Watermillock had almost gone back to normal after being invaded by press, police dogs, forensic teams in plastic suits, yellow tape, and groups of residents and tourists, standing around theorising about what might have happened to the woman in the churchyard.
Kelly and Rob had eaten sandwiches from Waitrose at the M6 services. They’d drunk coffee and cold water. Holidaymakers came into the shops and cafes, happy, tanned and relaxed, and looking forward to the final leg of their journey. It was a hub of activity and one of the best gateways into the Lakes.
She dropped Rob back at Eden House and carried on to the A66. He would have to sit at his desk making phone calls this afternoon, like most of the others. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him with her, it was always good to bounce ideas from person to person, but she just couldn’t afford the officers. She didn’t have an endless pit, and if they were all to go home at night and get some rest, she had to spread them thinly. She knew he wasn’t impressed, and neither would she have been at his age. Rob was good company and he was keen to learn. There was often much to acquire from a young fresh pair of eyes, which saw things that tired ones missed. But she’d made her decision, and had come to Watermillock on her own. Her team knew that she tried to give equal experience to everyone, but that experience included number crunching and screen time. Cane wasn’t about to yield more officers yet; she’d have to unearth some critical evidence first.
Kelly parked as close as she could to the church gates. The building was typical of the Lakes: sandstone craftsmanship coupled with quiet serenity. It had almost returned to peaceful calm once more and Kelly thought back to the last time she’d been here. Since then, fifty-two statements had been taken, turning up very little of interest.
The graveyard was full and Kelly could see, without going up close, that most of the headstones were hundreds of years old. Some of them lolled to the side, others crumbled away, and some were covered in vegetation, relatives having passed long ago. Several benches were dotted around and Kelly wondered if Conrad Walker had been to that of his wife recently. She hoped so. The place was arrestingly soothing, like many churchyards, but with the trees bouncing gently in the soft breeze, and the smell of Ullswater close by, it was a place of singular beauty, and this struck Kelly as important. She walked around the back, looking for possible ways that a body (a hefty one at that) could have been transported here. The trainer print had been found in the mud, by the gate. They had no guarantees that it belonged to a killer, as opposed to a member of the congregation, but it had looked fresh, and so it was a lead.
The imprint of Terrance Johnson’s shoe was not a match.
Uniforms still manned the spot where Moira had been found, but the tarp, tape and markers would be soon gone. This was Kelly’s last chance to replay the scene in her head, in peace, without being disturbed. There was only one road in to the village, so she had to assume that the body had been transported by car. It would’ve had to have parked. She looked around. There were no street lights in a churchyard and, sadly, no CCTV.
Kelly calculated the closest place where a car could have parked, and it was pretty much where she had parked herself. She measured it: it was twenty-three feet away. Moira weighed over two hundred pounds. Kelly had once squatted ninety kilograms in the gym, egged on by three male colleagues, whose testosterone levels would challenge those of the Marvel team put together, and she’d managed two repetitions. She’d been twenty-six at the time.
She looked around, and confirmed there were no cameras, houses, or shops in the line of sight. There was no play area, pub, bench, or bus stops nearby. Kelly’s heart sank when she contemplated the endless list of options presented in the Lakes to a killer who wanted privacy, isolation and tranquillity. It had it in spades. Once out of Watermillock, the killer could have driven east or west. East led back to Penrith, and west, deeper into the Lakes National Park.
The reverend had agreed to meet her, and she walked to the entrance and opened the large oak door. He’d already given a statement, but Kelly wanted to meet him personally. He’d stated that he’d never met Moira and, indeed, no-one in the village knew her.
The church was cold, and Kelly appreciated the break from the sun. The contrast between the hot summer outside, and the cool, cavernous mausoleum interior was striking. The place was vast inside, thanks to high ceilings and huge stained glass windows. Her small heels made a racket on the stone floor. There was a desk to one side, and she checked her watch and waited, absently flicking through leaflets and flyers. For such a quiet village, it would seem that it had an active community.
Kelly was struck by the stillness, and it instantly impelled one to quiet. The smell of incense wafted around and she noticed a metal and glass burner near the pulpit. A cloud must have passed outside because light, in shades of blues and yellows, hit the stone floor, as it flooded through stained glass windows. If she’d been religious – which she wasn’t – she might have been moved by the significance. The reverend was late, and she studied the images splayed all over the c hurch more carefully. Images of saints and sinners, and hell’s pitfalls, were everywhere. The potential religious significance of Moira’s death nagged her.
She heard a door creak, and a man in a long black cassock with a white dog collar round his neck, came towards her. He smiled and held out his hand. He was a small man but thick-set, and Kelly wondered when and how he’d found his calling. He wore glasses but they couldn’t hide his open face.
‘Reverend Neil Thomas?’ she said.
‘Kelly Porter? Pleasure. Please, let’s go to my office, unless you’d like to walk in the grounds? It’s a wonderful day,’ he said.
‘Yes, that would be fine. It is gorgeous out there,’ Kelly said, relieved. He beckoned her to lead and she did so. The Reverend Thomas was proud of his church and he pointed out details for her as they wandered towards a bench. It had a metal plate screwed onto the back of the backrest and an inscription: ‘For Hilda Alty. 1909-1973. Missed every day.’
They sat. Birds chirped, and the reverend waited.
‘Reverend, I’d like to ask you some questions about the place. You must know a lot about the village, and, I’m guessing, it’s inhabitants. How long have you been here?’
‘Twelve years. I couldn’t believe my luck, being sent here. But now, I’m afraid visitors might come here for something entirely different,’ he said.
Kelly was sure that if visitors came here on some weird pilgrimage tour of a gruesome murder, then the reverend wouldn’t mind the extra traffic. They could set up a tea shop.
‘I’m wondering if there was a reason why the woman was left here. I have reason to believe that this place was chosen on purpose, but from what I can make out, she had no connection with Watermillock,’ she said.
Kelly didn’t mention the relevance of dump sights, or the fact that she believed it to be a punishment killing – thus flagging up a whiff of religion at least.
The reverend looked at the sky, as if God would provide him with the key to her quandary. She wished that He would.
‘It’s a beautiful place, Miss Porter,’ he began.
‘Please call me Kelly,’ she insisted. He carried on.
‘I suppose one could think that she was brought here to make peace with God. You could think that it was an act of mercy. Or, it could have been an accident,’ he said.
‘I don’t think it was an accident, and I don’t think it was mercy. The lady’s husband told us that she was not at all religious, in fact, she was vehemently against it,’ said Kelly.
‘So a conversion perhaps?’ said the reverend.
It was an attractive theory, and Kelly did believe that Moira knew her killer, because he was making a statement about her personality and character. Kelly wondered if the reverend had ever considered becoming a forensic psychologist.
‘What do you know about the Romantic Poets, Reverend? Specifically the Lakes poets. I noticed you had some of their work for sale at the entrance.’ The trinkets, pamphlets, maps, guides and sweets for sale in churches had become a normal sight, and there was nothing unusual about this one.
He looked at her oddly. ‘Has that got something to do with your enquiries, detective, or are you just making conversation?’
‘I have reason to believe that they might be relevant.’
He looked at her questioningly but Kelly divulged nothing further. He knew the score. He looked at the sky once more, thoughtful and introspect, then answered.
‘Well, they loved the Lakes. They loved the majesty, the vastness and the fact that in such a wilderness, one was closer to God. Well, perhaps not God, but a god of sorts: their god. The creator, whatever form that came in for them. I think Wordsworth was religious, but they were all more believers in the human spirit. Or they thought they were. In reality, I think they all believed in the God who created all of this.’ He wafted his hands around the churchyard and beyond, to the fells. It was singularly romantic, and Kelly could sit and listen to this man for hours. He must spend much of his time alone, in contemplation and study, but he didn’t seem to mind. His speech was calm and measured. A bit like Ted Wallis.
‘I think they were tortured souls, Kelly, looking for the meaning of life, escaping the evils of the time,’ he said.
The word torture jarred her. ‘What were they escaping from? What tortured them?’
‘The degeneracy of industrialisation. Lust for money and capital. The slide of man into a hedonistic and politically crooked existence, where nature was forgotten. Why?’ he asked.
‘You seem to know a lot about them, Reverend, is it a hobby of yours?’ she asked. She thought about Moira’s fingers again, and an image of miserly money lenders in Grimm nursery tales came to her, their fingers sticky with money and corruption.
‘Absolutely. I love any literature or art to do with the Lakes, it’s the most beautiful place on Earth! I take guided walks on trails following in the footsteps of poets like Wordsworth, and artists like De Breanski.’
His enthusiasm was infectious. She felt like staying here in this alluring place, discussing poetry and the meaning of life, all day long. But she had a job to do, and despite wanting to spend hours with this reverend-cum-professor, she had to pull herself away. She wondered if, at some point, she could join one of his tours – it could be relevant. Indulgent, but relevant.
‘What do you think of this? It’s from Shelley’s ‘The Flower that Smiles Today, Tomorrow dies.’ She showed him the lines that had only yesterday been retrieved from the cavity of a murder victim, and today copied onto clean note paper, and he read them, engrossed.
‘This is one of the more depressing elements of Lakes poetry, Kelly. They were all guilty of it: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, although there’s no evidence that Keats ever stayed here for any length of time. They couldn’t help themselves, it was their way of trying to make sense of man’s existence. The Age of Reason tried to do it with science, and the Romantics tried to do it with feelings. It drove a lot of them to opium, I can tell you.’ He laughed.
‘So what’s depressing about it? I always thought that the Lakes poets just wrote about the beautiful scenery. What am I missing?’ she asked.
Kelly had a vision of Coleridge, Shelley and Southey, wasted on hard drugs, on top of Wordsworth’s cottage roof on a heady summer evening, swigging from bottles of Port and reciting their poems to one another. But she still didn’t understand the meaning of the verse clearly.
‘I suppose they compared themselves to nature, and always fell short. Ironically, though, they were all narcissists. They espoused poetry that came from the heart, but they were still members of the privileged elite, like all philosophers. Champagne socialists, shall we say.’
‘So they were hypocrites?’ Kelly asked.
The reverend laughed.
‘Yes, you could say that. Look, it’s about innocence, and not being as beautiful as we once thought, and about losing something because it’s essentially tainted.’ He looked at her. His eyes were soft, and his face deeply etched with experience; real and theological. His face was tanned and she imagined him taking groups of walkers around the major sights, reciting lines from verse as they listened attentively. A philosophical theologian was a rarity indeed, well at least one who was so balanced. In all the time he’d taken to answer her questions, he hadn’t once tried to preach to her.
Kelly was no English graduate like Emma. She’d majored in Biology. But it was beginning to make sense. Especially the notion of being judged.
Punished.
‘How regular are your tours, Reverend?’ she asked. ‘Does anyone help you?’
‘Every Friday morning, and yes, my good friend, Professor John Derrent, at the University of Lancaster, comes along now and again, and when he does, he always puts his own spin on things; the walkers love it.’ The reverend was enthused once more, and he became more animated.
‘And you follow in the footsteps of the poets?’
He nodded. ‘Most of them,’ he said.
‘Percy Bysshe Shelley?’
‘Yes, when we go to Keswick. But he was only here for three months. He didn’t like it and he moved on, finding it not in the least romantic, but tainted and full of tourists. A bit like today, some would argue,’ he said, mischievously.
‘And is that what you think, Reverend?’ she asked.
He thought for a moment before he replied.
‘Anything that is beautiful is sought after, and one would like to think that we are the only pursuer. It’s like going to The Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, and getting there, only to find that you have to queue up behind a thousand other people to get a glimpse, when your fantasy was you sitting in front of it, on your own, taking it in, and appreciating the beauty like no-one else could,’ he said. Kelly shivered.
‘So their idea of perfection was tainted after all?’ she asked.
‘Exactly!’ he said, his eyes twinkling. His accent was from the midlands somewhere, and Kelly wondered if he had a family.
‘Do you stay alone in the Vicarage, Reverend?’
‘I do. Divorce isn’t picky like God is,’ he said. Sadness tinged the corners of his mouth and his eyes looked glassy.
‘Well, I really could stay here all day, but I need to get back to work, I’ll contact you should I need anything further, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch should anything jog your memory – anything at all, even if it doesn’t seem important,’ she said.
‘Of course I will. I’ll walk you to your car.’
‘Could you write down the name of your professor for me, and your phone number?’ she asked, and passed him a card and her pen.
He did so. The reverend was right handed.
She stood up and held out her hand.
‘Thank you so much, Reverend. I’ll join one of your tours one day.’
‘I do hope so, that would be very fine indeed.’
As she walked back to her car with him, Kelly thought to herself that she hoped he hadn’t always been religious. It seemed such a waste. She hoped he’d smoked weed and necked vodka at university. She did that a lot with people who fascinated her: made up stories about their past.
They arrived at her car.
‘Is it a close community, Reverend?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes, and everybody is in deep shock. I’m organising meetings to bring everyone together so we can grieve as a community. We didn’t know her, but she came to rest here, and it will never be the same,’ he said.
‘Have you seen Mr Walker?’
‘Yes, we’ve been for several pints of the strong stuff. He’s taken it badly, but he’s a survivor, Conrad is, he’s made of tough stuff.’
‘I hope it doesn’t put him off his morning routine of coming to sit with his wife.’
‘No, he’s here like clockwork, every morning.’
‘Good, I was worried about him.’
They said their goodbyes and Kelly drove away. The lake glimmered in the distance and she considered that the killer had chosen somewhere fairly remote: it wasn’t random. Had he planned the timing too? Perhaps he had watched Conrad Walker go into the churchyard every morning, and placed Moira near his bench. If the community was as close as he said it was, then Kelly wondered why on earth no-one seemed to have seen anything at all. It’s as if Moira was brought here under circumstances shrouded in absolute secrecy, and the whole village had been asleep.