Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders) (13 page)

But after what had happened to his dad Ryan knew that he’d never follow suit. The odd joint didn’t count as drugs, just like a few beers didn’t count as drinking, and Ryan had no intention of going the way of his old man. Or his mum come to that. He still cared about them both, and he’d got into plenty of fights at school when other kids had said things about his dad, but both his parents were weak, and Ryan knew that he wasn’t. He had no idea why, but he was different from them, and he hoped that his brother Ben was too. He had high hopes for Ben.

So he’d sit in that car every day for a month if he had to, because he was going to use Wayne to find Adam. And while he’d been sitting thinking in that cell it had come to him, an explanation that fitted the facts. What if Adam or one of his crew had a good reason to set him up? If they’d been moving drugs by a different route that night then they might have grassed Ryan up to draw the cops’ attention away from them, as a kind of insurance policy. The only thing that struck him as strange was why, if they always intended him to get caught, had they put so much gear in the car? There was no need. Anything more than he could have claimed was for personal use would have got the coppers excited anyway.

Ryan had thought about asking Wayne direct, but he wasn’t certain that Wayne knew anything much, and probably wouldn’t tell if he did. Wayne would be honest with him up to a point, but it was Adam who actually provided the gear: so Wayne’s prime loyalty would always be to him, especially as he’d become increasingly addicted himself. Ryan understood that relationship as well as anyone. It didn’t annoy him at all. And he couldn’t see himself giving Wayne a hiding to get information out of him, and Ryan had already been around enough to know that there was no point threatening anyone unless you were ready to follow through.

And Ryan was just beginning to sense that there was a world beyond the estate, beyond Kendal even, and that Wayne was useful to Adam because for most of his life Wayne’s horizon had been no further away than the permanently drawn curtains that they kept going on about on the news. And that made Wayne easy to understand, and easy to control.

At half-six Wayne finally came out of the house. He’d never had a driving licence, and after doing six months for a full-house of motoring offences recently he’d stuck to cabs and getting the older kids to drive him. He only walked if he was going to the shops at the end of the street, where the two takeaways and the convenience store were.

So Ryan decided to let him walk out of sight, give it a couple of minutes, then drive past the shops. If Wayne was in the queue then he could just drive back and wait, but if not he’d soon overtake him and then be able to follow Wayne on foot. But his first guess was right, and as he drove past Ryan saw Wayne walking into the Chinese, go to the counter and place his order.

Ryan was hungry too, so he drove to the chipper on the edge of the estate, and was back, parked just beyond Wayne’s house as he walked back down the road. Ryan ate his food as the windows steamed up. Then he sat and watched until he was was frozen. He started the engine and looked at the clock. It was nine-thirty, and the condensation was freezing on the inside of the windscreen.

This stake-out business wasn’t as easy as he had hoped. Ryan turned the engine off, and in no time the car was stone cold again. He decided to give up for the night, and maybe come up with a different plan. Because for all he knew Wayne might have been chatting away to Adam online or on the phone for all he’d know about it sitting out here. Maybe they never even met at all.

But Ryan had the beginnings of an idea. What if he was able to force Wayne to meet Adam face-to-face somehow? It would have to be something that would be guaranteed to get Adam into the open. But Ryan was too cold to think clearly, so he started the car again, scraped the condensation off the windscreen, and drove home.

The house was quiet whenHall came down for breakfast. The kids were still fast asleep, and as he put on his walking gear he was reminded of when the kids were small, as he often went walking on his days off. It had been a good way to get to know the eastern fringes of the Lakes, the Dales and the Pennines. He felt a bit stiffer, and a good bit thicker round the middle as he bent down to tie his worn old boots, but a good few years had passed since he’d walked really regularly.

When he got in the car and backed out of the drive he put a Stones album into the CD player, foun
d
Gimme Shelte
r
, and played it loud as he drove the mile or so to the Scout Scar car park. It was a lovely morning, not a cloud in the sky and frost still holding hard on the shadowed ground, and Hall found himself looking forward to the walk.

He’d been tempted to text Ian Mann and ask him to come along, but he hadn’t. And as he parked up in the almost empty car park he wasn’t certain that he’d made the right decision. Anything Hamilton said would have no evidential value of course, but Hall didn’t see him as a credible suspect, so that   wasn’t his concern. He just wondered why he’d suggested it to Hamilton in the first place. Now he was here he could really have done with a walk on his own.

But it was too late for second thoughts, because Hamilton’s Range Rover crunched over the bare limestone of the car park and pulled in. Hamilton was obviously as punctual as Hall was, even on a Sunday.

They shook hands, and agreed to walk along Cunswick Scar, back across the golf course to town, grab a coffee and a bacon roll, then walk back out to Scout Scar, along the top and back to the cars. It wasn’t a marathon, but there were lovely views to the Langdales in the first part of the walk, and an equally enjoyable stroll above the Lyth valley to finish. They set off, saying little and settling into a strolling rhythm.

‘Did you sleep all right?’ asked Hall.

Hamilton shook his head.

‘No. I could go the GP and get some pills I suppose, but you can’t rely on that forever, can you?’

‘I agree, but it might help for a while.’

‘But that’s the problem. Like I said, this is never going to get any better. For the rest of my life this is going to be the first and last thing that I think about every day. So I might as well get used to it I reckon. I need to be strong for Lucy, that’s my other daughter. She has to be my priority now.’

‘How is she?’

‘Totally gone into herself. No surprise really, but her mum is doing her best. It was strange, but when my wife first left the kids didn’t tell anyone at school. Just kept it to themselves for weeks and weeks. They must have been ashamed of us. It really hurt when I found out. But when I thought about it I realised that, in their position, I’d have done exactly the same thing.’

‘So I guess the best thing to do is try to help her through this. Keep the routines going, that sort of thing.’

‘Yes, I think so. I’m going to try to go into work tomorrow actually. I probably won’t get anything done, but that’ll be my staff’s problem. They’ve been great actually. I’ve had dozens of phone calls and emails, but that’s the thing about a family business I suppose. We all know each other.’

They walked on in silence for a while, climbing gently until they reached the top of Cunswick Scar, and the views opened up to the west. Hall had seen it hundreds of times, but he was still moved by it.

‘Work and family, where would we be without them?’ said Hall eventually.

‘I know what you mean. By the time you’re our age they define your life, don’t they? Sometimes, if I have to go to the Post Office in town I see a couple of people I’ve known since I was a lad, and who I know haven’t worked in years. Not since the shoe factory closed. I sometimes wonder how they manage to go on, day after day.’

‘They do all right though, don’t they? I’ve noticed some of the young coppers at work becoming really angry about it actually. They work long hours, can’t afford to buy a place of their own in town, don’t even have the kind of security that we used to have in the job, and they get pretty pissed off when they see the way that some of our regular customers seem to live.’

‘I do know what they mean, but I wouldn’t want to swap places. Mind you, I inherited a thriving business. Two generations of my family worked umpteen hours a week for well over 60 years to build it up. That’s why I’ve always been determined not to let them down.’

‘No chance of that, surely?’

‘Don’t be so sure. Our Swedish competition have hurt us over the last couple of decades, and the internet hasn’t helped either. Just walk into one of our shops and you’ll see that the customers are older than our staff, and that’s saying something. So I don’t think there’s a long term future in it, and my job is really to manage the decline and get the best out of it for my staff. I want to try to get a good few more through to a decent retirement age.’

‘You’re not worried about the money?’

‘No, not for a minute. Even after the divorce I’ve got a decent level of pensions and investments outside the business. And because I’m now effectively the sole shareholder the value that’s left in the business when it does close, like the premises that we own and a few other assets, will all be mine. It may take a bit of time to realise, especially because of the way the economy is, but some of the sites have very significant value.’

‘So why did your brother want out? He disagreed with your strategy, wanted to get out faster perhaps?’

Hamilton walked on silently, and Hall wondered if he’d crossed a line of some sort. He remembered one occasion, as a young Detective Sergeant, when he’d asked an old hill farmer who’d had some Swaledales nicked how many sheep he had, and been surprised at the curt reply he got. It was only later that he found out that it had been exactly like asking the man how much cash he had in the bank.

But John Hamilton didn’t seem remotely offended, and they walked for a minute or two before he replied. ‘My brother just has a different way of seeing things, I suppose. He’s eight years younger than me, and by the time he came back from university my grandfather had died,and it was him who’d set the tone for the whole business. Simon just missed out on that I suppose. Anyway, Simon thinks I’m a dinosaur, and that we should have levered up on the back of the existing business and got involved in developing flats in Leeds and Manchester. At the time I thought he was probably right from a financial perspective, we’re talking about a few years back now, but he’s turned out to be dead wrong. He needed to cash in his shares in our business just to get the banks off his back.’

‘And he wasn’t happy with what he got?’

‘No, he wasn’t. But it was all done completely fairly. We had the business independently valued, but it turned out to be much less than he’d banked on - probably literally. He’s hardly spoken to me since, and to be honest I was surprised when he came round a couple of nights ago. But it was great to see him of course.’

‘We saw him round at your ex-wife’s too.’

‘That’s good. He seemed to blame her for the low payout he got as well, so I think they fell out too.’

‘How so?’

‘Simon convinced himself that the fact that I had to fund my wife’s divorce settlement was behind the valuation of the business, and the offer that was made to him for his shares. But of course it wasn’t. They weren’t connected at all.’

They walked on, stopping at the western end of the fell and looking out at the Langdales in the distance. Cloud was just starting to bubble above the Pikes.  ‘Anyway, you seem very interested in my business. Is that professional interest?’

‘Not really, though of course the more background I have the better. But you’re certainly not a suspect in my mind. If you were then I wouldn’t be able to be doing this today.’

Hamilton seemed reassured. ‘You know it’s a funny thing about money. I’ve never been poor for a single day in my whole life, so this isn’t based on personal knowledge, but I think money changes from being a force for good, something liberating, to the exact opposite at the very the moment you go one single pound overdrawn.’

They walked back across the golf course, waiting for a group to play past and onto the green. Like Freemasonry the Golf Club was another career enhancing club that Hall had never felt the slightest urge to join. One way back into town was down through Serpentine Woods, but Hall turned down another path before they reached the woods. Hamilton didn’t comment.

They walked on in silence for a minute, Kendal spread out in the valley below them, with the Howgills piling up behind. Hall mentioned that he’d met Robert Preston. Hamilton didn’t offer any comment. ‘I understand he’s in the property game too’ prompted Hall.

‘So I gather. When I knew him he was more or less an odd-job man, but since he’s hooked up with Amanda he’s gone up in the world. A bit late to that particular party I’d have thought, but what do I know?’

‘What do you know?’

Hamilton looked across at Hall. He smiled. ‘Good question Andy. Believe it or not, next to nothing. As soon as I’d satisfied myself that he was a safe person for my kids to be around I made a conscious effort to know as little as possible about him.’