Death on the River: A gripping and unputdownable English murder mystery (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 2)

by Clare Chase

  As Tara tried to scramble up again she glanced over her shoulder once more – not to check for spectres in the dark, but for anyone who might have seen her make such an idiot of herself. But everything was quiet. The damn tiles were as slippery as hell. In the end she had to slide off them, onto one of the small patches of gravel that lay either side of the path, inside the brick wall boundary of her so-called garden. At last she was able to right herself and reach for her scattered belongings.

  When she’d finally gathered everything together, she leant across to unlock her front door and stepped diagonally into the house, avoiding the snowy tiles this time.

  She was cold after the fall and desperate for a change of clothes. She went straight to her bathroom, undressed and stood in a hot shower, where she pointed the jets at her back, hip and elbow, hoping to ease the pain. Already she could see that the large red area where she’d smacked onto the ice was turning purple.

  As soon as she was out she changed into jeans and layered up tops and jumpers – thin, thicker, thicker still – to try to keep herself warm. The most figure-hugging one was cashmere – a present from her mother, of course, who didn’t really believe in other sorts of sweaters. Tara grudgingly admitted that it was effective at keeping out the cold.

  After that she boiled the kettle and made hot chocolate to drink and a hot water bottle to sit on her lap. She rounded the arrangement off with a vodka chaser, two ibuprofen and the softest cushion she could find to perch on at her seat at the kitchen table. She needed to email Blake. He’d sent her a message asking for a full update and making it clear he knew she’d been keeping some of the details back from him. But he hadn’t bawled her out for meeting Monica Cairncross unofficially.

  The act of starting to type her notes made images of the day flit through her head. She remembered how cross Wilkins had looked when he realised Blake was seriously going to commandeer her for what her boss regarded as a wild goose chase. And the relief of escaping the station and heading out on her journey.

  And then suddenly, she stopped, and stared into space as she thought back further, to when she’d left her house earlier that day.

  It had rained the previous night, but by the morning it had cleared. Her path had been dry when she’d left home. Then, as forecast, the temperature had plummeted. As she’d left for Suffolk in the early afternoon it had started to snow.

  The temperature had been below freezing since then. There’d been no chance for any of the snow to thaw and refreeze. There would be well-trodden areas in Cambridge where the snow had compacted into ice. But her front path wasn’t one of them.

  So why—

  Within a second, she was back outside again, crouching down in her front garden. She swept the snow from the tiles in front of her house, feeling the pain as the intense cold worked its way into her fingers.

  Underneath the snowfall was sheet ice. A thick layer – the sort you got when someone had unthinkingly thrown a bucket of water over a car windscreen to clear it, leaving a skiddy death trap to form on the road for the next poor sod who was passing.

  Except this ice was deeper than that. And no one would ever spill water over her front tiles by accident.

  Someone had done this deliberately. It was the only possible answer. She caught her breath in the frigid air and felt her heart rate increase.

  At one point – after her death threat – she’d had cameras installed at her house. They’d been police property – interlinked with the station – and had long since been removed. She wished now that she could see who’d visited her place earlier that day – before the snow had started. She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and photographed the scene. If whoever had stopped by had left any other evidence behind, she’d only see it once the snow had melted.

  She stood again slowly, feeling the pain in her back as she straightened up. She was getting stiff now.

  Her accident was meant to happen, she was sure of it. All the perpetrator had needed was her address, the weather forecast and a few bottles of water.

  Why had they done it? To warn her off? To make her scared? Or maybe to make her colleagues think she was paranoid if she was determined enough to report it.

  The evidence was destined to melt away, and she was willing to bet Wilkins would call her ‘accident’ misadventure…

  Five

  Tara had grown seriously cold as she investigated the situation outside her cottage. She guessed most of the shaking her body was doing was down to that. Most, but not all. She put the chain on the front door, kicked off her snowy boots and then walked around the house quickly, closing all the curtains – something that hadn’t seemed like a priority when all she’d wanted was a hot shower. Still she shook. She went to check the elderly boiler but it was firing away; the heating was on all right – the insulation just wasn’t good enough.

  Resolutely, she refilled her hot water bottle and microwaved her chocolate (nothing stayed warm in her house for more than a few minutes). After removing the revolting skin that had now formed on top of her drink she returned to her task of emailing Blake, half her mind still on the sheet ice outside.

  After she’d given the DI all the salient points from both Lucas Everett’s mum and the coroner’s office near Kellness, she pressed send.

  She hadn’t yet told him about the situation outside her front door. It seemed ridiculous. Who the hell would do something like that? He’d think she was being paranoid, and that was nothing to what Wilkins would say if he ever found out. At last she abandoned the idea of mentioning it. It probably wasn’t important, anyway.

  For a moment she felt too tired to move. She needed food, but the cooker – though only four feet away – felt distant. She found herself staring into space, and thinking of Blake, wondering what he’d think of the information she’d gathered that day. Though of course he probably wouldn’t be sitting there reading non-urgent work emails on a Friday night. It must be family time.

  Every so often she’d heard snippets of gossip about his wife at the station. People often said how gorgeous Babette was, and how enchanting their daughter Kitty was proving to be. Kitty was six, apparently, so she must have been a toddler when Blake and his wife had had their trial separation. Years had gone by, but there were still hints that they weren’t happy. She’d heard Wilkins question how anyone could complain about being hitched to someone like Babette. And wonder why on earth she’d chosen a scruff like Blake. Hardly surprising – Wilkins saw all other blokes as rivals, and spent his time working out how he measured up against them.

  For a second, the thought of having Blake there with her flitted across Tara’s consciousness. The image of him came unbidden: sharing theories on Ralph Cairncross, opening up a bottle of red, each mucking in with the cooking. She pushed the idea out as soon as it arrived. She was happy on her own. It was just that it had been unexpectedly satisfying, pooling ideas with him when they’d been caught up in the same murder investigation.

  She’d shared thoughts on multiple police cases since then, of course – though not with Blake. Her mind ran over the connections she’d made over the last four years, during her time in uniform and after she’d joined CID. There were a few colleagues who’d been hard to take – sexist, defensive or patronising – but several that she’d really valued. She’d got as far as joining them for evenings at the pub, and with one guy things had gone further. Her thoughts lingered on Toby for a moment. She’d liked him, but there’d been something missing; she still wasn’t sure what.

  It was ironic, really. There were very few people Tara could be herself with. In fact, she could count them on the fingers of one hand. Literally the fingers: she didn’t even need the thumb. There was Bea, who’d looked after her as a child; Kemp, the ex-cop who’d taught her self-defence when she was stalked as a teenager; Matt, her old colleague at Not Now magazine – and, well, that was about it really. With most other people she put on an act of some kind or another: to get information as a professional, or to save face or b
ecause of her pride. And the one other person she could see herself adding to that very short list was Blake. That had become obvious to her oddly quickly. They’d emailed briefly, after the court case where Samantha Seabrook’s killer had been convicted, but as Blake had settled back into his marriage the messages had become stilted. She guessed he hadn’t wanted to share anything personal. In the end, the correspondence had tailed off. She had a feeling it had been she who’d failed to respond to Blake’s last message, but she guessed he’d been relieved that the exchange had petered out.

  It really was time to cook, but she couldn’t settle to it straight away. Before she started, she walked into her darkened sitting room and stood by the window, tweaking the curtain very slightly so that she could see out onto the common, towards the river. The moon was behind a cloud now, but still the scene seemed to glow. She felt as though she was illuminated, even though she was standing well back from the glass and to one side. In an instant, she let the curtain fall back into place. If there was anyone out there now she didn’t want to be seen. But the view she’d glimpsed had looked like a perfect, empty stage set. Whoever was playing games, they’d have long since gone home.

  She went back to the kitchen and poured herself a second vodka and tonic, then set some leftover pasta sauce to heat up whilst she boiled the kettle for some spaghetti water. She swigged her drink and wandered back over to the table again.

  An email from Kemp had come in.

  How’s life back at the old homestead? And what about work? Coping all right with DS Wilkins? The guy sounds like a prick.

  Tara smiled. She’d met Kemp when she was seventeen, but right from the start he’d treated her as an equal – never talked down to her, never doubted her word. Over the long years they’d known each other their relationship had developed and by her mid-twenties they were sometimes more than just friends. Despite that, he never expected anything of her and their association was as relaxed and balanced as it had always been. That didn’t mean he wasn’t frank with his opinions though. It had taken him about two years to get over the fact that she’d decided to train as a police officer, but these days he was keen to hear her gossip. His own opinion of the force was low. He’d left under a cloud, following a complaint about his attitude and professional conduct. He’d always been cagey about the exact circumstances of his departure and she didn’t care. The important thing from her point of view was that he’d been there for her when no one else would listen. He’d seen her in tears on her way into the station where he worked, just as he was on his way out for the final time. He’d taken her in hand and taught her self-defence, including some low tricks to ensure she no longer felt like a victim.

  She composed a reply.

  Homestead is slightly less warm than an igloo, but I’ll work on it. Wilkins is causing all the problems I anticipated, but I’ll work on that too.

  If her DS imagined he was going to get the better of her she would delight in disappointing him. All the same, when she’d seen the opening for her job, she’d never imagined quite how hard it would be to work as his subordinate. For a second she wondered if she’d have still applied if she’d known – but she’d been waiting for an opportunity to come up in Cambridge so she could be close to Bea. She sighed and added:

  How’s life in the world of security? Decked any villains recently? X

  And clicked ‘send’.

  Over her pasta she reviewed everything she’d come up with that day.

  The visit to the coroner’s office had thrown up some new information. Lucas Everett had been drinking heavily the night he died, just as Ralph Cairncross had. It fitted with the risky behaviour he’d indulged in. Would he have gone ahead with his swim if he’d been sober? Tara could imagine him getting fired up about his plan as he consumed more booze. All the same, his head must have cleared pretty quickly when he’d waded out into the North Sea. Even on a mild autumn evening the water would have been intensely cold. Yet he went ahead.

  According to the police reports that had been submitted, no one had seen Lucas go out onto the beach, but that wasn’t surprising. His clothes had been found further out of town from where his mother lived. She was guessing that bit of the seafront would be pretty reliably deserted in the late evening. He’d last been seen at 9 p.m. on the night he’d died, in the same Co-op where she’d bought her sandwich that lunchtime. He’d purchased a bottle of Adnams East Coast vodka. It had been found – very much depleted – amongst his clothes. The only clear prints on it had been his and those of the person who’d served him. The cashier said he’d been cheerful. ‘As though he’d had a good day and was looking forward to the rest of his evening.’ Apparently he’d even joked with the staff as he left the store. There’d been a twinkle in his eye. One of the colleagues of the woman who’d served him had wondered if he’d already had a drink or two, but it might have just been high spirits. He hadn’t smelt of alcohol and he hadn’t talked about his plans for later.

  It sounded to Tara as though he’d been excited. If he’d already decided to undertake his late-night swim by that stage, she was guessing he was anticipating it and feeling confident.

  The handwriting on the note he’d left on the beach had been identified as his by his mother.

  Tara had been so absorbed she was forgetting her pasta. She took a forkful and found it was already lukewarm. Microwave time again…

  As she walked stiffly over to reheat her food, her mind turned to the last item on the reports the coroner had passed on to her. It related to the paper Lucas Everett had used to write his note.

  An adventure in memory of Ralph. And if I die, then death is not the end.

  It said that the paper had been ripped from a pad. There were small bits of glue along one edge, where it had been bound in amongst other pages.

  Lucas hadn’t had the rest of the pad on him, and no one had managed to locate it. It hadn’t seemed important at the time.

  All the same, that bit of paper had to have been ripped from somewhere – a point she’d made to Blake in her email. But as she’d typed the words she’d privately acknowledged that the case she was trying to build looked shaky at best.

  Six

  Blake was sitting at the kitchen table at his home in Fen Ditton, enjoying a moment of peace and quiet. He glanced out of the French windows into his back garden. The leafless trees were heavy with snow. The shrouded shrubs loomed out of the shadows, glowing shapes in a shaft of moonlight that had slipped between the clouds. He wondered how Tara had got on in Suffolk – and if she was safely home. There was a thaw forecast overnight, with more rain, but conditions now weren’t great for driving.

  On glancing back at his laptop he saw an email had come in from her; it was as though he’d conjured her up by allowing her into his thoughts.

  He’d just opened the message when the sound of his wife, Babette, at the doorway made him start. He’d thought she was still upstairs. She’d dozed off whilst he was reading Kitty’s bedtime story and he hadn’t disturbed her. She stretched, elongating her petite stature slightly, and yawned. She was graceful and cat-like in her movements.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realised how tired I was.’ She walked over to the table and he felt his shoulders tense. ‘What’s that?’ She was standing behind him, peering at his inbox. ‘Work?’ And then she laughed. ‘Silly question, of course it is!’

  He nodded and resisted the urge to shut the laptop lid. The email wouldn’t be private, of course, but he wished Babette didn’t feel she had carte blanche to read his messages over his shoulder. He hadn’t even had the chance to look at it yet. For a second, he wondered what would have happened, when Kitty had been a toddler, if he’d taken the same approach with his wife’s emails. Would he have known she’d been planning to walk out on him, instead of it coming as an ice-cold shock, taking his breath away?

  For the hundredth time he questioned his decision to accept her back into his life. He’d done it because he couldn’t bear to be apart fr
om Kitty, but then he’d let the child down. For the first year after Babette had moved back in, he hadn’t been able to treat either of them as he had before. The burning anger he’d felt towards his wife made a resurgence, and every interaction with Kitty felt staged.

  In the end, Babette had had it out with him. The knife-edge atmosphere was more damaging for Kitty than them being apart. She’d told him he needed to conquer his feelings if he really wanted to make a go of it. He knew she was right, but it didn’t make it any easier. The fact that she’d been planning to remove Kitty from his life for good meant forgiveness was hard to summon. Babette had explained repeatedly how wrong she’d been, though. And spent months begging him to take her back. For a time, he’d managed to transfer the anger he’d felt towards her to the man who’d persuaded her to leave him.

  It was complicated, and he knew he needed to make an effort. He turned to look up at Babette, reaching out to take her hand. ‘Yes, it’s work. Something unexpected came up earlier today.’

  Babette met his eyes for a moment before dropping her gaze. ‘I was going to suggest an early night.’

  After they’d got past the early days, when Blake had barely been able to hide his feelings, they’d begun to have sex again. And now, Babette had started to talk about wanting a baby brother or sister for Kitty. It was something he’d been refusing to tackle head on. He baulked at the idea. He wasn’t even sure it was right to stay in the marriage – it sure as hell couldn’t be right to have another child.