‘This is where he lived with her, isn’t it, Oxenholme?’
He’d meant to avoid mentioning their father. Her resentment of the old man was excessive, but too deeply ingrained to be smoothed away overnight. He should have known better than to believe that they could gloss over the past.
‘Cheryl’s in Grange-over-Sands now. She’s moved in with someone else.’
‘You looked her up?’
Her voice rose; she was too astonished to be angry. For her, Cheryl was the serpent who had tempted their father into destroying his family’s happiness and he’d been too weak to resist. She’d never met Cheryl, but like her mother, she hated the woman with blind ferocity.
‘I was curious.’
Louise was struggling for calm. ‘You were always too curious for your own good.’
He heaved the suitcases into the car and slammed the boot shut. ‘Believe it or not, I felt sorry for her.’
Louise swore. ‘You’re joking!’
‘She’s not ageing well and the man she lives with is an old misery. He’s obviously planning to spend his retirement looking around for errands she can run for him. Waiting for her to mess up so he has something fresh to complain about.’
‘Serves her right, the selfish bitch.’
‘He used to be her boss.’
Louise grunted. ‘That was her modus operandi, wasn’t it? Seducing men she worked for.’
They drove through the town in silence. As they turned on to the road that led to Brackdale, she said, ‘I know I look a fright.’
‘A bit wan, that’s all.’
‘I’ve lost a bit of weight too.’
‘Not a bad thing.’
‘Still not got any manners, then?’ She hesitated before saying, ‘Thanks for letting me stay with you.’
‘I’m glad you came.’
‘Who knows, in a couple of weeks people might start mistaking me for a country maid, with pig-tails and cheeks like apples.’
He laughed. ‘So this is your first time in the Lakes since that holiday?’
He’d wanted to keep their conversation on safe ground, but with Louise you could never be sure what was safe ground. In a moment, the temperature in the car plummeted.
She said in a low voice, ‘Do you ever wonder how he could sleep? How he could live with himself?’
Daniel kept his eyes on the road. ‘He’s dead now.’
After a pause she said, ‘Yes. And I’m sorry about that. And I know how much you cared for him. Like I used to. And I realise I’m a miserable cow, I fully understand. It’s just that…’
To his horror, she started to sob. In all the years since their father’s departure, Daniel could never remember his sister crying. Not even during those frail anorexic days. Louise didn’t yield to emotion, Skiddaw would crumble before she shed a tear. A flame of anger spurted inside him. That smug bastard Rodney, this was his fault.
He pulled off the road and parked on a grassy verge. If ever there was a time to put his arm around her, this was it, but she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and pushed him away.
‘I’m all right.’
‘You think so?’
‘Happens every day, doesn’t it? Woman falls for man, man shags woman, woman gets clingy, man meets another woman and runs away. And the whole cycle begins again. I’ll get over it.’
‘So you don’t like men too much at the moment, big sister?’
‘I don’t exactly like myself, come to that.’
A sudden instinct made him want to say, ‘But I like you, Louise.’
Thank God he bit the words back on his tongue. She’d never forgive him for such a horrendous outburst of sentimentality. For patronising her. For taking pity on her.
In the quiet of the car, as she dried her tears, he realised — with a shock, because he’d never turned his mind to it before, except in the shallowest way — that it was true. For all the years of bickering, for all the gulf between them whenever they discussed their father, there was a bond between them. They were all that remained of their family.
So Kirsty Howe was weeping buckets and the same day, her mother had been accused of killing her father. Hannah leaned back in her chair. She’d been in the job long enough to realise that coincidences, like cock-ups, were commoner than conspiracies. Interesting, though.
Nick looked in. ‘See you there in twenty minutes. Mine’s half a Guinness.’
She slipped the anonymous message into a plastic wallet and Charlie’s irritatingly uninformative crime-scene log back in its labelled folder. There were few less exciting virtues in an SIO than tidiness, but Ben Kind had always preached its importance. Mess wasn’t merely a nuisance, according to Ben, it could hamper an investigation if it prevented you seeing the facts with a clear eye. It wasn’t the end of the world if the facts were incomplete — an occupational hazard in an investigation led by Charlie. Spotting gaps might suggest fresh lines of inquiry. Even the lack of evidence is evidence. Like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
She sat up in her chair, realising it wasn’t an original thought. She could hear Daniel Kind quoting those words, in a television programme. A week ago, she’d seen a DVD of his BBC series on special offer and picked up a copy. One evening when Marc was out, she’d watched it for half an hour. The following day, she’d picked up a voicemail message. Daniel, suggesting that they get together again sometime. He wanted her to tell him more about Ben, fill gaps in his knowledge of his father. She hadn’t returned the call, wasn’t sure it would be a good idea.
He liked to compare the work of historians and detectives. She was reluctant to be convinced, but his arguments defied easy contradiction. Ben might not have been an academic, but he had had a sharp mind and was more down to earth than his son. To abandon fame and fortune to get away from it all — even in the Lakes — was daring. Reckless. She could never do what he had done. Yet she couldn’t help admiring his nerve in walking away from fame and money, to make a new life with the woman he loved.
At least, she supposed he loved his partner. When they’d last talked, he’d hinted that Miranda was having second thoughts about the move. If he felt let down, he hadn’t said so. She was sure he would be loyal, just like his father. Even though Ben, in an aberration, had left his wife and kids to move up here with Cheryl. Something else the Kinds had in common. On occasion, they acted out of character and surrendered to a wild impulse that changed their lives.
Frightening. Yet fascinating.
Chapter Five
The Shroud, officially The Woollen Shroud, was a rambling free house set back from the road out of Kendal. The pub, like the name, dated back centuries, to the days when in an attempt to combat an industrial slump, the authorities forbade people to bury their dead in anything that wasn’t made of wool. To this day the Shroud retained a graveyard atmosphere, if graveyards ever smell of stale beer. But the bar boasted a series of secluded alcoves in which you could conduct a conversation with a degree of privacy seldom found outside the confessional, plus an ill-lit passageway leading to a discreet way out at the back of the building. Ideal for a quiet word with a publicity-shy informer, or a chat between colleagues away from the madding and insatiably curious crowd at police HQ.
Nursing his glass of Guinness, Nick said, ‘What do you want to know about Chris Gleave?’
Hannah took a sip of traditional-recipe lemonade and said, ‘What is there to know?’
‘Not a lot, if you’re looking for a suspect. He had an alibi.’
‘A surfeit of those in this case, don’t you think? Tina, Sam, Kirsty. Roz Gleave. And now her husband Chris?’
‘Yeah, discouraging.’
‘Alibis are made to be broken.’
‘Charlie never cracked them.’
‘That tells us more about Charlie than the strength of the alibis.’
‘If I had to name one man who truly would never hurt a fly, it would be Chris Gleave.’