JOE WOKE UP THE MORNING AFTER Sal’s birthday feeling old. He’d never had a hangover when he was younger. He and Sal must have polished off a bottle of fizzy wine each to celebrate, because there were two empties in the recycling bin in the kitchen. He didn’t drink much these days, especially on a school night, and now it showed. Sal seemed okay. She was singing along to Radio Two and getting the kids ready for school, eating toast thick with marmalade, and emptying the washing machine all at the same time. Crumbs had sprayed all over her top. She realized and wiped them off with a cloth, then folded the clothes ready for the line. Multitasking. Something he’d never quite got the hang of. He made himself tea and didn’t bother with the toast she’d left for him.
Vera was already in the office, though he’d got in early. She called him into her room. The radiator had decided to work again, and it was as steamy as a sauna in there. Outside it had started to drizzle again and she’d hung her damp coat on the back of a chair.
‘Sal enjoy her birthday?’ Vera’s voice was bright. ‘Good night?’
‘Yeah!’ As he said it, he knew it was true. He’d got all that he’d ever wanted with Sal and the kids, a kind of contentment, and it had been a good night. He was about to explain about the cake that Jess had made for her mam, and the presents Sal had got, but Vera had already shifted her attention back to work. Whenever she asked about the family, it was just going through the motions. She had no real interest. But then, he thought, he wasn’t much interested in other people’s kids either.
‘I want you to do a bit of digging around Annie Laidler and Daniel Rede,’ Vera said. ‘Their baby died when it was just a few months old. Cot death, they thought at first, but the parents came under suspicion too. Poor Annie’s still haunted by it. They were living in a caravan up at Rede’s Tower when the bairn died and it must have seemed a bit of an unconventional lifestyle at the time. They were very young. Our lot were involved anyway, stomping in with their big boots, just at the time when everything was most raw. The death was viewed as unexplained until it turned out in the end that the poor little scrap had been suffering from infantile meningitis. But it happened around the time there was that second death. Louisa’s sister Isobel driving off the Holy Island causeway in a temper, too close to the tide. That was unexplained too. Both incidents would have happened forty-five years ago, but there’s a bloke who was a young officer then who’s still alive and up for a bit of a chat about the olden days.’ A pause. ‘I remember him from my cadet days. Not a cheery soul, but a good policeman. Solid.’
‘There’ll be files.’ Joe thought an in-person interview was a lot of effort for two accidental deaths.
‘Of course there’ll be files. They might even have been computerized and easy to access, though I very much doubt it. But files don’t tell us what was really going on in a cop’s head when they were interviewing the witnesses. And I’ve never yet met a cop who hasn’t got a long memory.’ Vera stopped up sharp. ‘There’d have been post-mortems in both cases. And those records would be more detailed. It occurred to me that Isobel might have been pregnant and Doc Keating says you’d be able to tell, even if she was only a few weeks. She looked up at Joe. ‘I’ll follow that up later. I’m seeing Judith Sinclair first, to find out why she’s pissing us about. I want you to chat to the police officer who was involved in the Isobel Hall accident. Make him very happy by asking his advice. Buy him a pint at lunchtime. Or a pie. Or both. Let’s find out what was going on all those years ago.’
Joe nodded. When the boss had a bee in her bonnet, it was best to humour her.
‘He lives on the coast. Before you meet him, call in at Rede’s Tower and see if our friend Daniel is there. Hol’s tracking down Katherine’s alibi on Holy Island, but we still don’t know where her bloke was on Monday afternoon. I’ve left messages for him but he’s not called me back. I’d like to know what’s going on with him. Everyone says he’s a very busy chap, but it’s starting to look suspicious to me. And if not that, then bloody rude.’
Joe was glad of an excuse to go back to Rede’s Tower. It was a trip into nostalgia. As he’d explained to Holly, he’d spent weeks of his childhood summers there. His grandfather had owned an old caravan, very close to the shore. There’d been no fancy facilities in those days. No facilities at all, except one outside tap for drinking water and a concrete block with two stinking toilets and a shower that rarely worked. But to Joe, it had been paradise. Freedom. In his memory the days had been endlessly sunny. He’d gone crabbing with his grandad and disappeared for hours with the other feral lads on the site, playing on the beach or in the scrubby piece of woodland just inland.
There had been rain but only at night. He remembered the sound of rain on the metal roof of the caravan, the sense that this was his den, safe, warm, protective. Now, he had a shed at the bottom of the garden and when it was raining, he went there to bring the memory back. Sal thought he was doing useful tasks – sharpening tools or tidying the shelves – but very little got done because he sat on a broken garden chair, his eyes shut, remembering the past as the rain rattled the corrugated iron roof.
When the kids had come along, he’d wanted to get a caravan at Rede’s. ‘It’d be great for weekends away. They’d love it!’ But Sal had put her foot down. The nearest she was prepared to get to camping was a lodge at Center Parcs.
There was a lay-by just before the turn-off to the holiday park, and Joe stopped there, to allow a few more minutes of childhood memory, but nothing was at all as he recalled it. A mist had rolled in from the shore and made everything shadowy, shifting. Occasionally it cleared and Joe saw the shape of wooden cabins where once his grandfather’s caravan had stood with a few others, forming a circle, like a wagon train in an old-fashioned Western.
Now, in the spinney, they’d built an elaborate children’s adventure playground. One of the structures rose above the layer of mist, and reminded Joe of a scaffold with its gibbet. His imagination was running wild. It was drinking too much the night before and not enough sleep, or a weird kind of prejudice. Because it wasn’t as he’d remembered, he was determined to dislike the place.
The pele tower itself had been derelict when they’d stayed on the site, and now the stone had been cleaned and repointed and the slate roof replaced. Proper windows put in. He thought he might persuade Sal to consider a weekend here now, but he wouldn’t suggest it. It wouldn’t be the same.
He drove on and pulled in to the visitors’ car park. He sat for a moment to get a sense of the place. There was a new stone building attached to the tower, glass fronted. A cafe and restaurant. All very tasteful. Joe got out of the car and made his way to find Daniel Rede.
Once she realized that Joe wasn’t a guest checking in, the receptionist thought he must be a salesman and tried to put him off. ‘I don’t think Mr Rede is on site today. I’m sure I can find someone else to help you.’
He showed her his warrant card. ‘I won’t take up a lot of his time, but it is rather urgent.’
‘As I said…’ But before she could insist that Daniel wasn’t there, a man walked in through a door behind her.
‘Don’t worry, Jan. I’m back on site. I’m very happy to help the officer.’
Joe wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Some kind of businessman perhaps, but not this. Daniel Rede was wearing a checked shirt and jeans and looked more like a retired farmer than the head of a multimillion leisure company. ‘I know Inspector Stanhope has been trying to get hold of me. I’m sorry. We seem to keep missing each other. It’s been a busy week. How can I help you?’
‘Just a few more questions,’ Joe said. ‘You’ll have seen there’s been another death.’
‘Of course! Charlotte. Kelsall’s first wife. Another dreadful tragedy. And quite unnerving actually. Do you mind if we walk while we talk? There’s been a complaint about the hot tub attached to one of our superior lodges. The filtration system wasn’t working properly. The customers are regulars and I want to check it’s properly fixed.’
‘Fine.’ Joe followed him out of the building. ‘You’re still very hands-on then?’
‘It’s the only way, a place like this.’ He turned to Joe, gave a quick grin. ‘We charge a fortune – you wouldn’t believe what people will pay for a sea view, fresh air straight from Scandinavia with a bit of luxury thrown in. But the punters are demanding. They expect personal service. I like to keep on top of the detail, and as your boss is aware, I’ve not been on site much in the last few days.’
Joe thought there was more to Rede’s focus on the everyday detail of the operation than a desire to give good customer service. The man seemed restless, unsettled. He was probably one of those practical men who were better at making and mending than sitting and staring at a screen. And perhaps he was jittery because murder was bad for business. ‘I stayed here as a kid,’ Joe said. It seemed a way in to break the ice. ‘It’s a bit different now.’
‘I started working here as soon as I left school,’ Daniel said. ‘My grandfather ran the place then and it was mostly people from the region who came to stay. Newcastle families wanting to escape the smoke and soot of the city. Pitmen needing a bit of fresh air in their lungs. But everything changed. People wanted more from a holiday. We were having to compete with package tours to Spain. We couldn’t give them guaranteed sun, but we could provide the other things they got abroad: a bar, entertainment in the evening, play spaces for the kids. Then staycations got a bit more fashionable and we decided to move upmarket. Now we get regulars who come from London for a couple of short breaks a year.’
‘I can see that makes business sense…’
‘But you miss the old days?’
‘Aye.’ Joe laughed. ‘Maybe.’
‘Sometimes,’ Daniel said, ‘I do too.’
They’d arrived at the row of wooden lodges closest to the water. These were as different from Joe’s grandfather’s caravan as it was possible to be.
‘Each site is different.’ Rede seemed to have forgotten his nostalgia for the past. Now, he could have been selling the place to a potential visitor. ‘And each has its own outdoor space. If you live in the city, you don’t want to be overlooked by your neighbour. We planted the hedges. Sea buckthorn. Authentic. We know they’ll want outdoor facilities so we’ve added a firepit, a covered balcony in case the weather’s bad, like today.’ He sounded as proud as the new father he’d once been. ‘The hot tubs are all wood burners. With all this managed woodland, we’re not short of logs, and we make sure they’re properly dried before we hand them over. Let me just check this has been properly fixed by the maintenance guy, then I’m all yours.’
Joe walked on a few yards to the bank of pebbles that separated the beach from the development. He looked back at the lodge, which could have accommodated a family of eight in comfort. His father would have made a comment about the injustice of it: these palaces for the rich to holiday while the poor lived in modern slums or were homeless. The mist cleared for a moment and he could see the shadow of Holy Island on the horizon, suddenly very large, very close.
Daniel Rede joined him, looking out over the water. ‘All sorted,’ he said. ‘I knew it would be – we’ve got a great team – but I still feel the need to check. Katherine says I should delegate more, but in the end, I’m responsible. It’s my name on the place.’
‘You’re not tempted to sell up, retire?’
‘Nah! What would I do all day? My life would seem pointless.’
Joe thought of the other people who’d been at the Pilgrims’ House on the night of Rick Kelsall’s death. Annie was still working, but perhaps she needed the income. Louisa and Ken had retired and Philip was talking about giving up the priesthood soon. They all seemed content. But he wasn’t here to discuss the possibility of ageing well.
‘We’re just checking people’s movements for Monday afternoon. That was when Charlotte Thomas died.’ Joe paused. ‘We know you were in Kimmerston in the morning.’
Daniel didn’t seem to resent the question. ‘That’s right. A planning meeting first thing, then I called in on Annie. She and Rick had always been close. I don’t think there was ever anything romantic between them, but they were very good friends. I just wanted to check that she was okay.’
‘And later?’
‘I was out recceing potential sites along the coast. As I said, we want to expand the business.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t meet anyone until early evening. That was when I called in on a farmer near Amble, but I didn’t think we’d get planning permission for a development of the scale that we’d need to be viable, so we didn’t chat for very long. I can give you his details. In the afternoon, I was looking at a caravan site near Whitley Bay. Whitley’s going up in the world these days. All artisan bakers and indie shops. It might suit us very well. But that was a covert operation. I didn’t want the owner to know I was interested.’ He stopped. ‘I know you have to ask, but really I didn’t know Charlotte very well. I certainly had no reason to want her dead.’
‘You were at school with her though?’
‘Even then, we didn’t really know each other. I didn’t start at the Grammar until I was thirteen and we didn’t come from the same sort of background. Like I said, my grandad ran this place then, and you’ll know what it was like. Run-down. A bit of a shambles. There was no money in it until I took it on. The other Grammar school lads treated me like some sort of gypsy.’
‘You haven’t seen Charlotte more recently?’
‘Once or twice.’ A pause. ‘She wanted to set up a well-being centre here on site. A kind of glorified spa. We had a couple of meetings.’
‘You didn’t take her up on the suggestion?’
‘Nah. It was a bit awkward because Katherine liked her, but I couldn’t see it making us much profit once she’d taken a cut. She wanted us to fund the initial set-up. I thought we’d be better keeping it in-house. It sounds harsh, but Charlotte Thomas wouldn’t have been the draw she might once have been. Our target demographic is people in their thirties and early forties. They would never have heard of her.’
Later, Joe found himself sitting in a pub in an ex-mining community by the coast, buying a pint for a former sergeant, who’d been based in Northumberland for the whole of his career. The man was called Pete Allen, and as Vera had said, he had a memory that went back years. By the time Joe got there, it was lunchtime and the place was empty apart from a few other men of Allen’s generation. Regulars, who nodded gravely to each new customer as they walked through the door. They were coming together for company, and to help the day slide on.
Allen had a grey moustache, which dipped into the beer, grey hair, grey eyes. A sadness, which he wore like his grey overcoat. His missus had left him years before. He’d told Joe that even before they’d met. When Joe had phoned to make the appointment, he’d asked Allen if he’d be free for a pie and a pint or if he’d need to be home for his midday meal. ‘I’m always free.’ Allen’s voice had been flat, uncomplaining.
Joe got more details in the pub. The wife had run away with an insurance broker from Bellingham, apparently. She’d claimed it was Pete’s fault, the shifts, never knowing when he’d be home. ‘But it wasn’t that,’ Allen said. ‘I bored her. She was a lively thing. I knew from the start that it wouldn’t last.’
That gave Joe a jolt. Sometimes Sal said he was boring, staid, old before his time. It always came across as a joke, but there was a moment of fear. Might she be attracted by someone more exciting, more reckless?
Gentle, misty rain ran down the dirty windows, which wouldn’t have let in much light, even on a sunny day. Everything in the place was covered with a sticky, brown varnish, the colour of toffee: the wood panels on the walls, the bar, the settles where the old men sat sharing a desultory conversation.
‘Aye,’ Allen said. ‘I remember that year. Two deaths within months of each other and the same people involved. It would stick in your mind.’ He looked up. ‘What’s your interest then?’ For the first time showing a spark of curiosity
‘Two more deaths with the same people involved.’ Joe paused. ‘But this time murder.’
‘That man from the telly on Holy Island? And the woman who’d been some sort of model and actress in the seventies and eighties?’
Joe nodded.
‘They’d be the sort who’d end up fighting their way out of the jungle on a reality show. I can’t abide folk who think they’re celebrities.’ There was a long silence. ‘But I suppose we can’t go round killing them.’ Another pause. ‘More’s the pity.’ For the first time, he gave a little smile.
‘It’s the same group of people,’ Joe said. ‘The same witnesses and suspects, as the deaths you were looking into of the bairn and the young student. My boss thinks it’s a weird coincidence.’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Tell me what you remember,’ Joe said. ‘While you’re sorting things out in your head, I’ll get you another pint.’
‘Eh, bonny lad, I’ve not finished this one yet.’
‘All the same, I won’t want to interrupt once you get started.’
Allen nodded to show that made sense, and watched Joe go up to the bar.
‘The baby dying,’ Allen said, once Joe had settled down again, his orange juice untouched on the table in front of him, ‘that was just sad. But we had to investigate. A young couple, living as they did, in a caravan up at Rede’s Tower. Suspicion was that the poor little lass might have been shaken to death by one of the parents. They were all cramped into such a small space and they might have been desperate. I’ve never had a bairn, but you could see how you might be driven to it, if it was the sort that cried all night. And you had a bit of a temper.’
‘Did Rede have a temper?’
‘We asked around but found no evidence of that. A nice enough chap, everyone said. Laid-back. Supportive of his woman. I’m not sure he ever wanted the child – a young man, it’d surely cramp his style and Daniel Rede was ambitious for his business even then – but he went along with it for her sake.’ Allen paused. ‘I don’t think he grieved the loss in the way that the lass did, but that didn’t mean he’d commit murder to get his freedom back.’
Joe nodded to show he understood what Allen was saying. He sipped his orange juice, thought that this liquid had never been anywhere near an orange, and he waited for the man to continue.
‘I was pleased when the doctors said it was meningitis. Natural causes. Without that, the pair would have been under a cloud all their lives. Rumours that they were child-killers. People don’t forget.’
‘I’m sure there were still rumours,’ Joe said. ‘Sometimes folk prefer the drama to the fact.’
‘That’s true too.’
They sat for a moment, the silence broken by a sudden heavier shower of rain clattering against the window and the muted conversation of the men on the other side of the room.
‘Then there they were,’ Allen said, ‘three months later, on Holy Island and another death. A car crashing off the causeway into the sea and a young woman drowned. I knew them at once. You wouldn’t miss them. Annie Rede she still was then, and such a pretty thing even though she was so skinny. She’d lost weight. I suppose it was the grief.’
Joe could hear the sympathy in his voice and thought the man had had a bit of a crush on Annie Laidler. Perhaps that was why the facts of these cases were so strong in Allen’s mind. ‘That was put down as an accident,’ Joe said. ‘Is that how you saw it?’
Pete Allen took a while to answer. ‘It was an odd one,’ he said at last. ‘It’s not unusual for cars to get stranded on the causeway. Trippers misread the tide tables at each end of the road, or think they’ve got a car that’s big enough and fast enough to outrun the tide. Each year people get caught out. But they don’t die. There are towers along the road. You see that you’re not going to make it and you leave the car and climb the tower until the water goes down again. You get a bit wet and the car is ruined, but you’re okay. Even if it’s a high spring tide and in bad weather.’ He paused. ‘And the water was well up by the time Isobel Hall left the island. Anyone with any sense would see that they wouldn’t make it across. It was pure recklessness.’
‘You pushed for a post-mortem?’
‘Aye, the boss did. We just wanted to be sure, you know, because something jarred. No real suspicion of foul play, but we wanted an explanation.’
‘Had she been drinking?’
‘Well, that was our thought too. There was a bit of alcohol in her blood, but that could have been left over from the night before. They’d all been boozing then, apparently. Not enough to cloud her judgement though. Not according to the doc.’ Allen paused. ‘I did wonder about suicide.’
‘You think she drove into the water deliberately? Not a nice way to go.’
‘She wouldn’t know that though, would she?’ Allen looked up from his beer and stared at Joe with his sad, grey eyes. ‘She was young. Hardly more than a bairn herself.’
‘The same age as Annie Laidler. I suppose they were friends?’ Joe didn’t let on about Only Connect, the fact that they were there for its five-year anniversary.
‘There was a group of them, all staying in the Pilgrims’ House.’ Allen looked up sharply. ‘That was where the TV journalist was found dead.’
Joe nodded.
‘Unlucky sort of place then,’ Allen went on. ‘A strange coincidence. Maybe that’s the reason they’re planning to close the retreat.’
‘It’s being closed for the season?’
‘Not for the season. Forever. I saw it in the local paper. The nuns are selling it off. I suppose they’ll turn it into some sort of private self-catering or guest house. It’d need someone with money to take it on. Places on Holy Island sell for a fortune.’
Joe wondered if that was significant, but couldn’t see how it might be. He’d pass on the information to Vera and let her decide. ‘What conclusion did you come to in the end about Isobel Hall’s death?’
Allen shrugged. ‘It went down as accidental, but it didn’t sit quite right with me. To be honest, it’s one of those ones that stick with you. The cases that you wake up wondering about.’
‘You’d have checked the car?’
‘Yes, nothing wrong with the vehicle. Nothing they could find, at least, after hours in the water, being battered by the current.’ He looked at Joe over his beer. ‘You’re thinking one of them might have tampered with it?’
‘It must have occurred to you too.’
‘Something was going on there. They came across as bright young things with their lives ahead of them. But they were a weird bunch. Arrogant. Secretive. I couldn’t take to them. Except Annie Laidler. She was different.’
Oh yes, Joe thought. You definitely took to her.
‘You say they did a post-mortem on the lass in the car,’ Joe said. ‘My boss wondered if she might have been pregnant.’
‘Is that what she told her boyfriend? Wanting to hang on to him?’
Joe shook his head. ‘We don’t know anything for certain. Just a line of inquiry.’ Then he had a thought. ‘Did she have a boyfriend? One of the group staying at the Pilgrims’ House? Rick Kelsall playing away while his woman was at work in London?’
‘It seems she was the kind to play those sorts of games.’ Allen drained the last of the beer from his second pint. ‘But they all closed ranks and if she was having a fling, nobody admitted it. And no, she wasn’t pregnant. I’d have remembered that. Two babies, it’d have stuck in my mind. Another coincidence. Besides, like I said, this case is not one I’ve ever forgotten.’
Outside on the pavement, after the gloom of the pub, it was a shock to see how light it was, to realize that it was still early afternoon. Joe had parked by the scruffy little harbour and sat there to phone Vera.
‘So, Isobel wasn’t pregnant,’ she said. ‘Another fine theory out of the water. I’ve heard back from Hol. Katherine Willmore’s alibi for Monday checks out. Did you manage to get hold of Daniel Rede?’
‘Aye.’ Joe replayed the conversation. ‘He had no concrete alibi between seeing Annie Laidler late morning and meeting a farmer in Amble early evening. It would have been tight but he could have killed her. We could look at CCTV in Whitley to rule him out.’
‘I’ll get Charlie onto it.’ Vera sounded preoccupied. ‘Get back here, Joe. This case is doing my head in. All these respectable elderly people making out that they’re innocent. I need a younger mind to make some sense of it.’