The Hanging Wood (6 page)

‘He might have been more interested in boys than little girls.’

‘And perhaps she blanked stuff out, who knows?’

‘So she committed suicide on her father’s farm? Did she talk about her relationship with him?’

‘It was difficult, I gather. Like everyone else, he reckoned his brother killed Callum. But Orla was adamant that there must be some other explanation for what happened.’

‘Such as?’

‘She didn’t say. The last time we spoke, she was in a state. Not making much sense.’

Louise clicked her tongue. ‘Hey, you’re the one who claims that historians make great detectives. Didn’t you ask?’

‘It wasn’t healthy, this dwelling on the tragedy. I tried to steer her off the subject of Callum, but without any success.’

‘You always say that to understand the present, you have to understand the past.’

‘Yeah, yeah, hoist with my own petard.’

Louise narrowed her eyes. ‘I suppose she fancied you.’

Orla’s eager face sprang into his mind as his gaze settled on the Sacrifice Stone, its dark bulk outlined against the sky. What she liked, he thought, was the fact he listened to her without passing judgement. She’d spent a lifetime being ignored.

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘You didn’t fancy her, by any chance?’ He shook his head. ‘Not your type?’

Louise had this habit of turning conversation into
cross-examination
.

‘I don’t have a type.’

‘How about Aimee and Miranda?’

‘Are you kidding? They couldn’t be more different.’

‘Only on the surface. You’re a sucker when it comes to needy women.’

‘Thanks for that.’ Better not remind her that she kept falling for selfish bastards who did their best to mess up her life. ‘Orla was fixated, desperate to unravel a mystery 
everyone else thought was solved twenty years ago. Her stepfather was unhappy about it, she told me; he thought it was doing her no good.’

‘And her father?’

‘I sensed she was afraid of him. I even wondered if she thought she bore some kind of responsibility for his disappearance herself.’

‘How?’

‘Something I heard her mutter to herself on Friday, the last time we met. She’d been working in the library, rather than her office, and we had lunch together. She wasn’t with it, frankly. It was as if something in her life had changed, but don’t ask me what.’

‘What did she say?’

‘“
How could you do that to your own brother?
”’

‘Meaning?’

‘Dunno. When I asked what was bothering her, she brushed me off. At first, I thought she was quoting Callum. But perhaps in some way she thought she’d betrayed him. If she started torturing herself, that might be why she committed suicide.’

‘Where’s your evidence for that?’

‘If I’d known what she meant to do, I could have asked—’

Louise interrupted. ‘If you are even thinking you may be partly at fault because of what happened to her, I will scream. Please, Daniel, forget it. People are responsible for their own actions, OK? You did your utmost to help her, I’m certain.’

‘On Friday, I suggested she might talk to the police.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘I gave her Hannah Scarlett’s name.’

‘You did?’ Louise sat up in the deckchair.

‘Callum’s disappearance is a cold case. Right up Hannah’s street. Orla may have been obsessive, but she wasn’t stupid. Suppose she was right, and the uncle didn’t kill Callum? If anyone could make sense of whatever was whirling round in Orla’s brain, Hannah could.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t spoken to Hannah yet.’

‘I haven’t spoken to Hannah.’

‘Daniel, for God’s sake, what are we going to do with you?’

‘Don’t start.’

His sister insisted that he and Hannah were right for each other. But he’d decided he wasn’t ready for another serious relationship. He’d fallen for Miranda on the rebound after Aimee’s death, and it had been a big mistake. Besides, things with Hannah were complicated. By Marc, for a start. And there was something else. Hannah had been close to their father, Ben. Daniel couldn’t help wondering if her interest in him was driven by curiosity, because he was his father’s son.

‘I’m just saying.’

‘I’ll phone her tomorrow.’

‘Terrific.’ Louise mimed applause. ‘Faint heart never won, et cetera.’

‘Calm down, it’s nothing to get excited about. All I’m doing is returning a call. She left me a voicemail message this afternoon.’

Night had fallen by the time the cab dropped Hannah back at Undercrag. The bulb had gone in the so-called security light that Marc had fitted, and in the darkness, the dour old house seemed lonely and uninviting. Not at all like home. At this time of day, the bustle of Ambleside’s shops and cars seemed to belong to a different world. Undercrag was the last of a group of five buildings that had once formed a cottage hospital, and Hannah often thought about the patients who had come here in the hope of a cure, only to die.

God, she needed to loosen up. It wasn’t as if she had drunk enough to induce melancholy. As she unlocked the front door, she reminded herself for the hundredth time to beef up the security around the house – the box fastened high up on the front wall of the house had no alarm inside it – but this was another on the long list of jobs which she never seemed to reach. Better sort it out soon. How embarrassing would it be as a senior cop to find yourself burgled because of a failure to take the simplest precautions?

In the hall, the light on the answering machine was flashing. She swallowed hard. A return call from Daniel, even though she’d said she’d be out this evening? She pressed playback, to be greeted by the voice of her old friend Terri.

‘Hiya, just ringing to confirm timings for tomorrow. See you at seven-thirty? And if you arrive first, mine’s a pina colada. Lots of love.’

Hannah deleted the message and headed for the living room. Kicking off her shoes, she poured whisky into a tumbler. Lately, she’d got into a routine of having a drink
on her own before going to bed. It helped her to get to sleep. She never had more than a couple of glasses, but she knew it was a bad habit. She ought to break it, but for this evening, never mind. Just savour the alcohol.

Curling up in her favourite armchair, she closed her eyes and thought about Hansel and Gretel. Two kids with a wicked stepmother, they had ventured into a wood, only to encounter death and destruction. What prompted Callum Hinds to make the comparison? Was it possible that he suspected Kit of wanting to abandon them, just like the horrible woman in the fairy tale?

On the short drive back from Mancini’s to HQ, Lauren had told her Bryan Madsen had asked if Orla’s death might prompt a fresh look at Callum Hinds’ disappearance.

‘Bet he doesn’t fancy that.’

‘Look at it from his perspective, Hannah. The Madsens are in the leisure business, like so many other people in the Lake District. It doesn’t help if there’s a suggestion that a boy who lived on their park was murdered, and the culprit wasn’t found. That sort of thing can deter potential visitors.’

‘Yeah, Philip Hinds’ suicide was a real stroke of luck for them.’

‘Don’t be sarky, Hannah, it really doesn’t help. We both know the odds are that Hinds did kill the boy. But Bryan Madsen is a reasonable man, he realises we can’t simply ignore Orla’s calls.’

‘So you’re happy for my team to take another look at Callum’s disappearance?’ Hannah had expected resistance. Talk of financial constraints and the need to prioritise. ‘Do the Madsens understand that?’

‘Absolutely; they strike me as very constructive. They’re keen for things to be cleared up, if only to set Kit Payne’s mind at rest. But don’t waste too much time and resource on a wild goose chase, Hannah. All the Madsens ask is that we don’t drag our feet.’

‘It will take as long as it takes.’

Lauren shook her head. ‘In fairness to everyone, we need a quick outcome. Can you make sure your report is on my desk by this time next week?’

So that was it. A box-ticking exercise, a low-cost means of proving that no favouritism was extended to business partners. The Madsens’ reaction was shrewd. No attempt to stifle her by insisting that sleeping dogs must lie. For all Gareth’s jokes, he and Bryan realised they couldn’t dictate how the police handled their enquiries. They’d done their best to bond with the ACC, and the head of the cold case team whom Orla had contacted. Their aim must be to come over as law-abiding folk with nothing to hide, and she’d rather taken to Gareth, though experience warned her to be wary of rich men who oozed charm. As for Bryan, she wouldn’t care to spend long in his company, but the bottom line was that if the brothers were sweating, they were smart enough not to let it show. Even after a few drinks.

Seven days to pore over a case that reached a sudden and melancholy conclusion twenty years ago. Not enough time, it went without saying. But she couldn’t ask for more, given the apparent lack of fresh evidence. Orla probably was a sad obsessive, as the Madsens reckoned.

And yet.

Daniel Kind believed Hannah should hear what Orla
had to say. He wouldn’t waste her time, Hannah was sure of that.

She needed to talk to him.

So Orla was dead.

Aslan Sheikh lay on his bed in his underpants as a rapper boomed from his iPod dock. A tap never stopped dripping in the washbasin, and the music drowned the sound. Even at the height of summer, this scruffy little bedsit in Crosthwaite was draughty, the breeze from the fells sneaking in through the cracks in the window frame. A yellowing house plant festered in a beige pot, a perfect advertisement for botanical euthanasia. The place smelt of damp and last night’s curry. He’d smoked a couple of joints in quick succession to calm his nerves. Funny how Orla had refused that time when he brought her back here, insisting that she didn’t do drugs. Naive to a fault, for what was alcohol but a drug that had killed her mother?

The sun’s rays caught the blade of the small knife on his bedside table. When it shone so brightly, he barely remembered the damage it could cause. It was a silver butterfly knife, or ‘balisong’ as the Filipinos called it, and he’d picked it up in London after he’d had to leave its predecessor in the States for fear of arrest at airport security. This little fellow was over a hundred years old and counted as an antique. It fitted snugly into the pocket of his jeans; he carried it everywhere. A balisong had helped him extricate himself from some of the tight spots he’d got himself into. He’d made a few mistakes over the years; he supposed his mother was right when she said he was too headstrong, too wild.

He couldn’t get over Orla’s death. Suffocated in grain, what a shitty way to go. Sham Madsen had shaken uncontrollably as she broke the news, and he’d thrown an arm around her by way of comfort, but when she clung closer to him, he managed to disengage. Her tears were self-indulgent, and he knew enough about phoniness to recognise it when he saw it. She seldom had a good word to say about Orla when she was alive. The spoilt rich kid, scorning the stepdaughter of her father’s right-hand man. Surely not even she could be jealous; a bald woman with barely a penny to her name was no competition for one of the heirs to the Madsen millions.

Sham was gorgeous – more so than Purdey, with her unfortunate chin and micro-boobs – but she was a drama queen whose sole topic of conversation was herself. He humoured her, but the endless stream of
me, me, me
became a bore. She didn’t disguise her lack of interest in St Herbert’s, and he was sure she’d only taken the job because she wasn’t keen to play second fiddle to Purdey at the caravan park.

He’d no experience of sibling rivalry, let alone everything else that had happened here since his arrival. Even though he’d spent so little of his life in Britain, he liked to think of the Lakes as home. How many times had he dreamt of this homecoming? He’d never settled anywhere for long. The first place he could remember was in Istanbul, and then his mother had moved to Germany, where her cousins lived, and they’d lived in a cramped flat in Berlin before moving out to Rostock, eventually finishing up in the small coastal resort of Warnemünde, where his mother worked in one of the bars that served crew members coming ashore from the big ships. When she entertained at home, he’d make
himself scarce and go to watch the cruise ships sailing out of the harbour and beyond the lighthouse, into the wide blue yonder. At sixteen, he took a job with one of the cruise lines, lying about his age and what he could do, and over the next few years he moved from ship to ship, but he never found what he was searching for. Perhaps the truth was that he didn’t know.

He’d travelled far and wide before drifting around the States, but he’d never bought a share of the American dream. Women, drink, drugs, he tried them all, but none of them meant much. He’d as soon smoke a cheap fag as a joint, and the money he earned or stole never lasted long. In the end, he persuaded himself the way to change his life was to come back to England. This was to be where he finally discovered himself.

But he’d never expected things to turn out like this. Orla was dead, and the Lakes didn’t feel anything like home.

Half a year without Marc should have acclimatised Hannah to waking up alone, but as the radio woke her, she still put out an arm, an instinctive searching for the warm body that had lain by her side for so long. Instead, her fingers clutched at emptiness.

The weather forecaster said today promised to be the sunniest of the year so far. After a cold shower – not from choice; the hot water system was on the blink – she dressed hastily so as not to keep Maggie Eyre waiting. A true farmer’s daughter, Maggie was an early riser, and the doorbell rang as Hannah swallowed her last mouthful of toast.

‘How was the awards dinner?’ Maggie asked as her little Citroën bumped over the potholes of Lowbarrow Lane.

‘I managed to stay awake. In fact, it wasn’t a complete waste of time.’ Hannah told her about meeting the Madsens. ‘Even if they aren’t thrilled about the prospect of our looking into Callum Payne’s case, at least they didn’t put any roadblocks in the way.’

‘They are convinced the uncle killed the boy?’

‘A neat solution is best for their business. The ACC has given us the green light, but wants an outcome by this time next week.’

‘A week?’ Maggie nearly swerved into the path of an oncoming tractor. ‘A proper investigation takes months. Sometimes years.’

‘She’s taking it for granted nothing new will turn up. It’s not as if we have any DNA to retest with the benefit of improved technology. Her thinking is that if we talk to the main witnesses who are still around, we’ll have done the necessary. She’s not worried about the IPCC complaining about Orla Payne’s calls to us. So the game plan is, we give the file a quick once-over, and move on.’

‘And if we find something worth investigating?’

‘The ACC would say, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Eyes on the winding lane, Maggie said, ‘Surely we wouldn’t give up if there was evidence that Philip Hinds wasn’t guilty?’

Hannah gave her a sidelong glance. ‘Let’s find the evidence before we worry about that, shall we?’

Enough said. Maggie fell silent until they reached the main road.

‘My father reckons Mike cast Philip as a scapegoat.’

‘He knew the Hinds family?’

‘It’s not surprising. Farming is a close community, everybody knows everybody else. People bump into each other at shows and markets and National Farmers’ Union events – can’t avoid it. By the sound of it, my dad prefers to avoid Mike Hinds, that’s for sure.’

‘They don’t get on?’

‘Dad says he’s a maverick, always arguing the toss, whether about bovine TB or compensation for foot-and-mouth disease or anything else. Thinks he’s clever because he won a scholarship to Cambridge, even though he soon dropped out. I suppose he sees Dad as a pillar of the establishment because he’s held office in the NFU. And Mike doesn’t think the union does enough to protect its members’ interests. Dad said, if it was left to Mike Hinds, tractors would be parked permanently across Whitehall, in protest about the way the government has wrecked the industry.’

‘Does your father know much about Callum’s disappearance?’

‘Only what everyone knew. Of course, I didn’t go into detail about why I was interested in the Hinds family, confidential police business and all that. Dad never met Philip, but said he felt sorry for him. For Mike Hinds too; it is terrible to lose your son like that. Dad heard that Philip was simple, but decent enough. People were too quick to jump to conclusions, in Dad’s opinion.’

‘If their conclusions were wrong, we’ll find out,’ Hannah said. She couldn’t forget what Orla Payne had said about justice. ‘If Philip was innocent, we’ll clear his name.’

Daniel and Louise breakfasted in the garden, looking out to the reed-fringed tarn and the fell beyond. The water was still, with no breeze to rustle the leaves of the oaks and the yews. The air smelt fresh, and they heard the piping call of a wood warbler hidden in the trees. No mist clung to the upper slopes, the merest scraps of cloud drifted in
the sky. Already walkers in shirtsleeves were striding along Priest Ridge, their voices drifting down from the heights. The Sacrifice Stone gleamed in the sun, for once benign, not sinister.

‘No regrets about abandoning the rat race, then?’ Louise asked.

Daniel’s eyes followed a flash of yellow as the warbler emerged from a tall oak before flying off towards Tarn Fold.

‘Need you ask?’

‘At first, I thought you were mad to give up your career,’ she said. ‘But now … this place is addictive, and I’m hooked too. All I need is to find a place of my own, so I can get out of your hair.’

‘Stay as long as you like.’

She grinned. ‘No, better quit before we start bickering all the time, like when we were kids.’

‘We’ve grown up.’

‘You think so?’

As soon as she went inside to get dressed and stiffen her sinews for a renewed onslaught on the local property market, Daniel fished out his mobile and dialled Hannah’s number.

‘Is it convenient?’ he asked when she answered. ‘If not, I can call again.’

‘I have a briefing scheduled in five minutes, but no worries,’ she said. ‘Great to hear from you.’

‘And did you hear from Orla Payne?’

‘I spoke to her, yes. And then she rang again when I was off work. I’m assuming you met her at St Herbert’s, where she worked?’

‘Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time there lately, trying to finish the book.’

‘You know what happened to her?’

‘She suffocated in a grain silo on her father’s farm,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s all I’ve heard. So she talked to you about Callum?’

‘I didn’t get much sense out of her. Certainly no clue about her brother’s fate. Linz Waller got nowhere either, when Orla called again. Each time, she sounded drunk.’

‘Sorry I’ve added to your burdens, but she was so screwed up about Callum’s disappearance, and I thought it qualified as a cold case.’

‘How much did she tell you?’

‘She talked a great deal, but if she had any firm evidence about what happened to Callum, I didn’t hear it. She rather liked to be mysterious. But she was emphatic that their uncle didn’t kill the boy.’

‘Was it wishful thinking? She was fond of her uncle, and didn’t like the idea that he was to blame.’

‘Possible. But …’

He hesitated, trying to put into words the intuition he had about Orla, and her quest for the truth about Callum.

‘Yes?’

‘Orla’s life was a mess. She reminded me of someone who has the pieces of a self-assembly kit, but doesn’t know how to put them together.’

‘I know that feeling,’ Hannah said. ‘My garage is full of segments of a kitchen trolley, and instructions written in Japanese with illustrations that make no sense to me.’

He wondered if she’d ask Marc to stick the pieces together, but said nothing. He heard someone speak to
Hannah, and her muffled reply that she’d be along in a moment.

‘Daniel, I’m sorry, but I need to conduct this briefing. Can we speak again?’

‘Love to.’

Story time.

Hannah’s mentor, Ben Kind, was a grizzled teller of tales. As she stood and waited for Greg Wharf – as ever, the last to arrive – while Les Bryant chewed the fat with Maggie Eyre, and Donna Buxton nagged Linz about becoming more active in the Federation, her thoughts drifted back to her early days in the CID. How the briefing room fell silent as Ben took his team through the sequence of events leading up to the latest murder. How she listened, spellbound, as he highlighted scraps of information culled from page after page of witness statements, suggesting fresh lines of enquiry, and ideas about the culprit’s motive and MO. By the time Ben finished briefing you about a case, the victim was no longer a name, always a person. That cold corpse in the mortuary had once been flesh and blood. Ben made you care about the victim’s fate, strengthened your resolve to see justice done.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Greg said, marching into the room like a chief executive greeting members of his board. Donna, an arch-feminist recently drafted into the team, threw him a withering look, but Greg smirked in response, pleased to have provoked a reaction.

Hannah breathed in. She’d soaked herself in the old statements, and reckoned she had a handle on the main
facts, but there was no denying that the mood today was so different from that at briefings from Ben. From the moment murder was done, every hour that passed reduced the chances of a result. Statistics proved the need for speed. Everyone felt an adrenaline rush. By definition, cold cases were rarely time-critical, and Hannah’s team knew it. They knew, too, that each of them was there for a reason. Most were misfits, as far as the brass was concerned. Some folk, and not just in the hierarchy, reckoned that cold case reviews were cushy and only fit for underachievers. Others regarded transfer to the team as a form of exile or punishment, the Cumbria Constabulary’s very own Gulag Archipelago. All of which meant the pressure was on her to motivate people to get results.

‘The body of Orla Payne was found buried in a grain tower at the farm of her father, Michael Hinds, near Keswick. An apparent suicide. She had been in touch with us about a cold case, the disappearance of her brother Callum twenty years ago.’

‘Is murder a possibility?’ Les Bryant asked.

‘Nothing is being ruled out, pending the inquest. Mario Pinardi up in Keswick is looking into the circumstances surrounding her death. He’s waiting on the results of toxicology and urine tests. Our focus is on the cold case. What happened to Callum Hinds?’

Hannah nodded at a black-and-white photograph on the whiteboard. A dark-haired boy with a hooked nose and deep-set eyes, reluctant to smile for the camera.

‘Callum’s mother came over from Donegal as a student. After she took a degree in Lancaster, she stayed in England. She was called Niamh, and her first husband was Mike
Hinds. Three years before the boy went missing, the couple split up.’

‘Why?’ Greg asked.

‘Niamh’s story was that she wasn’t suited to being a farmer’s wife.’

‘It’s a vocation,’ Maggie said.

‘And the husband’s story?’ Greg was a city boy, scornful of the so-called pressures of rural life.

‘You can almost taste the bitterness when you read his statement,’ Hannah said. ‘He scarcely had a good word to say for her. She drank too much, cared only for herself. He blamed her for the boy’s disappearance. Obviously pissed off that she’d landed on her feet. Before the divorce was finalised, she’d moved in with Kit Payne, a manager at Madsen’s.’

‘The caravan park?’ Donna Buxton asked. ‘My uncle and aunt used to have a pitch there. We stayed with them when we were kids.’

‘They call it a holiday home park these days,’ Hannah said. ‘One of the biggest in the Lakes. The site borders Mike Hinds’ land. In next to no time, Niamh and Kit Payne were married, and instead of slaving away all hours cooking and cleaning, she had a husband with a well-paid job and free accommodation thrown in. Even if it was only a glorified log cabin.’

‘How did the stepfather get on with the kids?’ Greg asked.

‘Kindness itself, according to Niamh. There weren’t any issues between him and Orla, or so it seemed. Yet Callum resented the new man in his mum’s life, and refused to take Payne’s name.’

‘He stayed close to Hinds?’

‘The divorce was acrimonious. Niamh played games over Hinds’ access to the kids. Arrangements would be made, and at the last minute she’d come up with some excuse for cancelling. But Kit Payne tried to act as a peace-broker, and Callum made it clear that he was determined to stay in touch with his dad. Since the farmhouse was a stroll away, Niamh could hardly stop him.’

‘How about the prime suspect?’

‘Philip Hinds was older than his brother Mike, and they had nothing in common. He was single, and seems never to have had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, that we know of. He enjoyed the company of his nephew and niece, but for all anyone could prove, it seemed perfectly innocent.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah, actually. Everyone agreed he was devoted to Orla and Callum. Mike Hinds discouraged them from spending time with their uncle, but Niamh was fond of Philip, and didn’t mind the kids visiting his cottage. Hinds said it showed she was a bad mother, letting them walk through the wood on their own. His argument was that, never mind Philip, the caravan site was nearby; you couldn’t be sure who might be lurking around, on the lookout for kids.’

‘You can see his point of view.’

‘Sure, but does it do any good to wrap kids up in cotton wool?’

As she spoke, Hannah wondered if she’d ever face that dilemma as a mother. The closest she’d come to parenthood was when a miscarriage had put an end to an unplanned pregnancy. Marc had said all the right things, but he reckoned he wasn’t ready for fatherhood, and he’d hardly
been able to hide his relief that a baby hadn’t complicated their relationship even further. Perhaps that was the moment she should have decided he wasn’t the right man for her.

Greg shrugged. He didn’t have kids, either. At least, none that Hannah knew of.

Aslan had the habit of coming and going as he pleased at St Herbert’s. What was the worst that could happen? The principal wasn’t made of the right stuff to sack anyone, and why get rid of a spare pair of hands, even if they belonged to someone as bolshie as Aslan?

He strode down the corridor towards the main entrance. With Orla dead, St Herbert’s’ publicity efforts were on hold. No point in twiddling his thumbs. It was time for a visit to Lane End Farm. He could not delay it any longer. Yet his stomach churned, and his skin was all gooseflesh. He would go the long way round to the farmhouse, along the meandering lanes rather than taking a short cut across the fields. He needed plenty of time to work out what to say.

‘Penny for them!’

Sham, in breezy mood. A deeply cut pink top fought a losing battle to contain her breasts. She’d made a rapid recovery from the trauma of learning that Orla was dead.

He smiled. ‘If you knew what I was thinking, you’d never believe me.’

She giggled and leant back on her chair, revealing a skirt so short that it was more like a belt. ‘You reckon?’