Martin Edwards - The Coffin Trail

‘I told you. He was racked with guilt, but as for moving away, his take on it was that he sacrificed what he wanted for the good of you and your sister.’

‘Yeah, I still can’t get my head around that.’

‘I’m not pretending it was the shrewdest judgement of all time. He made mistakes, like the rest of us. Picking Cheryl to run off with wasn’t exactly a stroke of genius. Without wishing to be bitchy, he could have done better.’

‘Where Cheryl is concerned,’ he said with a grin, ‘anyone’s allowed to be bitchy.’

‘I suppose she loved him, at least to begin with. But by falling for her, he gave up so much. Your mother wanted him out of her life completely. Gone, finished, never to return. He hated that, but he was terrified that a battle royal would wreck your life and your sister’s. I saw him face danger, many times, and he never flinched, but he wouldn’t put his kids through any more pain. He said you had a wonderful mother, he admired her strength of character. She was more than a match for him. He was only sorry he’d been such a lousy dad.’

At the table next to theirs, a family birthday party was in full voice. Amidst much merriment, a white-haired great-grandmother was flapping leathery hands and pretending to be embarrassed as whooping children urged her to blow out the candles on a huge cake.

Daniel grunted. ‘He should have fought harder.’

‘Maybe, but I can promise you this. If he gave up too easily, it wasn’t for lack of guts.’

‘Come to that, if he’d fought harder with his bosses, maybe the truth about Allardyce would have come out at the time.’

Hannah paused as the old lady’s candles were extinguished with a little help from the younger generation and a couple of waiters led a raucous serenade of ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

‘He did his best,’ she said. ‘Don’t they say that politics is the art of the possible? Well, it’s the same with police work.’

‘His best wasn’t good enough, was it? Sure, Barrie’s death was a lucky break for Allardyce, but if Jean had been interrogated more intensively, she might have admitted that the alibi she gave him was false. How could she bear to keep on sleeping with a man she knew was a murderer?’

‘Women,’ Hannah said softly, ‘will put up with a lot. More, very often, than can possibly make sense.’

‘I still can’t help wondering…’

‘Don’t wonder,’ she said. ‘It’s not a recipe for contentment.’

He wanted to argue, but something in her voice made him hold his tongue. Needing to cool down, he loosened his collar. Candle-light reflected in her eyes as she traced a finger around the rim of her glass.

‘You were complaining earlier on that you couldn’t figure out certain things about the murder,’ she said. ‘Why Allardyce left his wife’s body in the dipper, for instance, instead of burying it out of harm’s way up in the fells before it was found.’

‘He knew you were asking questions about Jean’s whereabouts, but the cover he put on the dipping tank was never going to fool anything but the most casual inspection. Are you suggesting that subconsciously he wanted the corpse to be discovered, that he realised he was losing it?’

‘God knows, Daniel. How do you read the mind of a man like that, even supposing you want to? Your father used to say that a police officer’s case-bag is packed with strange things. Unexplained mysteries, all kinds of…unfinished business.’ She lingered over the last phrase. ‘People talk about life’s rich tapestry, but it’s not always crafted in elaborate satisfying detail. Pieces go missing, odd bits of the pattern seem out of place.’

‘History is like that too. It can’t be wrong to work at making the patterns fit.’

‘Not so long as you don’t treat detective work as a guessing game or a lottery. To make a charge stick, you need evidence strong enough to convince the court.’

‘Which doesn’t arise here. The accused is dead. Like Barrie Gilpin.’

‘Listen,’ she said as the cappuccinos were served. ‘We didn’t want Tom Allardyce to die. No one did. He brought it on himself. He knew exactly what he was doing when he provoked that AFO to shoot him, believe me. But even if we’d brought him to trial, secured the convictions, the odds are that we wouldn’t find out everything. Think of Fred West and Harold Shipman.’

‘Sure, but why not at least try to make sense of the fragments you don’t understand?’

She lapped the chocolate topping off her drink and gave her mouth a quick wipe. ‘History’s one thing. Nobody’s going to make too much fuss if you guess wrong about whether Queen Victoria ever dropped her knickers for John Brown. Murder cases change lives forever. We trespass enough into private grief when we focus on what the courts need to know. It’s impossible to do more.’

Stung, he said, ‘History matters more than you think. There’s a saying in the States that says history is fiction with the truth left out. Not entirely unfair, but to my mind history is all about searching for the truth. Like police work, or so I assumed.’

‘It seems to me,’ she said calmly, ‘that you have a secret yearning to be a detective. My sergeant thinks so too. Trust me, it’s not as much fun as you may think.’

He swallowed some coffee. It was scalding, but he scarcely noticed. ‘Sorry if you think I’m naive.’

She reached across the table and brushed the tips of his fingers. Her touch was warm, but he didn’t respond and she put her hand back on her lap. ‘Hey,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t be cross with me, Daniel. I do understand. Your dad was a hero and then he let you down. Of course you’re bound to be fascinated by the work he did.’

‘No psychiatric analysis, please,’ he said. ‘I get enough of that at home when Miranda combs through the horoscopes.’

‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘This has been a lovely evening and I don’t want to spoil it with some pointless argument. Yes, history’s important, and so is finding out about your father. All I’m saying is that it isn’t a good idea to worry away at problems that don’t have answers.’

‘I don’t agree,’ he said, signalling for the bill. ‘It’s the only way we ever achieve anything.’

‘How did it go?’ Miranda asked when he joined her in bed at midnight. He could still smell the fresh paint.

‘All right.’

Her body wriggled against him. ‘I finished the article.’

‘Terrific.’

‘Guess what? Suki, the editor, emailed me to suggest lunch next time I’m down in London. If I move quickly, there could be a chance of a regular half-page. You know, confessions of a city girl who’s found herself plonked down in the countryside without a pair of green wellies to her name.’

‘You make it sound as though I dragged you here kicking and screaming.’

She poked him in the ribs. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of poetic licence. I rather fancy writing a funny column. Misadventures in the middle of nowhere, something for readers to chuckle over while they sit under the hair dryer. There can be something very po-faced about beauty tips, aerobic exercises, and feng shui. Anyway, I’ll see what she says.’

‘So you’ll take her up on the lunch?’

‘Why not? I only need be away one night, two at most. I might look up one or two people whilst I’m down there. And I happen to know that Suki likes to lunch lavishly, so I’m hoping for something swish and champagne-laden in Chelsea. What was your pizzeria like?’

Absurdly, he felt defensive, as if she’d impugned the quality of restaurants the length and breadth of Cumbria. ‘It was fine. And it wasn’t simply a pizzeria.’

Her breasts were pressing into him, her legs were rubbing against his. Finishing an article always gave her a high and he knew she’d want to celebrate by making love. But he wasn’t in the mood.