The Hanging Wood Read online

  Better stop beating herself up about Orla Payne. The woman had been pissed, but Hannah shouldn’t have let her temper fray. Blame it on Marc; she’d been psyching herself up for the challenge of seeing him again. Yet Orla wasn’t a routine time-waster. She’d been drinking, but the muddled desperation in her voice sounded genuine.

  ‘He deserves justice,’ Orla said. ‘“How could you do that to your own brother?”’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Those were Callum’s words. Our uncle was a scapegoat. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone Callum. He loved us both. Why does nobody understand?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’ll say that Callum hasn’t been seen for twenty years,’ Orla muttered. ‘But I’m only asking for justice for my brother. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘Your brother’s name was Callum Hinds, and he disappeared all those years ago – is that what you’re saying, Ms Payne?’ If this was a cold case, it was slap bang in her territory – but very, very cold after a couple of decades. ‘Ms Payne, if you want my team to consider looking into a case, we must have something to work with. Can you provide new evidence? Facts not available until now?’

  ‘He said you would listen,’ Orla muttered.

  ‘I am listening.’ Teeth gritted. ‘But I’m not clear what you’re telling me.’

  ‘For God’s sake. How many times …?’

  The woman’s voice trailed away.

  ‘Ms Payne?’

  ‘He was wrong. I should have realised. You’re not interested.’

  Ever-decreasing circles. Impatience gnawed at Hannah.

  ‘Who was wrong?’ she demanded.

  ‘Daniel Kind.’

  Hearing Daniel’s name out of the blue snatched Hannah’s breath away. For a moment, she could not think what to say.

  ‘I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?’

  ‘Ms Payne—’

  ‘Don’t you care about justice?’

  The line went dead.

  Leaving Hannah to wonder about Orla Payne, her brother’s disappearance, and Daniel Kind.

  A grey squirrel crouched on the grass in front of her, its eyes bright and inquisitive. Hannah offered it a small piece of toast, but the squirrel took one look and scampered off up a tree trunk, leaping from one branch to another before disappearing into the thick mass of leaves. Oh well, so much for bonding with nature. When she and Marc first looked round Undercrag, he said the grounds would be lovely in the summer months, a haven of peace and quiet two miles from the traffic jams in the tourist trap of Ambleside. They mustered the purchase price and cost of renovations thanks to money Marc had inherited, yet he hadn’t set foot inside the house since early January. His fault, so why did Hannah feel a pang of remorse? That was as stupid as fretting because a boozed-up woman she’d never met accused her of not caring about justice.

  After Orla’s call, Hannah asked Chantal, the team’s latest admin assistant, to dig out the file on Callum Hinds. He’d disappeared when Hannah was still at school. The name rang a bell – no doubt she’d seen it in the papers or heard it on the TV news, but she couldn’t recall any details. In her mind, his story was blurred with those of all the other teenagers who went missing, never to return.

  Once she started reading, she became so absorbed that she took the buff folders home and trawled through each and every one of them, staying awake till the early hours. Callum Hinds’ parents were divorced. Niamh, his mother, had remarried a man called Kit Payne, but Callum kept the surname of his father, who ran a dairy farm near Keswick. One day, his mother raised the alarm when she discovered that he had gone missing. A search was mounted, but no trace of Callum was ever found.

  Soon after the police were called in, his uncle – Philip Hinds, brother of Mike, the farmer – committed suicide. His body was found dangling from a branch of an old elm tree, a stone’s throw from the cottage where he lived.

  ‘He died somewhere called the Hanging Wood,’ Chantal had said, unable to resist a nervous giggle at the irony.

  ‘So how old was Orla Payne when Callum vanished?’

  ‘Seven.’

  Only seven. Had life treated her roughly since then, had drink or drug addiction led her to fantasise about her brother’s fate? The call gave the team nothing to latch on to; there was no reason for Hannah to feel wounded by the jibe that she didn’t care about justice.

  Gulping down the rest of her drink, she stretched out on the lounger. But the caffeine made her nerve ends tingle, and she had plenty to do. Forget Orla Payne. This was meant to be decision day, when she finally summoned up the nerve to tell Marc they were finished.

  ‘You’re looking fantastic,’ Marc said.

  She shrugged, determined not to respond to flattery, even though she’d experienced a zing of triumph when she first pulled on her jeans. Trophy jeans, a pair she’d kept long after she’d last been able to squeeze herself into them. Over the past six months, she’d lost half a stone. Living on her own must suit her.

  She closed her eyes, listening to the water crash over the weir. They were lunching out at the back of Marc’s second-hand bookshop. He’d cordoned off a space that overlooked the stream. Hannah had suggested meeting elsewhere, on neutral ground, but he’d persuaded her to come here. The bookshop was his kingdom – but not, these days, exclusively his. He’d gone into partnership with Leigh Moffat, who ran the cafeterias here and at Marc’s other shop in Sedbergh. Food and drink lured more customers than the stacked shelves of books. All over the country, second-hand bookshops were closing their doors as customers migrated to charity shops and online buying, but Marc was contrary. Besides, even people who hated reading needed to eat. Earlier in the year, when the bank manager started to make menacing noises about cash flow and overdraft limits, Marc had sold a half-share in the business to Leigh. Years back, Marc had had a fling with her sister, but he insisted this relationship was about business, nothing more. Would she care if he was lying?

  ‘Busy at work?’ Marc was determined to keep trying.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Hannah tasted her soup. Carrot and coriander, seasoned with garlic and a touch of black pepper. Warm, sweet and spicy.

  Marc smeared low-fat spread on a wholegrain roll before passing it to her. Talk about buttering her up.

  ‘Still flogging yourself to death, I suppose.’

  ‘We’re short of staff. You must have read about the row over cutbacks.’

  ‘Yeah, don’t the newspapers reckon that twice as many Tesco supermarkets open twenty-four/seven as police stations? But I see that congratulations are in order. Your team has been shortlisted for an award. Isn’t the ceremony tomorrow?’

  Hannah almost choked on a mouthful of bread roll. Give him credit, he was making an effort.

  ‘You’ve done your homework.’

  ‘I’m interested, believe it or not.’

  Then why leave it so late?

  ‘It’s nothing to get excited about.’

  ‘Typical Hannah. Underselling yourself.’

  ‘No false modesty – we aren’t going to win. I’ve been tipped off that we finished as runners-up for the Contribution to the Community Award. The girl who types for the judging panel fancies Greg Wharf. She told him that we lost out to a bunch of litter collectors.’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me – the Cleanliness in Cumbria Partnership?’

  ‘Yeah, their press releases get everywhere. They emptied more bins than we solved rapes and murders, I think that’s how it works.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not about winning, but the taking part.’

  She couldn’t help grinning. ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’

  ‘Any major cold cases on the go?’

  ‘Only if you count a miserable old sod in his seventies who lives in Lancaster, but spent most of his life in Barrow. We spent six months searching for a match to DNA from a rape at Millom thirty years ago. The victim has been in and out of mental hospitals ever since. Eventually, we
found our man, but the CPS are digging in their heels, they don’t want to prosecute. He has advanced Parkinson’s disease, and the medics say he’s unfit to plead.’

  ‘Frustrating.’

  ‘Life’s rich tapestry.’

  ‘No more murders?’

  ‘I needed a break from murders.’

  He nodded. At the start of the year, he’d found himself mixed up in one of her cases. They’d reached a tacit agreement not to speak about it again. The wounds were too raw.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Matter of fact, I took a call yesterday. A woman whose brother disappeared, his name was Callum Hinds. Their stepfather managed Madsen’s caravan park, up at Keswick.’

  ‘The caravan park?’ He pondered. ‘Aren’t Madsen’s the people who sponsored your award?’

  ‘The award we didn’t quite win, you mean?’ Of course, that was why she knew the name. ‘As a matter of fact, you’re right.’

  ‘Successful company. I’ve bumped into the Madsen brothers at Commerce in Cumbria events. Bryan Madsen is a big wheel in local politics, and once upon a time, Gareth was a racing driver. If they can afford sponsorship money in the current economic climate, they must be worth a packet.’ He paused. ‘As it happens, I do recall a boy going missing somewhere near the caravan park.’

  ‘Your memory goes back that far?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my memory,’ he murmured. ‘My parents talked about the case, because they’d discussed buying a caravan at Madsen’s. In the end, they settled for a timeshare in Majorca. Kept it for five years and went out there only twice. The lad and I were much the same age. You don’t expect to die in your teens.’

  ‘No trace of Callum was found. There’s nothing to prove he died.’

  Marc pushed a hand through his thicket of fair hair, a habitual gesture. As she finished her soup, it struck her that this was one of his mannerisms that she found appealing. She’d actually missed it.

  Weird, very weird.

  He looked into her eyes, and she averted her gaze, focusing instead on sheep traipsing across the fells. She understood how much effort he was making to appear relaxed, indulging her with small talk. Marc fizzed with nervous energy and, beneath the surface affability, his insides must be knotted with tension. He was as photogenic as ever – she’d felt familiar stirrings of desire, unwelcome but undeniable, when he greeted her – but there was no masking the dark rings beneath his eyes. The legacy of a sleepless night, fretting that he was about to lose her? He hated losing, something else they had in common. No way would she let him soft-soap her. Her heart was hardened. At least, as much as it ever could be.

  When it dawned on him that she would not break the silence, he said, ‘How’s your new sergeant shaping up?’

  ‘Greg Wharf? An old hand by now. Smart guy. Almost as smart as he believes he is.’

  ‘Not as smart as Nick Lowther, though?’

  Nick had left the force and emigrated with a new partner before last Christmas. Marc had been suspicious of their relationship for years. If only he knew how wrong he’d been. Before that, he’d imagined she lusted after her old boss, Ben Kind, though their relationship was never more than platonic. This winter, Marc had got it into his head that she’d started an affair with Ben’s son, Daniel. His jealousy tore them apart. That, plus his pathetic swooning over a girl who had worked for him, downstairs in this very shop.

  ‘There’s no comparison. Nick was quiet and thoughtful. Greg is noisy and relies on what he calls his “gut”.’

  ‘Not your type?’

  She frowned. ‘I’m not sure I have a type.’

  He knocked back the rest of his wine and said, ‘Thanks for coming, Hannah. I wanted to apologise to you.’

  ‘You apologised before.’

  ‘And you said you accepted my apology. But I don’t think you did.’

  She focused on the grazing sheep. What were apologies for? They were empty words, devalued currency. Spouted by politicians who were keen to say sorry for sins of the distant past, but lacking the courage to admit mistakes of the here and now.

  ‘I meant to ask your forgiveness.’

  She’d never heard him speak with such humility.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For everything. The way I treated you when we lived together. Spending too much time on the shops, not enough on you. Accusing you of shagging Daniel Kind.’

  He lowered his voice. A couple of elderly women in raincoats, who had spent too long living in the Lake District to be fooled by sunshine and a cloudless sky, plonked themselves down at a table on the other side of the chain, and he was desperate not to be overheard. He didn’t want witnesses to his mortification.

  A wild instinct seized her.

  ‘What if I did shag him?’ she whispered.

  She’d never before said anything to him that was meant to hurt. Grief was scrawled all over his face, as plain as if a vandal had sprayed it with paint.

  ‘I … I wouldn’t be surprised.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Good-looking successful man. Good-looking successful woman. Both let down by their lovers. Who could blame them?’

  On the drive from Undercrag, she’d rehearsed this conversation, expecting resistance, bitterness, anger. Conceivably, for he was an emotional man, a torrent of tears. Self-abasement wasn’t in the script. She didn’t want to humiliate him, or lie about her relationship with Daniel.

  ‘For what it’s worth, we haven’t done anything.’

  One of the women at the nearby table brayed with laughter, enjoying a bit of salacious gossip. Marc’s hands shook. He was unsure whether to believe her.

  ‘You don’t have to say that.’

  ‘It’s true.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, he kissed me once. In the car park of The Tickled Trout, not the ideal spot for a romantic tryst. If you must know, I haven’t seen him for months. The last time we bumped into each other was at a lecture given by a professor of criminology at the University of South Lakeland. All about the narratives that criminals weave, to justify their behaviour to themselves. Daniel was with his sister – she teaches law at the uni, remember? The three of us had a chat over a glass of orange juice, and then went our separate ways. All right?’

  Marc swallowed a mouthful of baguette. ‘You can see whoever you like. Specially a good friend like Daniel. As a matter of fact, I got you something.’

  She stared as he reached into a shoulder bag that he’d dumped on the decking underneath their table. He pulled out a parcel in gift wrapping and put it in her hands.

  She tried to hand it straight back to him, but he’d folded his arms and it was impossible.

  ‘Marc, I can’t accept—’

  ‘Don’t be so hasty. Unwrap it and have a look, before you turn it down,’ he said.

  Unwilling to be churlish, she tore off the wrapping. Inside, the present was packed in tissue paper. She slid out a slim hardback book, with gold lettering on the front and spine. The title was Hidden Depths, the author D.B. Kind.

  ‘Is this by Daniel?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘You won’t find Hidden Depths mentioned in his bibliography. I think he prefers to forget about it, but he’s too modest. It’s a collection of poetry that he published when he was a student. Not exactly Coleridge, but definitely not McGonagall, either. Quite a few of the verses deal with rifts between parent and child – read into that what you will. Maybe he needed to put it down in black and white to get the bad stuff out of his system. And writing poetry doesn’t pay the rent – you can see why he gave it up for popular history.’

  She opened the book. ‘A first edition?’

  ‘Yep, it was never reprinted.’ He gave the engaging grin she’d always liked. ‘The publishers went out of business shortly afterwards, but I’m sure it wasn’t Daniel’s fault.’

  ‘You shouldn’t give this to me.’

  ‘This copy took a hell of a lot of finding, trust me. I tracked it down to Manitoba. After all that effort, you have to accept it
. No way am I planning to flog it on the Internet.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Peace offering,’ he said. ‘No strings.’

  ‘Whenever anyone says there are no strings, there are strings.’

  ‘Put it in your bag, Hannah.’

  She considered him. He was pleased with his coup, and it would be childish to spurn the gift. He’d been riven by jealousy, first of Ben, later of Nick, finally of Daniel, and people didn’t change. But he’d striven for generosity, and the little book was worth more than any protestations that the leopard had changed spots.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Again the grin. This was more like the old Marc – low-fat spread wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Hannah pictured her oldest friend, Terri, a self-certified expert on the opposite sex, warning her it wouldn’t last – it never did. Terri ought to know, after three marriages and half a lifetime deluding herself that she could transform some of the most unsuitable men in Cumbria, possibly in the western hemisphere, into a cross between Mr Darcy and George Clooney.

  Time to seize back the initiative.

  ‘So what about you and Leigh?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing to tell. She made it very clear when she put up the money, it’s an investment, because she believes we can make it work. Books and food, nourishment for brain and body, a magical combination. We’re partners, sure, but it’s only in business.’

  The cynic in Hannah wondered if that meant Leigh had rebuffed his overtures. Whatever, their teaming up didn’t offer her an easy escape route.

  Time to look him in the eye.

  ‘I don’t want us to get back together again,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  She’d steeled herself for a protest, perhaps an eruption of fury.

  ‘So, there are things to decide. Arrangements to be made.’

  ‘Hey, not so fast. We’re not married, remember?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she snapped.

  ‘Well, then. There’s no question of a divorce. No legal stuff. We can take our time.’

  ‘Marc, it’s more than six months already.’

  He leant across the table, putting his face close to hers.