Martin Edwards - The Hanging Wood

High in the sky, a gaudy yellow-and-red kite caught their attention, and they watched it gust along before starting a jittery descent towards Derwent Water.

‘Not Aslan Sheikh, by any chance?’

‘You know him?’

‘I know the name. We haven’t interviewed him yet, but he’s top of the list for Monday.’

‘Good plan.’ In front of them lay the slate and roughcast stone exterior of the Theatre by the Lake, blending in with the landscape so that it looked as though it had been part of the scenery for ever, not for just ten years. A poster advertised What the Butler Saw . Daniel couldn’t resist the temptation to ham up the suspense. Lowering his voice, he said, ‘But … do you know his real identity?’

The park and the paths around it were busy. Elderly couples reminiscing, children squealing, mothers scolding. A gull wheeled overhead, a couple of geese honked messages to each other. Hannah took no notice, eyes widening as she concentrated on him, pupils dilating, lips slightly parted. He felt a thrill of excitement, knowing he had something she wanted badly, even if it was only gossip that he’d gleaned from a drunken girl at a dinner party.

‘Tell me,’ she breathed.

The window of Aslan’s poky bedsit looked out to the steep and sweeping curves of the saddleback mountain. The view was the only good thing about the place, the reason he’d decided to rent it. That, and the fact he could afford nothing better.

He wanted money; he was pissed off with years of living hand to mouth. It shouldn’t be necessary. Not for a kid of his class.

Shame about Orla, but her death wasn’t his fault. He’d wanted her to give him an insight into the Hinds family, it was part of his plan to survey the ground before approaching his father with the truth. He hadn’t checked how the inheritance laws worked, but surely one day he’d be entitled to a stake in the farm at Lane End? What he hadn’t bargained for was Orla deciding that he was Callum, because he’d adopted a Turkish name that happened to feature in a story his mother had read him when he was young. He’d never have guessed that his half-brother loved C.S. Lewis. Orla was so distraught when she found out he wasn’t Callum that he’d not wanted to admit that there was a blood tie between them, until he was clear how she would take the news. With hindsight, he should have come clean. If she knew she had a half-brother, she might not have jumped into the grain. Better sweep the thought to one side. The roses had been an impulsive acknowledgement of the half-brother he’d never known; he wasn’t even sure why he’d made the gesture. He didn’t do sentimentality.

Anyway. The one positive he could take from this whole shitty situation was that he might never be poor again.

This encounter needed to be face-to-face, nothing else would do. Yet he couldn’t turn up out of the blue, and drop such a bombshell.

He’d found the right number.

Now he reached for his phone.

Hannah yanked a straw hat and dark glasses out of her bag as Daniel pushed off from the shore of Derwent Water. Rather than take a round trip by motor launch, they’d hired a small rowing boat for half an hour, so they could talk without being overheard. The sun shone on the surface of the water, in patterns chopped and changed by the motion of the oars. Canoes and kayaks drifted by, the motor launch was chugging back towards the jetty. He watched Hannah rubbing sun oil into her bare arms. She was gazing absently towards the wooded slopes of Friar’s Crag. Lost in thought, mulling over what he had told her.

If Aslan Sheikh was Orla’s half-brother, what bearing did it have on her death? He and Louise had tossed the question back and forth while the taxi took them home to Tarn Cottage, and he’d slept fitfully because his mind kept working overtime, but he hadn’t come close to an answer. If anyone could unravel the knots, it was Hannah.

‘Ruskin said this was one of the three most beautiful scenes in Europe,’ he said.

‘I can believe it.’ She pointed towards the fells flanking the lake. ‘Got your bearings? That’s Cat Bells to the west, Castlerigg Fell to the east. Behind you is Derwent Isle. And the biggest island, over there in the middle of the lake, is St Herbert’s, where the hermit of Derwent Water lived. One summer when I was a student, a couple of friends and I rowed out there. The plan was to stay overnight in a tent.’

‘I never knew you liked life under canvas.’

‘Once was enough. We’d had too much to drink, and the tent collapsed an hour after we landed. Before we could put it back up again, there was a violent storm, with thunder and lightning. We were scared to death as well as soaked to the skin. These days, people camp on the island for corporate team-building events. I hope they have more joy than the three of us — we were barely speaking to each other by the time we made it back to dry land. St Herbert could keep his island hermitage, as far as I was concerned. I’ve never even explored the library they named after him. Next week, I’ll put that right when I have a chat with Aslan Sheikh. Or Michael Hinds’ son, if that really is the truth of it.’

‘Purdey Madsen seemed confident of her facts. Mind you, none of the Madsens are lacking in confidence.’

‘That’s how they got to be filthy rich. I guess dinner at Mockbeggar Hall was a memorable experience?’

‘You bet. The Madsens never do things by halves, and Purdey Madsen is no exception. As if it wasn’t enough to be dragged out of the closet in front of her nearest and dearest, she dropped her bombshell about Aslan Sheikh, and made Sham spit with jealousy for good measure.’

‘Can we rewind a few weeks, to when you befriended Orla Payne?’

‘She was pleasant, rather naive, without a trace of ego or self-consciousness. Even though she wore a scarf to cover her baldness, she didn’t mind talking about her alopecia. Her enthusiasm for history, like her love of fairy tales, wasn’t sophisticated. Much of the time, she lived in a dreamworld. After she told me about her childhood, I understood why.’

‘She talked about her parents?’

‘Yes, she was close to her mother. Overawed by her father. One day when she did something to annoy him, he threw a rag doll of hers on the fire in the inglenook. Once the marriage collapsed, she stayed in her mother’s camp. The two of them had a lot in common, including the taste for booze and the mood swings. When she took Kit Payne’s name, her father was furious. I suppose he felt betrayed and let down, but she just saw the red face and heard the raised voice.’

‘He hasn’t mellowed, trust me.’

‘A dangerous man to cross — that’s how she described her own father.’

‘Sad.’ Hannah pictured the farmer’s fist, clutching the scythe. ‘Yet she was right.’

‘Callum was closer to Hinds. Not that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wasn’t cut out for farming. But he had plenty in common with his dad. Orla implied that her brother had inherited that nasty streak.’

‘Was she in awe of Callum, too?’

‘I’d say so. She made him sound smug and superior. A clever boy who exploited the age gap between them, and treated her as a lackey. Literature was the only bond between them. They both read voraciously, and their tastes ran to fantasy. Callum was into C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, she was hooked on the fairy tales.’

Hannah trailed her hand in the water. Her fingers were slim, with nails cut short and not painted. She wore no rings. ‘What did Orla tell you about Philip Hinds?’

‘She was fond of him, they both were. Callum loved to escape from home and explore the Hanging Wood, and she often went along with him. For two kids with vivid imaginations, it was the perfect playground. Especially for Callum. Orla found it spooky, she didn’t like to go in on her own. Of course, she was only a child.’