Martin Edwards - The Coffin Trail

Gwynfor stared. ‘Commitment? Daniel Kind? Am I hearing right?’

Daniel grinned. ‘Past performance is no guide to the future, as the investment folk say. Wriggling’s off the agenda. Miranda had enough of that with the married man and all the reasons why the time was never right for him to pack his bags and leave his family.’

‘But in case things don’t work out up north?’

‘Cumbria isn’t on the other side of the globe.’

‘It’s further away than you think. And I’m not talking miles on the clock.’

‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s something I have to do.’

‘Well, Miranda is a gorgeous lady.’

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘She is.’

‘Think of all those disappointed fans of yours. The porters were complaining they couldn’t cram all the mail into your pigeon-hole. And what will the two of you do for money?’

‘I’ll start writing again, when I’m ready. A proper book, not a TV script. And I’ve sold the house in Summertown for twice the price that the two of us are paying for this cottage. Miranda’s flat is still on the market, but we haven’t even needed a huge loan. So the cash won’t run out in a hurry. It’s not as if I earn a fortune as a college fellow.’

‘Tell me about it. All the same, you’re committed and she isn’t?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. We’re going into this together, the cottage is ours in equal shares. She’s passionate about Brackdale, the move was her idea. I tried to talk her out of it.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind.’

‘The more I think about it, this isn’t so much getting away from it all. It’s more like going back home.’

Gwynfor stabbed a thick index finger at the wall posters advertising a musical at the Playhouse, a performance of The Real Inspector Hound in the Newman Rooms, a Balliol concert. Daniel had taken Aimee to each of them.

‘This is where you belong. Oxford gets inside you, there’s no resisting it. You’re part of the place and it’s part of you.’

‘That’s what I used to think,’ Daniel said. ‘But now I’m breaking free.’

‘Something I need to tell you,’ Daniel said, switching off the car radio. ‘I should have mentioned it before, but the time never seemed quite right.’

After a final weekend in Oxford, they were caught in a tailback on the Thelwall Viaduct, on the way back to their new home. Three lines of vehicles stretched ahead of them, as far as the eye could see. In a minibus in the adjoining lane, a group of teenage girls were waving their arms in the air and singing to pass the time. Rudimentary lip-reading suggested a tribute to Abba’s greatest hits.

Miranda took a breath. ‘If it’s about Aimee, you don’t need to say any more, okay? That’s all in the past. What went on between you and her — it’s private. It doesn’t affect you and me.’

‘It’s not about Aimee.’

With a wicked grin, she said, ‘Listen, I already worked out that you weren’t dressing down for the benefit of the TV ratings. No image consultant required, you really are that scruffy.’

‘Lucky that unkempt was fashionable at just the right time. No, it’s about the cottage.’

‘Oh, is that all? Break it to me gently. Does the roof need replacing? Some bad news in a secret codicil to the survey that I wasn’t allowed to see?’

‘The roof’s fine. This is to do with the cottage’s history.’

‘You’ve been investigating?’ She smiled. ‘Does it have a ghost? The spirit of an old farmer’s wife who fell in the tarn and was too plump to climb out?’

‘No ghost,’ he said. ‘At least — not exactly.’

‘What, then?’

He swallowed. ‘All those years ago, when we took a holiday in Brackdale, I made friends with a murderer. He lived at Tarn Cottage.’

‘Jesus.’

‘But he was only thirteen years old. He’d never done anyone any harm in his life. What’s more, I’ve never believed he was capable of murdering anyone.’

‘A miscarriage of justice?’ She was at once sympathetic, ready to be outraged. Her research for a series of articles about women falsely accused of killing their children had robbed her of faith in the judicial system. She cared passionately for life’s victims; it was one of the things he loved about her.

‘He was suspected of murdering a young woman, a tourist. But the case never came to court. He and I met while my dad and I were out walking. Our first full day in the Lakes. His name was Barrie Gilpin and he lived in Tarn Cottage with his widowed mother. We talked and started playing together. I could tell he was different, but I didn’t know quite why. I’d never heard of autism and he had a mild form of it. We were two loners who sort of hit it off together. We saw each other every day, he became part of our family for a fortnight. When we were leaving, I made a promise to write, to stay in touch. Then my father left home and our world fell apart. I let Barrie down. I never wrote that letter.’

‘You can’t take the blame for that. Don’t always be so hard on yourself.’

The car was stuffy, the windows were misting up. He turned down the heater and said, ‘There’s more. Like I told you, I swore to my mother that I wouldn’t make contact with my father. Louise never exchanged a word with him from the day he walked out until the day he died. But I did. He’d fallen for a civilian worker at police headquarters and they moved up to Cumbria together. He’d always loved the Lakes, wanted to settle there, but my mother was Mancunian, through and through. The Lakes weren’t far away, but she insisted on sticking close to her roots. We never travelled much, for me going up to Oxford was a great adventure. All the time, I wanted to get back in touch with my father. I must have written him a hundred letters, over the years, but I never sent a single one. I just couldn’t do that to my mother, it would have been worse than his infidelity.’

Miranda squeezed his hand. ‘But he was your flesh and blood. She didn’t have the right…’

‘She didn’t have very much at all after Dad abandoned her,’ Daniel said. ‘He was never mean over money, but the divorce was bitter. There were rows over his right of access to Louise and me. In the end he simply gave up. That made me feel he’d written me off, but as the years drifted by, I wondered if there was another side to the story. Then one day I saw my father’s name in the newspaper. Inspector Ben Kind of the Cumbria Constabulary, quoted in connection with a murder inquiry. A woman had been killed and her body left on the Sacrifice Stone. Remember it?’

‘The strange boulder, perched on the summit of the fell.’

‘Yes, Barrie was in awe of the Stone. The story was that every year in pagan times, the community used to sacrifice a virgin. To make sure the gods were appeased and the lakes didn’t run dry. I’d forgotten all about it until I read that report in the Guardian . Then I started to wonder if it had rung a bell in my father’s memory.’

‘Did your father arrest Barrie?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘He never got the chance. Barrie’s body was found not far from the victim’s. He’d fallen into a ravine and died. Case closed, as far as the police were concerned. I couldn’t help thinking about his mother. Poor Mrs Gilpin, he must have caused her plenty of grief, but she still worshipped him.’

‘And she’s the lady whose cousin is selling the cottage?’

Ahead of them, traffic was edging forward. Daniel touched the accelerator and switched the tape back on. Carole King, singing “It’s Too Late”.

‘So there you have it. Tarn Cottage was once home to a murderer, if the police were to be believed. Barrie spent his whole life there. He would never have moved away. Sorry, I should have told you before. But…’