Death in the Woods: A DCI Jude Satterthwaite novel (The DCI Satterthwaite Mysteries)

by Jo Allen

  Outside in the square an ambulance siren squealed. In the reception area behind Jude, Vanessa’s secretary, Maisie, answered the phone. ‘Yes, Dr Wood will be around tomorrow. Drop in any time after eleven.’

  Vanessa inclined her head towards the door. ‘I’ll see you at Eden’s End at ten, then.’

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ he said, and paused.

  Vanessa took a guess at what he was about to say. ‘Your brother will be fine, Chief Inspector.’

  A flicker of surprise crossed his face and for a moment she thought that wasn’t what he’d been going to ask. But the surprise was followed by almost immediate relief, so her guess had been right after all, and she’d hit on what that was worrying him. ‘You think so?’

  ‘It’s natural for you to worry. You’re a clever man, I know, but you’re a sensible one, and I’m sure he is, too. Stop worrying about him.’ Mikey Satterthwaite had turned up at her drop-in session and loitered in the waiting room while Vanessa been listening to Izzy Ecclestone expound on her fascination with death and the mystery of what lay beyond it, but he hadn’t come in. Having escorted her there, he’d escorted her safely away again and politely refused Vanessa’s invitation for a chat. You couldn’t reach people who didn’t want to be reached, but she fancied Mikey had a level head on his shoulders. She’d have loved to have talked to him; whatever reassurance she’d just offered his brother, the younger Satterthwaite was bound to have major emotional issues.

  ‘I’m a bit happier for hearing that.’ He wouldn’t be, of course, though he managed a rueful smile. Reassurance was impossible. He’d lie awake at night like half of the local population, waiting for bad news.

  ‘Good. We all have things that trouble us, Chief Inspector. No-one is too old or too strong or too clever to have problems, and it’s normal and natural to look for the easy way out. I shouldn’t really say this because I wouldn’t want people to think death might be the answer, and I’d never do so in a professional capacity.’ Sometimes she lied to her clients. All therapists, she thought, did so. ‘But sometimes it is. Izzy Ecclestone, for example. The attraction she feels for that tree. It’s unhealthy. They should cut it down. It has an appeal for a certain type of person. It only ends one way.’

  His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he didn’t like what he’d heard. ‘I’ll see you at Eden’s End at ten tomorrow, then,’ he said, and left.

  Twenty-Three

  ‘I’m buying,’ Jude said, as Doddsy preceded him in to the Golden Cage at Lazonby. ‘But for God’s sake don’t let me drink myself into a stupor tonight. I’ve got a lot of work to get through tomorrow.’

  Doddsy, who was handily teetotal and therefore an ideal drinking partner when restraint was called for, lifted an eyebrow as they shouldered their way through the busy pub. It was a sunny evening and the locals seemed keen to make the most of it. ‘One of those days, eh?’

  ‘You can say that again.’ Jude was too intense, too aware of his position and his responsibilities to be a heavy drinker. In a bizarre way it occurred to him that this was just the kind of thing that Becca, though no serious drinker herself, would regard as symptomatic of his obsessive nature. That evening, after a frustratingly unproductive day which had ended with Vanessa Wood neatly fingering his deepest fears, was one in which he wanted to drink enough to stop himself lying awake at night and drown the niggling voice in the back of his head that whispered about Mikey.

  ‘Then I’ll buy. Because I’m that mean I won’t get you the kind of measure you’d get for yourself and tomorrow will be a whole lot easier on everybody.’

  Doddsy’s calm always rubbed off on those around him, and he’d assessed the situation accurately in a conversation of just a few words, which meant Jude wouldn’t need to justify his mood. Thank God his friend could be trusted to keep the situation neutral and deliver Jude back to his house in Wordsworth Street in reasonably undamaged condition. Already the temptation to drink himself into a stupor was passing. ‘Make mine a pint of Eden Gold, then. I’ll go and get a seat outside where we don’t have to listen to the folk at the next table talking about how we should be doing our job.’

  Doddsy threaded his way through the table to the bar. Both the bar and the beer garden were unusually crowded, as if the sun had tempted everyone out to make the most of it. It was a lively yet lazy evening, where the sun and the beer drove the customers to ever more intense discussion with increasingly little consequence. Jude loitered in the doorway, taking his habitual look around, before heading out into the beer garden and occupying a table by the low, riverside wall. From there he had a view along the curve of the Eden and the thick green tangle that marked the edge of Cave Wood and concealed Lacy’s Caves. In a moment of weakness he texted Mikey just to check where he was and the reply, a barrage of outraged emojis, almost made him smile. Quite why Vanessa had been so sure of Mikey’s safety was beyond him, but she knew her job.

  There were reasons other than Vanessa’s superciliousness and Mikey’s bad temper to further sour his mood. Adam Fleetwood was standing in the middle of the beer garden talking to someone, and as Jude watched Geri Foster appeared, strode towards him and greeted him with a kiss on each cheek. Jude turned his back. He could imagine the laugh that would come to Adam’s lips when he heard how Becca had rejected him. And that wasn’t the worst; the worst was that there was no more he could do, no more questions he could ask. He knew the answer. Becca loved him, but not enough. He’d done his best, and his best wasn’t good enough.

  ‘Here.’ Doddsy negotiated the obstacle course of the beer garden, slid the pint down on the table in front of Jude and settled down in the seat opposite him with a tall glass of orange juice and lemonade. He, too, had taken a long look around. ‘Look on the bright side. If you’re looking for a woman, you won’t go short, and if you aren’t we’d better leave now. I saw your Spice Girl friend in the bar.’

  Jude had told Doddsy about Geri’s blunt approach to life and love, and it raised a smile. It was hardly a surprise that she was there; the Golden Cage was local. ‘Yeah, I saw her. I think I can protect myself against a predatory female. But I won’t need to. She’s with Adam Fleetwood.’

  ‘Nope.’ Doddsy double-checked. ‘She’s on her own.’

  Jude didn’t look for himself. He trusted Doddsy’s eyes and ears, and it made sense. Geri and Adam knew one another but it didn’t follow that they’d socialise, nor mean anything if they did. The Golden Cage, with its huge outside space and its geographical connections to the local suicides, was the pub of the moment. It had been his idea to come, for that very reason, but it had been a mistake. They should have chosen somewhere else. ‘Waiting for someone, you reckon?’

  ‘Could be.’

  Jude looked towards the bar in time to see Josh Foster come out and scan the garden, swinging a car key on his finger in a jaunty manner, before he strode over. Jude’s curiosity got the better of him. He half turned. Neither Josh nor Geri, seated two tables away, had a drink in front of them. Waiting for friends, then. He drew on his pint, pulled his chair round so he could look in their direction without being obvious. Josh also swivelled, but away from him, looking down the river towards the sandstone cliff in which were concealed Lacy’s Caves. Was that significant?

  ‘Interesting stuff, eh?’ Doddsy said, under his breath. ‘She’s a good looking woman, mind you. I like a bit of character.’

  ‘You’re spoken for.’ Jude drank again. It didn’t take much more than sunshine, a pint and some good company to help him start on the road to recovery. Ashleigh ending their relationship hadn’t come as a surprise, and Becca’s rejection was just the reprise of an old song. Even Adam’s vindictiveness seemed, at that moment, like a vanquished ghost. He’d survive. ‘What will Tyrone say?’

  Doddsy laughed. ‘I don’t think he needs to worry.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Seriously, now. What do we reckon about Josh? Do you think it was him?’

  ‘I certainly think it could have been.’

  Josh sai
d something to his mother, who turned to him and laid a careful hand on his arm. If he was guilty, did Geri know? Jude thought not, given the way she was looking at her son, the concern on her face.

  He sipped again. He was drinking too quickly, he knew, reliant on Doddsy to keep him under control, but he didn’t slow down. Something about Josh and Geri compelled him to keep watching. The two of them were laughing, now, but Geri stopped laughing first.

  ‘I think so, too,’ Doddsy said, still in the low tones although there was no-one within earshot and the hubbub from around them would have drowned them all out. ‘But supposing he is behind Eden Whispers, eh? We’ve all read the blogs. Subtle as you like. Nothing overt, all suggestion. Are we sure that’s enough to constitute an offence?’

  ‘That’s one for the CPS to worry about, but I think so. If it was him, I can’t believe Eden Whispers was all he did. He can’t have got that lucky. Maybe that’s what happened to begin with. But after that, maybe not. After that he might have moved on to give a helping hand.’ Or, in the case of Tania Baker, a push. ‘Maybe the phone records will show something, when we get them.’

  The Fosters turned again, this time to a man who was making his way across the beer garden towards them, hands clutching an assortment of glasses and with a couple of packets of crisps clenched by their corners in his teeth. He took the seat next to Josh, pushed a glass with a can of Coke inside it across to him, dropped the crisps on the table.

  Forgetting discretion, Jude stared at him. The man had thick grey hair that skimmed his shoulders and a beard that was darker than his hair. A gold earring flashed in his left ear. He had, Jude was quite sure, never seen him before in his life, yet he was startlingly familiar.

  ‘See him?’ said Doddsy, in a near-whisper. ‘Look.’

  Jude put down his pint. When the man smiled the flash of his teeth and the crinkle in the eye were an exact reflection of the look on the face of the young man next to him. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s Steven Lawson, isn’t it?’

  It was there in front of them. He was an older version of Josh who, in his turn, was a template drawn from that old school photograph. ‘It sure as hell is.’

  ‘Right. Then we need to get him picked up now.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Jude under his breath, regretting the half a pint he’d drunk too quickly. Steven Lawson wasn’t just wanted for murder; he was possibly complicit in two other killings and had questions to answer over the Eden Valley suicides. ‘We don’t want him giving us the slip.’ Just as he’d done forty years before, when he’d ghosted his way out of a crowded pub and vanished, leaving a man dying behind him.

  As casually as he could, Doddsy reached for his phone. ‘You keep watching. I’d better call for backup, I think, as I’m the one who’s stone cold sober.’

  As Doddsy dialled, got through to the control room, Jude watched the next table but one. When they got Steven Lawson into custody, they’d know for certain the extent of his crimes. He wasn’t a betting man but he’d lay money on the fact that Lawson’s fingerprints would match those found at the murders of Finn McDougall and Richard Stoker. ‘He must have been behind it, then. He put the kid up to it. Eden Whispers. And maybe he did the others himself.’

  ‘Slow down,’ Doddsy said, closing down the call. ‘Let’s make sure it’s him first. Let’s see if his dabs match up.’

  ‘His dabs don’t need to match up for him to be hauled in for the Hexham murder.’

  ‘I don’t know how these guys live with their consciences.’ Doddsy sighed and took a deliberate look elsewhere. ‘Imagine. You know you did it. Everyone else knows you did it. You’re wanted. Don’t you expect the knock on the door, every day of your life?’

  ‘Not if you’re arrogant enough to think you’ve got away with it.’ Jude, too, dipped his head to look less obvious. There was no way Steven Lawson could know who they were, but Josh and Geri did. And if they told him, even if he didn’t realise how closely he was tied into the web of death that someone had spun across the area, if he realised the police were taking an interest he’d melt away like the summer snow.

  On the other side of the beer garden, Josh looked up and turned sharply towards the man who must be his unacknowledged father. The man pushed his drink to one side and stood up.

  Jude sighed in frustration. ‘He knows who we are.’

  ‘There’s a patrol car on its way,’ Doddsy said, ‘but we don’t want to lose him, do we?’

  ‘He might not go anywhere if we don’t chase him.’ Jude turned his head away, pretending to be casually disengaged, and Doddsy did the same, but they both kept half an eye on the drama going on a short distance away.

  Yards away, Steven Lawson looked across at them, measured up his chances just as they were doing. He was, Jude knew, fifty-eight, the same age as David Satterthwaite. He looked lean and mean and fit but he didn’t look like a man who could outrun either of them, over a short or a longer distance.

  Lawson said something to Josh, who stood up and reached for the car key he’d placed on the table, but Geri was swifter. She closed her hand over the key and snatched it away. ‘Joshua Foster.’ Her raised voice reached them over the now-empty table between them. ‘Don’t you even think about it!’

  Lawson lost his caution. ‘What the hell are you doing? Give the kid his key. I need a lift and I need it now.’

  ‘It’s my key, it’s my car, and I say who drives it. I’m not having him getting mixed up with anything dodgy.’

  ‘It’s not dodgy, you stupid cow. But I need to get out of here.’ He’d lowered his voice but Jude could still hear him. ‘If those are the police, like he says—’

  ‘They are the police. But they’re drinking in a pub, not turning up in uniform. They don’t know who you are. It’s us they’re looking at. Doing a runner and drawing attention to yourself is really going to help, isn’t it?’

  He snatched at the key, caught her wrist and broke her grip, twisting it free. Geri’s cry of pain crashed through the sound of a summer evening and the father of her child snatched the key and broke for it across the crowded beer garden, overturning chairs as he went.

  Jude and Doddsy took off after him, hampered by the falling furniture, through the chaos of the bar, out into the street.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Doddsy, but Jude was concentrating on the man in front of him. They dodged through the darkened bar. His hand clutched at thin air as Lawson swerved to the doorway and burst out into the street. Fending off the door as it swung back in at him, Jude followed.

  He was under no illusions. Lawson would be heading for the Land Rover and if he got to it, it would become a weapon. He put on a spurt. ‘Stop! Police!’ The Land Rover was parked on the pavement, illegally, but Lawson must have realised he hadn’t time to reach it and make an escape. He ran past it, fruitlessly. Jude was a confident runner and tackled steep hills with ease; he made it to within arm’s length, reached out to grasp Lawson’s shoulder and the two of them crashed into the gutter.

  ‘Get off him!’

  Jude hadn’t realised that Josh had come after them and he, youngest and fittest of them all, had easily overhauled them. Lawson fought like a rat, though he must know he had no realistic chance of escape, and Josh’s young man’s fury was behind him.

  ‘That’s enough, lad,’ Doddsy was panting from somewhere above as Josh rained blows down on Jude. The tussle went on, futile and brutal, until just a few moments later a police patrol car screeched to halt beside them and two constables got out to join the fray. And that was it. Within a minute, Steven Lawson and his son were in handcuffs and a second car was drawing up.

  Jude, off duty and with half a pint of Eden Gold inside him, got to his feet, shook himself off and stepped back. Tonight it was a problem for someone else and he wouldn’t have to worry about it until the next day. He stepped back and ran a cautious hand over his shoulder. Bruising, nothing more, and that was lucky. Young Josh was handy with his fists; an interesting detail. He looked back to where
the customers were beginning to spill out of the pub onto the street to see what was going on. A third police car drew up and Tyrone Garner got out, looked up and down the street with a broad grin.

  ‘Enjoying your evening off, boss?’ Tyrone said to him, though it was Doddsy on whom he turned his dazzling smile. ‘Looks like it’s an interesting one.’

  ‘You can’t even get a pint in peace around here,’ Jude grumbled, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief and wiping blood from a grazed knuckle. ‘Is anyone else coming along? Who’s on call? This isn’t just your average brawl. We’ll need a detective. You’d better get statements.’ Not least from himself and Doddsy.

  ‘DS O’Halloran is on duty this evening. Now. Not just a brawl? Then these guys…?’

  ‘One for murder,’ Doddsy said, ‘and one for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.’ He turned to the officers in the other two police cars. ‘Get them taken down to custody, would you? We’ll fill you in with what happened and then probably get out of your way and look after our bumps and bruises, eh?’

  When Jude had given Tyrone his statement he stepped away, leaving Doddsy to give the uniformed officers what little direction they required, and turned to see what happened to Geri. She was standing on the pavement outside the pub, the fingers of her right hand clutched around the fingers of her left, and when she saw him she walked towards him. ‘Oh, well done, Chief Inspector. An excellent night’s work.’

  He ignored the sarcasm. ‘Are you hurt?’

  She looked down at her hand. ‘Bruised, that’s all. It was an accident. Really not worth making all that fuss about.’ She looked along at the police car, with Josh already in the back. ‘You’d better not be going to lock my son up.’

  He shook his head at her, feeling the beginnings of a bruise throbbing on his shoulder where Josh had struck him. ‘What do you think we’re going to do? He was trying to stop us making an arrest.’ Josh would get bail, he was sure of that. Geri would know it, too, and must be trying to provoke him. ‘You saw it.’