Was that why they stuck together, because it wasn’t in their nature to make the break? Even after last night in bed, she could not swear to the answer.
Her personal address book lurked at one corner of the desk, hidden by a sheaf of last month’s crime statistics. On impulse, she fished it out. She’d noted the numbers of Daniel Kind’s mobile and the cottage in Brackdale. Never got round to crossing them out.
Why not give him a ring, where was the harm?
As she picked up the phone, the door swung open.
‘Ma’am. Something’s just cropped up. I thought you’d like to know.’
Maggie Eyre, breathless and sweaty after running down the corridor. She’d put on a bit of weight, Hannah noticed. She succumbed to unworthy selfishness. Hope to God she hasn’t got pregnant yet. We’re short-staffed as it is.
She put down the receiver and waved Maggie into the chair on the other side of the messy desk. ‘Be my guest.’
‘Sorry to interrupt, I should have waited.’
‘It wasn’t important.’
Maggie tossed a sheet of paper onto the desk. It covered up the address book. ‘Of course, this probably means nothing at all. But it’s an intriguing coincidence, I wanted you to know straight away.’
Hannah glanced at the sheet. It was a short witness statement. The witness’s name was Wanda Smith, and she had worked at a PR consultancy where Bethany temped prior to moving to a post at the university.
A yellow Post-it note was stuck onto the paper. Maggie had written on it a telephone number and four words.
Married name — Wanda Saffell.
Daniel Kind stared at his laptop, thinking about murder.
Thomas De Quincey had a lot to answer for. Daniel had just finished rereading ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’, and the old essay retained its bite. De Quincey was intrigued by ‘the philosophy of cleansing the heart by means of pity and terror… Something more goes into the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed, a knife, a purse, and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature.’ The true murderer was a romantic, who played to the gallery. The crimes that appealed to De Quincey possessed a touch of the bizarre.
Daniel thought it best not to dwell upon what his dad would have said about making murder the subject of satire. No scope for relishing the aesthetics of murder when your job was to detect it. One of Daniel’s infant memories was of staying up late one Friday night when his father was working on a case. The old man had promised to read him a story at bedtime — a rare treat, and Daniel chose a chapter about the Five Find-Outers, who were forever investigating mysteries. When at last Ben arrived home, he was haggard and weary, and he hugged his son with a strange ferocity before saying that he needed a shower before story time. Louise was already fast asleep, but as Daniel waited in his bedroom, he overheard his parents whispering.
‘What did he do to her?’
‘Strangled her with his bare hands.’
‘Oh God.’
‘And that wasn’t the worst of it.’ Ben’s voice was choking and, for a terrible moment, Daniel thought his father was about to burst into tears. ‘A kid, that’s all she was. A kid.’
At that point, Ben noticed his son’s door was ajar and shut it so as to prevent any more eavesdropping. But Daniel had heard enough. He’d learnt that in his father’s world, real people did things to real children, things too sickening for words. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Those words troubled him for years.
His mother always wanted Ben to let the job drop, to shut the door on the harsh and terrifying world of crime when he came home to his family. She dreaded the thought that murder might taint all their lives. But Ben never managed to chill out for long. The urge to see justice done drove him; the irony was that sometimes he failed to do justice to the people who meant most to him.
Daniel had wanted to talk to Hannah Scarlett about his father. The old man must have admired her passion about what she did. It wasn’t simply about ticking the boxes on the forms and building up your pension pot so you could retire after thirty years and advise businesses on security in between golf trips to the Algarve. Hannah was someone else who wanted to give to the innocent the justice they deserved.
Since meeting Hannah, he’d encountered murder at close quarters and seen the havoc it caused. Murder changed lives for ever, tore families apart. Yet there was no point in trying to pretend that his interest was purely academic. Murder didn’t simply intrigue him, it obsessed him. As it had De Quincey, as it had when, as a small boy, he’d waited hour after hour for his father to come home and imagined that, single-handed and unarmed, he was busy slapping handcuffs on homicidal maniacs.
Might as well face up to something else. It wasn’t only the fascination of detective work, and the chance to learn more about the father who had left home for another life, that drew him to Hannah. Even before Miranda’s decision to leave, he’d felt a strong attraction to her, and that sense of passion burning beneath the surface of cool professionalism. But Hannah was with Marc, and he would never dream of wrecking their relationship.
The phone trilled. He snatched up the receiver, glad of the distraction. His mind was wandering into dangerous territory.
‘Daniel Kind.’
‘This is Arlo.’ Denstone was speaking on a mobile and the reception was poor. A common problem in the Lakes. ‘I’m in the neighbourhood, wondered if you’re free.’
‘Sure, it would be good to meet. I heard you on the radio this morning.’
‘Really?’ Arlo sounded pleased.
‘You pricked my conscience. The deadline for delivering my Festival paper to the printers isn’t far away.’
‘End of this week. I can’t wait to see it.’
‘Um…I’m working on it now.’
‘Hope you don’t mind my inviting myself round? Please don’t think I’m checking up on your progress.’
Through gritted teeth, Daniel made appropriately good-natured noises.
‘I promise not to disturb you for long, but I’ve been dying to meet up ever since you agreed to be our keynote speaker. No need to move from your desk until the doorbell rings. I can be with you in fifteen minutes.’
‘I’ll put on the coffee.’
Daniel put down the phone and ambled barefoot into the kitchen. Any excuse to stop work was welcome when the words stopped flowing. He felt like a quarryman, hacking at an unforgiving rock face. Yet the call had shattered his concentration, a cause for resentment. At least until he reminded himself that when the phone rang, his thoughts had already drifted away from murder, to DCI Hannah Scarlett.
Cassie Weston was due for a morning off, but a couple of part-timers had called in sick, victims of the virus sweeping the county, and she’d offered to cover for them up to half-day closing. Marc hated paying overtime, but with Cassie he was happy to make an exception. He even allowed himself to wonder if her willingness to help him out was due to something more than the fact that she was at a loose end on a damp January day.
He joined her at the cash till after she finished serving a woman who ran one of the craft shops in the courtyard and was invariably accompanied by an aggressive little terrier called Whisky. The customer had driven a hard bargain over a first edition about traditional quilting, and Marc could have squeezed a couple of pounds more out of her, but who cared? Even in a shapeless blue sweater and jeans, Cassie looked good. He cast his mind back to the night before last, and her shadow in the window as she stripped.