The Hanging Wood

‘My sergeant and I called in at the caravan park today. You’ll probably have to listen to them complaining about our wasting their valuable time on a fool’s errand.’

‘Look, I wanted to talk to you about Orla. One or two things I’ve gathered from her colleagues at St Herbert’s. You wouldn’t be free tomorrow, by any chance?’

‘It’s Saturday, and the budget doesn’t allow for overtime. When and where?’

His spirits lifted. He liked Hannah’s directness, and the absence of fuss about needing to check her diary. ‘The weather forecast is fine, and I’ve an unfulfilled ambition to explore Derwent Water. How about meeting in Keswick and then we can go on the lake? Unless you’d prefer somewhere closer to Ambleside?’

‘Keswick suits me fine. Shall we say ten-thirty? I fancy taking a look at the market, so if we meet outside the Moot Hall?’

‘Perfect.’

‘So Callum Hinds might still be alive?’ Mario Pinardi said.

Hannah and Greg were debating the case in The Forge Brow, a tiny pub backing on to the River Greta. Half five on Friday evening, and the place was packed with people who had finished work and were getting in the mood for the weekend. Mario had bagged a table outside, on a small paved patio that separated the saloon bar from the river.

‘I have to admit, it’s the longest of long shots,’ Hannah said.

During the afternoon, her initial excitement at the possibility that Callum might have staged an audacious comeback had waned. She and Greg hot-desked at Keswick police station for a couple of hours, catching up on emails and chewing over their theory. The longer they talked, the more unlikely it seemed that Callum was back in town.

‘If Callum is alive, it would explain a few things,’ Mario said.

‘And raise plenty more questions,’ she said. ‘Like where he disappeared to, and what he’s been playing at all these years.’

‘Explains why you saw him at Lane End — looking out for his long-lost father. Maybe plucking up the courage to say, Hello, remember me?’

Hannah found herself playing devil’s advocate. ‘Why would Callum leave a rose at a memorial to himself? I mean, narcissistic, or what? And why would his reappearance coincide with Orla’s suicide?’

Mario took a swig of orange juice. ‘It might explain Orla’s suicide, don’t you think?’

‘How?’

‘Suppose she met this bloke and got an inkling he was Callum. So she became insistent that her brother hadn’t died at the hands of Philip Hinds. But for some reason, things turned nasty. Did she discover he had some dark secret that explained why he’d stayed away so long?’

‘Must have been very dark for her to dive into a silo full of grain.’ Greg drained his glass. ‘Same again?’

He strode into the saloon bar, leaving them to watch the river rushing over stones set in shallow mud. Hannah found it hard to imagine that, only months before, the Greta had smashed through its banks during freakish floods that drowned large areas of Western Cumbria, claiming lives and wrecking homes. Scaffolding still shrouded houses along the riverside, and flood defences were being built in an attempt to make the buildings safe in case the waters ever swelled again.

‘Where are you up to with the enquiry?’ she asked.

‘Orla was a pisshead,’ Mario said. ‘She never settled to anything; jobs and relationships, none of them lasted. The most exciting thing that happened to her was that her brother was supposedly a murder victim. She was bright and not bad-looking, and Kit Payne did his best by her after her mother died. Decent education, she was a long way from destitute. But she wasted her opportunities.’

‘Callum’s disappearance defined her,’ Hannah said, almost to herself. ‘How life-changing must it be, to lose your brother in those circumstances?’

‘She moved away to make a fresh start, but it didn’t work out. Once she took the job at St Herbert’s, the old memories came flooding back. I’d say that in the end, they killed her.’

‘You’re still certain it was suicide?’

‘Her father’s farm and the Hanging Wood were just around the corner from St Herbert’s. There was no escaping the past. She persuaded herself that Callum was alive, then changed her mind, and couldn’t cope with the grief. End of.’

‘Is that what you really think?’

Mario flashed the smile that sent so many women weak at the knees. ‘Dunno. It’s a job for an ace detective, I guess.’

‘But where do you find one of them?’ Greg demanded as he returned bearing drinks. ‘Solved it yet?’

Mario tilted his glass. ‘Cheers, mate. Might be worth my having another word with the feller that Orla palled up with at St Herbert’s. He says they were casual acquaintances, no more than that. But the word is, she saw it differently. Perhaps he has something to hide.’

‘Hasn’t everyone?’ Greg said. ‘What was his name?’

‘Aslan Sheikh,’ Mario said.

Hannah almost choked on her lemonade. ‘Aslan?’

The two men stared at her.

‘What?’ Greg asked.

‘Did you never read C.S. Lewis?’

‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?’ Mario asked.

Greg made a face. ‘Wasn’t that the film with Tilda Swinton? Saw it on Sky by mistake. Not my cup of tea.’

‘But The Chronicles of Narnia were Callum Hinds’ favourite books.’ Her voice was unsteady. ‘Aslan was a Christ-like figure who came back from the dead.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘The Hall dates back to the seventeenth century,’ Fleur Madsen said, ‘but it needed to be rebuilt after being burnt down the year Victoria came to the throne.’

‘I read about that when I looked up the Hall’s history this afternoon,’ Louise said. ‘Arson, wasn’t it?’

Fleur moved her head to one side, allowing a pretty waitress to refill her glass with a fine red Bordeaux plucked from the newly refurbished climate-controlled wine cellars that lay beneath their feet. There were ten for dinner, sitting around a mahogany Chippendale table large enough to have accommodated twenty; Fleur sat beneath a portrait of her great-grandmother’s great-grandmother. The woman in the painting wore a green velvet- and-satin evening gown, whereas Fleur contented herself with a simple black dress and necklace of pearls, but like her long-dead predecessor, she radiated the self-assurance that came with being chatelaine of Mockbeggar Hall.

‘One of my ancestors dismissed a servant on a whim, and the man set fire to the place in revenge.’

Her wry smile gave no clue to her thoughts. Daniel felt a sudden urge to step inside her mind. How must it feel to belong to a house like this, where your family had lived for so long? Hard to understand for someone who had grown up in a nondescript semi on the outskirts of Manchester. When he was a boy, to live here would have seemed a dream come true. But real life was no dream. The Hall’s makeover had been planned and executed with respect for the past, and many of its original features had been restored and retained, but the historian in him could not help cringing at the metamorphosis of a grand family home into an offshoot of a caravan empire.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, but was Fleur as happy about the Hall’s fate as she claimed? For whatever reason, discontent lurked beneath her surface calm, he was sure of it.

Kit Payne smiled. ‘Thank goodness there are employment tribunals nowadays where disgruntled staff can ventilate their grievances without resorting to acts of vengeance.’

‘Not that we like to think we have any disgruntled staff,’ Bryan Madsen announced, sneaking a not very surreptitious glance down the waitress’s top. ‘Kit does a first-rate job of keeping everyone motivated. Ably assisted by Glenys, I might add.’