The pony is making good speed, and the party begins to string out. Skelgill is not perturbed – the dense pines on either side of the bridleway hem in his charges. It strikes him that if the firm that had booked the hotel had made it to Cumbria, once the storm abated they might have enjoyed a few days’ good fun. But, for his ‘company’, any such frivolity lies over the present horizon – it is not in his nature to count his chickens. On cue, there comes an ear-splitting shriek.
In the darkness ahead forms a sudden conflation of flickering lights and shadowy movements and raised voices; the torches converge – and Skelgill realises the focal point is the snow-filled shake hole over which he and Richard Bond had brooded. He breaks into a jog – and then accelerates as the most prominent cries (they are of a woman) become increasingly desperate.
‘I’m sinking! Help – I’m sinking!’
Skelgill does not wait to take in the precise circumstances – he calls out to Richard Bond – shining his flashlight to where he and DS Jones have brought the pony and trailer to a halt. Richard Bond responds – he stoops to untie the rope from the back of the trailer. Skelgill reaches the crowd at the edge of the shake hole. The plaintive voice continues in its despairing appeals. It belongs to the journalist, Jenny Hackett. She is up to her neck in snow.
Skelgill sees now that a prone DS Leyton, at full stretch, has a one-handed grip on her fingers – and he would be falling into the shake hole himself if it were not for the American, Bill Faulkner, who has his sergeant around the waist, and is lying half on top as if he has rugby-tackled him. In turn, Richard Bond’s colleagues, Egor and François each have a grip on one of Bill Faulkner’s legs. They appear to have reacted instinctively – and have succeeded – but at best it is a holding position. Skelgill swivels to see Richard Bond now approaching – the standing section of the rope is still coiled over his shoulder. Skelgill snatches the working end, passes it around his waist, ties what is probably the quickest bowline he has ever knotted in his life – and plunges into the pit beside Jenny Hackett.
He, too, sinks up to his shoulders – and immediately is reminded of the suffocating properties of drifted snow. But he knows he can rely on Richard Bond – and gains confidence as he feels the slack taken up. From close behind the stricken woman, he embraces her beneath the armpits and forms a double wrist-hold. She is wriggling furiously, and he tightens his grip. Instantaneously Richard Bond begins hauling them out – up and past DS Leyton, who in turn has to be judiciously dragged back, an inch at a time, by the human chain. Skelgill rises, lifting Jenny Hackett to her feet and passing her into the custody of the other females.
Only DS Jones is not amidst the throng at the lip of the shake hole. She has squinted anxiously from the darkness, keeping the pony in check. Skelgill calls out to her that all is well. People are variously reassuring Jenny Hackett, and gingerly patting her down to remove loose snow, and restoring the zip and Velcro fasteners of her suit, which have come undone. Richard Bond struts about barking instructions, but these are merely statements of their situation. Jenny Hackett sounds to be none the worse for her dramatic if brief ordeal.
‘I’m fine – I’m fine. Silly me – I just stepped too close. The edge gave way. What a troublemaker you must think me.’
Skelgill beats the snow from his own suit. When satisfied, he sidles across to DS Leyton. He lowers his voice.
‘Did you see what happened?’
DS Leyton is still recovering his breath.
‘Nah – just heard her scream – I ran towards the sound – someone was shining a light – just managed to reach her hand before she went any deeper. Lucky enough some geezer got hold of me by the goolies – else I’d have been eating snow. There should be a warning sign – that’s a flippin’ death trap, Guv.’
Skelgill decides now is not the moment for a lecture on the geology of the area. He pats his sergeant on the upper arm.
‘Good job, Leyton.’ But the praise must seem faint as peremptorily Skelgill turns and calls out to the group. ‘Let’s move before we start getting cold. Ten minutes and we’ll be there.’ He adds a rider. ‘Don’t stray from between the tracks made by the wheels of the trailer.’
As they file away the party remains close now, as if for safety in numbers, their chatter more subdued. Skelgill waits before bringing up the rear. He directs the beam of his torch onto the snow around the curved rim of the shake hole – but there is little to be gleaned; the snow is heavily trodden, and sloughed where he and Jenny Hackett were hauled out and DS Leyton pulled clear. But he ponders grimly for a moment, and the words of DS Jones’s ominous revelation echo in his thoughts. “Guv – there’s one passenger missing. And one dead.”
*
Rather ironically, as it turns out, Shake Holes Inn boasts fifteen public bedrooms, so it could have accommodated even a full complement of travellers. Ranged around the first floor, these are reached by a single ‘square’ corridor that traces the quadrangle, its windows overlooking the stable yard. As he presses his nose against the warped antique glass Skelgill watches mesmerised. In the winter dawn he sees that the sheltered courtyard is generating a vortex, akin to an eddy that betrays a deeper pocket in the bed of a stream. The flakes swim tirelessly before his eyes, like an immense shoal of fish. He speculates that in bygone days, for travellers muffled senselessly in greatcoats and blankets, it must have been an uplifting moment to hear the clatter of hooves upon the cobbles. For the horses, too, there was respite after an energy-sapping pull across the stony tracks of the windswept fells. That said, their little Fell pony had been reluctant to return to her stall, and had to be tempted with a nosebag of oats. Skelgill had observed DS Jones’s gently persuasive manner with the animal, while he and several of the men were handing the luggage into the tack room.
Together he and DS Jones had been last to reach the residents’ lounge – bedecked for Christmas with a tree and twinkling lights – to find the travellers ranged around a crackling log fire, immersed in contrasting aromas of pine resin and fried bacon, and furnished with piping hot tea from an urn. Skelgill had noted that Wiktoria Adamska and Ivanna Karenina merely nibbled at dry biscuits. The option of brandy had been called for – perhaps not unreasonably now in the case of Jenny Hackett – and several members availed themselves of its fortifying properties. Skelgill had contemplated tipping a measure into his tea – but why would you spoil a decent cuppa? The thought causes him to snap out of his trance – for in one hand he bears a recharged mug, and in the other a somewhat dog-eared Ordnance Survey map extracted from the library.
The party safe, breakfast and room allocation completed, Skelgill’s priorities have moved on. A clock somewhere is striking three-quarters, and he pulls himself away from the view of the courtyard and turns to the door immediately opposite – on which he knocks.
‘Just come in!’
The main landing running around the inside of the building, the bedchambers accordingly offer external views, as it happens almost precisely to each of the four points of the compass. In the case of this room – allotted to DS Jones – its windows face due east, and Skelgill sees that the sill and the mullions are piled high with snow, filtering the twilight, and his colleague has switched on the bedside lamps. There is an air of cosiness, enhanced by the muted sough of the wind. DS Jones herself is kneeling beside the nightstand on the far side of her bed, twiddling with the knobs of an old-fashioned analogue radio.
‘I feel like we’ve been transported back in time, Guv.’
Skelgill stands at the door, his expression pensive. When he scrutinised the hotel brochure he had been more struck by the lack of fishing as an activity, when hereabouts numerous little trout becks spring from the limestone. But now he recalls an unpunctuated quotation that had boasted: “no WI-FI no MOBILE no TV no STRESS”. On reflection, this might be a case of making a virtue out of thrift, for investment does not appear to feature large in the present management’s marketing strategy.
‘They say it does you good.
’
DS Jones understands his remark to be rhetorical, if a little sarcastic in tone.
‘Even this old wireless set, Guv. It’s just long and medium wave. If they’re all like this we shan’t be able to get Radio Cumbria.’
‘Let’s hope we’ve made the national news, then.’
Skelgill places his mug on the adjacent nightstand and casts about the room – but he decides the double bed is the best place for his map; he flicks it out with the practised ease of a chambermaid spreading a fresh sheet. He balances with one knee and both hands on the counterpane and leans rather precariously over the newly revealed landscape.
‘That’s the BBC – I’ll turn it up when we hear the pips.’ DS Jones clambers lightly onto the foot of the bed and settles into a side-saddle position. She is sockless and Skelgill notices the meticulously silver-painted nails that had complemented her head-turning cocktail outfit of the previous evening. ‘Where are we, Guv?’
Skelgill has to steady himself before he can raise a hand. He makes a series of downward sweeping movements, lines that run in parallel to the eastings of the grid.
‘M6. West coast main line. A6.’ He indicates to a spot near the centre of the map. ‘There’s the pinewood – there’s the hotel.’
‘What’s the scale?’
‘Two-and-a-half inch – to the mile. Probably makes things look further than they are.’ He glances at the window. ‘Then again, in these conditions, can’t be too careful.’
‘The journey was less demanding than I expected, Guv.’
‘Aye – the trick is not to be lost.’ He turns his head to regard her, his expression strained. ‘Lost – that’s another kettle of fish altogether.’
DS Jones nods reflectively. Then she brightens and casts a hand over the map.
‘What are you thinking, Guv?’
Skelgill is silent for a few moments, his expression still grim. He stares at the patchily coloured sheet, although his gaze seems to be clouded.
‘While it’s like this, we sit tight. I want to hear the forecast as much as the news.’ He measures out with his left thumb, like a tailor estimating cloth. ‘There’s farms within a mile or two – but if they’re in the same state as us – no communications, maybe no power – there’s no point struggling there. Okay – they might have a quad or a tractor – but there’s a limit to what they can cope with. Our best bet’s Shap village – there’s a manned Fire Station – but you’re talking seven mile. If the A6 is blocked, you could just end up stranded half way.’
‘I could ride, Guv.’
‘Ride what?’
‘The pony. There’s a full set of tack in the stable. They must use her for trekking.’ DS Jones points to their position on the map. ‘If you could guide me to the A6 – I could surely follow the route safely?’
Skelgill regards his colleague with consternation.
‘I used to ride every week as a teenager, Guv. I only stopped when I went away to uni. I can jump fences, you know.’
Skelgill finds himself scrabbling for an objection.
‘Aye – but can you jump a ten-foot snowdrift? Even a Fell pony’s not going to get you through that.’
DS Jones is about to respond but suddenly she performs a deliberate tumble onto the rug and reaches to turn up the volume on the radio; she has heard the time signal.
‘That’s nine a.m.’
One thing that can be relied upon – there might be an asteroid about to strike the Earth and the President of the United States might have stolen a rocket and escaped to the Moon – but give the British a chance to talk about the weather and it will relegate all other items to the category of minor news. Foreigners accustomed to extremes rarely experienced in Britain’s benign climate must be perplexed that audience ratings can be so boosted by commonplace meteorology – but there it is. Cynics will argue it is a free hit for the lazy media, but perhaps the public welcomes the respite from political angst, all the same. Thus Skelgill and DS Jones settle to listen introspectively to what is a news report entirely dominated by the weather.
In a nutshell, the Baltic Blast has licked like a great tongue across the north of England and southern Scotland to bring the region to an almost total standstill. Schools are closed, public transport is cancelled; fistfights have broken out over bread and milk. Virtually all roads are impassable, and motorists are warned not to undertake any journeys. The experts now say that the strong easterly winds and accompanying snow will continue for at least the next twenty-four hours. The army has been mobilised to rescue stranded travellers and move them to the nearest places of safety – but it is believed many hundreds of people may be trapped, with no way of knowing who and where they are, a situation exacerbated by damage to power lines and the cell phone network. Aerial surveillance is presently impossible.
At the conclusion of the bulletin a well-spoken announcer intones, with no apparent hint of irony, “And now we present, music for your pleasure, Desert Island Discs.”
There has been no mention of the train.
Skelgill loosely punches a fist into the opposite palm. DS Jones has been reflecting on what she has heard.
‘Just as well you got us here, Guv. Without your knowledge and expertise we could have been in serious trouble.’
Skelgill hams modesty.
‘I expect Bond would have thought of something.’
DS Jones smiles knowingly, but does not contradict him. Instead she rises and then resettles herself on the clear side of the bed and rests her head on the pillow. She stretches, catlike, and closes her eyes.
‘But probably not as good as this.’
Skelgill seems rather captivated by her actions – but perhaps they bring home to him what they have been through – he in particular – a rude awakening at 4.45am and four hours of responsibility and physical demands. After a moment he pulls the map away and lets it float onto the rug. He rolls onto the bed beside DS Jones and regards her for a moment; she remains unmoving. Her naturally streaked blonde hair is a little dishevelled, but her strong features and smooth olive skin combine to present a picture of serenity. Skelgill grunts as he slips his hands behind his head. The room is warming up as the central heating kicks in – an old-fangled cast iron radiator gurgles and ticks beneath the long window.
‘Aye – a nice little mini-break.’ Now he, too, closes his eyes. ‘If it weren’t for a missing passenger and a corpse on the train.’
DS Jones inhales sharply – but she does not yet speak, nor open her eyes. Perhaps she is reminding herself of Skelgill’s – of their – pressing duty to get a message out about their situation. She inhales again, as though she may now say something – but Skelgill begins to snore.
*
‘Er – sorry to butt in, Guvnor.’
DS Leyton clears his throat rather melodramatically. He takes a tentative step inside the room. DS Jones sits up abruptly on the bed, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. Skelgill takes a few seconds longer to wake, he lies blinking.
‘Not Crewe again?’
His colleagues look at him with a mixture of amusement and alarm, unsure whether he is clowning. But his apparent confusion clears, and he drags the fingers of both hands through his hair, as if to comb out recalcitrant fragments of his dreams. DS Leyton waits a few more seconds before announcing the purpose of his intrusion.
‘What it is, Guv – that reporter, Jenny Hackett – she’s insisting on seeing you. She’s claiming someone pushed her into that snake hole thing.’
6. THE INN
Thursday, 11am
‘It’s shake, Leyton – not snake.’
‘It says “Snake Holes Inn” over the front door, Guv.’
‘Aye – it does now – but it started out as Shake – take my word for it.’
DS Leyton for a moment looks like he wishes to contest his superior’s rather belligerent attitude. ‘Snake hole’ seems to make far more sense with reference to his metropolitan lexicon.
‘Well – she’s shake
n up about it, that’s for sure, Guv. Hah!’ Characteristically he opts for appeasement.
In any event, Skelgill’s mind has moved quickly on.
‘Who pushed her?’
Now DS Leyton looks rather blankly at his superior.
‘Dunno, Guv. I didn’t like to pile in. I thought you’d want to question her. I’ve told her to come to the library at 11.30 – reckoned you might need a few minutes to get sorted.’
Skelgill is staring out of the window. In the two hours since he nodded off the only evident change in conditions is a partial lifting of the twilight; but still there is a preternatural gloom beneath the constantly shifting shroud of snow; it is the impression of the proverbial ‘nuclear winter’, when sunlight is banished from the Earth.
‘What are the rest of them doing?’
DS Leyton makes a gesture with open hands towards the bed with its crushed pillows and creased coverlet.
‘Having a kip, I suppose, Guv. As far as I know everyone’s in their rooms.’
Skelgill pats the breast pocket of his shirt; he is feeling for his own room key. He rubs one hand against the emerging stubble on his chin – and then for more accurate confirmation of the time he refers to his wristwatch.
‘Twenty minutes – alright?’
Murder at Shake Holes Page 8