by Anita Waller
‘Sounds lovely. Must be forty years since I last saw Winnats, and that was on the back of a motorbike.’
‘It doesn’t change. Still the most stunning view in Britain as far as I’m concerned.’
Although Doris didn’t stop on the way down the Pass, she slowed down as much as she dared, given the convoy of traffic behind her. Wendy’s second view in forty years of the outstanding vista before her stopped her speaking. She looked around, blown away by the beauty. She clicked away with her phone, recording the views she would spend some time printing on the Sprocket, until finally they reached Castleton village, enjoying a cooked lunch so they didn’t have to cook at home later. The fish and chip Friday evening meal was cancelled.
They were laughing and chatting as they entered Little Mouse Cottage, and Wendy went straight through to the kitchen to put on the kettle. She didn’t like to go much longer than a couple of hours without being watered; she had explained to Doris many years earlier that she would simply wilt and fade away into obscurity if she didn’t get regular tea or coffee fixes.
‘I’ll have water, please, Wendy,’ Doris called as she slipped her shoes and coat into the hall cupboard grandly known as the cloakroom.
‘Okay,’ Wendy responded. ‘You’re going into the reading room?’
Doris stood for a moment. ‘You turned into a mind reader?’
Wendy appeared in the kitchen doorway and grinned at her friend. ‘No, it’s where your computer is, it’s where your books are, and it’s a TV-free zone. I know you, Doris Lester. And it’s where the Ferrero Rocher are.’
‘How could you possibly know that’s where the chocolate stash is?’ Doris was astounded. She thought it was carefully hidden.
‘I didn’t,’ Wendy laughed and turned away to make her tea. ‘But I do now.’
Wendy carried a tray with the two drinks and a small plate of biscuits into the reading room, and Doris was opening up her laptop.
‘I was right,’ Wendy said. ‘You can’t ignore it.’
‘I thought I’d run a quick check on Shirley’s husband. I’m hoping they’ve found her now, but it doesn’t hurt to know a bit about him.’
Wendy placed Doris’s water by the side of her laptop, and handed the plate of biscuits to her. Doris absently took one, said thank you, and began giving her computer a series of instructions. She leaned back for a moment staring at the screen and allowed the machine to do its work.
Wendy sat down with her book, but her mind drifted off in different directions. She had been friends with Doris for more years than she could remember, and yet there were aspects of her life she knew nothing about. It actually felt strange that she had opened up a little about the work she had done during her earlier life, work that Wendy suspected still went on, although to a limited degree. And she was sure it had only surfaced currently because of this situation arising through Harry’s infidelity.
She’d liked Harry. He’d always seemed pleasant enough, adored Claire, and nothing was ever too much trouble for him. She remembered back to the time when she had had a leak and couldn’t move the stop tap at all. She’d rung on the off chance that Harry was in, and within five minutes he had solved the problem. By the time her own waste of a space for a husband had returned home, the job had been sorted and tidied away. That had been husband number two, she mused, he didn’t last long after that. The first two had merely paved the way for the love of her life, husband number three, Barry Lucas.
And her thoughts drifted away from Doris. Her time with Barry hadn’t been long; five years and cancer had taken him so quickly. She had had no time to prepare for a life without him, and she missed him every day. She had been envious of Doris’s life with Harry, but in view of the recent revelations maybe Doris hadn’t come out of the institution of marriage in such a good way.
She heard Doris say a quiet yes, and knew it meant she had found something.
‘He’s got convictions for fraud and GBH,’ Doris said, ‘although to be fair, they were some years ago. Nothing recently. Married for ten years to Shirley, nee Chambers, two children called Seth and Adam, aged eleven, so obviously they married after the birth of the twins.’
‘Did he do time?’
Doris nodded. ‘The fraud was a paying back type of thing, with community service and a fine, but the GBH got him three months in Strangeways. That must have felt like a life sentence to him, because he’s been a good boy since. Maybe.’
Wendy laughed. ‘We’ve never met the bloke, and already we don’t like him.’
‘I get the impression Rosie doesn’t. And it seems as though Shirley doesn’t either. She’s ditched him, temporarily or otherwise. I wonder if they’ve heard from her.’
‘Ring and ask, put your mind at rest.’
Doris closed down her laptop after telling it to print, and moved to sit on the sofa. ‘I can’t, I said no involvement. I’m going to leave it alone. I’m sure she’ll be back by now anyway; she’s got two boys. She’s not going to abandon them, is she?’
Wendy shrugged. ‘Depends how desperate she is. Maybe her plan is to get the boys and go. I still think you should ring Rosie.’
‘That’s because you’re a nosy old bat, Wendy Lucas. I’ll ring tomorrow. Will that satisfy you?’
‘It will,’ Wendy said, smiling. ‘But I’m not convinced it’ll satisfy you, Mrs Karate-Fifth-Dan-Give-Me-A-Mystery Lester. You’ll not be able to leave this alone; you know you won’t. Fancy a glass of wine?’
‘Has the sun gone over the yardarm?’
‘Well over, in Hong Kong.’ Wendy spoke seriously.
‘I’ll have a fruity little white then, please, my alcoholic friend. Cheers.’
9
Saturday morning at six showed no promise of the sun that the weatherman had said would be present all day. It wasn’t particularly warm, and there were no dancing shadows of leaves on the path, or the whisper of a breeze in the trees. Apart from the occasional bark from Tyrone, the Jack Russell with attitude, there was complete silence. Even the birds didn’t seem to have realised dawn was blending into day at a fair old rate.
As dog and master approached the area where the stream ran, the tinkling sound of water became a slight disturbance in the previously soundless existence, and Tyrone barked, this time a little louder.
‘Shut up, Tyrone,’ his elderly companion growled. ‘I’m not happy at being out at this ungodly hour, so don’t make things worse by barking at every damn thing.’ He took the dog’s lead out of his jacket pocket with the intention of it being a threat to the dog that he would be anchored to it if he didn’t stop being noisy. The little black and white dog with a black moustache marking on his otherwise pure white face dashed off into the undergrowth, his answer to the old man’s action.
Joseph Flint increased his pace as best he could, hampered by a walking stick and a dog lead, and tried to follow Tyrone down the path. ‘Bloody dog,’ he grumbled, but he knew he wouldn’t dare return home without the canine terror; he wouldn’t be allowed back in the house.
He waved his stick as he shouted Tyrone’s name, and was relieved when there was an answering bark. He’d not lost him – yet. Joseph carried on down the small incline, getting a whimpering bark each time he shouted the dog’s name, until he eventually spotted him down by the stream. He was standing on the edge, and Joseph felt relieved that at least he hadn’t ventured into the water.
Unlike the woman’s body floating face down in the stream.
Joseph faltered, knowing what he was seeing but not wanting to believe it. He used his stick to balance himself as he edged closer to the body, and Tyrone lifted his face as if to ask him what they should do next.
She was floating towards the middle of the stream, about six feet away from Joseph and Tyrone, and Joseph could see that she was caught on something. She wasn’t going anywhere and there was no doubt that life was extinct. She hadn’t gone swimming at six in the morning.
He eased himself gently down onto the grass, knowing it wou
ldn’t be easy getting back up again, and took out his mobile phone. He blessed his granddaughter for bringing it to him. Her words had been something along the lines of you never know when you might need one, Grandy. What if you fall when you’re out with Tyrone. We wouldn’t know where you were, would we?
He mentally acknowledged her foresight, and pressed three nines. It was answered within seconds and he quickly explained the situation. The operator kept chatting to him until the first police officers arrived; she asked him to put Tyrone on a lead to prevent scene contamination, and to make sure the little dog didn’t try to bite the officers. She had said they would be there within ten minutes, and he was surprised when they arrived in eight. Their progress through the woods was noisy, and as they reached him he said goodbye to the nice lady at the other end of the phone.
He waved his stick to show where he was, and the first officer slid down to join him.
‘Mr Flint? Thank you for this. My colleagues will be here any second now. You haven’t been in the water?’ He glanced down at Joseph’s trousers, which were slightly damp around the bottom of the legs, and definitely damp around his rear end where he had sat on the grass. ‘Good man, we can protect the scene knowing nobody’s been near her. Your dog didn’t go in the water?’
‘No, he barked a fair bit, but he’s dry, so I’m pretty sure he took the sensible decision to stay out of the stream.’ There was a touch of sarcasm in his voice, which the young DC couldn’t help but notice, and he laughed.
‘Sorry, sir, I’m being an idiot. My boss, DCI Grace Stamford, will be here shortly, and she’ll probably want to speak to you, so I can’t let you go yet. Can we head back up the hill a bit, and find you a fallen tree or something, I’m sure it will be comfier than the ground.’
Joseph held on to the DC’s arm and they walked about fifty yards from the stream before finding a tree stump.
‘You’ll be okay here?’ The DC thought the elderly man looked a bit grey.
‘I’ll be fine. It’s knocked me off kilter a bit. I’ve been doing an early morning walk with this dog for the past five years, and the most I’ve seen before is a dead hedgehog. Don’t worry about me. Send your wee lassie to see me when she arrives, and I’ll be on my way. I’m going to let the wife know where I am though, because if I’m not back in the next three and a half minutes she’ll be ringing the police anyway, convinced I’ve dropped down dead somewhere.’
Wee lassie. DC Sam Ellis tried hard to keep the smile off his face and the laughter from his voice. DCI Grace Stamford was not his idea of a wee lassie. He left Joseph to make his phone call, Tyrone’s lead firmly anchored around his master’s wrist.
The peace was definitely shattered by the arrival of Grace Stamford. Statuesque at six feet, her piled-up curly brown hair adding several more inches to her height, she approached the elderly man sitting on the tree stump. Her smile extended to her green eyes.
‘You’ve got her out then?’ Joseph got his question in before she had even opened her mouth.
‘Yes, we have. Forensics are setting up the tent any moment now. Thank you for waiting. You didn’t touch anything at the scene?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I could see there was no point me getting wet through going in to drag her out, that wouldn’t have helped anybody.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There will be my footprints in the mud at the edge, but I don’t think she went in here, anyway. I think she’s drifted down from somewhere higher up. If the forensics want to take imprints of my shoes now, I’m happy to take them off.’
Grace Stamford halted for a moment. ‘Thank you. You want to be SIO?’
He laughed. This was the most fun in years, he’d already decided. ‘I’m sorry, I’m winding you up. Before I was Joseph Flint, I was DCI Joseph Flint. And if I’d thought there was any possibility of life in that young woman I’d have had her out of the water in a flash, but I knew it was too late for that. No, I’ll leave you to carry on being SIO, and good luck with it. I’ll hang around until somebody’s talked to me, then I’ll be off with Tyrone and get back home. My investigating days are over.’
Grace inclined her head. ‘Now I can put a face to the name. Bit of a legend, sir, and it’s an honour to meet you. The tent’s up so I need to go and see what I can find, but I’ll send somebody to take your details, and you can get off home. I imagine a cup of tea might be most welcome, so we’ll not keep you hanging about. Thank you again for treating the scene with respect, but I do think you might be right, that she went in higher up. It’s a bit of a trek through the woods to get to this point. It all depends on whether there’s water in the lungs, really.’ She leaned over and shook his hand. ‘Would you like a lift home, sir?’
‘No, it’s not too far from here. And then I can get back to enjoying my retirement. Good luck, DCI Stamford.’
Grace Stamford sent Sam Ellis to the man sitting patiently on the tree stump, careful to tell him who he was, and then she reached the tent set up to hide and protect the body.
Pathologist Owen Bridger looked up. ‘Grace. Yes, it’s suspicious because she’s young and she was found in water, but I can’t tell you much yet. I think she’s been in the stream at least twenty-four hours, but I need to get her back to the autopsy suite before I can expand on that. She’s nothing on her to say who she is, so we’ll check fingerprints as soon as we can. I would think she’s in her twenties, maybe early thirties, but even that’s a guess. She may be a fit forty-year-old. And before you ask, I don’t know when she died, not yet. Or how, but I suspect asphyxiation.’
Grace smiled at him, aware his manner was a touch irascible. ‘Too early for you, is it, Owen? Did you have to get out of bed?’
‘I bloody did. I’d only been in it four hours. Late night, early morning, doesn’t sit right with anybody.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, go and see what the troops have found, if anything, but there’s nothing to say she went in the water at this spot. DCI Joseph Flint confirmed that.’
Owen’s head shot up. ‘Joseph? He’s here? Why?’
‘He found her. To be totally correct, his dog Tyrone did. DCI Flint rang it in. I’ve left him with one of the DCs, he’ll be okay. It felt like I was in the presence of royalty.’
‘You were.’
Grace walked over to the spot where the body had been lifted from the water. Two of her team were wearing thigh-high waders, and had gone back in to see if they could locate anything of use, but they were climbing out.
‘Nothing obvious, boss,’ one of them said. ‘Maybe a diver could locate something by going under the water.’
‘I’ll organise it, but thanks for trying, you two.’
The area was taped off, and one or two early morning dog walkers were standing at the top of the incline watching the activities with interest. Joseph had finished giving his statement to Sam Ellis and was escorted under the tape.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Sam said.
‘No problem, young man,’ the ex-DCI said, ‘come and find me if you need anything else. Although I don’t think I can help in any way. I can’t imagine I would know her, the age range of my acquaintances has increased exponentially with my own age, so she would definitely not be on my Christmas card list.’
Sam laughed. ‘Probably not. Are you sure I can’t give you a lift home? You may be a DCI but a dead body is still a shock even though you’ve probably seen a lot over the length of your career.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll finish off Tyrone’s walk, I’m not too far from home at this point.’
‘Then I’ll head back down to the stream. Take care, sir.’
And so the day began. It was a Saturday that shortly developed sunshine, the breeze lifted and leaves cast swirling shadows over the scene. An old man and a dog began their last half mile, and Mrs Flint made an immediate pot of tea as they arrived home.
‘That was a bloody funny early morning walk,’ Joseph said, and she took him in her arms and kissed him.
‘Go and s
it down, I’ll bring your drink through. And try not to get in any more trouble, will you?’ She smiled at him. ‘I thought we’d done with all this suspicious death malarkey. Seems we haven’t.’
10
Doris and Wendy made the decision to go to Bakewell as soon as the sun confirmed it would be in evidence, and it would be warm. They packed a picnic, judging it would be nice to sit in Bakewell Park for their lunch, after feeding the ducks and touring the shops.
‘We will continue the holiday, won’t we?’
‘We will, and I promise to bury anything that arrives to distract me,’ Doris said with a laugh. ‘I’m really sorry we stopped it early, but I think your idea was right. In fact, when we get back, I’ll get my diary and we’ll set a definite date. I’ve a couple of things I can’t miss, seminars and suchlike, so I’ll work something out around appointments, and we’ll start off with Sylvia Plath.’
‘Good. I read her book because I knew we were going to see her grave. Fascinating writing, and with The Bell Jar, she came up with a brilliant title to go perfectly with the story. She was a disturbed young lady though. I’d like to go and tell her that.’
‘We definitely will.’ Doris pulled out of a junction, and they dropped down the hill into Bakewell.
The car park wasn’t too full, although they knew that later it would be heaving. Doris collected the picnic basket from the boot, and Wendy carried a blanket. They headed for the river that ran parallel to the car park, and Doris pulled half a loaf of bread from her bag. She handed some to Wendy, and they fed the ducks. It seemed, like them, that everyone was ignoring the notices that asked for no duck-feeding. There were currently different thoughts on the subject, so once again the underweight ducks were coming back to their fat and full status.