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

braced themselves against it, possibly with the other foot in the water. It’s either a wellington boot or a walking boot or a Doc Marten. That sort, though the mark isn’t clear enough to distinguish between them. In Tammy’s reconstruction, the killer braced himself — or herself — like that while shoving the body under the bridge, jumped up onto the road and made off. As an aside, when I saw Miranda she was wearing trainers but she could have changed. And her feet are way smaller than the print.’

‘Size 12,’ noted Doddsy.

‘Yes. And now we need to think about why he was killed, and that will help us work out who.’ He picked up a black marker from the table and took off the cap. ‘This is where I want to add something else into this equation. Ashleigh and I were talking about this the other day. About the coincidence of an accidental death — Summer — and a sudden death from natural causes — George Barrett — within such a small area. She had suspicions about both.’ He gave her a half-smile. ‘I said if there was a third death I’d bring both of those two back into consideration, and that’s what I want to do.’

Turning back to the board, he wrote Summer’s name in capitals, then George’s beneath it, a question mark beside each.

‘I want us to think about where there’s something linking those three. There may not be. It may be there’s a clear and separate motive for Luke’s murder.’

‘A lot of people disliked him,’ Chris said, running his hand through his fair hair. ‘But as far as I can gather the more aggressive ones were pretty much the same kind of people as he was. The sort who’d lose their temper and throw a punch and then run off leaving the body in the middle of the road, or hand themselves in. Whoever did this was clever.’

‘Yes. And if Summer was murdered then that person was also clever. Which makes me think that Luke stumbled across something — or someone — he wasn’t supposed to know about, and that meant he had to be removed instantly.’

‘It can’t have been planned. If it was, they’d have hidden the body.’

‘Unless they wanted someone else to get the blame. My guess is whoever it was who killed him saw Miranda coming and had just seconds to hide the body and themselves.’

‘Military killing, eh?’ Chris had his thinking face on.

‘Military style, at least.’

‘Didn’t I hear something locally about some army guy hanging around?’

‘You did. George Barrett’s great-nephew is a soldier in the Australian army and is over in the UK on leave.’

‘He didn’t get on with George,’ noted Ashleigh. ‘I’m sure I heard that somewhere.’

‘Yes, from me. A lot of people didn’t, including Luke, I believe. But I don’t know that this guy — his name is Ryan Goodall — was in the dale when Summer died, and to the best of my knowledge he isn't around now. The last I heard of him, he was floating about in some unspecified place in the Pennines.’

‘And that was when?’

‘A couple of days after George’s death. I heard that from Becca, but she hasn’t heard anything since then. He said he’d be back for George’s funeral but he never turned up.’ Becca had been worried about him; but Becca worried about everyone. From what he knew of Ryan Goodall from Mikey, whom he’d grilled on the subject, he was the type of man to change his plans with no regard for others. ‘I don’t know if that’s significant. It would probably have been more so if he’d been around.’ Nevertheless, he wrote Ryan’s name down on the board, too.

‘There are the twins,’ Ashleigh said, with a frown of doubt, ‘and there’s Miranda. The boys went to a good school and they may have been in the cadet corps or whatever.’

‘I’d like to think they don’t teach kids that age to kill.’

‘l’d like to think so, too, but you never know. Miranda says they were in the house, but I suppose it’s not impossible they carried on the row and she’s covering for them. Or sneaked out and she didn’t see them.’

‘It’s not impossible,’ Jude allowed, with some reluctance, ‘but they’d both been drinking and my guess is the person who killed Luke had his wits about him. And I can’t see how he’d have let them get close enough to surprise him like that.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘We’ll get on. Ashleigh, you can go down and see how the door-to-door stuff is going. Chris, I’d like you to try and track down Ryan Goodall. Ask Becca if she’s got a number, though he probably won’t answer it. We may be able to trace the phone.’

When they’d gone he stood up and crossed to the window, where he stared down on the scattering of cars in the car park. As he’d expected, Faye’s was among them, and he was only surprised she hadn’t drifted down to see what was going on. ‘I’ll leave you to it just now,’ he said to Doddsy. It was time to go up and have a chat with Faye.

She’d been sitting making notes on a pad, but when he came into her office she flipped the cover closed. He came straight to the point. ‘I think I’d like the Neilsons’ property searched.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you would.’ She shuffled her coffee mug on top of the pad for extra security, guilty as a teenage boy caught writing poetry, then took it off again and flipped the pad open. ‘I’d love to, as well, and I was just working through the arguments for and against it. I won’t go through them with you. Some of them are things you don’t need to know and I’ll be putting this through the shredder when I’m done.’

‘Then you’ll authorise me to apply for a warrant?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m surprised at you. I’m as keen to go ahead with it