Death on Coffin Lane

by Jo Allen

  Or was it possible? Could Cody have accused Brandon of murder?

  He reached for the list of internal phone numbers that lurked in his desk drawer and dialled the Intelligence Unit. ‘Jude Satterthwaite here. DCI.’ He rolled his eyes at Ashleigh. The Intelligence Unit were the butt of every joke but they got their own back. They controlled information. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Oh, hey Jude.’ Someone laughed. ‘Let me know what we can do for you.’ The voice echoed, as though whoever had answered had flicked him onto speaker and introduced him to the rest of the team for some light entertainment.

  ‘You’re monitoring a residential property for me in Coffin Lane in Grasmere. I need to know what happened there this afternoon.’

  There was a pause, a flutter of laughter. Was it possible they had so little to do on a Friday afternoon that they had time to mess him around? ‘I can’t give out classified information. I don’t have your name down.’

  ‘Detective Superintendent Groves put the application in, at my request.’

  ‘Fine. Get him to give us a call and we’ll pass on what we know.’

  ‘He’s off on leave.’ Jude was shaking his head. ‘I can’t get hold of him. I need your input. I need to know what’s going on in that cottage, and in particular I need to know what kind of a conversation went on there this morning.’

  ‘Matter of life and death, is it?’

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘Right. Then I’m prepared to talk to your Super, if you can get hold of him. But I can’t let you know without his authorisation. More than my job’s worth. Sorry, mate.’ And the call ended, to general laughter.

  They were right, that was the worst of it. It was Groves who was authorised to request surveillance and only Groves who could take control of the information it produced. Now he was out of the game. Finding someone else sufficiently senior to access the recordings would take time and time wasn’t on Jude’s side.

  So he’d have to change his tactics. He pushed back his chair and walked over to Chris’s desk. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Yes. Find out if it was foggy in Chicago last week. And find out if any flights were cancelled or diverted.’

  He walked back to the desk where Doddsy had abandoned what he was doing and come to join Ashleigh. They were both looking at him as if they sensed a crisis.

  ‘I need to know what Cody and Brandon talked about this morning.’ He addressed them directly. ‘I’m not getting anything form those so-called intelligence guys. So I think I’m going to take a flyer and go down and haul the Wilders in.’

  ‘But the evidence…’ Doddsy shrugged.

  ‘I know. But I’m pretty sure now that I know what happened. It wasn’t Cody. She didn’t know. That’s why she’s gone to pieces. But now we know what happened in Wyoming. We know the two of them are probably guilty as hell of killing their father. We know she wants it kept quiet. But what if he wants it kept quiet too, but he thinks she’ll tell?’

  ‘He certainly wouldn’t get the sympathy vote that she might, if it came to a trial.’ Ashleigh shook her head.

  ‘No. And I’m prepared to bet Owen knew, too. Careless talk from Cody, but it happens. Don’t forget – they were lovers.’

  Chris crossed the room at a rapid walk. ‘Weather reports from Chicago for the past week. Good weather for the time of year. Good visibility. Clear, frosty. No delays or cancellations.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ashleigh said, her voice full of doubt. ‘Then how is it possible? He says he was delayed by fog—’

  ‘Yes. So the next thing I want you to do, Chris, is check flights from UK airports – Manchester is the most likely one – to Chicago on the day that Owen died and the day after. I’m prepared to bet that Brandon Wilder was on one.’ He turned to Doddsy and Ashleigh. ‘Let’s get down to Grasmere.’

  *

  From the window, Cody could see the police car. All she had to do was call the man in and tell him everything, but what would be the price? They’d think she was the killer. She was too tired, and she couldn’t face the police, couldn’t bear the prospect of having to relive those years of abuse again, first in an interview room and then in a court. She sat down on the sofa and stared at the ashes.

  For his betrayal of her trust and the destruction of Dorothy’s letters, as much as the deaths that lay at his door, Brandon deserved the worst she could do to him and the only thing she could think of was to pay him back in his own currency, debased though it might be. He spoke the language of hate and revenge and a Pyrrhic victory over him, just like that she’d achieved over her father, was the best she could hope for. She’d leave him regretting the day he’d turned on her.

  And he’d come after her, and then what would happen?

  It was after half two and the light was already fading, but it would be early in the working day in Los Angeles. Reaching for her phone, she ran a quick Google search and dialled. ‘Can I speak to Ms Maracado? No, it’s a personal call. My name’s Wilder. Cody Wilder.’

  On the other side of the world, strangers passed her in silence through a series of screenings. ‘Laura Maracado speaking.’

  ‘Hi.’ Cody managed to stop herself calling her future sister-in-law ‘honey’. It wouldn’t do to patronise her when there was a chance she might be at least as formidable as Cody herself. ‘I’ve been chatting with Brandon and he told me your news. Congratulations.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Cody.’ There was definitely reservation in the voice. It had taken the saintly, virtue-signalling Laura a long time to decide to speak to her.

  ‘It’ll be cool to meet you but I’m afraid I’m not going to be on the west coast for a while. So I thought I’d call and introduce myself.’

  ‘How kind.’ The woman gave nothing away, fencing Cody’s charm aside. How much had Brandon told her about the killings in Grasmere? Anything?

  ‘Brandon and I have always been close.’ Cody made herself comfortable, stockinged feet stretched out to warm herself against the last embers of the Wordsworth letters. The bigger the betrayal the sweeter the revenge, and the hush of the hissing flames reminded her of a fundamental truth. Cold? No, the hotter you served your revenge the better. ‘I’m so delighted he’s found someone who deserves him. Someone who will benefit from his fierce loyalty.’

  ‘I’m sure we—’

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about our childhood. Such good memories. Just Brandon and me, Mom and Dad. We saw no one for months at a time. When there was no one else, he was there for me. Imagine how that was for two young impressionable teenagers just learning about themselves.’

  There was silence from the other end of the line. So the woman was still listening. Now was the moment to press home the advantage. ‘Of course he’ll have told you everything. You’re his soulmate. And of course you’ll have forgiven him.’

  ‘Forgiven him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Reckless in the dark, Cody tugged at her ponytail and careered towards disaster. ‘In such isolation, it was inevitable that we were closer than we should have been. What choice did we have?’ Pulling a strand of hair free and twining it around her finger, she snatched a moment to reflect. How far should she go? The question wasn’t how much she wanted Brandon to pay for his vandalism, the destruction of the letters, but how much she was prepared to suffer to enable it. ‘I knew he’d have explained it, and I knew you’d understand. It took me a long time, but I’ve forgiven him for the way he took advantage of me, and I know you will, too.’

  The silence from LA stretched into half a minute, during which Cody tried to envisage the expression on her future sister-in-law’s face. The picture on the company website had shown a steely brunette with fake smile and a taste for good cosmetic surgery. ‘Life was hard, and you know how it is. You have to do hard things to survive, things that you wouldn’t do in other circumstances. The world won’t always excuse that, and I know that’s true for some of the things Brandon did. But you will.’

  ‘What
things?’ There was a sharp edge to Laura’s voice.

  Oh, this would test her love. ‘You can’t blame Brandon. Our daddy was a violent man. It wasn’t strictly self-defence, of course, but under the circumstances you can’t blame him. If Brandon hadn’t killed him, he’d sure as hell have killed Brandon. So when they were out on the ranch one day and a storm was coming, Brandon drove away and left him.’

  ‘This is an outrageous allegation.’ So, Laura Maracado was a fighter. Cody smiled. ‘How dare you try and poison my mind against my fiancé? He warned me what you’re like.’

  ‘It’s the truth, honey. I know, because I helped him. When he came back without Daddy, we covered it up. I drove the jeep somewhere else and he followed and brought me back. So I’m sure you’ll be fine about it, huh? As long as you keep on the right side of him. Because you’ll find out he’s a mean man when he’s crossed.’ As Fi and Lynx and Seb, and maybe even Owen, had discovered.

  A soft click on the line, followed by the long bleep of a closed-down conversation. Laying the phone down, Cody stared into the fire. It was too late to change anything, now. Brandon had turned his back on her and he’d regret it for the rest of his life.

  There would be a price to pay. She knew how he lashed out at those who crossed him. Their father’s death had been understandable, justifiable, even, taking a life to save them both, but a man who had slaughtered so many people in the slenderest suspicions that they might endanger his interests wouldn’t hesitate to kill the sister who cost him his fiancée.

  And yet, and yet. She got to her feet and crossed to the window, staring out at the soft grey-green of Grasmere in its winter clothing. Smoke from the New Agers’ campfires, from the chimneys of the village. A dragon’s breath of mist from the surface of the lake.

  What had she done? As her father’s fury had alienated her, she’d learned the lesson of her upbringing, that only violence defeated violence. Hate and terror had taught her well, but if only he’d cared for her the way a father should have done, how different it would have been.

  If she’d learned to trust people, she wouldn’t be more devastated by the loss of half a dozen sheets of paper than she had been by the loss of Lynx, the one man who genuinely seemed to care for her. She wouldn’t have been driven by that fatal impulse and lashed out at Brandon. Her father’s wickedness had followed her after all, and Brandon too, a shadow from which neither of them could ever escape. Even William had no words for that.

  As she sank into a chair by the ashes of Dorothy’s letters and waited for the breaking storm of Brandon’s retaliation, she thought of too many lost lives, of Lynx, of Owen and Seb and Fi, and grieved for them all. In the gathering darkness she understood at last just how great her tragedy was and, leaning forward in the chair, she buried her head in hands and gave way to tears.

  20

  ‘That’s Chris.’ Jude looked down at the message on his phone as Ashleigh turned the car off the road through Grasmere and up towards Coffin Lane through the growing darkness. ‘Do you want to get out and see what Charlie and Tyrone have to say, and I’ll give him a call?’

  ‘Sure.’ She pulled the Mercedes up, too sharply, choking it to a stalled stop so that he winced. The two uniformed officers had driven up to the cottage and were standing outside, waiting for instructions. In the headlights Jude could read Tyrone’s impatience and guessed that Charlie Fry, with his wise head and years of experience, had struggled to keep the youngster back while they waited for instructions.

  A third car, with Doddsy at the wheel, joined the backlog clogging the lane. Another vehicle was on its way to help find Brandon. Was that enough? Watching as Doddsy and Ashleigh engaged in earnest conversation with the two uniformed policemen, Jude dialled Chris’s number. ‘Okay. What bad news do you have for me this time?’

  ‘You were right.’

  ‘About what, exactly?’

  ‘Brandon. He flew into Chicago from Manchester overnight on Wednesday and got the next flight back again. And when I took the search a bit further back, I discovered he’d flown into Manchester from Denver on the Tuesday. So it’s pretty clear what happened now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Looks like it. You might want to see if you can trace his movements while he was here. Taxi firms are a good place to start, but he may have got the train to Oxenholme or Penrith and then a taxi.’ If Brandon had flown into Manchester to kill Owen and then back again to establish an alibi, it shouldn’t be hard to discover his whereabouts. ‘Thanks. I’ll speak to you later.’ He ended the call, but he still stayed for a moment, in thought.

  Outside in the darkness, Ashleigh and Doddsy engaged in intense conversation. Jude opened the car door and got out, the cold wind catching at him. Cody was ashamed of nothing and if she hid things it was from spite. Her tale of abuse at the hands of her father might make her a figurehead of a certain section of the feminist movement and, if she played it right, would enhance rather than damage her reputation. If the Grasmere murders were to hide the Wyoming killing, she might have had a hand in them, but he’d seen for himself how much it traumatised her. Surely it wasn’t something worth killing again for?

  ‘Cottage is empty,’ Charlie was saying. ‘I never saw Dr Wilder leave, but she must have gone out through the back. The back door was open.’

  Jude’s breath shortened. ‘Where’s her brother?’

  ‘I lost him down in the village,’ Tyrone was saying, his voice urgent, his breath crystallising on the cold air. I didn’t want to seem too obvious, so I wasn’t right on his heels. He must have stepped off the path somewhere. Down by the river, I think. Charlie told me not to get too close.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Ashleigh said, intervening to soothe a disagreement before it brewed any more. ‘It looks as though he’s dangerous and he may be armed.’

  Charlie folded his arms over his broad chest. ‘He didn’t come back to the cottage that I saw. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t around.’

  ‘So she isn’t in the cottage. Any signs of violence?’

  ‘None. But she left in a hell of a hurry. No coat, no bag. Even left her phone.’

  ‘We need more support, then. We need to find her.’ Doddsy’s anxiety was evident.

  ‘And him.’ Of the two of them, Brandon was the more immediate problem, the one who might kill again. ‘Get onto that, Doddsy, would you? I’m going to take a look at the cottage.’

  Leaving the others behind, Jude picked his way with care around the side of the building. Charlie was too smart to have touched anything but he’d switched the light on. Brushing his way past the overhanging branch of a yew tree, Jude stepped into the kitchen. Cody’s waxed jacket hung on the back of a chair. He made his way into the living room where the last embers of the fire glowed red and flakes of ash spread on the rug in front of it. Paper, and very old paper, too.

  He recalled the way she’d held those letters, how much they’d meant to her. It was beyond belief that she’d destroyed them herself. Staring with a frown, he was distracted by the pinging of the phone she’d left on the arm of her chair. When he picked it up the screen sprang into life, a notification of a text. Brandon.

  Why don’t you answer me, you bitch? I’m coming for you.

  Pocketing the phone, Jude walked swiftly back round to the front of the house.

  *

  Cody couldn’t think straight. Brandon had tipped her over the edge and she was out of control, so that her body shook and she stuffed a clenched fist into her mouth to stop herself whimpering like an animal. She’d known he was capable of killing but their father’s death, done at a distance, had seemed remote enough to be a sin of omission rather than commission. The violent murders of Lynx, Fi and Seb, who hadn’t threatened him directly, were different, the product of her own obsession so that they lay as much at her door as his and she could see no way of atoning. If she challenged Brandon, he’d kill her, and she would deserve it. I’m so sorry, she mouthed to the ghosts of the dead, so sorry!

  The long shadow of
their father, stretching out from the canyon where the wolves and coyotes must have picked his body clean, snuffed out reason. If she called the police they might not be there in time. She didn’t know where Brandon was, only that the fear of him was in every shadow that surrounded her. Scrambling through the hedge into the woodland at the back of the cottage garden, she picked an uncertain way down towards the road, keeping close to the trunks of the leafless trees, moving as swiftly as she dared to do between them. Beneath her feet the fallen branches snapped like her father’s sun-bleached bones.

  The lights of two cars, in one of which she recognised Jude Satterthwaite, moved through the village and crawled up Coffin Lane. Unbidden, Wordsworth came into her head as she rolled his lines around her brain in search of help. My apprehensions come in crowds; I dread the rustling of the grass; the very shadows of the clouds, Have power to shake me as they pass.

  The shadow that moved in the woods ahead of her was no cloud and no ghost. It was retribution, in jeans and cowboy boots.

  Brandon would love to think he had her on the run. She dropped to her knees, crawled through the mud and the wet leaf mould, resisting the panic that curled in her gut, the kaleidoscope of images in her brain that made sudden appalling sense. She could only just have missed seeing him kill Fi. He must have lured the woman up to the cottage, killed her and got in through the window of his room while Cody was in the kitchen, pretending to be sound asleep when she’d left the cottage. If she’d been a few minutes earlier, she’d have caught him in the act and then she’d have been dead too.

  Crawling in the mud in humiliation was no more that she deserved. Her mouth dry, with that old, remembered terror, she fought to regain some kind of perspective. A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. She was a clever woman. She didn’t panic. Out in the blood-chilling isolation of Wyoming she’d been far more vulnerable, much further from safety than here.