‘Aidan Wilson was older than Mary, am I right?’
Jean Tyson nods decisively, as though this were the righteous state of affairs.
‘They were wed when oor Mary were eighteen. He were twenty-four.’
‘So he’d have been, what – twenty-one when they started seeing each other?’
‘There weren’t many lasses that could say they’d got a boyfriend with his own motor car. When they were courtin’ he took her on trips to Windermere, Whitehaven – and Blackpool once.’
There is an almost wistful look in her eyes – it seems she is recalling her impressions from that time – perhaps her boasts to other mothers whose daughters had not achieved the same success. It seems the bachelor Aidan Wilson held out prospects that did not come to fruition as a son-in-law.
‘Where did they live, after they were married?’
‘At Aidan’s Ma’s place at Balderthwaite. She were an invalid – she suffered MS. She died of her illness after a couple of years – and they took over the lease of the cottage.’ Jean Tyson frowns introspectively. ‘I’d allus said they could come to mine – and they did in the end.’
‘And what was their relationship like – during the time they lived here?’
The woman looks momentarily puzzled – as though the idea that there is some volition over such a thing is a revelation.
‘I don’t suppose it were any different to most married couples.’
‘Were they the sort to have rows?’
She shakes her head, but with some indecision.
‘Not rows, so much.’ (Skelgill waits patiently and in time she supplies more detail.) ‘Mary knew her own mind. Happen she thought sometimes Aidan were holding her back – he weren’t the ambitious sort. But if she snapped at him he’d like as not go out wi’ dog. He weren’t what you’d call confrontational. I never saw him lay a hand on her – if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Skelgill shrugs noncommittally.
‘And after Mary disappeared – what happened?’
‘I’d been minding the bairn, anyway – a lot of the time. I just carried on. Aidan had his job – he had to keep that up.’
She looks at Skelgill, beseechingly, he thinks, from beneath the austere exterior – as if she seeks his approbation for the turn that domestic events must have taken. But his analysis is merely what he regards as common sense: why would you live with your mother-in-law? What, for instance, if one day you wanted to bring home a female friend?
‘Jean, you mentioned that he moved out – how soon after was that?’
She thinks for a few moments.
‘Six months, maybe nine. Any road, it were before the bairn were two – I remember Aidan were supposed to come for his second birthday – and he forgot – or he made up some excuse that he’d been called away.’
There is news in this to Skelgill.
‘Are you saying the child remained with you?’
She looks at him as though she is surprised that he asks; and that she is irked that he might think otherwise.
‘I’ve brought him up like I was his Ma.’
For his part Skelgill remains perplexed. It is an unexpected turn of events.
‘So – Aidan Wilson didn’t have the boy living with him – not part-time – weekends or whatever?’
The woman shakes her head, her expression somewhat blank.
‘What’d have been the point? His cot were here – and all his things. This were his home. Besides, Aidan wouldn’t have known how to look after him – changing nappies, making up bottles. Never mind that the place he moved to – he took lodgings in a B&B down at Grange – he only had a bedroom there, leastways at first.’
She ends the sentence with a disdainful “tch”.
Skelgill takes it as an invitation to probe further.
‘You mentioned that relationship didn’t continue.’
‘He moved to Keswick within the year. Then the less he had to do wi’ bairn – the less he knew what to do wi’ him. And t’ bairn weren’t fussed about seeing him. They’d never what they call bonded. Oor Nick grew up – made his own friends hereabouts – he were more interested in laikin’ with them.’
‘Nick – that’s the name of your grandson?’
‘Aye. Mary were particular about that – not Nicholas – just Nick.’
‘He’s not here now – I mean, he doesn’t stay with you?’
Skelgill casts about in a guileless fashion, as if looking for some sign like a pair of men’s boots or empty beer bottles; but the woman nevertheless seems a little defensive.
‘He’ll be twenty-three this month.’
‘Where is he living?’
‘He’s a mechanic at Dickson’s garage – he’s got free use of a caravan there – they’ve three static vans out t’ back – they let them to holidaymakers. It were right for him to have his independence.’ She frowns introspectively. ‘He still comes round of a morning, mind – for his bait, like?’
‘Dickson’s – that’s Balderthwaite – down Beck Lonnin.’
Skelgill says this to be conversational – the garage has been trading for donkey’s years, so long that it was once a traditional cartwright’s, and everyone knows of it. But she seems to read into his statement some intent. Now there is perhaps a hint of anxiety in the small grey eyes, and she clutches her mug to her chest with both hands.
‘I said to your uniformed lass I ought to be the one as tells him.’
Skelgill glances at DS Jones, who gives a confirmatory nod – this must be a point that was conveyed to her by their colleague upon arrival. Jean Tyson however moves to pre-empt any new objections.
‘He never knew his Ma. You have to remember that. He were nobbut a bab’e when she disappeared. There’s no cause for him to be upset.’ She hesitates – and only after a moment’s indecision does she appear to yield to one side of some internal conflict: she blurts out a supplementary justification. ‘He’s got a learning difficulty – you have to know how to speak wi’ him.’
Skelgill regards her implacably, such that his response, when it comes, might be unexpected.
‘Jean – that’s no problem. You do it in your own good time. Like you say – he were a babe in arms. Whatever happened to your lass, he’s the one person we can be sure weren’t mixed up in it.’
The woman’s features remain conflicted; there might be a silver lining, but her repressed emotions hang heavy, an immovable bank of dark clouds. As if to distract herself she reaches for the teapot, presumably knowing it is empty – but she appears bewildered by the fact and rises automatically from her chair.
‘I should tell him soonest – before he hears it ont’ wireless. He listens t’ local radio while he works. I’ll be garn along when you’ve done wi’ us. I’ll make a fresh mash.’
Skelgill judges her words to be a polite invitation both to stay and to leave. He glances at his colleagues – who indicate via body language that they are replete – but his own response to the sound of water filling a kettle is entirely Pavlovian, and he does not try to dissuade the woman. Besides, there is more to discuss. He begins by adding a qualification to his concession.
‘We’ll make sure there’s nothing released to the media before tomorrow morning. They don’t like it when they’ve got a sniff of something – which no doubt they have – but they realise we have to contact the next of kin before they can go public.’ He inhales between clenched teeth, as if to add emphasis to what he is about to say. ‘Jean, you have to expect the presence of news reporters and film crews in the area – at least for the first day or two when the story breaks. Folk are sick to the back teeth of moaning politicians – so an unsolved murder, a historical case like this – it will attract attention.’
Jean Tyson returns to the table with the recharged teapot. She puts it down with an excess of care that suggests she is containing her frustration. And yet her next question is pragmatic.
‘Does that include Aidan? As next of kin?’
Skelgi
ll glances sharply at DS Jones – but for once here is a detail of which she is uncertain. In the limited time during which she has familiarised herself with the case, the present address – indeed the status – of Aidan Wilson has not yet been established. Of course they intend to see him, but that is a plan to be made. DS Jones, however, at least knows her law.
‘To be frank, Mrs Tyson, there’s no legal definition. Next of kin is any person you nominate in the event you suffer a sudden illness or an accident. They have no powers or rights. We use it as a more general term to refer to the close family. So whether Mr Wilson remarried or not wouldn’t make any difference. We naturally came to you first. No one can be closer than a mother.’
The woman seems pleased by what DS Jones has said, and she regards her confidingly.
‘He don’t have hardly any contact wi’ oor Nick – sends him a text on his birthday and at Christmas. But I don’t reckon he’s remarried. Happen he’d have told him that much.’
Jean Tyson now moves to pour out more tea. DS Jones and DS Leyton tactfully decline. As she is filling his mug, Skelgill rather absently poses what is of course a particularly salient question.
‘Jean, did Mary know about the Kissing Cave? Up in the woods.’
Jean Tyson seems to hesitate in her movement – the heavy clay teapot held motionless between Skelgill’s mug and her own. Her grip trembles a little as she commences to pour.
‘All t’ folk int’ dale know about t’ Kissing Cave – it’s been known for generations. Least, up until recently. Once in a while we’d laik up there as bairns.’ She flashes a self-conscious glance, almost coy. ‘Teenagers an’ all.’ But her thoughts are evidently jerked back to the issue at hand, to the horror of what the place now represents. Her voice becomes strained. ‘But Mary wouldn’t have walked t’ dog up there – she’d have stuck to t’ path along t’ bottom.’
‘What kind of dog were it, Jean?’
‘Jewk? Same as I’ve got now. That Archie out there – he’s us third Lakeland since Jewk died. There were Tupper, but he got run down by Pick Pearson’s tractor. Then the last one were named Cur – he lived till he were twelve. I’ve had Archie just above a year.’
Skelgill nods encouragingly.
‘On the day Mary went missing – what time did the dog – Jewk – come back here?’
The woman looks troubled by the effort of recall.
‘I can’t rightly mind. It were afore Aidan got back from his work – and that were normally about five. It were maybe threeish.’
Skelgill is thinking it is probably documented in the case notes. This question must have been asked at the time, and the answer would have been fresh in the memory.
‘And he were in the habit of doing that – you didn’t think owt were amiss?’
She shakes her head.
‘Afore they moved in I used to keep him if they went away for the night. And Mary’d often walk him along – it’s no distance from where she were living at Balderthwaite – there’s a path beside Slatterdale Beck, so she could let him off t’ leash. Jewk knew his way well enough, and he’d turn up here – especially evenings when Mary were at work and he’d bin left wi’ Aidan.’
She seems to display a measure of satisfaction in regard to the creature’s allegiance.
‘You kept the dog – after Aidan Wilson moved out?’
‘Aye – he were a marra for oor Nick when he were growing up.’ She lapses into thought, and begins to shake her head ruefully. ‘If only dogs could talk, eh?’
Skelgill nods pensively – although there are various explanations for the dog’s behaviour. Often enough he encounters owners whose pets have become separated for reasons of their own making – lured by the hot whiff of a fox, spooked by another bigger dog, or they’ve tagged along with a commercial dog-walker’s pack to scrounge treats – and it is not uncommon to find the miscreant skulking back at the car park, while the owner whistles in the wind. The dog Jewk may not have been a silent witness to Mary Wilson’s fate.
‘Was Mary in the habit of meeting anyone – when she took the dog, I mean? Another dog walker? A friend? It’s what a lot of folk seem to do.’
But Jean Tyson shakes her head.
‘Most folk back then had proper working dogs, hounds, sheepdogs, ratters. It weren’t a big thing like it is now – all these fancy mongrels – and t’ dog-walkers’ vans you see about the place. Mary just used to like that she’d get a break – some peace when the bairn were sleeping. She’d come back and say she’d had this or that new idea – for her woollens, or for how she was going to make more of a business of it. And she liked the exercise – she had a lovely figure, did oor Mary, and she soon got that back, what wi’ all her walking. No, she preferred to go alone. And that were her downfall, weren’t it?’
It is not easy for her audience to divine the nuances of the elderly woman’s sentiments; such is her bleak and cheerless delivery. But Skelgill’s assessment is that her tone implies sadness rather than rancour.
‘She were only doing what thousands of other folk do, Jean. You can’t be expected not to go for a country walk, for fear of something happening to you.’
She looks at him directly.
‘Aye – except folk kept their bairns away from t’ Bowder Stone after oor Mary’s car were found there. And from t’ woods all down t’ dale. The Bowder Wood, Cummacatta, right past Grange down t’ Girt Wood.’ She pauses reflectively. ‘T’aint much of an issue nowadays, though. You hardly see bairns at all – they’re too busy with their computer games and mobile phones.’
Skelgill is nodding. What she says is probably true, even in these relatively isolated villages. Kids just don’t laik about – play out – like they used to, even in his day, when the first curling tendrils of digital technology were beginning to take their insidious grip on society. It has struck him on his two brief visits to the Kissing Cave – Friggeshol, as the professor would have it – that the vicinity is overgrown and appears unvisited. And both of the routes he has forged, on Sunday the more direct ascent from the Bowder Stone, and today the traversing zigzags from Cummacatta, required old memories of the lie of the land; there was no actual worn path in either case. His musings are interrupted by Jean Tyson’s determined voice.
‘Course – I never let oor Nick out on his own – not down there. Not till he were a big lad. I could never have lived with mesen if lightning had struck twice.’
Despite the implied improbability of the idiom, Skelgill can’t help thinking that, when he narrowly misses a take, the first thing he does is cast back to the exact spot. The woman has a point; and now she raises another depressing aspect of their mutual business.
‘Happen I’ll be able to start preparations for t’ funeral.’ Her voice becomes weak and plaintive. ‘To lay Mary to rest – proper like.’
There is the rather uncomfortable truth that her daughter has been buried; but she seems phlegmatic, sustained by what for bereaved relatives is surely only a meagre crumb of comfort, when human remains are located.
‘Jean – it could be a few days before the Coroner will be able to give the go ahead. You understand it’s something we need to get right – in case we miss a vital clue.’
The elderly woman looks tired; she acquiesces.
‘I’ve waited nigh on twenty-two years. A mother can bide her time.’
Skelgill is about to commend her stoicism when there is a sudden clamour, a renewed commotion from out of doors. It is the hens and what sounds like a vagrant goose that has entered the fray, to throw in its weight on the avian side of the equation. The dog is yapping spiritedly. Skelgill rises.
‘I’ll go and referee.’ He reaches and places a palm briefly on the woman’s shoulder. ‘My colleagues will just take a few technical details that we’ll need. And we’ll be back in touch as soon as we have some information for you about timings and suchlike.’
The woman forces a grin of sorts.
‘Aye – that’s alreet, love. You tell yer Ma I were as
kin’ forra.’
Skelgill bows and steps away. He turns on the threshold to address his subordinates.
‘Just top line. I think Mrs Tyson’s helped us enough for one day.’
DS Jones nods amenably, though she may be disappointed that her preparation has not yet been put to good use. DS Leyton turns a new leaf of his pocket notebook.
When the two sergeants emerge they find Skelgill reading a photocopied hand-drawn bill that has been tied to a wooden telegraph pole inside an inverted punched plastic sleeve (though the Cumbrian damp has still got at it). They amble across – there is something in his body language that suggests he is waiting for them to do just that.
‘Look at this.’
He steps back.
DS Leyton squints. He clears his throat. Beneath an illustrated Herdwick sheep is a paragraph of flowery text that he now reads aloud.
‘“Balderthwaite Shepherds’ Meet – Wednesday 23rd September. More than two centuries of tradition, not to be missed. Over 40 classes for Herdwick and Swaledale sheep. Working shepherds’ dogs. Fell race. Hand clipping. Shepherds’ working sticks. New this year, Yat Lowpin! Categories fer bairdens an’ fer arl uns. Scordy an’ scran served in the Twa Tups public house. Music afterwards. All welcome – even offcomers frey Kezzick. Entrance free.”’
‘Cor blimey, Guvnor – some geezer’s havin’ a larf. What the flippin’ heck’s Yat Lowpin when it’s at home?’
Skelgill grins. He gives a gentle nudge with his elbow to DS Jones, who stands at his side.
‘You’re a local lass. Translate Cumbrian to Cockney for him.’
DS Jones takes a deep breath – it suggests she is not entirely confident.
‘Well – a yat’s a gate. And to lowp means to jump. So I guess if you put the two together, you get the idea. Bairdens are young people, and arl means old.’ She looks at Skelgill impishly. ‘It doesn’t say where the cut-off is. Maybe you can make a glorious return, Guv?’
Skelgill grins sardonically. But it seems his cheeks begin to flush and he turns and heads back towards his car.
‘Aye, very funny, Jones.’
Murder at the Meet Page 5