Reginald Hill - Fell of Dark

My new complacency was shattered, however, as we pulled into the small courtyard of the Keswick police station. Despite the rain, a small crowd had gathered there and as I got out of the car, I was horrified to hear from two or three throats a low baying noise, half growl, half boo, which rose in volume as Lazonby seized me by the arm and hustled me into the building.

I wrenched my arm away from him and asked in some anger, ‘What do you think you’re doing? And what was all that din about?’

Lazonby looked apologetic, or at least as apologetic as his solid impassive face permitted.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Bentink, but you always get a funny type of person hanging around the station on cases like this. They want a glimpse of the murderer. I had to rush you in. There was a photographer there, and I’m sure you didn’t want your picture in the papers, did you?’

‘Why no,’ I said, still feeling uneasy about the whole incident. I looked around.

We were standing in a kind of foyer about twelve feet square. There was a counter running the length of it, topped by frosted glass with a couple of compartments in it, like the windows of a railway booking office. One of these was open and through it two uniformed policemen eyed us with undisguised interest. The door which led through this partition into the office behind it opened and a sergeant came out. Armstrong stepped forward and spoke to him. He nodded and disappeared again.

‘Won’t keep you a moment,’ said Armstrong brightly, obviously pleased at the prospect of getting rid of us.

I turned to Peter. He had slumped down on to the bench which ran along the wall opposite the partition. He looked, I thought with horror, the picture of guilt overtaken by conscience. But before I could think what to do to rearrange this allegorical picture, a door opened at the far end of the room and through it came Marco.

He stopped dead when he saw Peter. I might not have been there. Then he set off for the exit door and I thought he was going to rush through it without a word. But he stopped with his hand on the knob, turned and looked down at Peter who stared back with no discernible emotion on his face, then cried:

‘Pardon me, Peter. I was so angry.’ This was followed by a few sentences in very rapid and emotional Italian, then he flung open the door and rushed out.

Peter, with one of those rapid transitions of mood which I realized I had noticed previously but which only now began to cause me some unease, looked up at me and winked. I glanced round quickly to see if anyone had noticed. The two constables behind the counter were chatting away to each other with great verve, Lazonby was staring thoughtfully at the door which was just swinging slowly shut on its spring. Armstrong was looking to the other end of the room where in the open doorway through which Marco had appeared stood a new figure. He was looking straight at Peter.

Something told me immediately this was Melton. Yet he looked nothing like my mental picture of the man. Perhaps I had been conditioned by television, but I had expected a large man, solid, impassive and like Lazonby except larger and cleverer. But this man was nothing like that. Short, thin, wearing an ill-fitting blue suit and, most unsuitably in every sense of the word, a green and orange checked waist-coat, he had a triangular face swelling from a narrow chin to broad expanse of forehead, accentuated by a far-receded hairline. He wore spectacles, round, cheap-framed, with bi-focal lenses.

He stepped into the room.

‘Emotional creatures, these foreigners, aren’t they? Mr Bentink? Mr Thorne? Thought I had you spotted. Yes, emotional. Easily upset. Show it all. Not like you and me, Mr Thorne, eh?’

His voice was high-pitched, but perfectly controlled, lacking entirely the over-rapid pace and near squeakiness of the normal high male tone.

‘It’s good of you to come. I’m Detective-Superintendent Melton. We’ll try not to keep you any longer than is necessary. Though on a day like this you might as well be here as anywhere, eh?’

‘It was sunny in Ravenglass,’ said Peter in a childishly sullen kind of voice.

‘Yes, yes. I dare say it was. Come along now.’

He turned and walked back through the door. We followed him into a long corridor with several doors leading off. One of these was open and sitting behind a desk there was a figure cast much more in the mould I had expected. He was a big solid man, about sixteen stones of him I reckoned; he made Lazonby seem a puny youth.

‘Ah, Inspector Copley. Just the man. I wonder if you would have a chat with Mr Thorne here and take his statement. In you go, Mr Thorne.’

‘Aren’t you coming too, Harry?’ asked Peter appealingly. I could see signs of strain on his face like those which had seemed permanently etched there during the first weeks after his breakdown.

‘Mr Bentink will come with me,’ said Melton politely but firmly. ‘We’ll get things done much more quickly that way. We don’t want to keep you hanging about, do we?’

He turned away, but Peter still stood in the doorway, his hand tightening on the jamb till his knuckles whitened.

‘I don’t see how we can help anyway,’ he said in a high, strained voice, looking straight at me. ‘We only saw the girls once, in the hotel bar. We never saw them again.’

His gaze fixed on me for a few moments longer, then he turned into the room and the door closed behind him.

I stood in bewilderment. What Peter meant by his last comment seemed clear enough to me. He wanted me to enter into conspiracy with him to conceal our second meeting with the girls. But why should he want this? Why?

‘Come along, please, Mr Bentink,’ said Melton. ‘Let’s see if we can find somewhere to stow ourselves.’

He led the way further down the corridor and stopped at the last door.

‘Here we are. This will do, I think.’

He opened the door and waved me in. I stepped forward, then stopped dead. Sitting there reading a large type-written sheet was Ferguson. He looked up.

‘Hello, Bentink,’ he said.

‘How on earth did you get here?’ I asked.

He grinned.

‘Our policemen are wonderful,’ he said.

‘I am sorry,’ said Melton. ‘Come along, Mr Bentink. We must obviously look further afield.’

We turned the corner at the end of the corridor and went up a flight of stairs. Up here we were obviously on a different plane of existence. There was a carpet on the floor, not luxurious but sufficient, and the room he finally took me into was very different from the bare functional boxes I had had a glimpse of below. Again, it was not luxurious, but it was reasonably spacious and the emulsioned walls looked bright and fresh. The furniture just consisted of a large desk and three or four chairs, but even these looked solid and reasonably expensive compared with the flimsy hardboard affairs below. And the room’s biggest advantage was that it had a real window. I went to it and peered out. The rain was slackening off a bit it seemed and visibility had improved, but it was hard to believe in the brilliant sunshine of the previous day.

Melton had come to stand beside me and he seemed to catch the tail-end of my thought and take it further.

‘If it had been like this yesterday, those girls might still be alive.’

We stood in silence after that looking out on the rain-washed landscape.

The police station was a fairly new building situated on the outskirts of the town and it backed on to some open fields which stretched away to the near fell-slopes. As I looked up at the dimly discernible heights, I felt I could imagine all kinds of sinister and dreadful happenings taking place there, but not what had happened the day before. That seemed somehow too urban, native to those stretches of heath or parkland which pass for the countryside near large towns rather than this wilderness whose terrors were not made by man.