Manette watched her. For the first time things were becoming clear. She said, “You’re not bringing them home, are you? You’re intending Kaveh to keep them. Why?”
“Drink your bloody coffee and leave,” Niamh replied.
“Not till we get things perfectly clear. Not till I understand every nuance of what you have in mind. Ian’s dead, so that’s ticked off your list. Now it’s Kaveh. Kaveh’s not too likely to die, though, unless you kill him— ” Manette’s words halted of their own accord. She and Niamh were left staring at each other.
Niamh turned away first. “Leave,” she said. “Just go. Leave.”
“What about Tim? What about Gracie? What happens to them?”
“Nothing.”
“Which means you leave them with Kaveh. Until someone forces your hand legally or otherwise, you leave them in Bryanbarrow. Permanently. So Kaveh gets the full experience of what he destroyed. Those two children— who are, by the way, perfectly innocent in this entire matter— ”
“Don’t be so certain of that.”
“What? Are you claiming now that Tim… My God. You get worse and worse.”
There was, Manette knew, no further point in their conversation. Coffee be damned, she began to head towards the front door and she was nearly there when footsteps came up the two exterior steps and someone called out, “Nee? Pet? Where’s my girl?”
A man stood at the door, a pot of chrysanthemums in his hands and on his face a look of such eagerness that Manette knew she was looking at the sender of the Bucket of Love. He was there to play with its contents, she reckoned. A slight sheen of anticipation glistened on his pudgy face.
He said, “Oh!” and looked over his shoulder as if thinking he’d come to the wrong house.
Then over Manette’s shoulder, Niamh said, “Come in, Charlie. Manette is just leaving.”
Charlie. He looked vaguely familiar. Manette couldn’t place him, however, till he nodded at her nervously and passed her in the doorway. His proximity brought his scent quite close, and the scent was cooking oils and something else. At first Manette thought of fish and chips, but then she realised he was the owner of one of the three Chinese takeaways in the market square in Milnthorpe. She’d been in there more than once on her way home from Arnside and Nicholas’s house, scoring a meal for Freddie. She’d never seen this man out of his kitchen uniform spattered with grease and copious amounts of soy sauce. But here he was, eager to do a job that didn’t at all involve slopping chop suey into takeaway cartons.
As he entered the house, he said, “You look good enough to eat,” to Niamh.
She giggled. “Hope so. Have you brought your appetite?”
Both of them laughed. The door closed on them, allowing them to get down to business.
Manette felt white heat wash over her. Something, she decided, would have to be done about her cousin Ian’s wife. She was wise enough to understand, however, that it might well be a leave-her-to-God situation completely beyond her powers to effect. But what she could effect was a change in Tim and Gracie’s lives. And that was something she could see to herself.
WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
Getting possession of the forensic reports had not been a difficult matter, and this ease of acquisition had been largely due to St. James’s reputation as an expert witness. There was, of course, no actual need for his expertise in this matter because the ruling had already been made by the coroner, but a phone call and a spurious tale about a university presentation on basic forensics had been enough to put all the relevant documents into his hands. These confirmed what Lynley had told him about the death of Ian Cresswell, with a few additional salient details. The man had suffered a severe blow to the head— in the near region of the left temple— which had been enough to render him unconscious and fracture his skull. The apparent source of the blow was the stone dock and although his body had been in the water for approximately nineteen hours when it had been found, it had— at least according to the forensic report— still been possible to make a comparison between the wound on his head and the shape of the stone that he had ostensibly hit on the dock before tumbling into the water.
St. James frowned. He wondered how this was possible. Nineteen hours in the water would do much to alter the inflicted wound, making information about it useless unless some sort of reconstruction had been managed. He looked for this, but he didn’t see one. He made a note and continued reading.
Death had been by drowning as an examination of the lungs had confirmed. Bruising on the right leg suggested that Cresswell’s foot may have become caught in the scull’s stretcher as he lost his balance, capsizing the craft and holding the victim beneath the water for a time until— perhaps due to the gentle action of the lake over the hours—his foot had ultimately become dislodged and his body had floated freely next to the dock.
Toxicology showed nothing unusual. Blood alcohol indicated that he’d been drinking but he was not drunk. Everything else in the report indicated that he was a fine specimen of a man in the range of forty to forty-five years, in perfect health and superb physical condition.
Since it had been an unwitnessed drowning, a coroner’s ruling had been required. This had necessitated an inquest, preceded by an investigation by the coroner’s officers. They had testified at the inquest, as had Valerie Fairclough, the forensic pathologist, the first policeman on the scene, and the subsequent officer called in to confirm the first policeman’s conclusion that no SOCO were needed as no crime had occurred. The end product of all this was the ruling of death by accidental drowning.
As far as St. James could see, there was nothing untoward in any of this. However, if mistakes had been made, they’d been made at the initial stage of the process and that was with the first policeman on the scene. A conversation with this police constable was in order. This demanded a trip to Windermere, from where the officer had originally come.
The man’s name was PC William Schlicht, and from the look of him when he came into Reception at the Windermere station to meet St. James, he was fresh out of the nearest training facility. This would explain why he’d called in another officer to confirm what he’d concluded. It had likely been the first death scene PC Schlicht had encountered and he wouldn’t have wanted to start his career off with a gross error. Aside from that, the death had occurred on the estate of a well-known and semi-public figure. The newspapers in the area would have found this of interest, and the PC would know that eyes were upon him.
Schlicht was a slight man. But he was also wiry and athletic in appearance, and his uniform looked as if he starched and ironed it every morning, as well as polished its buttons. He seemed to be in his early twenties, and his expression was one of a man extremely eager to please. Not the best attitude in a policeman, St. James thought. It put one in the position of being easily manipulated by outside forces.