The Hanging Wood (17 page)

‘You’re making it up!’ Sham blurted out. ‘He never said anything about it to me!’

Purdey shrugged. ‘So?’

Gareth said, ‘I think you’d better tell us the whole story.’

For once, he sounded stern and humourless, like the Victorian paterfamilias who stared down from the opposite wall. Daniel snatched a glance at his fellow diners. Kit and Glenys looked bewildered, Bryan displeased, Sally agog and open-mouthed, hungry for fresh revelations. Hurt and angry, Sham had turned the colour of beetroot. Louise was frowning with concentration, keen not to miss anything. Only Fleur’s expression – or lack of it – gave nothing away. Perhaps her studied indifference was a clue; why make such an effort to appear unfazed? Daniel found himself admiring her gift for hiding what she really thought.

‘Yes,’ Purdey said. ‘Mike Hinds was his father, and Aslan had come back to check him out.’

‘Check him out?’

‘Correct. They’d never met, and Aslan was afraid he wouldn’t be welcome if he turned up on his father’s doorstep and introduced himself.’

‘Never met?’ Bryan was bewildered. ‘But if you’re trying to say that this man is Callum Hinds, then—’

‘I’m not saying that!’

She was dragging it out, Daniel thought, relishing her fifteen minutes of fame in the family circle.

‘What, then?’

‘Aslan wasn’t Callum. His mother met Mike Hinds in a bar. They had a fling, and Aslan was the result. By the time he was born, his mother had left Keswick for Carlisle, and before long she went back home to Turkey. Mike Hinds never knew anything about the child.’

‘This is bizarre.’ Gareth shook his head in disbelief. ‘I know Mike was a womaniser in his younger days, but …’

Sally said, ‘How on earth did you find this out?’

‘I met Aslan when I called in at St Herbert’s. Aunt Fleur asked me to drop off some financial statements for the principal. Aslan and I got talking. He invited me to meet up for a drink at a bar in town that night, and since I had nothing better to do, I agreed. That was when he told me his story; it only took a few drinks to loosen his tongue. He swore me to secrecy, but I think he wanted to impress me with his exotic life story. An illegitimate son of a Keswick farmer, raised in Istanbul, who has roamed the world for years and is now back in Cumbria in search of his roots. Fascinating if you like that sort of thing, but he wasn’t my type. When he invited me back to his flat, I made it clear I wasn’t interested.’

‘I bet,’ Sham muttered.

‘What do you mean?’ her mother asked.

‘Oh, come on, Mum, don’t tell me you haven’t worked it out. Why do you think she was so upset when Dad’s secretary Lily went back home to Australia?’

Purdey said quietly, ‘Keep your nose out of my life, Sham. It’s nothing to do with you. Besides, you ought to be grateful. I told Aslan he’d stand a much better chance with you. If he fancied easy pickings.’

‘You cow!’ Sham banged her spoon on the wooden
tabletop. Her lower lip was thrust out, making her resemble an infant losing her temper at mealtime.

‘Purdey, Sham, you’re not teenagers any longer, behave!’ Gareth was seething. ‘I’ll speak to you both later, when our guests have gone home. Your private lives aren’t for public consumption. All I want to know right now is whether there’s any truth in this incredible story that Mike Hinds has an illegitimate son he knows nothing about.’

‘He had no reason to lie,’ Purdey said sulkily. ‘Everything he told me seemed perfectly believable. He hadn’t contacted Mike Hinds at that time; he’d heard from his mother, and also by asking around, that Mike has a vicious temper. I told him he needed to choose his moment carefully if he wanted a reunion. Time it wrong, and Mike would be getting out his shotgun. I said I wasn’t sure Mike would be thrilled to discover he had a long-lost son.’

‘But he’d lost Callum,’ Sally said.

‘I don’t think he’d see Aslan as a straight swap, Mum,’ Purdey said with exaggerated patience. ‘It’s not as simple as happy ever after.’

‘The real question is whether this tale he told you is true,’ Bryan said. ‘It seems extraordinary, like something out of one of Orla’s fairy stories.’

‘It could be true,’ Kit Payne said. ‘Niamh told me about some of Mike’s affairs. The ones she knew about, anyway. A girl from Eastern Europe was among his conquests, I remember.’

‘So Aslan really is Mike’s son?’

As Gareth lingered over the question, his brain seemed to be stepping up a gear. Like everyone else, Daniel thought,
he must be computing what he’d learnt, trying to figure out the implications.

‘Well, well,’ Bryan said. ‘The prodigal has returned, after all.’

‘But not the prodigal everyone hoped for,’ Fleur Madsen said.

Saturday morning in Keswick, and Market Square was crammed with bargain hunters swarming around stalls that sold pies and paintings, clothes and crafts, and pretty much everything else you could wish for. Traders’ raucous cries punctuated the hum of a hundred conversations, smells from the fishmonger’s wafted through the warm air, mixing with those of home-made preserves and pungent cheeses. Marooned in the pedestrianised area was Moot Hall, with its sturdy tower and one-handed clock. Over the years, it had served as a courthouse, a prison and a town hall. Now it housed a tourist information office, with posters, leaflets and videos extolling Keswick’s various delights: Derwent Water, the Theatre by the Lake, Skiddaw, Blencathra – and a pencil museum.

The temperature was rising as Daniel smeared a dollop of sunblock on his face and neck. He’d arrived early, but he was hopeless at waiting, and found himself inventing a dozen reasons why Hannah might not show up. At last he
spotted her through the crowd, handing over money at a stall that sold belts and bracelets. The bag under her arm bulged with purchases. A single woman with a busy job didn’t have much time for shopping, and she’d made the most of the market. A short-sleeved blue top and denim jeans clung to her. Since their last encounter, she’d lost weight, he thought, even though she’d never had much to lose. From a distance, she looked scarcely old enough to have left police college, let alone take charge of a cold case squad. His spirits rose as she caught sight of him, and gave a wave before hurrying over to him.

‘Thanks for sparing me an hour or two,’ he said. ‘I’m sure your Saturdays are precious.’

‘Glad to.’ She smiled, showing even white teeth. ‘This is a treat.’

He dropped a light kiss on each cheek. She wasn’t wearing make-up – no need. He liked the fresh smell of her hair and her skin. The Madsen women were sleek and gorgeous in a no-expense-spared way, but give him the natural look any time.

‘Derwent Water, then?’ The lake was only five minutes away. ‘So how is your book going?’

‘The question all writers dread,’ he told her. ‘No matter what target or deadline you set, it always turns into a frantic race against time. Coupled with the need to dream up increasingly unlikely excuses for slow progress whenever your agent calls. Ensconcing myself in the library at St Herbert’s seemed like a smart idea at the time. Allegedly, it’s an oasis of peace, where nothing ever happens, the only disturbance an occasional snore from an adjoining table. But what happens the minute it becomes my second home?
Orla Payne decides to make me her confidant, and next thing I know, all hell breaks loose.’

Hannah laughed. ‘You’re fated.’

‘My own fault.’

‘She must have found you sympathetic.’

‘Nosey, more like. I’ve never been able to get rid of this urge to find things out. Very useful in academe, but in the real world, sometimes it’s easier not to know. When I was a kid, Dad used to tell me I was too curious for my own good, and he was dead right.’

‘He usually was,’ she said.

‘I overheard him talking to Cheryl on the phone when he thought the house was empty, so I knew about his affair a week before he broke the news to Mum.’ He aimed a kick at a scrap of litter on the pavement. ‘Looking back, that may just have been the most agonising seven days of my entire life.’

‘I’m sorry, Daniel.’ Her hand brushed his. ‘It’s such a shame you never spent enough time together before he died. He was thrilled by your idea of history as detective work. It showed you were a chip off the old block, he said.’

‘Hardly. When Orla told me about her missing brother, and that she didn’t believe he was dead, I tried to winkle more information out of her. But she clammed up on me. It was obvious she was unhappy, but I didn’t know why.’

‘She never hinted at suicide?’

‘I keep asking myself if I should have spotted what was in her mind.’ His tone was as bleak as Blencathra in winter.

‘There were subtle clues, just as with Aimee. But I didn’t spot them.’

‘You did all you could, you told her to talk to me.’

‘Passing the buck, to be honest.’

‘It was the right advice. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

‘Easier said than done, Hannah.’

‘Listen.’ She seized his arm, forcing him to stop in mid stride. ‘I spoke to her, so did my DC the day she died. She was drunk and depressed. We are supposed to be the professionals, and we couldn’t get any sense out of her. How do you help someone who won’t let you help? I’m sure you couldn’t have saved Aimee, and you’re certainly not to blame for what happened to Orla, OK?’

‘OK.’ They started to walk again. ‘You know, I could never make out whether she wished she’d kept her mouth shut, or whether she’d discovered something that changed the complexion of things.’

‘What do you think she might have discovered?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it was all in her mind. She was seriously mixed up, and the booze didn’t help. The last couple of times I saw her, she reeked of it. The principal wasn’t happy, and one or two colleagues started to keep their distance.’

They had reached Hope Park. Hannah said, ‘Which colleagues?’

‘Sham Madsen, for one; she was never a fan of Orla’s. And a chap who worked with her, and took her out a time or two, started avoiding her. Or so she thought.’

High in the sky, a gaudy yellow-and-red kite caught their attention, and they watched it gust along before starting a jittery descent towards Derwent Water.

‘Not Aslan Sheikh, by any chance?’

‘You know him?’

‘I know the name. We haven’t interviewed him yet, but he’s top of the list for Monday.’

‘Good plan.’ In front of them lay the slate and roughcast stone exterior of the Theatre by the Lake, blending in with the landscape so that it looked as though it had been part of the scenery for ever, not for just ten years. A poster advertised
What the Butler Saw
. Daniel couldn’t resist the temptation to ham up the suspense. Lowering his voice, he said, ‘But … do you know his real identity?’

The park and the paths around it were busy. Elderly couples reminiscing, children squealing, mothers scolding. A gull wheeled overhead, a couple of geese honked messages to each other. Hannah took no notice, eyes widening as she concentrated on him, pupils dilating, lips slightly parted. He felt a thrill of excitement, knowing he had something she wanted badly, even if it was only gossip that he’d gleaned from a drunken girl at a dinner party.

‘Tell me,’ she breathed.

The window of Aslan’s poky bedsit looked out to the steep and sweeping curves of the saddleback mountain. The view was the only good thing about the place, the reason he’d decided to rent it. That, and the fact he could afford nothing better.

He wanted money; he was pissed off with years of living hand to mouth. It shouldn’t be necessary. Not for a kid of his class.

Shame about Orla, but her death wasn’t his fault. He’d wanted her to give him an insight into the Hinds family, it was part of his plan to survey the ground before approaching his father with the truth. He hadn’t checked
how the inheritance laws worked, but surely one day he’d be entitled to a stake in the farm at Lane End? What he hadn’t bargained for was Orla deciding that he was Callum, because he’d adopted a Turkish name that happened to feature in a story his mother had read him when he was young. He’d never have guessed that his half-brother loved C.S. Lewis. Orla was so distraught when she found out he wasn’t Callum that he’d not wanted to admit that there was a blood tie between them, until he was clear how she would take the news. With hindsight, he should have come clean. If she knew she had a half-brother, she might not have jumped into the grain. Better sweep the thought to one side. The roses had been an impulsive acknowledgement of the half-brother he’d never known; he wasn’t even sure why he’d made the gesture. He didn’t do sentimentality.

Anyway. The one positive he could take from this whole shitty situation was that he might never be poor again.

This encounter needed to be face-to-face, nothing else would do. Yet he couldn’t turn up out of the blue, and drop such a bombshell.

He’d found the right number.

Now he reached for his phone.

Hannah yanked a straw hat and dark glasses out of her bag as Daniel pushed off from the shore of Derwent Water. Rather than take a round trip by motor launch, they’d hired a small rowing boat for half an hour, so they could talk without being overheard. The sun shone on the surface of the water, in patterns chopped and changed by the motion of the oars. Canoes and kayaks drifted by, the motor launch
was chugging back towards the jetty. He watched Hannah rubbing sun oil into her bare arms. She was gazing absently towards the wooded slopes of Friar’s Crag. Lost in thought, mulling over what he had told her.

If Aslan Sheikh was Orla’s half-brother, what bearing did it have on her death? He and Louise had tossed the question back and forth while the taxi took them home to Tarn Cottage, and he’d slept fitfully because his mind kept working overtime, but he hadn’t come close to an answer. If anyone could unravel the knots, it was Hannah.

‘Ruskin said this was one of the three most beautiful scenes in Europe,’ he said.

‘I can believe it.’ She pointed towards the fells flanking the lake. ‘Got your bearings? That’s Cat Bells to the west, Castlerigg Fell to the east. Behind you is Derwent Isle. And the biggest island, over there in the middle of the lake, is St Herbert’s, where the hermit of Derwent Water lived. One summer when I was a student, a couple of friends and I rowed out there. The plan was to stay overnight in a tent.’

‘I never knew you liked life under canvas.’

‘Once was enough. We’d had too much to drink, and the tent collapsed an hour after we landed. Before we could put it back up again, there was a violent storm, with thunder and lightning. We were scared to death as well as soaked to the skin. These days, people camp on the island for corporate team-building events. I hope they have more joy than the three of us – we were barely speaking to each other by the time we made it back to dry land. St Herbert could keep his island hermitage, as far as I was concerned. I’ve never even explored the library they named after him. Next week, I’ll put that right when I have a chat with Aslan
Sheikh. Or Michael Hinds’ son, if that really is the truth of it.’

‘Purdey Madsen seemed confident of her facts. Mind you, none of the Madsens are lacking in confidence.’

‘That’s how they got to be filthy rich. I guess dinner at Mockbeggar Hall was a memorable experience?’

‘You bet. The Madsens never do things by halves, and Purdey Madsen is no exception. As if it wasn’t enough to be dragged out of the closet in front of her nearest and dearest, she dropped her bombshell about Aslan Sheikh, and made Sham spit with jealousy for good measure.’

‘Can we rewind a few weeks, to when you befriended Orla Payne?’

‘She was pleasant, rather naive, without a trace of ego or self-consciousness. Even though she wore a scarf to cover her baldness, she didn’t mind talking about her alopecia. Her enthusiasm for history, like her love of fairy tales, wasn’t sophisticated. Much of the time, she lived in a dreamworld. After she told me about her childhood, I understood why.’

‘She talked about her parents?’

‘Yes, she was close to her mother. Overawed by her father. One day when she did something to annoy him, he threw a rag doll of hers on the fire in the inglenook. Once the marriage collapsed, she stayed in her mother’s camp. The two of them had a lot in common, including the taste for booze and the mood swings. When she took Kit Payne’s name, her father was furious. I suppose he felt betrayed and let down, but she just saw the red face and heard the raised voice.’

‘He hasn’t mellowed, trust me.’

‘A dangerous man to cross – that’s how she described her own father.’

‘Sad.’ Hannah pictured the farmer’s fist, clutching the scythe. ‘Yet she was right.’

‘Callum was closer to Hinds. Not that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wasn’t cut out for farming. But he had plenty in common with his dad. Orla implied that her brother had inherited that nasty streak.’

‘Was she in awe of Callum, too?’

‘I’d say so. She made him sound smug and superior. A clever boy who exploited the age gap between them, and treated her as a lackey. Literature was the only bond between them. They both read voraciously, and their tastes ran to fantasy. Callum was into C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, she was hooked on the fairy tales.’

Hannah trailed her hand in the water. Her fingers were slim, with nails cut short and not painted. She wore no rings. ‘What did Orla tell you about Philip Hinds?’

‘She was fond of him, they both were. Callum loved to escape from home and explore the Hanging Wood, and she often went along with him. For two kids with vivid imaginations, it was the perfect playground. Especially for Callum. Orla found it spooky, she didn’t like to go in on her own. Of course, she was only a child.’

‘Spooky is right, believe me. I went with my sergeant for a reconnaissance yesterday.’

‘Yes, I heard.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Did the Madsens gripe about it?’

He grinned. ‘Bryan did mutter something about public
servants with nothing better to do with their time. Question is, did you learn anything?’

‘We weren’t hoping for forensic evidence twenty years on. Perhaps it was an indulgence, but I wanted to see for myself the place where Philip was supposed to have killed Callum. Your father taught me the importance of thinking yourself into the minds of the people you wanted to investigate, and part of it involves understanding their environment. Where they work and live and play. The snag with cold cases is the passage of time. But sometimes, the distance of the years helps you see more clearly.’

‘And how do you see the case against Philip Hinds?’

‘Purely circumstantial. Doesn’t mean he didn’t kill the boy, of course.’

‘But you believe he was innocent?’

‘I’d say he loved the Hanging Wood, it was the one place he felt at home. To me it felt like a dank and dismal prison, but I’m sure he’d hate to desecrate it. But that’s guesswork. Police officers work on the basis of evidence, not gut feel.’