The Serpent Pool Page 20

  It was so hard to keep secrets in the Lakes, Hannah thought as she drove into Lowbarrow Lane. A detective simply needed to know the right questions to ask. Cumbria comprised so many small, tightly woven communities that someone always knew more than they should about someone else’s business. Just as Wanda Saffell knew about Bethany and Marc.

  As she rounded the last bend, Undercrag stood in front of her. There were no lights on, other than the security lamp that came on as the car came within range of the front door.

  He hadn’t warned her that he would be late. What was he up to?

  ‘Comfortable?’ Cassie asked.

  Marc stretched his legs and stifled a yawn. Not that he was bored, just weary. She hadn’t poisoned him with the Irish coffee, though she’d gone overboard with the whisky, and he had to hope that tonight was too cold for the traffic cops to be out with their breathalysers.

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  On top of the bookshelves was a clock fashioned from a seven-inch vinyl single by the Beatles. ‘Please, Please Me.’ Quarter to seven. She’d perched on the edge of the sofa, but he couldn’t tell if she was waiting for him to go, or hoping he would stay.

  ‘More coffee?’

  ‘I’d love to, but no. I’d not be fit to get behind the wheel if I had any more.’

  ‘My fault,’ she said. ‘I have this terrible habit of going overboard.’

  ‘Is that so terrible?’

  She leant closer to him. ‘Believe me, Marc.’

  His throat was dry. He wasn’t sure where this would lead, but he had a good idea.

  A mobile ringtone chirruped. Another snatch of the Beatles: ‘Lady Madonna’.

  She stood up and moved towards the kitchen. ‘Saved by the bell, huh?’

  She left the door ajar and he strained to eavesdrop. But she was whispering, and he couldn’t make out the words. Within a moment she was back in the sitting room, clutching the phone as tightly as though it were a grenade. Breathing hard.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes were fixed on the patterns of the kilim, avoiding his scrutiny. ‘Well, in truth, yes. But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You look unhappy all of a sudden.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘The boyfriend?’

  ‘Ex-boyfriend.’ She coloured. ‘He’s so persistent.’

  ‘Can’t blame him for that.’

  She looked at the mobile screen. ‘Oh God, he’s just sent a text.’

  He craned his neck to read the message.

  Got 2 c u.

  ‘He’s stalking you?’

  ‘It’s my problem, not yours.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I’ll sort it.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  She thought for a moment and mustered a sardonic grin. ‘Let you get back home to your chief inspector.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  She took a stride towards him and dropped a kiss on his cheek. Her lips were chilly, but for a moment he felt her slim, hard body press against him, before she withdrew.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Thanks for the lift, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Showdown time.

  Hannah was checking her lipstick in front of the hall mirror as Marc banged the door shut. She was due to see Daniel in half an hour, and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. But she didn’t mean to delay questioning Marc until she arrived back from The Tickled Trout.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to be this late.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise I needed to seek permission.’

  She groaned inwardly. Sounded like he’d had a bad day at the bookshop. Maybe he’d heard about Stuart Wagg. He couldn’t afford to lose too many good customers.

  ‘There’s food in the kitchen.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He eyed her suspiciously. ‘Going out?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise I needed to seek permission.’

  ‘Ouch.’ For an instant, she glimpsed the grin that had attracted her so much the first time they met, all those years ago. But it faded as fast as the gold and silver cascades of fire they’d watched at Crag Gill, and was replaced by an expression both watchful and sardonic. ‘Meeting a source?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She was about to tell him she would be seeing Daniel Kind, but something stopped her. Maybe she just didn’t want the conversation to digress. ‘You know Stuart Wagg is dead?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He sighed. ‘So, two people I know have died in mysterious circumstances.’

  He’d gifted her with an open goal. ‘Three people, surely?’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘There’s Bethany Friend as well.’

  ‘What makes you think I know Bethany?’

  ‘Do you deny it?’

  ‘Deny what?’

  ‘Deny knowing Bethany?’

  She recognised his expression: she’d seen it a thousand times on the faces of politicians playing for time while they groped for a form of words that avoided the lie direct.

  ‘No, I never have denied it.’

  ‘You never said she worked for you. Not at the time of her death, not even when we discussed her on New Year’s Eve, when we walked to the Serpent Pool. Are you telling me it slipped your mind?’

  ‘I was sad about what happened to her, it depressed me. She was a nice girl. I preferred to remember her as she was, not dwell on her death.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Marc! I’m reinvestigating her death, and it was asking too much to expect you to tell me what you knew about her?’

  ‘Nothing to tell.’

  ‘She fancied you.’

  He gritted his teeth. ‘You have been doing your homework.’

  ‘Did you shag her?’

  ‘No!’

  They stared at each other. His gaze didn’t waver. She decided that probably he was telling the truth.

  ‘OK. So what did you make of her?’

  ‘What else do you want to know? She was a sweet girl and I don’t have a clue either why she might commit suicide or why someone might kill her. Satisfied?’

  ‘Why weren’t you straight with me?’

  He wagged a forefinger at her. ‘Don’t push your luck. Everyone has secrets, even you.’

  Her spine chilled. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Where are you off to this evening? You never wear lipstick to office briefings. Anybody would think you were scuttling off for a tryst with some man.’

  Hannah strangled a cry of anger and snatched her jacket from the stand near the door. The zip stuck, and as she fumbled, it broke. Bloody typical. Everything was falling apart.

  She took in a gulp of air. ‘I’m meeting Daniel Kind, if you want to know. It’s no secret. He and his sister found Stuart Wagg’s body.’

  ‘Don’t try to tell me you’re investigating Stuart’s death.’

  It felt as though he’d kneed her in her weakest part, but she fought for calm. ‘There may be a connection between the deaths of Saffell and Wagg, and what happened to Bethany Friend.’

  ‘A woman who died six years ago?’ His voice rose. He was a skilled exponent at phoney outrage and used it as a weapon whenever they had a row, but she didn’t think his astonishment was feigned.

  ‘She worked for both Saffell and Wagg. Did she sleep with them, too?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Bethany was confused about her own sexuality, she wasn’t some sort of slapper. It’s madness to think anything could link those three deaths.’

  Wanda Saffel is one link, she thought. And there are bound to be others. But she buttoned her mouth. She’d already said more than she should. The snag was, he took her silence as a sign she had a chink in her armour. He was determined to seize back the initiative.

  ‘Go on, Hannah. Admit it.’

  Her gaze settled on the hall ceiling. It still needed plastering. The way she and Marc were heading, it would be a job for some other couple.

  ‘Admit what?’

>   ‘This is your second cosy get-together with Daniel Kind inside twenty-four hours. What did he want to talk about last night? Not prophesying Stuart’s death, I bet.’

  Shit, shit, shit. The spasm of guilt was like stomach cramps. For a moment she wished the ground would open up beneath her. Why hadn’t she come clean about last night, when there was nothing to hide? She couldn’t guess how he’d found out. Maybe one of his customers had spotted Daniel and her at The Tickled Trout.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she muttered.

  ‘Touched a nerve, have I? Of course, Daniel is Ben’s son.’

  She spun round. ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘You had the hots for Ben.’

  ‘We were colleagues, it never went further than that. Now I’m going out. Not sure when I’ll be back.’

  ‘Take as long as you like.’ She knotted the scarf in silence. Resisting the temptation to wrap it around his neck.

  ‘Oh, and Hannah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your lipstick smudged. Better wipe up if you want to look your best for Daniel Kind.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The route from Undercrag to The Tickled Trout took Hannah past a trendy bar at the end of a terrace row. Outside it were roadworks and a temporary traffic control, and as she waited an age for the lights to change, a couple of people spilt out of the bar. A man and a woman, arm in arm. Their unsteadiness suggested they’d each had a skinful. As they sank into an embrace, Hannah thought they looked familiar, even though she couldn’t make out their faces. The woman put her back to a brick wall as the man pressed up against her. His hands moved behind her, as if to lift her skirt. Hannah stared with shameless curiosity. Sometimes a detective must become a voyeur.

  A furious tooting from the next car in the queue jerked her attention away from the lovers. The lights had changed to green. As she wavered, reluctant to move off, the light switched to red again. She imagined a cry of disgust from the driver in the car behind, and raised a hand in apology, but it was too dark for him to see.

  At the sound of the horn, the couple sprang apart. Perhaps they thought the salvo was aimed at them. In a moment, they vanished into a shadowy passage that ran behind the terrace. For a split second, their faces shone in the glare of light from the street lamp. Hannah’s instinct was spot on.

  Nathan Clare and Wanda Saffell were back together again.

  She put her foot down the moment she escaped the thirty-mile limit, but arrived at The Tickled Trout ten minutes later than promised. The car park was crowded, but she saw Daniel’s Audi and squeezed into the marked space next to it. As she raced across the asphalt to the pub’s front entrance, raucous cheering broke out from the locals’ end of the lounge bar. Nothing personal: this was quiz night, and the home team had taken the lead with two rounds to go.

  Daniel leant against the counter, scanning the crowd. Her heart lurched as their eyes met. Absurd: the last thing she needed was to start behaving like a seventeen-year-old on a date. She pushed through the mass of drinkers, envying Daniel’s cool. Nobody had the right to look so laid-back, hours after discovering a tortured corpse. Like his father, he took disasters in his stride. He’d lined up two glasses of Chablis for them. His knack of reading her mind meant she must take care; she’d die of embarrassment if he could read her most private thoughts.

  ‘Hannah, thanks for sparing the time.’

  They shook hands, his grip firm. As he led her to the corner booth they’d occupied the previous evening, a bell rang and a tubby quizmaster, who looked as though his specialist subject was chip suppers, bellowed the next question.

  ‘Who was murdered by his wife at Battlecrease House in Liverpool?’

  ‘James Maybrick,’ Daniel murmured. ‘Although some people doubt whether his death was murder.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘James developed a taste for arsenic as a medicine, and it boosted his virility into the bargain. His wife served fifteen years in jail, but she may have been innocent. Unlike James. According to one school of thought, he was Jack the Ripper.’

  She settled into her seat. ‘You know a lot about crime.’

  ‘Necessary research. Don’t forget I’m writing a history of murder.’

  ‘So, how is The Hell Within?’

  ‘Hell to write, frankly. I’ve not even finished my lecture for Arlo Denstone’s festival. Real life keeps interrupting.’

  ‘And now you’ve stumbled on a real-life murder.’

  ‘Finding Stuart’s body reminded me why I chose academic life.’ He gazed up at the black wooden beams, as if trying to decipher a pattern in the knots of the timber. ‘That’s the difference between me and my father, I’d rather watch the world from a safe distance. Thomas De Quincey went into rhapsodies about murder as a fine art, but it looks pretty coarse when you come face to face with it. No way could I ever do your job.’

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret. At times, I’m not sure I can do it, either.’

  He shot her a sharp glance. ‘Are you all right?’

  Irrationally, her hackles rose. ‘Any reason I shouldn’t be?’

  ‘You look unhappy, that’s all.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘That obvious?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to bite your head off.’

  ‘Wretched day?’

  ‘Not as grim as yours.’

  ‘It was much harder for Louise. The first corpse she’s ever seen, and it belongs to the man she spent Christmas with. Not a pretty sight. But she’ll get through. This evening she said she’d already fallen out of love with Stuart Wagg before he sent her packing.’

  ‘He was a bastard.’

  ‘But a charming bastard, by all accounts.’

  ‘Charm alone is not enough,’ Hannah said fiercely.

  ‘Louise reckons he used to get away with murder. Now someone has murdered him. The well wasn’t covered up by accident. The sheet lying on top of it was heavy. You’d never shift it from underneath, even if you could climb up that far.’

  ‘His legs were broken, and his kneecaps shattered.’ Why shouldn’t Daniel know, where was the harm? He’d already seen the body, and the precise nature of the injuries didn’t need to be a state secret. ‘There was a monkey wrench down underneath the body. Someone tossed it into the well after using it to cripple Stuart before they dropped him down.’

  His eyes widened with horror. ‘He was deliberately maimed?’

  ‘Presumably to prevent him hauling himself up to safety. Whoever put him down there was determined he would never escape.’

  Daniel winced. ‘Don’t tell me he was alive when he went down there?’

  ‘Still conscious, yes.’

  ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Whatever his faults, he didn’t deserve to die like that.’

  ‘What was the cause of death?’

  ‘The post-mortem results weren’t ready when I left work this evening. Hypothermia, possibly heart failure, I’d guess. His head was gashed, you must have seen, that may have been the blow that incapacitated him before his legs and knees were smashed. His injuries didn’t kill him, but he wasn’t kitted out for a night underground in these temperatures.’

  Daniel swallowed hard. ‘Imagine his last hours. Trapped in the dark, suffering terrible pain. Nightmarish for anyone, but for a claustrophobe…’

  ‘Your father thought I relied too much on imagination.’ The wine tasted flinty on Hannah’s tongue. She should have grabbed something to eat, so there’d be no risk of the alcohol going to her head. ‘He worried that I’d let it get in the way of the business of detection.’

  ‘Dad wasn’t always right.’

  ‘It helps to try to think myself into the head of the victim. And the criminal.’

  ‘Not easy to inhabit the mind of someone capable of torturing a man before killing him.’ Daniel swallowed more wine. ‘Someone must have hated Stuart very badly to do that to him.’

  ‘H
as Louise any clue about who might fit the bill? Did Stuart admit to having enemies?’

  ‘This isn’t a rational crime. Surely it’s the work of a sociopath.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t believe it was a random crime, either. Stuart Wagg wasn’t a fool. How did he allow someone to do that to him?’

  ‘If the killer incapacitated him with a blow to the head, maybe he was dragged to the well at gunpoint or knifepoint.’

  ‘How did the murderer get so close? Crag Gill was fitted out with state-of-the-art security.’

  ‘The storm—’

  ‘Had nothing to do with the fact that the power supply to the house wasn’t working. I gather the lines were cut. Deliberate sabotage.’

  ‘So, the murder was premeditated?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Stuart didn’t have to let anyone into his home if he was suspicious or afraid.’

  ‘The best guess is that he knew his visitor. He or she was a friend or acquaintance.’

  ‘Not Louise,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Of course not.’ So he wasn’t quite as laid-back as he looked, at least where his sister was concerned. ‘There will be more questions for her, I’m afraid, but she’ll be OK. I’m sure she couldn’t have hurt Wagg like that. Lashing out with scissors in a moment of despair is very different. The sheer brutality of this murder isn’t in her nature.’

  ‘Let’s hope your colleagues are equally open-minded,’ he muttered.

  ‘They are only doing their job, Daniel.’ Why did she sound so defensive? ‘Everyone who knew Stuart Wagg will come under the microscope.’

  ‘Are we talking about a hired killer?’

  ‘Who knows? Nine times out of ten, hit men shoot their victims. Why dump him down the well without even making certain he was dead first? That’s gratuitously vicious.’

  ‘Maybe not so gratuitous,’ he suggested. ‘A sign of intense personal hatred.’

  ‘Which is why I’m surprised Louise can’t come up with any likely candidates.’

  ‘Wagg acted for the rich and famous, people who have skeletons in their closet. If he was caught up in criminal shenanigans, money laundering, or drug deals or something—’

  ‘Did he use drugs?’