Death on the Lake by Jo Allen (rocket ebook reader txt) 📕

gin. His silence was comforting. ‘I’ve never told you my whole story, though it happened not long before we first met.’

She paused to remember that first meeting with Robert, the moment of eye contact across a smart bar near her flat in Canary Wharf, the smile she’d come to know so well. He’d been waiting for a friend who’d been kept late at work, and she’d been drinking alone. ‘Perhaps you remember. There was a woman named Elizabeth Bell who was arrested for killing her boyfriend. His name was Drew Anderson. I was Elizabeth’s best friend and I gave evidence on her behalf in court.’

Those warm fingers tightened over hers. When she looked at her husband, his lips had curved upwards in what was almost pleasure. ‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. I knew before I asked you to marry me. The whole story. I’m glad you’ve found the courage to tell me and I’m only sorry you couldn’t tell me before. But I knew you would, in the end.’

With her free hand, she lifted the glass to her lips. ‘Now I want to tell you everything. You know that. About what it was like.’ About how she’d come to be alone in that bar, because she’d attracted so much hatred she’d become toxic and no-one was prepared to take on the burden of her friendship. After everything she’d done for Elizabeth.

‘Standing up to speak out for your friend was a wonderful and courageous thing to do. I know you were made to suffer for it.’

He couldn’t know how much. ‘Drew’s family tried to intimidate me. They told lies about me. His friends threatened me. I reported them to the police and it didn’t stop them. I didn’t sleep for weeks when the trial came up and I almost didn’t give evidence, but I knew I had to do it. If I didn’t, Elizabeth would go to jail. He’d treated her shockingly, appallingly. He was violent and controlling.’ She heard her voice shake.

He leaned in towards her and brushed her cheek with his lips. ‘I know what he was like, too.’

‘There was no-one else who would speak up for her because he was so powerful and charismatic and charming, in that way that sociopaths have. No-one would believe the things he did and no-one else would speak out against him, speak up for her.’

‘Except you.’

The sun had dropped a little further, plunging the slopes of Gowbarrow Fell into darkness. Down on the lake, a fish popped up to snatch at a fly and descend into the depths with its prey. A present relief mingled with a past fear. ‘Yes. And that’s why I was so scared when I thought Summer might want to talk to me. It brought it all back.’

‘But everything you’ve told me is a matter of public record. Anyone can find you. You aren’t pretending to be who you aren’t.’

‘I’ve never done that.’ Sometimes she wished she had.

He looked down at his glass. ‘I should confess, too. I knew who you were the first time we met. I recognised you across the bar, from the news coverage, and I was drawn to you straight away. You looked so vulnerable, almost hunted. I wanted to protect you then, Miranda, and I want to protect you now.’

Her heart warmed. It would be all right. ‘I’ve never forgotten the threats. I’ve never forgotten how they told me I’d never be free of what I did. I’ve been waiting, ever since then, for someone to come after me and make me pay for saving Elizabeth. And three years ago Elizabeth died.’ She’d nearly told him then but her courage had failed her once again.

He knew that, too. ‘In a car accident. I read about it.’

‘I don’t believe it was an accident.’

‘Oh, Miranda!’ He laughed, a soft laugh full of love, even of joy. ‘Is that what scares you? You told the truth. No-one should come after you for telling the truth. And I’ll make sure they don’t. I’ll keep you safe.’

Miranda’s heart lifted. Why had she ever doubted him? She’d be able to walk the fells without fear, without wondering where death might be lying in wait. She could leave her paranoia behind and know that if a stranger was shadowing her on the hillside it would be someone Robert had put there to protect her. She should have told him the whole story much sooner. ‘Yes. But this is the real confession.’ She drew a long deep breath, would have turned to the gin but somehow her glass was already empty. ‘My testimony at the trial. I made it up.’

‘What,’ he said, at last startled, ‘all of it?’

‘No. Everything I said was something Elizabeth had told me and I believed her. But no-one else would. If I corroborated her evidence, he wasn’t there to deny it, so I told them I’d seen things I hadn’t seen. Things Elizabeth told me he’d done.’

‘You lied in court?’ he asked, his tone light, as if perjury were no worse than the smallest white lie.

‘Not about what he did — I do believe he did it all — but that I’d seen him, or heard him. It was the only way to prove she was innocent.’

‘Not innocent,’ he observed, lifting his gin and turning the glass against the setting sun. ‘But not guilty of murder.’

‘Exactly.’ She looked at him, anxiously. ‘You don’t mind that I gave false evidence?’

He considered, then laughed. ‘Why would I? If, as you say, your friend was abused, I think you did something heroic.’ He paused. ‘You were on the wrong side of powerful people then, my darling, but you have an even more powerful man by your side now. Me. And who knows? Maybe one day I might ask you to give false evidence again. But this time it would be for me.’

Sixteen

‘George has died,’ Becca said, shouting into the phone though it was more in hope than expectation. The signal was fine down in Wasby but God knew what it