The Dungeon House (Lake District Mysteries)

by Martin Edwards

  A roar of pleasure erupted from the football spectators in the bar as someone scored. Joanna was in an equally good humour. This little adventure was like a shot in the arm. No longer did she feel like one of life’s victims. She was infused with energy and a sense of purpose. She was making things happen.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Joanna polished off a croissant and orange juice in the pub the next morning before setting out down Main Street. No more lazing around in bed for the new Joanna. The sun was shining, and the vagaries of the climate here meant she’d better take advantage of it while she had the chance. She was familiar enough with the laid-back ways of Lakeland folk not to be startled by the sight of a middle-aged woman in a fleecy white dressing gown standing at the end of the street, throwing sticks for a spaniel to fetch.

  The curtains at Seagull Cottage were open. Was this a good time to speak to Scott Durham about Nigel? On impulse, she rang the doorbell. No answer. She peered through the window into an untidy front room. Watercolours and ink drawings covered every inch of the walls, and half a dozen of this morning’s newspapers were scattered over the dining table and armchairs. There was no sign of Scott. Presumably he’d seized the moment, and headed off to paint or sketch while the spring weather stayed fine.

  The beach lay beyond the floodgates. The land facing her on the other side of the water was owned by the Ministry of Defence, and the Eskmeals firing range. A sinister notice warned that it was ‘dangerous to touch any shell, bomb, missile or strange object found on the sands or beach’. Strange object? The mind boggled. As if the possibility of being shot wasn’t enough. Just thinking about the guns of Eskmeals reminded Joanna of Malcolm Whiteley’s horrific crimes, and she turned away with a shudder.

  Walking round the point, she followed the shoreline behind the houses, back in the direction of the Eskdale Arms. The urge to climb over the rocks, something she’d last done in her teens, was impossible to resist. A rusting anchor was stuck in the mud, and you could see the willow sticks from the old salmon traps. Traces of the old coast road still remained, and someone had even parked an ancient Ford Anglia on the shore. Here she’d once collected fragments of Georgian pottery and coloured glass from in between the stones, though she’d never fulfilled her ambition of picking up a long lost Roman coin.

  The Esk, the Mite, and the Irt joined together here, but although a footbridge ran alongside the railway viaduct, toward Saltcoats and the caravan park, she intended to go round in a circle, and return to the guest house. No point in hanging around Ravenglass in the hope of a word with Scott Durham.

  Half a dozen houses backing on to the shore boasted conservatories, and Joanna identified the most dilapidated as Scott’s studio. Set into the concrete sea wall below was a back door – locked, she couldn’t resist trying the handle – giving access to the foreshore. Steep steps ran up to the house, with an iron spiral staircase leading to the studio from the tiny garden. She imagined Scott sitting up there on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, drinking in the view. Why had he been so grumpy yesterday? Seeing her must have opened old wounds. If Lysette was the love of his life, perhaps her death left scars that never healed.

  The rocks were slippery, and the gusts of wind gaining strength, but somehow she kept her footing. The cold morning air had cleared her mind, and a fresh thought struck her as she scrambled down. Those newspapers in Scott’s cottage – why had he bought so many? He hadn’t collected a pile of yellowing copies of The Whitehaven News or something, but rather a mix of nationals as well as the latest locals. She’d spotted the Telegraph, Guardian, and Mail amongst others. Why would an artist take such an interest in what was going on in the outside world? He was checking out a particular story, Joanna thought.

  At once she realised what it must be. Scott was researching the disappearance of Shona Whiteley.

  ‘That girl is still missing.’

  Daniel was in the kitchen of Tarn Cottage, listening to the news on Radio Cumbria, as Hannah looked in to say goodbye. Spread out in front of him on the kitchen table was a sheaf of notes, background material for the talk he was preparing. ‘Heard the latest on Shona Whiteley?’ She frowned. ‘Not looking good.’

  ‘No, she was last seen on Saturday morning, and today’s Wednesday. A long time for a sixteen year old to be away from home.’

  ‘The more time passes, the more likely it is that she’s been taken against her will. Her father must be frantic. It’s only a year since he lost his wife. I’ll see if I can get an update at HQ before I set off for Grange.’

  ‘Good luck with Cheryl.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll need it.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Maybe I should have ordered that body armour, after all.’

  ‘An accountant called Gray Elstone?’ You-can-call-me-Al was standing in the doorway that led to his private office. ‘I certainly do know the name, Joanna. He does my books.’

  ‘I used to work for him, a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d look him up.’

  He gave a thoughtful nod. Her skin prickled, and she wondered if he was mentally undressing her. He reminded her of one of Gray Elstone’s clients, a corpulent middle-aged businessman who thought his audit fees entitled him to fondle her backside whenever she made the mistake of getting within range. She was glad the reception counter separated the pair of them.

  ‘Old flames of yours, Scott and Gray?’

  She flushed. ‘Not at all. They were both quite a lot older than me.’

  ‘Of course, of course, I didn’t mean to …’ He coughed, to signal a hasty retreat into platitudes. ‘Nice chap, Gray, salt of the earth, I’m sure he’ll be over the moon to see you. His office is in Seascale, but you probably knew that?’

  ‘No, we lost touch a very long time ago. In those days, he was based in Ulverston, and lived nearby. But I seem to remember he came from Seascale originally.’

  ‘Yes, and he has a big house on the cliffs, two minutes from the office. There’s nothing like getting back to your roots, is there? Not that I plan to get back to mine in a hurry. Then again, I was born in a two-up, two-down in Benwell, so can you blame me?’

  He gave a throaty laugh, but Joanna didn’t join in. Once again, he’d baffled her. She had no idea where Benwell was, but she suspected Benwell was doing just fine without him.

  ‘DI Borthwick still thinks Shona left home voluntarily.’

  Billie Frederick conveyed her disagreement with a shake of her tight black curls. She was one of Cumbria Constabulary’s few detectives with West Indian heritage. Her family had come over from Jamaica when she was a child, and although her father and brothers were medics, she’d joined the police after leaving school. A no-nonsense character, always blunt and often bolshie, Billie was a small woman with a loud voice. Her inexhaustible supply of scathing one-liners made her the life and soul of any party as well as a scarily effective negotiator on behalf of the Police Federation. Management had learnt from bruising experience that you didn’t mess with DC Wilhelmina Frederick, and so had plenty of criminals.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Hannah asked. ‘Was she unhappy at home?’

  ‘Not according to Daddy. Question is, how much does Daddy really know about his little darling? Grizzly reckons he’s a smart guy, but how many men are that smart when it comes to their teenage daughters?’

  ‘There were no clues on her laptop or her phone, were there? Not on her Facebook page, or anywhere else. Nothing to suggest she was planning to do a bunk.’

  ‘One theory is that she left her phone at home on purpose, because she had another phone, ready for use.’

  ‘Any evidence to support that?’

  ‘We found a girl from her class who reckoned she saw Shona fiddling with a brand new iPhone on the last day of term before the Easter break.’

  ‘The day before she disappeared.’

  ‘Right. When she asked Shona if it was a present from her Dad, she was told it belonged to a friend, and Shona had just borrowed it out of curiosity. According to the c
lassmate, she seemed evasive, as if she’d been caught out. We’ve not been able to track down whoever supposedly lent the phone.’

  ‘Was the classmate a close friend?’

  ‘Shona doesn’t have many friends. Let alone people she confides in. That’s one of the things complicating the enquiry.’

  ‘And there’s no trace of the girl she was supposed to be seeing over the weekend?’

  ‘Nothing. The story she told her father was untrue. Unless she didn’t tell him that story after all.’ Billie leant forward. ‘There is another possibility. Want to hear it?’

  Hannah grinned. ‘I’d be heartbroken if you didn’t tell me. Gobsmacked, too, to be honest.’

  ‘Ouch.’ Billie rocked with laughter. ‘What if darling Daddy did something to Shona, and made up the story to cover his tracks?’

  ‘Grizzly reckons he’s devoted to her, doesn’t he? And hasn’t the house been searched?’

  ‘Grizzly’s too nice. And yeah, we’ve had a look round, but I doubt the kid’s buried under the floorboards. The grounds are extensive.’

  ‘You really think Nigel Whiteley is a murderer?’

  ‘Hey, nobody around here knows better than me about the dangers of stereotyping. But we’ve got to face facts.’ Billie grimaced. ‘This man’s uncle was a killer, and one of his victims was a teenage girl. I’m not talking sexual abuse here, not necessarily. Just about a violent temper snapping. Let’s face it. It’s in the blood.’

  Seascale was a few miles up the coast, on the far side of the sand dunes at Drigg, but to reach it by road from Ravenglass, you had to drive inland and zigzag out of the National Park. As Joanna drove along the front, above the cliffs, she thought the resort hadn’t changed much in the past twenty years. She parked next to the rebuilt battlements of an old stone fortress. Below a reinstated cannon, a plaque commemorated the people killed a few years back by a demented gunman called Derrick Bird. Although Bird’s madness was very different from Malcolm Whiteley’s, he’d destroyed even more innocent lives.

  The narrow wooden jetty had been rebuilt, and three anglers were trying their luck. The smell of fish and salt took her back to seaside trips of her childhood. The waves were choppy, the breeze bracing, and she strolled to the end of the jetty before looking back at the buildings perched on the low cliff. With the coming of the Furness Railway, Victorian speculators planned to transform the village into ‘the Eastbourne of the North’, but the money ran out, and the grand hotel-lined promenade never got past the drawing board. Seascale remained tiny, peaceful, and half-forgotten until the government built a munitions factory, and then replaced it with a nuclear processing plant. In the Fifties, so many atom scientists lived in Seascale that it claimed to be the brainiest village in Britain. Most of the boffins moved on, but Sellafield remained, a vast sprawling blot on the landscape. During her childhood, Joanna had recurrent nightmares about being burnt to a cinder in an atomic explosion, or turned into some sort of radioactive zombie. But time acclimatised you to almost anything, and the night of the Last Supper had taught her that the worst dangers were those you never dreamt of.

  She walked back toward the old water tower, with its red stonework and conical roof. Thank goodness nobody had bulldozed it in the name of progress. In no time, she found Elstone and Company’s offices, which occupied the floor above a tea shop rejoicing in the name of The Odd Women. Her pleasure at tracking Gray down soon gave way to uncertainty about what to do next, and she dithered on the pavement until the decision was snatched from her hands. The door marked with the name of Gray’s firm swung open, and the man himself strode out. Ungainly as ever, he cannoned into her. ‘Hello, Gray.’

  He gave a little gasp. ‘Joanna?’

  She smiled. ‘Glad you still recognise me.’

  ‘Good Lord, of course.’ He’d lost an inch or two of height, thanks to a slight stoop, and he still bit his fingernails, but he’d had his teeth whitened, and his shirt and tie looked expensive. He peered through rimless spectacles. ‘Your … um … hair, I mean … it’s still very … um … eye-catching.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She took it as a compliment. The numbing misery of her younger days returned only when someone like Eoin was unkind about her appearance, and made her think her appeal lay in her bank balance, not in her womanliness. ‘It’s lovely to see you again.’

  ‘Yes … um, and you, of course.’ He drew breath. ‘What on earth are you doing here, of all places?’

  ‘I’m staying in Ravenglass. Decided it was time to get back to my roots. The man who runs the guest house told me he’s a client of yours. Is his name really Alvaro Quiggin, or is he pulling my leg?’

  ‘Alvaro? Goodness, yes, nothing less than the truth. Um … nice chap. Well …’ Gray seemed unsure where the conversation was going. So was Joanna. It was one thing to map out an encounter in your mind, quite another to conduct it according to plan when the moment arrived. ‘Can you spare the time for a cuppa?’

  ‘How kind. I’d love that.’ Nothing ventured, nothing gained. ‘I’m sure you’re rushed off your feet without wasting your time chewing the fat with an old secretary from twenty years ago.’

  Gray hesitated, and she feared she’d played her cards badly, giving him a chance to escape. ‘No, no. I was only popping out to the florist’s. I don’t have any more client meetings till this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, in that case …’ Joanna waited to see if he was going to explain the trip to the florist’s, but he simply smiled, and said that The Odd Women did a very good Darjeeling.

  Walking into the tea shop, they were greeted by home cooking smells, and the fragrance of herbs. Gray whispered, ‘In case you’re wondering about the name of this place, the owners are two … um … lesbians. Nice women, Molly and Pat. Jolly good fun. They’re clients of mine, and they’re making a go of the business, though it’s never easy out of season.’

  ‘I suppose it helps that they have a sense of humour.’

  Gray allowed himself a smile as they took a table in the window. ‘They are also a very cultured couple. As you can see.’

  He pointed to a framed print showing a Victorian novel, lavishly bound. The author was George Gissing, the title The Odd Women. A small buxom woman in her fifties came to take their order, and greeted Gray like an old friend.

  ‘Molly, this is Joanna. She used to work for me, more years ago than either of us cares to remember. Another keen student of literature and history, if I remember correctly. You were a fan of Jane Austen rather than Gissing, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Still am, actually.’ How wonderful that he remembered.

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Molly’s handshake was firm. ‘Gray’s told you about Gissing, then?’

  ‘Never read him, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Unlucky bloke, George, but he could write. As a boy, he came here on holiday. Even in those days, Seascale wasn’t exactly Blackpool, but he fell in love with the place. When he came to write an important feminist novel, where did he set a crucial chapter of The Odd Women? In Seascale, where else? So that’s a pot of Darjeeling for two, and a plate of scones?’

  As she bustled off, Gray gave a nervous laugh. ‘You live and learn, eh?’

  ‘I suppose we’ve both done a lot of that in the last twenty years.’

  ‘Very true.’ He sighed. ‘So what have you been up to, all this time?’

  Joanna had planned what to say about her life during the last twenty years. She needed to rehearse for her meeting with Nigel. Not that she meant to lie, naturally. She was simply aware that many people would think she’d had a miserable time, and she didn’t want to come across as sad or desperate.

  ‘Oh, this and that. When I left home, I didn’t have a clear idea about what to do. I only knew I needed to get away from Cumbria, after so many awful things had happened to me here. You’d been very kind, it was nothing personal. I moved to Manchester, but city life didn’t suit. I met a boyfriend who was a dyed-in-the-wool Mancunian, so I stuck it out for as long as I could,
but in the end I left him, and finished up in a flat in Lytham. After Mum and Dad died, I spent my inheritance on a bungalow, and worked in an insurance broker’s.’ He glanced at her hand, searching for a ring. ‘You never married?’

  ‘No, no.’ It was her turn to give a nervous laugh. ‘Came close a couple of times, but never made it to the altar. My last boyfriend treated me unkindly, and I was ill for a while.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it. You do look pale, but not to worry, the Ravenglass air will do you a power of good.’

  ‘Absolutely. My firm wanted to cut back on the secretarial side, and they gave me a package. Now I’m feeling more like my old self, and I’m ready for a fresh start.’

  He looked startled. ‘You’re not thinking of coming back here permanently?’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Gray, I’m not here to beg for my old job back.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean … actually, I might well have a vacancy before long, as it happens. But I rather thought… when you left, you were in quite a state. So it’s a shock to see you here … a nice surprise, of course, I don’t …’

  She held up her hand. ‘Please don’t apologise, Gray. You’re right, it’s a bolt from the blue, seeing me again after so long. But my story isn’t very exciting and doesn’t take long to tell. How about you? I was so sorry to read about …’

  ‘About Lily?’ The Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Yes, it was dreadful. Still is. I mean, you keep hoping, but …’

  He’d never been good at finishing difficult sentences, and nowadays his voice trailed away more often than ever. Molly brought the tea, and Joanna took charge of pouring. She reached across the table, and brushed his hand. His flesh was cold to touch.