The Grave Tattoo (26 page)

Jane shook her head. ‘No. I wanted to wait till I’d had the chance to talk to you. But they are seriously looking for you. They searched the place and they asked for the key to my flat so they can get in and look for you there. I told them there was no point, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. You’re going to have to give yourself up, Tenille. This is not just going to go away.’

Tenille glowered defiance at Jane. ‘Sure it’ll go away. It’s just a black waster that’s been killed. A week or two goes by and nobody will give a shit.’

‘Maybe not in the normal way of things. But it’s not like you can stay on the run forever. You’re thirteen, not twenty-three. And as soon as you resurface, they’re going to be coming for you.’ Jane sounded exasperated.

‘I know that,’ Tenille said, all sulky teenager. ‘But maybe they’ll get another suspect. Take the heat off me, then I can come back.’

‘That’s not going to happen while they’re concentrating on finding you. Tenille, you’re going to have to tell them the truth. Actually, we’re both going to have to tell them the truth. You have to tell them about Geno and I have to tell them about going to your dad.’

‘They won’t believe us,’ Tenille said dully.

‘Why wouldn’t they? Your dad makes a far more credible suspect than you. He’s got a reputation and, I presume, a record to match.’

‘Yeah, but I think I left my fingerprints on the gun.’

Jane looked at her in horror. ‘You
think
you left your fingerprints on the gun? How the fuck did that happen?’

Defensive, Tenille said, ‘I picked it up, all right? And I didn’t wipe it off afterwards. I forgot. I was in a state. Maybe it burned up in the fire, but if it didn’t, they’re not going to believe it wasn’t me.’

‘Tenille, they’re a lot more likely to believe it was your dad.’

She shook her head stubbornly. ‘I’m not grassing him up. And neither are you.’ She gave Jane a calculating look. ‘So, are you going to hide me or what?’

Jane looked thunderstruck. ‘Hide you?’

‘Yeah, hide me. Just till the fuss dies down and we can figure out what we’re going to say.’

‘I can’t hide you here. The cops have already searched it once.’

‘All the more reason why they won’t search it again. They’ve looked, I’m not here.’

Jane shook her head. ‘This is a bad idea, Tenille. Look, why don’t you sleep here tonight and in the morning we’ll go to the police and tell them the truth.’

‘The truth isn’t going to work. We’ve got to come up with something better than the truth. My dad stood by me, I’ve got to stand by him.’

‘He killed a man, Tenille.’

Tenille looked away. ‘No. Geno was trash, he deserved what he got. You think I’m the first kid he messed with? You think I’d have been the last? No. My dad did a good thing and I’m not going to send him to jail for it.’ She pushed the chair back from the table. ‘You won’t help me, fine. I’ll just go back on the road again. I made it this long, I can make it a bit longer.’

Jane grabbed her by the wrist. ‘Wait. You’re not leaving.’

‘I’m not staying either if all you’re going to do is dob me in.’ Tenille wrenched her arm free from Jane’s grip, her expression wounded. ‘You say you’re my friend. But you’re not. You’re just the same as all the other whiteys. When it comes right to it, you just the same. I should have stuck with my dad. He knows what to do with grasses.’ Tears started to her eyes and she brushed them away impatiently. ‘Fuck you, Jane. Fuck you.’

26

Derwent Water sparkled silver and blue in the sunshine. A few dinghies were already cutting through the water, the angles of their sails indicating the strength of the breeze that ruffled the lake’s surface. But Jake had no eyes for beauty that morning. England and this task had made him jaded and faded in a matter of days. He relished nothing that lay ahead of him–neither further encounters with the elderly nor a potentially bruising reunion with Jane.

At least he could postpone that while Dan Seabourne was hanging around the place. Jake had never warmed to Dan and Harry finding their constant flirting both unnecessary and embarrassing. He suspected the lack of warmth was mutual and he didn’t anticipate Dan’s presence lending any help to his attempts to get alongside Jane.

His worries about Dan’s presence extended beyond the purely personal, however. As far as Jake knew from his reading of Jane’s email, Dan had failed so far in his searches at the Family Records Centre. Where Caroline’s researcher had come up with a wealth of material, Dan had drawn a blank.

Or so his email had said. If it had been the truth, Dan’s arrival in Fellhead made little sense. Why would he have come all the way from London if he had truly nothing to report? Jake’s flesh goosepimpled as the only explanation he could imagine crystallised in his mind. If Jane had realised her email had been hacked, she could have texted Dan or phoned him and told him not to send his results. And maybe even to go one better and send an e-lie to fake him out. If she was aware of the hack, she had to suspect it was him. And if she suspected him of such a shit’s trick, there was no way he was going to get anywhere near her research.

He’d just have to find another route to what he wanted. Jake picked up a pebble and threw it as far out into the water as he could. It plopped, then the ripples spread, merging with the tiny waves created by the wind to disappear almost immediately.
Sunk without trace. Whatever it takes, that’s not going to be me.

‘You look terrible,’ Jane said, taking in Dan’s grey pallor and sweaty skin. ‘That mussel really did for you, didn’t it?’

‘I’ve never liked shellfish,’ Judy said. ‘When you think what they feed on, it doesn’t make you want to put them in your mouth. Can I get you a cup of tea, Dan? Or something to eat? We had our breakfast a while ago, I hope you don’t mind us not waiting for you, but Jane said better let you sleep.’

‘She was right,’ Dan said, his voice thin and colourless. ‘I don’t think I could face eating anything, but a cup of tea would be a gift from the gods. I thought the fresh air would do me good, walking down from the cottage.’ He sighed then squeezed his eyes shut. ‘But I can’t remember the last time I felt this rough.’ Judy reached across and patted his hand, then put the kettle on.

‘I got rescued by a cop last night.’ Jane tried to sound breezy and nonchalant. It felt a bit like whistling in the dark.

Dan’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘What?’

‘I was walking back from Bossy Barbara’s when some drunk driver nearly ran me over. Mum reckons it must have been Billy West from over the hill. The local teenage tearaway driver. I was picking myself out of the hedge when a detective inspector from the local nick turned up.’ Jane fiddled with the fringe of a table mat, meeting no one’s eye.

‘Just by chance? Or was he chasing the drunk driver?’

‘That’s what I thought at first. But no. That was just coincidence. He was on his way to see whether I knew anything about Tenille’s whereabouts. And then he decided he needed to search the place while he was here. So his bosses could report back to Scotland Yard that they’d done the job properly, I suppose.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ Judy said, pouring boiling water into the teapot. ‘I mean, why run away if you’ve got nothing to hide?’

‘I imagine because she believes she won’t get a fair crack of the whip from them. You think they’d be pointing the finger at her quite so quickly if she was a nice respectable white middle-class girl from Hampstead? I don’t think so. And that’ll be why she’s run.’

Dan shook his head. ‘Poor kid. So they thought she might be hanging out with you?’

Jane shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. Not seriously. I think the inspector was just going through the motions. What he really wanted to know was if I’d heard anything from her. Email, text, whatever.’

‘And have you?’ Dan asked.

Don’t lie unless you have to.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what I told them: No, I haven’t heard from Tenille at all.’

‘I still can’t get over the rush to judgement about Tenille. I mean, she’s a nerdy black kid, right? It’s not like she runs with the gangs or anything. Or is there something you’ve not been telling me?’

Jane waited till her mother had gone through to the pantry, then said softly, ‘Her real dad’s the gangsta who runs the Marshpool. He doesn’t acknowledge her as his daughter but everybody knows. Including, it seems, the police.’

‘Ah,’ Dan said.

‘“Ah,” is right. But it still doesn’t make Tenille guilty of anything except being scared.’

‘Busy night, then. Are you OK? Did you hurt yourself?’

‘I bruised my shoulder, that’s all. It was scary. Like he was coming straight at me. Lucky I knew the road better than the lunatic behind the wheel. I only had a split second, but I knew where to jump.’

‘Thank God for that. Bloody teenagers, getting their kicks out of scaring people. So, how did you get on with Bossy Barbara?’

Jane pulled the sheaf of papers in front of her. ‘More family trees than you can shake a stick at.’ As Judy came back in with a leg of lamb, Jane said, ‘Bossy Barbara came up trumps, Mum. Thanks for putting me on to her.’

‘I’m glad, love. We all want you to do well, you know.’

While Judy busied herself with the meat, Jane passed some of the papers to Dan. ‘I thought we could go through them, put them in order of likelihood based on the primogeniture principle.’

Dan looked at her as if she’d suggested going down to the village to catch a small child to spit-roast for lunch. ‘I don’t think I could read without throwing up. Actually, I was thinking of going back up to the cottage to crash out. If that’s OK with your mum.’

‘Of course, I wasn’t thinking. You could stay up there till you go back, if you like.’

Jane tried to hide her relief. It wasn’t that she wanted to be rid of Dan for himself. But after the night before, she needed freedom of action without anyone asking where she was going or what she was doing.

Dan swallowed a mouthful of tea and shuddered slightly. ‘Maybe I could manage some toast,’ he said without confidence.

While Judy fussed around him, Jane began to sort through the information she’d been given by Barbara Field. She began to sift it into piles, making notes as she went. It was a slow and complicated process and she soon came to realise that it was easier to accomplish with one than two. She glanced up at Dan, tentatively munching toast with strawberry jam while Judy watched him anxiously. ‘Oh, and I thought I might try to talk to the forensic anthropologist who’s dealing with the bog body. Suggest she might want to get some DNA samples from Fletcher Christian’s direct descendants to see if it’s a match.’

Dan stood up. ‘Good idea. I think I’ll head down to the pub to pick up my car. Then I’m going back to bed.’

‘I’ll drop you off on the way to church, if you like,’ Judy said.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I think I need the fresh air.’ He pulled Jane into his arms in a tight hug. ‘I’ll be better by the morning. Then we can start doing the interviews.’

She kissed his stubbled cheek. ‘Thank you. I’ll work on the list.’ She walked as far as the farm gate with him, waving him off as he walked slowly down the hill. But instead of heading back to the kitchen table, Jane crossed the yard and cut between the long barn and the shearing shed.

She emerged into a small field with a square stone building in the corner furthest from the house. A line of oblong frosted-glass windows ran around it two courses of stone below the eaves, almost like a decorative border. The metal door was painted a dull green, fastened with a strong lock. Her father had renovated it a dozen years ago when EU regulations had made it impossible for him to slaughter his own sheep for sale to the local butchers. The old slaughterhouse was further up the fell and Allan had converted it into a holiday let called Shepherd’s Cott, an occasion of much mirth in the village pub. But Allan still wanted somewhere he could butcher his own meat for his family’s consumption, so he’d transformed the tumbledown outhouse, providing it with running water and electric light. He’d even added a tiny toilet and shower cubicle to avoid trailing blood and guts into the house.

Jane walked across the field, pausing apparently to enjoy the view, but in reality to check she was unobserved. As sure as she could be that the coast was clear, she quickly unlocked the door and slipped inside, softly calling, ‘It’s me,’ as she did so.

Tenille was sitting on one of the stone benches, insulated from the cold by the sleeping bag Jane had dug out of the cellar the night before. A book was carelessly thrown down beside her and her eyes were wide with fear. Seeing it was Jane, she pulled her earphones out, allowing the unmistakable sound of hip-hop to leak out tinnily into the still air. ‘All right?’ she said.

‘I’m fine. How about you? Did you get much sleep?’

Tenille shrugged one shoulder. ‘Yeah. Took me a while to, like, settle. But once I was off, man, I was out for the count.’ She managed a lop-sided version of her usual grin. ‘Mus’ be that country air, huh?’

‘Have you got enough to eat?’

Tenille gestured at the scones and the sausage rolls Jane had filched from her mother’s freezer. ‘I ate all the apples. So it’s a bit monotonous, know what I mean? But it’s OK.’

‘I’ll get you some stuff tomorrow in Keswick. My mum knows to the last tin of tomatoes what’s in her cupboards and her fridge, I don’t want her to notice there’s anything missing and start wondering what’s going on. Is there anything in particular you’d like?’

Again the half-shrug. ‘Chocolate biscuits? Crisps? Like, maybe some sandwiches? Not tuna or prawn, though, I don’t like fish much. A toothbrush would be good too. Oh, and batteries for this,’ she added, gesturing to the MP3 player.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Jane perched on the bench beside Tenille. ‘You thought any more about going to the police?’

Tenille shook her head, obstinate to the core. ‘It’s not going to happen, Jane. There’s no way I can live with myself and do that.’

‘You can’t live here forever either.’ Before Tenille could interrupt, Jane held up a hand to stop her. ‘And I don’t mean because I’m going to tell you to go. I just mean that it’s a limited option. I have to go back to London in just over a week and I can’t leave you here to fend for yourself. Besides,’ she grinned, ‘my dad might want to slaughter a sheep one of these days.’

‘Yech.’ Tenille looked disgusted. ‘I just about managed to stop thinking about what goes on in here and you have to go and bring it up again. Look, it’s OK, I know I can’t stay here forever. But I just need time to straighten my head out without being scared every minute, OK?’

‘OK.’ Jane got up.

Tenille snapped her fingers and tutted in annoyance. ‘Hey, with everything that’s been going on, there’s something I forgot. Something I meant to tell you about.’

‘What?’ Jane tried not to sound too apprehensive.

‘Jake. He’s back. And he’s stalking you.’

Absolutely the last thing she’d expected Tenille to say. Shocked, Jane said, ‘What do you mean? He’s in Crete.’

‘No, he’s not. He came by the flat the day you left, when I was still there.’

‘You let him in?’

‘Course not.’ Tenille was scornful. ‘He just came to the door, I saw him through the spyhole. He shouted your name through the letter box then he fucked off.’