She bit the sentence off, as if regretting that she had said so much.
‘Did he ever…?’
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to go. Sorry if you’ve had a wasted journey. If you’re that keen to rake up the past, you’d have done better to talk to that bloody sergeant of his.’
‘Which sergeant?’
She was closing the door on him, her face a powdered mask even as she replied. ‘Hannah Scarlett. That was her name. She thought the sun shone out of your father’s backside.’
Chapter Six
‘Hannah, Nick, there you are!’ The ACC, practising for the media scrum, flashed a maximum-wattage smile as she beckoned them over. ‘Can I introduce Les Bryant?’
Hannah had walked into the ante-room ready, willing and able to take a serious dislike to her new colleague. First impressions were not encouraging. She’d never liked the smell of tobacco and he reeked of it. His weather-beaten features were moulded in a look of dour scepticism, as though he were about to caution her that anything she might say would be taken down and might be used in evidence.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
Bryant’s flat Yorkshire vowels gave no clue to his true feelings. But then, how thrilled was he likely to be that, after years of his own command, the senior serving officer in this new team was a woman? Plenty of policemen, not all of them veterans, found it hard to cope with female superiors. Given her experience of Lauren Self, Hannah was tempted to sympathise.
‘This is a truly exciting project,’ the ACC said. She spoke with deliberation, and Hannah guessed that she was rehearsing her lines for the conference. ‘Too many families of too many murder victims have had to wait too long for justice. Now we have an opportunity to tackle the mysteries that baffled a previous generation of investigators.’
‘What if they ask about resources?’ Bryant asked. ‘Are the figures finalised?’
Nick coughed. Hannah guessed that he was trying to suppress a snigger. Trust a Yorkshireman to focus on the money. Bryant had a point, nonetheless. There was a lot of talk at the moment about Government money being redistributed from rural forces to the metropolitan areas with higher crime rates. If this unit wasn’t properly funded, her fear of being set up to fail would prove prophetic.
‘Well,’ the ACC said, colour rising into her cheeks. ‘The Head of CID’s initial budget proposals have been approved by the police authority.’
‘I was only thinking, my contract is for six months at four days a week. Not exactly a long time to see justice done.’
The ACC flushed. ‘Yes, but don’t forget that your contract has an option to extend, if both parties wish it.’
Bryant thrust his hands in his pockets. A small pony-tailed girl from the press office put her head round the door and said in a breathless tone, ‘We’ll start in two minutes, ma’am, if that’s all right.’
‘Thanks, Sally-Ann, that’s great. Are we all set?’
‘Absolutely. The BBC crew is here and the room’s full to bursting, but I thought you’d like to keep them waiting for a few moments. Make a bit of an entrance. Build the excitement.’
Hannah caught Bryant wince at that last phrase, but the ACC was too busy checking her cue cards to notice. She lifted her head and squared her shoulders, her momentary discomfiture already forgotten. ‘Marvellous, absolutely marvellous. This could kickstart our project in the best possible way. Nothing like wall-to-wall media coverage for regenerating interest in an inquiry that’s gone cold. Don’t you think so, Les?’
‘Two-edged sword,’ he said bluntly, slouching towards the door. ‘We could find ourselves knee-deep in rubbish. Time-wasters and clairvoyants. It’s all about sorting the wheat from the chaff.’
‘Of course, you’re right, but…’
The ACC hesitated. For once she was lost for words. And for once Hannah actually felt sorry for her.
‘So now the circus is over,’ Les Bryant said as they trooped into the room that Headquarters had allocated for the team briefing, ‘where do we go from here?’
‘The pub?’ Bob Swindell stayed true to form. He would be the unit’s self-appointed joker. Every team had to have one.
Hannah waited until everyone had settled down and Bob had stopped pretending to shiver. Or perhaps he wasn’t pretending. The room was light and airy and freezing. Some problem with the radiators; they always malfunctioned during a cold snap. At least the media conference had gone as well as could be hoped. The ACC was thrilled with all the photo opportunities and the fact that nobody had asked penetrating questions about budgets. She was currently giving an in-depth interview to a local journo who needed to fill a page in a slack news week.
‘All right, where do we go from here?’ Hannah asked. ‘Well, we start by having to make choices. The resources allocated to us are limited. Our aim has to be to make an impact, fast. The ACC has been told to make an interim assessment of our work after six months. Not much time, not much cash.’
‘No change there, then.’ Lindsey Waller crossed her long legs and her skirt rode higher than ever. Hannah had already noticed that eyes kept straying to admire her. No change there, either. Linz was an object of almost universal desire and also one of the sharpest young detectives in the county. When the pressure was on, her sceptical sense of humour kept everybody grounded.
‘Too right. Six serving officers plus Les here as consultant, to cover all three regions of the county, all unsolved murders and rapes in Cumbria over, say, the past thirty years. That’s enough for a start.’
Bryant rocked on his chair and said, ‘More than enough, don’t you think, ma’am? Better make it fifteen years.’
The ma’am nettled Hannah even more than the hint that she was biting off more than she could chew. A small team needed to operate with maximum cohesion, minimum formality – she had little doubt that he was taking the piss. She’d retaliate by killing him with courtesy.
‘Excellent idea, Les. Spot on. Fifteen years it is. As for you four,’ she nodded at the detective constables, ‘I’d like you to split into two teams. Linz, you’re with Bob. Maggie, I’m pairing you with Gul.’
Bob Swindell nodded with enthusiasm and Maggie Eyre seemed happy enough, but DC Gul Khan wasn’t much of an actor and his flicker of disappointment was noticeable. A renowned ladies’ man, he’d obviously fancied taking the chance to bond with Linz Waller. Maggie had the rosy cheeks and ample proportions of a true farmer’s daughter, but glamorous she wasn’t. Anyway, she’d recently fallen for a young car mechanic from Keswick. Gul’s parents ran a convenience store in Workington; he and Maggie might not be soul-mates, but they could share experiences about escaping the clutches of a family business without becoming distracted from the grunt work of cold case review.
‘We need to take a look at each case, focusing on the evidence that might be improved with a little help from our friends in the Forensic Service. Then we can prioritise in order of re-examination for more detailed work. Looking at the statements that were taken at the time, the exhibits…’
‘If they’ve been retained,’ Bryant said.
‘Obviously it won’t help if stuff’s gone missing. We’ll have to take our chances on that. But as we all know, there’s scope for identifying minute quantities of DNA these days, in contexts where investigators a few years back didn’t have a prayer. We can consider the tests made originally and whether we can improve on them.’
‘Finance permitting,’ Bryant said.
‘Absolutely right, Les.’ She wouldn’t let him knock her off her stride. Above all, she couldn’t allow a negative attitude to take root in the team. A unit like this needed to be highly motivated. It would be so easy to despair of ever achieving a result. ‘Because cash is tight, it’s all the more important to take good care to use it to maximum effect. Maybe you’d like to give us the benefit of your experience? Anything to add?’
Les Bryant grimaced. His trousers seemed tight; Hannah guessed that he’d put on weight since he’d last worn a suit. Had he a
lready spent too long in cardigan and slippers? Maybe he’d lost it and meant to cover up by seeking out for a chance to make her look a fool. Hannah realised she was holding her breath, waiting to gauge his response.
‘Take nothing on trust,’ he said finally.
As was her habit, Linz said what everyone else was thinking. ‘Meaning what, specifically?’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said. Seize the moment. ‘Would you like to elaborate, Les?’
Bryant contemplated Linz’s legs wistfully. For a moment, Hannah thought he was going to crack a locker-room joke, just to see how she handled it. Then he cleared his throat and began to talk in a drab monotone that she found oddly hypnotic.
‘You need to remember, cold case review is different from a typical murder inquiry. There you start with a body and nothing else. Right? In this game, you have a whole load of stuff on your plate from day one. Photo-fits, e-fits, exhibits, a thousand and one facts. Things are simpler when you don’t have too many facts getting in the way.’
‘You can say that again,’ Bob Swindell murmured, but Maggie hushed him with a fierce look.
Bryant didn’t seem to notice the interruption. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, as he defined the nature of the challenge that the ACC had set. ‘You see, a lot of those facts are going to be useless. Worse than that, they’ll lead you astray if you let them. Facts are like ideas, you can have too much of a good thing. We’re walking in old footsteps, ladies and gentlemen, dealing with other detectives’ preconceived ideas. Sure, we’re playing catch-up with the past, but don’t let it get you down. There’s always a reason why a murder inquiry fails to get a result and it’s mostly down to cock-up, not conspiracy. Was a bit of evidence overlooked, a statement not checked? We can’t assume that any of the original work was sound. Maybe all but one per cent of it was – but we don’t know which particular one per cent it might be.’ He folded his arms and looked at Linz, the faintest hint of a cynical smile on his seen-it-all features. ‘That’s why I say – take nothing on trust.’
‘So what do you make of him?’ Hannah asked.
Nick stirred his coffee with a plastic spoon. They were sitting in a corner of the canteen while the four constables sifted through the first calls responding to the press office’s publicity blitz. Les Bryant was upstairs with the ACC, wrangling about the procedure for claiming his expenses.
‘I was hoping for Gandalf. Looks like we finished up with Eeyore.’
She laughed. ‘Under pressure, he did talk a bit of sense.’
‘Pity it had to be dragged out of him. See what I mean? Stereotypical Yorkshireman.’ He put on a cod Leeds accent. ‘If tha does owt for nowt, do it for thissen.’
‘He’s supposed to have all the right experience.’
‘Meaning that he knows just which buttons to press if he wants to be a pain.’
‘You could be right. I can’t see him joining my fan club, somehow.’
Nick gave her a cheeky grin. ‘That’s a pretty select grouping anyway, isn’t it? Never mind, solve a couple of cold cases and everyone will love you. Above all, Lauren Self will love you.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to say I don’t care about being loved. So far as her work as a detective was concerned, it was the unembroidered truth. Yet she realised that if she said it to Nick, she’d feel uncomfortable. Would he infer a dig at Marc, even though she didn’t mean it like that? She didn’t want to risk being misinterpreted. Not by Nick, not about her feelings for Marc.
When she got home that evening, the lights were on upstairs. Marc had converted the loft into an office and he spent hours alone there, revising his stock catalogues and checking prices charged by American book-dealers on the internet. They lived in a sprawling old house with a cellar and out-buildings and he’d been assiduous in filling every inch of available space with books. Books everywhere. Books in boxes, books on shelves. Books lurking behind table lamps, books propping up plant pots, books crammed into racks intended for magazines and videotapes.
Until she’d met Marc, she’d thought herself a book-lover, but now she was not so sure. He was so well-read as to make her feel half-educated, but it was more than that. He worshipped books in a way she had never experienced before. For Marc, books were far more than mere texts to be read. He protected their jackets with archival Brodart sleeves and cosseted those with unwrappered spines for fear that they might split. When there was dampness in the air, he would prowl the cellar feverishly, fearing that moisture in the atmosphere would cause bindings to bulge and pages to curl, rendering the books valueless. Condition was crucial, content seldom came into the equation. An ex-library reading copy of Anna Karenina was worthless, a first edition in a fine wrapper of The Curious Mr Tarrant by the late C. Daly King (whoever he might be) was worth its weight in gold. All this was a mystery to Hannah. When provoked, she would tell their friends that it left her slightly foxed.
She hurried into the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine. As it began to burble, she called out that she was home. Soon, Marc came tramping down the stairs. Head shaking, brow corrugated, footfalls so heavy that they might have belonged to an unhappy policeman.
‘You’ll never believe this,’ he said and recounted the iniquities of the day’s dealings with an especially finicky collector of nineteenth century Cumbrian guide books. After delivering the punch-line, he had an afterthought. ‘By the way, how did your thing go?’
‘My thing?’ she asked, without expression.
‘You know, the press conference. Cold cases and stuff.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘Great.’ He gave a brisk nod. ‘Told you so.’
As she climbed into bed, he said, ‘Forgot to mention. We had a celebrity visitor at the shop today.’
‘Oh yes?’ From his over-casual tone, she sensed that he hadn’t forgotten, he’d just been biding his time to mention it.
‘He was just looking round, but when I spotted him, I persuaded him to sign his book for me.’
‘Salman Rushdie? Terry Pratchett?’
‘Not even warm.’ He put his hand on her bare shoulder and tugged casually at the strap of her night-dress. ‘I’ll give you a clue. He’s a historian.’
‘David Starkey? Simon Schama? One of the other guys you watch on the box?’
‘You’re not being serious,’ he said. ‘No, the answer is Daniel Kind.’
She sat up at once. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘As true as I’m lying here. Daniel the scruffy don, expert in horrible history. Son of your old boss.’
‘What on earth is Daniel doing up here? It’s rather late in the day to be taking a look round his father’s haunts.’
‘Oh, I think there’s more to it than simple sight-seeing. He’s bought a cottage in Brackdale.’
‘He’s what?’
‘Thought you’d be surprised,’ Marc said complacently. ‘And he hasn’t just bought it for the occasional weekend break. Seems as though he and his partner have decided they want a new way of life, and they want it here in the Lakes.’
‘What about his job? He was one of Oxford’s shining stars.’
‘As far as I can gather, he’s walked out on his college. What’s more, he doesn’t have any more television scripts in the works. He simply wants to sit in his cottage and do a bit of writing. When he comes up for a breath of air, with any luck he’ll drop in at the shop and treat himself to a couple of first editions.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘It’s not that unusual. We know plenty of people who came here to live the dream.’
‘But Daniel. It’s – very strange.’
‘Trust me, it gets stranger. You’ll never believe which house he’s bought.’
‘Go on, nothing can surprise me now.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said, slipping his hand inside her night-dress and stroking her nipple. ‘He’s become the proud owner of Tarn Cottage.’
She pulled his hand away. ‘You can
’t be serious?’
‘Never more so.’
For all the warmth of the bed, Hannah had gooseflesh. ‘Ben was never convinced that Barrie killed the girl.’
‘Perhaps it helped him to feel better about failing to lock Barrie up.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ she said angrily. ‘Ben was bigger than that.’
Marc grunted and Hannah cursed herself for falling into a trap. Long before Nick Lowther, Marc had been jealous of Ben Kind. She’d taken pains to convince her lover that she and Ben used to talk about nothing but work, work, work. But she and Ben both cared so much about the job that work always became something more, something intensely personal. Maybe that was why Marc suspected that their relationship was not merely platonic. Or maybe he just liked having someone of whom to be jealous.
‘My guess is, the son’s like the father,’ Marc muttered. ‘He simply can’t bear to let things go.’
Chapter Seven
‘Daniel, tell me about Barrie.’
Daniel was sitting with Miranda in the kitchen, nursing a mug of coffee. When he’d arrived back from his encounter with Cheryl, the cottage had been filled by a cacophony of drilling and sanding, but at last the workmen had finished for the day and the place was still.
Forget about the murder. He remembered his injunction to himself that first morning as they drove over the fell and into Brackdale. He should have known better. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t forget history.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m curious.’ Miranda gestured at their surroundings. ‘I mean – he spent the whole of his life here, this was the only home he ever knew. You were fond of him, but most people think he was responsible for a shocking crime.’
He sneezed. Unexpectedly, and yet it kept happening. It was the dust from the builders’ work, the dust that was everywhere; sometimes he feared his sinuses would never be rid of it.
The Coffin Trail Page 8