The address the Whistons had given him was a substantial thirties detached house, set back from the road leading out to Cartmel. By moving in with her boss, Cheryl had scrambled up several rungs of the property ladder. She’d been personal assistant to the company’s finance director and it was a safe bet that her lover’s remuneration package was a good deal healthier than Ben Kind’s police pension.
The door opened and a small woman in a lime green trouser suit appeared. Her heart-shaped face was immaculately made up, mascara and lipstick applied with painstaking care. His first thought was that he’d seen her before. As he trawled through his memory, he introduced himself. He’d been expecting surprise rather than instant, naked hostility, but as soon as she realised that her ex-husband’s son had shown up on the doorstep, she glared as if the Boston Strangler had paid a call.
‘Why have you come?’ Her tone was combative, her whole body trembling with barely suppressed anger. ‘What do you want here?’
‘I drove over to Oxenholme this morning and the Whistons told me I might find you here. I won’t take up much of your time, Cheryl. I just want to talk.’
Her cheeks reddened, as if she found his use of her forename an offensive act of enforced intimacy. She folded her arms, one more barrier between them. ‘You and I don’t have anything to talk about.’
‘Sorry if it’s a shock, my turning up out of the blue. I don’t want to cause any trouble or disturb you and your…friend.’
‘My fiance, you mean?’
With a snort of defiance, she flourished her ring finger with its winking diamond. Suddenly he remembered who she reminded him of. His father had always had a soft spot for Elaine Paige, had owned most of her albums and played them interminably. Even now Daniel could remember the lyrics to her greatest hits by heart. Twenty years ago, Cheryl must have looked like Elaine playing Evita and she still had a feisty prettiness. Daniel pictured Cheryl opening her lungs and bursting into “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” and even with his nerves stretched taut, he had to suppress the urge to laugh out loud.
‘Dad is dead,’ he said. ‘What you make of your life now is none of my business.’
‘Very generous of you, I’m sure.’
‘Please. I don’t want a quarrel. You meant a lot to him, he told me so. I tried to explain in my letter.’
It had never occurred to him to blame Cheryl for the delay in getting the news of his father’s death to him, but he wondered now if she felt a pang of guilt. Maybe she hadn’t wanted him at the funeral. It didn’t matter: he’d written to her afterwards, a short, civil letter of sympathy. He hadn’t expected a reply. Why would she want to mend fences with a family she’d never met?
She tapped her heel on the doorstep, waiting for him to give up and walk away. ‘No point in raking over the past. I really don’t have anything to say to you.’
‘If you could just spare me a few minutes.’
From inside the house came the sound of a door opening. Looking past Cheryl, Daniel could see into a long hallway with highly polished parquet floor. Framed photographs of brooding mountains covered the walls. At the far end of the hall a stooped bespectacled figure appeared.
‘Have you seen my golf clubs?’ the man called. ‘Surely you wouldn’t have moved them again after what I said before?’ His voice had a grumbling, disconsolate note that Daniel guessed was habitual. Unexpectedly, he felt a pin-prick of sympathy for Cheryl.
‘Not today,’ she said hurriedly, glancing over her shoulder to offer a tense smile of apology. ‘I’ll look for them in a minute.’
The man shuffled out of sight, muttering to himself.
‘Look,’ Daniel murmured, ‘I’m sorry if it’s a bad time…’
She compressed her lips. ‘No point in saying you’ll be back another day. It would always be a bad time.’
Daniel wouldn’t give up. ‘He investigated a case. The woman who was found on the Sacrifice Stone. I wondered…’
‘He and I never talked much about the job.’ She spoke so quickly that he felt sure she was fibbing.
‘You worked for the police.’
‘Only as a civilian, and not after we moved up here and got married. When he came home, it was better for him to forget about all the crime and squalor. I tried to make the house nice for him, help him to unwind. He worried too much about his cases, he could never let them go. I hated that, hated the way his work mattered more than…’
She bit the sentence off, as if regretting that she had said so much.
‘Did he ever…?’
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to go. Sorry if you’ve had a wasted journey. If you’re that keen to rake up the past, you’d have done better to talk to that bloody sergeant of his.’
‘Which sergeant?’
She was closing the door on him, her face a powdered mask even as she replied. ‘Hannah Scarlett. That was her name. She thought the sun shone out of your father’s backside.’
Chapter Six
‘Hannah, Nick, there you are!’ The ACC, practising for the media scrum, flashed a maximum-wattage smile as she beckoned them over. ‘Can I introduce Les Bryant?’
Hannah had walked into the ante-room ready, willing and able to take a serious dislike to her new colleague. First impressions were not encouraging. She’d never liked the smell of tobacco and he reeked of it. His weather-beaten features were moulded in a look of dour scepticism, as though he were about to caution her that anything she might say would be taken down and might be used in evidence.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
Bryant’s flat Yorkshire vowels gave no clue to his true feelings. But then, how thrilled was he likely to be that, after years of his own command, the senior serving officer in this new team was a woman? Plenty of policemen, not all of them veterans, found it hard to cope with female superiors. Given her experience of Lauren Self, Hannah was tempted to sympathise.
‘This is a truly exciting project,’ the ACC said. She spoke with deliberation, and Hannah guessed that she was rehearsing her lines for the conference. ‘Too many families of too many murder victims have had to wait too long for justice. Now we have an opportunity to tackle the mysteries that baffled a previous generation of investigators.’
‘What if they ask about resources?’ Bryant asked. ‘Are the figures finalised?’
Nick coughed. Hannah guessed that he was trying to suppress a snigger. Trust a Yorkshireman to focus on the money. Bryant had a point, nonetheless. There was a lot of talk at the moment about Government money being redistributed from rural forces to the metropolitan areas with higher crime rates. If this unit wasn’t properly funded, her fear of being set up to fail would prove prophetic.
‘Well,’ the ACC said, colour rising into her cheeks. ‘The Head of CID’s initial budget proposals have been approved by the police authority.’
‘I was only thinking, my contract is for six months at four days a week. Not exactly a long time to see justice done.’
The ACC flushed. ‘Yes, but don’t forget that your contract has an option to extend, if both parties wish it.’