The Frozen Shroud (10 page)

‘The great Lauren Self isn’t afraid of me.’

‘You don’t think so? She’s not stupid, she knows better than anyone that she’s been over-promoted. So she’s determined to shore up her position, and that includes pushing potential rivals overboard.’

Hannah savoured her lager. He was right, the taste was dangerously addictive. ‘And I gave her the perfect excuse by messing up on the Rao trial?’

‘Precisely. Putting you in charge of Cold Cases must have seemed like a masterstroke. And then you go and ruin it by making such a success of the job that her only option left is to cut you, and your team, down to size.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘I don’t do flattery, Hannah.’ He wiped his fleshy lips. ‘Trust me.’

One quick drink turned into three slow ones, and when they were ready to leave, Greg suggested they call at Fryer Tuck’s chippy on the way back. Hannah had planned to dig a ready meal out of the fridge, but he suggested they share a cab to Ambleside before he made his way to Kendal, where he had a flat. It was only good manners to suggest in turn that they eat the chips at Undercrag.

After lighting the fire, she left him in the living room while she made coffee. It wouldn’t be a good plan to offer the option of alcohol. Or share the sofa with him. No way did she intend to send out any wrong signals.

Over the simple supper, she discovered a new side to Greg Wharf. The revelation that he liked cats wasn’t the last shock disclosure. He played and watched tennis, and during his annual pilgrimage to Wimbledon, he made a point of taking
in a West End musical. Not just
Les Mis
or the latest Lloyd Webber, but edgier stuff like
Spring Awakening.

‘You kept that quiet.’

‘Do you blame me? I’d never hear the end of it if the lads got to know.’

The horrible thought struck her that she’d written him off as a brawny hunk whose brains were in his pants. A Flash Harry who wasn’t that much different from the villains he’d hunted when he worked in Vice.

‘I still can’t get over the musicals.’

‘Hey, I love music. As a kid, I sang in the school choir, and got as far as Grade 7 with the piano.’

Greg Wharf, a choir boy? What next, Les Bryant as a teenage Romeo, Lauren Self a tireless worker for the underprivileged?

‘So what happened?’

‘My dad died, and I needed to earn a living. Also, I discovered girls and beer.’ He grinned. ‘Downhill all the way from there.’

‘Don’t worry, your secrets are safe with me.’

‘What about you, Hannah, what are your secrets?’

‘Me? I’m an open book.’

‘Yeah, written in Sanskrit.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry. I meant to say, you’re admirably discreet.’ He watched as she threw another log on the fire. ‘And you have a lovely house to be discreet in.’

‘Only half of it is mine. Much less once you factor in the mortgage. And soon none of it will be mine. We’re selling up.’

He nodded. The break-up with Marc was common knowledge; the disastrous betrayal leading up to it was the stuff of legend back at HQ.

‘When Zanny and I split up, I didn’t know what had hit me. In the space of a weekend, I lost a wife, the woman I’d been seeing behind her back, and the roof over my head. And my job went west, quite literally. Within a week, I was kicked over to the other side of the Pennines.’ Greg’s matrimonial catastrophe was equally celebrated; he’d been married to a high flyer in Northumbria Police before getting far too close to a girl from Community Support. ‘Everyone said I reaped what I sowed. Fair enough, but when you shoot yourself in the foot, it still hurts like hell.’

Hannah watched the fire. The flames writhed like exotic dancers. ‘I’ll get over it.’

‘Of course you will. You’re strong. Where are you looking to move to? Closer to HQ?’

‘Not sure. I did wonder …’

‘What?’

‘If the time was right to make a fresh start. All this shit at work is hard to take, day in, day out. Perhaps I ought to try something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, I dunno.’ She tasted the coffee. Too bitter. ‘I’d just … like to feel I’m getting somewhere, instead of just running faster and faster to stay in the same place.’

‘You’ve achieved a lot.’

She put down her mug. ‘Sorry, I’m rambling. I shouldn’t have had that last glass of lager.’

‘Even DCIs are allowed to unwind sometimes.’ He stretched in his chair. The fire was blazing, the room felt warm at last. ‘Now you know the worst about me, when you’re ready to look at staffing cuts.’

‘You reckon that’s the worst?’

‘Well, your face was a picture.’

‘It’s not the image you’ve cultivated.’

‘Fair comment. I’ve always liked being one of the lads.’ He dunked his one remaining chip in a puddle of brown sauce. ‘Blokes who like musicals are usually as camp as a row of tents, aren’t they?’

‘Marc once made me sit all the way through
South
Pacific
. And he might be many things, but he isn’t camp.’

‘What’s he up to now? Still licking his wounds after you kicked him out?’

She pushed her plate to one side. Half the fish and most of the chips and mushy peas lay untouched, but she’d had enough. That empty feeling inside was nothing to do with hunger.

‘He wants another chance.’

‘Who could blame him?’

‘It isn’t going to happen.’

She was talking to herself as much as to Greg, eyes fixed, not on him, but on the brooding screes of Wasdale in the watercolour on the opposite wall. Marc loved the picture, and she couldn’t wait for him to take it away. The dark hues reminded her of a long ago afternoon they’d spent on the slopes above Wastwater, slipping and sliding as the treacherous black rocks shifted beneath their feet. She’d seldom felt as scared in her life; they’d taken a wrong turning at Marc’s insistence – he always knew best – and came close to becoming cragfast in the wilds of Great Gully.

‘It isn’t going to happen,’ she said again.

She hadn’t drunk that much, yet her head was in a whirl. So much was changing, all around. Her lover gone, her house going, her team slashed to ribbons. What next?

‘Hey,’ Greg said softly, ‘are you okay?’

‘Sorry. It’s not been the best of weeks so far.’

He swallowed the last of his coffee, and stood up. ‘I’d better go.’

Tears pricked her eyes. Oh shit, she’d allowed him to see how feeble she could be. This was so fucking pathetic, she was acting like an emotional teenager, not a head-screwed-on DCI. All those years, she’d worked at painting a portrait of herself in people’s minds, and now she was ripping up her own picture. And why? Because she couldn’t handle this strength-sapping sense that everything she touched fell apart.

She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll get your jacket.’

As she stepped past him, he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She kept looking straight ahead. It would be a mistake to turn to face him. Any moment now, those tears would start running down her cheeks, and she didn’t want to allow him a glimpse of her flimsiness.

‘You don’t have anything to prove,’ he said. ‘Not to me, not to the team, not to Lauren Only-Thinks-Of-Her-Fucking-Self.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve got nothing to thank me for. It’s the other way round. They dumped me on you, which must have been a total pain, but you just got on with the job. And with me.’

She couldn’t avoid looking at him any longer. ‘Someone had to keep you in order.’

He smiled. ‘You do it well.’

Her mind was a useless blur, no longer in control. Her body seemed disconnected from it. She moved closer to Greg, drawn by his sheer physical presence. Afterwards,
she could never quite get the sequence of events clear in her head, but within moments they were on the sofa. His arms were tight around her, as he kissed with a tenderness she’d never have imagined. She smelt beer and a musky aftershave, felt his bristles against her cheek. His hand slid over her jersey. She didn’t stop its progress, didn’t want to. It had been a long time since she’d been touched like this.

‘Hannah.’ His breath was hot on her face. ‘Are you okay?’

She moved so that she was almost lying on the sofa, head propped against a leather cushion as he eased forward so that his face was above hers. He tugged her jersey over her head and let it fall onto the floor. She saw him drinking in the sight of her. When she’d come back here to change before going out to the pub, she’d put on a black bra and knickers in fine silk, bought a month before the break-up with Marc and never worn since. Not because anything was going to happen with Greg, but because she was sick of feeling like a harassed people manager and wanted to feel like a woman again.

And now something was happening with Greg.

He slipped the straps off her shoulders, and fumbled with the hooks. Funny that he seemed clumsy – wasn’t he supposed to be the expert seducer? A light glinted in his wide open eyes, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was allowing him to do.

As for Hannah, she’d given up on believing. She was so sick of careful, diligent, do-the-right-thing Hannah, the inadequate toer-of-lines who believed in going through the proper channels, yet somehow still managed to screw everything up. Life was short. She wanted, yes she wanted, to behave badly.

Her nipples stiffened at the touch of his fingers. For once, she wasn’t worrying her breasts were too small or too freckled or the wrong shape. No time to wonder if, now he’d finally broken through her defences, he’d find her disappointing.

Greg bent forward, his tongue moving delicately from one breast to the other. She started to unbutton his shirt. It slid off his shoulders, revealing a chest covered with fine hair. He had a sportsman’s arms, muscular and firm. As he breathed harder, she felt the intensity of his excitement. His hands slid to her starchy new jeans, loosening the belt, yanking at the zip. She closed her eyes and waited.

Somewhere outside the room, a door creaked. Her mind was empty of everything except the man she was with; she’d surely imagined the noise. But she felt Greg’s body become rigid with tension.

‘What was that?’

‘Just the wind.’ This was a fib, she had no idea really, but she couldn’t bear the moment to end. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘No, it’s something.’

Then she heard it too. Footsteps, hesitant footsteps, but definitely footsteps, in the hall. Right outside this room.

‘Hannah?’ The cry was strangled. ‘Hannah?’

‘Oh fucking hell,’ Greg muttered. ‘Fucking, fucking, fucking hell.’

The living room door swept open. Hannah closed her eyes.

This is a nightmare, all I need do is open my eyes again, and everything will be all right.

She looked up, and beyond Greg. In the doorway stood Marc, the man she’d lived with for so long. He was staring at the two of them, half-dressed on the sofa.

For a few seconds – or was it years? – nothing happened. The three of them might have been wax dummies in a weird tableau, silent, rigid and cold. Hannah’s temples pounded; she thought she was about to scream. Her mouth opened, but not a sound came out.

Marc was the first to move. As he turned to go, he gave her a lingering look over his shoulder, before shutting the door behind him with extraordinary care.

Louise wasn’t timetabled for work on Hallowe’en, and she and Daniel stopped in Kendal to pick up their party costumes before driving over the Kirkstone Pass. After overnight rain, the skies had cleared, and as they descended into the valley of Ullswater, the sun sidled out from behind the clouds like a bashful schoolboy. In the old mining village of Glenridding, they parked near the public hall, and Louise pointed out the house she wanted to buy. A cottage built of green Lakeland stone, perched at the foot of Helvellyn, looking out towards the steamship pier and the serpentine lake beyond.

‘You’ll have the most beautiful commute imaginable,’ he said.

‘Only snag is, the pass will be closed in the worst of winter.’ Her laughter reminded him of the mischievous girl she’d once been, before their father left home, and she grew a spiky skin for self-protection. ‘Plenty worse places to be snowed in.’

Three miles on, they stopped again, and entered the labyrinth of woodland paths beneath Gowbarrow Fell. The route wound past the Money Tree, a toppled beech trunk into which people had hammered thousands of coins from all over the world. Once these were private pleasure grounds, landscaped for the family of a wealthy landowner. These days everyone could stroll through the glades on a pilgrimage to Aira Force, retracing Wordsworth’s footsteps. Here the great man had found poetic inspiration in the daffodils, but on this last day of October, the flowers were long gone, and the paths were treacherous with mud and wet leaves.

Aira Force made itself heard before they set eyes on it. The waterfall’s roar reached a crescendo as they walked onto an old stone packhorse bridge spanning the top of the cascade. Luckily, neither of them suffered from vertigo. The spectacle of the water crashing into the chasm below was dizzying. A chattering Italian couple, kitted out for the Antarctic, squeezed past. Daniel caught the name Sir Eglamore. The woman was telling the story of the valiant knight’s beloved, whom he awoke from sleepwalking, only for her to plunge to her death in Aira Force. A legend Wordsworth turned into yet another poem.

‘It’s an unlucky place we’re going to,’ Louise said. ‘Two women murdered. Do you think Melody’s hunch is right, and the mad Mrs Hodgkinson was really innocent?’

He watched the swirling patterns made by the foaming water. ‘With murder, like most things, the obvious explanation is usually right. On the face of it, there’s even less mystery about who killed Gertrude Smith than who battered Shenagh Moss to death. Letty Hodgkinson’s suicide looks like a confession of guilt, Craig Meek died
before he could be questioned. But what if things aren’t what they seemed?’

‘So Melody’s succeeded in stirring your curiosity.’

Something in her tone made him look up. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘She told you her husband was unfaithful. Better watch out, in case she’s in the mood to pay him back.’

He shook his head. ‘Have you ever known me get involved with married women? She wasn’t chatting me up. What Melody fancies is the idea of collaborating on the Gertrude Smith story.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah. She’s decided my name might help her sell a book. Probably it’s just a rich woman’s passing whim. But she has interested me in the Ravenbank murders. Both of them.’

‘Don’t let her use you.’

Closing his eyes, he listened to the deluge rage below, as he puzzled over the contrast between Melody’s conviction that Letty Hodgkinson was innocent, and her refusal to accept the same might be true of Craig Meek.

After lunch in a tea room overlooking the River Eamont at Pooley Bridge, they followed pony trekkers along the road that clung to the east bank of the lake, and past the small harbour at Howtown, before zigzagging up the hairpin bends of the Hause towards Martindale. Parking at St Peter’s Church, they climbed the gentle contours of Hallin Fell to the stone cairn at the summit. Mist clung to the distant fells, far below the steamer chugged away from Howtown pier, and an instructor in a wetsuit bellowed commands at a group of teenagers with dinghies.

As the sun dipped out of sight, Louise waved a hand, indicating a small, wooded promontory poking out into the lake to the south of the fell. The peninsula was shaped like a human skull, connected by a neck of land to the valley of Martindale. The trees formed a copper, brown, and green mosaic. Close to the water’s edge stood a large triple-gabled house. Even at this distance, Ravenbank Hall looked lonely and bleak. Somewhere in the grounds, Letty Hodgkinson, the supposed murderer of Gertrude Smith, was buried. From their vantage point, it was impossible to make out the design planned by Letty’s husband. The Hall was undeniably imposing, but its design was curiously irregular and idiosyncratic, so that it seemed slightly strange and out of kilter. Ravenbank’s other buildings were invisible, and so was the lane prowled by the Faceless Woman. A century after Hodgkinson had set out to master the landscape, Nature had reclaimed most of its own.

‘So that’s why Ravenbank was originally called Satan’s Head,’ Daniel said. There was scarcely a breath of wind, but he felt a chill. ‘Seems to me that Clifford Hodgkinson was an Edwardian Canute, trying to push away the darkness of the past. Even when the sun is out, Satan’s Head seems like its rightful name.’

‘Oh well, we all know you should never fight against the tide of history.’

Her teasing amused him. After so many years when the slightest provocation had her at his throat, today they were at ease in each other’s company.

‘The peninsula was always distinct from the valley. People viewed it with suspicion and fear. Its sinister reputation predates all talk of faceless women and frozen shrouds. So
the story goes, pagan rituals were commonplace at Satan’s Head. Animals were sacrificed to appease the gods, and maybe not only animals.’

Louise, the rational lawyer, made a sceptical noise. ‘You’ll be telling me next that the place is cursed.’

‘People used to say so, long before the murder of Gertrude Smith, let alone the death of Shenagh Moss. Hodgkinson took no notice, and paid the price. Like his successor at Ravenbank Hall, Francis Palladino.’

The sun reappeared as they scrambled back down the fell-side. Tiny and remote Martindale might be, but it boasted two churches. They stopped to look at the ancient chapel of St Martin’s. The font had once been part of a Roman altar, a wayside shrine; the gnarled yew outside was supposed to date back to Saxon times. People had worshipped on this site for a thousand years. Had they prayed for protection from the dark forces of the nearby headland?

Britain’s oldest herd of red deer roamed in the upper part of the valley, where public access was forbidden. Daniel’s researches had yielded the titbit that Kaiser Wilhelm II once visited Martindale as a guest of the Earl of Lonsdale. He’d come here to take part in a deer shoot. Four years later, the Kaiser’s war brought about an even bloodier slaughter.

Half a mile from St Martin’s, a wooden signpost to Ravenbank directed them along a narrow, uneven lane winding between two fells. Bad for the car’s suspension, but once they had bumped over a small humpbacked bridge, Daniel caught glimpses of Ullswater between the sombre mass of trees. He pulled up beside the moss-covered drystone wall, and they walked on a little way for their
first close look at Ravenbank. Hodgkinson had planned a boulevard by which to approach his estate, but the straight edges of his proposed boulevard had long since vanished beneath grass and brambles. All that remained was a country lane. A heavy fall of snow would cut Ravenbank off from the valley. This was as isolated a spot as anywhere he’d found in the Lakes.

‘So this is where the Faceless Woman walks,’ Louise said. ‘Perfect for a ghost. Even in broad daylight, you can’t help feeling shivery.’

‘I wonder why Gertrude’s face was covered with a shroud. To say nothing of Shenagh’s.’

‘Presumably Shenagh’s was a copycat killing?’

‘Aren’t copycats usually psychos who murder for the sake of it, not stalkers with a personal axe to grind against the victim? Craig Meek had it in for Shenagh – but why bother covering her face with a blanket in imitation of a crime from the past?’

‘A mark of respect?’

‘After smashing her features beyond recognition? I don’t think so.’

The only signs of life were a rabbit scuttling across the lane into the undergrowth, and the mournful cawing of a crow. Daniel understood how the people of the valley had regarded this small, secretive enclave as alien and frightening, set apart from the civilisation they knew. Solitary by instinct, he found the quiet desolation of Ravenbank, and the sense that time had passed it by, weirdly exhilarating. He felt shivery too, but with excitement. Ravenbank had an air of mystery. Anything might happen here.

‘Have you brought Jeffrey’s sketch map?’

Satnav was redundant in Ravenbank, so Jeffrey had drawn a map with directions to the cottage he shared with Quin. Louise dug the sheet of paper out of her bag. Their destination stood close to the lake, at the end of a narrow lane intersecting with Ravenbank Lane, which ended at the gates of the Hall.

‘Their cottage is called Watendlath,’ she said. ‘Why does the name seem familiar?’

‘It’s a pretty hamlet above Borrowdale, where Hugh Walpole set part of his Herries stories. Jeffrey named his house in honour of his hero.’

‘I’ve never read Walpole. Any good?’

‘He was famous in his day, and incredibly prolific. Even earned a knighthood, and how many writers can say that? The Herries books were popular, but Jeffrey Burgoyne is right, his darker stories have worn better. He was snobbish and thin-skinned, and when Somerset Maugham caricatured him in
Cakes and Ale
, the ridicule tormented him. Once he was dead, his books vanished from the shelves, and they’ve stayed out of sight ever since. Sobering, when you think his admirers included the likes of Conrad, Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.’

‘You’re such a bloody know-all.’

‘You did ask. Okay, now we’re in the mood for the macabre, let’s press on for Tarnhelm Towers.’

Watendlath stood in a large wild garden of tall grasses, creeping ivy, and rotted tree trunks. It was a sturdy stone cottage with mullioned windows and an old-fashioned bell push. Quin answered the door, and ushered them in through a low-beamed hallway festooned with colourful
posters and photographs from past productions of the Ravenbank Theatre Company.

‘Each of our shows is a two-hander, and we play multiple parts. Jeffrey does the writing, then we block it – that is, work out our movements – together. It’s scarcely Ibsen, just light entertainment, but plenty of fun.’ He gave a suggestive wink and pointed to the photographs. ‘That’s us as a
very
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And here is Jeffrey playing Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, with me as his faithful chum Bunny.’

The living room bore such a strong resemblance to a set for
The Antiques
Roadshow
that Daniel was tempted to peer at the mahogany sideboard and say, ‘Marvellous example of late Chippendale, if it wasn’t for that tiny nick, it would be worth thirty thousand.’ A single shelf held calfskin-bound books by Lakeland writers: Ruskin, Walpole, and the poets. Logs crackled on an open fire; the warm, heady aroma of mulled wine filled the air. Jeffrey was due back soon, Quin explained as he waved them onto a deep leather sofa, he’d stayed in Keswick for a meeting with their financial adviser.

‘Rather him than me,’ he grinned, pouring wine into three huge glasses. ‘In another life, Jeffrey would be a top-notch accountant, like his father and grandfather before him. Business is bollocks, as far as I’m concerned. I hate it when money gets mixed up with art. Cash exists to be spent, end of story. Probably explains why I’ve never had a penny to my name.’

Nice not to need to worry about the sordid realities, Daniel thought. Presumably financial security made it worth tolerating the occasional slap when Jeffrey was in
a bad mood. Quin had done well to find a partner who could keep him in style. For Watendlath was undoubtedly stylish, every touch of decor demonstrating impeccable taste. A painting hanging above the fireplace made a vivid splash of blue and sea-green against the white stone wall. Quin pointed out the signature, and Louise gasped. It was a Hockney original.

‘Jeffrey’s parents bought it at auction thirty years ago. God knows how much it’s worth. When he told me how much he pays for the insurance premium, I almost had a stroke.’

‘Surely you needn’t worry too much about burglars,’ Louise said. ‘There must be easier pickings, posh houses in villages that are much more accessible.’

‘That’s the beauty of Ravenbank. Only one way in, only one way out. If you exclude a marine landing, that is, and the currents can be tricky enough to test Admiral Nelson. But Jeffrey’s cautious. It’s the accountancy in his genes. Never takes anything for granted, that’s why he spent a fortune on the alarm system, let alone insurance. Fair enough, I suppose. Ravenbank is hardly a capital of crime, but since we do have the occasional savage homicide, I guess we can’t take anything for granted.’

‘Melody and I were talking yesterday about Shenagh Moss,’ Daniel said.

Quin raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, really?’

‘I gather she wasn’t a paid-up member of Shenagh’s fan club?’

‘Understatement of the century, my friend. Don’t get me wrong, Melody’s a sweetheart. But Ravenbank isn’t big enough to accommodate two beautiful women. Robin
Park’s mum is an old battleaxe, so no worries there, and his latest lady friend is too loud and in-your-face to be serious competition for Melody.’

‘But Shenagh was more of a threat?’

Quin nodded. ‘Seriously glamorous, and Melody didn’t care for her. She aspired to be the lady of the manor, even when Francis Palladino still owned the Hall. Shenagh’s arrival put her nose out of joint. Even before …’

He paused, seemingly irresolute. As if encouraging Daniel to quiz him, to drag out gossip he didn’t want to seem eager to share.

The mulled wine burnt Daniel’s tongue. ‘Even before Shenagh had a fling with Oz Knight?’