‘May we come in?’
Vanessa screwed her face into an anxious frown. ‘We’ve already had a young policeman here. Wanting to know where Francis and I were the night that poor man was thrown in the lake.’
She showed no sign of releasing the chain. Why was she playing for time? Hannah said, ‘If you wouldn’t mind allowing us to come into the house, Mrs Goddard?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Of course.’
Vanessa fumbled with the chain and finally pulled the door wide open. But when she shooed her visitors into the front room, her haste contrasted with her hesitation before letting them inside her home.
‘Christopher is engrossed in his maths homework,’ she said. ‘He’s such a diligent boy, but he needs to concentrate. I wouldn’t want him to be disturbed.’
Hannah heard a door bang somewhere in the back of the house. ‘May we talk to your husband as well?’
‘Francis? I … I’m not sure …’
‘Is he here?’
Vanessa fingered the mark on her face. ‘He … no, I don’t think so.’
She’s losing the plot. Hannah listened out for an engine starting up, but heard nothing. Besides, if he’d left his car in the garage, they were blocking him in. Gritting her teeth, she said, ‘Mrs Goddard, I don’t want to waste time. We need to talk to your husband as well.’
Vanessa’s expression froze. Suddenly, they heard a young boy’s voice, loud and crystal clear, calling from the next room.
‘Daddy, come and see this!’
Half a second of silence was snapped by the boy again. He sounded petulant.
‘Daddy! Where are you?’
Hannah said, ‘Mrs Goddard, you have to tell us, if not your son. Where is your husband?’
Vanessa’s brown eyes moistened. ‘We saw your car through the curtain. Francis said he had to go.’
‘On foot?’
She nodded.
’Do you know where he’s heading?’
‘I think … to the lake.’ She stifled a sob. ‘That’s what he said he would do.’
‘Tell me.’
‘He said he’d rather end it all than bring shame and disgrace to Christopher and me.’
Francis couldn’t be far away. Hannah and Maggie parked by the trees fringing Coniston Water. The moon was hiding, but they left their headlights on to light a patch of land and lake. The cafe and the steamship ticket office were shuttered and no living soul was in sight. Hannah’s sole coherent thought was that darkness had an infinite number of shades.
They jumped out of the car. Wind was rattling the branches above their heads, water lapped against the shore. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Hannah picked out a shape in the murk ahead, caught the rasp of laboured breathing. A man exhausted, close to defeat.
‘Mr Goddard!’ Hannah cried. ‘This is DCI Scarlett and DC Eyre — we need to talk.’
Footsteps pounded across stony ground, then clattered against the wet wooden surface of the L-shaped pier. Francis Goddard wasn’t in the mood to talk.
Maggie broke into a run. She was young and fit, with long, loping strides. Hannah followed in her wake. Surely he didn’t plan to steal a boat? It was madness, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
‘Stop!’ Maggie screamed. ‘Don’t do it! You’ll never …’
The dark shape seemed to pirouette on the pier. An easy, elegant movement. Hannah remembered that Francis loved dancing, he knew how to move. But then he let out a cry of despair. She heard a loud thud as his body hit the water. By the time she reached the pier, Maggie was bending over and tearing off her boots.
‘I’m going in,’ Maggie hissed.
‘You can’t! It’s too cold. Nobody can survive down there.’
Francis was thrashing around in the lake, making a muffled noise that might have meant anything. Did he want to be rescued or just left to drown?
Maggie stood up. ‘Sorry, Hannah. It has to be done.’
‘No!’
Hannah moved to restrain her, but her shoes slid on the rain-sleeked wood and she lost her footing and pitched forward. Her knees hit the pier with a painful crash. She stretched out her arms, as if in prayer.
Then watched Maggie jump.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘So Francis Goddard is expected to live?’
Hannah couldn’t tell from Les Bryant’s grimace whether he was glad or disappointed. Hunched over the table in her office, she strove to shut the fan heater’s asthmatic roar out of her mind. She wasn’t in doubt, she wanted Francis fit and able to talk. Some questions only he could answer.
‘They hope so. But the doctors are worried about brain damage.’
Les’s nose wrinkled, as though at a dodgy sick note. ‘Brain damage? He was only underwater for a couple of minutes before that bloody girl dragged him out.’
That bloody girl. Les was furious with Maggie for having risked her life for a man who had committed one murder and caused another. When Hannah told him that Maggie was going to be OK, he’d come close to shedding tears of relief. Those desperate moments when Maggie grappled with Francis underwater before somehow summoning the strength to drag his inert body on to the shore had been as long as any in Hannah’s life. Thank God the ambulance had come so quickly.
‘They say it’s a case of dive reflex.’
Les curled his lip and leaned back in his chair. His conservatism was ingrained, he was always suspicious of anything he’d never heard of.
‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’
‘When you dive into very cold water, sometimes your larynx goes into a reflex spasm, closing up to stop your lungs drowning. The body starts hibernating to protect itself, but the danger is anoxia, being starved of oxygen. That’s why the doctors are so concerned, that’s what happened to Francis.’
‘Let’s not beat about the bush. If he doesn’t make it, who cares?’
‘His wife, his son …’ And me.
Les snorted. ‘Listen, I don’t want to dance on the bugger’s grave, but what’s he got to live for? He’s going to spend a long, long time in prison.’
Hannah shrugged.
‘Hey, what’s up? Lauren’s over the moon, you’re flavour of the month, we can all move on. Why are you so downbeat?’
‘It’s just that …’
He wagged a stubby, tobacco-stained finger in her face. ‘Forget it. You solved the case. Nothing else matters.’
* * *
‘Francis wanted a child as much as I did.’
Vanessa Goddard’s voice dropped to a whisper, barely loud enough for the tape recorder. Hannah had to lean close to make sure she picked up every word. She and Linz Waller were sitting on either side of Vanessa; the idea was to avoid any hint of confrontation. Hannah had brought in Linz, rather than Les or Bob, in the hope of encouraging Vanessa to open up. Three women together. Like a private chat, except that every word would be taped. And the plan was working; Vanessa was subdued, but far from reticent. She’d hired a solicitor, a local woman and a family friend, to represent Francis if and when he recovered, but she didn’t want a lawyer to accompany her when she talked to the police. Even when Hannah pressed the point, she’d remained adamant. She wasn’t under arrest, she’d committed no crime. She could handle this on her own.
Deep furrows criss-crossed her brow; she was concentrating with the intensity of a tennis star whose next serve would decide Wimbledon. Her gaze fixed on a point high on the wall of the interview room, her only movement was the fiddling of her fingers with a bracelet. She spoke with as much care as if giving a presentation to library officials. No cue cards, but Hannah was sure she’d memorised a script.
‘Jeremy told me you’d been trying for a baby for years.’
‘I felt a failure. He said it wasn’t my fault, but there was no getting away from the bitter truth. I couldn’t give him what he wanted. What I wanted too, more than anything.’
‘It must have hurt when you found out that Karen was expecting a baby.’
Vanessa twitched, as if Hannah had yanked her hair. ‘You can’t imagine the wound. We’d had a good marriage …’