‘Bethany Friend is dead.’ Nathan Clare’s deep, almost musical voice made the harsh words seem all the more cruel. ‘They burnt her body, one wet morning at the crematorium. Why rake over old ashes?’
The house was a mid-terrace in the heart of Ambleside. You stepped in through the front door, straight off the pavement. There was a pub opposite and an off-licence round the corner. During the ten years he’d lived here, he’d probably kept them both busy. In a bedroom upstairs, he’d slept with Bethany, but there was no trace of her in this living room. No fading photograph on the mantelpiece. No photographs at all, come to that. Hannah supposed he wasn’t into remembering other people. She guessed that Nathan Clare had fallen in love with himself at an early age and remained ever faithful. On a small table, books were piled high. Fanned out next to a flyer advertising the De Quincey Festival were half a dozen red warning letters about unpaid phone, gas, and electric bills.
Hannah shifted on the sofa. It was absurdly low, and as lumpy as a bad milk pudding. He’d waved her to take a seat, but wasn’t foolish enough to join her. Instead he roamed up and down the narrow living room, pausing every now and then to warm his backside against a log fire. Each time he made a point, he waved his beefy arms. Every syllable of his body language said: I am in control.
‘We never closed the file.’
Bad choice of words. She sounded like a pen-pusher, ticking off a checklist.
‘So, this is an exercise in bureaucracy? Presumably you have targets to meet? Bonuses to be earned?’
‘This isn’t about meeting targets, Mr Clare. Bethany’s mother is ill, she doesn’t have long to live. She’s never understood why her only child died. She needs closure.’
‘Closure.’ Nathan Clare lifted dark, brooding eyebrows. ‘A fashionable nostrum, DCI Scarlett. Of course, it’s an illusion. Life isn’t neat and tidy. There are no elegant solutions to its mysteries.’
She groaned inwardly. Spare me the philosophy.
‘Even so, I’d be grateful for your help.’
‘I went through this six years ago. I can’t tell you any more.’
‘You and she were lovers.’
A shift of his shoulders implied: So what? Even in T-shirt, chinos and moccasins, he struck her as formidable. His features were simian, with prominent cheekbones and flared nostrils. As he stalked around in front of her, he reminded her of a caged animal. Untamed even after a lifetime of captivity, forever on the prowl. Strong, feral, dangerous.
‘Six years isn’t so long. The two of you were close, and her death was very sudden.’
‘I needed to move on.’ A grand sweep of a huge paw. ‘I made a conscious effort to scrub Bethany out of my mind.’
Hannah knew the trick he was pulling. He wanted to cover his back in case he made some mistake and contradicted his original statement. She’d fixed the appointment by phone and, caught by surprise, he’d agreed before he had the chance to fob her off. She’d half-expected when she rang the doorbell five minutes ago that he wouldn’t answer. But he’d decided to indulge in a little unsubtle psychological warfare. On the wall facing her hung a sub-Modigliani daub of an angular, naked girl with legs splayed open. He wanted her to feel uncomfortable. The lumpy sofa, at least, was doing the job.
She scrambled to her feet and stood close to him. He smelt of stale beer.
‘When did you meet Bethany?’
‘As you well know, I held a series of evening classes at the university, and she came along. She worked in the offices as a secretary at the time. Temping, to pay the rent. But literature was her passion.’
‘What was the subject of your classes?’
‘Ostensibly, the Lakes poets other than Wordsworth. Coleridge, Southey, you know?’ His tone implied that a detective wouldn’t have heard of any poet other than Wordsworth. ‘I like the discussion to range far and wide. I could never become a full-time academic. Examinations and grades only matter to second-rate minds. One night, Bethany and I talked. We went to the pub for a drink and took it from there.’
‘You began a relationship?’
‘It wasn’t against the rules, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘She was on the university’s payroll.’
‘But she wasn’t a student. The evening classes were just a way of filling the time when she ran out of ideas for her writing. She’d had a series of dead-end jobs. Serving in restaurants, typing in offices, earning a pittance behind the counter of a bookshop. One summer, she cleaned bedrooms at a hotel at Bowness. Her ambition was to write the Great English Novel. Not that it was ever going to happen.’
‘Did you and Bethany discuss her moving in here?’
‘She knew I wanted to keep my independence.’
‘You didn’t view it as a long-term relationship?’
He laughed. ‘Nowadays people spend a fortune on weddings and five minutes later they’re consulting their lawyers about divorce. I’m not sure relationships actually work long-term, Chief Inspector. A few last because the parties are too lazy or frightened to make a break.’
‘Did Bethany feel the same?’
‘She’d had bad experiences in the past.’
‘What do you mean?’
He frowned, as if he’d been lured into saying too much. ‘She was an innocent. Prey to wild infatuations, followed by deep despair.’
‘Is that so?’ Hannah was curious. ‘I heard she was a very private woman.’
‘Are private people forbidden to fall in love?’
‘Was she infatuated with you?’
He grinned, showing teeth as large as any she had ever seen.
‘Do you find that so difficult to understand, Hannah?’
‘The last time you saw her was a couple of days before she died. You admitted that you argued.’
‘I told her I’d met someone else.’
‘Who was that someone else?’
‘I said it was a girl who’d come to one of my poetry readings, but that wasn’t the truth.’
‘You invented a new girlfriend because you’d tired of Bethany?’
‘That wasn’t…’ He paused. ‘Please don’t sound shocked, it’s unbecoming in a senior police officer.’
‘I’m not shocked, Mr Clare. It just seems rather heartless.’
‘As a matter of fact, I was doing the poor girl a kindness.’
‘Really?’
‘It would have been cruel simply to say that I found her wearisome. Her physical demands, I had no trouble accommodating, I can assure you. But she stuck to me like cling film. She was terrified of rejection. Utterly terrified.’
‘Why was that, do you think?’
‘I’m not a psychiatrist.’
Hannah waited.
‘If there’s one thing I can’t stomach, it’s a clingy woman. Freedom is very precious to me.’
Through a door opening into the kitchen, Hannah saw dirty plates and mugs piled high on the draining board. The floor hadn’t seen a mop for weeks, and she caught a whiff of sour milk.
‘You never married.’
He shook his head. ‘Not for the want of opportunities, I promise you.’
Slimeball though he was, Hannah feared he was telling the truth. There were probably a good many women who thought they could change him. Depressing thought.
‘Is that right?’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, my dear Hannah. In case you’re wondering, I’m not interested in my own sex. Bethany could never persuade me there was any sense in that sort of thing. But I like to do as I please, and marriage makes that difficult. Paying off the mortgage is commitment enough for anyone.’
The urge to slap his face was almost impossible to resist. No doubt, over the years, plenty of women had succumbed to the temptation. But Hannah wanted information.
‘How did the argument between you end?’
‘I promised to call her in a few days, once I’d given her time to calm down. There was no reason why we couldn’t continue to be friends.’
‘If she was terrified of rejection, she must have been upset with you. Angry?’
‘These things are never pleasant. I’m no monster, Hannah, whatever feminist prejudices you may harbour. But our relationship had run its course. She was bound to get over me, sooner or later. Probably the moment she met someone else.’
‘Did she seem irrational, did she make threats?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Hannah gave him a do-me-a-favour look.
‘She was distressed, naturally. I had arranged to take her out for a meal, at a decent little trattoria. It closed down last year, a real loss. Bethany thought we were about to discuss a romantic holiday in Umbria when I broke the news. She wasn’t irrational. Just…unhappy.’
The original investigating team had spoken to the staff on duty at the trattoria that night. Voices had been raised, and Bethany was in floods of tears. Wailing like a child, according to one of the waiters. But there was no evidence that she’d threatened any form of revenge, far less that her behaviour had driven Nathan Clare to murder.
‘You told my colleagues that she must have committed suicide.’
‘I thought she would get over the break-up, but—’
‘You think she was so depressed that she saw no reason to keep on living?’
‘What other explanation could there be for her death? Whatever her shortcomings, Bethany was an utterly inoffensive woman. How could any sane person wish to do her harm?’
Ben Kind had asked himself the same question. Perhaps, against all odds, it was a case of accidental death. One of his working theories was that Clare had invited Bethany to the Serpent Pool to indulge in some kind of sex game as a means of reviving his flagging interest. On a lousy February day, he might have been confident they would not be disturbed. Had the experiment gone terribly wrong?
‘So, she killed herself because she was heartbroken that you ended the affair?’
‘I never said that.’
‘What, then?’
‘She was too intense for happiness. This wasn’t the first time that a relationship had come to an end against her wishes.’
‘Tell me about her previous relationships.’
‘We never discussed them. Why would I be interested?’
He’d said the same during the original investigation. At least he was consistent. Or simply careful.
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. I believe in living for the moment. All that matters is the here and now, that’s what I said to her. And I meant it.’
Something he’d said earlier stirred in her memory. At once, anxiety chilled her.
‘You mentioned that she worked in a bookshop.’
‘Correct.’
‘Waterstone’s?’
‘No, they sold second-hand books.’
Bethany Friend’s death haunted Ben Kind. Yet he couldn’t even prove it was murder, let alone get close to making an arrest. Nathan Clare was the obvious suspect. Ben disliked him, and now Hannah understood why. There was no trace of the supposed lover who dumped Bethany before she took up with Nathan. None of Bethany’s friends or work colleagues knew of anyone. Ben had wondered if the lover really existed, or was an invention of Clare’s.
Next stop was a care home near Watersedge. Time for a word with Bethany’s mother. Hannah wanted her to know she’d had the go-ahead to reopen the case. And now she needed to find out whether Bethany had ever worked for Marc.
As she stomped through the rain to her car, she thought back to those conversations with Ben. He shared with others of his generation an innate distrust of the Bramshill Flyers, those younger graduate officers who came fresh to policing with degrees in Archaeology or Classics and were fast-tracked for promotion. But he wasn’t a bigot, and he’d done everything in his power to aid her progress. Despite the age gap, there was an attraction between them. Never acknowledged in words, but palpable. Neither of them ever did anything about it. He stuck with Cheryl, for whom he’d abandoned his wife and children, and she found herself living with Marc.
One wet night, over a drink after work, Ben told her why Bethany Friend’s death meant so much to him. He’d interviewed Bethany’s mother, and been struck by the depth of her despair. She was only in her sixties, but the combination of a weak heart and a series of personal calamities had aged her. He said she might have passed for fifteen years older, and no wonder. Her husband had died long ago, followed by her son, and finally she’d lost her remaining child.
‘Sounds stupid,’ he said as they sat in the corner of a dingy pub, ‘but she made me think of my mother. When I left home, my wife wouldn’t have anything to do with me or my family, ever again. My mum never saw her grandchildren after that, even though Daniel used to write to her in secret. It made me realise…’
His voice trailed away. Hannah had wanted to take his hand and offer comfort, but she’d been afraid of where it might lead.
‘What?’
‘It made me realise what a selfish bastard I was. Mum died within a couple of years, and whatever they put on the death certificate, the truth is that her heart was broken and she lost the will to carry on.’
‘So, you want to make it up to Daphne Friend?’
‘Yes.’ He stared into his cloudy pint, embarrassed to meet her eyes. ‘Yes, yes.’
Now Ben was gone, and a cold case investigation was the last chance to discover the truth before Daphne died. This was why she’d been so determined to persuade Lauren Self to back the investment of time and resource in a seemingly hopeless cause. She owed it to Ben and Daphne to do her best.
And yet.
What if Marc had employed Bethany?
Or, even worse, if he knew what had happened to her and had kept his mouth shut because he had something to hide?
The care assistant’s name was Kasia. Like most of the staff in the home, she was Polish. Young, cheerful, and obviously overworked. The home was a double-fronted nineteenth-century house which had been much extended. A conservatory had been tacked on, affording residents a view of the fells. But nobody paid attention to the slopes beyond the rain-streaked glazing. Half a dozen elderly women and a couple of men sat around in a semicircle, but most were fast asleep. One couple were glued to a quiz programme on the television screen facing the windows. Some of the wizened faces had changed since Hannah’s last visit before Christmas, but the gentle snoring that greeted her as they walked in sounded exactly the same.
‘She is awake,’ Kasia whispered, as if they had entered a church. ‘She was unwell over the holiday, but she seems brighter today.’
Daphne Friend sat in a wheelchair, hands folded in her lap. A copy of Take a Break had slipped from her grasp and lay on the carpet in front of her, but she paid it no heed. She was barely seventy, no age at all these days, but illness and unhappiness had worn her down. Her skin was papery and she smelt of talcum powder. Her gaze rested on a framed watercolour of Buttermere on the opposite wall, but Hannah was sure she wasn’t studying the picture of the lake. Her mind was wandering back down the years, in search of those memories she managed to retain.
‘Daphne,’ the care assistant said. ‘You have a visitor.’
Hannah held out her hand. ‘Hello, Daphne. My name’s Hannah Scarlett. Do you remember me?’
Daphne Friend lifted a withered hand and brushed it against Hannah’s fingers. The smile on her lips was tentative. Was that a faint spark of recognition in the watery blue eyes? When Hannah was last here, a nurse had told her that Bethany’s mother showed signs of memory loss and problems with concentration. The symptoms had worsened since a minor stroke in November. Yet Hannah had caught her on a good day, and Daphne had spoken wistfully about her lost daughter. After talking to her, Hannah was all the more determined to discover the truth about Bethany’s death.
‘You were in Bethany’s class at school.’
It could have been worse: she might have forgotten their conversation altogether. Or was she simply guessing, like a deaf person trying to keep up when they haven’t heard properly what was said? The care assistant wheeled Daphne back to her room, a tiny box with barely enough space for a bed, two chairs, a wardrobe, chest of drawers and a small bookcase in which battered Catherine Cooksons stood side by side with novels by Pat Barker and AS Byatt.
‘I will leave you together,’ Kasia said. ‘Many things to do. Ring if you need me, OK?’
Hannah sat on a chair next to the old lady.
‘I’m a police officer, and we’re trying to find out what happened to Bethany. When I came before, I promised I’d do my best to help, and now my boss has agreed, we can get down to work.’
Daphne’s eyes began to fill with tears. ‘She was such a lovely girl.’
Hannah touched the age-spotted hand. The wedding ring was loose, her fingers were skin and bone. Ben Kind had been struck by a resemblance between this woman and his own mother. Another old lady whose life was ruined by loss and loneliness.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘She deserved better, she never had much luck.’
‘I wanted to ask you about her friends.’
‘She worked hard at school. There was a girl called Phyllida in her class. She went to America and married a doctor. Or was it an architect?’
‘What about later on? The people she was close to in those last few years.’
A tear trickled down Daphne Friend’s cheek. ‘Oh, I’m not sure. It’s so long ago. Sometimes, I get muddled.’
‘About Bethany’s boyfriends, did you meet many of them?’
Daphne frowned. ‘She was secretive. You know what young people are like. It wasn’t that I wanted to pry.’
‘You were just interested,’ Hannah suggested.
‘Yes, it’s only natural. When she was a little girl, she used to tell me everything.’ Daphne strayed into reminiscence until Hannah gently brought her back to Bethany’s later years. ‘She didn’t settle with anyone. Such a shame. I always thought it would be so nice to be a grandma.’
‘Was there anyone special at all?’
Daphne shook her head. Her white hair was sparse, the pink scalp showing through.
‘She never said.’
It wasn’t surprising that Bethany kept her private life away from her mother. Daphne Friend was a conventional woman, no doubt disapproving of sex before marriage. Bethany probably told her as much as she needed to know, and nothing more.
‘Tell me about her jobs, Daphne. She loved writing, didn’t she?’
Daphne’s eyes widened suddenly as she smiled. Even though she hadn’t put her false teeth in, Hannah had a momentary glimpse of what had attracted the late Mr Friend half a century ago.
‘She did that. The teachers always gave her top marks for English, you know. She studied it at university. Even as a tot, she always said she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Though I told her she needed to have a proper job as well.’
Good advice, Hannah supposed, if Nathan Clare was anything to go by.
‘What sort of proper job?’
‘I wanted her to teach.’ Daphne drifted into a reverie about the attractions of working in a school. ‘A respectable job, with long holidays, and a decent pension at the end of it all. But she said she wasn’t patient enough.’
‘So, what did she do?’
Daphne frowned. ‘Something-and-nothing jobs. At least it was better than the dole, but she could have made more of herself. Working behind bars, or shop counters, that’s no life for a girl with an English degree.’
‘She had a job in a bookshop, didn’t she?’
‘She worked in several shops,’ Daphne said. ‘When she was at Lakeland, she bought a lot of lovely jerseys at a discount.’
Questioning people with erratic memories demanded endless patience. Police work was something else that wouldn’t have suited Bethany Friend.
‘And the bookshop?’
‘Yes, I remember. A nice place.’
‘Did you ever go to see her there?’
‘Once, dear. The shop was in an old mill. They opened a cafeteria. You could sit outside on a nice day with a cup of tea and a bun, and look at the stream as it went over the whatsit.’
‘The weir,’ Hannah said automatically. Her heart was pounding.
‘That’s right, the weir.’ Daphne’s pallid cheeks coloured as something occurred to her. ‘I’m so sorry, dear, your name’s just slipped my mind.’
After leaving the care home, Hannah wandered around the village, not yet ready to return to Divisional HQ. With a certain amount of well-concealed malicious glee, she had given Greg Wharf the task of checking into current wisdom on knotting techniques, to see if more light could be cast on the manner of Bethany’s death. Maggie was phoning round, in search of the people on her list who remained untraced.
Pausing by the edge of the lake, she gazed at the grey expanse of water while swans flapped their wings as if trying to dry themselves in the drizzle. She’d quizzed Daphne without success about Bethany’s spell in the bookshop. It must have been during the early days of Hannah’s relationship with Marc. They’d both been working long hours; she was building her career, while Marc devoted himself to getting the business off the ground. They had so little time to spare for each other. Her job meant so much to her; disappointment had yet to set in. As for Marc, books were his obsession, his life. He’d dreamt of owning a bookshop the way other kids dreamt of running a sweet shop. She’d been content to let him get on with it.
Hannah remembered the photograph that had caught Greg Wharf’s attention. A young woman who was quietly intriguing. A challenge. Like Hannah herself, perhaps. There was a type of woman who appealed to Marc. Bethany fitted the profile.
As she followed a circuit around Ambleside, anorak capital of the western world, shop windows proclaimed unbeatable reductions on walking boots, and outdoor gear for sale at not-to-be-repeated prices. But she was in no mood for bargain-hunting.
When she arrived home that evening, the lights were on, and Marc emerged from the kitchen with a spring in his step. He planted a kiss on her cheek and patted her bum. He was in such a good mood, she supposed he’d sold a first edition. Or bought one on the cheap.
‘Flogged a signed copy of Leave it to Psmith half an hour ago over the Internet. As for the shop, barely a customer. It’s the weather, of course. Never mind, the Wodehouse sale more than makes up for it.’ He put his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. ‘I’ve put the oven on and dug a bottle of that nice red wine out of the cellar to celebrate.’
As his lips brushed hers, she told herself this wasn’t the time to interrogate him about Bethany Friend. Moments of harmony were precious. He would hate questions, would demand to be told whether she was checking up on him. In her head, she heard his outraged innocence.
‘For God’s sake, Hannah, what’s got into you? Don’t you trust me anymore? I mean – you’re not jealous of a dead woman, are you?’
So she squeezed his hand and said, ‘That’s fine.’