Martin Edwards - The Frozen Shroud

‘Everyone here resists any suggestion that Craig Meek wasn’t responsible.’

‘Can you blame them? Raking over the ashes when the people concerned are dead and buried is one thing. Very different when everyone involved is still around. Nobody likes having their lives put under the microscope. All over again, years after the case was officially closed? Nightmare.’

A fresh gust coming in from the lake rippled the branches. ‘I’ll talk to Hannah about Shenagh, and see if she’s interested in looking into the evidence.’

‘Good plan.’ He didn’t need to look at his sister to picture the told-you-so smile.

‘Pity Robin Park was out of action. I wanted to say hello.’

‘What’s your ulterior motive?’

She knew him too well. ‘He may not have met Dorothy Hodgkinson or Roland Jones, but he might tell me more about her than I prised out of his mum.’

Raucous laughter tore through the silence. Terri Poynton’s hilarity was noisy and distinctive as she enjoyed one of her own jokes. Could Terri make a go of her relationship with Robin Park? Hannah, Daniel knew, despaired of her friend’s judgement of men, though after Marc’s betrayal of her, she was in no position to talk.

‘Is this the place?’

Louise clutched at her brother’s sleeve. They’d passed Miriam’s cottage, but Quin and Jeffrey had halted where the road crossed the lane running from one side of the promontory to the other. Hodgkinson planned this as the hub of the development. An empty house stood at one corner, and a shop-cum-post-office was to have been built on another, but all that remained were a few foundations, hidden from view by clumps of stinging nettles and a patch of gorse.

‘Gertrude’s body was lying under the trees, on the other side of the beck,’ Jeffrey panted. ‘No sign of her on the move tonight, alas! Not so much as the flicker of a shroud.’

Louise shone her torch around, as Terri and Miriam joined them. The beck ran roughly in parallel with the road for a short distance, before veering off towards the lake. Two women had died near here. Daniel could hardly bear to picture their final moments. Had they recognised their assailants, had they realised they were about to die at the hands of someone they knew — perhaps someone they had once loved?

And was that someone necessarily the obvious suspect?

‘Woo! Woo!’ Terri was loving the occasion. Her eyes were glassy, her gait unsteady. ‘C’mon, Faceless Woman, let’s be having you! We haven’t got all night!’

Daniel visualised Jeffrey’s sketch map. ‘So Fell View is down there, on the other limb of Water Lane?’

‘Beyond the trees, that’s right,’ Jeffrey said. ‘Although Gertrude’s body was left close to the roadside, this is a pretty safe place to commit a murder. Not overlooked by any of the houses, and at this time of night, no danger of passing traffic.’

The Knights joined them, Melody trudging behind her husband. She looked weary and cold. The rain had swelled the beck and they could hear the rush of water in the distance.

‘Don’t tell me Gertrude is skiving off tonight?’ Oz called. ‘No Faceless Woman? Dear me, how disappointing.’

‘Shockingly remiss of you as a host, old chap,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I expected you to put on a bit of a show for us.’

Oz’s perfect teeth glinted in the torchlight. ‘Absolutely. You all deserved a special treat, and I’ve let you down.’

‘What about Shenagh Moss?’ Daniel asked. ‘Where was her body found?’

‘You seem terribly interested in Shenagh,’ Quin said. ‘Any particular reason?’

‘Both cases fascinate me. Two women, their faces destroyed, then shrouded, on Hallowe’en.’

‘Craig Meek must have lacked imagination,’ Terri scoffed.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Miriam muttered. ‘This Stefan of yours, he’s no different. Men like that are a menace to decent folk.’

The wind was gathering strength, and in the moonlight Daniel saw branches dancing in the dark. Melody seemed lost in her own thoughts. Her husband waved towards the woodland.

‘A network of paths lead from the road to the shore. Shenagh used to walk their dog all around. Francis found her, two minutes from here. Does that answer your question?’

‘Thanks.’

Miriam stifled a yawn. ‘I’m about done in. Terri, do you mind if I come back with you for a minute to make sure Robin is all right?’

‘Course not. I’ll walk you back home, make sure you aren’t accosted by any old ghost.’ The Black Widow linked arms with the old witch. ‘Goodnight, all! Oz, Melody, thanks a million, it’s been fantastic. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Robin will be gutted he couldn’t make it.’

She’d given the signal for the party to break up. Assorted ghouls kissed and hugged, before Daniel and Louise followed Jeffrey and Quin up the road towards Watendlath.

As they trudged off into the night, they heard Terri’s voice, ripping up the silence.

‘Woo! Woo!’ she cried. ‘Woo! Woo!’

And then she dissolved into helpless, boozy laughter.

Hannah had a phobia about hospitals, dating back to her childhood. It was a dread she’d kept to herself; she’d never shared it with Marc, not even in their earliest, happiest days together. Did that show she’d never really trusted him? It didn’t matter now, anyway.

At the age of thirteen, she’d been rushed in for an emergency operation to remove her appendix, an experience more frightening than any of her adult encounters with sociopaths armed with knife, gun, or — a few months earlier — scythe. She’d never forget the heart-pounding fear of being slit open, the dizzying terror of never being whole again. To this day, the squeak of hospital trolleys on tiled floors set her teeth on edge, and the smell of antiseptic made her gorge rise. She’d spent her adult life making excuses to avoid visiting hospitals unless there was no choice. But today she had no choice. She had no hope of getting any rest until she found out how Marc was. After waking from her nightmare, she’d found it impossible to get back to sleep. She needed to know.

As she put herself through the purgatory of an ice-cold shower, she remembered where she’d seen the strange church of her dream. On a wall in Tarn Cottage. Daniel had hung a watercolour that fascinated her. A Jericho, Oxford, street scene; he said he’d lived there as a student, and the exotic architecture of St Barnabas had fascinated him. She’d never given the image another thought, and yet it had lodged in her subconscious.

As she drove through the drizzle along the winding road to Kendal, she focused on psyching herself up for whatever lay ahead. By the time she strode into A amp;E, she was ready to cope with anything. Even the suffocating claustrophobia that the labyrinth of corridors induced in her. And yes, even big hospital bureaucracy. For all its virtues, the NHS, like the police, and probably any large organisation, allowed systems and process to get in the way of talking to people.

This morning, she had become an irresistible force. Token efforts to fob her off until visiting hours made no more impression than a kid’s catapult on a Chieftain tank. Within ten minutes of her arrival, steely determination, coupled with the ruthless deployment of her warrant card, earned an audience with a calm and caring young Asian doctor.

‘I’m afraid Marc isn’t a pretty sight at the moment, DCI Scarlett. You can imagine, after such a terrible accident. He’s …’

‘What’s the damage?’ She breathed in. This felt like trying to hold off an avalanche, an avalanche of emotion. A picture flitted through her head of the cool, collected woman she’d once imagined herself to be. Just another figment of her imagination.