The Cipher Garden

Chapter Three

The gathering dusk had become a favourite time for Daniel. He wandered outside the cottage and savoured the scent of old roses, and the colours mingling on the fell, tints of blue and indigo deepening as the sky grew dark. The slopes looked so rich and sensuous that if he could only brush them with his fingertips, it would be like touching velvet.

The evening air was chill after the heat of the day, but he stoked the cast-iron chiminea and smelled the logs as they burned. A fox on the prowl rustled in the bracken, a trio of brown-breasted mallards squealed and flapped as they rose from the tarn and fled over the trees. But whatever the tourist brochures said, Brackdale wasn’t a wholly peaceful place. Years back, a young man who lived at Tarn Cottage, Barrie Gilpin, had been suspected of killing a woman whose body was laid out on the Sacrifice Stone.

Thank God, that was done with. Sitting down on an upturned crate between the potted lavenders, he shut his eyes. It awed him that the bedrock of the Lake District was as old as any in the world. The constancy of the lakes and mountains satisfied a need within him. Ever since his father had torn their family apart, he’d burned with desire to belong, to feel complete. At last he’d found a place he wanted to become part of.

He would love Louise to see the Lakes as he saw them. Splitting up with Rodney might be the making of her. Like a modern counterpart of a tightly corseted Victorian, she needed to unbutton herself, learn the art of relaxation. The last time they’d spoken, she’d made it clear that for Daniel to downshift to the Lakes at the precise moment his career was taking off was madness.

But he’d needed to escape. For as long as he could remember — certainly since his father abandoned the family — Daniel had worked. And worked and worked. After school studies, academic research. Each year he set new goals, more demanding than the last. He didn’t care about the money, although he earned a lot of it. What mattered was to break new ground. Soon everyone wanted a piece of him. Success made him a minor celebrity, people he didn’t know envied him and he’d overheard someone in the Senior Common Room referring to him as The Lucky Kind. Always another project, always another offer he could not refuse. No time to think, no time to relax, but that didn’t matter because he was doing so well and you had to make the most of every opportunity and, and, and, and…

And he’d been away when his father died and he’d missed the funeral, and then Aimee, his lover, had embarked on another suicide attempt and he’d been too late to save her from throwing herself from the top of a tower.

Miranda came into the sitting room, wrapped in a yellow bath towel. She loved aromatherapy and there was a glow of contentment about her. He could smell rosemary and juniper.

‘Any luck at the church?’

‘I asked the rector if I could see the parish records, but all he could do was refer me to the County Records Office, and I didn’t find anything useful there. But I had a look around the graveyard and found where the Quillers were laid to rest.’

Their cottage had been built over a century ago, by a cousin of the man who owned Brack Hall. His name was Jacob Quiller and after he and his wife died the place had changed hands several times before the Gilpins arrived.

She feigned a yawn. ‘Am I right in thinking you won’t rest till you’ve made sense of that crazy garden?’

He glanced through the window. Outside, darkness had fallen. A lamp cast a pool of brightness over the path leading to the tarn, but the effect was to make the dark shapes of the trees beyond reach of the beam all the more mysterious. He caught sight of a movement in the plants by the side of the path. The fox was getting bolder. At night-time the garden became a different place, the kingdom of unseen creatures. The patterns that men imposed on the landscape were only skin deep.

‘I must admit I’m intrigued.’

‘Another crusade, huh?’ She wasn’t into the past; the present was all that mattered to her. Already she was preoccupied with unbuckling his belt. ‘Come and join me on the rug. Better make the most of our freedom before your sister arrives.’

He was glad she’d changed the subject. Too easy for him to develop a fresh obsession with the mystery of the garden. It had scarcely been touched for many years and he suspected that the underlying design dated back as far as the Quillers’ time. Their grave was situated under the leaves of a spreading oak in the churchyard. Its marble headstone was large, but lacked the grandeur of the vaults dedicated to the squires of Brack Hall and their families. No twee verses, no doleful epitaphs.

Three people were buried there. And here was an oddity: Quiller and his wife Alice had died on the same day, the first anniversary of the date given for the death of their son. He was named as Major John Quiller of 1st Northumberland Fusiliers and he’d died on 5 April 1902. The tail end of the Boer War, though there was no indication that he’d been killed in action. Beneath his parents’ names were four words.

Died of broken hearts.

Warren Howe’s face leered at Hannah out of the glossy file print, as if he were about to proposition her. Hannah contemplated the dead man, wondered how to climb inside his mind. Murder victims forfeited their privacy. Human rights? Forget them, they were an indulgence for the living. She stared into his eyes, searching for a clue to what he’d done to earn such a savage fate.

He wasn’t bad-looking in a louche kind of way. Unruly dark hair and old-fashioned sideburns, full lips, a wide fleshy face. Teeth marred by a chipped front incisor that accentuated a small gap. The deep-set eyes were his best feature, startling and blue. One ear had a discreet ring. A strong face, with a touch of devil-may-care. Easy to understand why some women fell for him, despite knowing he was a serial seducer.

The picture featured in a brochure extolling Flint Howe Garden Design and a dog-eared copy had been kept in the file. A footnote credited the photographer, Tina Howe. She’d also been responsible for the shot of her husband’s partner. Bespectacled, with a fuzz of greying hair, high forehead and long nose, Peter Flint looked as though he’d be more at home in a college library than getting his hands dirty in the great outdoors.

Family snaps spilled out of a buff folder. The Howes, parents and children, lifting celebratory glasses at a table in a restaurant. ‘In happier times’, as the gossip columns might say. A painting of a crimson sunset above shadowy heights hung behind them; Hannah guessed at nightfall over the Langdale Pikes. A card propped up next to an empty bottle of Bollinger depicted popping corks and proclaimed Have a Wonderful Anniversary!

Tina Howe’s equine appearance lived up to its advance billing, but her bone structure had a subtle elegance. Hannah understood why Nick had seen past the horsy jaw and tombstone teeth, and discerned a formidable spirit. Plenty of men would be attracted to such a woman, and not merely because her black top displayed a dramatic cleavage. Few would be a match for her.

Sam was a more obviously handsome version of his father. His sister had laid a hand on his arm, as though trying to protect him from committing some faux pas. A mass of auburn hair tumbled on to her shoulders, and her features were unmistakably those of a Howe. She must have been about sixteen and her demure cocktail dress hinted at a figure that might one day rival her mother’s, but Hannah thought the smile was misleading. Everyone else was enjoying themselves, but Kirsty Howe had anxious eyes.

Nick came in and glanced at the file. ‘Taken at the restaurant in the village, a couple of weeks before the murder. Warren and Tina’s china wedding anniversary.’

‘China?’

‘Twentieth.’

‘You know everything.’

‘I wish. Finished the file yet?’

‘Halfway through. Seems the team never got near to making an arrest.’

‘Spotted the name of the SIO?’

‘Clueless Charlie deceased? Yeah, explains a lot. The criminals of Cumbria were heartbroken when he suffered that coronary.’

‘It wasn’t brought on by overwork. He could have scuppered the force’s spidergram single-handed if he was still around. Charlie certainly lived up to his nickname during the Howe case. The inquiry was all over the place, we seemed to do nothing but thrash around in the dark. One thing about Charlie, he gave good PR, and the Press loved him for it. Did you ever work with him?’

‘No, but I gather I missed a treat.’

‘He was a throwback to the Fifties, Fabian of the Yard plus handlebar moustache. Rumours swirled that he might even dust off his old trilby for the cameras. Anything to divert attention from lack of progress to report. Before it came to that, the trail got cold and the media lost interest. So did Charlie. One more unsolved crime. You and I owe him a vote of thanks. For cold case work, he was a one-man job creation scheme.’

Hannah laughed. ‘So he never came close to an arrest?’

‘I actually once heard him say cherchez la femme. At least I think that’s what he said. With a Geordie accent that strong, it’s not easy to tell. He liked women almost as much as food, did Charlie, but the female psyche baffled him in a way shepherd’s pie and chips never did. When Roz Gleave confounded him with her alibi, he turned his attention to her mate Bel Jenner. Personally, I suspected it was an excuse to ogle her while sampling three courses of home cooking in her restaurant.’

‘And did you fancy Bel Jenner?’

‘A beautiful woman,’ Nick said carefully, ‘none the worse for being a wealthy widow still on the right side of forty. Her husband was much older and he’d died a couple of months earlier and the new young chef was drooling over her. For all we knew, they’d been having an affair while the husband was on his deathbed. Oliver, the chef ’s name was, Oliver Cox. The little boy who kept coming back for more, Charlie called him.’

‘Oh yeah? Tell me about the husband’s death.’

‘Don’t get too excited, it was natural causes. Brain tumour. As far as Bel Jenner was concerned, Charlie was pissing in the wind. She had no motive, and it was the same with Roz. Suppose Warren Howe tried it on with one of them, so what? Bel and Roz had grown up with him, they were ex-girlfriends with no illusions about the great charmer. If they were in the market for a quick shag, fine, but they’d have known there wasn’t any more to it than that. You ask me, he was content to stay married to Tina.’

‘Why did she put up with him?’

‘Why do so many women put up with unsatisfactory men?’

Hannah shrugged. Good question.

‘Christ knows how long the marriage would have lasted once their children left home. Why resort to murder? Charlie wondered about Kirsty Howe, before he decided that his prime suspect wasn’t female at all, but her brother Sam. As far as most of us were concerned, that as good as ruled the boy out of contention. Poor old Charlie, he had a reverse Midas touch.’

Legend had it that Clueless Charlie’s final promotion to the heady rank of detective superintendent was intended to keep him out of harm’s way, far from the sharp end of detective work carried out by the humble foot-soldiers. By a bitter irony, he hadn’t been smart enough to draw the fat pension earned by dint of fabled incompetence. He’d made the ultimate bad career move in succumbing to the charms of a voluptuous civilian worker from police HQ. Her voracious sexual demands had taxed his portly frame once too often. Result: a massive coronary and a funeral where his widow wept for more than one reason.

‘How about Sam as a father-killer?’

‘If every kid who ever had a set-to with his dad turned to murder, the world would soon be an empty place. In any case, I told you that Sam’s sister and mother alibied him. That trip up the Hardknott was convenient for all three of them.’

‘Too convenient?’

‘I was reluctant to believe it. Sam was supposed to have been helping his father in Roz Gleave’s garden, but he cried off at the last minute. Our difficulty was, they had their story and they stuck to it. Word perfect.’

‘Suspicious in itself, then.’

‘Yes, but who was covering up for whom?’ The careful grammar struck Hannah as a clue to Nick’s character. His instinct was always to obey the rules. ‘Tina may have been guilty, but we never found any buttons to press that would have prompted Kirsty or Sam to grass up their mum. To lose one parent is a misfortune, as Lady Bracknell said; to lose two…’

‘You know what statistics tell us. Most murder victims know their killers.’

‘And most of the killers are lovers or partners, past or present. But that didn’t narrow the field of suspects much in this particular case.’

‘So we’re wasting our time if we follow up the tip-off?’

‘You’re the boss.’

‘I’m asking your opinion.’

‘You said yourself, the likelihood is that someone’s trying to settle a score with Tina. This note doesn’t offer any corroborative evidence. Not a sliver.’

Hannah glanced again at the photograph of Warren Howe, taken by the woman accused of slashing him to pieces. Despite the smile, his blue eyes were watchful and she saw a challenge in the bared teeth. He was daring her to solve the mystery of his death.

‘Once I’ve read through the file, I might drive out to Old Sawrey, get the feel of the place. I’ve never been further than Hill Top.’

Nick took a breath. ‘If we start turning over stones, who knows what we’ll find? Plenty of worms, but maybe nothing to do with the crimes we’re investigating.’

‘Such is life.’

‘That’s the danger, don’t you see? It’s a risk with all the cases in our too-difficult file. If we don’t solve the crime, we can cause more harm than good. Hurt people who don’t deserve it. Didn’t someone once call it ordeal by innocence?’

Hannah had never visited Old Sawrey before. The Lake District was full of tucked-away spots known by dedicated walkers to the last blade of grass, but ignored by most of Cumbria’s natives. You never check out what’s on your own doorstep.

Should she commit resources to reopening the Warren Howe inquiry or go along with Nick and let this particular sleeping murder lie? Before deciding, she wanted to get a feel for the area where Warren lived and died. Reading a file without visiting the scene was like hiring a DVD of a concert instead of watching it live. You needed to soak up the atmosphere. No matter how scrupulous the original investigation (and scrupulous wasn’t a description anyone ever associated with Charlie), the paperwork could never tell you everything. Most of the suspects lived in and around Old Sawrey. Had done all their lives, probably still did. She wanted a picture of the place in her mind, as well as a picture of the dead man.

One Lake District village was, in Hannah’s opinion, very much not like another. Each had its own unique identity. How could you compare Troutbeck, Cartmel, Watendlath? Even the tiniest settlements were distinctive. She’d once gone on the statutory day trip to Near Sawrey, to take a timed ticket courtesy of the National Trust and traipse round Beatrix Potter’s old home, accompanied by a coachload of Peter Rabbit fans who’d made a special journey from Osaka. Across the hay fields, Far Sawrey boasted its own church, shop and part-time post office. Old Sawrey must be the poor relation, skulking among the oak trees up a lane that petered out into a path winding up Claife Heights.

The sun blazed as she threaded through the narrow byways to the west of Windermere. On days like these, she loved driving. She had the roof open, breathing the hot air, letting Bill Withers’ ‘Lovely Day’ wash over her. A month earlier, she’d taken delivery of a gleaming two-litre Lexus and she was still relishing her new toy. She qualified for an essential-user car loan and on impulse had dug into her own pocket as well and gone for something livelier than a boring old Mondeo or Vectra. Motorway driving was tedious, too many roadworks, but the gentle pace of the lanes was fine, at least until she encountered a minibus full of tourists coming in the opposite direction and had to reverse all the way back to the nearest passing place.

After a couple of wrong turnings, she found the ‘no through road’ sign she’d been seeking and squeezed her car between steep grassy banks. To her right she caught glimpses of a strip of water through a cluster of rowan trees. Beyond a farm gate, the lane became a rutted track, climbing through woodland. On a post beside a wooden gate, she saw a green slate nameplate marked Keepsake Cottage. The Gleave house, scene of the crime.

She pulled up at the end of the lane. Neat and whitewashed, the cottage was elevated so that even ground-floor rooms commanded a view of Esthwaite Water over the tops of the trees. Scarcely 10 Rillington Place or 24 Cromwell Street, yet this was where Warren Howe had been butchered.

His body had been discovered in the back garden. So close to civilisation and yet a murderer had been able to scythe down Warren Howe in the open air with little fear of being observed. Nobody walking the path up the incline would have had a clear sight of the grounds of Keepsake Cottage; the woodland was too dense.

On impulse, she walked up the driveway, the urge to explore overpowering caution. If someone came out of the cottage and demanded to know what she was up to, she would produce her ID. It almost always did the trick; most people wanted to keep on the right side of the law.

Suddenly a bark broke the stillness and a sleepy-eyed mongrel, a canine Robert Mitchum, moseyed down the path. It looked in the mood to bite the hand that fed it identification. She swore and beat a retreat to the Ford. The dog followed her to the bottom of the drive and gave an uncompromising yelp as it watched her leave. As she executed a three-point turn, she took a hand off the wheel and pretended to shoot the pooch, but it gave her a sidelong glance packed with Mitchumesque scorn.

Soon she was on the lower slopes of Claife Heights, driving past a large green board with yellow lettering outside the entrance to an old farmhouse set back from the road. FLINT HOWE GARDEN DESIGN. So even after all these years, Peter Flint had kept the memory of his partner alive in the name of the business. She wasn’t naive enough to write off suspects on the basis of knee-jerk amateur psychology, but it didn’t seem like the act of a man with murder on his conscience.

The lane forked and she followed the sign marked OLD SAWREY ONLY. As she climbed the hill, she passed a scattering of houses before seeing a building perched on the brow, overlooking the lake and forest and fells beyond. The Heights looked like a small and ancient village pub with a conservatory extension tacked on at the front to enable diners to make the most of the view. Tubs overflowing with yellow and purple pansies bordered a pathway connecting the restaurant to a large detached house, set further along the slope. The grounds of house and restaurant were divided by willow screening. The car park was almost deserted and Hannah reversed into a space between a purple Citroen and a board outside the canopied entrance displaying times of opening. The restaurant was shut to customers for another couple of hours. Above the door a notice confirmed that Isobel Marie Jenner and Oliver Cox were licensed to sell intoxicating beverages. So the widow and the chef were still together after all these years.

As Hannah switched off the ignition, the restaurant door opened and a solidly built young woman in a white T-shirt and denim jeans hurried out. She reached the Citroen and fumbled in a battered bag for the key. Her face was blotchy and her eyes full of tears. With a start, Hannah recognised her. The red hair was shorter than in the photograph she’d studied earlier in the day, but the blue eyes and jutting jaw were unmistakable.

The woman in distress was Kirsty Howe.