Martin Edwards: The Serpent Pool

His failure to return her calls was eating into her nerves. At first she’d assumed his silence was payback following their row. Now her anxieties were growing like bindweed. He fancied Cassie, and she wouldn’t put it past him to try his luck with her. If Cassie got a thrill out of provoking Arlo Denstone into jealous crimes of vengeance, she might encourage Marc’s advances.

Why didn’t he answer?

‘Everything all right, ma’am?’

Greg Wharf had come up behind her. On his way to see the chairman of the Culture Company and check out Arlo Denstone’s background.

‘Fine,’ she muttered. ‘Fine.’

Talking the case through with him had helped sort it out in her mind, but she wasn’t in the mood to confide her anxieties. He’d interpret it as a sign of weakness.

A sceptical glint lit his blue eyes. ‘If I can help, ma’am, let me know.’

‘Thanks, Greg.’ She forced a weary smile. ‘And…the name’s Hannah.’

Phoning Mrs Amos was a last resort. Right or wrong, the old lady always took her son’s side. Hannah didn’t blame her, perhaps she would understand better if ever she had a child of her own. But did a mother have to be so blinkered? Rather like Daphne giving birth late on to Bethany, Mrs Amos had had Marc at an age when she’d never expected another baby. It helped to explain why she spoilt him rotten.

Negotiating the conversation was a test of her powers of tact and diplomacy. At first Mrs Amos made it plain there was nothing for them to discuss, and that she had no intention of disclosing Marc’s whereabouts. She might not know the details, but she was clear that Hannah had blown the relationship apart, and it didn’t come as a huge surprise. Police work wasn’t a suitable job for a woman.

‘There’s a serious problem, it’s connected with the shop,’ Hannah said when she managed to get a word in.

‘What sort of problem?’

‘One of my colleagues needs to question someone who works for Marc. I wanted to give him advance warning, but he isn’t answering his phone. I’m worried something has happened to him.’

She didn’t want to be unkind, or to play on a mother’s fears for her favourite child, but needs must. She was desperate to get Mrs Amos to open up.

‘I already said, he isn’t here right now.’

‘When is he due back?’

‘He doesn’t tell me everything, you know. And he wasn’t even sure he’d be home tonight.’

Home? Hannah clenched her fist. Undercrag was his home.

‘What did he say to you?’

‘He just told me not to stay up late.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘He didn’t say, except that he wasn’t due in the shop today. Or in Sedbergh. He told me he was off to buy a collection of books. I don’t pry, you may be surprised to hear. He has his own life to lead.’

What she meant was that she didn’t pry successfully, but this wasn’t the moment to start a row. If something happened to Marc, it would shatter Glenda Amos. Hannah’s relationship with her was uneasy, but she didn’t want to see her harmed.

‘The fog is dreadful.’

‘So, they said on the radio.’

The reedy voice betrayed a note of uncertainty. Hannah hated herself for planting seeds of fear in the mind of an old woman, but it was the lesser evil.

‘I’m worried he might have had an accident. You know what these country lanes are like when visibility is so poor. Every bend a potential death trap. Have you really no idea where he was heading?’

‘He…he never said.’

‘Are you sure he went to buy books? Not to see someone else?’

‘I don’t know.’ Glenda Amos paused, and then the words started to come in a rush. ‘He spoke to someone on the phone, I heard that, though I couldn’t make out the words. I’m not as deaf as he thinks. He didn’t want me to listen in, I can say that. He went up to his room and shut the door while I cleaned downstairs. But I knew what he was up to. He’s my boy, and I can read him like one of his own precious books.’

But you never got past Chapter One .

‘He’s involved with someone else,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m aware of it, Glenda. But she’s about to cause a lot of unhappiness for him, and I’d hate that.’

‘You think he’s driven somewhere to meet her?’

‘I hope not,’ Hannah said. ‘If he has, he’s made the biggest mistake of his life.’

Ten minutes later, she was steering through the fog-wrapped Kendal streets. Fern was off to a press conference about the latest developments in the Stuart Wagg case. It was too soon to give out detailed information about their interest in Arlo and Cassie, but they could give the registration number of Cassie’s Micra. The priority was to trace the pair before they did any more damage.

Especially to Marc. Hannah wanted to believe she was overreacting. With any luck, he’d be fine, hunting mouldy books in some godforsaken attic or cellar. But in her heart, she suspected his luck had run out.

The case against their two suspects was circumstantial. Her team and Fern’s faced a huge task in assembling enough evidence to persuade the CPS to bring the couple to court. But even as she’d talked through her theory with Greg Wharf, Hannah found herself believing in it more strongly with each passing minute. Arlo and Cassie were guilty, she was certain of it. Between them, they had killed Bethany Friend, George Saffell, and Stuart Wagg.

The surging sense of success reminded her of one Good Friday years ago, after she and Marc had bought a flat-pack self-assembly cupboard over the Internet. When they opened the box, the components had seemed to bear no relationship to each other. The instructions were in Japanese, and the accompanying diagrams more inscrutable than the Beale Cipher. It had taken hours, but she still remembered their shared triumph when at last they figured out how to fit the pieces together to form something recognisable as furniture. Marc had carried her off to bed to celebrate their achievement, she remembered. They’d dumped the cupboard in a skip the day they moved into Undercrag.

What drove Cassie and Arlo on? She suspected folie a deux . Madness shared by two people, whose psychotic bond brought out their worst impulses. The key to detection was to separate the suspects, so they could be interrogated without being able to give each other mutual support. In view of her relationship with Marc, there was no way she could be involved in interviewing either Cassie or Arlo, otherwise the defence lawyers would have a field day. All she wanted to do was to find Marc, and make sure he kept away from the woman who was mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Thanks to the fog, traffic on the A591 was bumper-to-bumper, but Hannah strove for patience. Please God, this would prove a wild goose chase. But she owed it to Marc to check it out for herself.

She was on her way home to Undercrag. To make sure that her partner hadn’t taken Cassie there to commit the ultimate betrayal.

When Marc started choking on his own bile, the man tore the tape from his mouth. It hurt, and made his eyes fill with tears. He found himself spewing onto the rock beneath his feet.

‘That isn’t to allow you to talk, do you understand?’ the man said. ‘I’m not into dialogue. But I would hate you to choke on your own vomit. Too quick, too easy.’

This was Ro, had to be. But he was Arlo Denstone, the expert on Thomas De Quincey. Marc understood nothing, except that he was in danger. The man had brought him here to die.

His mouth formed a single word.

Why ?

‘I don’t believe in explanations,’ Ro said. ‘Life and death, how can they be explained? De Quincey knew what I’m aiming for. Virginia Woolf said he was transfixed by the mysterious solemnity of certain emotions. How one moment might transcend in value fifty whole years. An impassioned man, Thomas, but he got his kicks from writing, not from the things he did. A difference between us, though I swear he’d share my taste for Grand Guignol. My destiny is to make nightmares come true, the way they came true for me.’