‘I don’t think he was stalking Gabrielle,’ she said. ‘He was just lonely and out of his depth. This glamorous woman with a Nevada tan had turned up out of nowhere and she didn’t make him feel small when he tried to make friends. Of course he was excited. That doesn’t make him a murderer.’
‘Easy for him to have become carried away. If he tried it on and she lost patience with him, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have snapped? He had access to the axe that killed her.’
‘There’s more. All the evidence pointed to the body having been moved. The Dumelows had a four-wheel drive that was stolen the day before Gabrielle’s murder. We found it burned out in a remote wooded area. Barrie could have killed her and then used the vehicle to transport her up the coffin trail, within spitting distance of the Sacrifice Stone. Headlights in the dark can be seen for miles in a valley like Brackdale, but we couldn’t find any witnesses. No big surprise, at that time of night, probably nobody was looking. Afterwards, so the official theory went, he hid the axe, dumped the four-by-four, and set off across the fell-side. In the dark, he slipped into the ravine. He broke his legs in the fall and in any event the sides were too steep for anyone to climb out if they weren’t kitted out with the proper gear. Death by exposure, everything neatly tied up.’
‘Why go back up the fell? Why not go home and tuck himself up like a good mummy’s boy? If Ma Gilpin was besotted by her only child, she might even have come up with an alibi.’
‘Not her. She was so honest it hurt to take her statement. Trust me, I interviewed her. From the word go, she admitted that he’d been out most of the evening.’
‘Do you think she was afraid he’d killed Gabrielle?’
‘No way. She was convinced of his innocence, she never wavered for an instant. He wasn’t capable of hurting anyone, she was adamant about that.’
‘Not exactly evidence to stake your reputation on,’ Bryant said with a weary sigh. ‘I can see why pinning the crime on Gilpin was the only game in town.’
‘But it wasn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘Ben Kind was no fool. He’d have faced up to reality if nobody else was in the frame, but there were other candidates for the murder of Gabrielle, men with access to the four-by-four and the axe…’
‘Tash Dumelow’s husband, for one?’
‘Simon Dumelow’s made a lot of money in a rough business and when he was twenty, he picked up a conviction for actual bodily harm. But he’s much older and apparently more civilised now. For a long time he’s been paying other people to do his dirty work for him. We wondered if he’d made a pass at his wife’s mate and reacted badly to rejection. But by all accounts he’s always been genuinely crazy about Natasha and even though she was laid up with flu at the time, she swore he never left the house that night. Then again — what if she was lying to protect him?’
‘Who else?’
‘Tom Allardyce, the tenant of Brack Hall Farm, Ben’s suspect of choice. Tash had introduced him to Gabrielle Anders, just as she had Barrie. Eight years before Gabrielle was killed, he was charged with raping a girl he’d met in a nightclub in Carlisle. But the prosecution fell apart.’
‘The way prosecutions do,’ Bryant said grimly.
‘Yeah, tell me about it.’
‘Did he have an alibi for Gabrielle’s murder?’
‘You bet, again conveniently provided by a mate of his, the local publican. Man called Dowling. The investigating officers couldn’t shake him and the CPS advised that if the case went ahead, Allardyce would walk out of court without a stain on his character.’ A tinge of bitterness entered her voice. She couldn’t help it; she was thinking not so much of Allardyce as of Sandeep Patel. ‘Actually, those were the very words the lawyer used. I looked up the file.’
Chapter Twelve
‘Why are you doing this?’ Miranda’s cheeks were crimson, her eyes packed with tears. ‘What do you want to speak to her for?’
He placed the receiver back in its cradle and turned to face her. Sun was streaming into the kitchen through the narrow blinds, making him blink in the glare. The most beautiful morning since they’d moved in — and all of a sudden she’d lost it, absolutely lost it. He wanted to say what’s the problem? but his mouth had dried. This was a landmark, as striking in its way as the Sacrifice Stone: their very first row. It had flared without warning, an explosion from an unsuspected spark. She’d walked in to the kitchen as he was dialling and when she asked, he said he was calling Hannah Scarlett. Thinking nothing of it, so that he was rocked on his heels when she cried out as though he’d smacked her. A mug of coffee slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor, splintering in jagged fragments, brown liquid eddying across the new diamond-shaped tiles.
Upstairs, Wayne had stopped hammering. He must have overheard. Daniel could picture the young builder’s coarse features wrinkling with prurient amusement. He swore to himself. His shoulder muscles tightened with tension; he’d never seen her like this before. How to calm her down? He might have been a junior doctor, asked to diagnose from symptoms he’d never encountered in his career.
‘You can’t keep on with it,’ she said, ‘this constant…reaching back in time.’
But I told you, it’s what I do, he almost said. I’m a history man. He ground his teeth, forcing himself not to throw more coal on the flames.
‘We were supposed to be starting all over again,’ she said. ‘Clean sheets for both of us.’
‘That’s right. Of course. I never meant…’
‘Then why hark after what’s gone?’
‘This isn’t about Aimee. You’re right, we agreed we had to get over everything that had gone wrong. Aimee, Richard. And it’s working, we’re doing fine. Talking to Hannah Scarlett is different, it’s about…’
‘It’s about Barrie Gilpin! Your precious Barrie, the suspected murderer! You know something? It’s finally dawning on me. You’d never have wanted to live here if it wasn’t for Barrie.’
She was leaning towards him, pointing her finger. During the small hours, he’d been dimly aware of her restlessness. The smell of paint lingered in the bedroom and neither of them were sleeping well. In the early hours, she’d climbed from under the duvet and disappeared downstairs to make herself a drink.
She’s overwrought, he said to himself. All this work on the house, living 24/7 in a building site, it’s enough to exhaust anyone. The noise, the dirt, the dust, they’d test the goodwill of a Mother Teresa clone. This isn’t about me, or Barrie, or Hannah Scarlett. I just need to give her space.
‘Sorry, I know I’ve harped on about the Gilpins. This is our place now, not theirs. I never meant to hurt you.’
He reached out for her, but she stepped backwards, evading his grasp. Her foot slid in the pool of coffee and she gave a little yelp as she clutched at the table to keep her balance.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. Not a clever question, but the best he could manage.
‘No, I’m not okay.’ As her head shook, her hair flapped in front of her face so that he couldn’t make out her expression. ‘I just feel I can’t shake it off, this thought that a murderer lived here, in my house. I thought if we cleaned and painted and everything, the place would become ours. But Barrie Gilpin’s clinging on like — like some sort of incubus.’
‘Miranda…’
‘There’s no escaping him. Not when we go out to The Moon under Water. Not when we’re invited to dinner by the Dumelows. We had the chance to make new friends and then you started asking about Barrie Gilpin and the evening was spoiled.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘This isn’t healthy, Daniel. You need to let go.’
‘I don’t care so much if Barrie was a murderer.’ He surprised himself by saying this, but as soon as the words left him, he knew it was the truth. ‘I liked him, but you’re right, it was a long time ago. If he killed the girl, he deserved his fate, as everyone says. But I need to speak to Hannah Scarlett.’
‘What for?’
‘Dad and Cheryl were drifting apart, and his work meant everything to him. Maybe he confided in Hannah
