For a woman who liked to joke that her career lay in ruins, Giselle was doing fine. She might be wearing her boyfriend’s Newcastle United shirt and a pair of Primark loafers, but she could have afforded Calvin Klein. Big-boned, bouncy and ferociously bright, she’d given up university lecturing to set up her own consultancy. Her clients ranged from regeneration planners, required by law to survey ancient sites about to disappear forever beneath housing estates or retail parks, to police forces and the Ministry of Defence. She and Hannah had worked together once before, when fragments of a dead man kept turning up in different parts of the north of England. Giselle had reconstructed the body much as her colleagues might reassemble a clay pot. Her skill she ascribed to a youth spent putting together two-thousand-piece jigsaws. She was a nationally renowned authority on burial practices through the millennia and possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of pretty much everything else, but Hannah liked the way she didn’t allow her academic expertise to blind her to the priorities of criminal investigation. She’d expected Giselle to know about arsenic labyrinths, and she wasn’t disappointed.
‘Mine owners down in Devon and Cornwall couldn’t believe their luck. All of a sudden, a by-product they’d struggled to dispose of was in big demand. They heated up the arsenic to extract it from the ore and made a fortune in the process. A hundred feet in, the arsenic would have cooled and left dirty white crystalline deposits on the wall. Each month the works would be shut down and the door into the labyrinth opened. They’d send boys in to scrape the arsenic off the walls. As for health and safety, the kids shoved cotton wool up their nostrils and smeared clay over their skin.’
‘Lovely.’
‘The good old days, huh? You can imagine a mine owner in Coniston might fancy breaking the monopoly of the Cornish businesses. Never mind the plumes of sulphur spewing out of the chimney, or the occasional death by poisoning. Occupational hazards. But the arsenic wasn’t plentiful enough. The venture failed and brought down the copper-mining business with it. After that, everyone gave the place a wide berth.’
‘Excellent place to hide a body.’
‘Do you really expect to find this woman at Mispickel?’
Hannah shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. So you’re on board?’
‘Listen, arsenic may have gone out of fashion with murderers who want to get away with it. Too easy to detect with Marsh’s test. But it’s lethal stuff. One level teaspoon will kill four people. Six, if the arsenic’s refined. Taxidermists used to love arsenic, because it kills off the bacteria that hasten decomposition. But I’ve heard of museums that have to keep preserved rhinos stored under lock and key, because the toxicity of the arsenic makes them too dangerous to display in public. Dumping a body underneath the Arsenic Labyrinth strikes me as a pretty good idea. Creepy, too. Am I on board? Try and keep me away.’
Jeremy Erskine frowned at Hannah, as though she were a dense pupil who had handed in the wrong homework. His voice was loud and musical and she was sure he loved the sound of it.
‘Candidly, Chief Inspector, this is shoddy journalism. The reporter simply wants to make a name for himself. There was no good reason to write about my sister-in-law’s disappearance, he didn’t have a shred of fresh evidence. All he’s done is tear open old wounds. It took years for my wife to come to terms with what happened, and now thanks to this ghastly publicity, she’s back to square one.’
They were in the conservatory at the back of the Erskines’ immaculate home. From their armchairs, Hannah and Maggie Eyre could see a neatly kept winter garden bounded by a ring of oaks and sycamores. A ladder led up to a wooden tree house and the misty tops of the Langdale Pikes loomed in the distance. Outside it was freezing, but the conservatory was so snug it might have been midsummer. On the other side of the sliding doors to the main house, a boy and a girl in matching tee shirts and Nike trainers sprawled on the Axminster carpet and watched TV.
Jeremy was sitting with his wife on a wicker sofa. They were a good-looking couple, tanned and trim after a New Year spent sand-skiing in the dunes of Dubai. Jeremy was in his early forties, tall with a long jaw and flecks of grey around the temples, Karen a cool blonde in a pink short-sleeved shirt and black leather trousers. The bronzed skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones; unlike her sister, she didn’t carry a surplus ounce. Jeremy took hold of his wife’s hand, as if to comfort her in a moment of distress, but Hannah guessed it would take more than a newspaper article to rattle Karen Erskine.
‘You gave Tony Di Venuto short shrift when he spoke to you about Emma.’
‘You’d do the same in my shoes. He was appallingly persistent, wanted to come here to interview us, if you please. I said it was out of the question. A disgraceful intrusion. Frankly, I was on the point of making a formal protest to his editor. I thought there were laws to protect us from that sort of behaviour these days. Don’t hardworking middle class people have a right to privacy?’
Hannah stared at Karen. ‘Aren’t you curious about what happened to your sister?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But this publicity isn’t about discovering the truth.’
‘If the anonymous caller is telling the truth, then …’
‘What evidence do you have that he isn’t a figment of a fevered imagination?’ Jeremy interrupted. ‘My understanding was that a court of law requires proof.’
‘We’re not in a court of law.’ Hannah fought the instinct to snap that he wasn’t teaching Year 8 kids either. ‘Mr Di Venuto has no reason to lie to us. Wasting police time is a serious offence, as he and his editor are well aware.’
‘He’s out to cause trouble and sell newspapers. Quite irresponsible.’
‘It would be irresponsible for us to ignore what he has told us.’
‘Is this what we pay our taxes for?’
‘We’ll survey the site before deciding what action to take. Of course, we’ll keep you both informed. DC Eyre will act as liaison officer.’
Maggie gave a brisk nod. The Eyres were a farming family and Hannah knew few people as down to earth as her DC. Jeremy’s pomposity was perfectly calculated to get up Maggie’s nose, but her equable expression yielded no hint of distaste. Learning to hide your true feelings when interviewing witnesses was a step on the road to becoming a good police officer.
Jeremy turned to his wife. ‘Sorry, darling. Seems as though we have no say in the matter. All we can do is let events take their course.’
Karen’s sharp chin jutted forward. ‘This isn’t ever going to end, is it, Chief Inspector? If you don’t find a body, we’ll be at the mercy of anyone who wants to speculate about Emma and make a few quid on the side. And if by some miracle you do, that will just be the start. There’ll need to be an inquest, a funeral, you’ll be looking for this man who made the phone call. The media will turn it into a circus. It will be impossible for us to grieve in private.’
Would Karen grieve? She was certainly restraining her curiosity about her sister’s fate.
‘You have nothing to fear from the media, surely?’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong!’ Karen grasped her husband’s hand. ‘The head at Grizedale retires in the summer. The deputy isn’t up to the job and the Governors have made it clear they would prefer to recruit internally. Jeremy is the obvious choice. He’s a first class historian and the results of his students are outstanding, half of them stroll into Oxford or Cambridge. He has marvellous ideas for raising the College’s profile, making it the leading independent in the North. But how will the governors react if our name features in a murder case? Parents care about these things. The sort of people who pay for their children to attend Grizedale don’t want to be associated with a high profile criminal investigation, even indirectly. This could ruin Jeremy’s career progression. Have you stopped to consider that?’