The Arsenic Labyrinth Page 4

  When he arrived at the breakfast table, she was frying bread in the kitchen while Clooney scratched at a post in the corner of the room. The cat threw Guy a derisive glance and then carried on. Guy was an equable soul, but nobody likes to be patronised. He was scowling at Clooney’s hindquarters when Sarah walked in, bearing a plate of hot toast.

  ‘You do like cats?’

  Guy nodded with vigour and attributed his grimace to a spasm of indigestion. No reason to miss out on his full English, though. They agreed that cats were wise and sophisticated creatures and Sarah confided that she’d spent a small fortune installing a state of the art infrared cat flap in the back door. Guy wished she’d invested in better plumbing. The love and money she lavished on the animal was out of all proportion, in his opinion. She needed a man in her life.

  Pity that even the meekest women were as unpredictable as weather. He’d blundered with Megan, telling her how his grandma believed a woman could ensure her partner’s undying devotion. Be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. This was a quote from a celebrity that he’d read in a newspaper – the bit about his grandma was just for colour, for he’d never known a grandma – but it made good sense. Unfortunately, Megan kept reading magazine articles about assertiveness and being your own person. Guy had no time for that stuff; he loved being other people. Their quarrel marked the beginning of the end.

  As Sarah chattered nineteen to the dozen, he contented himself with an occasional murmur of assent while concentrating on his food. The first mouthful of fat, succulent, pork and leek sausage, smeared with runny egg, made him sigh with pleasure and when he complimented her on the quality of her home-made marmalade her round face glowed.

  ‘The Germans aren’t up yet.’ She put on a half-shocked look.

  ‘Young love, eh?’

  She fiddled with strands of her disorganised hair. ‘A distant memory for me, Rob, I’ll be honest.’

  He put down his knife and fork and bestowed on her his undivided attention. ‘A woman like you must have – um, admirers, I’m sure.’

  ‘Admirers?’ She gave her habitual, self-deprecating, tinkly laugh. ‘Joking, aren’t you?’

  He shook his head and neither of them said anything for a while. He felt an urge to resume eating before the bacon rashers cooled, but at last she said in a tone of contrived brightness, ‘So what will you be up to today?’

  ‘Catching up with the past.’

  He said it on the spur of the moment. He’d returned to the Lakes in haste, without an agenda in mind. Life was a fast-flowing river, you could never guess where the current might take you. Yet the moment he uttered the words, he knew where he had to go.

  ‘You were late back last night,’ Hannah mumbled as she chewed the last of her breakfast.

  Marc Amos pulled a stool from beneath the breakfast bar and sat down beside her. He was still in his white gown, smelling of lemon soap; she was aware of his nakedness underneath the towelling. After all these years, he still turned her on. When he’d joined her under the duvet at midnight, she’d been half asleep, but she relished his warmth next to her and she’d have responded if he’d been in the mood. At one time his lust was as predictable as sunrise. But all he did was whisper goodnight and roll over and away from her. Within two minutes he was snoring.

  ‘Sorry, should have phoned. Leigh and I got caught up talking to the agent. By the time we’d got rid of him, the two of us were dying for a bite to eat, so we went to a bistro and chewed over the business plan. Next time I looked at my watch, it was half past ten and I didn’t want to disturb you. Thought you might be in bed. Don’t suppose you made any more toast?’

  She shook her head. Marc had a flair for camouflaging thoughtlessness as care and consideration. ‘I’ll be off in a minute. You know where the toaster is.’

  ‘Don’t you want to hear about the business plan?’

  She spotted the trap. If she reminded him that police officers started work long before second-hand bookshop owners with obliging staff, he’d put on his mournful look and say she was always too busy, and they needed to talk more. One thing he never wanted to talk about was her miscarriage at the end of last summer. She’d become pregnant by accident, but after losing the baby she felt suffocated by grief. While he’d never said as much, she knew the prospect of fatherhood frightened Marc. Or perhaps it was the prospect of taking on responsibility for another human life.

  ‘Fire away.’

  His eyes widened; he’d not expected her to show interest. She ought to do better, she told herself with a pang of guilt, instead of getting hung up on Marc’s blind spots. A relationship was a two-way thing.

  ‘Sedbergh’s close to the motorway and developing a reputation as England’s book town. Leigh’s doubled her turnover in eighteen months, so an upmarket café is crucial. We’ll formalise our partnership and divide the premises between us. Half for books, half for people to browse over coffee and a snack.’

  They chatted for five minutes before she had to go. It was a long time since she’d seen him so energised about the fortunes of the shop. For Marc, books were objects of beauty, to be loved, not just read. Catching up with tax returns and stock inventories came a poor second to the surge of joy at finding a rare first edition at a fair. Leigh Moffat had, beneath her demure exterior, a shrewd brain; he was right, together they made a good combination. But Hannah caught herself wondering whether that was all they made.

  Listening in her Lexus to Rufus Wainwright’s mournful vocals on ‘Go Ask Shakespeare’, she told herself not to be so stupid. Jealousy was Marc’s vice, not hers. For years he’d suspected her sergeant, Nick Lowther, of lusting after her. Wrong and unfair. And it wasn’t as if Marc had always been a one-woman man. In the early days of their relationship, he’d had a fling with Leigh’s younger sister Dale.

  These last few weeks, Marc seemed to have lost interest in sex, which was akin to Casanova taking up celibacy. She’d experienced a flutter of paranoia when he passed on gossip that Vicky, a skinny graduate who was working in the shop supposedly to pay off her student debts, had squandered her earnings on a spectacular boob job. Was he secretly hoping she might follow suit? All things considered, she’d rather worry about his running off with Leigh.

  A red light loomed and she stamped on her brake. That was the trouble with being a detective. You wound up suspecting everybody and everything.

  The rain had died away overnight, but Guy knew the Lakes well enough to wrap up warm and prepare for the worst. A fortnight before their final row, Megan had paid to kit him out in the wet-weather gear that walking in Snowdonia demanded. He’d said he would reimburse her when the big futures deal came through, but obviously her behaviour rendered the promise null and void. It served her right that there was no big futures deal. When he said he planned a walk, Sarah filled a flask and insisted on lending him her mobile phone and a torch.

  Outside, the wind’s edge scraped his cheeks like a blade. At the head of the lake, he sat on a bench and read a couple of chapters from a dog-eared David Copperfield that he’d picked up from a charity shop. Small children squealed while their anorak-clad mothers prattled about soap operas and celebrity scandals.

  This time last year, he’d still been in Rome, squashed into a one-bedroom apartment with Farfalla and her one-year-old, Bianca. He’d met her the day Maryell, the wealthy American widow whose suite at the Boscolo Palace he’d shared, discovered that he wasn’t a celebrated English artist after all. He’d told Farfalla that he was a spy working for the British government. At the time he was reading The Woman in White and he amused himself by telling her that it was his sourcebook for deciphering top secret codes. Trouble was, he discovered that he wasn’t the only one leading a double life. Farfalla meant ‘butterfly’ and she lived up to her name. All the time she was supposedly waitressing on the Via Cavour, she was sleeping with a minicab driver who made a fortune fleecing tourists new to the city. Guy knew it couldn’t last. Language was a barrier
, and then there was the child. Farfalla decided to move in with her fancy man, and forty-eight hours later Guy was chatting up Megan by the check-in desk at Fiumicino airport. She’d walked out on her job as a nanny when the kids’ father wanted her to perform services never mentioned in the contract she’d signed with the agency.

  Guy stuffed the book into his pocket and contemplated the inky water. Those cold depths had been the resting place of Donald Campbell, who sacrificed his life in quest of speed, his boat somersaulting as he strained to reach 300 miles per hour. Guy remembered seeing black and white footage of Campbell before the accident. A suave, Brylcreemed Englishman, cigarette in hand. A charmer, a ladies’ man, the sort of chap Guy might have become, had he been a couple of generations older. After thirty-odd years, the wreck of Bluebird was found and lifted from the bottom of the lake, tail fin intact, still proudly bearing the Union Jack. Campbell’s remains were recovered at last. It was right and proper that the dead should receive a decent burial.

  Emma Bestwick would be forty now, older than the gossiping women. He wouldn’t speculate on what course her life might have taken. What was done was done. But he ought to pay his respects.

  The wind had dropped as he ambled into the village, past the deserted bowling green and tennis courts, glancing in windows of shops that sold fishing tackle and Kendal mint cake, hiking boots and waterproof gear. When he glanced over the roofs towards the bracken-covered slopes, his stomach lurched. The road bent at the bridge and he stopped to take a deep breath and listen to the rush and gurgle of the beck. Across the road the bell tower of the church of St Andrew loomed above a small burial ground dotted with clusters of snowdrops. A sign pointed to the tall carved cross that marked John Ruskin’s grave. Ruskin had opted to be buried here, in preference to Westminster Abbey. What a waste. Guy couldn’t understand why Ruskin hadn’t wanted to finish up in splendour. One day he’d have his own fifteen minutes of fame, and he’d make the most of them.

  He consulted his watch. A 14 carat Rolex Oyster Perpetual, benefiting from a champagne dial and gold index markers, picked up in a dodgy bar off the Via Veneto. On the stroke of noon he strolled into a low-beamed pub and ordered a pint of strong bitter beer, brewed on the premises. He didn’t need to slake his thirst. But the alcohol made his head buzz, eased the memory of the last time he’d climbed the fells behind the pub, on his way to meet Emma Bestwick.

  Hannah and Lauren Self should have had a lot in common. Two senior women in a man’s world. Loosening up after a couple of drinks, Lauren liked to talk about girl power and how women in the force needed to look out for each other. A politician to her beautifully manicured fingertips, she’d been fast-tracked to the giddy rank of Assistant Chief Constable by dint of relentless focus on telling councillors on the police authority precisely what they wanted to hear. Hannah preferred to keep a safe distance from the ACC. But, when she wasn’t schmoozing with the great and the good, Lauren wasn’t a bad detective. If she wanted to find you, there was no hiding place. She cornered Hannah by the water cooler.

  ‘Hannah, just the person! This news coverage of the Emma Bestwick case, what is CCRT’s action plan?’

  Lauren loved acronyms as much as Home Office statistics and high profile campaigns against institutional discrimination. It was a safe bet that she had never heard of Emma Bestwick until the press office had served up the cuttings, but Tony Di Venuto’s piece must have concentrated her mind.

  Hannah gave a butter-wouldn’t-melt simper and said, ‘I’ve requisitioned the old papers and prioritised a formal review. Let’s see if some joined-up thinking can produce a few outcomes.’

  If Lauren realised she was being sent up, her glossy smile betrayed nothing. ‘Terrific. We need to stay ahead of the game on this.’

  ‘We’re short-handed at present. Nick Lowther will be in court for another week, and Linz Waller and Gul Khan are working on a possible DNA match in the Furness rapist inquiry. The Bestwick case is the longest of long shots. You’re happy to devote resources to a review?’

  ‘We need to respond to public concern, Hannah. You still have Les, Maggie and Bob Swindell at your beck and call. I’m surprised you haven’t organised a formal press briefing. CCRT is a high-profile unit and we want journalists to understand the value of local police work, benefiting from our can-do culture. Plus our commitment to working in close partnership with the community.’

  In other words, we need to position ourselves for the day when a force merger comes back on the agenda. Hannah assumed an obedient expression as she filled her cup to the brim.

  ‘Understood.’

  Lauren smiled. ‘Excellent. Keep me in the loop.’

  ‘Will do,’ Hannah said, sticking her tongue out at the ACC’s elegant, retreating back.

  At least she had an excuse to put the dip sampling tapes back in a drawer. She’d never wanted this job; Lauren had sidelined her after the Rao trial went pear-shaped. In part a rebuke, in part a convenient way of making sure that Hannah didn’t start getting above herself or – Heaven forbid – grabbing a share of the girl power. Hannah couldn’t care less about status; something Lauren would never understand.

  At last, Hannah was appreciating the positives of cold case work. She liked the people in her team, enjoyed making up her own rules. Above all, she relished becoming a detective again, rather than telling other people what to do and worrying about how well they would do it. If the choice was between interviewing suspects and attending endless meetings to discuss the latest measures of police service efficiency, it was a no-brainer.

  Back in her office, she leafed through old statements. Might Tony Di Venuto have figured in the original investigation? She found no mention of his name.

  ‘Solved it yet?’ Les asked.

  She’d been so engrossed, she hadn’t even heard him lumber into the room. ‘If only.’

  He peered over her shoulder at the file photograph of Emma and sniffed. ‘Ms Ordinary, eh?’

  Harsh, but fair. Emma wasn’t plain, but neither were her looks special. The only extraordinary thing to have happened in her life was that she had disappeared without trace.

  ‘I don’t think she was a warm woman. Hardly any close friends.’

  ‘Boyfriends?’

  ‘She preferred other women.’

  ‘I suppose you’re expecting me to say that was just because she’d not met the right feller?’

  Hannah laughed. ‘Sid Thornicroft wondered if her disappearance was connected with her sex life.’

  ‘She’d met someone new and gone off with her?’

  ‘It was a theory. But we found no trace of any new friendships after she split up with Alexandra Clough.’

  He parked his rear on a corner of her desk. ‘No suggestion she was being stalked?’

  ‘Not by Alex Clough, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I was wondering about men. Just because a woman isn’t available, doesn’t mean some dickhead won’t obsess about her.’

  ‘Sid Thornicroft thought that if she had been murdered, the likeliest candidate was a chap called Tom Inchmore. He worked as a handyman at the Museum of Myth and Legend and mooned after Emma. According to the Cloughs, it was simply because she treated him with kindness. But when Sid found he had a record of minor sexual offences, a lightbulb flashed in his brain.’

  ‘I’m guessing you weren’t Sid’s number one fan.’

  A throwaway remark by Ben Kind, in the pub one night, surfaced in her mind. Sid Thornicroft? So pedestrian, he never steps off the pavement. She shrugged.

  ‘What did Inchmore do?’

  ‘Two cautions as a teenager. Once for stealing an old woman’s undies off her washing line and once for peeping into a girls’ changing room at the gym of a local school. In Sid’s opinion, steps on the road to rape and murder.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was sent to tease a confession out of Tom Inchmore.’

  She could see him now, an acne-ravaged
young man with scruffy black hair and a furtive demeanour who spent too much time peering at her breasts and not enough mumbling answers to her questions. Tom was one of life’s losers; she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. His mother was dead and he lived with his grandmother, Edith Inchmore, a warty, bad-tempered old hag straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But Edith had more guts in her little finger than Tom had in his whole body. She simultaneously despised and protected him, engaging a lawyer to warn him not to answer questions and seize every opportunity to complain about police harassment. Hannah had conceived a grudging respect for her determination to safeguard what little was left of the family name. Edith was convinced the police were intent on stitching the lad up. And maybe the old witch wasn’t so far off the mark.

  ‘Any joy?’

  ‘None whatsoever. So Sid brought in the nastiest DC in the force to give Inchmore a hard time. But even he didn’t manage to beat out a confession.’

  ‘Run a criminal records check. See if Tommy’s been a good boy over the past ten years.’

  ‘Over the last five years, certainly.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘He’s been dead that long.’

  ‘Oh yeah? How did that happen?’

  ‘Accident. No suspicious circumstances. He fell off a ladder while he was fixing a tile on the roof of the house where he lived.’

  Yes, poor Tom Inchmore had been a loser right to the end.

  ‘So, if he did kill Emma, not much chance of finding what he did with the body.’

  ‘’Fraid not.’

  ‘No wonder Thornicroft gave up the unequal struggle?’

  ‘To concentrate on improving his golf handicap.’

  Les belched to show what he thought about golf. ‘Other theories?’

  ‘Emma might have gone for a walk and fallen into a tarn or down a ravine. It happens. But usually to over-adventurous visitors. Not to people born and bred in the Lakes.’