Murder at the Meet

by Bruce Beckham

  Skelgill is nodding to this – as an owner himself, he is acutely aware of the issue of dogs and sheep, that they do not mix; and the risk to the dog if they should. He pictures Patrick Pearson’s shotgun – no doubt he would loose off both barrels first and ask questions later. But even this mild mannered shepherd would probably put his flock before a family pet, if push came to shove. DS Leyton continues.

  ‘It makes you wonder why she didn’t do that. It would have been her chance to see the nipper.’

  He says this rather musingly, as though realising it would be a natural state of affairs. Meanwhile a small furrow seems to have formed on the brow of Sean Nicolson.

  ‘Happen she thought there weren’t time for that. She took her car, didn’t she?’

  DS Leyton shrugs.

  ‘But if she were tight on time, why not just walk round the village?’

  ‘If she wanted to let t’ dog off lead. It’d been tied up at her stall all morning.’

  There is a pause while DS Leyton glances at his notes. Now he seems to take his cue from the man’s last comment.

  ‘What was the arrangement you had with Mrs Wilson regarding the supply of wool, sir?’

  Rather as his wife had done, he exhibits a hint of alarm, as though he thinks they believe there was something untoward about this.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it an arrangement. I gave it her free. As much as anything she took it off my hands.’

  DS Leyton motions as if he is turning imaginary dials.

  ‘What I mean, sir, is what was the practical arrangement. How did she get the wool?’

  Sean Nicolson jerks a thumb to indicate out of doors. He has the stout fingers of a farmer.

  ‘I kept some fleeces baled in the barn. She could come for it when she needed it. It were no use to me. It’s coarse – and it’s deceptively light. A Herdwick’s fleece weighs half of most breeds’ – that’s another reason it don’t fetch a lot. Wool’s bought by weight. But Mary made a feature of it being traditional local knitwear.’

  DS Leyton is nodding.

  ‘So – when would have been the last time she collected some wool, sir?’

  Sean Nicolson makes a face of slight bewilderment, as though this is a near impossible question. But after a moment’s consideration he replies.

  ‘Mostly the shearing’s in August. So it were maybe a month before the meet that she last took some. I reckon she’d have been running low – and she’d have wanted to make plenty of stock for her stall.’

  DS Leyton turns his head from side to side, as though his shirt collar is becoming uncomfortable.

  ‘Would that have been the last time you spoke with her, sir?’

  Sean Nicolson shakes his head.

  ‘I’d have talked to her at the meet. When we were all setting up, early on – there were the usual crack about the weather – it being good for a change – that there ought to be a decent turnout.’

  ‘Would you say you were on friendly terms?’

  Now the man frowns more distinctly – and it might occur to the observer rather odd that he would need to recall this; perhaps the thought simply pains him.

  ‘I knew her well enough. Like I say, we were at school, together – grew up in the dale. And of late she’d been working behind the bar at the Twa Tups. I might see her if I went in to pick up Meg on rainy night. Mary had her own car, mind.’

  Skelgill, from his more detached viewpoint registers both the addition of the rider and the avoidance of an entirely straight answer. DS Leyton, however, is nodding readily and continues.

  ‘You knew a bit about her business – were you aware of any problems – financial, I’m thinking of? Could she have got into trouble, borrowing money, owing money?’

  ‘Folk could always do with more money – but I doubt if it were that, with Mary.’

  There seems to be a flush of colour upon the man’s cheeks. Skelgill wonders if this is simply an ingrained principle coming to the fore, neither a lender nor a borrower be, one that is all pervasive in these parts. But this time DS Leyton is quick to pick up on the possible ambiguity in his words.

  ‘What could it have been?’

  Now Sean Nicolson reaches for his tea. He drinks as though his mouth has suddenly become dry. When he puts down his mug he stares into it, avoiding eye contact. Then the reason underlying his reticence becomes clear. He speaks with some difficulty.

  ‘Aren’t most women murdered – by sex attackers?’

  DS Leyton glances at Skelgill, but his superior remains implacable.

  ‘Actually, sir, not statistically. But most female victims are murdered by someone known to them.’

  Sean Nicolson looks up, his eyes distinctly troubled. He gazes for a moment at Skelgill, and then back at DS Leyton.

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  DS Leyton gives a slow shrug of his broad shoulders, like a giant tortoise momentarily retreating into its shell.

  ‘We have to keep an open mind, sir. Reviving an investigation that was closed over twenty years ago – at this stage we’re just playing catch-up.’

  Sean Nicolson shakes his head slowly.

  ‘I’m not much help. I wish I could be.’

  *

  ‘What is it, Leyton?’

  Skelgill’s sergeant appears to be brooding over a text message he has discovered on his phone.

  ‘Ooh – it’s the – er – missus, Guv. Seems like she’s in a bit of a pickle. She’s got an appointment – one of these ladies’ things, you know – regular check? But the littlun’s playing up.’

  ‘You talking Keswick?’

  ‘Yeah – the health centre. At four-thirty. The other nippers have got after-school clubs until five-fifteen, so they’re under lock and key.’

  Skelgill glances at the clock on his dashboard.

  ‘I’ll drop you off – we’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  DS Leyton casts a suspicious glance at his boss.

  ‘What about writing up these interviews, Guv?’

  ‘Leyton – it’s kept twenty-odd years – I think the case can wait until tomorrow. Besides –’ (and now Skelgill makes an agonised face) ‘if Smart gets his way we’ll just be going through the motions.’

  DS Leyton looks torn. It is obviously a tempting offer, but he suspects he ought to reject it.

  ‘What about my motor, Guv – it’s back at Penrith?’

  ‘Get the bus, Leyton – else someone’s going to be driving across in the morning. Failing that, I’ll come and pick you up.’

  DS Leyton is now really wide-eyed. It is a rare double dose of altruism from his boss.

  ‘I’m sure I can manage the bus, Guv – thanks all the same.’ He looks rather forsakenly at his handset. ‘But that’d be great if I could get the missus out of jail. I can work on the report tonight.’

  Skelgill does not answer – but he begins to drive in a more rapid, yet carefree fashion, and might almost be humming a tune under his breath. In fact, it is a reaction to a day in which he feels his head has been stuffed full of everything and nothing, such that these ineffable properties have cancelled one another out. The flickering sun, slanting between the ancient oaks of Borrowdale seems to have a mellowing effect upon his craggy features.

  ‘There they are, Guv!’

  DS Leyton’s exclamation comprises the first words spoken since their discussion. Skelgill swings the car into an entrance marked “Emergency Vehicles Only” and stops on double-yellow lines where Mrs Leyton waits under the entrance canopy. She is leaning over a pushchair; she looks up despairingly and then with relief at their arrival. They are dead on time. Skelgill’s sergeant bales out like a paratrooper warned of an imminent crash landing, in his desperation inadvertently displaying an expanse of unseemly flesh.

  Skelgill ducks to catch a glimpse across the car of his sergeant’s troubled spouse, who forces a thankful smile and exchanges a quick word with her husband before she dashes into the building. The buggy has its rain cover fitted and most of what is
visible within, from Skelgill’s angle can be summed up in the word tonsils, from which cavity emanates a prodigious yowl. Here is a predicament outwith his comfort zone, and he is compelled to observe how his colleague will deal with it. DS Leyton looks momentarily at sea – but then he produces from his jacket a bunch of keys, with its Millwall-supporter’s plastic lion key fob. He dangles the little creature and the child’s two small hands reach out, snatch the bunch and feed the toy directly into its mouth. Silence! DS Leyton glances across at Skelgill, and grins, and gives him the thumbs up.

  But Skelgill does not respond. He stares at his sergeant, or the infant, or both – almost unseeing – and then, without a wave of farewell, crunches the car into gear and speeds off. Almost immediately he fishes for his mobile phone, sets it ringing in speaker mode, and traps it in the sun visor above his head. After quite a long delay, a tentative DS Jones answers.

  ‘Oh – hi.’

  He knows immediately she is with DI Smart – and is he irked that out of some misplaced good manners she has not called him “Guv”. It sounds like they too are travelling. He guesses that she will not have him on speaker – but he cannot take it for granted there will be no eavesdropping. Moreover, it is generally possible to decipher a one-sided conversation. His voice is low, his words curt.

  ‘If asked I’m phoning about when you’re coming back.’ He does not wait for her assent. ‘Did they test Nick Wilson’s DNA?’

  There is a significant pause; she is clearly thinking about how to couch her answer.

  ‘Almost certainly not.’

  ‘Right – I’m getting it organised. I’m fetching one of Herdwick’s crew now. Can you chase it up once it’s in the system?’

  Skelgill is referring to the test result, since it is she that has been liaising with the various forensic departments in this regard.

  ‘I should be able to let you know tomorrow.’

  ‘Call me when you get a chance – on your own.’

  DS Jones does not answer – and it becomes evident why. A male voice, a Mancunian drawl comes over the airwaves. There is glee in the tone.

  ‘Is that you, Skel? We’ve got the slimy pervert bang to rights, cock! I expect the Chief’s already told you to drop everything your end.’

  DI Smart must have grabbed his colleague’s handset. Skelgill pulls his mobile phone from the sun visor and tosses it over his shoulder into the flatbed of his car, where accumulated fishing paraphernalia cushions its fall. He jams his right foot on the accelerator and overtakes the vehicle in front of him, a brewery company’s dray with an advertisement featuring boozing England rugby union players and the slogan ‘Swig Low’ painted on its side. A driver coming the other way flashes him, but he merely grimaces; he is too preoccupied to think either about beer or road rage. As per his instructions, DS Jones’s answers were shrewdly couched. It would have sounded to DI Smart like he wanted to know when she might return to Cumbria. But that is evidently not going to be tonight.

  12. MEMORY LANE

  Thursday, early morning

  There are only three ways by car to reach Buttermere village – three ways ‘home’ – up Lorton Vale from the Cockermouth direction, skirting Crummock Water and sometimes the last resort in winter; or via one of the high passes from Derwentwater, either the Honister or the Newlands. Skelgill has opted for the latter. The approach is from the western side of the lake, traversing the gravity-defying screes of Causey Pike. It is a route he considers both more direct and a refreshing change of scene; it avoids Balderthwaite, for the time being. But there is another reason that he won’t quite admit to himself: had he taken the Honister Pass he almost certainly would have met his mother coming the other way on her boneshaker of a bicycle. Complications would ensue. He would offer a lift; she would give him short shrift. She would want to know his business; he would be taciturn. And so on – an uncooperative exchange sidetracking them both from their ends. That said, he experiences a small nagging regret – because no doubt she could more than usefully answer some of the questions bobbing about in the slack water of his subconscious.

  And he can hardly claim to be in a hurry. He has halted at Newlands Hause; his soot-stained Kelly kettle is on a rumbling boil and streaky bacon spits in a dented aluminium pan on his meths stove. Better here than in his kitchen, with Cleopatra (now in the custody of his daily dog-sitting neighbour) drooling down his trousers. Besides, there is the scenery to savour. The autumn rains have saturated Buttermere Moss, and the tumbling waters of Moss Force are foaming white in the low early morning light. Beneath a clear sky the air is still – though likely as not this will change as the day wears on – but in the meantime an exaltation of meadow pipits celebrates the benign conditions, swirling and chasing about the deserted parking area; a sure sign of winter to come, that they have abandoned their territories and are readying to head for the salt marshes of the Solway.

  Skelgill’s volcano kettle begins to erupt, and he turns his attention to fixing up his tea and bacon roll. He clears a space on the flatbed of his shooting brake and sits facing due west. Way down below there is just a glimpse of one of the Holme Islands, like a raft becalmed in the southern reaches of Crummock Water; beyond, the fells rise to the distant rounded summit of Great Borne, part of the great rollercoaster ridge that divides Lorton Vale from its neighbouring valley, the real-life Ennerdale. Skelgill’s thoughts drift accordingly – after all, this morning he is on a trip down memory lane. And he cannot banish the earworm, the theme tune of the soap opera that Patrick Pearson was watching yesterday. Just as he and DS Leyton were leaving, a cliffhanger ending had seen the lustful milkmaid’s axe-wielding fiancé about to enter the barn to replace his tool; a sure fire case of in flagrante delicto. The credits had rolled and the band had struck up. To Skelgill’s mind it is a mournful dirge – but, his mother being an aficionado, it has long been embedded in his psyche, a Pavlovian stimulus that conjures feelings of a compulsory early bedtime with only school to look forward to (thirty years ago Ennerdale was screened on Monday and Wednesday nights, and no repeats). Skelgill chews contemplatively. He supposes there is some compensation in being an adult. That said, the day’s duties remain to be done, with the additional obligation to change the world.

  Morning twilight slips down the dale like an ebbing tide, and strands of sunlight are just illuminating the grey slate rooftops of Buttermere village when Skelgill rounds the end of his mother’s terraced cottage and enters via the unlocked back door. The small kitchen looks much as it has always done; it will have been cleaned and swept this morning, like every morning; a stockpot of soup simmers on the range, the familiar aroma of lamb, potatoes and onions; his habit would be to sample it – but he has had his fill, and besides has other things in mind. He passes into the narrow hall and enters the tiny parlour at the front of the house, by custom a room rarely used, where his great-grandparents’ oak casement clock has ticked away the generations in splendid isolation, sometimes its only human contact the weekly wind. Against the opposite wall stands a traditional walnut sideboard, and from its middle drawer Skelgill extracts a large, well-thumbed scrapbook – the family album, no less, though infrequently used these days he guesses; at clan gatherings even the old folks cluster round their mobile phones to exchange videos of the exploits of their progeny.

  He shifts a vase of artificial hydrangeas and lays the album on a cross-stitch cloth that covers a mahogany drop-leaf table. The thick pages lie like layers of geological sediment; he makes a stab at the desired epoch, and is not far out. He half squints at the contents; there are reminders he would rather not receive; strange how arguably the most profound entries – births, marriages, deaths – are the minutest clippings of all. A lifetime, ten million moments, encapsulated in the space of three postage stamps. And then, to his relief, he finds what he is looking for: an A5-sized leaflet, black print on yellowing white stock, so like the one he has in his pocket that it is quite remarkable; here is something that hasn’t changed: the design of the Ba
lderthwaite shepherds’ meet brochure. The archive copy, pressed for posterity by his mother, dates from the year after Mary Wilson disappeared; by custom it lists the winners at the preceding meet.

  The cellophane pages covering the contents of the album have become brittle and have lost their adhesive properties. As he raises the board leaf to extract the pamphlet a press cutting escapes from the reverse side and flutters to the floor; he ignores it for the time being. He turns the leaflet over; sure enough the results are displayed on the back page. There are so many classes for sheep – the likes of Best Mouth Female, Best Gimmer Lamb, Best Horned Tup, and so on and so forth. He scans the dense type, squinting now for good reason; rivers of white seem to criss-cross a black hinterland. But his persistence pays off, for there it is – near the foot of the page: “Best Exhibitor – Mrs M. Wilson, Shear Bliss Knitwear – 1st Prize.” So Patrick Pearson was right.

  And she never got to wear her rosette.

  Skelgill is staring at the clock when it begins to strike. Eight. He doesn’t count – but he has heard eight so many more times than any other number that he doesn’t need to; he knows eight is coming, and he knows what eight feels like when it is just an echo. Eight am – time to leave for school, or be late and get a clout round the lug. Eight pm – when the last haunting strains of Ennerdale have died away and the adverts are coming on – time for bed, or get a clout round the lug.

  On the last stroke he snaps out of his reverie. The pale newspaper cutting on the burgundy mat is obtrusive in his peripheral vision; salient in the speck-free parlour, like the first leaf of autumn to fall upon a freshly mown sward. He stoops and swoops it up – and the headline catches his eye.

  “Buttermere Lad Shatters Dickson’s Record!”

  He stares at the piece. There is a photograph, black and white, grainy – hardly distinguishable, really. Except of course the callow youth breaking the tape (and not knowing how to celebrate) is he. No other runners are in sight. He remembers the content of the article, despite that he has not set eyes on it for a good decade and a half. Jake Dickson – the invincible Jake Dickson from Balderthwaite – twice his age back in those days, a man to his boy, the record holder and unbeaten for years on end. And yet he had beaten both him and the record.