Riddled on the Sands (The Lakeland Murders) (17 page)

As she drove along the A65 Jane’s mood lightened. A warm westerly wind had cleared the air and polished the views. For some reason seeing Farleton Knott always lifted her spirits. She pushed a USB stick that Andy had given her into her Mini’s stereo, and listened as she drove. Some of the stuff was a bit sentimental, she thought, and she had no idea who most of it was by, but  she sang along to the ones she recognised. And, unlike Andy Hall, Jane could actually sing.

Her sat-nav took her to one of the narrow streets close to the centre of Kirkby Lonsdale, and she had to park a little way away from the address that she had for Miles Peter Robinson. No criminal record, age 71. She didn’t know much else about him, except that he’d run a bookshop in Kirkby Lonsdale for over forty years. Jane looked at her watch. She was ten minutes early, so she walked quickly to Main Street, and soon found the shop he’d run for all those years. It was locked and empty, and all the shop fittings were gone. There was a brief note in the window, politely thanking Robinson’s customers for their many years of loyal support, and already the tape holding it to the window was starting to yellow and peel.

Jane knocked on Robinson’s front door at exactly 3.30pm, and listened to the sound of a chain being removed, and two locks being turned. The old man opened the door cautiously.

‘I’m DC Francis. I called earlier.’

‘Someone claiming to be a detective constable of that name did indeed telephone me earlier. Might I trouble you for sight of your Warrant Card?’

Jane fished it out of her bag. Robinson was holding out his hand. She handed it over and watched as the old man removed his glasses, and looked at it closely.

‘Have you seen a Warrant Card before?’ she asked, after a few seconds.

‘An excellent question.’ He handed the card back and smiled. ‘And the answer is, of course, no. I don’t believe that I’ve so much as spoken to a police officer since I was a boy.  But I do pride myself on being able to identify authentic artifacts, although I freely admit that I can’t always do the same with people.’

‘So am I, I mean is my Warrant Card, the real thing then, do you think?’ Jane was smiling as she asked.

‘I can’t be certain. But since I took the precaution of calling Kendal police station twenty minutes ago, and discovered that Jane Francis was indeed on duty, but was out at present, I think I can be reasonably sure that you are, indeed, a Police Officer.’

The old man stepped back into the darkness of the hallway, and swung the old door open. Jane walked in and followed him along the passageway to the kitchen. The cottage was old, very old, and the hall was lined with watercolours and drawings, but it was too dark to make them out properly.

She sat where he suggested, on a window seat looking out over the garden, while the old man made tea. It was obviously going to take some time.

‘I suggest Darjeeling’ he said as he worked, ‘is that acceptable?’

‘Lovely, thanks. We have catering packs of tea bags at work, and I think they’re just the sweepings and the dirt.’

‘How very distressing for you.’

‘Are you by any chance related to Eric Robinson? He used to be one of the bosses at work. The boss, in fact.’

‘I’m delighted to hear that Eric, who very probably is a distant cousin, achieved such an exalted rank and no doubt brought honour to the family name. But no, I don’t know him personally. Robinson is a very frequently occurring name locally, and to the best of my knowledge my family has been hereabouts for centuries.’

‘Have you studied your family history?’

‘Yes, I have. Since my shop shut I’ve had a good deal of time on my hands, and the internet is a great source of genealogical information. I think that’s probably all that it’s good for.’

‘So you have a computer at home?’

‘Of course I have. I believe I’m what you young people insist on calling a silver surfer. Though how one is expected to surf a web, I have no idea. Still, I doubt that you’ve come to talk to me about my level of engagement with modernity. When you telephoned you mentioned that you wanted to ask about someone with whom I had business dealings. Milk?’

‘Just a splash, thanks.’

Robinson removed the strainer from the top of a porcelain cup, and added just the tiniest amount of milk.

Jane put her cup and saucer down on the white painted wooden seat next to her, having checked that a coaster would not be required.

‘Do you remember selling some stock to a man named John Perkins, from Kendal?’

‘I do, yes.’ The old man didn’t seem to react at all to the name. Nor did he seem inclined to elaborate.

‘And what did he buy from you?’

‘At first, nothing. But, when I needed to clear my remaining stock, he bought virtually everything.’

‘And did you achieve a fair price?’

‘The price was the last thing on my mind.’

Jane nodded. She hoped that the old man would go on, but once again he didn’t.

‘Why was that, Mr. Robinson?’

‘The shop was the last connection with my old life, with my late wife, with many friends, with so many books. It was all just swept away in a few weeks.’

‘And what did you make of John Perkins?’

‘In what regard?’

‘What impression did he make on you?’

Robinson paused. Jane could here a cat mewing softly, somewhere not far away.

‘Very little. I couldn’t describe the man to you, if that’s what you want. Has he done something terrible?’

‘Not at all. He has been the victim of a serious crime, arson in fact. It was on the local news.’

‘Was it? I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not sure that I can help you, Detective Constable Francis. My dealings with the man were, as I say, fleeting.’

‘Not to worry. Tell me, do you have a record of exactly what you sold to Mr. Perkins?’

‘Oh yes, it will be on the computer. Would you like a print out?’

‘Yes, please, but there’s no need to do it now. If you’d just email it over to me that would be great.’

‘Certainly. I will do it as soon as you have finished with me.’

Jane had the sense that Robinson was just a little less friendly now, and a little more guarded.

‘Do you remember what Mr. Perkins paid you? Roughly, I man.’

‘It was £2,500, precisely.’

‘And was that a fair value, would you say?’

The old man laughed. It didn’t sound as if it was something he did often.

‘For a lifetime’s labour? I’ll leave it to you to decide that, DC Francis.’

Wednesday 26th June

Andy Hall never slept well when he had an early alarm call, and his dreams were vivid. When he woke, just a minute or two before five, he realised that he had been dreaming about some huge fish, in some kind of display tank, chasing each other and sinking their teeth into each other’s tails. When he awoke he could still see the lumps of flesh in the water.

He looked across at Jane, her back turned to him. As he got ready to leave she either remained asleep, or else pretended to. And for the first time in their relationship Hall wasn’t sure which was more likely.

He couldn’t face anything to eat, and he felt a bit queasy when he reached work at dead on 5.15. The search team were sitting waiting in an unmarked car, and Ian Mann was standing chatting to the driver. When he saw Hall pull up he jogged over, and climbed in.

‘Morning, Ian. Not many of them, are there?’

‘They’re alI I could round up that’ve had the training. I had to pull in a few favours to get it up to five. Good thing it’s a small house then, eh, Andy?’

‘Don’t forget his shed, and any other outbuildings. If his place is like Jack’s he’ll have a big fire and a pot in one of them, where he boils up the shrimps, so we’ll need to take ash samples for analysis.’

‘Got you. I’ll tell Charlie when we get there.’

‘Great. How’s he handling his demotion?’

‘All right, but he’s changed, as you’d expect. He’s just counting the days ‘til he can go, he says, and I believe him. He’s got no confidence in the bosses at all.’

‘Ray used to say much the same, and look at him now. I keep having this mental picture of him hanging on to the front door by his fingernails and trying not to let go, on his last day, you know.’

‘Will you be like that, do you reckon, Andy?’

Hall was driving up the hill, towards the by-pass, with Charlie Coward’s car behind. Coward had turned the headlights on, and with all the weight in the back the lights kept flashing in Hall’s rear view mirror. For a second or two he wondered if Coward had done it intentionally.

‘Will I miss the job when I retire? Yes, I’m sure I will. But I’m not one of those people where you can’t tell where they stop, and where the job begins. You know what I mean? And anyway, that’s not the real question here, is it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘What Ray’s thinking about is what he’s going to do with his time. That’s what he’s afraid of. He’s not even fifty-five, so he’s too young to retire really, and his pension is decent, but not quite decent enough to keep his tan topped up as well as it is now. So there’ll have to be cutbacks, I reckon.’

‘Have you seen his wife lately? She’s had her hair dyed ginger. I swear it clashes with her skin.’

Hall laughed. They drove in silence for a while.

‘So what do you reckon you’ll do?’ asked Mann. ‘When this is all over, like?’

‘Well I’ll have a lie-in, for a start. But I really don’t know. What are we really qualified for, other than this?’

‘But you’ve got a degree, Andy.’

‘That’s true, but Adam Smith was still alive when I was at college.’ Mann didn’t laugh. ‘What I mean is that I’m so far out of date that I’d never get another job that wasn’t connected to policing, and even if I could get one I’d have to move away, I expect. And I don’t want to leave here, not after all this time. So I reckon I’ll just have to work out how to live on half a pension, because remember my wife will get the other half. Anyway, how about you?’

‘It’s years away yet. All I’m thinking about for now is getting your job when you go.’

They both laughed.

‘It’ll be you searching his bog, then, you cheeky bastard’ said Hall.

The roads were quiet, and they were soon parked up outside Capstick’s house.

‘We know that he’s home, do we?’ asked Hall.

‘Aye, Geoff said he watched him go in after the pub. About midnight that was. He was really far gone again, Geoff said.’

‘OK, Ian, do me a favour and nip round the back, just in case he decides to scarper.’

‘Not likely, is it though, Andy?’

‘No, but until they make me retire I’m the DI, and so you’re the one who gets to pick your way through all that rusty old scrap iron in his back yard.’

Mann grinned and got out of the car.

‘Oh, Ian’ said Hall, before Mann could close the door, ‘your tetanus jab is up-to-date, isn’t it?’

The search took hours. Hall phoned Gorham, explained the position, and she managed to persuade her opposite number in north division to send a couple of extra bodies down to help. By lunchtime nothing of the slightest interest had turned up, and Capstick was fast asleep on his sofa, snoring loudly.

Hall and Mann were standing in the kitchen.

‘How many sets of his fishing clothing have we found? Waders, that sort of stuff?’ asked Hall.

‘Two’ said Mann. ‘And before you ask we’ve spoken to other fishermen already.  As far as they knew he had two sets, that’s it.’

‘Bugger. So he hasn’t got rid of any by the looks of it, then. And have we taken samples from the ash under that big pot in his shed?’

‘Aye, that’s been done. One of the lads will drop it in to SOCO on the way to Kendal. But let’s be honest, Andy, we’re going to get nothing here. Either the bloke’s clean, or he’s good at covering his tracks.’

‘He’s had enough time to do that, though, hasn’t he? But you’re right, we’ll get nothing here. Because unless he was close to Jack Bell when he was shot, which I very much doubt, there’s not going to be any spatter or other forensic evidence to link him to the killing anyway. And I’m not sure that building the pressure, letting him know that we don’t believe he’s not involved, will help us much either. He’s in pieces already. I’m beginning to regret doing this, Ian, I really am.’

‘Come on, Andy, that’s not like you. You’re usually so sure you’re in the right.’

Mann grinned and Hall ignored him. He wasn’t in the mood.

‘I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever get anywhere with this one. It’s just my bloody luck to get a case where the locus isn’t covered by any of the five million bloody CCTV cameras that there are in the UK now. It’s true, I read it somewhere. Five million, but not one can help us. All we’ve got is evidence that Capstick talked to someone on a sat-phone on the day that Jack Bell died. And so what if he lied to us about it? That’s not enough for a conviction, not remotely enough, and the rest of his electronic trail is clean as a whistle.’