The Hawkshead Hostage (16 page)

‘Let me think. You do realise I never imagined it was important. It was just a glimpse, and only now when you tell me there’s a problem with the boy have I even given it a thought. She was just a woman driving a car. Normal sort of size and shape. Lightish hair, possibly. But look, Sim, I could be making it all up. You read about how totally wrong eyewitnesses usually are. If you were to tell me the chief suspect has purple hair and enormous spectacles, I could probably square that with the person I saw. And even worse with the man in the back. I’d say he was fairly large, clean-shaven and not very young. But I wouldn’t swear to any of it.’

‘Would you know them in an identity parade?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘But you’re fairly sure it really was Ben.’ She felt a growing desperation at this elusive clue. With anybody but Ninian, the testimony would be more reliable than his vague uncertainties.

‘I was sure at the time. Sure-ish, anyway. I said to myself, “That’s young Ben Harkness. Wonder what he’s up to now.” That’s exactly what I thought. Then I remembered he’s finished school for the summer, and could have aunts or something who’d be glad to take him for a nice drive up to Grasmere. It didn’t seem unusual, except for the man with him in the back. That was what made me look a bit more closely than I’d have done otherwise.’

Simmy could see that he was trying his best to cooperate. He wanted to please her, and that made her feel warmer towards him than she’d done for some time. After all, who could remain cross with sweet Ninian Tripp? She was tempted to give him a hug, just for being there and taking things seriously. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be helpful. I mean – if you saw him, others might have done as well. The police can put out a call for any other witnesses.’

‘Maybe they can hypnotise me into remembering what sort of car it was.’

‘Yeah,’ she laughed. Ben would say of course they
could
, but there was no chance that they
would
, because it cost too much, and any results wouldn’t justify the expense. Unless Ninian could come up with the number plate, of course. And from the window of a bus, he was unlikely even to have seen that.

‘Melanie’s blaming me,’ she said suddenly. Something
about Ninian’s softness; the way he was simply standing there so patient and accepting made her want to splurge the most acute of her worries. ‘If I hadn’t taken Ben to the hotel and let him go down to the lake, then she and I would not have been the ones to find Dan’s dead body. It’s true, but he’d still be just as dead without any of us being there. She sat there in the water with him on her lap. I suppose that’s going to haunt her now for the rest of her life. I sort of expected her to be tougher than that. Silly, I know.’

‘She’s tough enough,’ he said. ‘It’s my guess that she feels guilty about something she said and did, and she’s projecting it onto you.’

Ninian had been through rocky emotional times himself, with years of therapy. As a result he could sometimes come up with surprisingly accurate insights about people’s inner workings. Simmy had seen him with Bonnie Lawson, recognising elements the two had in common.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Do you think so?’

‘How well did she know this Dan person?’

‘She’s spent the night with him, twice, I think. She insisted there was no great love between them, but she seemed terribly fond of him when she discovered he was dead.’

‘Dead,’ Ninian repeated gently. ‘That’s a pretty big thing, you know, even when it happens to a total stranger. If you’ve got his head in your lap, you can’t really avoid the enormity of it, can you?’

Simmy was assailed by a tormenting image of her own stillborn daughter lying in her lap, cold and silent and unmoving. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Poor old Mel.’

‘Right. So go easy on her, okay? She’ll be fine after
a bit, but for now her world is probably upside down, and she has no idea how to deal with it. Just because she’s grown up in a family of losers doesn’t equip her for something like this.’

‘Thanks.’ She gave him a watery smile.

Then – as happened so uncomfortably often – an unexpected figure came into the shop.

‘Dad?’ Simmy stared at her father as if at a ghost. ‘Are you all right?’

There was no immediate reason for such a question. He was tidily dressed, his hair brushed, no wild look in his eye. And yet there was definitely something wrong.

‘I can’t find your mother,’ he said, with an apologetic smile.

Simmy took a breath. This was the sort of thing a senile old person would do – but the fact that Russell had found the flower shop on his own, and was in a presentable condition, gave credence to his words. ‘Didn’t she say where she was going?’

‘If she did, I didn’t hear her. The thing is, that girl who works here came to the house wanting her. When I went to look for her, she was nowhere to be found.’

‘Girl? Bonnie, you mean?’

‘I’m not sure that’s her name. Big lass. Dark hair. Lovely skin.’

‘Melanie! That’s Melanie.’

‘Yes,’ he said, with evident relief. ‘Of course.’

‘Why isn’t she with you? Where is she now?’

‘Who? The girl?’

‘Yes. And Mum. Oh, for heaven’s sake, this isn’t making any sense at all.’

‘That’s what I said.’ His very mildness was alarming. ‘The girl went away. But before that she said maybe I should come and ask you, because Angie might be here. Or you might know where she’s gone.’

‘Well I don’t.’ She gazed at her father in perplexity. Only three months ago he had been absolutely normal, fully functioning in every way. Was it feasible that dementia could set in so rapidly? It was no longer possible to ignore his deterioration; a doctor must be consulted as a matter of urgency. But first they had to find Angie.

‘I bet she left a note,’ said Ninian cheerily. ‘Why don’t we all go back for a look?’

Russell gave him a long, considering look. ‘All right,’ he agreed at last. ‘That’s a sensible idea. Good man.’

It wasn’t apparent to Simmy that he knew who Ninian was, despite several encounters. Her friend had even spent Christmas Day with the family only seven months earlier.

‘I’ll lock up, then,’ she said. ‘It’s almost closing time, anyway.’ Thinking back over the long day, she felt suddenly exhausted. Far too much had happened for a scant eight or nine hours. On balance, nothing at all was any better than it had been the previous day. Ben’s whereabouts and state of mind were still a complete blank. Dan Yates was still just as dead, his killer still evading detection. Bonnie, Melanie and Helen were all frightened and miserable. And
she herself was saddled with a parent who was losing his wits and another who’d emulated Ben Harkness and gone absent without leave.

Her car was a few streets away, and as always she had to think hard to remember where she’d left it. With tired, dragging feet she led the two men southwards towards the network of small roads where parking was unrestricted. ‘P’Simmon!’ came a welcome voice from a side street just behind them. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Mum.’ She turned and almost fell into her mother’s arms, so great was her relief. ‘Dad came to the shop, saying he’d lost you.’

Behind her, she heard the clearing of a male throat. ‘Um …’ said Ninian. ‘You won’t need me any more, then. Everything should be all right now, by the looks of it.’

Simmy let the exaggeration pass. She refrained from listing all the things that remained very far from all right. All she said was, ‘Thanks, Ninian. But don’t forget the police are going to want to talk to you about last night.’

He made a rueful face, like a schoolboy threatened with an interview with the Head. ‘They know where to find me,’ he said. Simmy wasn’t entirely sure that this was true, but she merely nodded.

‘See you, then,’ he smiled, and turned back towards the main street. Intending to catch a bus down to the further end of Bowness, she supposed, where he would have to walk home up Brant Fell.

‘Why do the police want him?’ asked Angie, after leaving a moment for Ninian to get out of earshot.

‘I’ll tell you later. Let’s get Dad home. Where were you?’

‘Shopping.’

‘Oh. Well, Melanie’s been looking for you, for some reason. She got Dad all agitated, and he came out to try to find you. At least, that’s what he said.’

‘I suppose you want to talk about
that
later as well.’ Angie gave an angry little snort to indicate how trying people were being. ‘And why in the world would Melanie Todd want me? She hardly knows me.’

‘I have no idea. I spoke to her less than an hour ago and she was in Bowness feeling miserable. Perhaps she was just hoping for a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on.’

‘I hardly think she’d choose
me
for that.’

They were walking briskly, Russell flanked by his two women, forced to maintain the pace. ‘What’s the rush?’ he asked at one point.

‘We’ve got people coming,’ said Angie. ‘They’ll be annoyed if there’s nobody to meet them.’

For the hundredth time, Simmy was made aware of the restrictions imposed by running a Bed and Breakfast. Not only the mornings relentlessly spent preparing large breakfasts, seven days a week, but the afternoons, where people were liable to arrive at any time after three o’clock – and sometimes earlier than that. One or other of her parents needed to be there to receive them. During the summer there was never a free day; the resulting pressure difficult to imagine. Had this, then, been a factor in sending her father into his tailspin, in addition to the violence and danger that his daughter had been exposed to?

‘I’m not staying,’ she said, when they got to Beck View in Lake Road. ‘It’s been a pretty awful day.’

Angie faced her with a thunderous expression. ‘And what about
my
day?’ she demanded. ‘And every other
day for the past umpteen weeks?’ She gave her husband a little push. ‘Go and put the kettle on,’ she ordered him. ‘I’m desperate for a cup of tea.’ Again, she waited until the subject of her remarks was beyond earshot. ‘I haven’t been shopping at all,’ she hissed. ‘I went to the doctor.’

‘About Dad?’

‘About both of us. I can’t sleep. I can’t get a minute’s peace, day or night. Nobody gives a button for how I’m feeling, with all their own troubles. And I include you in that. It all got more than I could stand, so I went to the bloody doctor.’

The rage was complicated, but Simmy was quite aware that the mere fact of consulting a doctor was enough to make her mother angry. In her worldview a doctor was strictly for vaccinations and transitory injuries. To seek help with anything more nebulous, hinting at emotional difficulties, indicated real desperation. ‘So what did he – she – say?’

‘She. It ended up with me talking about your father, since he’s the reason I’m in such a state. She wants him to have a scan, because she thought it sounded as if he could have had a stroke, or aneurysm or some sort of “episode” and there’s treatment for all that kind of thing. If he was getting Alzheimer’s, it would be more gradual, she thinks. To see her face, you’d assume she was giving me good news.’

Angie’s own face was a picture of scorn.

‘Well, if there’s treatment …’ said Simmy cautiously.

‘Right. A lifetime of drugs that’ll keep him practically comatose, or give him ghastly side effects. Honestly – am I the only one who thinks we’re living in a totalitarian state governed by medics and pharmaceutical companies?’

‘Probably,’ said Simmy. ‘They’re only trying to help, after
all.’ She knew she ought to keep quiet, that her mother was in a mood for passionate diatribing and the quickest way to stop her was to say nothing. But she saw no way to avoid replying, so she squared her shoulders and said firmly, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. Go and have your tea and forget it for now. I’m going home. If Melanie comes back, tell her you’ve got too much to do to talk to her this evening.’

‘What’s come over you?’ Angie’s rage had mutated into reproachful disbelief. ‘So hard and self-absorbed all of a sudden?’

‘I’m not.’ The accusation was piercingly unfair. ‘It’s just that I’m as tired as you are. The weather doesn’t help. We all need an early night, so we can start sorting it all out in the morning.’

‘“Sorting it all out”?’ Angie repeated with hurtful contempt. ‘And how do you think we’ll do that?’ She paused. ‘What possible reason can Melanie have for wanting me? What use can
I
be to her?’

Simmy gave no reply. Resentment was flaring warmly, not just towards her mother, but the whole business at Hawkshead. Once again she had been drawn into something that did not concern her in the least. People she didn’t know had killed and been killed, for reasons she could not begin to guess. She was the still centre of a swirling mass of overwrought people, all of them wanting something from her. If Melanie wanted Angie, that was one weight off her – Simmy’s – back.

They were still barely inside the house, facing each other in the hallway. From the kitchen came the sound of a whistling kettle. For a moment, Simmy was tempted to sit over a mug of tea and give herself up to the needs of
her parents. It was what she would normally do, without a second thought.

But this was not a normal evening. Her only wish was to escape to the peace and solitude of her own cottage in Troutbeck. So, steeling herself against pangs of guilt at her heartless behaviour, she did exactly that.

She took the easternmost road to her village – the one that carried on to Kirkstone Pass and Ullswater once it had passed Troutbeck. In summer it was well used by visitors in cars or hiking, with a few on horseback for good measure. To her right rose fells and crags which she had yet to properly explore. Paths led up and over the top, then down into Kentmere, which was also little known to her. By road it was a long and tortuous distance away. On foot it was an easy hike. She and her father had resolved to do it one summer weekend but all such plans were on hold until his state of health could be ascertained. A better map reader than she was, he needed to be in full possession of his wits before such a venture could be attempted. She would never dare to go by herself.

She returned to her cottage with a mixture of relief and self-reproach. It was disgraceful of her to walk away from so many distressed and needy people, for no reason other than that she had had enough. Ben was still missing – that was the most stark fact of all. His claim to be ‘okay’ was decreasingly reassuring as night approached. Where was he? What was he doing? Where would he sleep? Had he had anything to eat? These maternal anxieties made her think of Helen and how much more acute they must be for her. There was a high chance that he was no longer okay, of
course. If he was shadowing people he knew to be capable of murder, then he was obviously in real danger. And yet Moxon had seemed to drop all concern for the boy, once he heard the tale of the note on the windscreen.

A concern that would surely revive once he got the message about Ninian’s sighting. Again, Simmy felt guilty. She should have made a better effort to contact the detective, trying different numbers, making it seem more urgent. But then – why should
she
be the one to do it? It was Ninian’s sighting, not hers.

Because she cared intensely about Ben, of course. Because principled jibbing at doing Ninian’s work for him could lead to resulting harm for the boy. Ben was worth a hundred Ninians. Even Ninian himself would agree to that.

But there really was nothing more she could do that evening. She scrambled three eggs for herself, and ate them quickly. Her phone was switched off, a deliberate refusal to participate any further in the convolutions centred on Hawkshead. She would go to bed insanely early and hope for better news in the morning. ‘I’ll be far more use after a good night’s sleep,’ she muttered to herself. Sometimes she wished she had a cat to talk to. It would make her feel less crazy. But cats killed too many things, and were really not ideal as companions. She drifted off to sleep thinking sadly that cats and dogs were all basically substitutes for wholesome human relationships. And she did not want an animal to remind her of how defective she was in that department.