The Coffin Trail

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘Suicide by cop,’ Hannah said. ‘A fashionable way to die these days.’

‘I read up about it.’ Daniel savoured his last mouthful of lasagne. ‘Allardyce matches the profile. People who provoke armed police officers to kill them are usually white males of a certain age who have recently suffered an emotional trauma. And if murdering your wife doesn’t qualify as an emotional trauma, what does?’

She pushed her plate aside and leaned across the mahogany table. ‘You’re always very well informed, aren’t you?’

Off duty this evening, she was wearing a white fitted shirt and black trousers. Nothing glitzy, that wasn’t her style. They were nearing the end of dinner in a hot and crowded Italian restaurant in Kendal. There was nothing furtive or secret about their meal together; he’d even asked Miranda if she wanted to come along and be introduced. But she’d said no. A glossy lifestyle magazine had commissioned her to write eighteen hundred words on the pleasures and perils of downshifting and the deadline was first thing tomorrow.

Hannah hadn’t said whether she’d invited Marc — she hadn’t mentioned him all evening. Otherwise, she’d been more forthcoming than he’d dared to hope. It wasn’t down to alcohol; she’d only drunk sparkling water. He’d learned about Gabrielle’s dodgy past and her fling with Joe Dowling. About the money on her bed, which Dowling had no doubt pocketed when he learned his guest was dead, though nobody would ever prove it. About how Allardyce had avoided being tried for rape. And about how Jean Allardyce must have secretly feared that her husband was a murderer and how her inability to keep silent any longer had cost her life and ultimately her husband’s. It was as though, now that the case had come to an end, Hannah needed to sign it off in her own mind before moving on to the next cold file. Perhaps it was her equivalent of his habit, childish, but satisfying, of typing THE END in bold 24-point capitals whenever he finished a manuscript. He hadn’t expected her to speak so frankly about the investigation and its horrifying climax. Nor had he needed to do more than give the occasional prompt. A remark of his mother’s lodged in his memory; she’d once told him that all women love men to listen to them, really listen to them — because it doesn’t happen often enough. For a long time he’d assumed it was a sideswipe at his father, but in time he’d concluded she might just be right.

Yet he didn’t believe that Hannah would disclose so much merely because he was willing to pay attention. She trusted him to be discreet and he found that flattering, even if he did owe it to the trust she’d had in his father. And, maybe, she enjoyed his company nearly as much as he relished hers. When he’d heard the rifle shot that ended the siege, his stomach had lurched with fear. Allardyce had murdered Jean; he wouldn’t scruple at gunning down a police officer. When the news filtered through that the farmer was dead, he had to restrain himself from punching the air. It wasn’t the right reaction and it certainly wasn’t something he could confess to Hannah. He didn’t want her to misinterpret him, to jump to the conclusion that he wanted something more from her than friendship.

Savouring the last of his wine, he said, ‘That’s one thing Oxford gives you, a love of information. Of course, being a mine of facts and trivia is so much easier than being a man of action.’

‘Believe me, it’s no great shakes being a man of action.’ She sighed. ‘The poor sod who shot Allardyce has been suspended from duty. Routine procedure, but no joke. Neither was being stripped and debriefed. Now he has to wait to see whether the CPS decide to prosecute him for homicide.’

‘Surely they won’t do that?’

‘The smart money says you’re right, but with the CPS, you can never tell. The kindest thing to say is that they move in mysterious ways. The lad’s pretty traumatised, bound to be. He says he fired in self-defence, and who can blame him? Sometimes you have to make your mind up in a split second. He was afraid that Allardyce was going to kill him. Section Three of the Criminal Law Act says that’s a good defence. Even so, you wouldn’t want your whole career to depend on it. That’s the trouble with the laws in this bloody country. Everything’s weighted in favour of the wrongdoer and against the ordinary decent guy just trying to do his job.’

‘You sound like my father. That’s the sort of thing he used to say.’

She bit her lip. ‘Sorry. You think I’m ranting.’

‘Don’t apologise. We’re all allowed a rant every now and then. I can see why you and he got along, that’s what I’m saying.’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘We got along pretty well. I only wish you’d had a chance to get to know him properly.’

‘Thanks to you, I have a clearer picture of what he was like.’

She let a bustling waiter clear their plates and take an order for coffee before saying, ‘And what do you see in the picture?’

‘A mass of contradictions.’

‘Same as the rest of us, then?’

He laughed. ‘Let me try again. No villain could ever bully him, but he let Cheryl twist him round her little finger. He was a highly disciplined officer who kept getting the wrong side of his superiors. An emotional man who bottled things up and never let his feelings show. A rationalist who relaxed by performing magic tricks.’

She smiled. ‘He never did tell me how he managed to transform one playing card into another, however many times I pleaded to be let into the secret. An awkward cuss, that was your dad. And a true friend, a man you could rely on.’

Daniel folded his napkin; much easier than ordering his thoughts. ‘Despite the fact he betrayed his wife and abandoned his family?’

‘I told you. He was racked with guilt, but as for moving away, his take on it was that he sacrificed what he wanted for the good of you and your sister.’

‘Yeah, I still can’t get my head around that.’

‘I’m not pretending it was the shrewdest judgement of all time. He made mistakes, like the rest of us. Picking Cheryl to run off with wasn’t exactly a stroke of genius. Without wishing to be bitchy, he could have done better.’

‘Where Cheryl is concerned,’ he said with a grin, ‘anyone’s allowed to be bitchy.’

‘I suppose she loved him, at least to begin with. But by falling for her, he gave up so much. Your mother wanted him out of her life completely. Gone, finished, never to return. He hated that, but he was terrified that a battle royal would wreck your life and your sister’s. I saw him face danger, many times, and he never flinched, but he wouldn’t put his kids through any more pain. He said you had a wonderful mother, he admired her strength of character. She was more than a match for him. He was only sorry he’d been such a lousy dad.’

At the table next to theirs, a family birthday party was in full voice. Amidst much merriment, a white-haired great-grandmother was flapping leathery hands and pretending to be embarrassed as whooping children urged her to blow out the candles on a huge cake.

Daniel grunted. ‘He should have fought harder.’

‘Maybe, but I can promise you this. If he gave up too easily, it wasn’t for lack of guts.’

‘Come to that, if he’d fought harder with his bosses, maybe the truth about Allardyce would have come out at the time.’

Hannah paused as the old lady’s candles were extinguished with a little help from the younger generation and a couple of waiters led a raucous serenade of ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

‘He did his best,’ she said. ‘Don’t they say that politics is the art of the possible? Well, it’s the same with police work.’

‘His best wasn’t good enough, was it? Sure, Barrie’s death was a lucky break for Allardyce, but if Jean had been interrogated more intensively, she might have admitted that the alibi she gave him was false. How could she bear to keep on sleeping with a man she knew was a murderer?’

‘Women,’ Hannah said softly, ‘will put up with a lot. More, very often, than can possibly make sense.’

‘I still can’t help wondering…’

‘Don’t wonder,’ she said. ‘It’s not a recipe for contentment.’

He wanted to argue, but something in her voice made him hold his tongue. Needing to cool down, he loosened his collar. Candle-light reflected in her eyes as she traced a finger around the rim of her glass.

‘You were complaining earlier on that you couldn’t figure out certain things about the murder,’ she said. ‘Why Allardyce left his wife’s body in the dipper, for instance, instead of burying it out of harm’s way up in the fells before it was found.’

‘He knew you were asking questions about Jean’s whereabouts, but the cover he put on the dipping tank was never going to fool anything but the most casual inspection. Are you suggesting that subconsciously he wanted the corpse to be discovered, that he realised he was losing it?’

‘God knows, Daniel. How do you read the mind of a man like that, even supposing you want to? Your father used to say that a police officer’s case-bag is packed with strange things. Unexplained mysteries, all kinds of…unfinished business.’ She lingered over the last phrase. ‘People talk about life’s rich tapestry, but it’s not always crafted in elaborate satisfying detail. Pieces go missing, odd bits of the pattern seem out of place.’

‘History is like that too. It can’t be wrong to work at making the patterns fit.’

‘Not so long as you don’t treat detective work as a guessing game or a lottery. To make a charge stick, you need evidence strong enough to convince the court.’

‘Which doesn’t arise here. The accused is dead. Like Barrie Gilpin.’

‘Listen,’ she said as the cappuccinos were served. ‘We didn’t want Tom Allardyce to die. No one did. He brought it on himself. He knew exactly what he was doing when he provoked that AFO to shoot him, believe me. But even if we’d brought him to trial, secured the convictions, the odds are that we wouldn’t find out everything. Think of Fred West and Harold Shipman.’

‘Sure, but why not at least try to make sense of the fragments you don’t understand?’

She lapped the chocolate topping off her drink and gave her mouth a quick wipe. ‘History’s one thing. Nobody’s going to make too much fuss if you guess wrong about whether Queen Victoria ever dropped her knickers for John Brown. Murder cases change lives forever. We trespass enough into private grief when we focus on what the courts need to know. It’s impossible to do more.’

Stung, he said, ‘History matters more than you think. There’s a saying in the States that says history is fiction with the truth left out. Not entirely unfair, but to my mind history is all about searching for the truth. Like police work, or so I assumed.’

‘It seems to me,’ she said calmly, ‘that you have a secret yearning to be a detective. My sergeant thinks so too. Trust me, it’s not as much fun as you may think.’

He swallowed some coffee. It was scalding, but he scarcely noticed. ‘Sorry if you think I’m naive.’

She reached across the table and brushed the tips of his fingers. Her touch was warm, but he didn’t respond and she put her hand back on her lap. ‘Hey,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t be cross with me, Daniel. I do understand. Your dad was a hero and then he let you down. Of course you’re bound to be fascinated by the work he did.’

‘No psychiatric analysis, please,’ he said. ‘I get enough of that at home when Miranda combs through the horoscopes.’

‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘This has been a lovely evening and I don’t want to spoil it with some pointless argument. Yes, history’s important, and so is finding out about your father. All I’m saying is that it isn’t a good idea to worry away at problems that don’t have answers.’

‘I don’t agree,’ he said, signalling for the bill. ‘It’s the only way we ever achieve anything.’

‘How did it go?’ Miranda asked when he joined her in bed at midnight. He could still smell the fresh paint.

‘All right.’

Her body wriggled against him. ‘I finished the article.’

‘Terrific.’

‘Guess what? Suki, the editor, emailed me to suggest lunch next time I’m down in London. If I move quickly, there could be a chance of a regular half-page. You know, confessions of a city girl who’s found herself plonked down in the countryside without a pair of green wellies to her name.’

‘You make it sound as though I dragged you here kicking and screaming.’

She poked him in the ribs. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of poetic licence. I rather fancy writing a funny column. Misadventures in the middle of nowhere, something for readers to chuckle over while they sit under the hair dryer. There can be something very po-faced about beauty tips, aerobic exercises, and feng shui. Anyway, I’ll see what she says.’

‘So you’ll take her up on the lunch?’

‘Why not? I only need be away one night, two at most. I might look up one or two people whilst I’m down there. And I happen to know that Suki likes to lunch lavishly, so I’m hoping for something swish and champagne-laden in Chelsea. What was your pizzeria like?’

Absurdly, he felt defensive, as if she’d impugned the quality of restaurants the length and breadth of Cumbria. ‘It was fine. And it wasn’t simply a pizzeria.’

Her breasts were pressing into him, her legs were rubbing against his. Finishing an article always gave her a high and he knew she’d want to celebrate by making love. But he wasn’t in the mood.

‘So,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘you were adventurous enough to go for a Michelin-quality lasagne, then? Don’t deny it, I can smell the garlic. Not that you’ve quite managed to put me off, though. You lucky, lucky man.’

He felt her hair on his cheeks as he kissed her gently on the lips. ‘Eddie’s here early tomorrow, we need to get to sleep.’

‘Don’t think you’re getting off that lightly. Not when you’ve spent the entire evening with another woman. Is she gorgeous, by the way?’

‘She’s a police officer.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

Her hands began to roam as he said, ‘She told me a lot about my father that I didn’t know. And plenty about what happened to Tom Allardyce. But she obviously believes that history is bunk.’

Miranda giggled. ‘She’s out of date. Julian Barnes says that it’s burps. We keep tasting the onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.’

He spent much of the next day in the garden, scything down brambles. Left to spread unchecked, they would choke the begonias that he’d planted to add a splash of colour while he weighed up the garden’s long-term potential. It was the sort of job apt to induce myocardial infarction in the fittest, but at least it offered the reward of fast and visible progress. The lavender bushes filled the soft air with their scent, every now and then a squirrel scuttled up and down a tree and made the leaves rustle. The tarn was still and the heron invisible, but in the distance he could hear the tumbling waters of Brack Force.

In mid-afternoon, Miranda returned from an expedition to Tasker’s and they sat on the paved area, eating Magnum ice creams. She was agog with the news that Simon Dumelow was seriously ill with a brain tumour. According to rumour, he only had days to live.

‘Hannah Scarlett told me he was sick,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t know…’

‘He looked so fit when we went to dinner there. But remember when he stumbled on the stairs? I suppose it was a symptom and we never dreamed…’

He said slowly, ‘We talked about escapism.’

‘That’s right. Winter Holiday and all that.’

‘Yes.’ He remembered Tash blushing as they shared memories of the children’s book. Out of nowhere, a thought slapped him. ‘You’re right, she did understand.’

Tash Dumelow had aged ten years in the week since their encounter in Tarn Fold. She answered the door herself in T-shirt, denim jeans and trainers. Her pasty complexion had become a make-up free zone and the red-rimmed eyes were dull and expressionless. Daniel thought she’d put on weight. He could smell gin on her breath.

‘Hello, Daniel,’ she said hoarsely.

His throat was dry and he was wishing he’d prepared a script. Too late now. All the way over here, a voice in his head had nagged like a termagant.

You should be ashamed of yourself. The woman is grieving and you’re making a terrible mistake. Why didn’t you wait and think this through, instead of letting yourself be bowled along by excitement? What will you say if you are proved wrong? You’re ruining everything, not just for you but for Miranda as well. Why didn’t you listen to Hannah and mind your own business?

‘I — we were sorry to hear the news about Simon.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Not good, is it? The nurse is with him now.’

He coughed and shifted from one foot to another. ‘I don’t want to intrude…’

It was a lie; he’d driven over here precisely because he was determined to intrude. But he didn’t know what else to say. If she said she wasn’t up to talking or slammed the door in his face, he didn’t have a Plan B. He would have to go away and decide whether he dared share with anyone the idea that had leapt unbidden into his mind. It was a credible idea, it made his spine tingle just like the comparison between nineteenth-century historians and Sherlock Holmes that had become the springboard for the book and then his television series. But as Hannah Scarlett said, there was a world of difference between academic theorising and building a case on the granite of evidence.

‘You must excuse me,’ Tash said. ‘I’ve forgotten my manners. What are you doing out on the doorstep? Come in for a few minutes. The nurse will be a while yet.’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you at a time like this,’ he said, following her along the hallway. Their footsteps echoed on the floorboards. ‘It must be very difficult for you.’

‘It’s outside my experience,’ she said, not looking over her shoulder. ‘The man I love is dying and I’m being forced to watch.’

Brackdale folk had never understood the Dumelows’ relationship, he told himself. Glib and easy resentment of a glamorous trophy wife missed the point. So did envy of the rich man who’d dumped his childhood sweetheart for a younger, prettier model. For once the truth was tinged with fairytale romance. This couple really were truly, madly, deeply in love with each other. But it wasn’t a fairytale with a happy ending.

‘Would you like a drop of something?’ she asked as they entered the living room. A half-empty bottle of Gordon’s stood on a silver tray next to a solitary glass.

And Tash herself, people had never understood her. The snide remarks that they exchanged behind their hands were ludicrously mistaken. This woman wasn’t a city sophisticate who regarded slumming it in the valley as the price to be paid for a cushy lifestyle. Look at the watercolours that covered the walls, the shimmering dawns and the purple sunsets, the blue meres and the mist-fringed mountains. They weren’t masterpieces, but they were painted from the heart. She was infatuated with Lakeland, still crazy after all these years. Brackdale was her special place, a private refuge, an oasis of safety.

‘No?’ She nodded at one of the vast leather armchairs. ‘Do take a seat. You won’t mind if I pour myself another?’

‘Of course not.’

Lifting the bottle, she said, ‘I know I’ve had enough. Too many, in fact, but who’s counting? This is the best anaesthetic I know. Kind of you to call by.’

‘I’ll be honest with you, Tash.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I came to ask a couple of questions.’

Until this moment, she’d seemed dazed. Dazed by the drink and the fate of the man who was dying in this house. But something in his tone seemed to slap her into watchfulness.

‘Questions?’

The warning voice whispered in his brain: You’re going to regret this. Keep quiet, make your apologies and leave her to weep. There is still time.

‘As a matter of fact, when I was a student, I spent a few months learning Russian, just for fun.’

‘And?’

The longcase clock was ticking in the background. He focused on Tash’s white face, so beautifully structured. Cheekbones to die for. They were so high; a Slavic inheritance, he’d assumed.

‘There was a proverb I came across. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.’ He took a deep breath. If only his translation skills weren’t so rusty. ‘It goes something like this. Skazhi s kem ty drug, a ya skazhu kto ty takov.’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m way out of practice.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Your native tongue?’

‘It’s a mistake to live in the past,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘I think of myself as English now.’

‘Yes, that’s one thing everyone admires. The way you’ve assimilated yourself into the English way of life. You speak the language like a native, no one would ever imagine that you came from Russia. The proverb, by the way, means Tell me who your friend is and I’ll tell you who you are.’

She sipped at her drink, watching him in the way a zoo keeper might watch a tiger with a reputation for unpredictability.

‘In case you needed a translation,’ he said. ‘Some things cling on in the memory more than others, don’t they? Like the stories we enjoyed as children.’

It must have been his imagination, but the clock was getting louder. Tick, tick, tick.

‘Sorry, Daniel,’ she said coldly. ‘It must be me. Perhaps I’ve had a drop too much, maybe it’s all the — stuff that’s been going on lately. My head’s throbbing and I’m afraid you’re not making it any better.’

He stood up. They were a yard apart, facing each other. ‘You reminded Miranda of the name of the character in a book by Arthur Ransome, didn’t you? A girl called Dorothea.’

‘Sorry?’ Her face was a mask and he guessed she was trying to freeze-frame the conversation in her mind and identify what exactly she might have said.

Tick, tick, tick.

‘You both identified with the escapism in the story. But what matters is that you were familiar with the name.’

Tash spread her arms. ‘I must have come across it somewhere.’

‘Not as a child in Russia, though. My sister was devoted to those books, she couldn’t get enough of the fun and games with Captain Flint, even though it was a fantasy world. Totally different from life at the local comprehensive. Mind you, Arthur Ransome was married to Trotsky’s secretary, wasn’t he? One of my favourite bits of Lakeland literary trivia.’

She stared at him. ‘You’re not talking sense.’

‘It comes down to this. I can’t believe that when you were a kid, Swallows and Amazons and Winter Holiday were recommended reading for Moscow schoolgirls. But — maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe you read Ransome after you came to England.’

‘Maybe I did. What are you talking about, for God’s sake? I invite you in as a friend and now you are practically persecuting me.’

The voice hissed: This is your last chance. Stop now.

But an almost sexual exhilaration was blazing within him and he knew he could not let go. No stopping now, he was past reason. Like when he and Miranda stripped off inhibitions along with their clothes and made love to each other that first time in Tarn Fold. Had his father felt this hot excitement, when he closed in the solution to a case? At last he knew why detecting crime had meant so much to Ben Kind. It kidnapped you, this burning urge to rip away all the wrappers and reveal the truth. It consumed you, it was everything.

Tash’s hands were on her hips. Inside, for all he knew she was breaking apart, but her lips were pressed together in a defiant line. He’d never seen eyes so cold and empty. She would not yield.

He took a step towards her. With each bit of flotsam, each snippet of information swimming into his mind, he could feel himself gaining strength. The strength he needed to confront her with the truth.

You’d never imagine she was a foreigner.

He turned the King of Diamonds into the Ace of Spades.

Tell me who your friend is and I’ll tell you who you are.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

‘So Eldine Webber was the first?’ he asked.

‘Eldine Webber?’ Her voice broke. No mistaking her alarm.

She was playing for time, he could see it in her eyes. Making calculations. How much did he know, how much was guesswork?

‘Surely you haven’t forgotten him?’

‘He was — he was a friend of Gabrielle’s.’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘And Gabrielle killed him, didn’t she?’

Her face was ashen. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Gabrielle killed Eldine Webber. And you know that better than anyone, don’t you? You never were Natasha. You were always Gabrielle Anders.’