The Serpent Pool

detective work, until the man hanged himself and it turned out that the woman had made up the complaint to take revenge on an ex-boyfriend. Greg wriggled out of it without a disciplinary hearing, but he’d taken one chance too many. Exile to Cold Cases was the price he had to pay.

‘So, Bethany died on 14^th February.’ A laddish snigger. ‘Valentine’s Day.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Is the date supposed to be significant?’

‘That’s for us to find out, isn’t it?’

‘Sure.’ His eyes narrowed, like a chess player figuring out the next move. Trouble was, she’d never had the patience for chess, and he wouldn’t bother to follow the rules of the game anyway. ‘Do we have any theories? Any leads?’

‘Nothing to suggest that her death was linked to a romantic entanglement. Of course, she may have killed herself because her love life went wrong.’

‘Flaky, was she?’

His grimace implied that, with women, flakiness was an occupational hazard.

‘Bethany was quiet, bookish. A very private person, everyone agreed on that.’

‘We could spend months reinterviewing reluctant witnesses and finish up back where we started.’

‘Suicide is possible, but it seems unlikely.’

He nodded at a close-up shot of the corpse pinned on the whiteboard. ‘Because she was gagged?’

The face of the woman in the photo was bruised and swollen. Eyes shut, mouth open, as if she were biting the woollen scarf. Hannah looked away. Nobody should finish up like that. Not only dead, but degraded.

‘The gag was the tightest knot, but physically, she could have done it herself. Same with the tying-up.’

‘Mmmm. Sounds kinky.’

‘Her hands were bound behind her back.’ Hannah wouldn’t rise to the bait. ‘Spark plug cables wrapped around her wrists. They were quite loose.’

‘Not easy to truss someone up efficiently with jump leads.’ He grinned, as if to hint that he’d tried it himself.

‘Her ankles were tied together with a tow rope. It was never established whether the rope and the cables belonged to her or someone else brought them. There was bruising on the neck, from some sort of ligature. Probably the scarf. Perhaps she tied it around her throat, then thought better of it.’

‘So, she could have done all that and then chucked herself into the water?’

‘All eighteen inches of it, yes. Or so the investigating team was told by one of the country’s leading experts on knotting techniques.’

Greg Wharf’s face made clear what he thought of anyone who devoted a career to studying the methodology of tying knots.

‘No sign of rape?’

‘No evidence whatsoever that she’d had sex lately. She was dressed, but not fully equipped for a long hike over the fells. Blue jeans, shirt and body warmer. Marks amp; Spencer bra and pants. Boots. No injuries or signs of a struggle — if you don’t count the neck bruises.’

‘Bondage game gone wrong?’

‘Out in the open air?’

‘All the more fun.’

‘The weather was lousy. A rainstorm would dampen anyone’s ardour.’

‘Takes all sorts.’

He made a performance of stifling a yawn. She decided to allow him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was recovering from the festivities. Better not kill their relationship on the very first morning. Though right now she didn’t give it more than forty-eight hours before she’d have to slap him down hard, and no doubt earn his enmity for good. Bloody Lauren. This was a decent team, why did the ACC have to sabotage it by parachuting in a misogynistic egoist?

‘Can you reach the scene by car?’

‘An off-road vehicle could get close, but it’s not as if she was killed somewhere else and then brought to the water to be dumped. Bethany’s VW was parked at the end of a lane which peters out three-quarters of a mile away from the pool. She’d driven there herself, either with suicide in mind or to meet someone else. The forensic evidence was conclusive about cause of death. Drowning.’

‘Did she have suicidal tendencies? Any family precedents?’

‘None. Her father was long dead, and an elder brother was run over by a lorry a year before Bethany was born. She was studious, didn’t have many relationships. A long-term crush on a woman who taught her English in the sixth form ended when the teacher died of meningitis during Bethany’s first year at Lancaster Uni.’

‘Unlucky lady. A lot of people she was close to kicked the bucket.’

‘Not her mother, she’s alive to this day. She was forty when Bethany was born. I don’t think she ever understood her daughter, but she idolised her.’

‘Was there a history of depression?’

‘Nothing known. Bethany had few friends, but the people she knew found it hard to believe she’d want to end it all.’

‘Friends and family are often the last to know.’

‘According to the mother, Bethany couldn’t swim. She hated putting her face under water, so why would she choose to drown herself?’

‘Another way of tormenting herself?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

He shrugged. ‘So, why are we bothered?’

Good question. Hannah was ready with an answer. Though, as when she’d talked with Marc up at the Serpent Pool, it wasn’t a complete answer.

‘The SIO who led the inquiry wasn’t satisfied. He mentioned the case to me before he retired. He always believed she was murdered.’

‘Yeah?’

She remembered Ben Kind telling her about the investigation into Bethany’s death, after he was told to run it down. She’d been embroiled on another inquiry at the time. Even now, she could hear Ben’s voice.

I can’t get her last moments out of my mind. A woman who hated water, drowning herself like that? She must have been terrified. Why would anyone do that to themselves?

‘Bethany had a lover called Nathan Clare. The SIO wondered if Clare knew more about Bethany’s death than he was prepared to admit. But there was no proof, and plenty more pressing cases where there was no doubt a crime had been committed. He had to give up. But letting go rankled with him. Unfinished business.’

‘This SIO.’ His white teeth gleamed. ‘Not Ben Kind, by any chance?’

Shit. If this was chess, he’d placed her in check. She gave a quick nod, praying that she wasn’t blushing.

‘I used to work with him.’

‘Yeah, I heard.’

His knowing smile grew broader. The bastard. What had people said about her and Ben?

‘What he told me about the case convinced me that Bethany’s death was worth looking into, once we had the capacity.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, your arrival is the lucky break I’ve been waiting for.’

Take that, you cheeky bugger.

Greg Wharf frowned.

‘What do we know about her, then?’

So he was interested, after all? Better not let point-scoring wreck things between them from the start. For an ambitious guy with a high opinion of himself, Cold Cases must seem like a dead end. In the absence of material yielding fresh evidence thanks to the advances of DNA technology — the sort of stuff that had the Press Office salivating at the prospect of sexy headlines — only a minority of investigations made progress.

Leaning against the whiteboard, she closed her eyes. No need to consult her notes. After hours poring over