Death at Rainbow Cottage

by Jo Allen

  For no real reason Ashleigh thought of Faye, and the affair of which they’d both been ashamed and tried to conceal. She had no idea of Faye’s motivations but her own had been rooted in a fear of her own vulnerability. There were many reasons for being furtive. ‘It does look as if he was meeting someone. Suit. Neatly ironed shirt. Shiny shoes.’ The photographs of Len Pierce, sprawled in the mud, were distressing in their sense of optimism. ‘Dressed to impress, I’d say.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jude scribbled a frowning face and a question mark side by side on his pad. ‘It’s possible. Meeting up with someone seems the obvious reason for him to be where he was, but it doesn’t necessarily give us a motive. And it doesn’t follow that his killer was the person he met.’

  ‘Could it have been robbery?’ Ashleigh asked.

  ‘No. His wallet was in his jacket pocket. Cards and cash.’

  ‘And what do we know about the woman who found him?’ Ashleigh looked down at the notes she’d been making as the conversation continued. The clue to Len’s murder would be in his personal life. It always was.

  ‘Natalie Blackwell. She lives in the cottage on the other side of the field.’ Briefly, Jude ran through a description of the circumstances in which Len Pierce had been found. ‘She claims to have seen nothing and nobody. The CSI team haven’t turned up any evidence that anyone had tried the riverside path. It collapsed into the river a few weeks back, and it’s closed. We know from the information on Mrs Blackwell’s fitness tracker that she did go on a run, and we know where it was and when. All as she said.’

  Ashleigh looked at the whiteboard. Someone had already marked up Natalie’s route, with its times, on an OS map, a winding line looping back on itself and marked with crosses near either end where she’d stopped to stretch off.

  ‘What do you make of her?’ Doddsy twirled his pen between his fingers and addressed himself to Jude. ‘And her husband, of course.’

  ‘Did you say you knew him?’

  ‘I know of him. He’s a diversity campaigner. He’s been touting an idea for a Rainbow Festival around the local churches. We’re to get together and encourage LGBTQI folk to join in and feel welcome. Us Christian folk being all so straight and narrow-minded.’ He rolled his eyes.

  Ashleigh struggled not to laugh. Doddsy, ploughing his own quiet furrow, quietly minding his own business and never looking for attention, was the obvious candidate for a congregation to put forward as representative of their tolerance. She could see from the twist of his lips that whatever he thought of the concept, he’d want to keep clear of the execution.

  She could sympathise with that. The main thing she’d learned from her adventure with Faye Scanlon wasn’t the obvious, that attraction to the same sex was as normal and natural as it was to the opposite one. It was your own insecurities that were damaging. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘As you’d expect. Half of the congregation jumping on the rainbow bandwagon and the other half quoting Leviticus.’

  ‘And which side did you come down on?’ Jude joked.

  ‘I’ve never been one for hellfire and damnation. And I’m not sure about Blackwell. He means well enough, but I don’t think he understands his audience.’

  ‘He’s a natural campaigner. Has been all his life.’ Jude checked his notes. ‘For just about any cause under the sun. Anti-Zionism when he was a student, then worked for a disability rights charity, then moved into gay rights. I presume that’s why they’ve renamed the house. It used to be called Neville Cottage.’ He frowned a little, at a puzzle he couldn’t quite unravel.

  ‘He runs his own company taking equality training into the workplace.’ Chris tossed a leaflet onto the table and Ashleigh picked it up and skimmed it. Refreshing your knowledge of current legislation…exceeding legal requirements to promote positive viewpoints and a productive and healthy workforce. ‘He’s done some work for the NHS and the Council, among others, and he’s in advanced talks to do the same for us. So we can look forward to seeing how he reads his audience first hand.’

  Ashleigh thought of Faye’s predecessor, the unlamented Detective Superintendent Groves, and her lips twitched. ‘This would never have happened three months ago.’

  ‘No harm to them.’ Doddsy said, shaking his head, ‘but if I tell them I’m gay do you think I can be excused and just get on with my work in peace?’

  Jude waved the general laughter aside. ‘Let’s move on. There’s something unconventional about the Blackwells. Of the two of them, she interests me more. She’s had half a dozen different careers, I’m told, and hasn’t stuck to any one of them. Classically unsatisfiable, I’d say.’

  ‘Didn’t you say she has anxiety issues?’ Ashleigh sighed. ‘No wonder she can’t settle to anything. Poor woman. Finding Len must have been a hell of a shock.’

  ‘The PC who was first on the scene was genuinely worried about her, but by the time I got to her she was totally composed. I thought she must have taken some kind of medication. Her husband was looking after her and she seemed to have complete trust in him. Nearly had a meltdown when he tried to leave the room. She was looking to him after every question I asked.’

  ‘I think I’d find that rather freaky.’ Bitter experience, learned in a failed marriage to a charming but controlling man, had taught Ashleigh that devotion too often worked only one way.

  ‘I didn’t think so. It wasn’t as if she was looking to him for the answers. More as if to make sure he was still there.’ Jude sighed and sat back, glancing down at his empty coffee cup. ‘Next steps. We’ll get the PM results in later on today with luck, and we’ll put out an appeal for witnesses. Chris, as usual I’d like you to get digging. I want to know everything there is to know about Len Pierce and his friends and acquaintances. I need more background checks on the Blackwells. We’ll reconvene tomorrow after the early briefing and you can talk me through what you’ve got.’

  The meeting dissolved. Ashleigh shuffled her notes into some sort of order and failed to stifle a yawn. Chris and Doddsy had gone. ‘Are you sure you don’t need me to do anything?’

  ‘Yes, but I need you to do it when you’re awake. I’ve got someone else on the door-to-door inquiries for today. You can pick that up tomorrow.’ Jude checked his watch. ‘I need to pop up and have a chat with the new boss just now, but I’ll get down to Appleby afterwards.’ He hesitated. ‘If you’ve caught up on your sleep by this evening, why not pop round to my place? I can rustle you up a curry. It won’t be as hot as your average Sri Lankan one, but it’ll be edible.’

  She smiled at him, reached out and touched his sleeve. ‘I’ll see you this evening then.’ And she picked up her coat and slipped it on, wondering just how she’d manage to square the circle of working with a boss who was her lover and whose boss, in turn, was her former lover, and how long it would be before each of them found out about the other.

  Chapter 3

  Watching Ashleigh disappear down the corridor, Jude allowed himself a moment of appreciation and a smile to go with it. It was more than three years since the woman he’d been so sure he’d marry had got tired of coming second to his job and picked out an excuse to throw him over, and it had taken him longer than he’d expected to get over her. Even now his feelings for Becca Reid lingered, because the blunt truth was that she still attracted him, and her slavish devotion to everyone else’s goodwill and her redoubtable community spirit conspired to throw her in his path. With Ashleigh out of the way for three weeks, he’d run out of excuses not to go down to the village where Becca lived in the cottage opposite his mother. Whenever he came or went he’d risked running across his former lover’s scathing, scornful stare.

  In those three weeks he’d missed Ashleigh, and it unsettled him. Caring too much for other people inevitably brought more pain than caring too little. Caring about his younger brother, Mikey, had brought about the final split with Becca when she disagreed with how he’d dealt with Mikey’s teenage experimentation with drugs. He had no regrets over that, he reminded himself as o
ptimism asserted itself. Caring was positive, too. The very reason he was in the police was that he cared.

  He allowed himself a wry smile. Becca cared about Mikey, too, recognising the pressure that David Satterthwaite’s absence had placed upon Jude himself to be a substitute father, and this fundamental difference of opinion about how he handled it had been symptomatic of deeper problems in their relationship. When he thought of Becca it still hurt, but he’d learned the lesson. It was too late to go back and try again even if he wasn’t too proud to do so, and it was the right time to learn from the experience, build a new relationship and get the balance right. With that thought, he consigned his personal life to the back of his mind and set off to begin building a relationship of an entirely different kind — a professional relationship with his new boss.

  Faye Scanlon had left the door to her office wedged open. That looked like a statement of intent, a notice of accessibility. For form’s sake he tapped on it, but she was already looking up from where she sat behind her desk and motioning him in. ‘Come on in, Jude, and have a seat. Shut the door behind you, would you?’

  He did so, trying to judge how deep her apparent friendliness ran, how much it was a mask for something else. It hadn’t escaped him that she’d been mightily put out when Ashleigh had appeared in the canteen that morning.

  ‘Obviously you’re busy with the Pierce case, but it’s important that we talk. I’m making a point of having a chat with all of my inspectors and chief inspectors. I want to be sure we understand one another.’

  He nodded. Faye’s predecessor had been stiffly formal with colleagues he didn’t like but erred too far on the side of unwelcome informality with some — mainly younger and exclusively female. It was only to be expected that there would be some sort of correction. Sitting behind her desk, with ringless fingers clasped in front of her as she matched his quizzical gaze, Faye showed every sign of being the antidote to the recent past.

  ‘I didn’t know Detective Superintendent Groves,’ she went on, taking off her glasses and twirling them between her fingers as he pulled up a chair, ‘although I understand that, on his own admission, he was…shall we say… of a different generation.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ It wasn’t just generational sexism. Groves had always had favourites, and anyone who didn’t fit his profile of the right sort of policeman struggled to achieve promotion. His disapproval had held them back, the grit in the machinery of advancement that should otherwise have run smoothly. To be a favourite you didn’t have to like him, or be liked by him – merely to have a face that fitted. Young women of childbearing age somehow never won promotion under Groves and Doddsy had remained at his level for 15 years, during which Jude had made a meteoric rise to outrank him.

  ‘I might as well be blunt with you, Jude.’ In an over-deliberate pause, she looked out of the window behind him towards the town. ‘There are a number of officers here who’ve been promoted because of what they were rather than on the basis of their skills and capabilities. While we can’t undo those mistakes, we won’t repeat them. When I was appointed, it was on the basis that my job would involve a clear focus on redressing the imbalance which has built up within this force. It’s a strategic decision taken at a very senior level and I’m playing a small part in the process. Things are going to change.’

  She looked at him as if she was expecting a reply, but when he opened his mouth to speak she cut straight across him. ‘One of the proposals I put forward at my interview to correct this issue was to introduce a series of workshops on equality and diversity for all officers, as a matter of urgency. I’m glad to say the idea was well received and implementation began even before I arrived. Those workshops will begin this week.’

  ‘An excellent idea.’ A smile flitted across his lips as he thought of Doddsy’s pained tolerance of the Rainbow Festival.

  ‘Thank you.’ His smile must have irritated her. She scowled in response. ‘I can speak frankly to you. You’re young to be a DCI.’ An upheld hand stopped his reply. ‘I’m not questioning your competence. Merely saying that some of your junior colleagues might be equally competent and vastly more experienced.’

  She meant Doddsy. Jude stayed silent.

  ‘I want you to be aware that the system has previously worked in your favour and won’t do so in the future. I’ll be honest with you. I’ve heard that you can be quite a disruptive figure, and I’m assuming I’ll get your full and unquestioning support.’

  ‘Of course.’ Rapidly, Jude reviewed his own behaviour and found himself not guilty of any irregularity. He’d divided his friends and family throughout his time in the police, and if he was honest with himself he was probably enough of a control freak within his job to alienate people who didn’t like to work the way he did. It was why he relied so closely on a small group of officers and broke the traditional roles of rank where he felt it was beneficial. But disruptive?

  It was a debate for the future. Rather than pursue it and make an immediate enemy of his new boss, he changed tack. ‘And the workshops?’

  ‘There will be a range of them, beginning this week. We’ll be using a local provider who tailors courses for public and private bodies.’

  ‘Right.’

  Faye’s gaze, already keen, perceptibly sharpened. ‘You seem uncomfortable with that.’

  If she thought she’d picked up some resentment in his attitude she was right. He couldn’t challenge her over the fact that he’d benefited disproportionately from being the right sort of person in Groves’ eyes, but his irritation was more akin to Doddsy’s. No matter how worthy, desirable or even necessary the workshops might be, he could ill afford a day or a half day, or even a couple of hours, out of his busy schedule in order to learn how to treat his colleagues with the respect he already accorded them. And there was something else. ‘Would this local provider be Claud Blackwell?’

  ‘Do you have a problem with him? He’s locally very well known and highly regarded.’

  ‘No. But it’s interesting his name has come up. It was his wife who found the body off the A66 yesterday afternoon.’

  Faye’s eyes narrowed, and she picked at her necklace. ‘Is he a suspect?’

  No,’ said Jude, after a moment’s consideration. ‘We haven’t ruled him out yet, but the investigation isn’t even a day old. He was at home when his wife found the man, still alive. I’ve no reason at all to think it might be him.’

  ‘Then there’s no reason to change our plans.’ She nodded towards him, graciously. ‘That’s all just now. But I’ll be very hands on, so you can expect me to be very much around and about.’

  *

  ‘Gracie, Gracie, Gracie,’ breathed Giles’s voice into the phone. ‘What the hell am I going to do?’

  Out in the car park of the Penrith Hospital, Gracie Pepper turned her back on the colleague who was waving in her direction, pretending she hadn’t seen. ‘Giles.’

  ‘But what am I going to do?’ he wailed.

  She crammed the phone between her shoulder and her ear and scrabbled in her bag for cigarettes and a lighter. The spring wind played up, trailing a strand of long copper-coloured hair across her mouth as she tried to take a drag of the first cigarette. ‘Giles.’ She fought the wind and won, got a lungful of nicotine and retrieved the phone before she could drop it. ‘Do you need to talk?’

  ‘Of course I want to talk. We’re talking now, aren’t we?’

  ‘I can’t talk for long. Fag break.’

  ‘You should give up.’

  ‘I didn’t want this one, but I saw your message. It was the only way of grabbing a moment’s peace to call you.’

  The panic she’d sensed in his voice broke into a chuckle. ‘I appreciate it. Sorry. I know you’re busy. And I know I ought really to talk to Janice because–’

  He couldn’t possibly talk to Janice. Not about this. Gracie smiled and held the cigarette away from her. ‘It’s not a problem for me, darling. I’m all yours. Just let me know when.’

&nbs
p; ‘I’ll need to check my diary. And I don’t want it to look too obvious.’

  For such a capable, successful man, Giles was given to surprising bouts of inadequacy. ‘Find a time to come and visit your Dad. Meet me at the hospital. And don’t get into a state, right? You don’t want anyone asking questions.’

  ‘Especially not Janice,’ he said, rather mournfully.

  She shook her head in amusement. The tip of the cigarette glowed in the wind. ‘Whenever suits you. You know I don’t have any commitments other than work.’

  A pause, in which she almost heard him pull himself together. ‘You need to get yourself a man, Gracie my girl.’

  ‘Oh, Giles!’ she said, one last time, this time with more than the usual measure of affection. ‘Just let me know, okay?’

  Chapter 4

  Very hands on was an ominous phrase, Jude concluded as he drove along the A66 towards Appleby; a veiled threat to him to behave. Whether it was personal, or whether it was a weapon Faye Scanlon was carefully deploying in an attempt to set up her position with regard to her junior officers, remained to be established, something he could easily determine by checking with Doddsy. On the whole he thought not, recognising in Faye someone who was fighting against some insecurity he couldn’t identify and she wouldn’t reveal.

  Taking on a new job was difficult enough. Replacing someone who’d left more than a whiff of scandal behind, armed with a remit to right all the actual and perceived wrongs they had committed or allowed others to commit, was even harder. On that basis, he was inclined to give Faye the benefit of the doubt.

  Maisie Skinner, Lenny’s older sister, lived in a cottage just below the viaduct, but she must be a woman who believed that life must go on and had insisted on meeting Jude in The Cosy Cupcake Cafe in the village centre. On another occasion Jude might have interpreted that as indicative of lack of regret at a loss and given her motives a second look, but he hadn’t got the impression from Chris’s account that Maisie and her brother were that close, and plenty of people preferred the protection of routine.