The Frozen Shroud

by Martin Edwards

  Lauren allowed herself to reprise her perfect smile.

  ‘I’m only thinking of your reputation. Greg’s is a lost cause. I’ve heard a whisper that the two of you are becoming … quite close. Sounds to me like you’re perched at the top of a slippery slope, Hannah. Take a tip from me. You’d be well advised to scramble off that slope. As soon as.’

  Head buzzing, Hannah returned down the corridor. She was unsteady on her feet, as if she’d been smacked about by Stefan rather than just had a talk with the brass about finance and staffing.

  ‘All right?’

  A grizzled figure limped out from the kitchen, his battered shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. Les Bryant, cold case consultant, and both guru and team mascot. A man she, and everyone else who mattered, would trust with their lives.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Audience with her ladyship?’ Les put his hand on her arm, an uncharacteristic gesture. ‘Don’t fret. I’ve had a good innings. Two good innings, as a matter of fact.’

  Hannah caught his hand and squeezed it briefly. Even more uncharacteristic.

  ‘’Sides, I seem to need a season ticket for the GP’s surgery nowadays.’ He flexed knobbly finger joints to emphasise his point. ‘It’s no fun getting old. Suppose I’m ready for the bloody pipe and slippers after all.’

  After dropping the bombshell, Lauren had sworn Hannah to secrecy. The commissioner hadn’t signed off her proposals yet. Though she’d never have shown her hand unless she was confident that she held the aces.

  ‘What do you know?’ Her voice was hoarse with emotion.

  ‘When you’ve been a detective as long as me, it’s not what you know, it’s what your gut tells you.’

  ‘There won’t be a formal announcement for another week.’

  ‘’Course not. Takes time to draft a news release, doesn’t it? Any road, the formal stuff is always the last link in the chain. Office grapevines work faster than any intranet.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need. I’m not dead yet. And my contract isn’t over, either. I don’t suppose a payment in lieu is on the table, and I wouldn’t take it even if they offered. The ship may not be sinking, but you still need all hands on deck.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Nowt to thank me for. Promise me one thing, Hannah.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t destroy your own prospects over this. Look after number one, that’s my advice. Do yourself a favour, go with the flow.’

  Hannah looked into his bloodshot eyes. ‘My old boss once told me the best detectives don’t waste their time going with the flow.’

  ‘Right, but Ben Kind came close to drowning once or twice himself. And one day you might find you don’t have a lifebelt.’

  Half an hour later, Greg Wharf waltzed into her office. He’d spent the day in Barrow, checking on a possible link between half a dozen sexual assaults dating back to the nineties. As he finished his debrief, he added, ‘By the way, you don’t need to say anything.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You know, the cuts.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’

  ‘Fine.’ He stretched his legs. ‘I wouldn’t mind Public Protection. Bodyguard to nubile young pop stars? I can handle that.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Don’t plan your life around it, that’s all.’

  His mouth folded into a grin, as if to remind her what a good-looking sergeant she had. Not quite as good-looking as he thought. But not bad.

  ‘I’ll take my cue from you, ma’am.’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘Didn’t we agree to have a bite to eat sometime? What are you doing after work?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m going out tonight.’ Better make clear it wasn’t with Marc. ‘I’m seeing Terri. Remember that Polish barman? He’s giving her a hard time. Apparently he’s done time back in Poland for assault, and now he’s awaiting trial for punching a guy he worked with.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ The grin vanished. ‘I smelt the anger on him when we met. Mister Nice Guy as long as everything suits him, but ready to turn nasty any time his nose is put out of joint.’

  ‘I’m worried for Terri. She’s hopeless at looking after herself.’

  ‘She’s a big girl, Hannah.’ Greg looked as though he was about to make a breast-related joke, then thought better of it. ‘You can’t live her life for her. Tell her to see one of m’learned friends. They’ll slap an injunction on the bastard.’

  ‘Mmmmm. You know what lawyers are like. Only ready to move if the evidence stacks up, and the case is handed to them tied up with pink ribbon.’

  ‘Let me know if I can do anything to help.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, uncertain what kind of help he had in mind. Perhaps a quiet word with Stefan, possibly something more direct. Like Terri, he was a risk-taker. Was that why, against all the odds, she’d taken a shine to him?

  ‘If you’re busy tonight, how about dinner tomorrow?’

  Persistent, or what? ‘I might be washing my hair.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s fine as it is.’

  ‘Don’t think flattery will get you anywhere.’

  ‘Hey, I wasn’t trying to appeal to your vanity. Just your stomach.’

  ‘I need to lose pounds, not add them.’

  A sidelong glance. ‘You could have fooled me.’

  She reminded herself what she’d just said about flattery. ‘Not dinner. A quick drink. Maybe.’

  After Greg had left the room, Hannah scowled at the spreadsheet for five more minutes before giving it up for the day. Forget what Lauren had said about her and Greg. The gossips could fuck off. She clung to the belief that with him, she’d always been one hundred per cent professional.

  Was that enough? Perception often mattered more than reality. The temptation to do the opposite of Lauren’s bidding was almost impossible to resist. It wasn’t so easy to brush aside words of wisdom from Les Bryant. If people started to hint that she was shagging Greg, her career would soon go into freefall.

  His reputation as bad news had preceded him; when he’d joined the team, he already had one broken marriage to his credit, and God-knew-how-many broken hearts. He was a Geordie Jack the Lad, and like most of the people the brass moved into cold case work – including Hannah – he’d blotted his copybook. The team was widely regarded as a bunch of misfits, yet to everyone’s surprise, they had bonded into a cohesive whole. Best of all, they’d solved crimes that had festered in the too-difficult pile for years.

  Doctor Who interrupted her mental time-travelling. Her heart skipped a beat; her first thought was that Terri was calling again. Had Stefan caught up with her? Was she in danger?

  A glance at the caller name turned apprehension into anger.

  Marc. Oh, for God’s sake. Did some men never learn?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Louise left Tarn Cottage for work, still munching her toast. Cutbacks had led the university to offer her only a part-time contract this academic year. She’d taken the financial hit for twelve months, as a quid pro quo for a better work-life balance, yet a sadistic twist of timetabling fate had landed her with a nine o’clock lecture on Monday morning. Insider trading for a bunch of half-asleep first years. No wonder she was monosyllabic over breakfast. Neither she nor Daniel was a morning person, and after a few weeks of careful politeness, they’d eased back into territory familiar from their teens. Arguing about what to watch on television, and whose turn it was to load the dishwasher.

  The air in Tarn Fold was damp as Daniel trundled the wheelie bin along the rough track. The trees that formed a thick summer canopy were shedding their leaves, the birds flitting through twisted branches had lost the urge to sing. Somewhere in the distance, a sheep bleated as if in mourning. After a rainy summer, the autumn hues remained vivid, but winter was inching closer, ready to clutch Brackdale in an icy embrace. He parked the bin at the lane end where the refuse lorry stopped, and scooted back to the centrally heated sanctua
ry of his study.

  A deadline loomed for an article commissioned by an American journal, but he excelled at displacement activity. Anything to put off the moment of truth: fashioning the first sentence that set the tone for everything that followed.

  Louise had developed a passion for tidying the cottage, so he found it too easy to fritter away time trying to find where she’d hidden the keys or book or CD that he wanted. She could never understand the strange comfort he found in chaos and clutter.

  He made a fresh mug of coffee, dug out an album of Dusty Springfield covers by Shelby Lynne, decided against answering a stroppy email from his accountant about his tax return, and finally flicked on to Google, wanting to learn about the Frozen Shroud while listening to a breathy paean to the joys of just a little lovin’, early in the morning.

  Too right, Shelby; it beat a cup of coffee any day. Daniel turned up the volume a shade. He’d been celibate for too long; another thought to push out of his mind. He forced himself to focus on the screen.

  The wealth of knowledge available on the internet amplified Jeffrey Burgoyne’s account. Clifford Hodgkinson, a builder from Blackburn, moved to the Lakes at the turn of the century with his wife Letitia, and their newborn daughter. He bought a stretch of land on the east bank of Ullswater, known as Satan’s Head. Fearing the old name might depress property prices, he rechristened the area Ravenbank, and set about creating a private fiefdom beside the lake. Long before planning laws and National Park regulations prevented large-scale speculative development, his dream was to preside over a small, exclusive community with its own village shop, post office and pub. He started by rebuilding a half-derelict house on Ullswater’s shore, and transforming it into Ravenbank Hall, a testament to his wealth and status. Two roads were laid out, and individually designed homes built. The fifth was completed a week before Gertrude Smith’s murder.

  The housemaid had come down from Glasgow in search of work, and Hodgkinson offered her a job at Ravenbank Hall eight months before she died. She had been ‘courted’, as the old reports quaintly put it, by Roland Jones, a tutor hired to teach Dorothy Hodgkinson at home, but Hodgkinson admitted he’d been having an affair with her. According to some websites, Gertrude was pregnant, but whether the father was Jones or Hodgkinson wasn’t revealed. What was certain was that, less than twenty-four hours after the discovery of Gertrude’s corpse, Hodgkinson’s scorned wife took a fatal dose of veronal.

  Letty Hodgkinson had a history of jealous rages, and she’d suffered from depression since Dorothy’s birth. She’d spent time in a sanatorium, and the police took her suicide as proof that she was guilty but insane. There was mention of a suicide note in which Letty admitted killing Gertrude, and the authorities were quick to treat the case as closed. Letty was buried, not in the graveyard at Martindale, but in the grounds of Ravenbank Hall. That was why Gertrude’s ghost was supposed to walk endlessly down the lane leading to the Hall. She wanted to know why she and her unborn child had to die.

  The scandal wrecked Hodgkinson’s reputation, and his plans for Ravenbank collapsed. He died of heart failure not long afterwards, ‘a broken man’. Dorothy never married, but became well known in the county for charitable work. After the end of the First World War, Roland Jones rose to prominence in the field of liberal education. And that was pretty much that.

  The phone rang just as Shelby launched into ‘Wishin’ and Hopin”. He pressed pause and said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Daniel? This is Melody Knight. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

  ‘Glad of an interruption.’ He gazed through the window. Beyond the rambling back garden rose the slopes of Tarn Fell. A view he loved at any time of year, although a fleecy mist obscured Priest Ridge, and he couldn’t make out the dark outlines of the Sacrifice Stone. ‘Any excuse not to write.’

  ‘We agreed to get together so you could tell me more about your book. It just so happens that this afternoon I’m in your neck of the woods, picking up supplies for the party in Brack. We could have a cuppa and a chat about The Hell Within. If you can spare the time.’

  Spending an hour with Melody would be no hardship. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was meaning to visit Amos Books. I wondered if they had anything on Ravenbank, or that legend of the Frozen Shroud. They have a cafeteria there, if that suits you.’

  ‘Oh, I adore that shop! Not just the books, did you know their cakes have won awards? Not that I dare gobble many of them. I’d need to buy a whole new wardrobe. Or rather, talk Oz into buying it for me.’

  ‘Three o’clock suit you?’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  After she rang off, Daniel googled Shenagh Moss. Tales of Gertrude Smith’s ghost, coupled with the murderer’s decision to cover Shenagh’s face with a blanket, had been a gift for the media. The crime was a nine days’ wonder. Craig Meek, the ex who turned into a stalker, was described by an unnamed ‘friend’ as ‘a bit of a lunatic, really’ and ‘sort of a Mr Angry’, which made Daniel wonder what his enemies thought of him. Nobody suggested that Meek might not have killed Shenagh.

  And so, despite the link with a pleasurably macabre ghost story, Shenagh’s murder soon slipped out of the headlines. The presumed killer was dead, the narrative complete. There was nothing more to say.

  Yet five years after Shenagh’s murder, something kept alive Jeffrey Burgoyne’s scorn for her. Possibly others felt the same. Daniel couldn’t help wondering if Ravenbank was home to more than one ghost.

  He arrived at the converted mill occupied by Amos Books in time to search for books about the Faceless Woman before Melody arrived. He loved the shop, with its sloping floor and narrow aisles threaded between rows of crammed shelves, loved the mustiness of the old tomes even more than the seductive smell of coffee and cakes wafting from the cafeteria. Hidden away in his office, Marc kept his computer, and even an e-reader, but the shop remained a temple for worshippers of the printed word. This afternoon, it was quiet except for a group of voluble German walkers examining a set of signed Wainwrights, and the usual stream of people wanting food and drink rather than books. He was leafing through a dusty volume called Ullswater Lore and Legends when a hand clapped him on the back.

  ‘Daniel! How are things?’

  Marc Amos sounded glad to see him. They enjoyed each other’s company, and even though Hannah had confided that her former partner was always jealous of her friendships with other men, he seemed to make an exception in Daniel’s case.

  ‘Good, thanks. How’s business?’

  Marc pushed a hand through his thick fair hair. ‘Keeping the wolf from the door. Footfall is steady, and revenue from the cafeteria is on the up. When you see what’s happening to retail in this country, let alone to second-hand bookshops, we’ve got plenty to be thankful for.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. I can’t be the only person who still loves wandering around a bookshop.’

  A woman in a blue uniform waved hello as she walked past the far end of the book stacks. Leigh Moffat, brisk and businesslike, was in charge of catering. She and Marc had gone into partnership, and Hannah reckoned that one fine day, the two of them would move in together.

  ‘I should have joined forces with Leigh years ago,’ Marc said. ‘I used to be a control freak, thought I’d only be happy if I stayed in charge of everything. But Leigh’s far better at the business side than me. Not just the finances, but negotiations with the landlords, marketing, all the crap I hate. She actually enjoys it. Thanks to her, I can focus on scouting out rare books, and tracking down collectors who might want to pay good money for them.’ He grinned. ‘It’s like marrying a pristine first edition with a fine dust jacket from a second impression copy. The two are worth more together than apart. Now, what do you have there?’

  Daniel flourished the book. ‘Someone told me about the legend of the Frozen Shroud. And do you have any books dealing with the real-life murders at Ravenbank? Not just the killing of Gertrude Smith, but
the Shenagh Moss case too?’

  ‘Check out the true crime section. We’re more likely to have something about the old case. Shenagh was the Australian woman, wasn’t she? Your best bet is the newspaper archives. I remember Hannah talking about the investigation, though she wasn’t involved directly. Fern Larter was on the team, but she wasn’t the SIO.’

  Daniel nodded. Hannah had introduced him to Fern, a friend as well as colleague. ‘I gather the killer died in a car crash.’

  ‘Well, if you accept that the obvious solution is almost always right. The man’s name was Meek, I remember. What sticks in my mind is that Fern wasn’t happy about the case.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘She didn’t care for the SIO, said he was idle and far too quick to close the file. You’ve met Fern, haven’t you? Once encountered, never forgotten. And never afraid to say what’s on her mind. She had a row with her boss, and finished up with her wrists slapped, and forced to toe the line.’

  Daniel leant forward. ‘Didn’t she believe Meek was guilty?’

  ‘They were presented with a story that was too neat. Her theory was that someone took advantage of the old legend to settle a score with the woman who died, and used Meek as a scapegoat. Unfortunately, she had no evidence, she was relying on gut feel.’

  ‘And what did Hannah think?’

  Marc sighed. ‘You know Hannah.’

  ‘She agreed with Fern?’

  ‘She trusts her instinct. They both hated the idea that someone might just have got away with murder.’

  One coincidence about the two murders in Ravenbank had already struck Daniel. In each case, the prime suspect died within a day of the victim. Case closed. Neat and tidy, and convenient for everyone.

  A woman whose appearance and demeanour reminded him of the trout who wanted to swallow Jeremy Fisher accosted Marc. She demanded to know where she might find a biography of Beatrix Potter costing no more than two pounds. The answer was the biography shelves, but Marc dressed it up with such tact and charm that by the time she strutted off, she’d morphed into a beaming Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.