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

view. And I suspect he won’t have gone far, either. He’d need to be able to drop down into the dale and out again pretty quickly as soon as he saw his opportunity.’

Despite her reluctance, despite the poor grip of his smart shoes on the muddy grass, he headed off along what passed for the path up the side of the fell. It petered out rapidly, obviously rarely used, and the bright green fronds of the ferns rippled in the breeze. A gut feeling drove him. He could see exactly how Ryan might have staked out the dale, how he might have perched up there expending a week’s worth of patience, watching and waiting for his intended victim — whoever that victim was.

But surely not Luke. Who, then? Robert had been out of the dale but perhaps that was what suited him. With Miranda and the boys out of the house, maybe that was his opportunity to get into Waterside Lodge. And then he’d met Luke.

A ripple of self-preservation took him. He’d back himself in a fight with most people, if it came to it, but maybe not on a windswept hillside with a trained assassin. He slowed down. ‘We’d best ca’ canny, as my old granny used to say.’

‘I was about to suggest we get someone out to search the fellside,’ said Ashleigh. She stopped for a moment to disentangle herself from a strand of heather that had caught itself up in her trousers. ‘But I don’t think we need to. Look.’

She was looking away from him, at a wall about four feet high that marked the lower end of an old sheep fold. On the upslope side of it was a tent. A cooking stove was set to one side of it.

Jude crashed his way through the heather. God knew who was in there, if it was Ryan Goodall or someone else. But he wouldn’t have lasted long in the police by being faint-hearted. ‘Morning! Anyone there?’

No answer. The wind rippled the green nylon of the tent.

He headed up the path for a few yards to where the wall had fallen, and scrambled over it. ‘Anyone there?’ he called again.

‘Jude,’ said Ashleigh, agonised. ‘Take care.’

He could bluff it out, if he had to. ‘Hello!’ he called again, but the silence was resolute. He ducked down and lifted the flap of the tent. Empty. The he reached down to touch the kettle that sat by the camping stove. There was still warmth in it. At the back of the tent was a bowl with the remains of a breakfast, cereal barely congealed. At the front, tucked under the flap, was a pair of high-spec binoculars. ‘There you go. He’s been keeping an eye on what’s going on, and he’s around here somewhere. If it’s our man, and I think it is.’

She was aghast, and he could see why. ‘We need to get someone up here as soon as we can.’

He thought about it for a moment. There was little justification for flooding the dale with police when the tent could belong to any old camper. ‘You reckon? I think right now I’d rather keep an eye on this place. He’s obviously using it as a base. He’ll have to come back. I might get someone to get a drone up and see if there’s anything going on, and I’ll make damn sure there’s someone keeping an eye out down in the dale. When we know more we can ask him a few questions. But yes. Let’s get back down to the car and start looking innocent. We don’t want him to know we’ve found him and we don’t want to look any more suspicious than we already do.’ He got out his phone and checked it. ‘No signal, dammit. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t.’

They slipped and slithered their way down the slope. ‘So if he’s hanging around,’ said Ashleigh, after a furtive look about to make sure there was no-one listening, ‘that means there’s unfinished business.’

‘It looks like it.’ Jude scanned the dale. They should have searched it. If they had, and the camp site hadn’t been there immediately after Luke’s murder, that definitely suggested that the camper — whether Ryan or someone else — had moved back in for the kill.

He paused for a moment longer, as if something was off, something not quite right. ‘Let’s go and have a look at old George, shall we?’

‘Why on earth would we do it now?’

‘No-one uses the church. Maybe there’s a crypt. It would be an excellent place to hide, wouldn’t you say?’

He pushed open the gate to the churchyard and held it open for her, letting it swing back. The gate was self-closing, controlled by a weight on a chain that pulled it closed and as they went through, a black cloud of flies rose from it.

Eternally curious, Jude gave the contraption a second look, and it didn’t disappoint. ‘Ashleigh.’

‘What?’

‘Look.’

She bent down towards it as the flies settled back, took a look and stood up again. The look she gave him was troubled. ‘That’s blood.’

‘Yes.’ He stood and surveyed the churchyard. The long grass was still trampled from George’s funeral two days before and the police search the day before that.

‘What the…?’ Ashleigh saw, at the same time as he did, the mess of soil next to the grave and piled below the neighbouring yew tree. Dry soil, when the grass under their feet was wet. And the roughed-up turf that overlaid the grave, and the family’s arrangement of flowers, perched askew upon the grave.

He’d stood at the back of the crowd during the funeral, ready to make his escape, but he’d have sworn that the soil had been piled on a tarpaulin so as not to spoil the grass of the churchyard and make it easier to fill in the grave when all was over. He strode over to the grave and looked over the wall. A substantial quantity of dry soil lay scattered on