Finally, the boy appeared. Zed reckoned he went to school in Windermere. This was going to necessitate one of two things: Either his father was going to drive him there or he was going to catch a school bus. It didn’t matter which because in any case, Zed was going to talk to him. He’d waylay him on his way into the school, or he’d offer him a lift as he hoofed it to the bus stop, which sure as hell wasn’t going to be out here in the middle of nowhere.
The latter turned out to be the case. Daniel trudged across the green, around the corner, and out of the village, his head lowered and his trousers and shoes already beginning to pick up mud. Zed gave him ten minutes, reckoning that he was heading for the main road through the Lyth Valley. It was quite a walk.
By the time he pulled up next to Daniel, the boy was thoroughly soaked since, like most boys his age, he wasn’t about to be seen dead or alive carrying an umbrella. Social suicide, that would be. As someone who had endured social suicide on a daily basis during his own school years, Zed understood this completely.
He lowered the window. “You need a lift somewhere?”
Daniel looked over. His eyebrows drew together. He glanced left and right and evaluated the question as the rain continued to pelt him. He finally said, “I remember you. You a pervert or something? Because if you lay a hand on me— ”
“Relax,” Zed told him. “This is your lucky day. I’m into girls. Tomorrow would be risky. Come on. Get in.”
Daniel gave an eye roll at Zed’s weak joke. Then he complied. He dropped into the passenger’s seat and began dripping all over it. He said, “Sorry,” in reference to this.
“Not to worry.”
Zed set off. He was determined to milk the kid for whatever he could, so he drove slowly. He kept his eyes on the road as a way of excusing the lack of speed: paranoid visitor worried about hitting either a sheep or Sasquatch.
Daniel said, “What’re you doing round here again, anyway?”
Zed had already reckoned on his opening, which Daniel himself had inadvertently given him. “You seem worried about the local colour.”
“What?” The boy screwed up his face.
“The pervert remark.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Daniel said with a shrug. “Place’s crawling with them.”
“Well, the whole bloody district’s thick with sheep, eh?” Zed remarked with a wink. “No one’s safe, I reckon.”
The boy observed him with that adolescent expression that telegraphed you’re a bloody idiot far more effectively than words would have done.
Zed said, “Just a joke. Too early in the morning. Where can I drop you?”
“Lyth Valley. I catch the school bus there.”
“Where to?”
“Windermere.”
“I can drive you there if you like. No problem. I’m heading that way.”
The boy backed away. Clearly, this was pervert territory. He said, “What d’you want, anyway? You didn’t tell me why you’re in the village again. What’s going on?”
Too clever by seven-eighths, Zed thought. “Bloody hell, relax,” he said. “I’ll drop you off wherever you like. Want to get out now?”
Daniel looked at the rain. He said, “Just don’t try anything. I’ll punch you right in the Adam’s apple and don’t think I won’t. I know how to do it. My dad showed me and believe me, it works. Better than the bollocks. A hell of a lot better.”
“Wonderful skill,” Zed agreed. He had to manoeuvre the kid into the conversation he wanted before they reached the Lyth Valley and he started screaming bloody murder or worse. So he said, “Sounds like he worries about you, your dad.”
“Right. Well. We got perverts living next door to us, don’t we. Pretend they just lodge together, but we know the truth. Dad says you can’t be too careful round blokes like that, and now it’s worse.”
“Why?” Hallelujah, Zed thought.
“’Cause one of them’s dead and the other’s going to be on the look for someone new.”
That sounded like a remark coming directly from the horse’s you-know-what. “I see,” Zed said. “Could be the other’ll just move on, though, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s what Dad’s waiting for,” Daniel said. “He’s buying the farm once it goes up for sale.”
“What, that sheep farm you two live on?”
That was the one, Daniel told him. He brushed his sopping hair from his forehead and settled in for something of a natter. He seemed more comfortable with a subject that didn’t deal with perverts— as he called them— because he adjusted the heat in the car to a tropical level and dug in his rucksack for a banana, which he proceeded to eat. He informed Zed that his dad wanted the farm mostly because he wanted something to pass on to Daniel himself. This, Daniel said, was dead stupid because there was no way in hell that he intended to be a sheep farmer. Daniel wanted out of the Lakes entirely. He wanted to join the RAF. They buzzed the Lake District, did Zed know that? Wicked jets flying about three hundred feet off the ground— okay, maybe five hundred feet— and you’d be walking along when all of a sudden one of them would come roaring down the valley or just above Lake Windermere and it was bloody wicked, it was.
“Told my dad that about a thousand times,” Daniel said. “He thinks he can keep me home, though. All he needs is that farm to do it.”
He loved his dad, Daniel said, but he didn’t want the kind of life his dad had lived. Look at the fact that Daniel’s own mother deserted them. She hadn’t wanted that kind of life either, but still his dad didn’t understand.
“I keep telling him he should do what he’s good at anyway. Everyone should.”
Amen to that, Zed thought. But he said, “What’s that, then?”
Daniel hesitated. Zed glanced at him. The boy looked distinctly uncomfortable. This could be the moment, Zed realised. The kid was about to confess that what George Cowley was good at was offing blokes who lived on the farm he wanted to buy. Silver, gold, platinum, and the rest. Zed was about to be handed the scoop of his life.
“Making dollhouse furniture,” Daniel mumbled.
“Say again?”
“Dollhouse furniture. Furniture that goes into dollhouses. Don’t you know what that is?”
Shit, damn, hell, Zed thought.
Daniel went on. “He’s bloody good at it. Sounds daft, I know, but that’s what he does. Sells it on the Internet as fast as he can make it. I tell him he should be making it full-time instead of walking round in the muck with the bloody sheep. He says it’s a hobby and I should be able to tell the difference between a hobby and someone’s life work.” Daniel shook his head. “For him, it’s that stupid farm or nothing.”
Is it indeed? Zed wondered. And what was Cowley going to do next when he learned the farm legally belonged to Kaveh Mehran via Ian Cresswell’s will?
Daniel pointed to an enormous oak sitting just inside a drystone wall. That was where Zed could set him down, he said. And thanks for the ride, by the way.
Zed pulled over, and Daniel got out. At the same moment, Zed’s mobile rang. He gave it a glance and saw it was London. Rodney Aronson ringing. It was a bit early for Rodney even to be at work, and this didn’t bode well. Good news, though, was that Zed could report progress at last after this conversation with Daniel Cowley.
“Watch your back,” was what Rodney said to him, however, without preamble.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Scotland Yard knows you’re there. Keep your head down— ”
When it was six feet eight inches in the air? Zed wondered.
“— and keep your eyes on Nick Fairclough. That’s where you’ll find whoever’s been sent up there to dig into Ian Cresswell’s death.”