Death on the Lake

by Jo Allen

  ‘I see. Well, I’m interested to hear what the local gossip is on Mr Neilson. He’s one of several subjects of a wide-ranging, very hush-hush, investigation into fraud and money-laundering on an international scale. Our colleagues delving into organised crime are very interested indeed in what he’s been up to, how he’s managed to make so much money so quickly and what he’s spending it on. I’m not entrusted with the details of it, and I’d probably find it too difficult to understand if I was.’

  ‘But you’ve been asked to keep a watching brief?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to keep them informed of anything unusual I hear about the Neilsons and anything unusual that goes on at their property. I don’t want to attract too much attention to it and of course, you’re right. You’re far too senior to be directly involved at this sort of investigation at this sort of stage.’ Her nod did duty for an apology for her earlier slight. ‘I did think, however, that it might be smart to send a detective down to join your two constables. Send someone junior. That way we can pretend it’s normal procedure. He won’t know any different.’

  There was an obvious candidate. ‘I’ll send Ashleigh.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Faye stared over his shoulder into the distance, as if they hadn’t both slept with Ashleigh O’Halloran and weren’t both fully aware of her charms as well as her skills. ‘She does have the talent for getting people to talk, doesn’t she? I imagine she’d do the job very well.’ Mention of Ashleigh seemed to have unnerved her. She nodded towards the door, a subtle signal that the interview was over. ‘She doesn’t need to know why, of course. I’m sure you can think of some reason why we might want a detective on the case.’

  ‘There’s already a very good one.’ Jude pushed back his chair and folded the missing persons report in half, as if that would make his interest in it look casual to any passer by. ‘Her current boyfriend, Luke Helmsley, has a record of violence and as far as I’m aware it’s associated with sexual jealousy.’

  ‘Is that right? Well, goodness. How interesting. And yes, a very good reason to send someone down to run an eye over the dale,’ she said, and turned back to her desk.

  Three

  The old dry stone walls that marked the edge of the road up to Howtown and beyond towards Sandwick gave way, very suddenly, to a set of imposing and incongruous wrought iron gates. A slab of carved slate announced this magnificence as Waterside Lodge. After a moment’s pause to consider her surroundings, Ashleigh negotiated the cattle grid with care and drove slowly along the driveway that unwound ahead of her to offer her views of trees, of the steep rising slope of Hallin Fell, and at last of the silver sheet of Ullswater.

  A marked police car was parked in the paved courtyard in front of the house. She pulled up beside it, noting the two-faced nature of the property in front of her. Old slate on the lower storey paid homage to its humble origins, with brighter, newer slate, carefully-chosen to match but not quite aged, showing just how much the original building had been extended. As she paused before getting out of her car, she snatched a glimpse through one of the downstairs windows and saw plate glass beyond. So the house was one of those, all traditional at the front and daringly modern at the back to make the most of its lakeside setting.

  She sighed. Life had been kind to her and her parents had enough money to give her and her brother everything they could possibly have needed, even if not everything their young souls had yearned for, but the family’s three-bedroomed holiday cottage in North Wales was a hovel compared to this. It was rare she coveted anything, but the Neilsons’ summer mansion brought out the worst in her. How well did such ostentation go down in the rest of the dale where, her drive had shown her, there was money but not a lot of it and some people still seemed to scrape an existence that depended from year to year on how many other people visiting were rich?

  She snatched a final glance at her notes. A girl had gone missing. The boyfriend (the violent boyfriend, Jude had observed) had reported her; but that meant nothing. Summer Raine was young, she was fit and she was adventurous, possibly too much so. In normal circumstances she’d expect the girl to turn up, sheepish after some unplanned adventure.

  Jude clearly didn’t think these were normal circumstances. His briefing had been casual at most, but she sensed he hadn’t told her everything. Go along and help Charlie and Tyrone out, he’d said to her, as if either the vastly experienced Charlie Fry or the talented rookie Tyrone Garner needed any help from anyone in a routine enquiry. She smiled. Tyrone had been in the force for less than a year and already she’d heard people muttering, not completely in jest, about how long it would take him to rise to the rank of Chief Constable.

  Still, whatever was going on behind the scenes, she was there to be a presence. She was there to look official and — she guessed — show a rich local family there was nothing to worry about. Fine. She could spend the morning sitting drinking coffee and looking at the view while Charlie and Tyrone took statements. It was a rare opportunity to do something more interesting than paperwork.

  She got out of the car and crossed to the door, which opened before she had a chance to ring the bell. A woman whose shoulder-length brown hair rang with copper highlights, chic in a creaseless sky-blue linen frock that skimmed her knees, stood in front of her. A diamond the size of a pea hung, round and fat, on a gold chain around her neck and her perfectly made-up face bore an expression somewhere between sorrow and irritation. ‘Good morning. I’m Miranda Neilson. You must be the detective they said they were sending along. I do hope something terrible hasn’t happened to that poor girl. But do come in. I’m afraid my poor stepsons may have been the last to see her.’

  Ashleigh introduced herself, then followed Miranda Neilson through the house into the huge kitchen. ‘One of your men is talking to Will in the lounge. The other is with Ollie in here.’

  There were voices from the living room — Charlie’s deep, local one, and the high-pitched, slightly nervous tones of a youth. In the kitchen, sitting opposite a young man with floppy hair, a pale face and dark rings under the eyes that the beginnings of a summer tan couldn’t erase, Tyrone paused in his note-taking and gave her a reassuring smile.

  ‘This is my stepson, Ollie.’ Miranda waved a hand in his direction. ‘Ollie, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, but Sergeant O’Halloran is here to supervise the search for Summer. Though of course I’ve every confidence she’ll be found safe and well. Coffee, Sergeant?’ She turned away to the coffee machine at Ashleigh’s nod.

  Ollie Neilson, with the manners drilled into him by a good education, bounced to his feet and offered Ashleigh a hand, but he didn’t meet her eye. Guilt, she recognised, was all over his face. The previous night must have been a sleepless one for him. ‘Ollie, nice to meet you. There’s nothing to worry about, just routine. Carry on talking to PC Garner, and I’ll listen in.’

  Tyrone waited a polite moment while Miranda brought coffee and Ashleigh took her seat, then coughed politely. ‘No need to wait, Mrs Neilson.’

  ‘Of course.’ She backed away. ‘PC Garner has already spoken to me,’ she said. ‘I was away yesterday afternoon, with friends in Kendal.’

  The door closed behind her and the heels of her sandals clicked down a stone-floored corridor. A moment later she appeared in the garden that sloped down towards the lake.

  Turning back to Ollie, who was folding his fingers endlessly together like a nervous bride, Ashleigh was struck by the woman’s self-confidence. What kind of a relationship did Miranda have with her stepsons? A good one, judging by the way Ollie had looked after her when she left, as if he was desperate for her not to go. Or maybe she was the only person there he thought would support him.

  ‘So, Mr Neilson.’ Tyrone was barely three years older than Ollie, but the difference in maturity was palpable. ‘Let’s just go over it again for Sergeant O’Halloran. You said you spent yesterday afternoon with Summer.’

  Ollie Neilson, catching his breath, gave Ashleigh a sidelong look that rather too obvi
ously took in her assets, and allowed himself the kind of snigger that young men with one thing on their mind never quite realise anyone else can hear and interpret. ‘Yes. Will and I are up here for the summer. We’ve both taken a year out before we go to uni and we got back last week.’

  ‘You’re eighteen?’ Tyrone asked, surely for Ashleigh’s benefit because he must already have gone over that.

  ‘Nearly nineteen. We went to school young. Ahead of most of our year.’ Ollie sounded like a man not short of self-belief. ‘Last year we bummed around in Australia for a bit, went to South America, the Far East. That sort of thing.’

  ‘And you knew Summer,’ insisted Tyrone, politely.

  ‘Yeah. We met her last year. She taught — teaches — watersports at the marina and Will and I like a bit of that. We went down there last week when the weather was good. Sunday was her day off, and her boyfriend was working, so we said she could come up and we’d have the afternoon on the boat. Miranda was away, and Dad’s in Frankfurt.’

  ‘Do you know her boyfriend?’ Ashleigh asked, watching Miranda as she stood and stared across the water.

  ‘No, only that he lives along in Howtown and works on one of the farms down there. But if he’d been free we’d have asked him to come along, too.’ The way he shifted in his seat clearly indicated that Luke Helmsley was never intended to have any part in what the twins might have planned for Sunday afternoon.

  ‘And so Summer came along at…what time?’ Tyrone made rapid notes at the side of his pad, reminding himself of things to ask.

  ‘About noon. We went out on the Seven of Swords and had some lunch and…stuff.’

  ‘The Seven of Swords?’ Despite her intention to leave the questions to Tyrone, Ashleigh intervened. The constable had missed that little detail, but then again, he would. As far as she knew he was a man for intense practicalities, and he couldn’t possibly know the card she’d drawn that morning.

  ‘Yeah, that’s our boat.’ He jerked a head towards the lake where a sleek, white vessel sat fifty yards or so off the lake in front of the house. ‘We keep her up here.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Thank you.’ She nodded to Tyrone and let him take over, smiling a little at what must be coincidence.

  ‘Yeah. So we had something to eat.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Err…sandwiches and stuff.’ Ollie went pink. ‘And a beer. Maybe a couple of beers. I fell asleep and Will must have done, too. When we woke up, she wasn’t on the boat.’

  ‘Okay. And what time was that?’

  ‘About five o’clock.’

  ‘And weren’t you worried?’

  ‘Nah. We thought she’d need to get back and she must have decided not to wake us.’

  ‘And the boat,’ pursued Tyrone, in patient explanation, ‘was out on the lake, where it is now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you get there by a dinghy.’

  ‘Yes, but it was tied to the boat.’

  ‘And so how did Summer get to the shore?’

  There was a long pause. ‘Don’t know.’ Ollie pushed his chest out in what was obvious defiance, snatched a sideways look at Ashleigh, who returned it with interest just to let him know she was already onto the probability he was lying, and turned back to Tyrone. ‘I never thought of that. I just woke up and she’d gone.’

  ‘Perhaps your brother rowed her over to the shore.’

  Ollie snorted. ‘Will was way more drunk that I was. I had to wake him up.’ He brightened. ‘She must have swum.’

  ‘In her clothes?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ The youth brightened, as if a solution had occurred to him. ‘She was really sporty. I think she went wild swimming and stuff. Or maybe she rowed over with her bag and stuff and then returned the boat so we could get off, and then swam back and got dressed and walked home. That would make sense.’

  ‘Perfect sense. You didn’t think to check she’d got home safely?’

  ‘No, because…well, I didn’t think. It didn’t occur to me. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think anything, much. I’d had quite a lot to drink. Beer. And it was hot. Goes right to your head.’

  ‘Anything other than beer?’

  Ollie squirmed in his seat. ‘Summer brought a bottle of vodka.’

  ‘And anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Ollie’s ears flamed scarlet.

  ‘Okay. But it’s fair to say you were drunk. And Summer?’

  ‘Very drunk. I hope she’s okay. Maybe she fell asleep somewhere on the way home.’

  Tyrone looked at Ashleigh, received a nod, and put his pen down. ‘I’m going to ask you to read over this statement as I’ve written it, and initial it as a true representation of everything you’ve told me today. If Summer doesn’t turn up somewhere in the very near future, I expect we’ll be back for more questions.’

  ‘Because we were the last people to see her, yeah?’

  ‘The last that we know of.’ Tyrone handed the sheet of paper and the pen to Ollie, who barely scanned it before signing his name at the bottom of it. He must be keen to get rid of them. And then he’d be checking with his twin to make sure they’d said the same thing although, she realised with a sigh, they were probably both smart enough to do that before they started.

  Summer might turn up, but she had the distinct impression Ollie knew more than he was letting on. She pushed her chair back. ‘Thanks a lot, Ollie. You were a great help.’ She smiled at him, a full-on smile he tried and failed to return. The blush deepened. Ollie Neilson was a confident young man, and she didn’t think a smile from a woman usually sent him that beetroot colour. Yes; surely he had something to hide.

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant. Constable.’ He nodded them out of the kitchen, grandly. ‘I’ll go and get Miranda. She’ll want to see you off.’

  In the living room, Charlie was wrapping up his interview with Will. ‘Thanks, lad,’ he was saying. ‘That’s all I need just now.

  Will bounced up with obvious relief and the slightest nod passed between him and Ollie, as if each had concluded their side of a bargain, as he flung open the french window and yelled for his stepmother.

  Miranda had been waiting for the summons, and was in the room in half a dozen strides. ‘Thank you, Ollie. Will.’ She dismissed her stepsons with grace, and they withdrew without any sign of the tension common between teenage children and a second wife only three years into their lives. Maybe they were glad to get off so lightly. Instead, she addressed herself to the three police officers. ‘Thank you for being so helpful. And so understanding. I’m afraid the boys don’t seem to have covered themselves with glory yesterday.’

  ‘Boys will be boys.’ Tyrone nodded his head as if he were twenty years older.

  ‘We don’t encourage them to drink a lot, and they’ve yet to learn to handle what they do drink, it seems. And I believe the young woman brought spirits. Of course, if I’d been here this wouldn’t have happened. Or not in the same way. I worry I cut them too much slack, but I try to turn bit of a blind eye. They’re so young.’

  And she was their stepmother and didn’t have the authority their father would have. ‘When is Mr Neilson expected back?’ Ashleigh asked, as Charlie and Tyrone got into the patrol car and headed off to make further inquiries in the village.

  ‘He was due home on Friday, but I spoke to him earlier and he’s coming back straight away.’ The faintest scowl crossed her face. ‘He won’t be pleased. I’m afraid he can be a little puritanical. They like to have fun. I think the party on the Seven of Swords was Ollie’s idea.’

  ‘That’s a wonderful name for a boat.’

  ‘It’s a tarot card. A fortune teller drew the card for me at a fair, years ago, and I liked the name.’

  A short silence hovered between them. ‘Thanks for your help.’ Ashleigh moved towards the car.

  ‘No, thank you, Sergeant O’Halloran.’ A pause. ‘I do hope you find the poor girl safe and well.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’

  Ashleigh slid in
to the car and started the engine, noting how Miranda watched her all the way along the curve of the drive until she was out of sight. It wasn’t until she was off the premises and could park up in a field gateway that she called Jude. The phone rang three times before he answered it, seconds she spent looking out through the window and down over the lake to the Seven of Swords, now the last place that Summer Raine had been seen alive. ‘Jude. I’ve just been at Waterside Lodge with Tyrone and Charlie. The Neilson place. I smell a rat.’

  ‘Do you indeed? What sort?’

  Many things attracted Ashleigh to Jude Satterthwaite and his voice, whose sharpness was underpinned with humour that most people failed to pick up, was one of them. Today, rather to her surprise, she didn’t hear his usual enthusiasm and readiness to listen but instead identified a thread of weariness, as if the rat was a problem too many for a Monday morning. ‘We’ve spoken to the two Neilson boys. They had Summer round for drinks yesterday.’

  ‘I see.’

  She’d expected him to be more forthcoming. ‘I’ll be damned if it was just drink. I’ll lay a little wager they were smoking something at the very least. I’d like us to have a wee look around.’

  Jude was a stickler for the rules and the law, a man who never flinched from difficult territory even when there might be personal cost. Today even the hint of illegal substances didn’t tempt him into action. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘No, listen. I know what you’re thinking. I know there’s nothing to suggest Summer’s vulnerable and I know she’s capable of looking after herself. But if she went home off her head on drink and drugs then something terrible could have happened to her. We need to find out what she took, if she took anything, and where she got it.’

  In a silence at the other end of the phone she imagined him weighing up the pros and cons, balancing out arguments, some of which would be unknown to her. ‘Fair point, and from what you say it does seem as if she may have come to some harm. I’ll escalate it. I’ll get the mountain rescue people on it. Divers, too, if you think we need them. But no search of the Neilson property.’