The Serpent Pool

by Martin Edwards

  ‘For elimination purposes, at least. A farm worker noticed the vehicle hidden away near Crag Gill at about the time someone was stuffing Wagg down the well.’

  ‘Chances are, it’s a coincidence, but guess who drove a small purple car this week?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He couldn’t resist a ham actor’s pause. Building the suspense.

  ‘Arlo Denstone. He parked it in the Fold when he visited Tarn Cottage, chasing after the text of my talk.’

  Hannah’s fingers tapped against the steering wheel as this sank in.

  ‘On the morning that Louise walked out on Stuart Wagg?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Why did he need your talk if he hadn’t even paid the printers for their last job?’

  ‘Good question. What answer would you give?’

  ‘Perhaps he had another reason for calling on you.’

  ‘Excellent.’ She might have been one of his students, back at Oxford. Those lucky kids, she envied them. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Did Arlo say where he was going after he left Brackdale?’

  ‘Back to the office. Things to do, busy, busy, busy. Which was a complete load of balls, according to my new friend, Sandra the volunteer.’

  ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘Hardly at all. He contacted me whilst I was in the States. He’d picked up on the Internet that I was planning a book about Thomas De Quincey and the history of murder. He flattered me into agreeing to participate in the Festival. When it comes to De Quincey, he knows his stuff. He can quote it verbatim, he loves the man’s work.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, he can quote chunks from the essays by heart, he’s a dyed-in-the-wool fan. He said in an email that, in his opinion, De Quincey is one of the few English men of letters who is undoubtedly touched by genius.’

  ‘Forgive my ignorance, I’ve never read him.’

  ‘Not that many people have. If they think of him at all, it’s as a man with twin addictions. Opium and murder.’

  As she mulled this over, a car emblazoned with the name of a local undertaker’s drew up next to hers. A tall, sombre man got out and made for the entrance to the home. Come to sort out the arrangements for Daphne’s funeral, she supposed.

  ‘Hannah, are you still there?’

  ‘Sorry, I just remembered a detail from the Bethany Friend file. And I was chewing over what you said. Opium and murder, a deadly combination.’

  ‘What’s in your mind?’

  ‘Still working it out.’ She didn’t want to be evasive, not with Daniel, but her latest idea was a tender plant, not ready to be exposed to analysis by a formidable intellect. ‘Listen, thanks for the information about the purple car. I’ll pass it on to the team, someone will be in touch to take a formal statement.’

  ‘I’d better let you get back to work.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Before cutting him off, she remembered to add, ‘Talk soon.’

  Hunched up on the leather seat, she allowed her thoughts to roam. The truth had begun to loom up in front of her, dark and dangerous as a ten-ton truck, emerging from the fog. Pulling a notebook and pen from her bag, she wrote down a name.

  Arlo Denstone.

  She peered at the letters, checking them over and over.

  Surely she was right?

  She struck a line through each letter, one by one, before spelling out another name.

  Roland Seeton.

  The witness whose statement lurked in the file on Bethany Friend. The long-haired dropout who claimed to have seen Bethany in Ambleside, talking to a soldier with a white transit van. Ben Kind had been sceptical, suspecting he was an attention-seeker who had invented the sighting. But maybe Seeton had some other reason for telling a lie to set the police chasing wild geese – and a non-existent white van.

  The two names were anagrams of each other, and she refused to believe it was coincidence.

  No wonder Maggie hadn’t traced him yet.

  In the space of six years, Roland Seeton had metamorphosed into Arlo Denstone.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘Your ex,’ Marc said drowsily. ‘The boyfriend. What happened to him, then?’

  No longer was he sitting upright on the sofa. Too much like hard work. After following her example and kicking off his trainers, he’d slumped down, and spent the last few minutes fighting the urge to close his eyes. This was his chance, and he dared not botch it. Cassie knelt beside him on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her, breasts almost caressing his chest. Breathing hard.

  ‘Long story.’

  ‘We have all the time in the world.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Sure.’ He tried to order his thoughts. ‘The shop is covered. I don’t need to go back.’

  ‘Listen, I have a confession to make.’

  ‘Tell me anything.’

  ‘My boyfriend is still around.’

  He moved his head close to hers. ‘You mean…?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marc.’

  ‘You sound like a manager, about to make someone redundant.’ He smiled, to show he was simply trying to lighten things up.

  ‘You know something? I was once diagnosed as an addictive personality. That was after the two of us split up, and I dropped out of uni. The psychiatrist said I was stressed, impulsive, I lacked self-esteem. A disposition towards sensation-seeking, that was her phrase.’

  ‘Sensation-seeking, huh?’

  ‘You may laugh, but she didn’t know the half of it. Not a tenth of it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re addicted to him.’

  ‘You don’t understand, I’m not in control. What he and I did was so terrifying that he ran away.’

  Marc made a derisive noise. ‘Ran away?’

  She took no notice. ‘I spent years fighting against myself, desperate to get over him. And not just him, but the way he made me feel, knowing he wanted me so much, knowing the jealousy hurt him so much, that he’d do anything – yes, anything – to destroy the pain.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s the nature of addiction,’ she said, as if lecturing a classroom of underachievers. ‘Progressively, you need more and more stimulation. The psychiatrist warned me about it, and she wasn’t wrong. She encouraged me to write about my fantasies, but when I turned the truth into short stories, they never worked. What happened between him and me was something you couldn’t make up. When he came back into my life, it started all over again. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I got such a buzz from his heartache, the way it crucified him when I explained about the other men. His imagination works overtime, always has done. Fiction can’t compare to real life, that’s what I discovered. We can’t help ourselves. He’s hooked on me, and my addiction is nothing compared to his.’

  His cheeks stung, as if she’d slapped his face. ‘The chap’s obviously a loser. Wrong for you. You need to start again.’

  ‘I need what he does for me.’

  ‘Cassie, you said yourself, he causes you grief. Seriously, you don’t want him to become dependent on you. It isn’t healthy.’

  ‘Too late for that,’ she murmured.

  Marc hauled himself up on the sofa. Knackered he might be, after a bad night in his mother’s spare bed, but he must sort things out, once and for all. He couldn’t abandon her to some no-mark.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He stroked her cold and lovely cheeks. ‘You can break the habit.’

  ‘You think I haven’t tried? When I went into hospital, and he disappeared, I thought I’d never see him again. But the moment he turned up again, I was lost.’

  ‘Is he stalking you? Making threats?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. He isn’t like that.’

  ‘I’ll look after you.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Like I said, you don’t understand.’

  ‘What is there to understand?’

  ‘It’s a two-way thing. Something unique and precious. He and I, we have a bond.’ />
  ‘Break it. Cassie. Please, he’s not good for you.’

  ‘No.’ Her expression hardened. ‘Nobody can rip us apart. Not me, not you, not anyone. The two of us are shackled together. For better or worse. We’ve been through too much, there can be no going back.’

  The champagne was talking, he told himself. She’d not kept pace with him, and had barely finished her second glass, but bubbly must go straight to her head. He must make her see sense, he couldn’t sit back and let everything fall apart, after he’d given up so much, just to be with her.

  When Hannah stopped talking, Fern Larter chewed the cap of a ballpoint pen as if it were a snack substitute.

  ‘East Londoner.’

  The drive back to Divisional HQ had been slow and tortuous, but in Hannah’s mind at least, the fog had started to clear. She wanted to share her theory that Arlo Denstone was the same man who, six years earlier, had claimed to see Bethany Friend talking to a white-van man. A lead that went nowhere, because there was nowhere for it to go. Hannah was sure it was an invention, meant to steer the investigation into a cul-de-sac. An unnecessarily elaborate touch from someone who couldn’t help himself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘East Londoner. It’s an alternative anagram of Arlo Denstone.’ Fern beamed. ‘Actually, you can make countless groups of words from that set of letters.’

  ‘Are you seriously telling me this is just a coincidence?’

  ‘Seeton was a long-haired university dropout. Arlo is a respected expert on literary festivals who happens to be a follicly challenged cancer survivor.’

  ‘Seeton was an English student.’

  ‘So, are thousands of other people. Some of them are quite respectable.’

  ‘Hair can be shaved. You can’t—’

  ‘All right, all right!’ Fern put up her hands in surrender. ‘Calm down. I just wanted to see the look on your face. You’re right, Arlo has a load of explaining to do. But I’m not clear how this Cassie woman fits in.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’

  ‘Tell you what, first things first, let’s ask Donna to track Arlo down. He was involved in a scene at Wagg’s party, and seems to have some sort of relationship with Wanda, even if they never slept together. So we’re entitled to ask him a few questions. The only snag is that if nobody’s seen him since Wagg’s death, he might be anywhere by now.’

  ‘He won’t have gone far.’

  ‘What makes you so confident?’

  ‘He won’t want to be parted from the object of his affections. Not after they have been through so much together.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It grieves me to say it, but Greg Wharf was right. We’re talking about murder for an overwhelmingly powerful motive.’

  ‘Namely?’

  ‘Jealousy.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  Hannah nodded. ‘Jealousy was the cancer that Arlo Denstone suffered from.’

  ‘How come he has such a hold on you?’ Marc struggled to find the right words. The fog had sneaked inside the flat and seeped into his brain, confusing everything. But he was too stubborn to give up without a battle. ‘You don’t owe him.’

  Cassie tightened her grip on his fingers. Through the fuzziness in his head, he was aware of her touch. It excited him, persuaded him that everything would turn out fine.

  ‘Even if I explained, it would make no difference.’

  ‘Try anyway.’

  ‘OK, you asked for it.’ The faraway, storyteller’s look returned to her eyes. ‘To begin with, I felt sorry for him, because his sister died when he was a kid. Olivia was fifteen, and he adored her. When she died, he was heartbroken. She’d fallen off her bike on the way home from a first date and wasn’t wearing a helmet. A boy had taken her out to the cinema, and he’d teased her about the colour of the helmet. Olivia insisted she was fine after the accident, and their parents didn’t call an ambulance. By the time she started vomiting, and they rushed her to hospital, it was too late. The doctors said she was brain dead.’

  Marc shivered. ‘A sad story, for sure, but—’

  ‘It ruined his life, the worst thing that could have happened to him.’ Cassie was almost talking to herself. ‘They were so close, it was unhealthy, but that doesn’t make it easier to bear. He told me her death sent him mad with grief and rage. It made him hate the boyfriend, but that wasn’t all. He blamed their parents, the family was in pieces. He was only thirteen, it’s a tender age. Within eighteen months, his mother and father died in a car crash. The boyfriend was killed too, a climbing accident. Sometimes I’ve wondered if…well, it’s speculation. Nothing has ever been said, not even between us. Better not go there.’

  ‘You wondered if what?’

  ‘Aren’t you listening?’ Her voice rose in fury. ‘I’m baring our souls here, the least you can fucking do is pay attention.’

  He felt as if she’d clubbed him over the head. This wasn’t the Cassie he knew. She must be suffering such strain. The on-off boyfriend’s fault, no question.

  ‘Now do you understand why he feels the way he does?’ She gritted her teeth, battling for control. Marc could not guess where this was leading. ‘We’re all the product of our experiences. When we first met, the forces that pulled us together were uncanny. Not so much lust as a shared sense of loss. Though there was lust too, of course.’

  Too much information. He really didn’t want to know about her past infatuations. The future was what mattered.

  ‘Books were in our blood.’ Her temper faded, she sounded dreamy again. ‘He introduced me to De Quincey, the most famous addict in English literature. And he told me about Elizabeth. The sister who died when De Quincey was a boy. A tragedy that shaped his life, the way Olivia’s death shaped Ro’s.’

  ‘Ro?’ His tone implied: For God’s sake, what sort of a name is that? His head was spinning. In Cassie’s company, he never felt quite in control, but this was something else. ‘Ro?’

  ‘His nickname. His parents were teachers, it was sort of a classical allusion. They named their kids Roland and Olivia. Ro is what I always call him. The moment I set eyes on him, I wanted him. He became an obsession. Still is, I suppose.’ She tightened her grip on his fingers, crushing them in her bony hand. Marc felt tears pricking his tired eyes. ‘And it was mutual, that was the perfect thing. He was crazy about me. Couldn’t bear to think of anyone else so much as touching me. To start with, I teased him about his jealousy, but soon he made me realise it was no laughing matter. Even if I’d never done anything – like you and I have never done anything, it was just the same. He hated it.’

  ‘You haven’t told him about…you and me?’

  ‘What is there to tell?’ Her lips curved in a malicious smile. ‘But Ro and I have no secrets. I wondered how it would make him feel.’

  His throat was dry, his voice hoarse. ‘You haven’t told him that we’re lovers?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’ Again the smile. ‘Or am I wrong?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I belong to Ro – and him alone.’

  ‘You’re not a chattel,’ he said. ‘Not a poss…possession.’

  Shit, he was slurring his words, he couldn’t believe it. And that hammering in his temples. How could he have drunk so much and not even noticed?

  ‘Don’t you see?’ she demanded. ‘It’s so wonderfully terrifying, to be possessed.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Have you never felt like that, with your strait-laced police inspector lady? Never yearned to indulge yourself in absolute surrender to your most powerful, most prurient instincts? Never longed to abandon yourself to the darkest desires of life and death?’

  ‘What are you…on about?’ he mumbled.

  For all his pent-up excitement and fear, he was slipping away. Clinging to consciousness as a desperate man hangs by his fingertips to the top storey window ledge, not daring to look down on the city street below.

  ‘I thought I wanted to possess someone, but I was wron
g. Bethany was a failed experiment. Far better to be possessed. Oh Marc, do you still not get it, despite surrounding yourself with all that learning, all those books?’ She gave his fingers a final squeeze, then dropped his hand as if it were a scrap of litter. ‘What are you like? I’m talking about murder. Considered as one of the fine arts.’

  While Fern briefed Donna about Denstone aka Seeton, Hannah shut herself in her office and steeled herself to speak to Marc. Of course, she’d have to tread with care, given that she was so close to the situation. Cassie must be questioned about her relationship with Bethany Friend, and that was a job for Maggie. But Hannah needed to prepare the ground. Solving the case might prove to be a pyrrhic victory. It had the potential to destroy her life with Marc.

  Judith answered the phone and, after an exchange of pleasantries about the dreadful weather and the horrible nature of the bug, she said she supposed Hannah was after Marc.

  ‘If he’s not too busy.’

  ‘He rang to say he won’t be in today. There’s a collection of Olaf Stapledon manuscripts he’s chasing, owned by some bloke in Keswick.’

  ‘All right.’ Hannah paused. ‘Could I have a quick word with Cassie, please?’

  Did Judith hesitate before replying, or was that just her imagination?

  ‘Cassie isn’t in today, either.’

  Hannah digested this in silence. She didn’t like the path her thoughts were taking.

  ‘Fogbound?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Can’t blame anyone for not wanting to turn out in this weather. You’ve done well to make it in.’

  ‘I live on a bus route. It only took five minutes longer.’

  ‘Does Cassie drive to work, as a matter of interest? Or does she catch a bus too?’

  ‘No, she drives.’

  ‘Yeah, now you mention it, I think I’ve seen her car parked in the courtyard.’

  Not true, but who cared?

  ‘Can’t miss it, really, can you?’ Judith obviously wanted to say something bitchy, but wasn’t sure how far she dare go with her employer’s partner. ‘Between you and me, it’s not a colour I care for. Rather gaudy. I certainly wouldn’t fancy a purple car myself.’