by Jo Allen
‘I’ll go back and check what’s happening at the caves, if they’ve turned up anything else. I’ll see you back in the office later on.’
‘Great.’ Jude pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I’ll see you later then. See you tomorrow, Ashleigh.’
So were they any closer to finding Lynx’s killer, he wondered as he negotiated the A591 on the way back to Penrith? Was it someone pretending to be Lynx who led Storm along the path to Rydal Caves, or was Storm, improbably as it seemed, either a killer or an accomplice in a murder?
*
Doddsy wound his weary way up towards the incident room via the canteen. He never pretended to be inspired and he valued the chance to think things through, and even though he seemed to spend half of his working life in canteens and coffee shops and meetings with biscuits, it somehow never seemed to translate into large quantities of food.
He checked his watch. There were a dozen things he had to deal with in addition to the killing of the man they now knew to be Cain Harper. Despite Jude’s reservations, he was ready to hand Owen Armitstead’s death over to the coroner.
There was no real doubt in his mind that it was suicide and the only thing that concerned him was why. In the final reckoning, Cody Wilder would have to account for how she’d treated her young researcher, for her lack of care and her callous pursuit of him. No doubt she’d use her tough upbringing to excuse her behaviour.
‘Doddsy, do you have a minute?’
He looked up at the woman who’d accosted him. Strictly speaking every minute of his day was accounted for, but there was something about Aditi Desai’s face, as if she’d taken a while to approach him, which rather surprised him. Aditi, who was one of the younger detective constables working with Chris on the background to the Grasmere murder case, was normally one of the most relaxed people around. He didn’t think he’d become impossibly forbidding overnight, so it must be something else. ‘Sure.’
Still she hesitated, so he indicated the chair opposite. ‘Sit down. No hurry.’
‘It won’t take a minute. Just I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Fire away.’
‘I may be making a fuss about nothing. I don’t know.’
He smiled at her. He liked Aditi, though he found her a bit too kind for the wicked world she’d chosen to inhabit. ‘I won’t know either, if you don’t tell me.’
‘I was in Sainsbury’s yesterday and I bumped into Superintendent Groves. He asked me out for a drink. Of course I said no. But he said if I changed my mind…’ She turned her engagement ring over on her finger. ‘It wasn’t the first time. I didn’t think that was appropriate.’
‘It’s anything but.’ Groves had an eye for the ladies, and it had already cost him two wives. Now, it appeared, he might be bored with his own company.
‘No. Because he said something about talking about how we could advance my career. I think it was a joke, but it made me feel uncomfortable. I mean, that’s really not right, is it?’
‘Definitely not. You need to mention that to Professional Standards.’ But he could see the way the conversation was going to go.
‘That’s what I thought. But I just… you know it isn’t just me, Doddsy. It’s happened to a few people.’
He knew, without really thinking about it, that it had always gone on. The attitude of some of his colleagues was mired in darker parts of the last century. Didn’t he know that, and hadn’t he, as a gay man learned to keep his head down? What had changed was that most people no longer found it acceptable. ‘They need to report it, too.’
‘Yes. I wondered if you’d mention it to Professional Standards for me.’
People always approached him for this kind of thing, and there was as reason for it. He was the softest of touches. ‘Yes, okay. Why not? Leave it with me.’
He was, he realised, when she’d gone, going to have to sacrifice his break. Picking up his coffee, he turned a couple of corners and opened the door to the Professional Standards department.
They clearly had less to do than he had, because he’d walked in on some kind of relaxed chat, and he had to clear his throat loudly before someone – Lorraine, an older woman, who’d done her hard work somewhere else and was marking time in an office – spun round on her chair to take up her position at her desk. ‘Doddsy. What can I do for you? Come with a complaint?’ She picked up a pen and sat with it poised above her pad, almost as if she was expecting it.
He nodded.
‘Okay. Let’s have it. Who’s been behaving inappropriately to you?’
‘Not me.’ He outlined Aditi’s comments and the woman scribbled industriously. ‘I don’t think Aditi will mind giving you the details. She just didn’t want to make the first approach.’
‘Okay. Thanks for telling me.’ She frowned down at the paper. ‘Sure you don’t have anything to add?’
‘Nothing. Should I?’
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you, but this isn’t the first complaint I’ve had about him.’
That wasn’t surprising. Groves had acquired a reputation. ‘I think we can be reasonably sure he hasn’t made a pass at me,’ he said, and grinned at her.
‘Oh, God,’ she laughed. ‘No, I didn’t mean that. The opposite, really. Just that these days we need to make quite sure no one’s being discriminated against over anything.’
‘I’ll tell Aditi you’ll be in touch.’ And Doddsy backed away towards the door, deep in thought.
15
Cody had expected the nightmare. She’d fought the memories when Fi Styles had pressed her on her history, but Cain’s death had shown her that she’d have to acknowledge them. Jude Satterthwaite had been sympathetic but she knew how his people’s minds worked. They’d be checking up on everything she’d said, attempting to verify the years of abuse she’d received, and maybe they’d decide it was relevant to the trial of whoever killed Cain and bring her own personal Armageddon down upon her. And so came the nightmare, in which she had to stand up in court and testify to every detail of something that should have stayed buried for ever, in front of a shadowy figure in the dock.
The killer had her father’s face, of course. She knew enough psychology not to be surprised, but not enough to help her cope.
She woke about four, in a hot sweat on a cold night and lay there, tossing and turning as she thought about everything, anything but the past. Sometimes she dozed off, woken by the echoes of a man’s footsteps in the corridor, and just as she had done then, she pulled the pillow over her head and hoped the nightmare would end. The modern footsteps were a figment of her imagination but the fear they engendered was not. In the end, as it always did, time won, ticking on beyond the nightmare zone. The clock in the living room chimed a tinny seven and it was time to start the day.
Not soon enough. In the kitchen, she made herself a coffee and sipped it, but she was still restive. Brandon, who was an early riser, would normally have been up by now but he’d probably be lying in his bed crooning sweet nothings to a sweetheart on the other side of the world. The scent of his ultimate abandonment hung around her and even if it hadn’t, her nightmares were so raw she couldn’t bring herself to face him. He knew everything that she knew, and their relationship had at least meant some good had come out of the bad, but the two were linked. Most of the time she prided herself on her positivity, but just then she couldn’t face anything that reminded her of hell.
She drained her coffee and set her mug in the sink. The first glow of dawn was fading into the eastern sky, though there was still a while to go before the sun climbed the far side of Heron Pike and made itself known. The living room clock ticked and wakefulness proved no escape. The silence and the fear that seemed to inhabit the chilly, slate-floored kitchen in Coffin Lane echoed the early mornings in Wyoming when she’d waited to find out what kind of mood her father was in, whether it was to be her or her mother who’d take the brunt of it.
Coffee helped her to shrug her shoulders at her own weakness. Her father was dead a
nd the dead couldn’t hurt you. Only the living could do that, and she genuinely thought there was no one alive she was scared of. Hadn’t Owen folded under her challenge, when all he’d needed to do was take her on, so much stronger than she? And Lynx, who had threatened her for fun in an unintended echo of her father, was dead and those joking shadows would never haunt her from his direction again. Men were like dogs – pack animals, who needed only to know who was boss.
She snatched at her coat and let herself out of the front door, still pulling her arms into the sleeves against the cold air as she headed down the path with no idea of where she might be going. There would be nowhere open for breakfast, unless one of the hotels would rustle up something for a non-resident. What mattered was that she was outside, escaping her memories, in the chilly damp dawn of Cumbria.
A beauteous morning, calm and free, she misquoted wryly to herself, though still finding comfort in the words. It had been raining heavily, and the standing water splashed up under her feet. Down on Red Bank Road a dog barked. Knowing her luck, it would be that couple who ran the cafe, so detached from reality that they held her responsible for who-knew-what. It was too bad. She wasn’t in the good mood she’d been in the last time, and if they wanted to take her on today, they were welcome to try it.
It hadn’t been a windy night, but something lay across the ground in front of her like a branch fallen from a tree. In the cold, grey morning light, Cody dropped to her knees beside it. Her fingers reached out to touch it in the deep shadow of the wall and felt the slippery fabric of a Gore-Tex rain jacket. The soft silky texture of a woman’s ponytail. The sticky touch of fresh blood.
In the lane, the dog barked. Someone called its name. Behind her in the cottage a light went on in Brandon’s room. The earthquake is not satisfied at once.
With Fi Styles’s blood fresh on her fingers, Cody remembered to scream.
*
This time there was no need to look for the murder weapon. It was lying next to the body, a sharp piece of Lake District slate, its leading edge still bright with blood under the drizzle and matching the deep gash in the side of Fi’s skull. Jude stood looking at it from a respectful and non-interventionist distance, with Doddsy to one side of him and Ashleigh to the other. At the bottom of Coffin Lane, outside the blue and white tape that Tyrone was unwinding to seal the place off, another car pulled up to join the haphazard collection of vehicles already there.
‘Here’s Tammy and the CSI guys. Let’s get off and leave this place to the experts.’ He stepped back. ‘Where’s Dr Wilder?’
Charlie Fry was on duty, once again displaying his uncanny knack of being first on the scene whenever there was a crime to be investigated, and taking even this in his world-weary stride. ‘Her brother took her down to the cafe. It was the people who owned it who came up to help her. They were walking their dog in the lane. They called the police and got her off the scene.’
‘The Gordons?’
‘That’s right, sir. Graham and Eliza Gordon. They walk their dog every morning before setting up the cafe for the day. They say they didn’t see anybody coming down the lane.’
‘Shall we get down there?’ The hint of anxiety in Ashleigh’s voice suggested that she, like him, was wary of the irony of the Gordons, with their vitriolic hatred of Cody Wilder, being the ones to come to her rescue. ‘Has she got anyone else with her?’
‘Mr Wilder’s down there.’ Charlie stepped past Jude and held a hand up to stop Tammy and the two white-clad forensic investigators with her. ‘The doctor hasn’t finished yet.’
‘Sure, I’ll wait.’ Tammy pulled the fine mesh mask up over her mouth and ran an expert finger round her hood to check it was sealed. ‘It’s hardly going to take him long to certify the poor woman’s dead, though.’
Fi’s body sprawled ten yards from them, and even as they spoke, Matt Cork, the pathologist stood up, picked up his bag and stepped back. ‘Confirmed dead.’ He shook his head. ‘It all stands to be verified but it looks as if that piece of slate nearly took the back of the poor woman’s head off. Death would have been instantaneous.’
‘Can we get on?’ Tammy sidled past him to stand and survey the scene, deciding where to start.
Jude liked Matt, a man who understood the need for haste and how to balance it with accuracy. It meant he always gave the police something to work with while the information was of some use to them, even though his first impressions sometimes required amendment. It would be a couple of days before they got the detailed post-mortem results and though there might be surprises, the cause of death was surely clear. ‘When did it happen?’
‘Recently. Not much more than a couple of hours ago. I’ll firm up the time later.’
It was half past nine. The 999 call had come in to the control centre at about half past seven. Cody had been on the scene at or about the time the murder had been committed. ‘Thanks, Matt. That’s helpful.’
‘I’ll be in touch when I can tell you more.’ Matt moved off down the lane, past Tyrone, and the crime scene operation swung into operation around him.
‘Okay.’ Jude reviewed his priorities. ‘Doddsy, I’m going to leave you in charge here. I want to get down and speak to Dr Wilder. Ashleigh, it’s the same drill as last time. I want you to do the witness interviews and the door-to-door inquiries. Someone might have seen something.’
‘Of course.’ She fell into step beside him and they headed down the lane together, ducking under the tape and past the crowd of onlookers who were visibly concerned over a second murder when they’d been curious at the first. ‘What do you reckon? The same killer?’
‘Possibly. It’s the same modus operandi, more or less – attack from behind with what passes for a sharp instrument. And the same time of day.’
Ashleigh cast a rueful look back up the hill. ‘But why Fi Styles?’
‘I don’t know.’ But an answer to that question was beginning to form in his head, an answer framed by the sight of Fi’s blood-soaked ponytail spread out on the gravel lane where the sharp edge of the slate had sliced it from her scalp. ‘The first question we need to ask is what she was doing there at that time of the morning.’
‘Do you think she disturbed someone?’
‘Possibly.’ As they paused outside the cafe, he got the chance to see Ashleigh’s expression. She’d seen far worse than this, but her face had lost some of its colour. If they hadn’t been standing in the full glare of the public, he’d have loosened up enough to give her a hug, but he couldn’t afford the smallest, most innocent gesture of affection. ‘Or she was mistaken for someone. Or she was meeting someone.’
He pushed open the door to the cafe. The sign on it had been turned to Closed and there was a uniformed policewoman outside. Eliza Gordon, her face as white as the milk she was frothing to put in the lattes, was going through the motions at the coffee machine. Her husband sat by himself at a table with his head on his hands, the dog lying at his feet. In a seat by the window, Cody stared out across the lake with the frozen self-possession of a statue, while Brandon, his dark shadow stretching across the table, stood beside her, an expression of concern on his face.
Jude and Ashleigh separated, he to speak to the Wilders, she to the Gordons. ‘Mrs Gordon,’ he heard her say, with all the sympathy available for them that he hadn’t felt he could offer her. ‘Let me get the coffee. Sit down. That was an awful thing for you to have to see.’
With some difficulty, he turned his attention away from Ashleigh and focused it instead on Cody. ‘Dr Wilder.’
Brandon shuffled sideways, resting his hands on her shoulders when Jude spoke, as if it were the two of them against the world.
‘Chief Inspector.’ She looked at him, all defiance, chin out. The band holding her characteristic ponytail had slipped down to the nape of her neck, giving her a defeated look. Dried blood picked out the edges of her fingernails, seeped into the cuticles of her right hand, insinuating itself under the nails. ‘It’s getting closer to me, isn’t it? Y
ou aren’t doing a great job keeping me safe.’
He pulled up chair and sat down opposite her. For the first time, he didn’t trust her. ‘You must have had a terrible shock.’
It was easy to be brave when death was at a distance, less so when it came calling at your door, but Cody Wilder was made of sterner stuff than Jude had expected. ‘Only very briefly. I told you, Inspector. I had a traumatic upbringing and I experienced a flashback when I found her.’
Brandon’s fingers, he noticed, tightened slightly on her shoulders.
‘Of course,’ Cody went on, ‘I recovered. People die and I wouldn’t be true to myself if I pretended to be sentimental about it. But that’s not what you’re interested in. You’re interested in what I saw. Or rather, what I didn’t see.’
‘Honey. You don’t have to talk to anyone.’
Her brother was as bad as she was. ‘The more you can tell us, the sooner we’ll catch the person who killed Ms Styles.’
‘And Lynx, too?’ Perhaps now she regretted not having told him what she knew earlier. ‘Let’s get through this quickly, shall we?’
‘The first thing you need to do is to make sure my sister is safe.’
Cody looked up at Brandon over her shoulder and smiled at him. ‘I have you as my bodyguard.’
‘Yes, honey, and I’ll watch over you like I always did. But these guys need to kick some ass. I can’t stay here for ever.’
‘I’ll make quite sure you’re safe, Dr Wilder. Assuming there’s a threat to you.’ Cutting Brandon out of the conversation, Jude nevertheless noticed the scowl that passed over Cody’s face at that last remark. ‘Talk me through what happened.’
She composed herself, shaking Brandon’s hands from her shoulders and delivering a concise explanation of where she was and what she’d seen. It was a slender tale, one that offered no opportunity for anyone to vouch for her movements. By her own admission Cody had been alone and unseen within yards of Fi Styles when death had struck. ‘Thanks, Dr Wilder. I’ll get you to give a full witness statement to DS O’Halloran in a moment.’