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

to the kitchen where Holmes was standing beside an empty bowl scowling and Ryan leaned against the kitchen unit checking his phone. With a sigh, Becca forked food into the bowl, mopped up the drips from the floor and picked up her own raincoat. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’

Outside, as she turned the key to lock the front door, her bad mood intensified. A dark blue Mercedes drew up outside the cottage opposite and Jude Satterthwaite and his girlfriend got out. Becca had ditched Jude after an eight-year relationship four years before and so she had no right to feel resentful, either of Ashleigh O’Halloran for falling into the lap of so charismatic and intriguing a man or of Jude for having, after a respectable interval, replaced Becca herself with an altogether higher-spec model. That didn’t stop her feeling irritated every time she saw him, and she saw him more often than was comfortable because she lived opposite his mother.

‘Hi Becca.’ It was Jude’s standard greeting, neutral, polite and yet somehow unforgiving.

‘Hi,’ Ashleigh said, more brightly, and took three steps up the path towards Linda Satterthwaite’s front door.

‘Hi.’ Becca felt in her pocket for her car key and it wasn’t there. Beside her, Ryan loitered next to the wall. His silence, and Jude’s presence, forced her into social interaction. ‘This is my cousin, Ryan.’ But Jude would know that, because he had an irritating habit of knowing everything and an even more irritating habit of largely keeping it to himself. ‘Ryan, this is Jude. He’s an old friend.’ Because that was all he was.

‘I’ve heard all about you.’ Ryan heaved himself off the wall with reluctance that verged on rudeness and went straight to the car door.

‘All good I hope.’ There was a smile lurking on the edge of Jude’s lips, as if he found this whole awkward situation amusing. As well he might.

‘Nah, mate. Not much of it.’

Becca closed her fingers on the key card, flipped the doors unlocked and saw Ryan disappearing into the car with no further ado. ‘Ryan’s Australian,’ she said to Jude, as she walked past him to the driver’s door. The smile was full on now. He could afford to laugh at her. ‘They speak their minds.’

‘Obviously.’ He turned away before she had the chance to add to her apology. ‘Okay, Ash. I’m coming. No point in standing out in the rain.’

With relief, Becca slid into the car and started the engine. ‘Did you have to say that? Jude’s okay.’

‘I thought you’d fallen out with him.’

That was what the story was but the story was never quite the whole truth. ‘Yes, but it was years ago, and we’re both grown up enough to be civil.’

‘Yeah, Becca. But I’ve never been a great fan of the pigs.’ He paused. ‘Though that girl he’s picked up is a bit of all right.’

Becca drove out of Wasby and up towards Askham, still disproportionately annoyed. Dislike of Jude Satterthwaite was something she regarded as her prerogative, because he hadn’t valued their relationship as highly as he rated his job. A more general dislike of the police didn’t carry quite the same credibility, especially not from Ryan, who was ex-army. Or maybe that was it. Maybe the one branch of authority instinctively despised the other. Either way, his tactless but accurate appraisal of Jude’s new woman hadn’t helped.

In good weather and light traffic it was twenty minutes to Howtown, but today the cloud had clamped down on the road that climbed around Askham Fell and flooded the Eden Valley to the east. The road was slippery with mud and flooded where the water had surged down the hillside.

Their progress was further slowed by obvious police activity as they wound their way down the narrow road to George’s cottage in Martindale. There were two cars parked near the marina and another two pulled up on the verge by the Sharrow Bay Hotel.

‘Something up?’ Ryan inquired, raising a hand to wipe away the condensation from the inside of the passenger window and serving only to blur what little Becca could see in the wing mirror.

‘It looks like it.’ It couldn’t be important, or Jude wouldn’t have been spending his evening taking Ashleigh round to visit his mother, but even as that thought occurred to her, Becca suppressed it. Jude’s devotion to his job was excessive, but he wasn’t involved in every case and maybe he was learning, albeit too late for the two of them, that there was value in getting away from the job.

Or maybe that was all he and Ashleigh ever talked about. Maybe, after all, he hadn’t learned the value of downtime and his only chance of a successful relationship was to build one with someone who shared his priorities.

Three more police cars were parked at the pier in Howtown and the signs of activity here were more intense. Becca had to slow down to squeeze her way around them. There was a cluster of police officers, and a small motorboat sitting fifty yards off the shore. As she glanced across, a diver tipped backwards over the edge and disappeared below the surface with barely a splash. A policeman she vaguely recognised as one of Jude’s uniformed colleagues was leaning against a dry stone wall holding a reusable cup in one hand and clamping his radio to his ear with the other.

‘Looks like someone’s fallen in the lake.’ Ryan turned to crane his neck backwards as she turned the car up the hairpin bends that took them from Howtown and down into Martindale. ‘Someone misjudged the countryside I bet. Rookies.’

It had taken a week for her cousin’s continual chirpiness, which he seemed to think did something to offset his constant requests for favours, to begin to grate on Becca’s nerves, and she was the most tolerant of her family. That was why most of the favours seemed to devolve to her. Normally she wasn’t remotely bothered about popping along to see George, but she preferred to do it at a