The Night Book (4 page)

The voice at the other end had been distinctly subdued since the beginning of the conversation. Now it was almost inaudible.

‘Yeah, I’m still here, Seb.’ The line crackled again. ‘The thing is . . . about coming up . . . the thing is . . . look, Seb, I’ve got something to tell you . .
.’

He’d never been dumped before. A week later, as he drove in for the morning news conference, Seb still couldn’t quite believe it had happened to him. He’d
always been the one to move on, with all the usual honeyed, hackneyed words and expressions.

‘It’s not you, it’s
me
. . .’ ‘It’s
because
I love you that I want you to be
free
. . .’ ‘You deserve someone so much
better
. . .’

He had to admit that, after her initial hesitancy, Sarah had certainly got into her stride. She’d been impressively blunt.

‘We’re three hundred-plus miles apart, Seb, I hardly ever see you, the last time I came up you
slept
most of the bloody time – yes, I know you were on breakfast-show
shifts, but still . . . All you can talk about is your rotten job and how much you hate it, and anyway, to be quite honest I’ve met someone else and d’you know what? From time to time
he actually asks
me
how
my
day’s been. Can you believe that? I’m sorry, Seb, but I’ve had enough. Oh, and another thing, you never even
think
to—’

Fortunately, he’d called her from the pub.

Now, Seb parked his Triumph Spitfire two-seater sports convertible in the radio station’s car park and regarded it sadly as he pointlessly locked the door. It was the easiest car in
Britain to break into or steal. Back in London he’d thought it looked fashionably urban with a sort of scruffy-to-naff chic about it. Up here in the Lakes it just looked naff. He sighed and
made his way through the building’s front doors.

The news editor was busy handing out the morning’s assignments when Seb walked into the office.

‘Ah, Seb. How kind of you to join us. About bleedin’ time. I want you to go down to Kendal. Take the radio car. You’re probably going to be doing a live voice piece into the
lunchtime news and I want speech quality, not a crappy phone line.’

The station only had one radio car. Actually it wasn’t a car, it was a big Ford Transit van with an extendable twenty-foot radio mast on the roof and if you were assigned it, it meant you
were on a decent-sized story. Seb brightened up.

‘Great. What’s the job?’

Bob Merryman, a chain-smoking ex-newspaperman from Birmingham, shook his head. ‘Not exactly sure but I’ve got a feeling about it. There’s a press conference at the town hall.
It’s at eleven-thirty, which is why I’m pissed off you’re in late again. You’ll only just make it even if you leave now. Get weaving.’ He tossed the van’s keys
across the newsroom and Seb caught them one-handed.

‘But what’s it about?’ he asked. ‘You must have some idea.’

‘Not a lot. It’s something to do with these drownings in the lakes this summer. The local freelance guy down there says he’s heard they’re linked in some sort of way and
that’s what the press conference is about. The coroner and some hydrographer from Lancaster University are going to make statements. Make sure you record them and take Jess with you to do the
edits while you write your script.’

‘I can do both.’

‘Maybe you can and maybe you can’t. But like I say, I’ve got a feeling about this and I don’t want any fuck-ups, OK?’

Seb hesitated. ‘Why are you sending me, then? I thought you thought I was still—’

Merryman lit a fresh cigarette. ‘I’m sending you, Sebastian old chap, because, believe it or not, I actually have the teeniest tiniest fragment of faith in you.’ The Brummie
accent was very pronounced. ‘You covered some big stories when you were in London and you did OK. I’ve seen your cuttings. I think you just need something to get your teeth into and get
your confidence back. You did good with Thatch the other day. Now piss off before I change my mind. I want you to—’

Seb was already running down the corridor to find Jess.

Jess pushed the ageing Transit to its limits as they thundered down the M6 towards Kendal. All the windows were rolled down in a futile attempt to combat the heat, and the
roaring slipstream made it almost impossible for the two men to talk. The needle on the van’s temperature gauge was moving into the red band as they raced past the pretty little market town
of Penrith and into the wide, deepening valley that separated the steadily rising Yorkshire Dales to the east from the brooding Cumbrian fells to the west.

A fretting Seb had neither the time nor inclination to appreciate the savage grandeur that was beginning to unfold around them. ‘D’you still think we’ll make it for
eleven-thirty?’ he yelled at the engineer, as Jess indicated for the Kendal turn-off.

‘Bloody hell, Seb, how many times? I keep telling you,
yes
! Only just, though . . . are you all set up?’

The reporter tapped the compact reel-to-reel tape recorder nestling in his lap and checked the mic connection yet again before giving the thumbs-up.

‘Yup. Good to go.’

To their relief the noise level dropped appreciably as Jess slowed for the exit roundabout.

‘Right,’ he said, in a more normal voice. ‘Let’s go through it one more time. When we get to the town hall you run in while I get the mast up and establish the live link
to base. When the press conference is over, give me the tape, tell me the sound bites you want, and I’ll get editing while you write your script. Then when we go live, I’ll play them in
on your hand cues – just point at me
very clearly
each time. Got it?’

‘Er . . . I think so. I’ve never done a live news insert before, Jess. Hope I don’t screw up.’

‘Not with your Uncle Jess with you, you won’t. Ah, here we are – town centre coming up. Out of my way, matey.’ Jess performed a hair-raising overtaking manoeuvre around a
lumbering livestock lorry full of bleating sheep, and suddenly Kendal was before them, the pale stonework of the town hall’s Victorian clock tower rising above the old rooftops, its spire
gleaming dully in the baking heat of an already aggressive mid-morning sun.

Directly beneath it, a story was about to break.

Timothy Young had toyed with the idea of issuing some kind of public warning about swimming in the lakes, but in the end he decided against it. He only had a hunch that the
cluster of deaths that summer were somehow connected, and that was hardly evidence.

But as soon as he recorded his verdict of accidental death on the girl who had drowned in Buttermere, he phoned his daughter in London.

Christine was a systems analyst in the City (she’d explained her job to him many times but he still didn’t really understand what it was she did) and after a few minutes of
father–daughter banter he came to the reason for the call.

‘Do you remember that professor when you were a student at Lancaster? You know, the one with a bit of a thing for you, the old devil.’

Christine laughed. ‘He wasn’t old and he wasn’t a devil either, Dad. But yes, of course I remember Brian. We went out for a few months. He was only about ten years older than
me. He was nice.’

‘Didn’t he try to get you to switch courses? Study under him, if that’s the right expression.’

His daughter laughed again. ‘He certainly did. It wasn’t entirely self-serving of him, though. I was fascinated by his subject – hydrography. You know, the study of seas and
rivers and lakes. When Brian discovered our family lived above Bassenthwaite he was incredibly interesting about it and the Lake District generally. He used to joke that at least it couldn’t
possibly be a
dry
subject.’

‘Yet you drifted apart.’

‘Oh, very funny, Pops, ha-ha! Anyway, why are we talking about Brian? It was years ago. Water under the bridge –
there
, gotcha back!’

Her father smiled. ‘One-all . . . Look, Chrissie, I need to speak to him, or someone like him. An expert on lakes. Something’s going on up here that’s not right. Do you still
have his number?’

‘Gosh, how intriguing! Yes, I think I do. Give me a sec.’

Half an hour later Kendal’s coroner was talking to Professor Brian Parker of Lancaster University.

And, like the coroner’s daughter, the professor was intrigued.

‘Thanks so much for this, Brian. I’m amazed you’ve turned things round so quickly – it’s less than a fortnight since we first spoke.’
Timothy smiled gratefully at the professor as they prepared to go into the press conference together. The chief executive of the county council was with them.

‘Well, these guys helped,’ Parker said, nodding at the official. ‘They came up with the boats and paid for most of the equipment I needed. And it wasn’t that difficult to
do, technically. The results were a hell of a surprise, though, in this country and this far north. Not what I was expecting at all. Just goes to show how profound this summer’s effects are
becoming on surface-water temperature. Everything’s being influenced – human behaviour, aquatic reproduction cycles . . . I’m going to write a paper on it.’

The coroner turned to the council boss. ‘And you’re happy, Peter, with the public warning I want to give? You don’t think it’ll hit the tourist trade here?’

The executive shook his head. ‘No. Bookings are solid and this thing in itself won’t stop people coming. Anyway, we have a duty to get the information out there. We’ve
got
to do something to stop these drownings.’

‘Right.’ The coroner looked at his watch. ‘It’s exactly half past. Let’s get in there.’

Ninety minutes later, inside the radio car, Seb was ready. Just. The press conference had only wrapped up a quarter of an hour ago – it had overrun due to an unexpected
development – but somehow he’d managed to scribble down his script while Jess edited the tape in an incredible blur of razor blades and spinning spools.

As if he wasn’t nervous enough, Seb had just been told that the network’s main lunchtime news was going to take his report simultaneously along with his own station. He’d be
broadcasting live from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.

He swallowed and held his handwritten script a little tighter.

In his earphones he could hear the final words of the introduction to him from the presenters in both Carlisle and London. They were synchronised to the second and suddenly the two voices
– one male, one female – were simultaneously saying his name.

‘. . . live from the Lake District, Sebastian Richmond.’

Bugger
. He’d
told
them he wanted to be catch-lined ‘Seb’. Too late now. He took a deep breath and suddenly, miraculously, his nerves evaporated.

He had a story to tell.

‘Thank you . . . Today’s press conference was called by local coroner Dr Timothy Young in the wake of a spate of drownings here in the Lakes. Dr Young has become concerned at the
unusually high number of summer deaths in the water and took it on himself to commission an emergency survey of all three lakes involved, looking to identify any possible connection.

‘As if to underline his concerns, and in a moment of extraordinary drama here this morning, news came of a fourth drowning that took place earlier today. Here’s how that story
broke as Dr Young was about to introduce expert testimony about the previous tragedies.’

Seb pointed with a chopping motion at Jess and the engineer instantly fired off the first tape. Timothy Young’s clear, confident tones could be heard being interrupted mid-sentence by a
low, almost inaudible voice and the faint crackling of paper.

‘
. . . without further delay I’d like to hand you over to Professor Br— I’m sorry . . . bear with me for one moment, please, I’m being handed a
note.’

After more rustling and what sounded like a sharp intake of breath and a muttered
‘Good Lord,’
the coroner continued, more slowly this time.

‘I have just been informed that the body of a man, believed to be aged between thirty and forty, was recovered earlier this morning from Derwent Water, several hundred yards from the
shore near Portinscale. Early indications are that the victim had drowned, but of course there will need to be an autopsy followed by an inquest to establish the full facts.’

A low murmur could be heard sweeping through the roomful of journalists, and then the tape spooled out and Seb was back at the mic again.

‘If, as seems likely, the latest death turns out to be drowning-related, it would bring the number of such incidents in the waters of the Lake District during this long, hot and
unprecedented summer of ’76 to four. This represents a record number for a single season. Causing increasing concern is the fact that the frequency of the tragedies appears to be accelerating
– and that was before this morning’s shock news. Meanwhile Dr Young told the press conference that recent expert surveys of three lakes – Buttermere, Bassenthwaite and Thirlmere
– appear to show a hitherto hidden and sinister cause. The scientist conducting those surveys, leading hydrographer Professor Brian Parker, had this to say.’

Seb pointed almost fiercely at Jess and the second tape began to play. Parker’s flat, Lancastrian vowels filled Seb’s earphones as they simultaneously rippled across the entire
nation.

‘Morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll keep my remarks as free of jargon as I can. As you know, the entire UK has been enduring – I think we can all agree that’s the
appropriate word for it now – exceptional high temperatures for many weeks. Not only has there been no rainfall, there has been virtually no cloud cover. So the sun has been shining more or
less unbroken from sunrise to sunset, and at a time of year when it is at its highest point in the sky.

‘As you would expect, this has directly resulted in a rapid warming of the lakes, which to some extent is normal at this time of year. However, the heat, which as I say has continued
without even the briefest of interruptions, has resulted in an exceptional effect – one I doubt has occurred here in living memory.