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

stage in the previous month or so playing the stern parent with two such strong personalities had crept beyond her capabilities. She’d always known it would.

She helped herself to a sandwich lunch, looking out over the garden and the lake as she ate. In her heart she suspected a bit of a thrashing would do Ollie, in particular, no harm, but it was only part of a lesson they had to learn. And as for herself, well. She had the support of her husband and sharing her fears hadn’t just halved them; it had caused them to melt away. A beautiful day called for the temptation of another carefree walk. Only now she was released from the prison of her fear did she realise how enclosed she’d been in it, how much more she could enjoy the open spaces of the Lakes.

When she’d cleared away her lunch things, she let herself out of the house and walked down the drive. To her left Hallin Fell rose up, pretending to be far more mighty than its height allowed. She liked it, the way it sat out in the middle of Ullswater’s east shore and offered three hundred and sixty degree views. Today, perhaps, was a day to climb it.

Heading out of the gate, she hesitated for a moment before turning towards Sandwick. The alternative path was the one that took her along the water’s edge, past Kailpot Crag, and though she’d never have described herself as a sentimental woman it was too soon to walk past the place where the police had found Summer’s body.

Drowning was supposed to be peaceful. She bit her lip, wondering what she’d have done if the girl had approached her to talk about Elizabeth. Told her everything — or not all of it, not about the lies — probably, because there was so much already in the public domain. Something she could add to a body of research might, in the end, do justice to Elizabeth’s memory. The only concern would be whether it might reawaken ideas of vengeance that should long since have died down, but who was going to pay any attention to a first-person account in a dissertation?

After all, Miranda told herself as she strode out along the road to where the road curved down into Martindale under George’s cottage, looking somehow deserted even though no-one had been in to close the curtains, the fears that had trapped and troubled her for a decade were groundless and now she could start to live again.

The narrow banks of the beck pinched it into a gap where the bridge overstrode it, and she stopped to look over the parapet and back down towards the house. Below her, a figure in blue overalls sprawled in the beck, face down, the head tilted at an angle towards the bank.

As Miranda reached for her phone and dialled the police, the fear came flooding back.

Eighteen

‘Faye wants to show we mean business,’ Jude explained to Doddsy as he swung his car down the ever-more familiar twisting lane past the Sharrow Bay hotel and into the the heart of nowhere. ‘So make yourself obvious.’

Doddsy was unimpressed. ‘We’re the police. Who do we need to show off to?’

Jude slowed for a corner, and a Herdwick sheep stared back at him, reproachfully, from the middle of the road. He brought the Mercedes to a stop, waited a second and then nudged forward a foot to give the animal a hint. Faye’s interest in Robert and his financial goings-on remained confidential but her determination was wavering. Even if it turns out to be an accident, she’d said, it’s probably time to let him know we’re watching what happens on his turf. ‘The killer, I imagine. On the assumption that there is a killer, of course.’

‘And why on this case more than any other?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ No-one was going to escape by car, so in that sense there was no urgency, but the protection of the scene and the collection of evidence was a priority, and both of those degraded with time. Jude allowed himself to use the townie’s trick of hooting the horn at the sheep, and it did the job, prompting the animal to shuffle off and slither up the bank and under a wire fence. He put his foot on the accelerator and the car slid off.

‘Then I’ll guess.’ Doddsy, Jude could tell, was frustrated. ‘Maybe she thinks there’s something else going on, and maybe she’s trying to panic someone.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as someone who might have thought they got away with killing someone. And you know who I’m talking about.’

The case of Summer Raine had been shunted off to the coroner and once it had gone, Jude had had no time to discuss it with Doddsy — something he would have done, even six months before, over one of their regular pints of a weekday evening. Since Ashleigh had arrived on the scene, and since Doddsy had found himself a partner in the rather surprising shape of Tyrone Garner, the regular drinks had become highly infrequent and the exchange of information they’d facilitated was confined to office hours. Jude made a mental note to do something about it in future. ‘You think somebody did?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact. And so does Ashleigh.’

‘And you told Faye. And she must agree with you, or we wouldn’t both be here.’

‘She didn’t to begin with, but she may do now.’ Jude slowed again, for the hairpin bends at the Hause, where the road scaled the steep lower slopes of Hallin Fell. ‘This may be unconnected, of course.’

‘The call said it looked suspicious.’

‘And on further questioning said it looked like a broken neck. But it was Miranda Neilson who found him, and although we don’t yet have a positive identification, the first indication is that it’s Summer’s boyfriend who’s dead.’

‘Ah,’ said Doddsy, and descended into a moment of reflection.

‘My first reaction,’ Jude continued as they topped the hill past the