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

though at his age she should never have assumed, when she visited, that she’d find him alive. But at least, she consoled herself as she dashed the back of her hand across her eyes, he’d had his wish and passed away in the house he’d chosen as his place to die.

Ashleigh walked through the centre of Penrith in the late evening sunlight, brisk and businesslike, on a mission that could have waited. Everything about her life seemed, at that moment, to be profoundly unsatisfactory. Naturally she hadn’t expected the highs of her relationship with Jude to last for ever — she was far too pragmatic for that — but nevertheless the creeping realisation that nothing lasted for ever got her down. Maybe that was the shadow of Scott, sounding so cheerful without her, as if he’d learned to live in a way she couldn’t. Or maybe it was the frustration of work, knowing the accidental death of Summer Raine and the natural passing of George Barrett both seemed like pieces of a jigsaw everyone else wanted to see put back in its box, unfinished.

It was easiest to concentrate on work. Summer’s clothes. The way George had struggled so hard to tell them something and failed. The fact he knew everything that went on in the dale and yet no-one seemed to have seen Summer walking along the path to her death.

She’d been working at home, and it was the last of the work emails she’d looked at before shutting down her laptop that had prompted her to head out. Regardless of how her relationship with Jude would eventually pan out, he was the person she wanted to see at that moment.

‘Well, hello,’ he greeted her as he answered the door. ‘Come on in and have a seat. I was just thinking about you.’

‘That’s good to hear.’ She stepped into the narrow hallway, slipped off her jacket and hung it up, then followed him into the living room, where he was taking one last quick look at the cricket before he turned the telly off. There was a table in one corner and he had his laptop propped up on it. He, like her, must have been spending the evening catching up. ‘Sorry to interrupt. But I wanted to run something past you.’

‘You aren’t interrupting. I’m always glad to see you.’

Thank God in this modern, practical world you weren’t tied to to one perfect relationship, that it was acceptable to move from one to the other and to make what you could with a person who wasn’t, in the end, the great love of your life. If it wasn’t for that she’d have gone mad, because she hated to live, or sleep, alone. She walked over to him to hug him and he held her close, invitingly, and kissed her. ‘If I wasn’t busy working I might suggest something we could do.’

She decoded the message correctly. ‘It’s work I came over to see you about, as it happens.’ Releasing him, she sat down on the sofa, leaving him plenty of space beside her while he stepped into the kitchen

‘Maybe it won’t take long and we’ll be bored,’ he called through with a wink, as he flicked the buttons on the coffee machine.

She hadn’t intended to stay overnight, but she probably would. ‘The work bit won’t take long. I was just catching up on my emails and there was something I thought you might be interested in.’ Of course she could have phoned him, or forwarded the email, but where was the fun in that? ‘It was a nice evening and not much of a walk, so I thought I’d pop over.’

‘You know I always like to see you.’ He came back through and handed her the mug before sitting down beside her. ‘Decaff, of course.’

‘Thank God for that. My brain’s been buzzing like crazy all day and now I know something I wish I didn’t.’

‘And that is?’

‘George Barrett died of natural causes. A stroke.’ The very naturalness of it irritated her and she could see by the frown on his face that she wasn’t alone. ‘I can’t help it. I can’t let go of the idea there’s someone out there who’s much cleverer than us. I have this terrible sense that the cosmos is laughing at us.’

‘The cosmos can laugh all it likes. It’s when the criminals have fun at my expense that it gets to me. You must have seen the PM results, then.’

‘Yes, and they were everything they should have been. Straightforward. Severe stroke.’

‘Dammit. I don’t know there’s anything more we can do about it. Faye was annoyed enough when I told her I’d made a note of my concerns. Even if somebody did literally frighten him to death, we won’t be able to learn anything from the body. The family will want him buried as soon as possible.’

‘Did Becca tell you that?’

She thought he tensed at the mention of Becca. ‘No. I’m just assuming.’

‘We should tell the family. They’ll have seen the report, of course, but they’ll want to know we won’t be taking any action. I expect you want to do that.’

‘No,’ he said, far too sharply. ‘Anyone else can do it. I won’t. It’s no big deal.’

Irked by something she couldn’t identify, Ashleigh pulled at the end of her pony tail. ‘Did something happen between you after George died?’

‘Nothing.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘Unless you count the fact she attacked me in a fit of sheer fury, then flung her arms around my neck in a fit of remorse, apologised profusely, and followed it up with an anonymous complaint about my inappropriate behaviour towards her.’

She caught her breath. ‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

‘But if it was anonymous then—’

‘Lorraine bloody Broadbent took great pleasure in telling me all about it. They can’t do anything. But yes. It happened.’ He scowled. ‘There was nobody there but Becca and me, and while I can’t say my version of what happened is exactly the same as hers, I can recognise enough