‘Don’t stop,’ said Melanie, indicating the plate of food. ‘I’ll talk while you eat.’ Her voice was husky and there were grey smudges under her eyes.
Bonnie obeyed, more to make a point than anything else. Her curiosity was raging, along with a rising excitement. It was barely possible to force the meat and potatoes down her throat. But she was wary of letting her friend see any of this. Melanie’s role in the disappearance of Ben was obscure, and probably peripheral, but in Bonnie’s mind there was an uneasy association.
‘So, listen. I’m going to talk about Dan. I need to get it straight in my head, and there’s nobody else I can find to help. I tried to find Simmy’s mum just now. She’s always been incredibly sensible. But she wasn’t there. It was a stupid idea, anyway.’
‘Why not Simmy? Isn’t she good at that stuff?’
Melanie pulled a face. ‘I think I’ve annoyed her. She was quite off earlier on, when she called me. She thinks I’ve gone all self-pity and helplessness. And I wasn’t very nice to her, either.’
‘I thought so too,’ said Bonnie. ‘To be honest. You should have been with us today.’
‘Yeah, well …’ Melanie wiped a finger below her good eye. ‘It got to me, finding him like that. I couldn’t even think. I just kept feeling his head, all wet and heavy on my legs. I’m going to feel it for the rest of my life.’
‘You won’t,’ said Bonnie, through a full mouth. ‘It just seems like that now.’
‘Maybe. This afternoon I sort of woke up a bit and started to put my mind more to who might have done it. And I remembered a few things from the past week or two, in the hotel. Things that might have something to do with it.’
‘So tell the police,’ Bonnie urged her. ‘They need all the help they can get, if they’re going to find Ben.’
‘I thought Ben was okay.’
‘He probably isn’t,’ said Bonnie miserably. ‘If he was, he’d have come home by now. The important thing is, if the police can get some idea of who killed Dan, they’ll know who’s taken Ben, as well. Same people. See?’
Melanie pulled out a chair and sat at right angles to Bonnie, drawing idle circles on the plastic-coated cloth. ‘I don’t know. I mean, about telling the police. It could get the hotel closed down. I have to think of my job, references, and all that. And if there’s really something going on, they’ll find it out without my help. They probably know it already, anyway. There’s a woman who turned up yesterday. They’ll have clocked her by now. She’s been before.’
‘I’m not sure, but she had something going on with Dan. Not that sort of thing. Business. Something dodgy. He pushed me out of the room before he’d talk to her.’
‘When?’
‘Last week. I thought she was making a booking for rooms or a party, but then I wondered if she was an inspector of some sort. You know – health and safety or food hygiene or something. Or even an Egon Ronay spy. But none of that really fitted. There was some understanding between them that they wanted kept secret.’
‘I saw two men there today, who looked real villains.’
Melanie tossed her head impatiently. ‘They’re nothing to do with it. They’ll be the Americans Dan was so worried about. They’re in the hospitality industry, and I got the feeling they might be thinking about buying the hotel outright. Everybody was drilled in advance, making sure we impressed them.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘That turned out well, didn’t it.’
Bonnie gave up trying to eat. ‘They didn’t look like that. More like Mafia bosses.’
‘Well, they’d hardly hang around looking like that if they’d just killed Dan, would they? Trust me, they’re not important.’
‘I don’t know how you can be so sure. They might be bluffing it out. That’d be the clever way to do it.’ Bonnie heard Ben silently applauding her observations. It was exactly what he would think himself. ‘And what about the other guests? That Mr Ferguson – the tall old chap – was at the police station just now with Moxo.’
‘Was he? He’s a sweetie, in his way. Just wants some peace and quiet. His wife died. He told me all about it on Monday. I didn’t like him at first. He complained a lot when he arrived. But then he settled down and seemed happier. He even mellowed towards Gentian. Gave her a toffee.’
Bonnie’s antennae quivered. ‘Isn’t that a bit … you know? Old man giving little girl sweets.’ She waggled her head meaningfully.
‘No, no. My God! Gentian’s not the sort of kid anybody could feel like that about. She’d scream the place down, for a start. And she probably knows exactly where to kick a man. She’s a horrible kid, basically. Out of control, with a vicious streak. Likes to cause trouble. Ask Simmy – she saw what she was capable of, on Monday.’
Bonnie closed her eyes for a moment, wondering what had gone wrong for young Gentian to earn her such a character analysis.
‘Then there’s the Lillywhites,’ Melanie went on. ‘He’s a bully and she’s a doormat. She won’t even breathe until she’s sure it’s okay with him. I’ve never seen anything like it. Their room is weird, as well. Rila – she’s one of the chambermaids – took me for a look. Everything was absolutely pristine. They’d made their bed, wiped down the bathroom, put everything straight. It was just the same as when they’d arrived, except the towels were damp. We didn’t know what to make of it.’
‘Force of habit, maybe,’ Bonnie suggested. ‘She’s a boring little housewife who cleans everything every day. Even on holiday, she can’t stop herself.’
‘Mentally ill, if you ask me,’ said Melanie.
‘And the staff. What about the staff? Isn’t it most likely that one of them had a grievance against Dan and took it to the extreme? Moxon says Ninian saw Ben in a car with a man and a woman. Could that have been the manager and his wife, maybe?’
‘What?’
‘Yes. Last night. Somewhere up Grasmere way, I think. Of course, Ninian’s an idiot, so it’s probably not right. If it is, then it’s hard to square with the windscreen note and all that.’
Melanie smacked the table. ‘Yes, Simmy said something about a note. You’ll have to explain what it means.’
Bonnie gave a full account of the events in Hawkshead, except that she omitted any mention of Ben’s game.
Melanie repeated part of it. ‘So – he was in a shop with a woman, but she wasn’t really keeping him there. The boy who wrote the note thought Ben was perhaps following her, without her realising?’
Bonnie rubbed her nose. ‘He didn’t quite say that. That was just what I thought might be going on.’
‘It would make sense, though. So then maybe she caught him and was driving him somewhere. If Ninian can be believed, that is. Which he probably can’t.’
Bonnie groaned. ‘It’s so awful not knowing where he is,’ she burst out. ‘I just want to go out there and find him.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Melanie said with certainty. ‘It’s all completely typical of him. Ninian saw some totally other boy in that car. How big a coincidence would it be, if it really had been him? That wouldn’t happen. But he should come home tonight, all the same. It’s not fair on his mother.’
‘Or me!’
‘Or you.’
Bonnie could see that Melanie was making a big effort to be thoughtful and considerate, biting back some sharper remarks. ‘I know it’s not the same, Mel,’ she said. ‘What happened to your Dan is as bad as it can get. But I can’t help being scared for Ben. And I want him. I want to know I can phone him. There’s just a horrible great gap where he’s supposed to be.’
‘What are the police doing to find him?’
‘Bugger all. They haven’t got a clue. They don’t even know if he really is missing, that’s the trouble. Moxon seems to be half-asleep, and snappy with it. I don’t think he’s up to the job, really. He said himself he didn’t know whether Ben’s a hostage or what. They’ve asked everybody at the hotel a thousand questions and crawled around in the woods, and that’s mostly it, I reckon. I mean – what else is there to do, when you think about it?’
‘But Mr Ferguson was here at the station? Is that what you said? Why him?’ Melanie frowned. ‘Maybe he saw something yesterday. Maybe he overheard something.’ She brightened slightly. ‘He is always hanging about, listening to people. Lonely, you see. Nobody much bothers with him, poor old bloke.’
‘I don’t know,’ sighed Bonnie. ‘I didn’t even remember who he was when he first came in with Moxo.’
‘Why would you?’
‘I told you – I was at the hotel today. I saw them all. Even that Gentian and her mother. Seems rather a hard-faced cow. The kid was behaving all right, though. Bored out of her skull, obviously.’
‘How was it? At the hotel, I mean.’ There was something wistful in Melanie’s question. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day.’
‘The guests were out on the lawn and the police were inside. They’ve got an incident room where they ask all the questions. I think that’s just for today, though. They’re all coming back here with the paperwork in the morning.’
‘They’ll be wanting to know everything about Dan’s life. Don’t they always do that when a person’s murdered?’
Bonnie wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t ask me. Why – does he have a wife tucked away somewhere? How old was he, anyway?’
‘Thirty-one. He said he was married for a year or two and then divorced. The job took up practically all his time. A wife wouldn’t see much of him.’
‘Didn’t stop him having one, though. You told us on Monday that he was smarmy. That’s the word you used. Smarmy.’
‘I know. Everybody’s going to keep reminding me of that. It was just an act, all that. Really he was great. Really nice, you know?’ Tears escaped down her cheek. The false eye, to Bonnie’s fascination, appeared to lack the equipment for crying. ‘I can’t stop crying, every time I think about him,’ Melanie sniffed. ‘I never cry. It’s ridiculous.’
‘Don’t mind me.’
The older girl laughed through the tears. ‘I should have been there with you all today. I knew I should – but I couldn’t make myself get there. It would be just like going to work, but absolutely different at the same time. I just kept hearing Dan’s dead, Dan’s dead in my head, on and on. And the way some of those cops looked at me yesterday wasn’t nice. There I was, soaking wet and shivering, and nobody really bothered to see if I was okay. I hated the whole lot of them. I wanted a bomb to drop on the hotel and kill everybody in it. Even Simmy.’
Bonnie’s heart lurched. ‘Why, what did Simmy do?’
‘Not much. Not for a while, anyhow. She just hung about, getting in the way. Once they’d got Ben’s message off her phone, they didn’t need her any more, but she kept on sticking around looking tragic. I mean – it really isn’t anything to do with her, is it?’
‘She took Ben there in the first place.’ Bonnie eyed Melanie carefully as she said this, aware that she was repeating something Simmy had said.
‘Right. I told her it was all her fault, because of that.’
‘You didn’t really mean it. It’s not so terrible.’
‘She didn’t like it.’
‘I know. But she can be annoying. Sounds as if you think the same. Like a mother one minute, and just one of us the next. Why doesn’t she get a life?’
‘We are her life,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s the trouble.’
Corinne interrupted their rather hollow laughter, opening the door and saying, ‘Time to break it up, girls. I need to get in here.’ She threw a frustrated glance at Bonnie’s half-eaten cottage pie. ‘Something wrong with it?’ she demanded.
‘Of course not.’ Bonnie gave her a look that warned her not to play such a tired old game. ‘It was scrumptious.’
‘Right. Well, there’s a whole lot more we can have warmed up tomorrow. And probably the next day as well.’
‘Can’t wait,’ said Bonnie, thinking that the crispy edges of warmed-up cottage pie were really very appetising. People always thought that a person with anorexia took no pleasure in the flavours and textures of food, but they were wrong. Plenty of things got her saliva flowing. It was all the stuff that came with it that caused the difficulties.
‘Going to the shop tomorrow, are you?’ Corinne asked. Then she looked at Melanie. ‘And the hotel? Or has normal life ceased altogether?’
Both girls went blank. It was a question neither of them had yet addressed.
‘I see it has,’ observed Corinne. ‘Well, that won’t do, will it?’
‘You’re as worried about Ben as we are,’ Bonnie told her. ‘So you can stop pretending.’
‘All I want is for you to stay where I can see you. That’s enough for me to worry about, just at the moment.’ Corinne made a playful pretend cuff at Bonnie’s head, successfully lightening the atmosphere as she did it.
‘I’ll go,’ said Melanie. ‘Sorry I put you off your supper.’
‘Phone me tomorrow, then. We’ll go and see Simmy and work out a plan.’
Melanie got up and Corinne groaned theatrically. ‘And what’s poor old Moxon going to think about that?’ she asked.
Bonnie slept badly, dropping into tangled dreams for short spells and then surfacing to find that reality was no better. She could find no logical thread to follow, nothing that prompted her to explore a particular place, or approach a particular person. The previous day had been a model of clarity by comparison. All she could think of was that she should phone Melanie, and they would go together to the shop and try to construct a credible theory. That’s what Ben would do. He would draw a diagram with circles and arrows and neat remarks. He would list every known fact, and every individual involved. She recited some of these facts to herself – mysterious, smart woman at the hotel, with some link to Dan. Possible sighting by Ninian. No, no – that wasn’t a fact, she told herself. That was a useless diversion, taking them away from the proper path.
Her next dream included trees and police tape that was tied around the ankle of the Gentian child. Somewhere behind her she could feel Ben, but something was preventing her from turning round to look. It was a rope made of plaited rushes, wound around her legs. The other end was in the middle of Esthwaite, anchored by something heavy that she knew would be horrific if she managed to drag it out of the water. When she pulled, the tape attached to Gentian tightened and the little girl screamed.
At last it was morning, sunshine streaming through her window, and the hoped-for enlightenment was as far away as ever.
Over breakfast, she tried to convince Corinne that she would keep her informed of every move she made. ‘I’ll be at the shop all day, anyway,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry.’
Corinne merely sighed.
The shop was unlocked when she arrived shortly before nine. Simmy was in the back room constructing a colourful spray of flowers. ‘Got to take these to Newby Bridge in a minute,’ she said. ‘It’s for Moxon’s mother-in-law. Can you hold the fort till I get back? I’ll only be about forty minutes.’
‘Okay.’ It felt strange the way Simmy was carrying on as usual. ‘No news about Ben, then?’ she couldn’t resist adding.
‘Haven’t heard a word.’
‘So they haven’t found him.’ Again, the tightness, the inability to breathe, had her in its grip. He had been gone for two nights now. ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him?’
Simmy closed her eyes and said nothing. It was the most terrifying thing Bonnie had seen for ages.
‘You think he’s been killed?’ she said, in a choked whisper. ‘You do, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think anything. My mind’s paralysed. There’s nothing we can do, except just wait. So let’s get on with our jobs, and see what happens.’
Bonnie stared at her. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? You can’t mean you’re just going to carry on as usual and hope something turns up? That’s like giving up altogether.’
‘I just don’t see—’
‘Well, I do. Melanie agrees with me, as well. We’ve got to sit down and make a list of every single little thing, all the facts, and the people, the times and everything. We might see a pattern, or a clue or something. It’s what Ben would do,’ she concluded fiercely.
‘You’ve spoken to Melanie?’
‘She came round last night. She said she’d tried your mum, but she wasn’t in. I don’t know what good that would’ve done, anyhow.’
‘None at all,’ agreed Simmy listlessly.
There was a silence, before Simmy returned to her flowers. She glanced out of the small window, looking onto the yard behind the shop. ‘At least it’s another warm day. He won’t be feeling cold.’
‘Well, he was hardly wearing anything. Shorts and a T-shirt. He left his rucksack in my van.’
Bonnie’s head turned hot. ‘Shorts?’
‘Yes. His legs are quite brown, although he said some of it was dirt.’
‘No, no. That Barnaby said he had trousers. They were wet around the bottom. You heard him.’
‘Did I? I didn’t notice.’
‘Where would he get trousers from?’
Simmy was unbearably slow. ‘I have no idea.’
‘It must mean he was kidnapped. The people changed his clothes, in case the police were looking for someone in shorts. Did you tell them what he was wearing?’
‘I don’t think they ever asked.’
‘This is important, Simmy. It’s a massive great clue.’
‘It could be, I suppose. So phone Moxon. I’ve got to go. They want the flowers by ten o’clock.’
Bonnie lost it. ‘Go on, then. Can’t risk losing any business. Can’t let an old lady down. It’s only my boyfriend who might be dead. What does that matter, compared to a bunch of flowers?’
Simmy pretended not to hear. She lifted the finished spray, wrapped cellophane around it, raised her chin and walked out of the back door without a word. Bonnie watched her employer climb stiffly into the van, and then dug in her pocket for her phone. Her hands were shaking, as she realised she had no idea of Moxon’s number.
Melanie knew it, though. And Melanie arrived five minutes after Simmy left. ‘It’s here, look,’ she said, riffling through Simmy’s stack of business cards. ‘You must have seen her using it by now.’
Bonnie shrugged. ‘If I have, I forgot.’ She grabbed the scrappy object from Melanie and started keying in the number. ‘Oh bummer. My battery’s going. Can I use your phone instead?’
‘Why do you want to call him?’ Melanie wanted to know, handing over her phone. Bonnie merely flapped at her to stay silent. Melanie efficiently produced a charger and connected Bonnie’s phone to a power socket. ‘Never know when you’ll need it,’ she muttered.
‘Hello? Is that Inspector Moxon?’ the younger girl asked, making an effort to sound calm and responsible. ‘Good. It’s Bonnie Lawson. Um … I think I’ve found some evidence that Ben really has been kidnapped. That boy at the old school place yesterday said something about trousers. But Simmy says she’s certain Ben was wearing shorts.’
She pulled a handful of her frizzy hair in frustration, as she listened to his reply. ‘No, but how could he? He didn’t have any other clothes. He wouldn’t have bought some, would he?’ More listening, but little more speaking, before she finished the call. ‘He’s not very impressed,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think the man’s a fool?’
‘He’s probably just trying to stop you going up there again and interrupting things.’
‘Hmm,’ said Bonnie.
Melanie didn’t stay very long. ‘I need to call old Bodgett and find out where I stand. He might want me to go in today, if the police are packing up. Then I have to get the car off my idiot brother, before he takes it to Carlisle or Lancaster or somewhere. He’s always doing that without telling me.’
A customer gave Melanie her opportunity to depart. Bonnie called after her, ‘It was hardly worth coming, was it? Why’d you bother?’
The customer – a middle-aged man buying red roses, his face almost the same colour as the flowers – gave her a worried look. ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ she snapped. ‘Do you want me to wrap some fancy ribbon round these?’
‘No, thank you,’ said the customer, almost throwing money at her.
She was tempted to throw it back, so foul had her temper suddenly become. What was the matter with the police that they could ignore such a clunking great piece of evidence? Moxon had sounded as if he was in a crowd of people all talking at once. His impatience with her had been offensive. She fumed for a further ten minutes, alone in the shop, before bringing her rage under a degree of control.
Her only hope was to go back to square one and think everything through all over again. Whatever his situation, Ben would try to send her a message. Or he would rely on her to work it all out from the facts available. The photos had to be significant. The anonymous legs encased in trousers, perhaps? But surely that picture had been taken during a struggle, not deliberately aimed? And before that, Ben could not have known he would be captured, chased, challenged – whatever it was that had happened to him. So in fact the pictures on his phone meant nothing. They told the police how and where Dan’s body had been lying, but said not a thing about Ben himself.
Which left the bizarre events in the middle of Hawkshead. Here she really got into the momentum of her enquiry into the most likely explanation. With Simmy due back in ten minutes, she forced herself to think quickly. Her fingers twitched as she made mental notes, ticking off facts and suppositions, moving on to assumptions. Ben had taught her how this should be done. They had practised, laughing together, inventing little scenarios for each other.
And thus it all clicked into place, from one second to the next. All thanks to a second look at the assumptions everyone had been making.