The Hawkshead Hostage (8 page)

‘You forgot about me,’ she said.

‘I did. Listen – I don’t think we’ll need you for now. Thanks for waiting. You must have things to do.’

‘When do I get my phone back?’

‘Oh – that’s a good question.’ He tapped a front tooth for a moment, and then said, ‘I can’t see that we need it now. Go and ask for it. Say I told them to give it to you. Once it’s gone back to the station, there’s a stack of paperwork to fill in before it’s returned.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, aware that he was making a special exception for her. Then she waited until the reporter and his friend had driven away before speaking again. ‘The only thing I want to do is find Ben. And I imagine you know better than I do how best that should be done.’ She could have added that she urgently needed a drink, but that would have felt unworthy and selfish. She had no wish to go back into the hotel, a prey to staff and guests and all the things they might want to ask her.

‘Who’s Ben?’ asked Mr Lillywhite. ‘I must say, this is all very disconcerting. Police everywhere and somebody lost. It’s not another disobedient child, is it?’

His wife gave a little chuckle at this, which made Simmy look at her. She had not seemed to be the chuckling sort, the last time they’d met. Perhaps her submissive demeanour was no more than ingrained habit, concealing a more robust personality. Or perhaps the laughter was merely a nervous tic. There wasn’t anything funny, after all, in people going missing.

‘It will all become clear to you after we’ve had a little talk,’ said Moxon ponderously. ‘The guests will all be returning soon, I imagine, and we’ll be speaking to you all over the coming hour or two.’

‘But why?’ asked Mrs Lillywhite. ‘Can’t you tell us what this is all about?’

Simmy left Moxon to it, found the man with her phone, and finally escaped to her van. Only as she started the engine did she wonder where she ought to go. Ben’s rucksack was still on the floor where he’d dumped it, looking forlorn and abandoned. It made her think of Dan Yates’s possessions in his room, never to be handled again by their owner. Fear for Ben gripped her, along with a terrible sadness. Her place was rightfully beside poor, shocked Melanie and the bewildered Helen Harkness. They and Bonnie all loved Ben in their various ways. They would all have theories and suggestions about what must have befallen him.

On the driveway she had to squeeze past a silver-coloured Audi driven by the tall man who was the other person she had met on Monday. And then, turning in from the road as she was turning out, a big four-wheel drive thing containing several people promised to add to the throng. It had darkened glass in the rear windows, so she couldn’t see everyone, but the driver was a man with sharp features and curly hair.
Beside him sat another man, almost bald except for two white strips running above his ears. Two more men were in the back, but she barely registered their appearance. Only then did Simmy recall what Dan had said about expecting some important American guests in the near future. Could these be them, she wondered. And if so, what would they make of the chaos they were about to walk into?

A minute’s drive took her to the turn into Hawkshead village with its numerous souvenir shops, tea rooms and pubs. Her throat felt terrible – she was in desperate need of a cup of tea. It was approaching five o’clock, though, and that was closing time by the ancient schedules that operated up here. In many ways Hawkshead was fixed around the 1950s – a fact much relished by Simmy’s father. ‘Even in the height of summer, they close by five,’ he said. ‘Although you can generally find a pub open, I suppose.’

She did not want a pub. She wanted a little table on the pavement and a pot of well-brewed tea all to herself. Hurriedly parking and pouring money into the machine, she then headed towards the village centre. Almost instantly she set eyes on a café that matched her requirements. The door stood open and she trotted in, holding her purse in readiness.

No problem, according to the woman at the counter. She could have all the tea she liked for two pounds. The first
swallow was ambrosial. The world settled down again, for the few minutes it took to drain three teacups. She ignored the insistent pangs of hunger that now materialised once her need for fluid had been satisfied. But she could not ignore the temptation to justify the parking fee by making a little circuit of Hawkshead while she was there. It would be the first time she’d had a chance for a proper look, apart from a few flower deliveries made to properties close by. There were people in quantity, sitting at outdoor tables, strolling down the streets, walking their dogs. Very few vehicles impeded them, so they filled the middle of the road as well as the pavements, such as they were. The late afternoon light had a clarity that drew her attention to the stonework of the church, set on a hillock above the little streets, with a graveyard on yet higher ground behind it. Its clock told her the time was ten minutes to five. Ben had been gone for several hours – more than long enough for truly dreadful things to have happened to him.

Everything in Hawkshead was packed in close together and higgledy-piggledy. The buildings had obviously come in a haphazard fashion, narrow streets winding around and between them, as well as crooked little alleyways. There were square gaps clearly designed for a horse and carriage to go through, and sudden spaces between the buildings that pedestrians could use. Standing at any point, it was possible to view almost the entire settlement. She stared about her as she strolled along, noticing a large shop offering superb quality gifts, including Wedgwood and Moorcroft china. There was a chemist shop, too, and a National Trust outlet selling expensive tea towels and jigsaws. All the buildings looked historic and a few of the streets were cobbled. She could see three pubs, at least – as well as the same number
of tea rooms. She spotted a gallery full of fine paintings, and then a surprisingly utilitarian Co-op, which stayed open until 10 p.m. Dominating the whole village was an empty shop that had once sold books. Its abandonment added a dimension of dereliction and financial difficulty to what had at first seemed to be quite a thriving little place. The sounds were all of human voices, with music wafting from some unidentified point. A dog barked and a baby cried. The absence of traffic made a huge difference, she realised. When a delivery van or misdirected car did appear, it was at a crawl, seeming embarrassed to be there. Her father was right, she decided. Hawkshead was stuck in a bygone time.

But she couldn’t linger any longer. Just a quick visit to the Co-op for something to eat, perhaps, and then back to Windermere, where she had things to do and places to go.

Going back to her car, she noticed again the four-wheel drive vehicle with the four men in. It had just parked close to her, and the men were getting out. She heard one say, in an American accent, ‘Did the right thing there, pal. No way we’d want to stay out there tonight. We can try again in the morning. Thank the Lord for Mattie, hey?’

Another man said, ‘Can’t see the problem with the hotel, anyhow. They’d have been happy to have us an extra night.’

The first man turned round, looking annoyed. ‘Listen – we booked for Wednesday, we show up Tuesday. That looks bad. They’ve got plenty of problems already. We’d just get their backs up.’

‘Don’t let’s quarrel over it. It’s done now.’

Simmy tried to make sense of this exchange, with difficulty. The men seemed respectable enough, giving no
grounds for suspicion. Whatever reason Dan might have had to impress them, it would have to wait for the following day. Like everything else, she decided wearily.

She went first to her shop, to check that Bonnie had left it secure. Where was Bonnie now, anyway? If Ben’s mother was up at Hawkshead, who would the girl find to share her anxiety? Corinne, presumably, or Ben’s brother Wilf. In any case, Simmy found herself feeling superfluous. There was one new order on the computer, and a mildly chaotic list of takings in the till. Not a busy day by any standards, when it came to the business of selling flowers.

Almost without thinking, she walked down Lake Road to the large house where her parents lived. Beck View had five bedrooms, four of them let out to Bed and Breakfast guests. In July, the constant stream of customers kept Angie and Russell wholly occupied. Since Russell had begun to cause concern, Angie had looked increasingly tired and unhappy. It was a situation that Simmy feared would require drastic decisions before another year was out. As she got closer, she resolved to be of practical help to her mother, and possibly even refrain from telling the story of the day’s events. No good could come of it, and in her father’s more fragile condition, he might find it damagingly upsetting. It would be enough to spend some time with them, while more capable people than she conducted the search for Ben Harkness.

She had to go around the back since her father had started to insist that the front door be kept constantly locked and bolted, day and night. It was only by a strenuous exertion of will that Angie had managed to convince him that no
harm could come from leaving the back unlocked while they were at home. ‘One of us is always in the kitchen, anyway,’ she said. But such assurances meant little to a man suffering from such paranoia as Russell was. He easily argued that it was not true. In the end Angie simply said, ‘Well, you’ll have to live with it, then. I’m not going to be made a prisoner in my own home by your demented imaginings.’

It was exactly the sort of thing you were not supposed to say, but somehow she got away with it. Russell’s wretched little Lakeland Terrier was given the role of guardian of the back door whenever his people were somewhere else in the house, and that enabled an uneasy compromise to be made.

And through it all Simmy knew that her mother was experiencing a persistent sense of herself as the victim of a certain betrayal. She knew because she felt it herself. It was as if Russell’s accord with his wife’s attitude to life had always been a pretence, which he could no longer sustain. He had merely gone along with her cavalier approach to warnings of danger and patchy adherence to rules because it had seemed the easy way. Now, something had shifted and the real Russell Straw had emerged, timidly seeing robbers and murderers behind every tree. It infuriated and alienated Angie, who made no secret of the fact that she now liked him a lot less than she once did.

For Simmy the feelings were even more complicated, because they included a large dose of guilt. It was because of the succession of alarming and dangerous situations she had fallen into since moving up to the Lake District that Russell had lost his nerve. Or perhaps it had begun even earlier than that, when her perfect baby daughter had
died unborn, thereby demonstrating that the universe was unstable and hostile and in no way to be taken for granted.

She deliberately rattled the door and stamped her feet as she entered, to give due warning of her presence. Guests would most likely be arriving at just this time, with all the explaining and settling that went with it. A Tuesday was not usually a popular day for B&B guests to start their holiday, but by July there were always individualists who constructed their own itineraries, regardless of usual patterns. Angie would be weary from changing sheets and duvet covers, as well as probably getting in fresh supplies for the immense breakfasts she continued to offer.

As luck would have it both her parents – and the dog – were in the kitchen. Coming through the small storeroom between the back door and the main room, she had a moment to observe them, slumped in chairs on either side of the Aga like two aged characters from a Victorian novel. The Aga was emitting its usual wasteful heat, even on a warm day in July, making the kitchen uncomfortably hot. ‘No wonder you’re both half-asleep,’ she said cheerily. ‘It’s stifling in here.’

‘It’s the Aga,’ said Russell.

‘I know it is.’ His statement of the obvious caused her a pang of distress. Her father had always prided himself on imparting new information and anecdotes, very often surprising in their detail. He had explored almost every inch of the southern Lakes, as far as Grasmere to the north and Kendal to the east. He read forgotten little histories and produced nuggets from them, often for the entertainment of his guests at breakfast time. Simmy hoped that this still happened.

‘Where have you been? I hear the shop’s been closed all afternoon.’ Angie spoke incuriously, most likely assuming there had been a distant flower delivery to make.

‘I went to Hawkshead, actually.’

‘Ah!’ said Russell. ‘The town that time forgot. I spent a night there some years ago and it was the quietest night of my life. No traffic, birds, radios. It was uncanny.’

‘I’d never walked through it before. It’s a funny mixture of old and new. Galleries and upmarket souvenir shops, as well as little tea rooms and cobbled streets. I guess it’s all focused on tourism now. None of it’s really authentic. The bookshop’s closed down.’

‘Ann Tyson’s House hasn’t changed much. You can imagine how it was three hundred years ago. That was where I stayed, before we came to live here.’

‘Did you? And Esthwaite’s nice.’ She winced at the realisation that the calm little lake would never feel ‘nice’ to her again, with its grim associations.

‘Taken over by fishing folk. Not much use to anybody else. Been the same for over a century now.’

‘Maybe that’s why it’s so unspoilt.’

He looked at her with a little smile. ‘Maybe it is, old girl. You could be right about that.’

‘Why Hawkshead, though?’ asked Angie with a faint frown.

‘Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? I’ve got a big flower job at a hotel there. It goes on all summer, and maybe longer. Although—’ she realised too late that when the news finally emerged about Dan and Ben, her mother would make an instant connection. Miserably, she concluded that she would have to tell them at least something of the story.

‘What?’

‘There was some trouble this afternoon. It involves Ben Harkness. He’s missing.’

‘That boy!’ scoffed Russell. ‘Always into something. He’ll turn up.’ He spoke as if Ben were twelve, rather than seventeen. ‘He must be somewhere.’

‘Obviously,’ snapped Angie. ‘What happened then, P’simmon?’ Only her mother called her that, and only her mother could say it exactly right. It was always a funny little pleasure to hear it on her lips.

‘Well …’ she glanced at her father, wondering whether there was any way to get him to leave the room. ‘Haven’t you got things I can help you with? I know you’re busy this week.’

‘Only one lot have arrived so far. There’s another couple and a family with a small child. They’ll be here at any moment. They’re late, actually.’ Angie consulted the large clock over the door. ‘I hope they’re not standing outside – the doorbell doesn’t always work.’ She threw a wrathful look at her husband, which he failed to observe. ‘Russell – can you go and have a look? Make sure there’s room for them to drive in and unload. And can you
please
leave the door unlocked, just for a bit?’ The final part was uttered in a supplicatory tone that carried with it the knowledge that it was almost certainly spoken in vain.

‘I can watch out for them if you like,’ he offered.

‘Yes, do that.’

As soon as he had gone, she turned to Simmy. ‘Is that what you wanted? To get him out of the way?’

‘I suppose so. The thing is, there’s been a murder at the Hawkshead Hotel. Melanie and I found the undermanager
dead in the lake. And Ben’s disappeared. We think the killer – or killers, more likely – took him because he’d seen them. Something like that, anyway.’

‘Mere. Esthwaite’s a mere, not a lake.’

‘Shut up. You sound just like Dad. What does it matter? Didn’t you hear me?’

Angie sighed. ‘I heard you. I’m just too tired to adequately respond, I suppose. Is it the hotel where Melanie works now?’

‘That’s right. And apparently she’s been seeing the man who was killed. She’s very upset.’

‘It all sounds
highly
upsetting. What about Ben’s mother? She must be distraught.’

‘I saw her briefly. She seemed very calm, actually.’

‘Shock,’ Angie diagnosed. ‘Disbelief.’

Simmy nodded, saying nothing.

‘So why aren’t you out looking for him?’ Angie went on. ‘Were you the last person to see him?’

‘Probably. He went for a walk by the lake –
mere
– and found Dan’s body. He called me, but I didn’t hear the phone. It was in the van. So he left a message. It was cut off. He made a sort of shout and it went dead. We found it down where he’d been walking. There was no
sign
of him. He just disappeared.’

‘But the body was there?’

‘Sort of. I mean, yes it was, but it wasn’t under the trees like Ben said, but in the water. Melanie and I fished him out. Poor Mel,’ she finished miserably.

‘He wasn’t drowned, then?’

Simmy stared at her mother’s face, without actually seeing it, her inner eye filled again with the image of the
dead face. ‘No. He’d been hit on the head. Moxon says there must have been more than one person. They lifted him over a fence and dumped him in the water. A horrible thing to do. Melanie sat there with him on her lap. All dead and soaking wet and heavy.’