Martin Edwards - The Serpent Pool

‘Except that he liked golf?’

‘Spot on,’ Fern chortled. ‘He used to joke that when he died, he wanted Fairway to Heaven inscribed on his coffin. Doesn’t seem so funny now. Especially when there wasn’t that much left of him to put in a coffin. Wanda’s story is that she was in no hurry to split with George.’

‘And how did he feel?’

‘Wanda says he was happy with her. She never denied him his conjugals, and that was enough to keep him funding her printing press. She decided to give the marriage until the New Year, and see how she felt then.’ Fern paused in the act of swallowing the last morsel of her breakfast. ‘Next thing she knew, he’d been burnt to more of a crisp than this streaky bacon.’

‘What about other men?’

‘She admitted to a couple of flings, but not with Doshi.’

‘Did she fling the boyfriends, or vice versa?’

‘She claimed they were old pals. One was Stuart Wagg, the other Nathan Clare.’

Hannah put down her toast. ‘I talked to Clare yesterday.’

‘A right charmer, isn’t he?’ Fern scowled. ‘Five minutes into our conversation, I found the urge to cut his balls off almost irresistible.’

‘Why did it take you so long?’

A throaty chuckle. ‘How come your path keeps crossing mine? You don’t think our cases are related?’

‘Good question.’ Hannah stood up and reached for her purse. On the other side of the room, Greg Wharf was chatting up a waitress. He treated them to a cheeky wink. ‘Let’s discuss it on our way back to the Centre of Excellence.’

Something extraordinary had happened while they were inside the Beast Banks Breakfast Bar. The sun had come out of hiding. It hung so low over Kendal’s rooftops that you’d have thought it ashamed of its long absence, but its glare was uncompromising. Hannah needed to shade her eyes as they passed the old slaughtering ground on the way to Allhallows Lane.

‘So, did Wanda kill George?’ she asked.

‘She has an alibi. At the same time the boathouse was going up in flames, she’d finished a committee meeting of the Letterpress Publishers Association in Leeds by having a shouting match with the chairman. In front of a dozen witnesses. She didn’t leave until ten to eleven, and rather than drive home, she spent the night in a hotel near the main station. Alone, as far as we can tell. She called for room service at midnight and flirted drunkenly with the waiter who brought the tray.’

‘Making sure she was noticed.’

‘Yeah, but I bet that’s how she always behaves. Quarrelling and making eyes at blokes half her age.’

‘Any chance she hired a hit man?’

‘We found no unexplained payments out of her bank or building society accounts.’

‘Don’t those guys usually insist on cash?’

‘Sure, they’re as bad as plumbers, but if she had any spare funds, she’s kept them hidden. And there’s no suggestion she knows anybody ready, willing and able to burn her husband to death. Cumbria is hardly knee-deep in contract killers. If she found someone in Manchester, Liverpool, or Leeds, she’s covered her tracks to perfection.’

‘Suppose it was an amateur job. Murder by someone without a criminal record. A friend.’

‘Not Arlo Denstone, then?’

‘If he did help her out, she behaved very ungratefully at Stuart Wagg’s party. Suppose she wanted to throw everybody off the scent. Make believe that she and Arlo are at daggers drawn, when really-’

Fern made a face. ‘I suppose it’s possible, but-’

‘There are other possibilities.’

‘You’re thinking Nathan Clare?’

‘Do you have any better ideas?’

Fern sighed. ‘I had his movements checked, and physically, it was just about doable. He spent the first part of the evening in a pub in Ambleside. After he’d finished boozing, he’s supposed to have gone home to prepare for a lecture. He can’t prove it, and it’s just about possible that he had time to jump into a car and head up to Ullswater, burn George to death and nip back home. There’s only one snag.’

‘He was pissed out of his brain?’

‘Not just that.’

‘Break it to me gently.’

‘The bad news is, Nathan can’t drive.’

Hannah halted in mid-stride. ‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. Nathan has never had a full licence. We’ve checked. He says he’s never had any interest in driving. He takes taxis if and when the need arises. Other than that, he has a touching faith in Cumbria’s public transport. The mark of a true eccentric.’

‘Not having a licence doesn’t mean you can’t drive.’

‘True. But if he got hold of a vehicle, and despite knocking back five pints managed the journey to Ullswater and back on a dark winter night, he doesn’t just deserve to get away with it, he deserves a bloody medal. It’s typical of this inquiry — wherever we turn, we end up facing a brick wall. So, tell me about your cold case.’

Hannah finished running through the edited highlights of Bethany Friend’s story as they reached Busher Walk. Half eight, time for noses to the grindstone.

‘I’ve arranged to see Wanda this afternoon,’ Hannah said.

‘You never did like delegating, did you?’

‘There has to be some compensation for working in a backwater. Besides, half my team has succumbed to this bug going round.’

‘Let me know how you get on with Wanda. Interesting that she and Nathan both knew Bethany, but two unexplained deaths, six years apart? Hard to see a connection. Bethany drowned, and George was burnt to death.’

‘In each case, suicide was left as an alternative to murder.’

‘Nothing unusual in that.’

‘There’s something else.’

‘Go on, surprise me.’

A vague idea loomed in Hannah’s mind, unrecognisable as a stranger approaching through the mist.

‘Nobody really disliked them. There was no good reason for them to be murdered.’

Louise was asleep in bed when Daniel returned to Tarn Cottage, and he spent an hour tinkering with the first chapter of The Hell Within , achieving little more than replacing a few commas with semicolons and exterminating a rogue split infinitive. That night he dreamt about the bright September afternoon when Aimee died, and his heart-stopping race through the streets of Oxford after he picked up the message she’d left on his voicemail, desperate to reach her before she jumped. The nightmare was vivid enough for him to recall the slow-motion agony of failure to save Aimee. He never dreamt about Miranda, which said it all.

When he awoke, his head felt as though someone had tightened an iron band around it. After a scalding-hot shower, he padded down to the kitchen to find Louise seated at the old pine table, cocooned in a thick white dressing gown. In front of her stood a half-full cafetiere and a mug which proclaimed I’m a pleasant person after I’ve had my caffeine fix . She was munching her way through a large bowl of cornflakes as she read a moral dilemma column in The Independent .

‘Morning! Help yourself to some coffee.’

He halted in his tracks. ‘You sound cheerful.’

She stiffened, and put her spoon down with a bang. A confrontational expression, all too familiar from her teens, spread over her face like a dark red stain.

‘You prefer doom and gloom?’

‘No, it’s just-’

‘Forget it.’ She slumped back in her chair. ‘I’m the one who should apologise. When I opened my eyes this morning, I said to myself, today’s the day when I start making changes in my life. And the moment you walk in the room, I bite your head off.’

‘Old habits die hard, I guess.’

She winced. ‘I suppose I deserved that.’