by Jo Allen
‘But?’
‘But the times don’t fit.’ She sniffed the air. The dark, cloying smell of smoke and the pattern of ash on the concrete top of the dam reminded her, if she needed reminding, that it was little more than twenty-four hours since someone had murdered a child just half a mile from where she stood. ‘They were out of the village before the fires were started – an hour and a half before they were reported to the emergency services. And we know the fire brigade reckon they got there very quickly once they were alerted.’
She sensed him shaking his head at the other end. ‘Maybe they saw something. Or someone.’
‘Maybe they did.’
‘We’ll see if we can find them. See if they can shed some light on this. And Jude’s going to do a press conference in half an hour, so I’ll get him to mention that, too. Will you be back in the office this evening? He’ll want to do a quick round up and talk this through. Not a full briefing – just you, me and him as the officers leading the case.’
‘I’m heading back to the incident room just now. I’ll be half an hour.’
Witnesses. Ashleigh put the phone down and shook her head, looking around her at the rowan trees, their leaves burned brown by the dry summer, their berries turned prematurely red. People who saw things, who didn’t see things, who saw what they thought they saw or what they wanted to see. The facts could lead you to many different interpretations, and only one of those was the truth.
8
Ashleigh O’Halloran had made it to the evening meeting on time, this time. It was Jude himself who was late, lacking the energy to hurry after almost twenty-four hours on the case. ‘Sorry, team. I had to do an interview for the TV news. That’s not my kind of thing,’ he added, for Ashleigh’s benefit. Some people enjoyed preening in front of the cameras – he suspected that Doddsy hankered after the occasional moment in the limelight, and he’d briefly entertained the idea of passing the unwelcome task on to him – but it wasn’t for him. He preferred to work from the darkness and in the background, letting unwelcome attention focus elsewhere. ‘All right. Let’s get on. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get home and get some sleep. It’ll only take five minutes. I want to hear your updates and run a couple of things past you.’ And, remembering how Doddsy had ticked him off for his attitude, he made a point of smiling at his newest recruit. ‘It’s been a busy day for you, Ashleigh. I’m sorry you didn’t get a softer introduction to the job.’
‘I can cope. It’s just the same work as it was in Cheshire.’
He felt Doddsy’s approving gaze on him, met Ashleigh’s blue eyes and felt himself being judged, for better or worse, from that direction too. The two of them had the same effect on him: irritation. You’d think he was running a social work department, not trying to catch a killer. Other people’s feelings were the least of his problems just now. ‘Is this decaff to let me sleep tonight, or full on to keep me awake in the meeting?’ He sat down, reached out for the mug of coffee that one of them had poured for him and tried to excuse his bad temper, write it off to tiredness. ‘Okay. Let’s run through it. I don’t need chapter and verse on every door you’ve knocked and every phone call we’ve logged. I just need any relevant updates from this afternoon. Who wants to go first?’
‘Shall I start?’ Ashleigh flipped open her pad. ‘After our meeting this afternoon, I went back to Burnbanks. One witness – Andrea Innes in the shop – said she saw a couple in a camper van driving up through the village on Sunday morning. They came into the shop and she spoke to them. She’s given a statement.’ She nodded across to Doddsy. ‘Did PC Lennon send it to you?’
‘She did, and I’ve set young Chris the thankless task of trying to trace the vehicle.’
On the other side of the incident room, Chris was at his desk, working away. Jude made a mental note to send him home before it got too late. You could drive yourself as hard as you chose, but you couldn’t drive other people or let them drive themselves too hard. It would be counter productive, as well as breaching his duty of care. He scanned the statement Doddsy pushed in front of him, rubbing at his temple to suppress the beginning of a headache. ‘Okay. This looks very promising to me.’
‘But the timings, Jude.’ Doddsy sighed. ‘These guys can’t be our fire raisers. They’ll have been halfway down the M6 before it was reported.’
Ashleigh, opposite him, sat back, surveying the table as if she, not he, were in charge. ‘They aren’t necessarily our fire raisers, but they may be something else.’
Maybe the glowing reference from her bosses in Cheshire hadn’t been over flattering. Ashleigh was a smart cookie, someone Jude knew he would work well with. If only she didn’t remind him that he’d been without a woman for the three years since Becca had left him. ‘Yep. That’s right. We’ll come to that in a minute. That’s all you’ve got from Burnbanks today?’
‘That’s all. I’m moving the team on to ask questions in Bampton and Rosgill, starting this evening, and a couple of the other villages around. I’d like to cover the outlying hamlets and houses up as far as Askham tomorrow.’
Jude flicked an eyebrow. That meant the house to house team would be working their way through Wasby, where his mother, newly retired and certain to be at home, would have a quiet laugh at being asked for assistance by the police. Becca, when her turn came, would probably be as chilly with any unfortunate in uniform as she was with him, though with less reason. He shook his head. His fault? Hers? Who knew? ‘And from there?’
‘If I could have a couple of additional officers I can get started on asking people at Howtown.’
‘No problem. As we discussed, that’s the most likely way out. Good work. Keep me updated with anything you hear. And in terms of timing, I don’t think we should allow the reporting of the fire to constrain us.’
‘There’s something about the couple in the van.’ Ashleigh seemed to read his mind. ‘It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? Presenting themselves like that, and turning up in the shop, even giving away their names and saying where they’re from?’
‘Yes. Andrea Innes is chatty, but she’s not that chatty.’ And she could be formidably hostile to people she disliked. Her trust had to be won.
‘Plus she said she was busy in the shop yesterday. It just feels to me that those two were trying to draw attention to themselves.’
‘And yet at the same time they’re well outside our window of opportunity for fire raising. Yes. Of course, they may have set the fire and it just smouldered away and didn’t ignite. Or it may be something else. Or they may have been trying to alert us to a description of themselves that they wanted us to pick up on. Tell Chris to bear that in mind.’
‘Ah.’ Doddsy’s sigh came from the depths of his soul. ‘The criminal mind. How clever they think they are.’
But some of them unquestionably were. Jude sipped his coffee again. The brain slowed when you were tired, but something had been troubling him about this and it was only beginning to make sense. ‘What about the boat theory?’
‘No one at the hotel saw a boat. And Mark Webber – the one who reported the fire – allowed us to see his photographs. Nothing.’
That was no surprise. ‘And is anything through from Matt Cork? He was going to send over his full report as soon as possible.’
‘Here.’ Doddsy slid that one across the table, too. ‘It came through this afternoon, but you’ll be disappointed with it. There are many areas he isn’t specific about.’
‘That’s always the case in fires. The body can only sustain so much damage. The forensic evidence will give us some more clues, when we get it back from the lab, but the thing I’m most interested in right now is the time of death.’ He drew the paper towards him and scanned it. ‘I was hoping he’d be precise about it, but I didn’t think he would and I was right. All he says for certain is that the death occurred before the fire and didn’t result from it.’
‘Which we already knew.’
‘Yes, but now this opens up the possib
ility that the child was killed well beforehand. We know from the pooling of the blood that he died lying on his back, not hanging from the roof or the walls or wherever, but we don’t know exactly when. It may not be a very long time, but it could be long enough to leave open the possibility that he was killed elsewhere and taken to the location.’
‘By the couple in the camper van?’
‘It would be cheeky, and a huge risk in terms of drawing attention to themselves, but yes. They were seen leaving before the fire, but someone else could have set it.’
Ashleigh was scribbling furiously. ‘And that person – or persons – left via the hills. So that immediately widens my scope, doesn’t it? Now we’re looking for any walker at all, or walkers, coming through this area, with or without a young boy in tow. Great.’
‘Many killers aren’t very bright, but we can’t rule out that some of them are cleverer than us, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m aware of that. It was an observation, not a complaint.’
What was the matter with him? He couldn’t stop carping at the woman, just as Becca, with her misplaced sense of grievance over a self-inflicted wound, couldn’t seem to stop going on at him. ‘Shall we wrap up? We’ve all had a long day. Some of us longer than others.’
‘I’ll be in early tomorrow morning.’ Ashleigh stood up, picked up her pad and turned away, leaving her two superior officers to clear away her coffee mug.
Jude, gathering up his own paraphernalia and locking it in the drawer of his desk, stood back for a moment to look with a frown at the collage of information they’d amassed on the noticeboard. Of all the people who’d been out on the fells that Sunday afternoon, one of them must surely have seen something. But finding them would be a real problem.
He turned back from the board with a sigh. It was time to get some sleep and try and approach the problem with a clear head in the morning. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he called as the last of the team left the room and he watched Ashleigh and Chris walk down the corridor, side by side, laughing.
9
‘I’ll take her.’ Shattering the mother-and-child tableau in the corner of the living room, Becca scooped her month old niece from her sister’s arms and cradled the tiny child, crooning to her. ‘You have a wee break. You’ve earned it.’
‘You’re so good with her.’ Kirsty, her eyes underlined with the exhaustion of the new mother, over burdened with daily joy and sleepless nights, relinquished her treasure with equal measures of reluctance and relief.
‘Everyone’s good with a crying child when they’re new and fresh.’ Separated from her mother, little Rosie instantly increased her whimpering. ‘She’ll get bored of me, soon enough.’
‘At least if you can calm her down…’
‘Of course I can. The poor wee scrap is just so tired. It’s because it’s all so exciting and new. Trust me – I can bore her to death.’ Becca readied herself to deploy all the skills she’d learned in placating tearful new mothers and their tiny miracles. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Auntie Becca’s just so dull. You just close those eyes and flit off to sleep. You know that’s what you want to do.’
Kirsty heaved herself up from the chair as the front door opened. ‘Here’s Calum, now. Sorry – I told him to bring a takeaway. I was going to run up macaroni cheese, but you know how it is. Somehow I never got round to it.’
Becca smiled at her. New mothers never did. ‘So much the better. There’ll be no clearing up to do.’
‘Okay, Becca?’ Calum bounded in, light on his feet. ‘Okay, Kirst? And how’s my precious wee girl?’
‘Put that stuff in the kitchen,’ Kirsty directed, subsiding back into her chair. ‘I dare say you’ll see more than enough of your precious wee girl at two in the morning. Leave her to the expert just now. I’ll be more than happy if her auntie can get her off to sleep for long enough to give us a chance to eat in peace.’
Rosie’s whimpering grew to a howl. Becca jiggled her about and kept whispering and pacing. ‘It’s just practice,’ she told her sister. ‘I promise you. It’ll come.’
‘Practice? It’s not as if you have kids of your own.’
Becca succumbed to a surge of antipathy towards Jude, whose children she’d always assumed she’d have. ‘No, but I spend a lot of time with other people’s.’
Calum, mercifully, interrupted them, arriving back in the living room in a clatter of plates and cutlery. ‘We’ll slum it. I can’t face tidying the kitchen. But hey, we’re all friends.’
‘Give me five minutes to get her quiet.’ Becca shifted little Rosie from her arms to her shoulder, pacing the room, feeling the little girl’s tiny snuffling breaths, inhaling the fresh powder smell of newly minted life. ‘She’ll drop off soon.’
‘You were late back,’ Kirsty challenged her husband. ‘Busy at work? Or couldn’t face home?’ She grinned at her husband, as if she needed to prove it was a joke.
‘Neither.’ He unpacked the carrier bag with the Chinese meal. ‘There were loads of police around. The place is crawling with them. There must be something going on.’
‘Oh, didn’t you hear that? There was a fire up over beyond Haweswater yesterday and some poor so-and-so got caught in it. They’re trying to find out who it was.’
‘God. Poor sod.’ Calum lifted the pile of clean sleepsuits that Becca had just folded for her sister and dropped them on the floor, then swept a newspaper and the baby’s changing bag on top of them so he could subside into the armchair. ‘Some tourist, I bet. They don’t know what to do, do they? Though it’s been a hell of a year for fires. There was one up at Gowbarrow yesterday, too, and the road was closed. Let’s see if it’s on the news.’
In Becca’s ear, the baby’s breathing shifted, subtly but noticeably, from the intense to the quiescent as experience won out over infant enthusiasm. ‘Shh…’ she whispered, her fingers firm but gentle on her niece’s back. ‘You go to sleep, eh? You just drift off to sleep and Auntie Becca will hold you until you do, and keep you safe.’
Calum had switched on the television that dominated the corner of the room and sat forward on the edge of his chair, flicking through the channels to find the news. Kirsty, snatching a moment of respite wherever she could, sank back in her armchair, her eyelids flickering. At the edge of this scene of marital domestication, Becca tiptoed up and down a couple more times, whispering to Rosie, feeling in her soul the tug of the childless woman who yearned to be a mother. ‘Here we go. This is what they’re talking about.’
‘…fires which have ravaged parts of the Lake District are continuing to burn and have claimed at least one life. Firemen fighting a blaze near Haweswater on Sunday discovered a badly burned body. Police are appealing to the public for help in identifying the deceased.’
‘Ah, God.’ Calum’s voice held contempt. ‘Look, Becca. There’s your boyfriend.’
‘Ex-boyfriend.’ Startled from her doze by this revelation, Kirsty jumped back into wakefulness and stared at the screen. ‘Christ, but he’s looking particularly mean tonight.’
Becca kept walking. She was almost sure that Rosie was asleep now, but she didn’t dare put her down in case she woke. Besides, if she put her down she’d have to come back and join the conversation, and she wasn’t ready for that. ‘Let’s hear what he has to say.’ As if she hadn’t got fed up of what he had to say long before. But somehow, with Jude not present to sting her conscience and cause her to lash out in self-defence, she couldn’t keep her eyes from him.
On the television, at least, he was at a safe enough distance. ‘DCI Jude Satterthwaite, of Cumbria Police, appealed for information…’
Jude appeared on screen, sitting scowling at a piece of paper in front of him. Charming enough when he wanted to be, he couldn’t abide public scrutiny, and the cameras were unkind to him, portraying him as awkward and intense. Smart as ever in his sharp navy suit, he nevertheless looked uncomfortable, a man who couldn’t stand the searing heat. ‘I can confirm that a badly burned body was found on the shores of Hawes
water yesterday evening, and that preliminary post-mortem results have indicated that it’s the body of a young boy, aged around twelve years old.’
A child. Becca’s hands tightened just slightly on the infant she held. ‘Shh, Rosie. Shh.’
‘At the moment the identity of this child is unknown. We’re appealing for information about any missing persons who might fit the description of this child, and anyone who was walking in the Haweswater area, particularly on Wether Hill, High Kop or Bampton Common yesterday afternoon. We are keen to identify this child as soon as possible so that the relatives can be informed.’
The camera cut away to the black scar the fire had left above the lakeside. ‘He doesn’t come across as very touchy-feely, does he?’ Kirsty sighed. ‘Such a pity. If he smiled a bit more he might be quite attractive.’
The cameras had left Jude now, but the image of him, stiff and uncomfortable, still dwelt in Becca’s mind. The first time he’d had to face one of those interviews they’d sat together in his kitchen and she ran him through it, over and over again. Half a dozen years on, he hadn’t learned much. Or maybe it was because he looked so tired. For all his faults, he was committed – too much so. He’d have been up all night if the body had been found the night before. And he was a chief inspector now – a promotion, and no one had told her about it. It shouldn’t have made her feel marginalised but it did.
‘Character comes out.’ Calum had never been one of Jude’s fans. At one time Becca had thought it was jealousy, though she’d later realised that Calum and others had just recognised in their former friend the ruthlessness that scarred him, that made him different from everyone else. ‘You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.’