No answer.
He yanked his mobile out of his pocket and rang his sister.
‘What’s the code to open the front gates?’
‘2011. His birthday is 20th November. But-’
‘Better get back to bed.’
‘Daniel, this is crazy. It was only a flesh wound, I swear. Anything worse…it isn’t possible.’
As she talked, he keyed the security numbers in sequence, but the gates did not as much as twitch. He tried again. Still no joy.
‘Did you close the gates when you left?’
‘Of course not. I wanted to get away as fast as possible. There’s a lay-by half a mile from the house. That’s where I stopped to phone you.’
‘So, he must have closed the gates himself?’
‘I expect so. You’re worrying about nothing.’
‘Louise, you stuck a pair of kitchen scissors into him. Left him bleeding. I don’t want you to finish up in court on a charge of GBH.’
He switched off the phone. Was he making a drama out of a crisis? Neither of them was exactly rational this afternoon. She claimed Wagg’s injury wasn’t serious, but she might be fooling herself. Wagg could have shut the gates and then collapsed. It wasn’t unknown for stab victims to walk around for a while as if nothing was wrong before they dropped down dead.
There was the narrowest of gaps between one of the stone pillars and the hedge. Barely enough for a child to squeeze through. He took a couple of paces back, put his head down and forced his way into it. The branches fought hard and the thorns tore at his clothes, but he managed to overcome their resistance. Soon he was out on the other side.
It wasn’t yet half past three, but the light was fading. Night came early in winter here. Ahead was the low bulk of Crag Gill. On his previous visit, when Louise brought him to say hello to Stuart Wagg, she’d explained that the house was built on the site of a rambling mansion, for forty years home to an ancient bachelor. The man had inherited it on the day of the coronation and hadn’t so much as given it a lick of paint since. Not even the most zealous conservation officer could argue when Wagg knocked down the old ruin. To replace it, he hired a Swedish architect to indulge in a flight of fancy green enough to dazzle the planning authority. The rebuilt house was modest in size compared to some of the palaces bordering the east bank of Windermere.
Daniel splashed across ruthlessly cropped grass, between a pair of mountainous rhododendron bushes with dank and dripping leaves. But for a scattering of winter heathers, purple and white in the borders, the garden was asleep until spring. Tall lamp stands lined the long drive, but no lights shone. The house was in darkness. His torch beam was thin, but it helped keep his bearings.
As he drew close to the front porch, his skin prickled. The torchlight picked out another surveillance camera, suspended beneath the line of the grass roof of the house. No surprise — Wagg’s collection of books alone must be worth as much as the average semi-detached. But if the owner of Crag Gill was watching, he would only see a hooded figure, striding towards his door.
A security alarm was fixed to the front wall, six feet above the porch. Daniel had seen its red light winking, when Louise brought him here to introduce Stuart Wagg. Now it was dead. The electricity supply to Crag Gill must have been cut off. Chances were that the thunderstorm had brought down the power lines.
He rang the bell for the sake of it, but no sound came. There was a huge brass knocker on the door and Daniel rapped hard for thirty seconds. In the silence, the crash of iron against wood was deafening. If Wagg was inside, he must have heard.
No answer.
Daniel touched the handle of the door, not expecting it to move, but it swung open. A swift movement, unexpectedly light.
‘Shit.’
People who lived in the Lake District were inclined to be trusting. Crime rates were low compared to most of England; that was one of the reasons why so many fled here, sick of crime in the city. He often left the door of Tarn Cottage on the latch when he headed off for a walk along Priest Ridge, or to shop in the village store in Brack. But he didn’t have so much to lose — Crag Gill was stuffed with treasures. He couldn’t believe that Wagg would forget to lock up.
He shivered, as if from a weird thrill of excitement. Was this how it felt to be a burglar, breaking into the home of people whose lives meant nothing to him? He had to enter the house, he dared not leave now. Impossible to guess what he would discover inside Crag Gill. Stuart Wagg might be unconscious, or so incapacitated that he could not call for help.
Or dead.
One stride, and Daniel was over the threshold.
In his imagination, lights blazed and sirens screamed and the place filled with people, shouting and waving their arms. He’d walked into a trap and tomorrow’s headlines would gloat over the story: Former TV Historian Found Breaking into Top Lawyer’s Home. Pop psychiatrists would be wheeled out to analyse how Aimee’s suicide, his abandonment of Oxford and the glittering prizes, and the flight to Brackdale all played a part in his downfall.
None of it happened.
Nothing stirred.
Crag Gill’s entrance hall wasn’t much smaller than Carlisle Cathedral. According to Louise, Wagg suffered from claustrophobia, and he’d insisted that even the cloakrooms should be airy and spacious. Daniel’s torch played on the white walls, lingered on the whirls and splodges of the trendily unpleasant paintings that hung on them. This wasn’t so much a home as a showcase; the modern art looked as if it had been bought by the yard. Probably at enormous expense, even if its value might one day plummet like derivatives from a bank gone bust. Wagg was rich enough not to care. Dust jackets were the artwork he loved, and they were too precious to be flattened and framed.
A door on the left led into the entertaining room. The curtains weren’t closed. No hint of the New Year revelries, not even a crumb. A massive L-shaped sofa occupied the middle of the room. Daniel marched over to it. Thank God, there wasn’t a corpse hidden behind it.
Next stop, the dining kitchen. Gleaming cedar units, a glass table almost as long as the platform at Oxenholme Station, a dozen chairs in pristine black leather. This was the scene of Louise’s supposed crime. What had happened to her weapon? The scissors weren’t lying on any of the surfaces, and when he looked in the drawers, he found a clean pair with the cutlery. He bent down and studied the slate floor tiles, but couldn’t see the faintest smear of blood. Had Wagg, a tidy man, washed the scissors and put them away? He sniffed the air. Nothing but the sterile smell of emptiness. This was the deepest point of winter, but the house wasn’t cold. He brushed a wall radiator with his palm. It felt warm, so the gas supply was still working.
On the other side of the hall was the library. Wagg had brought him in here on his previous visit. The window was tiny, with blinds drawn to minimise the risk of sunlight fading the spines. Bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling. Like the rest of Crag Gill, the library was as lifeless as a tomb.
He checked upstairs, starting with the master bedroom. Black silk sheets, and above the king-size bed was a huge mirror. The furnishings had cost a fortune, but the room looked like a set for a seedy movie. Daniel decided not to think about it.
Soon he had inspected every corner of the house. No sign of Wagg, no clue to his whereabouts. He spent a few minutes prowling around outside, but it was too dark to make a thorough search of the grounds. Wagg wasn’t sprawled over the grass that stretched down to the water’s edge, but the garage and the outbuildings, unlike the house, were locked.
Daniel recalled Louise talking about her lover on their way here from the airport.
‘When Stuart is in the mood, he can be so much fun. But his boredom threshold is even lower than yours. He’s a mass of contradictions. A party animal who is happiest when he’s walking the fells on his own. That’s why he never moved from the Lakes. He has the luxury of being able to head into the hills at a moment’s notice. If his partners or his clients don’t like it, tough. Because he’s so good at what he does, they put up with his maverick ways.’