Just Desserts (2 page)

‘The road is blocked off.'

‘It doesn't show on the map as closed.'

‘It is, I assure you. Maybe that's an old map.'

Leo looked smug. ‘New – as recommended by army surveillance.'

‘Sometimes I really worry about you, Leo. Here we are. A fine example of a local enterprise park. Note the exhilarating lack of landscaping. None of this pandering to the public sensibility up here. Presumably you would like a casual cruise around the buildings? Slowing down near Lowdale Screw Fittings?'

‘Excellent idea. If you should suddenly feel the need to repack the shopping while we are outside, it would be even better. Good Lord, this place is bleak.'

‘Isn't it just.'

They did a slow circuit and she halted just before the old aerodrome buildings. Lowdale Screw Fittings had patched them up and added an extension and new signage, but in essence they were much the same as they must have appeared to the pioneer aviators of the thirties and forties. Beyond the former control tower, where the runway and hangars and mess huts would have been, there was now a hotchpotch of industrial units in various styles and designs extending around the perimeter fence.

Leo was completely alert. He got out and stood helpfully holding boxes and bags while she rummaged through her shopping, but all the time his eyes were assessing the buildings and the land and the activity going on. ‘Right on the edge of the site,' he murmured. ‘Couldn't be better if there's something shady in the offing. A pile of building materials to establish the fact that work is going to be starting here soon – and a digger clearing the land at a snail's pace.' He chuckled. ‘And a chap in overalls just happening to come outside for a cigarette break to keep an eye on us.'

Penny straightened up, a packet of biscuits in her hand. She gave them to Leo to hold while she repacked the boot. He leaned against the side of the car, the very picture of nonchalance, his voice slightly louder.

‘These hills must have made it interesting for the incoming planes when they were still flying here.'

‘I'm pretty sure the pilots would have had training,' said Penny dryly. ‘Are we done yet? Have you seen enough?'

He grinned. ‘You are very good to me, you know.'

They drove off. ‘That's Tom's lab,' said Penny, nodding towards a stark white building close by.

‘Going to call in?'

‘When Tom is in work mode he barely recognises me. He certainly wouldn't break off what he was doing to offer me a coffee even if it
is
lunchtime. Neither he nor Lucinda are natural skivers.'

The remaining circuit of the Enterprise Park didn't take long. Penny paused at the junction with the main road. ‘Back to Salthaven?'

Leo was annotating his map. ‘I wouldn't mind a look along that blocked-off road.'

Penny sighed. ‘Pass me a biscuit.'

She had to slow almost immediately as a tractor pulled out of a field on the opposite side of the road. ‘That's Billy Fell. There's no point overtaking, he'll be turning in again in a moment.'

Billy lifted his hand in apology. Penny waved back and glanced in her rear view mirror. She saw a neat green car turn out of the farm gates some way behind and come towards them. She stalled abruptly causing Leo's map to slip off his knees into the foot well.

‘Sorry,' said Penny. Her eyes were fixed painfully on the mirror. Her hands gripped the wheel. The green car turned right – into the Enterprise Park.

‘Penny? What's the matter?'

Penny started the car again, barely hearing him, and did the fastest, messiest three-point turn ever before surging back down the road. She got to Lowdale just in time to see a neat, green Ford drive into a vacant parking space next to the white building she'd pointed out to Leo. Her hand shaking, she slammed the gear lever into reverse and shot back a hundred yards out of sight.

‘Wasn't that –?' began Leo.

‘Yes,' said Penny, hearing her voice catch. ‘Yes, that was Tom. I saw the green car pull out of Fellrigg Farm. It looked familiar … and then it came in here …' She took a deep breath. ‘OK, I'll say it. Why would a committed workaholic be visiting Fellrigg Farm in the middle of the day when Billy Fell is out on the land?'

‘I don't know,' said Leo. ‘Let's go to the farm and find out.'

Penny swung to face him. ‘Leo, we can't!'

‘Sure we can. I'm a journalist, remember? I can ask about the missing aeroplane while you grill Mrs Fell for guilty clues.' He laid his hand gently on hers where it still clutched the handbrake. ‘Penny, you want to know what is going on, don't you?'

Penny thought of her daughter, wearing a chunky yellow bracelet she disliked and needing ‘time for them' out of her normal routine. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, I do.'

At the farm, Rachel Fell, a well set-up young woman a little older than Lucinda, was emerging from the whitewashed dairy. In contrast to a lot of farms in the area, there were no outbuildings at Fellrigg with tumbledown stone walls, missing windows, or a patched-up roof. There was an air of … not prosperity, exactly, but not hand-to-mouth living, either.

Rachel looked wary as Penny got out of the car, but her expression changed to polite interest as Penny greeted her and introduced Leo.

‘I'm a journalist with the
Messenger
,' said Leo smoothly. ‘I'm looking into an old story about Andrew Collins, a test pilot who was supposed to have crashed around here somewhere.'

‘Grandad's your man for that if he did. Won't you both come in? I was just going to fix Grandad up with a bite to eat for his lunch.'

‘Billy not around?' said Penny, trying to sound off-hand.

Rachel laughed. ‘He's taken his pack-up into the fields. One thing after another at this season. He won't be back until suppertime, I daresay.'

And while Penny, with her mind in turmoil, studied the composed farmer's wife for signs of dalliance or guilt – and failed to see either – Leo lucked on the exact story he'd been trying to track down!

‘A plane crash, you say?' Grandad Fell was a bright-eyed old man ensconced in the comfortable chair by the range. Now he cackled. ‘Any number of crashes up here, son. You'd think they'd see the mountains coming, wouldn't you?'

‘This would have been in the fifties. Andrew Collins was the pilot. I believe he came from Salthaven originally. That may have been why he was here.'

‘Aye, he did. I remember that. They never found him. They searched Long Tarn, you know. Brought up divers and equipment – didn't find anything.' He snorted with suppressed mirth. ‘Useless lot. I could have told them they wouldn't.'

Penny drank her tea, listening with half an ear as she watched Rachel move competently around the farmhouse kitchen, making the old man's lunch and seeing to her rising bread. Penny knew her vaguely, a pleasant, wholesome girl who wasn't at all the sort to attract Tom. So what could be going on?

‘Did you know Andrew Collins? Can you tell me a bit about him?' asked Leo.

‘I can. Right daredevil he was, up for anything. Came back here after flying fighters in the war. Couldn't settle. Went off again after this pilot's job as soon as he heard about it. I reckon he'd have paid
them
to fly their planes.'

Leo listened, made notes, asked more questions, and finally rose. ‘Thank you. You've been very helpful. I suppose you don't know anything about Lowdale Screw Fittings?'

The old man cackled again. ‘The secret laboratory? Sorry, lad.'

‘You don't know anyone who works there?'

‘Nobody does. It doesn't exist, does it?'

‘I'll see you out,' said Rachel. ‘I'm off to check on my cheese, Grandad.'

He looked put out to be deprived of his new audience. ‘You do too much, young woman.'

‘Give over, you've had a nice chat today and the children will be back from school to bother you before you know it.'

She ushered them out, saying in a cheerful voice that he couldn't get it into his head that the farm didn't make as much from the crops as it had in his day so everyone had to find other ways of turning a profit. ‘And I'd rather make dairy products from our own animals than take in bed and breakfasters. Your home's not your own, is it?'

‘No indeed,' said Penny. ‘Do you sell at the farmers' market?'

‘Internet, mostly. I'll give you a card.'

‘It's impossible,' said Penny as she drove away. ‘Tom cannot be having an affair with Rachel Fell.'

‘Is that why you didn't ask what he was doing there?'

Penny didn't dignify this with an answer. ‘I suppose you'd like to see Long Tarn now?' she said, changing the subject.

He grinned. ‘Might as well while we're here.'

The tarn was only a short way inland, nestled in the bowl of the hills. Leo got out of the car, shading his eyes against the autumn sun. ‘Collins ditched here?' he said, sounding puzzled.

‘Not according to Grandad Fell. He said nothing was found. Don't you like the idea?'

‘Frankly, no. It's too tidy. Too accessible a site. Too near the road. I don't believe in it.'

‘Come to think of it, nor do I,' said Penny. ‘We used to come up here for picnics. No one – not Mum or Aunt Bridget or Grandma Astley – ever suggested an aeroplane had once crashed into it.'

They looked at each other. ‘I'll do some more digging,' said Leo.

‘Try the Over-60s group at the library,' suggested Penny. ‘Some of the older people might remember.'

‘Good idea. How about us looking at that blocked-off road now?'

‘All right, but there's nothing to see.'

Leo's grin was wolfish. ‘That's what interests me. If there isn't anything to see, why block it off?'

‘It used to run all the way to the look-out post on the edge of the cliff. When the post was declared defunct and the cliff edge cordoned off as dangerous, the road was closed.'

‘Defunct
and
dangerous? Excellent. I'm always suspicious of two excuses where one would do.'

Penny tutted and drove him as far as they could get down the disused track. ‘See? Nothing here. Lowdale on the right, farmland on the left.'

He got out of the car and gazed over scrub filled with gorse and brambles. Penny looked past him, at the old airfield buildings behind the wire fence and the earth-moving equipment ready to expand the Screw Fittings site. ‘You can see where the road went originally. Down to the edge of the cliff and along round the perimeter of the airfield. But with the new grid criss-crossing the Enterprise Park, it wasn't needed.'

‘What's on the other side of this hedge?'

‘Another farm. Deep End. And before you get any ideas, that's private property with strictly no admittance. The glint of water you can see through the hedge is Deep Tarn. It's called that for a reason. People have drowned there.'

Leo's attention sharpened. ‘Is that so?' Before she knew what he was about, he'd scrambled onto the bonnet of her car. ‘Tell you what, this farm isn't as welcoming as Fellrigg. Very run down – and it looks as if the boundary is electrified.'

‘Leo! Get down! What are you doing?'

He gazed across the unkempt hedge to the farm on one side, before turning to stare at the Enterprise Park on the other. ‘Fixing the lie of the land in my head.'

Not just in his head – he was taking photos with his phone. Way over to their right, Penny saw one of the Screw Fittings builders spot them and call across to his mate. ‘Time to go,' she said. ‘You are plain dangerous, Leo. Do you want to climb in through the sun roof, or would you prefer to use the door like conventional people?'

‘Is everything all right, Lucinda?'

It was Sunday and Penny couldn't leave the question any longer.

Her eldest daughter immediately looked defensive. ‘Of course everything is all right. Why wouldn't it be? Apart from not having enough time in the day, that is.' She put the schedule for the Salthaven Show that she'd been leafing through back on the table. ‘They really ought to update the medal classes for the show. There's never anything quick involved. Who on earth makes jam these days? Why don't they have a cup for the healthiest sandwich or the most nutritious packed lunch?'

‘Frances entered a peanut butter and bacon roll once, for the unusual ingredients prize, don't you remember? Yours is a good idea. You'll have to suggest it to the committee. The show schedule isn't set in stone.'

‘I might, at that. What's Leo doing here?'

‘He was at a loose end. He gets bored all by himself on his boat. Besides, he took me out for a meal this week, remember? I thought I should return the favour.'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Mother, the paper was paying. You do realise he's too young for you, don't you?'

There were times when Penny had to remind herself quite strongly that she loved her daughter. ‘That's just his irresponsible air. But apart from the fact that a four-year difference means very little once you reach our advanced age, Leo and I are simply friends. Everyone is allowed to have friends.'

She carried drinks into the sitting room and was brought up short by the expression of concentrated pain in Leo's eyes as he played trains on the carpet with Lucinda's son, Bobby. The child was two, and endlessly endearing despite his parents providing him with purely educational toys and insisting he got the most out of every play experience. Penny remembered that Leo's estranged son was six or seven. He must miss him.

‘We were over your way during the week,' she said chattily to her son-in-law. ‘Leo is on the track of a test-plane that crashed somewhere near Lowdale in the 1950s.'

‘Really?' Tom's expression glazed, indicating that he was flicking through his internal database. He shook his head. ‘Sorry, don't know of it.'