Death on the Lake

by Jo Allen

  Doddsy nodded, looking in deep thought at the scene below the bridge. ‘It’s handy for someone that George Barrett died, isn’t it? He’d have seen something.’

  ‘I thought that. And are we sure no-one else did?’

  ‘We haven’t done the door-to-doors yet. Ashleigh will come down and take charge of that. But it won’t take long.’ There were only half a dozen houses in Martindale and Boredale combined, plus the hamlet of Sandwick. ‘We’ll do the houses all the way up to Pooley Bridge, and see if there’s anyone in the campsite who saw anything but I doubt it, unless there was someone up on Hallin Fell.’

  ‘Even then, the path goes the other way round. I wouldn’t swear to it but I reckon you can’t see the bridge from most of it.’ The killer, then, was clever. ‘Did you speak to anyone?’

  ‘The farmer came down. Luke’s employer. He was out looking for him because he hadn’t come back from his lunch break. I’d be surprised if it was him. I’ve never seen a man go grey so quickly when he heard what had happened.’ Doddsy slid his hand into his pocket and extracted a lighter and a packet of cigarettes, then slid them back again when the doctor stood up and stretched himself, then turned and scanned the assortment of police personnel for them.

  They went down the hill towards him. ‘Dead, of course?’ said Jude, as a conversation starter. It had been obvious.

  ‘Well and truly.’ The doctor was new to both of them, round and pink-faced, young enough to relish the excitement of certifying a body dead in the street. A tweed jacket and matching tie marked him out as a young fogey. ‘Difficult to say for how long. The water would affect the body temperature.’

  ‘And the cause of death? Obviously we need to wait for the PM for a final verdict, but do you have any ideas?’

  ‘Broken neck,’ the doctor said, without hesitation. ‘Not just broken. Snapped. You may find the post-mortem shows water in the lungs and so technically he might be said to have drowned. But if the neck injury didn’t actually kill him, it would have done within minutes. Bloody neat job, too. Almost certainly not accidental. In my view.’ He glanced at his watch, glanced at his car. ‘You can do as you wish with the body, now.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Jude saw him off while Doddsy gave the go-ahead to Tammy and her CSI team. At the place where the road was now closed, a Range Rover, new and top-of-the-range, pulled up and a man got out. Robert Neilson.

  ‘Ey up,’ Doddsy said, under his breath. ‘Who’s this?’ He’d got the cigarettes out again and in the name of professionalism was forced to put them back again, but he kept his fingers tapping on his jacket pocket.

  ‘I need to get home,’ Robert was saying to the PCSO. He had his back to them and his tone was polite, but icy. ‘My wife and sons are on their own in the house—’

  The twins were more than capable of looking after themselves, and Jude thought Miranda was a tougher nut than she wanted them to think. He watched with interest.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. This is a crime scene. We’ll clear it as soon as we can.’

  ‘Officer. That isn’t good enough. People live in this place. They have responsibilities. I insist you allow me access to my home.’

  ‘Do we intervene?’ asked Doddsy, under his breath.

  Jude shook his head. ‘Not unless we have to.’ Not, at least, until he could justify it to Faye.

  ‘I can promise you, sir, I understand. Being a local lad myself. It’s a crime scene—’

  ‘So you said. And I’m a local resident.’

  The PCSO looked back over his shoulder towards them. ‘If you need to talk to the detective in charge…’

  ‘That’ll be you,’ said Jude, under his voice. ‘I’m having nothing to do with it.’

  But Neilson, turning, took a long look at them and backed down. ‘No. That won’t be necessary. I suppose I’ll have to go and find myself a hotel for the night.’

  ‘I very much hope you’ll be back in your home later on this evening.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jude to Doddsy. ‘I’m out of here.’ Discretion was the better part of valour, especially knowing Faye’s opinion on the matter. Something told him there would be plenty of opportunity to speak to Robert Neilson in the future.

  Nineteen

  Tammy and her team had put in a superhuman effort to get the road reopened, even though work continued around the bridge. The dale’s children slept in their own beds on Friday night and Robert Neilson was able to return to the bosom of his family; but that was only the beginning of it. Inevitably, Jude took the flak for the ongoing disruption and the effect it had on George Barrett’s funeral.

  He’d been tempted to give it a miss and get on with the more immediate problem of what had happened to Luke, but there was only a limited amount he could do without the post mortem and the full results of the crime scene investigation, and anyway it was important to keep himself connected to convention. Missing funerals was a level of casual disrespect his mother would never have stood for, and he was in bad enough odour with Becca as it was. And he’d liked George. That, above all, counted for something.

  The family could have delayed the funeral if they wanted, and he understood why they hadn’t, but the irritation he’d observed from the mourners as they’d passed the uniformed police officer guarding the bridge had struck him as flimsy at best.

  ‘And now we have to walk back past the whole thing again,’ a woman in the row in front of him said to her neighbour as George’s coffin was lifted by a collection of his distant male relatives at the conclusion of the service. ‘You’d think they could have stood their men down, just for an hour. And taken away that white tent, for heaven’s sake.’

  He shook his head at that, hoping Tyrone, the officer on duty, had had the sense to show the coffin a little respect as it had been taken in to the church. The final leg of George’s life journey, from the church to his interment, was a matter of yards. Thank goodness that, at least, was out of sight of the crime scene.

  The coffin passed down the aisle and he looked away as Becca, her sister and her mother walked after it, at the head of the mourners. George had been well-known if not enormously popular, and the place was packed. He recognised plenty of faces, though it seemed most of them shared the prevailing view, that the taint of murder that lingered in the dale was his fault. Few of them spared him a smile.

  It was as well he hadn’t come to the church in the hope of increasing his approval rating. Fretting a little, he looked down at his watch. There would be time to attend the burial but he was keen to get back to the office to see what new information had come in. And there had been a message from Faye, the last one he’d had before he’d entered the church and turned off his phone, asking to be kept updated as a matter of priority.

  As if he could forget. But he wouldn’t be going to the wake and he was mighty glad to have an excuse not to.

  He waited in his pew for the church to empty, so that he could be at the back of the collection at the graveside just as he’d been in the back row of the congregation, scanning the mourners as they left. Miranda and Robert were there, she in a neat black silk suit and tiny black hat, walking down the aisle with her hand tucked through her husband’s arm. She didn’t look at Jude. There was no sign of the twins. In disgrace, or just not trusted out in public wearing the visible signs of a violent altercation with a man who’d been murdered barely an hour later?

  Outside in the dale a soft summer breeze tickled the long grass in the churchyard and rippled the fresh ferns on the slopes of Hallin Fell and Steel Knotts as the mourners gathered for the committal. At the western wall of the graveyard, a pile of earth lay on a tarpaulin by the empty grave. When the short service of burial concluded with an amen that disappeared to heaven on the wind, the pall bearers lowered the coffin into the grave; Becca’s mother laid an arrangement of flowers on the ground beside it; and as the mourners headed through the gate the undertakers moved in to shovel in the earth and smooth out the wrinkles in three rolls of turf they laid on top. And that was that,
the end of George Barrett. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  Jude hung back once again as the line of mourners funnelled towards the bridge and their parked cars, and that somehow brought him closer than he’d ever intended to Becca. She was groping in her handbag, clearly fruitlessly, and couldn’t have seen him for the tears that shone in her eyes.

  No-one else had noticed, so in the end he gave in to gallantry he didn’t feel.‘Do you need a hanky?’

  She took the one he offered without a word, dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose and only then seemed to realise who her knight in shining armour was. ‘Oh, Jude. I didn’t think you’d come. I told Mum you’d be too busy.’

  The dig annoyed him. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. George was a great guy. Which isn’t to say I’m not busy. Just that he was worth it.’

  She blew her nose again. ‘Did we have to have all these police around? On a Saturday, and at a funeral? And that horrid tent under the bridge? Couldn’t you have stood them all down?’

  She should know better than that: they’d been together long enough. ‘The tent’s a crime scene. The officers are protecting it. We went all out to get the bridge clear for the locals, but we still need to do a full investigation.’ Briefly, as they walked along the lane below George’s cottage up on the bank, he remembered Ashleigh’s contention, and his own, that George might equally be the victim of a lucky, or a stunningly clever, crime.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Tyrone, who was guarding the bridge, had taken his hat off as the mourners passed, something he saw was being greeted with approval even though the coffin was no longer there. Jude nodded to him, then carried on at Becca’s side.

  ‘Jude,’ she said, looking away from him, ‘can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She put his handkerchief into her pocket. He expected she’d return it, washed and pressed, via his mother, in due course. ‘I’m worried about Ryan.’

  ‘That’s your cousin from Australia, right?’ Jude had a clear memory of him from the time when they’d passed on the street between Becca’s house and his mother’s. What he remembered most immediately was the surliness of both his tone and his words.

  ‘Yes. He isn’t here.’

  ‘Were you expecting him?’

  ‘Yes. He’s gone off wild camping for a bit, but I spoke to him after George died and told him when and where the funeral was, and he said he’d come along.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t really think he’s got into any trouble. He’s not a rookie. He’s in the army so he’s done a whole lot of survival stuff. But it doesn’t matter how experienced you are. You can still have an accident.’

  ‘In which case it’s the mountain rescue people you should be speaking to.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know exactly where he is. Last time I spoke to him he said he was somewhere in the Pennines, but that could mean anything and anywhere.’ She fussed at the hanky again. ‘I don’t know why I’m even asking you. There’s nothing you can do, and even if there was you’d be far too busy. As usual.’

  That stung. ‘I’m not too busy to take half a day to turn up at George’s funeral when there’s a murder investigation on.’

  ‘That’s different.’ She scowled back at Tyrone, in total contrast to her usual sunny nature.

  It was a struggle to be dispassionate at the best of times with Becca, and Jude could see she was upset, but he wouldn’t allow himself to respond to it. Since she’d started dating Adam he’d seen more signs of discontent and less evidence of her open and honest heart, as if his former friend’s bitterness had spread to her.

  Recognising the signs of the way she responded to distress — and hadn’t he seen that same thing on the day of George’s death? — he plunged his hands into his trouser pockets and waited for the storm to break. He was bitter, too, and between them she and Adam had given him plenty to be bitter about. ‘Different? Why?’

  ‘It just is. I don’t know why you came here but you obviously didn’t come here to support me.’

  His patience ran out. ‘Why the hell would I? Adam’s the one who should be supporting you.’ But he wasn’t surprised Adam wasn’t there. George hadn’t liked him, and Adam had a flexible social conscience. ‘After the way you’ve behaved to me recently, it’s in my own interests to be very careful where you’re concerned.’

  Her scowl deepened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I did everything I could to help you on the day George died, and so did Ashleigh. God knows I’m not looking for gratitude, but I don’t need my good nature thrown back in my face, either.’

  She stopped just before they reached her car, and glared at him. ‘Okay, I shouldn’t have flown at you, but I was upset, and I apologised. It was trivial. I’ll apologise again if it makes you feel better. Don’t tell me you’re going to hold that against me. It’s not like you to be so petty. Maybe you need to take a long hard look at yourself.’

  Funeral or not, in full view of a selection of his colleagues or not, Jude wasn’t putting up with that. ‘You think it’s petty? You put my career at risk over something you’ve just described as trivial and apologised for and you tell me I need to look at myself? Jesus, Becca. What kind of satisfaction do you get out of it? What kind of pleasure does that give you?’

  ‘I don’t get any pleasure out of it. I don’t like being angry with anyone. I don’t like anyone being angry with me. And I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve that.’

  ‘Then why go out of your way to make my life difficult?’

  ‘What are you taking about?’

  ‘The complaint. What do you think?’

  ‘Complaint?’ She pulled out the hanky again and dabbed at her eyes. A streak of mascara transferred itself from her eyelashes to the hanky, leaving a bruising blur on her cheekbone.

  Even in his fury, he had to stop himself reaching out in a futile attempt to wipe it away. ‘Yes. The complaint you put in about what happened last Saturday.’

  ‘I didn’t complain.’

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence by lying to me. There was no-one but you and me there. Okay, so I can guess Adam will have put you up to it, but you did it.’

  For a second they stood and stared at each other. A sudden breath of wind tweaked her hair across her face and she flicked it away. ‘What you did was totally inappropriate.’

  ‘What I did? I didn’t do anything. For Christ’s sake, Becca. I thought we were friends.’

  Becca, breaking free, got into her car, slammed the door and drove away.

  Twenty

  ‘There’s no need to look so thoughtful.’ Scott bounced in through the back entrance to the cafe, when Ashleigh had been looking out for him at the front. She didn’t normally allow anyone to surprise her like that, but she’d been trying her best to be casual and not stare out for him like a teenager terrified of being stood up. ‘Unless someone’s died. But someone probably has, of course. Someone always does, in your line of work.’

  She jumped, more than she should have done given she was expecting him, and scrambled to her feet in unusual confusion. ‘There you are.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Scott swooped in on her, swallowed her up in a bear hug and kissed her.

  Familiarity overwhelmed her. It was funny how, after so long apart, she remembered the good things better than the bad; but the bad things were still there. Even if she’d wanted to forget them she couldn’t, with Lisa carping on at her in the evenings and Jude’s thoughtful but silent appraisal whenever the mention of Scott came up between them. ‘You’re late. I thought you weren’t coming.’

  ‘The interviews were running late. Thank God, because the taxi driver took me all round the houses on the way.’

  ‘The road’s closed up at Tirril. That’s why.’

  ‘Wherever that is. But the person before me got held up behind a hearse. That’s what made me think of death. And when I was done, the funeral party was passing. There would be something weird about ta
gging along with someone else’s funeral, so I waited and chatted with the guy on the desk.’

  ‘Was she pretty?’ Ashleigh could read him like a book, and was pleased to see that he coloured slightly in response.

  ‘Yeah, she was okay. A bit old for me, but you know.’

  She saved that bit up as reassurance for when Lisa challenged her on every twist and turn their meeting had taken. ‘Never mind. You’re here now. But I can’t stay long. I need to get back to the office.’

  ‘I thought you were on a day off.’

  ‘Supposedly. But we’re investigating a nasty homicide. I only just managed to sneak out to see you.’ She’d felt guilty about clinging onto those few hours of her supposed rest day when there was work to be done, but Scott was an obligation she couldn’t shake off. Anyway, it was important for the two of them to meet without expectation and without rancour, another step on the road to friendship. Jude had lifted an eyebrow when she’d told him, but he hadn’t said anything. ‘You’re lucky to get me at all.’

  ‘Right. But you can run me into town on your way back, at least. And I’m going to have some lunch. How quickly do you think they can rustle me up a sandwich?’ And he turned his charm on the waitress.

  While he was cajoling her into prioritising him over the customer who’d been in before them, Ashleigh looked out of the window. George’s funeral must be over: a collection of people dressed in black were parking their cars on the street and ambling towards the pub where the wake was being held. The solemnity had been broken, now, as always happened after the tears of a funeral, and they were laughing and chatting as they walked. Becca was among them, but her face bore a stormy expression and she was walking alone.

  In a moment, as Ashleigh had expected, Jude drove past. Skipping the wake to get straight back to the office and try and work out who’d killed Luke Helmsley, no doubt, and cursing the traffic delay that would add ten minutes each way to the journey.