Martin Edwards - The Coffin Trail

Daniel followed the coach all the way to the village. From the back window, two beaming teenagers waved at him. One wore a Peter Rabbit T-shirt. His girlfriend’s bosom was emblazoned with a picture of Jeremy Fisher. On either side of the lane, grey-fleeced sheep gazed down at the vehicles with yawning indifference. Daniel couldn’t identify with the Herdwicks’ utter lack of curiosity, but perhaps it helped to explain their gift for survival. And he’d also been told that when they were hungry, they ate their own wool to stay alive.

Touching his brake, he stole a glance across the valley, knowing that the scene was much as it had been a hundred years before. Two hundred, three hundred, more. Brackdale might once have witnessed a murder, but at least it had escaped the plague of foot and mouth that a few years earlier had left hundreds of burnt and blackened corpses on smoke-shrouded Lakeland hillsides.

He found a space to park by the church and bought a few provisions in Tasker’s, where an elderly man and the proprietor were sharing a moan about the labyrinthine complexities of the latest traffic scheme in Kendal. Shopping done, he headed to the baker’s on the other side of the square. Godfrey’s was fast becoming a favourite haunt. The smell of bread freshly baked on the premises was as enticing as the scones that accompanied an unexpectedly adventurous selection of coffees. He was becoming addicted to a blend from Helsinki that made it easy to understand why the Finns are supposed to consume more caffeine than anyone else in the world.

‘Hello again.’

He recognised the musky perfume at the same moment as he placed the voice, then looked up from the menu to find Dale Moffat smiling at him. She was kitted out in the regulation Godfrey white blouse and black skirt. On her curvy frame the uniform had an unexpected allure.

‘I didn’t know you worked here.’

‘I only started last week and it’s just part-time. A month’s probation to see whether I can satisfy Mr Godfrey.’

She gave him a cheeky wink and he laughed as he ordered. ‘I bet you will.’

‘So you’re settling in?’

‘Fine. I guess it takes years to feel that you’re part of a place.’

‘Decades, more like. I’m not even sure I feel I belong, and I was born a stone’s throw away. Trust me, Brackdale’s stuck in a time-warp. I live on my own, same as Leigh, but I have a boy and there aren’t too many single mums around here. Trouble is, I make waves, people think I’m dangerous to know. Most of the good folk of Brack don’t approve of me, never did, even when I was a skinny teenager. My skirt was always a bit shorter than all the other girls’.’ A candid grin. ‘Some things don’t change, eh? At least I give them something to talk about.’

She bustled off and he indulged in a little people-watching. He always chose the table in the front window if it were free, so that he could see the villagers come and go. This was so different from Miranda’s favourite cafe bar in Islington, where everyone in the streets outside was constantly rushing somewhere, too busy to take in the world around them. The pub door opened and Joe Dowling came out to water hanging baskets crammed with purple, white, and yellow pansies. He was wearing a bright blue sports shirt, tight trousers and mocassins of a sort that had been in vogue a couple of years ago. A fair-haired woman with a heavy shopping bag stopped to speak to him, but he gave a lascivious grin and said something that seemed to embarrass her. Cheeks flaming, she turned on her heel and scurried away across the square.

‘That’s Tom Allardyce’s wife.’ Dale was back with the coffee and scones. ‘She and her cousin are chalk and cheese. Joe’s as bad as her husband, in his way. And he’s got the dirtiest mind of any man I’ve ever met. Which is saying something.’ She sighed. ‘Poor woman, no wonder she looks like she has the cares of the world on her shoulders. She’d be better off getting out of here. She’s not bad-looking, she’d never be short of someone to share her bed when she was in the mood. I once made the mistake of telling her so to her face, but she looked at me as if I was mad. Or a trollop. Or both. Some women, they need a man in their lives, however mean he is to them.’

‘But not you?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t mind having a man in my life every now and then. But on my terms, not his. I keep saying to my sister, there’s no point in spending your days waiting to find Mr Perfect. Even if he does come along, you can guarantee he’s not already spoken for.’

‘And what does Leigh say?’

Dale tossed her hair. ‘Oh she worries too much, does my big sister. God knows why, I’ve known her literally all my life and I’ve never understood what goes on inside her head. One thing’s for certain, she’s too fussed about doing The Right Thing. After we spoke to you in The Moon, she started fretting that she’d been unkind when she spoke about Tom Allardyce. They say he saw his best mate killed in front of his very eyes on the Shankill Road. I ask you, does that justify behaving like a brute?’

He said carefully, ‘So Marc Amos lives with this police officer, Hannah Scarlett. Can you tell me if she…’

‘I don’t know anything about Hannah,’ Dale interrupted. ‘I only ever met her the once, just after the murder and — well, it wasn’t a happy time.’

Her reticence was as disappointing as it was improbable and he wasn’t sure he believed her anyway. But he’d better move on; if he pressed her about his father’s sidekick, she might clam up altogether.

‘So what did you make of Barrie Gilpin?’

‘Same as with Allardyce. Barrie had problems, we all knew that, but some things you can’t excuse.’

‘Like murder?’

‘And being a Peeping Tom.’

‘Really?’

‘So the story went. There was talk about it after he died. Gossip. Don’t ask me for the details. And I can’t say that he ever peeped at me, though I don’t always remember to draw the curtains. Maybe I scared him, maybe the girl who was killed led him on. It wouldn’t surprise me.’

‘You knew Gabrielle Anders?’

‘She was staying at The Moon when I worked there as a cleaner. Oh yes, I could tell you a thing or two about her.’

‘I’m all ears.’

She treated him to a teasing grin. ‘Not just ears, I hope.’

‘What was she like?’

Someone coughed noisily. The stout and long-suffering Mrs Godfrey was standing behind the counter with her meaty arms folded. She was trying to direct Dale’s attention to an old lady at the next table, waiting patiently for the eclair she had asked for.

‘Just coming!’ Under her breath Dale added, ‘I knock off in half an hour. You can buy me a quick drink in The Moon if you like.’

As Lynsey, the prospective Mrs Dowling, served him with a second orange juice, he tried his hand at gentle inquisition, but she turned out to be a native of Penrith whose parents had moved to Whitmell eighteen months earlier and she’d never heard of Barrie Gilpin. Within a couple of minutes he’d concluded that, whatever talents she might possess, Joe Dowling wasn’t marrying her for the benefit of sparkling conversation.

Dale was very late and he amused himself by moving to a table in an alcove with a poster from The Lady Vanishes . When at last she arrived, complaining that Mrs Godfrey was a slave-driver and predicting that her employment in the baker’s would be shortlived, he supplied her with a Bacardi and Coke and said, ‘So you’ve never found it claustrophobic, spending your whole life in an enclosed valley like Brackdale?’

‘Never known any different, have I? It must seem peculiar to someone like you, someone who’s appeared on television and travelled the world. Unsophisticated, what’s the word…parochial?’