Death on the Lake by Jo Allen (early reader books TXT) 📗

until she was out of sight. It wasn’t until she was off the premises and could park up in a field gateway that she called Jude. The phone rang three times before he answered it, seconds she spent looking out through the window and down over the lake to the Seven of Swords, now the last place that Summer Raine had been seen alive. ‘Jude. I’ve just been at Waterside Lodge with Tyrone and Charlie. The Neilson place. I smell a rat.’

‘Do you indeed? What sort?’

Many things attracted Ashleigh to Jude Satterthwaite and his voice, whose sharpness was underpinned with humour that most people failed to pick up, was one of them. Today, rather to her surprise, she didn’t hear his usual enthusiasm and readiness to listen but instead identified a thread of weariness, as if the rat was a problem too many for a Monday morning. ‘We’ve spoken to the two Neilson boys. They had Summer round for drinks yesterday.’

‘I see.’

She’d expected him to be more forthcoming. ‘I’ll be damned if it was just drink. I’ll lay a little wager they were smoking something at the very least. I’d like us to have a wee look around.’

Jude was a stickler for the rules and the law, a man who never flinched from difficult territory even when there might be personal cost. Today even the hint of illegal substances didn’t tempt him into action. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No, listen. I know what you’re thinking. I know there’s nothing to suggest Summer’s vulnerable and I know she’s capable of looking after herself. But if she went home off her head on drink and drugs then something terrible could have happened to her. We need to find out what she took, if she took anything, and where she got it.’

In a silence at the other end of the phone she imagined him weighing up the pros and cons, balancing out arguments, some of which would be unknown to her. ‘Fair point, and from what you say it does seem as if she may have come to some harm. I’ll escalate it. I’ll get the mountain rescue people on it. Divers, too, if you think we need them. But no search of the Neilson property.’

‘Jude. What if they—?’

‘Do you have any evidence they were using drugs?’

‘No, none.’

‘Right. Then no search. Not until you come up with something better, or unless you can give me any real suggestion that we might find her there. Sorry.’

He could have done it. In Ashleigh’s view they had clear grounds for suspicion. ‘Is there something I don’t know?’

‘Clearly,’ he snapped back at her, uncharacteristically sharp. ‘Otherwise we’d know exactly where to find her, wouldn’t we?’ And he ended the call.

Four

The police came back in the early afternoon, with boats and divers under the supervision of Ashleigh O’Halloran, who stood on the shore with a radio and a clipboard. When Miranda went up to the first floor and looked out from her bedroom she spotted another boat, just off the shore further down the lake path, and figures in hi-vis vests tramping through the fresh green curls of early summer ferns. At the edge of the lawn Ollie, looking exactly like his father, stood with his hands in his pockets and, she suspected, a frown of deep thought on his face, watching them with Will hovering just behind him like a downtrodden handmaid. The boys must know something and the police might know they knew.

This is all getting too difficult, Miranda said to herself, taking another look over the silver sheet of water, rippling in the stiff breeze. The boats from the sailing school weren’t out today, maybe as a mark of respect or maybe because Summer’s former colleagues were too busy answering the police’s questions. She could tell by the severe look on Ashleigh O’Halloran’s face that they weren’t expecting to find Summer alive.

Where could the girl have gone? People didn’t just disappear. And somehow, her instinctive response was one she couldn’t share with the police, no matter how much she might want to. The fear that lay like a rock in the pit of her stomach wasn’t one that anyone else could understand. It’ll be me next.

Miranda wasn’t a woman for leaving things alone. She strode down the stairs with purpose and out into the garden to where the twins were standing. Will, she could tell, would rather be anywhere else and only Ollie’s bullish determination kept him there, tethered to his brother by an invisible tie. Of the two of them she liked Will the better, but he was the weak link. Even at the age of eighteen Ollie, a formidable businessman in the making, was the one she could deal with. ‘Will, would you pop in and put the kettle on? Maybe offer the police a coffee or something.’

‘Keep them sweet, eh?’ muttered Ollie as Will took advantage of the loophole and scuttled back towards the house. ‘Great idea.’

‘It never does any harm to be hospitable.’

‘Right.’

When Will had gone, he turned to her and stared, cool brown eyes weighing her up. She often thought she was glad Robert loved her and today a similar thought occurred to her about her stepson. I’m glad he isn’t my enemy. ‘Are you okay, Ollie? Yesterday must have been shocking for you.’

‘Sure was.’ He showed the faintest sign of weakness, biting his lip, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Just as well you were out all afternoon, eh, Miranda?’

‘And just as well it was only alcohol and not drugs you had on the boat, eh, Ollie?’ she rejoined, deadpan.

His face cracked into a wary smile. ‘Do you think you can keep Dad sweet for us?’

‘I doubt it. He’ll assume the worst and act on it. You know what he’s like. But I promise you I’ll try.’

He sighed. ‘Okay.’ One day in the not-too-distant future he’d be brave enough to challenge his father, the young stag taking on the old, but they all knew he wasn’t ready