Martin Edwards - The Frozen Shroud

‘No way. One thing I can promise you, Terri had no wish to see Stefan ever again.’

‘She was a creature of impulse, wasn’t she? Robin’s illness might have given her an opportunity. Suppose Stefan rang up and persuaded her, for one last time …’

‘He can’t have called her mobile,’ Daniel objected. ‘Don’t you remember? She’d lost it earlier that day. I suppose he might have contacted her before then, but …’

‘Lost it?’ Hannah raised her eyebrows. ‘Terri loved that wretched phone, never went anywhere without it. How did she come to mislay it?’

‘No idea.’ Daniel drank some coffee. ‘She didn’t know herself. I can’t imagine he called on the landline, at the house of the man who’d taken his place. Whilst we’re debating little mysteries, why did Stefan try to imitate the previous killings?’

Hannah shrugged. ‘Trying to establish a connection with Shenagh’s death, taking himself out of the frame?’

‘Mmmmm … maybe.’

‘Look, are you suggesting that Stefan didn’t kill Terri?’

‘Historians are just as bad as prosecutors,’ he said. ‘We don’t jump to conclusions, we look for evidence.’

Hannah flinched. ‘Ouch.’

‘Hey, Daniel,’ Louise said. ‘This isn’t some university debating society, you know.’

He coloured. ‘Sorry, Hannah. This whole business is heartbreaking for you. I should have …’

‘Forget it,’ Hannah said. ‘It does Terri no favours if the wrong man is accused of killing her. I just can’t believe Stefan is innocent. She was genuinely frightened by him, and Terri didn’t scare easily.’

‘What if,’ Daniel said, ‘someone in Ravenbank took advantage of that, to pin the blame for the murder on an outsider?’

His question echoed in Hannah’s head on the journey up the motorway to Carlisle. She liked his reluctance to settle for easy answers. Long before they’d met, she’d heard enough about him from Ben to be intrigued. She couldn’t imagine lecturing to large audiences, or making a name for herself on TV, but Daniel took it all in his stride. In person, his quiet self-assurance was daunting. She could never match it. Ben used to berate her for underestimating herself, told her it was simply a matter of having belief.

Whatever. One thing she did believe was that Terri, her own worst enemy, had allowed the unspeakable Stefan to take revenge for her desertion. He was selfish enough to believe that if he couldn’t have the woman he wanted, nobody else could.

When she reached Carlisle, Fern was waiting for her. They found a cubbyhole near a vending machine, and Fern gulped down a black coffee before making inroads on a Mars bar. The rings beneath her eyes testified to a night with little sleep. Like most detectives leading a murder inquiry, she was fuelled by adrenaline and junk food.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ she demanded.

‘I’m in the mood for good news, to be honest.’

‘He’s instructed Dizzy Gillespie to act for him.’

At last, a stroke of luck. The dead jazz trumpeter himself would make a more formidable adversary. Gervase W. Gillespie owed his nickname less to flair for music than to a lifelong love of alcohol matched by his lack of ability to cope with it. Rumour had it that he’d never learnt to drive, on the basis that he realised he’d never keep his licence, so he travelled everywhere by taxi. He was a sole practitioner, mainly because nobody had ever wanted to take him into partnership, and ran a tiny office above a fishmonger’s in Keswick. He earned a crust in the criminal and divorce courts of Cumbria, taking the cases that didn’t offer enough profit to bigger firms. Somehow he’d managed to avoid being struck off the roll of solicitors; the word was that the Law Society thought that keeping a sad old drunk in business demonstrated their commitment to diversity within the profession.

‘Wow, a lucky break. Has he advised Deyna to confess yet?’

‘That’s the bad news I mentioned. The man is sticking to his story like glue. At first, we thought we were quids in, when Dizzy said he was happy for his client to answer our questions, not hide behind a wall of no-comments. But Stefan is fighting tooth and nail.’

‘What does he have to say for himself?’

‘Maintains he’s the victim of a mysterious conspiracy, would you believe?’

‘Does he deny stalking Terri?’

‘He admits they had issues. He’s latched on to the phrase “unfinished business”, claims that’s why he kept pestering her.’

‘And stealing her cat?’

‘He’s coughed to that, and to sending Terri the decapitation photo. Said he did it to teach her a lesson. Reckons she wasn’t into pets, and didn’t take good care of Morrissey. He found Morrissey roaming around when he called at Terri’s, so he took it home. Never meant to harm the creature, on the contrary. He sent the photo as a kind of rebuke. I gather the cat’s well nourished, and he’s done his best to look after it.’

‘A candidate for sainthood, eh? What about the murder?’

‘He claims Terri texted him and said she was willing to meet.’

‘Lying toad.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Fern finished her Mars bar and bought another. ‘It’s not quite as ridiculous as you may think.’

‘Have you seen the text?’

‘Nah, he deleted it.’

‘Surprise, surprise. What did it say — allegedly?’

‘He says she offered to meet him at Ravenbank at two in the morning.’

‘And he believed that? Jesus, he must think we’re soft.’

Fern crushed the chocolate wrappers in her hand. ‘His story is, he was desperate to see her again. He’d bombarded her with calls, and never had a response.’

‘A rendezvous in the small hours on a freezing autumn night, in the middle of nowhere?’ Hannah shook her head. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘He didn’t see it that way. She was with another bloke, it might be difficult to get away from him to see her ex. He thought she was going to sneak out while Park was snoring.’

‘Bollocks. Why should she?’

‘His wasn’t to reason why. When she changed her mind about seeing him, out of the blue, he didn’t ask questions, just grabbed his chance.’

Hannah groaned. ‘All right, then what?’

‘His story is that she asked to meet him at Ravenbank Corner, where two lanes cross.’

‘How far is that from Park’s house?’

‘Three hundred yards at most. You can’t see Fell View from there, because the lane bends. The Corner is overlooked by one house, but it’s empty at present.’

‘How many houses are there in Ravenbank?’

‘Six in total, but two haven’t been occupied for some time. Stefan says he showed up in good time, half an hour early, but there was no sign of Terri.’

‘I can’t believe he expects us to fall for this crap.’

‘According to him,’ Fern said, eyes fixed on a patch of damp on the wall, ‘he became restless, and decided to wander up the lane, to see if he could spot her. He’d never been to Ravenbank in his life, and he thought he might have misunderstood what she’d said about where to meet.’

‘And then he conveniently stumbles on her dead body?’

‘Pretty much. He followed the course of the beck, and a few minutes later he found her. She was lying in a dip in the ground, with a blanket over her face. He says he recognised her shoes, but he lifted the blanket to make sure. And saw that someone had bashed her face in.’

‘What about the murder weapon?’

‘Says he didn’t see anything that might have inflicted the damage. He dropped the blanket back on her face — and legged it. Close to where his car was parked, he threw up.’

‘We’re looking to find where the blanket came from?’