The Windermere Witness (24 page)

‘Or a bullet,’ chuckled Bridget.

‘Well, I think it was brave of him to come and tell you about Peter. People shoot messengers, don’t they? You might have turned the blasted gun on him.’

‘Brave.’ Bridget savoured the word. ‘I suppose it was, if you look at it a certain way. Poor Glenn. He worked so hard on the best man’s speech, even though he pretended it would be a doddle. He makes speeches all the time, of course. But he was very pale about it.’

‘Did he ever actually make it? Hadn’t you found Markie by then?’

‘Ironically, no, he didn’t. How could we carry on with all that? Everything just fell apart. Peter even joked that at least it had got him out of having to make his own speech. That sounds awful, doesn’t it? But he always makes jokes when he’s stressed. It’s nice, actually. He did it when my mother nearly died having Lucy and everyone had to sit in a corridor for hours. Peter just kept coming with the jokes.’

‘I haven’t heard this story. Was Markie there?’

‘No, of course not. She’s not
his
mother. There was me, Peter, Lucy’s father, and Felix.’

‘Why Felix?’

‘He was just around, I think, and came to lend support. Her uterus ruptured halfway through the labour. It was a real drama. Nobody expected Lucy to survive. She went ages without oxygen, or something. But it doesn’t seem to have done her any harm. She’s abnormally bright, if anything.’

‘She’s a lovely little thing.’

‘How do
you
know?’ Bridget flashed, before checking herself. ‘Oh yes, I remember – you had to look after her on Saturday afternoon.’

‘That’s right. We went for a walk. Her father sounds like a real character.’

‘Oh, he’s perfectly mad. You never know where he is or what he’s doing. My mother won’t let him move into her house, not permanently. He stays for a week or two at a time and then she packs him off again. She says she doesn’t want to give him any legal grounds for claiming it if they separate. She’s left everything to Lucy, if she dies.’

‘Not you?’

‘Nobody leaves anything to me, not even my grandparents. They think Peter will look after me.’ Her eyes grew large and wet as she remembered all over again what Peter had done. ‘Which he can’t if he’s in prison, can he? Simmy, we
must
stop that from happening. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I manage? I can’t deal with bills and mortgages and insurance and stuff like that.’

‘I’m afraid those aren’t good enough reasons to ignore
the law. The trouble is – I can’t see any guarantee that he won’t do it again. If he thinks he’s losing you, especially. What if he blames Glenn and decides to kill him as well?’

‘He’d never do that. He loves Glenn. They’re like brothers, only more so.’

‘But you
do
see, don’t you? In the end, they’ll catch him. After what he did this afternoon, they might have already done so.’

‘Why? What did he do?’

‘He punched Ben Harkness. You must have heard me telling Glenn about it.’

‘I didn’t take it in. Was it really hard?’

‘Hard enough to hurt him. And Glenn just flapped it away as unimportant. Actually, I think it’s very important. It shows Peter’s dangerous.’

‘Ohhh,’ Bridget drew a shuddering sigh. ‘I can’t believe that. I’ll go back tomorrow and see for myself. I might be able to make it all right.’

‘You won’t. Nobody can. But we’ll leave it for tonight. I’ll make a milky drink and some sandwiches, shall I? Are you really hungry?’

‘I think so. I
should
be. Thanks, Simmy. You’re being ever so good.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Simmy wryly, relieved that Bridget couldn’t read her thoughts.

Because her thoughts were rapidly clarifying now that Glenn and Pablo had gone. Scattered elements were coalescing into an increasingly coherent picture. The police were coming back before long. They might have seen the car that the men had used, and checked its ownership. If so, they’d realise that things had not been so unworrying as
she had made them think. She carried a terrible knowledge that she would have to share, whatever the consequences. She could not understand why Glenn couldn’t see that. He knew she was a witness to the killing of George Baxter, and therefore acquainted with a senior detective. Was he perhaps simply buying time, during which he would spirit Peter away to some distant country where nobody would find him? Would Peter be content to live in hiding for the rest of his life, presumably without Bridget? Or was Glenn so clever that he really did have full confidence that there would never be enough evidence to prosecute Peter, regardless of what Simmy might say?

Was there a tremendous urgency to convey the truth or could it wait till morning? That was the major burning question she now wrestled with. If the men drove through the night, they could get to Aberdeen or Harwich and find a boat to take them to Stavanger or Rotterdam or wherever. Unless the police had warned every port not to allow Peter Harrison-West out of the country. That was quite likely, surely? And would Peter go without Bridget? Would that not be too high a price to pay for freedom? Far more likely that he would wait until he had seen her again, hoping to persuade her to join him in a hideaway on a sunny island on the far side of the world. How much planning had gone into the murders, anyway? Most people seemed to think it was impulsive where Markie was concerned. And George Baxter had somehow got in the way, calling for a more careful execution.

If she phoned Moxon now, Bridget might hear her and react badly. There would be screaming and hair-pulling and aggravated neighbours. Shameful as it might be,
Simmy was profoundly reluctant to upset Malcolm and Sharon Jamieson. She wanted them to like her and approve of her, but progress towards that end was painfully slow. She was still hoping for some sort of alliance against the holiday-home people, but so far the Jamiesons seemed to find little to object to in the noisy comings and goings.

It was bad enough having a very obvious police car pass every hour or two, slowing outside her house and even stopping to knock on the door. That alone signalled something sinister and worrying. Sharon was from Essex and had yet to adapt to the ways of the local people. She believed in locks and Neighbourhood Watch and paedophiles behind every gatepost. She had two girl children who caught the school bus every morning, with their anxious mother hovering as they disappeared from view. They had moved north, apparently, because Malcolm had a breakdown one day on the M25 and needed a quieter life from then on. He worked from home now, designing websites or something of the sort. Sharon made the beds in the huge hotel in the middle of Bowness.

There were other considerations, none of them worthy of comparison with a murderer on the loose, but nonetheless compelling. The christening flowers had to be ready for Sunday morning, and were not yet started, or even fully planned. Saturday was supposed to be the first proper day for Halloween ideas to take shape. A complete overhaul of the window display would have been performed, even without Ben’s critical comments. There was the never-ending paperwork. And people she needed to speak to – including Julie the hairdresser with the broken fingers.

Paradoxically, the fact of such mundane preoccupations
made the murder investigation seem more real. As if she had applied some sort of test to it, by comparing it to the demands of her work, and it had come through triumphant.
Yes
, it claimed,
I really am very important indeed
. She couldn’t brush it aside or even put it in a ‘pending’ tray. It came first, took priority and had to be acted upon.

Bridget had reverted to passivity while Simmy prepared their scanty supper. ‘Come and eat it in here,’ Simmy ordered. ‘You’ve hardly moved all day, as far as I can see.’

‘What’s the point? It’s even worse now that Glenn’s told me about Peter. I just feel heavy and scared.’

‘You’ll have to hide that gun. What if those policemen ask to come in next time they call by?’ She looked at the kitchen clock. ‘They’ll be here any minute, I expect.’

‘Before or after I eat my sandwich?’ There was a hint of mocking insolence in her voice that made Simmy feel like a schoolteacher. People did that to her a lot, and she had worked out that it was an instinctive response to her height. Even she could see that she was a bit like a caricature schoolmarm at times, the way she looked down her long nose at people and asked them to make themselves clear.

‘Before might be sensible,’ she snapped. ‘Am I allowed to know where you’re going to put it?’

‘In the roof space, above the room you’ve put me in. Markie and I used to go up there when we were little. I’m not sure I could squeeze through the hatch now.’

‘You don’t need to, do you? Just push it through and stick the thing shut again. I had to tape it when it was windy, to stop it rattling.’

‘I’ll go and do it, then. Won’t be long.’

The police rang at the door while Bridget was upstairs,
causing Simmy a violent attack of terror. Being in possession of the gun that could be proved to have killed George Baxter would involve them both in an unimaginable abyss of suspicion and trouble. Inhaling deeply, she opened the door.

The same two men stood there, the talkative one looking as if he was beginning to agree with his colleague that this was all a big waste of time. Simmy wondered, as before, what she was going to say to them. ‘Hello, again,’ she greeted them.

‘Everything all right, madam?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ A thought rose to the surface. ‘You found somewhere to park, then?’ she asked, peering into the dark street. ‘It was a bit crowded last time you came.’

‘No problem,’ he said with a small frown. ‘It’s not exactly double yellow line territory, is it?’

‘No, but there was a car – just there.’ She tried to indicate that this was more meaningful than it sounded. Behind her, she could hear Bridget coming down the stairs, making no attempt to remain quiet or out of sight.

‘That’s your visitor, is it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And everything’s all right?’ he repeated.

‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘We’re fine. We’ll go to bed early. You don’t have to check us again now. It’s probably all been a waste of time.’

Again, she hoped he would be sharp enough to understand that she was not as relaxed and reassuring as she might seem on the surface. But it was obviously far too much to expect. What you saw was what you got, and he saw two women in a quiet house, who answered the door promptly and spoke with relative coherence.

‘Night, then,’ he said, and the two officers walked briskly back to their car. They were plainly ready for the end of their boring shift.

Bridget was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. ‘There’s some stuff up there,’ she began. ‘At the back, near the chimney breast. Is it yours?’

Simmy shook her head. ‘It must have been there when I moved in. Junk, obviously.’

‘Sure to be,’ Bridget agreed, unable to suppress the sparkle in her eyes. ‘But it’s probably
my
junk. And Markie’s. Can I go up there tomorrow for a proper look?’

‘If you want. Why not? It’ll keep you occupied while I’m at work – if you want to stay here. I thought you’d be off to see Peter, first thing?’

‘I might. I’m going to sleep on it. I might dream something that’ll help me work out what to do.’ At Simmy’s sceptical look, she went on, ‘Don’t you have meaningful dreams that help when you’ve got a problem? It’s magic sometimes. The person you’re worrying about appears to you, absolutely real-seeming, and tells you what you should think or do,’

‘No,’ said Simmy, thinking of her own tragic nightmares where her baby was alive and chuckling at her, and Tony a doting father, and she woke to a tear-soaked pillow and a world of grey depression. ‘It never works like that for me.’

‘I had one this year, when Peter was wanting to fix a date for the wedding. He and Glenn were both there, telling me it was my destiny, and I’d be bound to have a wonderful life if I let them take charge. I could take any courses I wanted, or travel, or keep a boat or a horse, at the same time as being Mrs Harrison-West. I could hear their voices,
just as if they were there in the room. So I said yes, we’d get married in October.’

‘And you still think it was the right thing to do?’

‘Ouch! You shouldn’t ask me that. But yes, I do. I think.’ She averted her face, staring into the living room and the curtained window, deep in thought. ‘I think I’ll have to trust Glenn and the others to make it all right. If anybody can do it, they can. And whatever we might think about justice and that stuff, it won’t bring Markie and my father back to life, will it?’

Ben never even showed up for registration on Friday morning. He was sure things were happening that he needed to keep abreast of, that this was the day when it would all become clear. His mother had made a token fuss of his bruised face, but with Wilf’s help he had convinced her that the playground fight story was true, and that there was no need for any further action. As far as the school was concerned, of course, nothing at all had actually happened. Which meant he would have to come up with another fabrication to explain his absence. He was tempted to ask Wilf to phone the secretary and say he thought Ben was starting glandular fever as well, but good sense restrained him. Such stories had a habit of bouncing back at you, bringing more trouble than they were worth.

He headed straight for Persimmon Petals, taking the road that branched away from the lakeside and into the centre of Windermere. It was a ten-minute walk from
his house. Neither of his parents’ cars was on the garth at the front. Wilf was still in bed and his sisters had taken themselves to school in their usual jostling female group that had no place for him. There were many more police cars on the road than usual, and he felt again the importance of being connected to such a famous crime. How brilliant it would be if he could help solve it – it would take him halfway to a job with a forensics lab the moment he graduated.

But when he surveyed the scanty material he had to go on, his optimism faded. The only hope was that Simmy had learnt more since he last saw her, and between them they could devise a plan.

She was working with utter concentration when he found her at the back of the shop. A cloud of cream-coloured flowers was being constructed with the help of slender wires, a pile of yellower blooms close by, as well as ribbon and a clump of tiny white stuff. He watched her twisting and tweaking, weaving and tying. ‘What’s that for?’ he asked her, eventually.

‘A christening on Sunday.’

‘Will they keep till then?’

She nodded. ‘In the cool room they will. Just. I daren’t risk leaving it any longer, in case something crops up and leaves me with no time.’

‘Did anything crop up last night, by any chance?’

‘You could say that.’ For the first time she looked at him properly. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’

He gave the ceiling a so-help-me glance, and waved a finger at her. ‘Just leave it, okay? I want to be here, is all. I want to talk about murder.’

‘So do I, actually. Although I absolutely ought not to encourage you.’

‘Is Bridget still at yours?’

‘Oh yes. She had a dream that told her to stay another day. We had visitors last night, which answered a lot of questions, but raised a few others.’

‘Who? Tell me.’

‘I definitely shouldn’t. You’ve got to promise not to say a single word to anybody else at all. Not Melanie or Wilf or the police. Not until I’ve decided what to do. My dreams are nothing like as helpful as Bridget’s.’ She summarised the visitation from Glenn and Pablo, while she finished the christening flowers. Ben asked a lot of questions. She kept back any mention of the Lee-Enfield, with difficulty. The less said about that the better, she felt.

‘I get it,’ he said at last, with an intelligent look. ‘You’re scared of those men, which is why you haven’t told the police already that we know who the killer is.’

‘I’m not scared of Pablo. I like him. I’m scared of making things worse. There’s a lot I don’t understand, and that makes it feel dangerous.’

‘But he can’t get away with it, can he.’ This was not a question. ‘Now we know it’s him, we can get evidence and present it to the police. His friends can’t save him, however much they want to. He might do it again.’

‘I know.’

‘I wish I’d known this when he hit me. I’d have made a massive fuss, called the cops, accused him of assault, and then told the Moxo bloke everything I knew. Too late now.’

‘Is it?’

‘For a start, we don’t know where he is. Do we?’

‘At his house, I imagine.’

‘What a nerve he’s got! Sitting tight, right under the noses of the police and everybody he’s ruined the lives of, as if nothing can get him. I’ve a good mind to go there and tell him what I think of him.’

‘He’ll hit you again.’

He fingered his bruises. ‘Yeah. He might. I could take Melanie,’ he added hopefully.

‘She wouldn’t go. He was in here yelling at her on Wednesday and she didn’t like it.’

‘He’s a menace. I don’t believe you’re just letting him get away with it.’

‘Me neither. But I still need to have a think. It’s not just being scared, it’s knowing I could make things worse. What if the police go charging up there and he hangs himself or something? Or takes a hostage.’

‘Like who?’

She grinned ruefully. ‘Like Pablo. Or Glenn.’

‘They’d be two against one. They wouldn’t let him do that.’

‘Or Bridget. She’s quite likely to change her mind and turn up there to see for herself what he thinks he’s doing.’

‘That’d be
three
against one. Even better.’

‘I know I’m being ridiculous. I think it’s something to do with my mother and how I was brought up. She’d never shop anybody to the police if she could avoid it.’

‘Even for
murder?
It’s a bit different from fiddling a tax return, you know.’

He could tell she felt hassled, her hands faltering on the final stages of the christening flowers. He wondered at his own temerity, urging someone so much older than
himself into a course of action that she surely knew was inevitable. He was still trying to absorb the implications of the story she’d told him, and wondering what she had left out. Something to do with Bridget? Or Pablo? Or what?

‘Probably not,’ she admitted. ‘But I can’t ask her, can I? I can’t say anything to anybody. I shouldn’t be telling you.’

‘But there’s still no actual evidence, is there?’ he realised. ‘Somebody telling somebody else, and you overhearing it, isn’t good enough to make a prosecution.’

‘That’s what Glenn said. I suppose the police would soon find evidence, once they were sure they knew who to investigate.’

A customer interrupted them, and before any further conversation could take place, two more turned up. Ben had almost forgotten they were in a shop until then. Now he could see it was going to turn busy, with Friday shoppers calling in for weekend flowers. ‘Is Melanie coming in today?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘I’ll get out of the way, then,’ he said, with a dawning idea of where he might go next. A reckless urgency was gripping him, and he almost trotted out into the street.

Transport was a problem. He did have a bike, but wasn’t eager to go home and collect it. A glance at the sky confirmed an instinctive expectation of rain at any moment. Standing indecisively in the street, he was aware of a labouring engine coming up the hill. A number 599 bus! What an idiot he’d been not to think of it – it went up to Ambleside. Without another thought he headed for the stop, fifty yards away, and waved it down.

Settled into a seat at the back, he tried to work
out what he thought he was doing. He had only the vaguest idea of where Peter Harrison-West’s house was. Somewhere on the northern edge of Ambleside, he thought. The prominence of the wedding had produced endless columns of gossip in the papers and on Facebook about the couple and their families, with scant respect for privacy. Since the murders there had been a massive escalation in publicity, and Ben suspected there might even be a gaggle of reporters outside the house. That would be a mixed blessing – what he gained in ease of identification would be lost in the impossibility of access. For the time being he might simply have to be content with being on the scene, ready to focus in on anything of interest that might happen.

At the stop for Troutbeck, a girl boarded the bus. At first Ben took little notice of her, but then a sudden recognition shocked through him. Wasn’t it Bridget Harrison-West herself? He had seen pictures of her, but never met her in person. The reality was oddly faded –
reduced
– presumably by the events of the past week. She was pale and seemed to be dragging herself wearily up the steps and into a seat behind the driver. She ignored the meagre scattering of other passengers.

Heart beating furiously, he tried to work out his strategy. If she got off in Ambleside, he would follow her, in the hope that she would lead him straight to the murderous Peter. A minute later he remembered that this was the local bus that only went as far as Ambleside anyway, so she was bound to get off there. His thoughts fizzed in a panic at this incredible piece of luck. The other people on the bus were all old and half asleep. Little could they imagine what might be about
to happen, when Bridget confronted her new husband with his crimes. Even if they’d seen the news about the murders – and how could anybody have missed it? – they’d think themselves immune from anything so dramatic and alien. They didn’t recognise the young woman at the centre of the story. People like the Harrison-Wests and Baxters didn’t use buses.

The journey was almost too brief. Loss of nerve threatened to abort the whole project when Bridget got off at the last stop and Ben had no option but to follow her. The upper portion of the little town was dominated by fells on three sides, the scenic road to Rydal and Grasmere a favourite with tourists as it left the comfort of Lake Windermere and climbed into serious upland country. He hung back, pretending to be sending a text, waiting to see where Bridget would go next. The tops of the fells were hidden by dark clouds – rain was due at any moment.

He felt alone and exposed, the object of curious glances.
Why isn’t that boy at school?
he could hear people wondering.
He must be up to no good
. Gazing unseeingly at his phone, he realised he couldn’t text Simmy or Melanie, even if he wanted to. He had neglected to ascertain their numbers when he had the chance. There was nobody he could share his adventure with; nobody to summon in an emergency. This acquired the dimension of a very major oversight, as he tried to think through his next moves. A possible chain of information suggested itself: he might call Wilf and ask if he still knew Melanie’s number. But he would have to explain, if he did that. And it wasn’t Melanie he wanted. It was the older and wiser Simmy, who could come in her van and rescue him, if things went sour.
It would take her fifteen minutes at most. Nothing too dreadful could happen in that time – could it?

Bridget was walking purposefully along the road, already passing the last of the houses, with the police station on her left. For a moment he thought she might be going in to betray her husband. When she kept on walking, he even considered going in himself. He might ask the person on the front desk to put him through to DI Moxon, who had spoken to him briefly on Sunday. He might leave a message vague enough to avoid immediate police response, but urgent enough to offer a sense of a lifeline. He could say he thought he’d remembered something else about the shooting of Mr Baxter, and would be in touch soon. But nobody would pass on a message like that. They’d ask a hundred questions, including his precise whereabouts. They would treat him like an unreliable child, and call his parents to come and take him home.

Still Bridget was walking, trudging along towards Rydal, where there was little more than a hotel and Wordsworth’s house and a farm. She wore a light jacket without a hood – when the rain started, she was going to get seriously wet. The views were dramatic as they approached Scandale Bridge, clouds lowering over the lake, making the water look solid, trees looming on the western bank of Windermere, no more than a sinister black stain.

Ben stayed well back, praying that his quarry didn’t look behind her for any reason. He was being drawn after her, regardless of his own will. Having come this far, he could see no alternative. Almost he began to see himself as a protector of a traumatised girl less than two years his senior. She was not, he concluded, going to her husband’s house,
after all. Unless he’d got it badly wrong, the Harrison-West mansion was nearly half a mile behind them.

There was plenty of traffic on the road, adding to his feeling of vulnerability. Somebody he knew might well drive past. Somebody might even recognise Bridget, although it would be hard to connect this tired-looking creature in crumpled clothes with the beautiful bride of the glossy magazines. Would it look obvious to anybody passing that he was following her? If he hung back any more, he might miss seeing her turn off the road down some invisible track and disappear. If he closed the gap slightly, people might think they were a couple who had had a disagreement. Or, he thought bravely, he could simply catch her up and tell her he knew who she was. What could she do? She would hardly scream and shout for help. She might even be glad of his company.

So he did it. Twenty seconds’ brisk trot was all it took to catch her up. ‘Hi!’ he said, from just behind her shoulder. ‘Aren’t you Bridget?’

She spun round, eyes bulging. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘My name’s Ben Harkness. I—’

‘The boy Peter punched yesterday?’ She was looking intently at his bruise. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘Nothing. I was on the bus, when you got on. I … um …’

‘You followed me! What for?’ She looked past him, back the way they’d come. ‘Are you on your own?’

‘Yes. You know my name? Did somebody tell you about me?’

‘Simmy told Glenn when he came to her house. You know Simmy, then.’ She shook her head, eyes closed tight for a few seconds. ‘I can’t take all this. I’m going away.’ She
had a purple bag slung over her shoulder, and she hefted it as she spoke. ‘I’ve got something in here I need to think about before I talk to anybody.’

‘Going away?’ He stared at the road ahead, the Pikes soaring before them. ‘Where?’

‘Anywhere.’

His alarm made him breathless. ‘Not up there?’ Was she planning to sleep out in the cold, hoping to die of exposure? ‘It’s just about to rain.’

‘No, you fool. I’m going to fetch my car. I left it at Pelter Bridge. Another half a mile or so, I guess.’ She started walking again, not looking to see if he was keeping pace.