‘But it wasn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘Ben Kind was no fool. He’d have faced up to reality if nobody else was in the frame, but there were other candidates for the murder of Gabrielle, men with access to the four-by-four and the axe…’
‘Tash Dumelow’s husband, for one?’
‘Simon Dumelow’s made a lot of money in a rough business and when he was twenty, he picked up a conviction for actual bodily harm. But he’s much older and apparently more civilised now. For a long time he’s been paying other people to do his dirty work for him. We wondered if he’d made a pass at his wife’s mate and reacted badly to rejection. But by all accounts he’s always been genuinely crazy about Natasha and even though she was laid up with flu at the time, she swore he never left the house that night. Then again — what if she was lying to protect him?’
‘Who else?’
‘Tom Allardyce, the tenant of Brack Hall Farm, Ben’s suspect of choice. Tash had introduced him to Gabrielle Anders, just as she had Barrie. Eight years before Gabrielle was killed, he was charged with raping a girl he’d met in a nightclub in Carlisle. But the prosecution fell apart.’
‘The way prosecutions do,’ Bryant said grimly.
‘Yeah, tell me about it.’
‘Did he have an alibi for Gabrielle’s murder?’
‘You bet, again conveniently provided by a mate of his, the local publican. Man called Dowling. The investigating officers couldn’t shake him and the CPS advised that if the case went ahead, Allardyce would walk out of court without a stain on his character.’ A tinge of bitterness entered her voice. She couldn’t help it; she was thinking not so much of Allardyce as of Sandeep Patel. ‘Actually, those were the very words the lawyer used. I looked up the file.’
Chapter Twelve
‘Why are you doing this?’ Miranda’s cheeks were crimson, her eyes packed with tears. ‘What do you want to speak to her for?’
He placed the receiver back in its cradle and turned to face her. Sun was streaming into the kitchen through the narrow blinds, making him blink in the glare. The most beautiful morning since they’d moved in — and all of a sudden she’d lost it, absolutely lost it. He wanted to say what’s the problem? but his mouth had dried. This was a landmark, as striking in its way as the Sacrifice Stone: their very first row. It had flared without warning, an explosion from an unsuspected spark. She’d walked in to the kitchen as he was dialling and when she asked, he said he was calling Hannah Scarlett. Thinking nothing of it, so that he was rocked on his heels when she cried out as though he’d smacked her. A mug of coffee slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor, splintering in jagged fragments, brown liquid eddying across the new diamond-shaped tiles.
Upstairs, Wayne had stopped hammering. He must have overheard. Daniel could picture the young builder’s coarse features wrinkling with prurient amusement. He swore to himself. His shoulder muscles tightened with tension; he’d never seen her like this before. How to calm her down? He might have been a junior doctor, asked to diagnose from symptoms he’d never encountered in his career.
‘You can’t keep on with it,’ she said, ‘this constant…reaching back in time.’
But I told you, it’s what I do, he almost said. I’m a history man. He ground his teeth, forcing himself not to throw more coal on the flames.
‘We were supposed to be starting all over again,’ she said. ‘Clean sheets for both of us.’
‘That’s right. Of course. I never meant…’
‘Then why hark after what’s gone?’
‘This isn’t about Aimee. You’re right, we agreed we had to get over everything that had gone wrong. Aimee, Richard. And it’s working, we’re doing fine. Talking to Hannah Scarlett is different, it’s about…’
‘It’s about Barrie Gilpin! Your precious Barrie, the suspected murderer! You know something? It’s finally dawning on me. You’d never have wanted to live here if it wasn’t for Barrie.’
She was leaning towards him, pointing her finger. During the small hours, he’d been dimly aware of her restlessness. The smell of paint lingered in the bedroom and neither of them were sleeping well. In the early hours, she’d climbed from under the duvet and disappeared downstairs to make herself a drink.
She’s overwrought, he said to himself. All this work on the house, living 24/7 in a building site, it’s enough to exhaust anyone. The noise, the dirt, the dust, they’d test the goodwill of a Mother Teresa clone. This isn’t about me, or Barrie, or Hannah Scarlett. I just need to give her space.
‘Sorry, I know I’ve harped on about the Gilpins. This is our place now, not theirs. I never meant to hurt you.’
He reached out for her, but she stepped backwards, evading his grasp. Her foot slid in the pool of coffee and she gave a little yelp as she clutched at the table to keep her balance.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. Not a clever question, but the best he could manage.
‘No, I’m not okay.’ As her head shook, her hair flapped in front of her face so that he couldn’t make out her expression. ‘I just feel I can’t shake it off, this thought that a murderer lived here, in my house. I thought if we cleaned and painted and everything, the place would become ours. But Barrie Gilpin’s clinging on like — like some sort of incubus.’
‘Miranda…’
‘There’s no escaping him. Not when we go out to The Moon under Water. Not when we’re invited to dinner by the Dumelows. We had the chance to make new friends and then you started asking about Barrie Gilpin and the evening was spoiled.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘This isn’t healthy, Daniel. You need to let go.’
‘I don’t care so much if Barrie was a murderer.’ He surprised himself by saying this, but as soon as the words left him, he knew it was the truth. ‘I liked him, but you’re right, it was a long time ago. If he killed the girl, he deserved his fate, as everyone says. But I need to speak to Hannah Scarlett.’
‘What for?’
‘Dad and Cheryl were drifting apart, and his work meant everything to him. Maybe he confided in Hannah Scarlett. She can tell me about him.’
‘But what do you want to know?’
‘What he was like.’
Arms folded, she said, ‘He’s dead, Daniel. I hate to say it, but you need to move on. Start writing again, we can’t live on fresh air.’
He swallowed hard. ‘You’re right. But first I want to talk to someone who knew him well. All I want to do is to fill in a few of the blanks…’
‘Don’t even try,’ she said. ‘Some mysteries aren’t meant to be neatly solved, some questions don’t have any answers. Leave them be.’
‘I can’t.’
She snorted with exasperation. ‘I give up. There’s no reasoning with you. All right, but don’t blame me if you end up hurt. He did walk out on you, remember.’
‘I remember.’
‘A man who’s capable of that is capable of anything.’
There was a knock and Wayne put his face around the kitchen door. As usual, he made it obvious that he was drinking in the sight of Miranda. In her clinging Levis, she always looked good, for all the blotchiness of her complexion and the rings around her eyes. Trying not to smirk — but not trying too hard — Wayne couldn’t keep the schadenfreude out of his voice.
‘All right, folks? Any chance of a cuppa, if you’re not too busy?’
‘Hannah Scarlett.’
Her voice was low and cautious, as though he was calling to sell uPVC windows or a time share in Spain. As he’d waited to be put through, he’d wondered if she would instruct a minion to fob him off. He watched the sun play on the surface of the tarn as he pressed the mobile to his ear. Miranda had retreated to the bedroom with a headache but that hadn’t stopped Wayne humming “Yellow Submarine”. Daniel didn’t have a game plan, other than to hope that curiosity would get the better of her when she was given his name. So far, so good.
‘We’ve never met, but you worked with my father, Ben Kind.’