‘Flippin’ heck, Guv – if this is the obvious route I shouldn’t like to try and find the difficult one.’
Skelgill stops dead in his tracks and turns. DS Jones is right on his heels and has to put out a hand against his shoulder to avoid a minor collision.
‘Think about what you just said, Leyton.’
DS Leyton seems more inclined to deal with his oxygen debt – but he gamely contrives a response from limited resources.
‘I see where you’re coming from, Guv.’ He buys a second or two while he mops his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Local knowledge, you’re talking about – right?’
Skelgill nods gravely.
‘The Bowder Stone’s a proper tourist attraction – like you just witnessed. Notice there’s no signpost to the Kissing Cave. It’s not on the map and it’s nowt to look at – there’s dozens of formations more spectacular. And it’s hard to reach even if you know where it is.’ Now he regards DS Jones with a rather peculiar expression – his gaze seems to address her midriff. ‘But if I were carting you up here, this is the way I’d come. Even then it would be no picnic – but that’s what I mean by the obvious route.’
While DS Leyton seems content with this assessment DS Jones nods more reluctantly. There is a spark of defiance in her response.
‘Or, if I knew the way, you could just let me walk, Guv.’
Skelgill stares at her for moment. The purpose of their visit is to get the lie of the land, not to firm up hypotheses – which was surely the failing of the original investigation. Accordingly, he raises a hand and turns, and leads them, in the manner of an Indian scout, back into the shade of the oaks. A couple of minutes more brings them to the minor ravine that is Odinsgill, complete with its eponymous beck, and a cordon of police tape confirms they have reached their destination. They have a brief encounter with a prowling PC Dodd, who appears to be patrolling the perimeter in order to keep himself occupied. The forensic team has made the archaeologists’ gazebo its base; conveniently they have similar methods, if not motives.
Following a confab with the senior investigator, the three detectives move up to the mouth of the Kissing Cave. DS Jones and DS Leyton carry white high-density polyethylene suits and overshoes; Skelgill has decided he need not enter for a second time. They reach the rock face, an almost vertical section on the steeper southern side of the ravine, with clumps of ferns and sedges springing from ledges. Skelgill indicates what is, at a glance, an inconspicuous crevice, a narrow rippling slit in the rock that begins about two feet from the ground and extends to a height of maybe seven feet – it looks impenetrable and indeed DS Leyton reacts with apparent disbelief.
‘In there?’
DS Jones is adroitly donning her overalls, wasting no time. DS Leyton, however, remains rooted to the spot.
‘I ain’t gonna fit, Guv – you could end up with another corpse on your hands.’
‘Leyton – it’s wider once you’re past the opening – I’ll give you a shove.’
DS Leyton looks with alarm from one colleague to the other.
‘I’m happy for Emma to report back.’ He mops his brow again. Then a note of rising hysteria seems to grip his voice. ‘You know me and caves, Guv?’
Skelgill is unsympathetic.
‘Come off it, Leyton. Water, heights – now it’s caves. At this rate you’ll run out of things to be allergic to.’
But DS Jones is staring at her fellow sergeant with sudden concern – for she is remembering tell of an episode of which her colleague does not speak – yet could rightly boast – for he received one of the highest orders of bravery that can be bestowed in peacetime. It concerned a case of fire on the London Underground. Now she guesses it is resurfacing as a case of PTSD.
‘Guv – let me go – there’s probably not much to see – I’ll take photos if need be. It’ll save time if there’s just the one of us.’
There is something about her tone that attracts Skelgill’s attention – although his expression remains sceptical as he considers her request. Whether the penny has dropped is not clear – and DS Jones does not wish to embarrass her colleague by explaining her reasoning. Before Skelgill can react, she darts towards him and feigns a lunge with puckered lips.
‘Kiss me luck!’
And she has turned and gone, disappearing with alacrity into the fissure.
There ensues a brief silence. A look of relief spreads across DS Leyton’s strained countenance, and he makes a double-clicking sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
‘She’s got the bit between her teeth on this one, Guv.’
Skelgill is staring at the rocky cleft. He appears to ignore his subordinate’s observation.
‘What did she just say?’
‘What, Guv? Er – wish me luck, wasn’t it?’
4. MRS TYSON
Monday, midday
‘I’m glad we’ve not had to tell her, Guv. I reckon that’s the worst blinkin’ part of the job, breaking bad news to bereaved families.’
Skelgill is staring solemnly ahead. He has pulled up beside a small marked squad car on a patch of roadside gravel. There is a hand-painted sign, flaking and askew affixed to a weathered farm gate, that may once have stated, “Private Parking” – something of a necessity during the summer months in particular, when Slatterthwaite, in common with many Lakeland hamlets, becomes a depository for the vehicles of inconsiderate trippers that disgorge their oft-unruly occupants to fan out across the fells, with limited regard for the Countryside Code.
But September is somewhat different. All but the elite private schools are back and the visitor profile therefore shifts along the social spectrum to well-heeled empty nesters, dedicated to making the most of their golden years, coming to explore and tramp while there is still sap in the veins and warmth in the air; it is a time when late rooms in Cumbria’s myriad gourmet hotels become as rare as hens’ teeth. As such, the hamlet of Slatterthwaite – the last settlement on a dead-end B-road – is something of a time capsule, since it has been spared the scourge of holiday homes and B&Bs, and has no ancient inn to serve up langoustines and quinoa, there is no talk of Marx and nuclear fission; indeed it offers the quality of entering a farmyard as much as a village.
Mrs Jean Tyson’s is the end cottage of a row, a low stone-built slate-roofed terrace that fronts directly onto the single-track lane, and behind which there is space only for truncated rear gardens where runner beans strain before the parabola of the post-glacial dale curves skywards, a looming feature that eats into the light of the winter afternoons and above which the silhouette of a buzzard seems permanently to hang like a child’s tethered kite. There is a side fence of wooden palings, rather rickety, and a gate – ajar – from which three red hens now explode like a crackling firework, pursued by a young Lakeland Terrier – and it is apparent that the back door of the property has been opened and a uniformed WPC whom they recognise reverses out, evidently concluding a conversation and making consolatory hand gestures. An elderly lady becomes partially visible on the threshold. The detectives emerge from the car and are noticed – and there now ensues what could look like a choreographed handover. DS Jones intercepts the WPC and exchanges information. Skelgill intercepts the big-pawed pup and wrestles with it playfully. DS Leyton intercepts the householder and chaperones her back inside, shortly to be joined by his colleagues – and the pup, which has not had enough, and persists in sallying at Skelgill’s shins. They have entered a low-ceilinged 1970’s-style dining kitchen with a formica-topped table and matching chrome-framed chairs. The woman seats her new visitors and shoos the dog outside, and a renewed bout of clucking reaches them through the open top section of the stable-style door. Then she sets about putting on the kettle and pulling down mugs from a shelf. She speaks without turning her head.
‘I didn’t expect you this quick. I shouldn’t have thought there were no rush.’
Her words are surprisingly matter of fact. She is a small woman of just over five feet, with a helme
t of short grey hair. She has a stocky masculinity, and fair skin that looks like it might be mottled with a heat rash. They know from their files her age to be seventy-two, but there is nothing creaky about her deliberate movements. She wears a pale-blue short-sleeved overall in keeping with the canteen-like impression of the spick-and-span kitchen. Skelgill is wondering if her busy, offhand manner is a reaction to the news she has received – a sort of displacement activity to keep at bay the shock. He is also thinking that ‘no rush’ was part of the problem twenty-two years ago. He realises his subordinates are waiting for him to reply when Jean Tyson speaks again.
‘Thoo’s one of Minnie Graham’s lads, int’ thee?’
Though she intones it as a question it is clear she knows it to be a fact. Skelgill clears his throat self-consciously.
‘That’s right, Mrs Tyson. You know her, aye?’
‘I see your Ma on her bike – sometimes when I’m down at t’ Post Office in Balderthwaite. Then she pedals back over t’ Honister.’ She seems to snort. ‘You’re tapped, you lot are.’
Skelgill raises an eyebrow.
‘You’re not the first to say it.’
The woman has filled a teapot and brings a tray to the table.
‘And you’re the lad that won t’ fell race the year oor Mary disappeared. That set t’ cat amongst pigeons.’
Skelgill is caught out by this remark. It is plain to see he is conflicted. When he might bask in the unexpected ray of glory, there seems to be a reprimand, a sting in the tail – as though he were responsible for something of which he is unaware. He senses his colleagues are staring at him – perhaps they are surprised he eschewed the opportunity to allude to his fell-running prowess earlier. He is further confused that Jean Tyson has conflated mention of her daughter with reference to himself. He nods accommodatingly, not knowing what he is accommodating. But the woman settles at the end of the table. There is milk already in the mugs and she pours tea without a further word and divvies out the strong brew. Skelgill avails himself of sugar and then realises Jean Tyson is waiting her turn. He watches her stir in two heaped spoonfuls. He has seen photographs of Mary Wilson in the files, but in her mother he does not recognise anything of the fine featured brunette, with the exception perhaps of the high cheekbones that in the older woman are cancelled by a belligerent jaw; there is a tight-lipped narrow mouth where the daughter’s was full and voluptuous; the eyes are small grey gimlets versus generous lanceolate emeralds. He wonders what her father looked like – a man who had not been on the scene since her childhood and now known to be deceased.
Skelgill’s lack of response – his distraction by talk of the fell race, and his mind thus caused to wander – sees DS Jones begin to extract her prepared notes from her shoulder bag. But before the detective sergeant can initiate what might be considered formal proceedings Jean Tyson makes a stolid pronouncement.
‘I allus knew she were close by. She wouldn’t have left t’ bairn – not after all them years tryin’ for one.’
At this, Skelgill seems to snap out of his reverie.
‘What did you think happened to her, Jean?’
His tone is conservational, and that he has switched to use her Christian name seems in keeping with the familiarity she has demonstrated with his own antecedent. However, when she faces him there is a distinct hardness in her eyes – albeit difficult to read; is she bottling up her emotions, or simply inured by the passing of two decades to the reality that has finally become manifest?
‘Tha don’t get buried under a pile of rocks int’ cave without being murdered.’
That she evidently regards the new information to be consistent with her original belief does not prompt Skelgill to contest this view – although murder has a strict technical definition of which they cannot yet be certain; thus he is obliged to offer a partial caveat.
‘Obviously, we’re waiting for some tests to come back. But – aye.’
The woman regards him unblinkingly, and compresses the small straight line of her mouth.
‘Will thee catch him, this time round?’
Skelgill wrestles with the muscles of his face that might betray the practical doubts that writhe beneath. He takes a pull at his tea and observes her over the rim of the mug. An outsider listening in might have heard a cynical note in the woman’s voice: that she has not the least expectation of what she asks, and is disparaging of officialdom and all that it cares for her. But Skelgill detects an entirely different aspiration in her harsh inflection. Fell folk like Jean Tyson do not wear their heart on their sleeve. As if hewn from the very rock beneath their feet, their character shaped by the rugged landscape and the inclement weather and the economic hardship, such people have their own special code for sentiment. So what Skelgill hears is not a dismissal of his predecessors’ ineffectual efforts and distrust in the lip service his new generation of coppers will pay, but an appeal that taps his provenance. He maintains eye contact and, once more conscious of the gaze of his subordinates upon him, he nods gravely.
‘Who would have murdered her, Jean?’
For split second there is a reaction – an involuntary, almost furtive glance at the green fellside framed in the open half-door – that makes Skelgill in the instant think that she expects to see a face there. But his perception is infinitesimal, and when the woman replies her answer dispels his fleeting fantasy.
‘Who would do sommat like that? A young mother int’ prime of her life.’
Skelgill waits, but she has nothing to add.
‘I realise that if anything specific had come up – some event, something said that triggered an idea – you would have got straight in touch. But is there a more general feeling, an impression you’ve formed over time?’
‘Like, someone’s tried to make amends – or who still can’t look us in the eye?’
Skelgill snatches a sidelong glance at his colleagues. This is far more explicit a response than he has dared to expect. She has cut through the well-meant flimflam and has called a spade a spade. She stares grimly into her tea, stirring methodically.
‘When you’ve had sommat like this happen, you think everyone’s acting strange towards you.’ She looks up, again betraying little emotion. ‘And they probably are.’
Skelgill pauses for thought. He can see that DS Jones is poised with her list of prepared questions. But it is dawning upon him that it is his instinct to treat the death of Mary Wilson as though it were a current event. Rather than pass the baton to his sergeant he raises both palms with spread fingers to indicate their surroundings.
‘What were Mary’s circumstances, prior to her disappearance?’
Jean Tyson seems unperturbed that he has changed the subject.
‘She liked it here – but that Aidan, he didn’t. But beggars can’t be choosers. And I were around to look after t’ bairn when they weren’t.’
‘What brought them to stay here?’
The corners of the woman’s mouth seem to twitch with disapproval.
‘Aidan lost his job at Wukiton – he were some kind of draughtsman in the office at the steelworks. They couldn’t manage their rent – and Mary seven months wi’ child and not being able to work towards the end.’
‘But, Aidan Wilson, he got another job?’ Skelgill glances at DS Jones, who gives a barely perceptible nod.
‘Aye – he got work as a sales rep – but it didn’t pay as much. And Mary were just getting back on her feet – with her own work. He didn’t pull his weight.’
It is not Skelgill’s inclination to take sides. Of course, he has sympathy for this woman, dour and painfully unemotional though she may be – but there is the other’s perspective. He is guessing that the tiny property has only one additional room downstairs, at the front, and two small bedrooms in the half-attic floor above. It would have been cramped – something he knows all about – but it does not escape him that living with the mother-in-law is a different species of cramped. Moreover, the bereaved husband would have been investigated a
s a possible suspect. There should be nothing read into such – it is basic police procedure to eliminate close acquaintances, a circle from which the perpetrator can oft be drawn. But for Aidan Wilson – knowing his mother-in-law will have been questioned about his whereabouts, his relationship with her daughter, his habits and behaviour – there would have been a lasting discomfort. Though cleared by the DNA sweep, when the process failed it damned everyone, as DS Jones’s article opined. It cannot have been easy to live both under the same roof and under suspicion.
Jean Tyson may almost be reading his thoughts.
‘Afterwards – after Mary disappeared – he got himself out soon enough. And it weren’t long before he were going wi’ his landlady. And that never lasted.’
Skelgill is pondering which of several avenues that are opening up to take. The original police investigation was not designed to chronicle the subsequent life histories of the actors – and yet, if there is to be a solution it may lie in occurrences since. Certainly any attempt simply to re-navigate the inquiry of twenty-two years ago is likely to wash up on the same old rocks, tarnished by time and tide and holed by the absence of participants who may have passed on or drifted away. Yet there is something in what DS Leyton said – that, yes, he was there. He was here. Naïve maybe, green, teenage – nonetheless those events form part of the continuum for which he has an unbroken affinity. The same cannot be said of the now-retired DI who was in charge of the case, a well-respected detective, but a man that hailed from urban Newcastle and was every inch Skelgill’s opposite.
Just as his colleagues must be thinking he has lost his train of thought, Skelgill responds, if a little obliquely, to Jean Tyson’s remarks.
‘But Mary and Aidan Wilson had been together for a good time, aye?’
The woman seems to take pride in this point, shifting into a more upright position and pulling back her shoulders.
‘Since oor Mary were fifteen.’
Skelgill inclines his head. That is half of the lifetime that was cut short.
Murder at the Meet Page 4