‘And the people we haven’t found?’
‘Include two of her closest friends from her school days, Phyllida Lathwell and Jean Pipe. They’ve probably married and changed their names. The main evidence they contributed concerned Bethany’s crush on a teacher, the woman who died. There was a fellow student, Gillian Langeveldt, who came from South Africa, and presumably went back there. A couple of work colleagues, with the depressingly common surnames of Smith and Brown. Plus some of the people who came forward, saying they’d seen her on or around the day she died.’
Hannah considered the names. ‘Graeme Redfern?’
‘Worked for an undertaker’s in Ambleside. Reckoned he saw Bethany having sex in a shop doorway the night before Valentine’s Day. Turns out that Redfern was sacked twelve months after Bethany died, and his old boss thinks he may have gone back home to Leeds. Not a nice man, Mr Redfern. He took a ring from a corpse’s finger and tried to sell it on the Internet.’
Hannah remembered now. Ben had mentioned Redfern to her. He’d dismissed the man as a sad fantasist. People like that always cropped up on the edges of a police investigation. There were other names on Maggie’s list. A pizza delivery man, Mickey Cumbes, whose criminal record included a prison sentence for indecent assault of a teenage girl, swore he’d seen Bethany kissing another woman outside the Salutation Hotel on the morning of Valentine’s Day. A dropped-out student who claimed to have seen Bethany being manhandled into an unmarked white transit van by a burly bloke who looked like an off-duty soldier. Once again, Ben didn’t believe a word of it. Roland Seeton was a long-haired layabout with two convictions for possession of illegal drugs, who probably nurtured some sort of grudge against the army. Any investigation attracted time-wasters, and tracking them down years after the event was a pain. But they had to give it a go. One lucky break was all they needed.
‘Good, you’ve noted Nathan Clare’s phone number. I want to talk to him as soon as I can. And to call on Bethany’s mum.’
‘I spoke to the care home.’ Maggie’s face wrinkled with dismay. ‘She had flu over Christmas and they said she’s fading fast.’
Hannah sprang to her feet. ‘Better get a move on, then. For Mrs Friend’s sake.’
CHAPTER SIX
Sleet slanted down outside the converted mill that was home to Amos Books. From his office on the first floor, Marc gazed out at the swollen beck as it rushed over the weir. The wooden decking beneath the window had disappeared under the water. On a fine day, customers of the cafeteria downstairs sat out and admired the scenery whilst they tucked into cappuccino and cake, but no book buyers had ventured out there for months. Half two in the afternoon, and the sky was the colour of Coniston slate. He switched on the radio to check the forecast, and was greeted by an avalanche warning for Helvellyn.
‘Snow and ice are unstable at all levels of the mountain.’ The Park Authority spokeswoman raised her voice to make herself heard above the storm. ‘Together with the gales, they make any ascent dangerous. High winds are moving the snow around, so it isn’t bonding. Surfaces underfoot are treacherous — all the time, edges are breaking away. With the sudden deterioration in the weather, there is added danger from a cornice of snow.
We think it may collapse at any time.’
Someone coughed behind him.
Marc swung round. He hadn’t heard the door open. He didn’t like people invading his private space or taking him by surprise. For years he’d been accustomed to a warning creak whenever someone came in, even if they didn’t knock. It had been a mistake to oil those hinges.
In the doorway wasn’t some nosey customer in search of a Wainwright first edition, but a woman in a thick fisherman’s jersey and jeans, with shoulder-length fair hair tied into a ponytail. Steam rose from the mug of coffee in her hand. He wasn’t sure how long she had stood there. Why would she wait and watch him, without a word? His skin prickled. Her silent scrutiny was curiously exciting, as if she could see right through him.
‘Our fell-top assessor says he has rarely seen conditions as bad as this in the Lake District,’ shouted the woman on the radio. ‘The wind chill factor is severe. We urge people, however experienced they might be as mountaineers, not to venture out until the situation improves.’
Marc shook his head. ‘What kind of fool would climb a mountain in this weather?’
A dreamy look came into Cassie Weston’s eyes. Her lips parted, revealing front teeth that slightly overlapped. Somehow the imperfection made her all the more attractive.
‘Someone who likes living dangerously?’
‘Living dangerously is one thing. Killing yourself is quite another.’
‘I brought you a hot drink.’
‘You’re very good to me.’ Her expression was unreadable. ‘You were miles away.’
He waved at the chaotic mess of paperwork on his desk. ‘You caught me out.’
‘It’s not as if you were doing something wicked.’
Most people would have said something wrong. But Cassie wasn’t most people.
‘I should be checking the unpaid invoices. Cash flow is king, and all that.’
She handed him the mug. ‘What were you thinking of?’
He might have asked her much the same question. Cassie had worked for him since the autumn, but he still couldn’t make her out. One minute distant, the next, almost intimate, as if she were on the verge of confiding a secret. Whenever he tried to find out more about her, she pulled up the drawbridge, but this elusive contrariness was part of her appeal. What made her tick, what turned her on? Once upon a time, he’d wondered the same about Hannah. Cassie was a fresh challenge, a conundrum he yearned to solve.
More than once, when the shop was shut and the staff had gone home, he’d pulled her file from the cabinet and pored over her CV like a detective in search of clues. But he found so few. She came from Carlisle, and after a year spent studying for a degree in English literature, she’d given up on university in favour of the real world. Over the years she’d drifted from job to job. Typing here, waiting on tables there. Her job application mentioned that she wrote short stories in her spare time, but the one occasion he’d asked about them, she’d shaken her head in embarrassment and changed the subject.
‘I’m a book man,’ he said. ‘Living dangerously isn’t for me.’
‘You never know till you try.’
‘A place like this can’t be too exciting for a young woman like you.’
‘That isn’t what I meant,’ she said softly. ‘I enjoy it here. I find it fascinating…to learn from you.’
He’d tried to explain how much he loved it here, surrounded by thousands of second-hand books. Each had a story to tell, and not just in words written on the page. Every volume on every shelf had a past life. Sometimes all was revealed by an inscription in a flowing hand — ‘To Daisy, Merry Christmas, 25 December 1937’, ‘Given to Hubert Withers for one year of unbroken attendance at Cark Sunday School’ — sometimes the books came with no provenance and you had to play detective to find out how a rare book printed in Gibraltar when Victoria was on the throne finished up in a junk shop at Gateshead one hundred and twenty years later.
He relished teaching her how to buy and sell rare books, couldn’t help feeling flattered by the way she hung on his words as he described the tricks of the trade. How to spot books that weren’t what they seemed, like alleged signed firsts of The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy — neither of which was published until Ian Fleming was dead and buried. Book values flipped up and down like the stock market.
Pricing had little to do with literary merit, let alone critical acclaim, when the books were new. Winnie the Pooh wasn’t worth quite as much this year, while a set of early whodunnits by Miles Burton in pristine jackets would set the rich collectors aquiver with desire.