Helen Phifer - The Lake House

‘Fred, stop mucking around. Where are you?’

But there was no reply. He knew that his friend couldn’t have gone upstairs without Billy bumping into him and he felt a ball of dread lodge in the back of his throat. What if he’d fallen down into that hole and was stuck in the drains? He ran across to the black hole, which seemed to have doubled in size since the last time he’d looked into it a couple of minutes ago.

Fred’s lantern was on the floor and Billy called his friend again. A muffled grunt from inside the hole made Billy force himself to kneel down and look inside. He couldn’t see Fred, but he could see whatever it was that Fred had been talking about at the bottom of the hole. Billy leant closer. The thing was moving ever so slowly but it was definitely moving. He opened his mouth to shout to Fred again and was pulled down into the hole by something with sharp nails that scraped against his skin, making him shiver in disgust. He was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. As he was falling he hit his head on a large rock that was jutting out of the wall, and just before he lost consciousness he saw a face in front of him unlike any he’d ever seen before, one that was ghostly grey with two huge red eyes and a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth.

Chapter One

‘I can’t hear you. Speak up. It’s too windy.’ Police Constable Jake Simpson was talking into the radio clipped on to his body armour to his best friend and colleague, Annie Graham. He refused to call her by her married name, Ashworth, because she’d always be Annie Graham to him. She was near to the side of Lake Windermere looking for a missing sixty-year-old man who had last been seen pottering around near some of the rowing boats that were for hire. A gust of wind took Jake’s police helmet clean off his head and blew it along at some speed until it reached the corner of one of the boathouses then disappeared underneath it.

‘Shit, I’ll call you back. My helmet’s just blown away.’

He didn’t hear Annie’s giggling as he ended the call and jogged across to find it. He bent down to reach underneath. He’d never hear the last of this if he didn’t get it back. He rarely wore the damn thing but this morning they’d had an email from the inspector telling them to make sure they were dressed appropriately at all times and not to let standards slip. It was all right for her – tucked up in her cosy office doing the crossword. She should try to keep her hat on in a gale-force wind and see how much she was arsed about standards then.

Jake’s fingers brushed against something that he assumed was his hat. He wasn’t really paying attention because he was too busy looking to see how many of the Japanese tourists on the steamboat that had just docked at Bowness pier were actually watching him and taking photos. He grabbed it and yanked it towards him. When he pulled it out and saw what he was holding in his hands he actually threw it onto the shingled path and screamed – really screamed. Which in turn made the tourists who were now all watching him lift their cameras and begin to photograph the perfectly preserved, severed head in front of him. Not only was Jake not wearing his helmet as he became the most photographed policeman in the Lake District, he was also swearing profusely and jumping up and down while rubbing his hands against his trouser legs.

He shouted down his radio to the control room for assistance and wondered how the hell a woman’s head had got under there and where the rest of her body was. Annie came running across from the other side of the pier towards him to see what was wrong and stopped in front of the head. Her mouth fell open and she looked from the head that was lying on its side on the ground back up to Jake.

‘Oh my God, where on earth did you find that?’ She tilted her head and stared. ‘Isn’t that the woman who went missing in Barrow a couple of months ago?’

He shrugged and pointed to the gap underneath the boathouse. ‘How would I know that?’

‘Well, you would if you bothered to read the bulletins the Intelligence Unit send out now and again instead of pressing delete every time.’

‘Jesus Christ, Annie, remind me what it was that you said? Come and work with me in Bowness, Jake. It’s lovely in the summer and ever so quiet in the winter. You won’t know you’re born. It’s all ice creams and summer fetes.’

Annie’s cheeks turned pink. ‘Well, it is most of the time. You’re not blaming this one on me; it’s all your fault. Is the rest of her body under there?’

‘I haven’t looked yet, boss. Oh my God, I dragged it out thinking it was my hat. Do you want to do the honours? And what the hell do we do with that? Everyone’s looking.’

Annie slid her torch out of her body armour and shone it underneath the building. She could see Jake’s helmet, which she reached under and grabbed, but there was no sign of a body. She turned around and looked at the size of the head; it wasn’t as big as Jake’s.

‘Should I cover her with your helmet?’

‘Piss off. I have to wear that!’

‘Stop being so dramatic. You can get another one. We can’t just leave her on show for the tourists to stare at; it’s not right or dignified.’

She bent down and placed the helmet on top of the head and Jake cringed.

‘If I get bollocked for not wearing my hat it’s all your fault.’

‘It’s always my fault so it won’t make a difference. Have you notified control?’

‘Yes, CID are on their way, along with CSI and the chief super, and now, thanks to you, when the circus gets here I haven’t got a hat.’

‘I’m doing you a favour. Stop complaining. Anyway, my darling husband, Will, is the on-call detective sergeant tonight so it will be him, and he was going to his dad’s for tea so he won’t take long. At least I hope he won’t.’

‘It’s just like the good old days when you, me and Will were the crime-busting, serial-killer-investigating task force back in Barrow before that evil, murdering bastard Henry Smith came along and ruined everything. Only most of the time they weren’t actually that good. I wonder who is duty CSI. If it’s Debs then we’re all back together. But I have to tell you I have a bad feeling about this, a really bad feeling.’

Annie didn’t say it out loud but so did she. How had the very well-preserved head of a woman who had gone missing from Barrow three months ago turned up in Bowness, on the patch she worked, when all three of them just happened to be on duty? What exactly were the odds of that? There had been no sightings of her stalker, the serial killer Henry Smith, or the nurse he’d escaped with from the secure mental hospital four months ago in the area. Yet she felt sick at the thought that this could be so much more than a coincidence. Jake had gone back to the car and was now taping off the immediate area with a huge roll of blue and white crime-scene tape that was flapping so hard in the wind it looked as if it was going to take off, bringing the tree with it.

There was quite a crowd beginning to gather and Annie pushed the thought of Henry out of her mind as she began to tell people to leave the area because there was nothing for them to see. Which wasn’t strictly true but it was the best she could come up with at this moment in time. Bang went her early finish. Will would be here for hours in charge of the scene. She would be here until they could draft in reinforcements to guard the scene, and then she and Jake would have to go back to type up statements. Will would be working for hours waiting for the scene to be processed and then meeting the undertakers at the hospital.

Technically it was Jake’s job to go and fill out the sudden death forms at the path lab but he would want to get home to his partner, Alex, and Alice, their nine-month-old adopted daughter. Annie knew she would be the one to go instead. She had no children to rush home to. Besides, if Will was working late there wasn’t much point in her finishing early. She may as well stay behind. She turned to hear Jake shouting at a group of tourists who were all chattering excitedly and trying to duck under the tape. She walked over to give him a hand. At least they would be kept busy until reinforcements arrived.