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

absorb so much dull information in phenomenal detail and retain it for just long enough to regurgitate it in an exam.

‘Well.’ Mikey sat down at the table and reached for the bar of chocolate sitting there. ‘I’m about due a break. Mum’s out, if you’re looking for her.’ He snapped off two squares and offered them to Jude.

‘I wasn’t looking for anyone. Just waiting for Ashleigh.’

‘Why wait for her here?’

Jude slipped a square of Dairy Milk into his mouth and allowed it to melt before he answered. ‘She’s got my car.’ And then it was off onto the explanation of what had happened and how, and why, although Mikey stopped listening once the dramatic fact of George’s collapse and death was over and done with so he was spared having to go into detail about Becca’s uncharacteristic breakdown.

‘How long are you hanging around?’ Mikey seemed to remember his manners. ‘Long enough for some lunch? It’s must be about that time.’

‘I expect we’ll go out for a pub lunch somewhere. Ashleigh won’t be long. She can’t have been far behind us.’

Holmes jumped up onto the table and padded along it as if it were a catwalk, picking his way delicately through Mikey’s papers to nudge his head against Jude’s elbow. Mikey swiped him aside. ‘That animal’s a pest. It’s good that you got a day off, anyway. You work too hard.’

Everyone said that, and at least George’s collapse wasn’t suspicious and there would be no need to get involved, but even the thought of such a thing sent his mind back to the old man’s death. He shook his head in irritation at Becca’s irrational accusation that he, through the investigation into Summer’s accident, was somehow responsible for what had happened to George.

It reminded him. There were questions it could do no harm to ask. ‘You don’t know Luke Helmsley, do you?’

‘Only vaguely. He’s a few years older than me. I know him well enough to keep out of his way if I’m ever in the same pub as him and never to look at a girl he’s with, but that’s about it. Why?’

‘I wondered.’ With a measure of relief, Jude heard the thrum of the engine of his Mercedes. ‘That’s Ashleigh. I’ll leave you to get on. Work hard.’

‘Oh, okay. Well that was short but sweet. Nice to see you.’

‘When are you heading back to Newcastle?’ Jude moved towards the door. ‘Give me a shout before you do. We could go out for a drink some time. Have a chat.’

‘I’ll take the drink but you can stuff the chat. I don’t need any of that in loco parentis stuff. Too awkward.’

‘See you.’

‘See you, bro.’

Holmes trotted out behind him, exactly as he’d trotted in, and shot up the path to Becca’s front door, which opened. Walking to the car and assuming the driver’s seat which Ashleigh vacated for him, Jude pretended not to notice either Becca in the living room dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, or the rather more deliberate presence of Adam Fleetwood, standing on her front step with his arms folded.

‘Well, that wasn’t how the day was meant to go.’ He started the engine, turned the Mercedes and headed back up towards Askham.

‘No. What a terrible thing to happen.’ Ashleigh was looking thoughtful. ‘Poor George.’

She relied heavily on instinct and he dealt only in fact, but today he knew what she was thinking and felt the same. ‘It didn’t ring true, did it?’

‘You thought that too?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know why. Probably because Becca was blaming it on everyone else when it was so obviously a stroke.’

‘I can see why, though. Becca was really upset.’

He sensed the sideways look she gave him but they were approaching the village of Askham and he had an excuse to ignore it, negotiating his way past the cars parked along the village green. ‘She mentioned Ryan. That’s her cousin. He’s over from Australia. Maybe he and George didn’t get on. George is a great guy but he could be a bit bumptious.’ Though he never was with Becca. ‘She was very fond of him.’

‘At ninety five you’d think his death was natural, wouldn’t you?’

‘You’re going to tell me you think it isn’t.’ He turned at the bottom of the village without really thinking where he was going. Away from Ullswater anyway, and into the Eden Valley, where they had half a chance of a pub lunch without running into someone he couldn’t be bothered talking to.

‘I’m not going to say that. But he was so obviously trying to tell her something, but her being so upset was stressing him out.’

‘She didn’t come across as upset. I thought she was really professional in dealing with him.’

‘She did all the right things, but she was upset, and he would know. I thought he was angry. Furious, in fact. Something had upset him, and it wasn’t the stroke. And he was definitely trying to talk. What was so urgent?’

Jude thought of George and his titanic struggle to speak. ‘Good question.’

‘I had a quick look round the house, and I didn’t see anything obviously wrong. And I know there’s no evidence, and I know there never will be any evidence, but that doesn’t stop me feeling there’s something not right about it.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ He turned the car off the A6 and into the network of country roads where the land flattened out towards the Pennines. ‘Let’s go and get some lunch and see if we can salvage something from the day. Though there was one good thing about it. That’s the most civil conversation I’ve had with Mikey in years.’

Fourteen

‘You know what? It’s irrational, but I’m still worried about Summer Raine.’

Faye raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, you know what? I think am, too.’

‘It’s the clothes.’ Jude had been sitting at his desk thinking about the girl when he should have been thinking about something else, and when Faye had dropped in on her way back from the coffee machine to find out if