessed too. He put it to me that I was condoning it –’ He registered her shock and realized with amazement that he was talking to his little sister. He shook his head vehemently. ‘It’s all over, Gem; we’re going to start again. I made a mistake and now we have to forget all about it.’
‘But you were shocked just now when I said she was having it off with Dwayne.’
He winced. ‘I didn’t know about him.’
‘So – who …’
‘You said there were other – look’ – but suddenly he was angry, at the end of his tether – ‘I’m not talking about it, d’you hear? She was my wife and –’ Again he remembered that this was a child. ‘Forget it, love.’ He stood up and said with false heartiness, ‘Now I’m going to do some gardening and get some fresh air into my lungs. Why don’t you come out yourself when you’re finished here?’
Gemma poured more coffee and stayed at the breakfast table, watching him change into his old shoes in the passage, wondering what it was that he knew and she didn’t, and how much of it he had told the police.
Miss Pink was watching a tree creeper when a watery crack alert
ed her to activity in the beck. She was on a track on the north bank and upstream of the house called Sunder. The level of the water had dropped and she felt no anxiety at sight of two small figures intent on constructing a dam; one, a tiny bareheaded girl, the other: young Bobby in a baseball cap.
She was about fifty yards away when the girl looked up and saw her. Miss Pink waved cheerily to indicate that she was no stranger, no paedophile come to Borascal to carry off small children, a hazard they’d no doubt been warned against, although in a dale where doors were left unlocked, it was a moot point that such a warning would be heeded. Different if it were Carlisle. And so ruminating, watching her feet among cow pats and lumpy bedrock, she came up to them, now slowed in their play, idly picking up stones and dropping them where they could serve no purpose except as something to do while they observed her out of the corners of their eyes. Bobby was now bareheaded too. She looked beyond him.
‘You’ve lost your hat.’
‘Hat, miss?’ No small boy could be as innocent as his expression implied. His sister glanced at him uncertainly.
‘Your hat,’ she said.
He stumbled, thrust out an arm as he tried to recover, and knocked the child over. There was a scream and a splash, Miss Pink made to start forward but Bobby was already pulling the dripping child to her feet, hustling her out of the water and up the bank. ‘You’re soaked,’ he hissed at her. ‘Mam’ll kill me! Hurry, we gotta get you into some dry clothes. Give you a hot drink. You’re all right, Flo, I’ll tell ’em it were my fault.’ He looked up at Miss Pink. ‘You come too, miss. You tell our nan as it weren’t her fault, please.’
His sister, infected by his panic, started to sob loudly.
‘No harm done.’ Miss Pink was calmness personified. ‘We’ll all go. Of course it was no one’s fault and a drop of water’s not going to hurt anyone on a hot day. What’s your name?’ To the girl.
‘It’s Flora,’ Bobby said quickly. ‘We was building a dam, see. We’re making a paddling pool and then our mam can come down with the littluns and us’ll have a picnic like. Maybe we can build un big enough for a proper pool and swim – once us learns how. Oh, I forgot; you go on, there’s the house, I gotta go back for me rod.’ And leaving them as the wall of Sunder came in sight he darted away up the track.
Flora said between sobs, ‘He didn’t have no rod.’
‘He’s gone back for his hat,’ Miss Pink said.
‘Right. He put it in the water.’
It was odd that such a young child should use the more difficult verb ‘put’ instead of ‘dropped’ but Miss Pink had no time to question it as, on the far side of a gate, Misella emerged from the cottage with a load of washing. Her eyes widened.
‘Where’s Bobby?’
‘He’s coming,’ Miss Pink assured her, unlatching the gate. ‘He’s fine.’ And explained.
‘In you go,’ Misella ordered the child, in the tone of wry resignation adopted by indulgent grandmothers. ‘You know where everything is: the green dinosaur shirt and the red shorts. I wouldn’t let her play in the beck on her own,’ she told Miss Pink, ‘but our Bobby looks after her. He’s a great little minder, that one.’ She followed the visitor’s eyes to a sand pit where two toddlers were playing. Beyond them was a weatherboard fence. ‘The littluns is too small to climb the fence,’ she said quickly. ‘And we keep this gate latched.’
Miss Pink nodded. Forget paedophiles, a beck was the major hazard here. She wondered how soon the toddlers would learn to unlatch the gate but she allowed no disapproval to show, instead she regarded the cottage benignly. The back door opened on a functional verandah roofed by one of those long slate canopies that were a feature of the region. It rose to the level of the bedroom windows and the space below served the dual purpose of drying room and play room, judging by washing lines, and bright plastic toys strewn about the cement.
‘So Sherrel’s at Jollybeard and you’re minding the family.’ It was facetious but Miss Pink was at a loss. With the Lees living here rent-free, and officially no father existing for the glut of children, she could think of no subject that wouldn’t carry some innuendo. ‘Such a shock,’ she murmured, casting her net wide: ‘Mrs Lambert drowning. It makes you think.’
‘I thought she were murdered,’ Misella said.
‘Drowned, strangled, what difference does it make? She died. I feel sorry for Mr Lambert. And that young girl: only fifteen.’
Misella gave a derisive snort. ‘That one can look after herself. I can’t say the same for the brother but her! Fifteen?’ She frowned at the toddlers. ‘Got a sharper brain than our Sherrel and no mistake.’
‘That’s education.’ Miss Pink was earnest. ‘Gemma’s had advantages. All the same, and judging by appearances, Sherrel’s youngsters are bright enough. She’s a good mother.’
‘With a bit of help here and there but you’re right: Gemma Lambert wouldn’t do so well if it was her with a load of weans.’
‘Time enough yet. She’s only a schoolgirl.’
‘They start at eleven nowadays, it were on t’radio.’ Misella was mildly contemptuous of this old lady, relic of a generation that thought brides came to the marriage bed as virgins. When did they ever? ‘But then,’ she added darkly, ‘what d’you expect with that sister-in-law?’
‘But I’m sure Mr Lambert loved his wife.’
‘He weren’t the only one then.’
‘Love?’ Miss Pink was bewildered.
‘Well, sex they calls it now, like an itch. You gotta scratch it, you know?’ Wrong. This old soul had no idea what was being talked about – never had the itch of course, neither legal nor outside wedlock.
‘Did she take people home?’ Miss Pink asked, seemingly of herself. ‘Oh no, never. A hotel then?’ She looked hopefully at Misella, childishly eager to be instructed in the conduct of clandestine affairs. ‘An empty cottage?’
Misella studied her, not sure about this. ‘Who did you have in mind?’
‘Heavens! I’ve no idea who. I was wondering how they could keep it a secret in such a small place. She couldn’t have driven far. People say she couldn’t drive.’
Misella said slowly, ‘What she’d do is drive to meet him and they’d leave his car and go on in hers.’ Miss Pink seemed to find this difficult to follow. ‘They couldn’t leave hers, it were too obvious,’ Misella explained. ‘Little red sports car. His wouldn’t be; leave it anywhere in a lay-by, even on a main road.’
‘Why wouldn’t his car be recognized?’
‘He’d be a stranger, wouldn’t he? Not from around here. He could be a truck driver she met in some all-night caff.’
‘Ah, I see. I couldn’t understand how a local man could get away with it; there’d be a wife to deceive, a mother … but of course, if he was a long way from home …’ She tailed off and after a moment Misella accepted that as the end of the conversation. She bent to her washing.
Miss Pink left Sunder giving no weight to the theory of Isa’s lover being a stranger or an itinerant truck driver, but a certain amount of weight to Misella’s wanting her to think so. However, Isa was one thing, what was at the forefront of Miss Pink’s mind right now was the fact that Bobby had not appeared at Sunder – which he wouldn’t do because he’d gone back for a rod, and Flora said he didn’t have a rod. He’d gone back for his hat, and this was the second time he’d denied that he had a blue denim hat. What was it about that hat?
Jollybeard was ticking over nicely. Nine customers in for lunch, Sherrel serving, Eleanor snatching a moment for coffee as Miss Pink tucked into focaccia and olives in the kitchen.
‘There are two dead sheep downstream of the Lamb. Would that be Swinburn’s land?’
Eleanor sighed. ‘The same. Last back-end there were seven. He fattens Scottish lambs in the water meadows and apparently there are always a few who die after the journey.’
‘He told you that?’
‘He told the police. Phoebe reported it. She was fed up. She’d warned him time and time agai
n that if he didn’t bury them she’d inform the police. And she did.’
‘That’s incredible.’
‘Not at all. You didn’t know Phoebe, and she was right: it was a health hazard. There could have been more bodies in the beck.’ Eleanor stopped short and their eyes met in united recall. She resumed as if kick-started, ‘But there was no bad feeling. I mean, we have to live together – and I get my eggs from there.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Awkward subject,’ she muttered.
Miss Pink refused to relinquish it. ‘There was a court case?’
‘Oh no. He buried the carcasses once they’d been brought to his attention.’
‘Lazy shepherding: seven of them. Seven minimum.’ Miss Pink thought of the one plastered against the watergate.
‘Yes, well.’ Eleanor swallowed. ‘Then Phoebe discovered that he’d merely dumped them on his tip. So she reported that and, granted, he did cover them with earth after a second warning from the police. I’ll tell him about the two you found and he’ll see to it.’
‘Where is this tip?’
‘It’s an old quarry down the dale a bit. Only a little one, the kind you take just enough stone from to build one or two houses. It’s on Jacob’s land so presumably it’s legal – providing carcasses are adequately covered.’
Miss Pink said slowly, ‘Phoebe passed Sleylands the morning of the day she died.’
Eleanor smiled. ‘No, Melinda; that hare won’t run. She passed, she didn’t stop, and she waved to him. Does that suggest bad feeling?’
‘You’ve only got his word for it: that she waved.’
‘Mabel was there, at the farm. She and Phoebe were friendly. If she says she didn’t see Phoebe that day, she didn’t.’
‘That doesn’t mean that Phoebe didn’t stop, didn’t go into a barn, confront Swinburn. I can’t believe they were on good terms, not after she’d involved him twice with the police. Was he at home all that Sunday? Did he go to the tip?’
