Peter Robinson - Cold Is The Grave

Scarlea House loomed ahead, a huge, dark Gothic limestone pile. None of the windows seemed to have any curtains. It stood on a slight rise at the end of a broad gravel drive, and in the weak light, against the backdrop of the rising, dull-green daleside, it looked like a vampire’s castle from an old horror film. All that was needed to complete the effect was a few flickers of lightning and the distant rumble of thunder. But when Annie pulled up outside and turned off her engine, everything was silent apart from the occasional bird call and the burbling of the River Arkbeck on its way to join the Swain along the valley bottom.

Christ, Annie, she thought, you’re about to enter one of the most upmarket shooting lodges in the Dales and just look at you; you’re a mess. She hadn’t dressed for upmarket when she climbed into her jeans and flung on a red roll-neck jumper that morning. Even less so when she picked up her denim jacket on her way out. They’ll just have to take me as they find me, she told herself, opening the heavy front door and walking over to the reception area.

The ceiling in the hall was taller than her entire cottage, and if it wasn’t quite the Sistine Chapel it was certainly ornate, complete with gilded panels and a chandelier. The walls were all dark wood wainscoting, and here and there hung overlarge oil paintings of men with bulbous noses wearing their collars too tight, faces the color and texture of rare roast beef, like Jim Hatchley’s – the kind of paintings that Ray, her father, called “optical egotism.” They paid the rent, though. If a local artist got one of those self-styled bigwigs to commission such a portrait, it would probably keep him in paint and canvas for a few years. Even Ray knew the value of that.

“Can I help you, miss?”

An elegant silver-haired man in a black suit came forward to greet her. Annie’s first impression was that he looked like a funeral-parlor worker.

“Actually,” she said, feeling a bit snotty and more than a trifle intimidated by her surroundings, “it’s not Miss, it’s Detective Sergeant Cabbot.”

“Ah, yes, Sergeant, we’ve been expecting you. My name’s Lacey. George Lacey. General Manager. Please, come this way.”

He gestured toward a door with his name on it, and when they went inside Annie saw it was a modern office, complete with fax machine, computer, laser printer, the works. She would never have expected it from the old-fashioned decor, but the paying guests would be well-off businessmen, and they would demand all the modern conveniences of the electronic age as well as the primitive excitement of blood lust. And why not? They could afford it all.

Annie sat in a swivel chair and took out her notebook. “I don’t know if I can tell you any more than I told the other officer,” Lacey said, making a steeple of his hands on the desk. He had prissy sort of lips, Annie noticed, shaped in a cupid’s bow and far too red. They irritated her when he talked. She tried to keep her eyes on the knot of his regimental tie.

“I’m just here to confirm that it really was the man in the photograph who stayed here.” She laid her copy of Clough’s photo on the desk in front of him. “This man.”

Lacey nodded. “Mr. Clough. Yes. That was, indeed, him.”

“Has he been here before?”

“Mr. Clough is a frequent guest during the season.”

“Can you tell me the dates he was here?”

“Just a moment.” Lacey tapped a few keys on the computer and frowned at the screen. “He stayed here from Saturday, the fifth of December, until Thursday the tenth.”

“It’s a bit late in the year for a holiday in the Dales, isn’t it?”

“This is a shooting lodge, Sergeant. People do not come here for holidays. They come here to shoot grouse. This was the last weekend of the season and we were full to capacity.”

“What about now?”

“Not quite so busy. It comes and goes.”

“But you stay open all winter, even though the grouse season is over?”

“Oh, yes. We’re generally booked up over Christmas and New Year, of course. The rest of the time it’s… well, quieter, though we get a number of foreign guests. Our restaurant has an international reputation. One often has to make dinner reservations weeks in advance.”

“It must be an expensive operation to run.”

“Quite.” Lacey looked at her as if the mere mention of money were vulgar.

“Was Mr. Clough alone while he was here?”

“Mr. Clough, as usual, came with his personal assistant and a small group of colleagues. The season is very much a social event.”

“His personal assistant?”

“A Mr. Gilbert. Jamie Gilbert.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” Banks had told her, when she had forced his confession about the lunch with Emily, that Emily had imagined she saw Jamie Gilbert in Eastvale the Monday of the week she died. Maybe she hadn’t imagined it after all. It was also interesting that Clough had arrived in Yorkshire only a day or two before Charlie Courage’s murder and left the day of Emily’s, which meant that he had certainly been in a position to supply her with the strychnine-laced cocaine.

“Do you know what time Mr. Clough left on the tenth?” she asked.

“Not exactly. Usually our guests depart after breakfast. I’d say between nine and ten o’clock, perhaps.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about his stay, his comings and goings?”

“I’m afraid not. I am not employed to spy on our guests.”

“Is there anyone who might be able to tell me?”

Lacey looked at his watch and curled his lip. “Mr. Ferguson, perhaps. He’s the bartender. As such, he spends far more time close to the guests in social situations. He might be able to tell you more.”

“Okay,” said Annie. “Where is he?”

“He won’t be in until later this afternoon. Around five o’clock. If you’d care to come back then…?”

“Fine.” Annie thought of asking for Ferguson’s home address and calling on him there, but decided she could wait. Banks was at lunch with someone from Trading Standards, and Annie knew that he would want to be here if she took this line of inquiry any further. She could phone him on her mobile and arrange to meet back at Scarlea at five. In the meantime she would head out to Barnard Castle and investigate a reported sighting of Emily Riddle there the afternoon before she died.

The news about Clough was exciting, though. It was the only positive lead they had on him since Gregory Manners’s fingerprints on the CD case linked him to PKF, and it was the first real lead they’d had linking Clough with Yorkshire and catching him out in a lie. Yes, Banks would certainly want to be in on this.

Banks had first met Granville Baird two years ago, when North Yorkshire Trading Standards had asked for police assistance after one of their investigators had been threatened with violence. Since then, they had worked together when their duties overlapped and had even met socially now and then for a game of darts in the Queen’s Arms. They weren’t close friends, but they were about the same age, and Granville, like Banks, was a jazz fan and a keen operagoer.

They chatted about Opera North’s season for a while, then, jumbo Yorkshire pudding on order and a pint of Theakston’s bitter in front of him, the buzz of lunchtime conversation all around, Banks lit a cigarette and asked Granville, “Know anything about pirating compact discs?”

Granville raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re in the market for something? The ‘Ring’ cycle, perhaps?”

“No. Though now you come to mention it, I wouldn’t mind the complete Duke Ellington centenary set, all twenty-four, if you can run some off for me.”

“Wish I could afford it. Does this mean that the police are actually looking at doing something about pirating at last?”