The Serpent Pool (2 page)

‘Better not go any further,’ she gasped, ten minutes later.

As she heaved herself over the iron ladder stile, her joints creaked. Time to renew her membership at that bloody gym. How did Marc manage to look so lean after wolfing down his sister’s cooking? She could only put it down to nervous energy. He was seldom still for ten seconds at a time; his litheness of movement had attracted her from the day they first met. Though sometimes she puzzled over what made him so restless.

Nudging his woolly hat out of his eyes, he grinned.

‘Maybe we ought to go too far one day, you and me.’

She got her breath back.

‘In your dreams.’

His playful manner harked back to their early years together. They needed more time alone, just the two of them, with no distractions. Too often she came home late, and when she wasn’t at work, Marc would be checking stock or exhibiting at a fair in some distant market town. Once upon a time, she’d thought a child would bind them together, but since her accidental pregnancy and subsequent
miscarriage, he’d made it clear that fatherhood wasn’t on his agenda in the near future.
No rush, we have plenty of time
. But she wasn’t sure that the time would ever be right for him.

As for New Year’s resolutions, she’d been less than frank. At last she’d reached a decision about Daniel Kind. He was the son of Ben, her former boss. Daniel was an Oxford historian who had moved up to the Lakes after the glittering prizes lost their sheen. She liked him a lot, too much for comfort. In rare flights of fancy, it seemed that whenever she talked with him, it was as if, through a door left ajar, she caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar room, flooded with dazzling light. Tempting to explore, but she was too cautious to venture through the door, lest it slam shut behind her, trapping in the unknown.

She needed to brush Daniel Kind out of her mind, sweep away the daydreams like so much discarded Christmas wrapping paper. The historian must become history.

It shouldn’t be such a wrench; they hadn’t seen each other since the spring. He’d set off from Liverpool for America, supposedly on a short-term assignment giving talks on a cruise ship. She’d wondered if he would ever come back, even though he assured her he’d fallen in love with the Lakes and didn’t want to leave. He’d split up from Miranda, the journalist he’d shared a cottage with in Brackdale. While he’d been away, they’d exchanged a couple of emails, nothing more. It was Hannah’s fault. She hadn’t replied to his last message because she’d been working round the clock on a case.

She must stop wasting her time. Daniel had probably found someone to take Miranda’s place. Anyway, it would
never work between the two of them. How could she ever cope with the guilt of dumping Marc? Enough wishful thinking. She ought to cherish what she had.

The scenery became wild. Rock, dead bracken, and leafless trees formed a winter tapestry. As they climbed, the wind grew stronger. She’d wrapped up well, with plenty of layers, but even with her jacket hood up and fastened, the cold stung every inch of exposed flesh. Wisps of mist shrouded the upper slopes of the fells. In the distance, she heard a plaintive mewing. A melancholy sound, as if an unseen buzzard mourned the passage of the old year.

Hannah shivered as they reached a low, spiky juniper with yellow-green needles. Hanging a juniper bush outside your door was supposed to ward off evil spirits, but if she didn’t believe in horoscopes, why heed old wives’ tales? Their new home would be a lucky place. Marc was right: moving into Undercrag was their chance for a fresh start.

‘Shall we turn back?’ she asked.

He lengthened his stride. Pushing hard to keep up, she saw him shake his head.

‘Five minutes and we’ll be there.’

He never changed direction before reaching his destination; it wasn’t in his nature. Years ago, in a hire car in Malta, they’d spent two hours driving in ever-decreasing circles because he refused to consult a passerby about the best route to Mdina. By the time they arrived, it was so late that they had five minutes in the Silent City before they needed to race back to the hotel for dinner. Better not remind him if she didn’t want to spoil the afternoon.

‘Let’s keep an eye on the mist.’

‘We’re not high enough to run into trouble. This isn’t exactly Blencathra, is it?’

Sure, but each year people strayed into difficulty without realising they were at risk. You had to treat the fells with respect. No point in saying that to Marc, though. Born and bred at Skelwith Bridge, he had the innate sense of superiority of someone whose family had lived there since Wordsworth was in short trousers. Hannah had grown up in Lancaster and Morecambe – almost the opposite end of the country as far as a native of the Lakes was concerned. She couldn’t claim deep familiarity with the local peaks; he liked to say she scarcely knew her Ill Bell from her Great Gable.

‘The moment we reach the Serpent Pool, we go straight back, all right?’

‘It’s a deal.’

As they strode on, she looked up and spotted the outline of an eccentric grey building perched a hundred feet above them. Twenty feet high, it resembled a narrow ship’s funnel, but made out of stone and topped with battlements. In the middle of nowhere, it had no purpose other than as a place to gaze up at and down from.

The Serpent Tower dated back to Victorian times, a folly constructed by a wealthy landowner. Now the plateau was owned by the Cumbria Culture Company, who allowed poets to read their work and folk singers to perform there, although there wasn’t enough space for an audience of any size. According to the guidebooks, the Serpent Tower didn’t have any connection with serpents, apart from having the outlines of two intertwined snakes carved above the door. The name came from its vantage point overlooking the Serpent Pool, but for the moment they couldn’t see the water.

They’d once walked up to the Tower together, and the views of the Langdale Pikes snatched your breath away. But it required a scramble up a steep gradient to reach the folly, and this was no afternoon for sightseeing. They’d not seen another soul since passing the last farm buildings. If they became stranded as the mist descended, and had to call out the mountain rescue so close to home, she’d never live it down at Divisional HQ.

Quickening her pace, she followed him along the edge of a shallow gully strewn with loose, lichen-covered stones the size of tennis balls. Lakeland guides scorned this walk as suitable for grandmothers, but her calf muscles were already aching.

‘Almost there,’ Marc said.

She caught him up and put her arm around his, thrusting her head down as they passed through a cluster of bare oak trees, breathing hard as she matched his rhythmic stride. Soon they were in the open.

In front of them lay a grassy platform above the farmland that reached as far as the rocky passageway leading to the ridge and the Serpent Tower. The area was featureless but for a small, irregularly shaped stretch of water. It took a fanciful turn of mind to compare it to the sinuous contours of a serpent, but the people who gave names to places in the Lakes never lacked imagination.

They halted close to the water’s edge.

This was their destination. This was the Serpent Pool.

And here, six years ago, Bethany Friend’s body had been found.

According to the file back in Hannah’s office, the Serpent Pool was never more than two feet deep. She’d read that file from cover to cover and committed the salient points to memory. There had only been eighteen inches of water on the day Bethany Friend’s bound body was discovered by a group of fell-walkers. She was lying face down in the water.

She and Marc stood together on the soft ground, lost in thought.

‘You’d never think a woman could drown in something so shallow,’ Marc muttered.

Hannah swung round and stared at him.

‘You know about Bethany Friend?’

The dark patch of water seemed to hypnotise him, as though if he stared at it for long enough, the solution to some eternal mystery would sneak into his brain.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘How did you hear about her?’

His gaze didn’t waver. ‘How did you?’

‘It’s my job to know these things.’

‘You never mentioned Bethany when we were buying the house.’

‘I read the file before I finished for the holiday.’

He breathed out. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re treating it as a cold case?’

‘It’s an unexplained death.’

‘She committed suicide, didn’t she?’

‘The coroner recorded an open verdict.’

‘That isn’t so unusual.’

‘No, but since we moved here…’

‘You took an interest just because we live close to where she died?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Not the whole truth, but she wasn’t ready to tell him the whole truth. ‘It’s a strange case, so much was left unexplained. That’s why it caught my interest.’

He stared at her. They’d known each other long enough for him to guess she was holding back on him. But he was holding back too, she was certain of it. That was why he didn’t push his luck.

Her feet were freezing and she stamped them. ‘Come on, we’d best get back before the mist closes in.’

He followed as she moved towards the trees, but they walked in silence. She wanted him to tell her how he knew about Bethany Friend. But he wasn’t in the mood for talking, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask him again.

Back in the kitchen of Undercrag, they were shedding their outdoor gear when the phone rang. Marc grabbed the receiver, saying it might be a customer from Japan chasing a signed Edgar Wallace, but after a brief exchange of words, he thrust it at Hannah.

‘Fern Larter, for you.’

Hannah took the phone into her study. It was as draughty as a barn, but she loved its solitude and stillness. Or, at least, the absence of people. Even in winter, the countryside teemed with life. Squirrels fought on the grass beneath her window, occasionally a roe deer came up to press a baffled face to the panes. Easy to persuade herself that the nearest village was twenty miles distant, instead of a stroll away.

Once, Undercrag had accommodated hospital offices at ground level, while live-in staff slept upstairs. Hannah and Marc had only afforded the mortgage thanks to a downward blip in the market, coupled with a legacy from Marc’s aunt, who succumbed to a stroke a fortnight short of her eightieth birthday. Although there were only the two of them, the
habitable space seemed to have vanished within weeks of their moving in. Marc annexed the reception room next to the lounge as his office. Three bedrooms were crammed floor-to-ceiling with books. Stock, he called it. She blamed bibliomania, not the business.

‘Happy New Year, Fern.’

‘And to you. Hey, I resolved to treat myself after Christmas. My in-laws are all bloody vegans, it’s been a nightmare. I hate dieting, most of all when it’s a moral obligation. Fancy getting together for a bacon butty before work one morning?’

‘Love to.’

‘Excellent, who cares about blood pressure? I’m pig-sick of the ACC’s healthy-eating initiative. I refuse to spend the rest of my life worrying about clogged arteries.’

Fern, a fellow DCI, had lent a solid shoulder to cry on when Hannah’s career hit a rocky patch. Lauren Self, the assistant chief constable, had shunted her into cold case work, but Hannah preferred to investigate the crimes of today. Fern argued that a cold case cop had more latitude to involve herself directly in proper detective work than anyone of similar rank in the whole Cumbria Constabulary. Especially in an age when management was all about form-filling, targets, and league tables. The higher you climbed up the greasy pole, the further you were from what made you love the job in the first place.

‘Where and when?’

‘That snack bar on Beast Banks? Seven-thirty on Thursday?’

‘You can bring me up to date with the Saffell case.’

A fractional pause.

‘Actually, I’ll come clean. I do have a teeny ulterior motive.’

‘This isn’t just about boosting your cholesterol levels?’

‘We’re getting nowhere fast. Thought I might pick your brains.’

‘Told you last time we spoke. I only met Saffell the once.’

‘Even so.’ Fern coughed. ‘Anyway, the business stuff will only take five minutes. Then we can catch up properly.’

Hannah hung up and wandered back into the kitchen. She smelt burning as Marc lifted two crumpets out of the toaster.

‘What did Fern want?’

When police work intruded on their private time, he treated it as a personal affront. Similar principles didn’t apply with books and his customers.

‘To fix up a meeting, that’s all.’

He tossed a crumpet for each of them onto a plate and took a clean knife out of the dishwasher. ‘When are you seeing her?’

‘Thursday, once I’ve settled in my new sidekick.’

He cut his crumpet in half with a neat stroke of the blade. He had a surgeon’s dexterity, she thought. His hands were slim; she’d always liked them, and what he did with them, when he was in the right frame of mind.

‘You’ll miss Nick Lowther.’

Even Inspector Lestrade would have detected the note of satisfaction. Hannah gritted her teeth. Nick had been her detective sergeant on the Cold Case Review Team and they’d worked together for years. Marc had long been wary of their friendship, and his unvoiced, but unmistakeable,
suspicion that they were more than friends had infuriated her. She’d never given him cause to doubt her fidelity.

None of that mattered now. Six months ago, Nick had met someone, and a fortnight before Christmas they had emigrated to Canada together. Marc was right. Nick’s departure had left a gap in Hannah’s life and she wasn’t sure how to fill it.

‘Uh-huh.’ She took the margarine out of the fridge and spread it over the crumpet.

‘Your new sergeant, what’s he like?’

‘Time will tell,’ she muttered. Unfair to make her mind up too soon, but one thing was for sure. Greg Wharf was no Nick Lowther.

‘It will work out fine.’

It should have been a kind remark, but he’d seldom been kind about Nick in the past and she couldn’t resist the urge to retaliate.

‘Will Cassie be at the party?’

He chewed hard for half a minute before speaking.

‘Cassie?’

‘You know.’ Of course he knew, he’d mentioned her a dozen times since she’d started work at the shop last autumn. Hannah had called in once, during the run-up to Christmas, to soothe the itch of curiosity. The girl was in her mid-twenties, fair and slim. During their short exchange of seasonal pleasantries, she gave the impression she wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But her figure was gorgeous and her eyes big and blue. She’d given Marc a jokey Christmas card, signed in an extravagant hand and adorned with half a dozen kisses. At least he’d made no secret of it, displaying it on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. Hannah hoped
he wouldn’t be tempted to make a fool of himself. ‘Cassie Weston. Your own personal sidekick.’

‘Stuart Wagg asked me to pass on an invitation to her, as it happens. I didn’t even realise they’d met. She must have sold him some books. But she said she couldn’t make it. Came up with some excuse about spending the evening with her boyfriend in Grasmere.’

‘An excuse? Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?’

‘I’d be amazed if she didn’t. Very pretty girl.’

As you keep telling me, Hannah thought.

‘You think she was fibbing?’

‘Dunno, it just didn’t ring true. My guess is, she didn’t fancy a night out in a big crowd. She doesn’t strike me as a party animal.’

‘So, Cassie is like me?’

He considered the question as he gulped down the last of his crumpet, and opted for vagueness. Or tact.

‘Um. Sort of.’

‘So, what’s the latest on George Saffell?’ Marc asked.

They were in Hannah’s Lexus, driving through the darkness. Their destination was south of the Hawkshead ferry, a modern mansion hidden among the trees on the slopes above Windermere. Marc drove half as many miles in a year as she did, but he wasn’t a good passenger, and she never enjoyed chauffeuring him. When she’d owned a car with a manual gearbox, he twitched with every change of gear. Now she drove an automatic, he twitched all the time. She might have passed her advanced test, he might have picked up a couple of speeding tickets, but if she rounded a bend at speed, his intake of breath sounded
like a pistol shot. If she took too long to set off when the lights turned green, his heel drummed on the floor mat in reproach.

‘Still dead, last I heard.’

‘You know what I mean.’ The habitual impatience flared, quick as the strike of a match. Hannah blamed his mother for spoiling him. Even this Christmas, the old lady hadn’t been able to resist the urge to straighten his collar and brush imaginary bits of fluff from his coat at every opportunity. She’d been in her forties when he was born and she couldn’t stop treating him like a precious gift. ‘Has Fern Larter figured out if it was murder?’

An old Beach Boys hit played on the in-car CD player. Smooth harmonies, a song about heroes and villains.

‘It’s for the coroner to decide, and the inquest was adjourned.’ She felt a flash of irritation. Why didn’t he show the same interest in her own investigations? But perhaps her reaction was unfair. After selling books to the man for years, he was bound to be intrigued by George Saffell’s bizarre demise. It wasn’t every day that one of his most valued customers was roasted alive. ‘Last time we spoke, Fern had pretty much ruled out an accident.’

‘Not surprised. Strange accident, huh? To incinerate yourself and your prized possessions. You think he killed himself?’

‘Funny way to do it,’ she said. ‘Burning yourself to a crisp, with no chance of second thoughts once the flames take hold.’

Saffell’s boathouse had been built of wood. Luxurious enough to feature in glossy lifestyle magazines, but never meant for round-the-year occupancy. Why would Saffell
want to spend dark winter evenings there when he had a lovely place out at Troutbeck?

‘Books obsessed him,’ Marc said. ‘Perhaps he thought it was a fitting way to go.’

‘You’d have to be very unhappy to choose that ahead of an overdose of painkillers.’

‘Yeah, he hated pain. According to his wife, even a twinge of toothache made him whimper.’

‘You know her?’

They hadn’t spoken much about Saffell when they first learnt of his death. After initial expressions of shock and dismay, Marc lamented the loss of business. Not so much callous selfishness, as naked human nature. The two men were acquaintances, not friends. When a customer died, there was usually the prospect of buying his collection from the widow at a knock-down price, once a probate valuation at a pittance had been agreed. But even that consolation was denied. Four thousand books worth a small fortune, reduced to ash. For Marc, the destruction of rare books was a crime worse even than murder.

‘Wanda Saffell?’ Was it her imagination, or was he weighing up how much to say? ‘I’ve met her a few times, haven’t I mentioned it?’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘You probably weren’t listening after a long day at Divisional HQ,’ he muttered.

‘I’m all ears now.’

‘Wanda was his second wife, the first died young of breast cancer. They married four or five years ago. She was a divorcee who shared his love of books.’

‘Another collector?’

‘No, she runs a small printing press as a hobby, publishes an occasional limited edition. Funded by George, but I get the impression they led separate lives.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said vaguely.

‘They hadn’t split up?’

‘Don’t think so. I kept my nose out.’

Having aroused her curiosity, he’d failed to satisfy it. Typical man.

‘The boathouse was gutted long before they brought the fire under control. It stood at the end of a track through woodland, and the alarm wasn’t raised until someone on the other side of Ullswater saw the place engulfed in flames. So Forensics didn’t have a lot to go on. There wasn’t much left of your customer, let alone all those books you sold him.’

Marc flinched in the passenger seat, and for once she thought it wasn’t on account of her driving. He didn’t lack imagination – how could he, a man who loved books so much? – and it didn’t do to dwell on the agonies that Saffell must have suffered. Even a few seconds before the final loss of consciousness must seem like an eternity while you burnt to death.

‘But they found traces of accelerant. Petrol.’

Marc groaned. ‘He may have kept fuel for a boat.’

‘Yeah, but there are signs that his wrists and ankles were tied.’

This was confidential, but Marc wouldn’t shoot his mouth off. He knew when to be discreet.

‘Jesus.’ He shivered. ‘Murder, then.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Who would want to kill someone as harmless as George Saffell?’

‘Is anyone truly harmless?’

‘That’s a bit profound, Hannah, don’t you think? He was a quiet sort, nothing like the stereotype of a brash estate agent. Old George wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘Even so. He must have had an enemy.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

Hannah swore as a car raced up behind them, its full beam dazzling in her rear-view mirror. It overtook them before a bend, cutting back in so sharply that she had to jam her foot down on the brake. She had the impression of a sports car, low and sleek. Tyres squealing, it disappeared into the darkness.

‘Stupid bastard.’

Marc clicked his tongue.

‘Someone’s worried about arriving late for the party.’

‘For God’s sake. For all he cared, we could have crashed.’

‘What makes you think the driver’s a man?’ He seemed about to add something, but changed his mind. ‘Anyway, we survived. And here we are.’

Hannah pulled up in front of a long, narrow driveway that reached through an avenue of dark trees. The gates were open and the lights on top of the brick pillars shone bright. She peered at the house name, carved on a sign made of slate.

‘Crag Gill.’

‘Named after Miss Thornton’s house in
The Picts and the Martyrs
,’ Marc said, as if that explained everything.

The title of the book stirred a memory.

‘Arthur Ransome? The
Swallows and Amazons
man?’

‘Spot on. Stuart has catholic tastes, but he’s especially fond of children’s classics. He has every Ransome in first edition. Mind you, the stuff Ransome wrote for adults is even rarer.’

‘I didn’t realise he wrote for adults.’

‘Believe me, his study of Oscar Wilde is fabulously rare in dust wrapper. Lord Alfred Douglas sued him for libel, and even though Ransome won the case, the controversial bits were censored from the later editions. Then there was his book on Russian folklore. You know he married Trotsky’s secretary?’

It sounded wildly improbable, but Marc loved showing off the extraordinary range of trivia he’d accumulated about books and bookmen. She decided to give the answer he hoped for.

‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s true, I swear it.’ He enjoyed the idea of startling her – perhaps because she was a sceptical police officer. ‘A dealer I know reckons that Ransome personally inscribed his collection of Russian folk tales to his chum Lenin. If it ever shows up, Stuart will be desperate to lay his hands on it, and he’s a man who likes to get what he wants. He’d trade his granny if he could get that book.’

‘So, he’s a true lawyer,’ Hannah murmured. ‘Caring and unselfish.’

‘You’re not going to be sarky with Stuart, are you? Chill out. Don’t forget he’s not just our host, he helps pay our mortgage.’