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

for. ‘Thanks. We need to go back to the scene now, but I wanted to let you know. Someone will be round a little later on to take proper witness statements from you all. Thanks for your time.’

Ashleigh got to her feet and Aida, fulfilling the function of footman, saw them off the premises. As they headed through the gate and back towards the bridge, the graveyard was abuzz with activity.

Keeping in step with him, Ashleigh stopped to flick a look back towards Waterside Lodge. ‘What did you think?’ she asked.

‘I wish I’d had the chance to give them a full cross-examination before they had a chance to cook up some kind of story. Miranda knows something, doesn’t she?’

‘It might just be that what’s happening around here is getting to her. My money says her stepsons are giving her all sorts of grief, so she’ll have that on her mind as well.’

‘You say that, but I bet you think the same as I do. She knows something about what happened, and so does Robert, and their stories will tally in every possible way.’

‘But could she have killed Ryan?’ Ashleigh shook her head. ‘Surely not.’

‘It seems bizarre.’ Jude opened the door of his Mercedes and slid into the driver’s seat, thinking of Miranda and Summer and George, and of the muscular, army-trained Ryan. ‘But no. Surely not.’

Twenty-Five

Faye appeared at the door to the incident room, and Jude’s heart sank. He’d been at his desk a long time with no break, and he wasn’t in the mood for her directness.

She strode across to where he was sitting, at a desk close to the whiteboard. ‘Any update?’ she asked, coming to a halt beside him.

‘Not yet. I’m waiting for Doddsy to come in.’

‘When are you expecting him?’ She glanced at the clock. It was after eight.

‘Any minute. It depends how long the queue is at the pizza place.’

Faye never had much of a sense of humour, and what little she had evaporated under the slightest pressure. ‘I hope that’s a joke.’

‘No. A man’s got to eat. I’ll be here a while. I asked him to pick me up a pizza.’

She shrugged that off. ‘You’re going to have to speak to the media about this fiasco. The media team have arranged a press conference for tomorrow morning, so you’ll have plenty of time to think about what to say.’ Her irritation was unusual, obvious and intense. ‘We can’t go on pretending there’s no connection between these three deaths, although I’d very much like you to keep the line that Summer Raine died by accident.’

At least no-one but Ashleigh and Jude himself had any suspicion about George’s death. That would have whipped up a national level media storm. ‘Fine. I can come up with something bland and uninteresting. But do you want to know my take on the matter?’

‘I think I’d rather not.’ Faye’s expression was grim. She knew how the plot was unfolding and it was at odds with the line she was trying so hard to hold to, that the deaths in Martindale might implicate Robert Neilson in murder before the law had a chance to catch him and a dozen others for fraud.

There was no-one within earshot, but nevertheless Jude lowered his voice. ‘It’s looking ever more like something that involves Robert. But perhaps not in the way I’d thought.’

‘Let’s keep this quiet, shall we?’ Faye motioned him to the door and he followed her out into the empty corridor. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. I know you disagree, but I still think there’s something suspicious about Summer’s death. I still think it’s likely she knew something she shouldn’t, or that someone — Robert or Miranda — misinterpreted what she wanted to speak to Miranda about and thought it might be blackmail. But we’ll leave that aside for the minute.’

‘Even if I accept that, you need to explain to me why Robert Neilson would murder Luke Helmsley.’

‘I don’t think he did.’

‘Oh?’

‘It was a military-style execution.’ Jude rubbed his chin with a forefinger as Doddsy so often did, thinking it through. ‘Robert has no military training and that doesn’t strike me as his style. He’d have to get his hands dirty. In any case, he wasn’t there.’

‘He’s never there.’ Faye’s distrust of the cast-iron alibi mirrored his own. ‘Always one hundred per cent provably somewhere else, what’s more. But it might have been done on his say-so.’

‘It might, but I don’t think so. I think Ryan Goodall killed Luke Helmsley. He was certainly lying about his whereabouts, because he’d told his family that he was elsewhere and there’s no proof of where he was.’ Except the tent, and they’d know soon enough if that was his. ‘He’s in the army. There’s a gun in the grave, although I don’t yet know if it had been fired or where he might have got it. He had all the survival skills to make himself scarce in the hills for a long time, and he was well-equipped.’ He thought, briefly, of how Becca would respond to the news. Judging by past experience, he’d get the blame for that, too, as if he could somehow have stopped it.

‘All right. But why did he he kill Luke? I know the man was hardly an innocent, but his crimes aren’t exactly complicated.’

‘Because Luke came across him somewhere he shouldn’t have been and he knew he’d have to stop him talking. Luke wasn’t bright, in an academic way, but he wasn’t stupid either. He’d know when something wasn’t quite right. He’d have heard Goodall had left. Maybe he said something to him. Whatever. He was a risk, he had to be removed, and there was one chance to do it and no chance to dispose of the body.’

‘So what was this man Goodall doing in Martindale anyway? Apart from visiting family, which looks like a smokescreen, if you’re correct.’

‘I don’t know. But as you seem to suspect Robert Neilson of being up to his neck in very large-scale crime indeed—’

‘I don’t suspect anything.