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

He looked down at the note, flicked a querying eyebrow. ‘One last thing, which may or may not be connected. There’s a woman called Elizabeth Bell.’

He rattled through the story of Elizabeth Bell, the back story to her emigration. ‘No, I don’t mind waiting while you see what you can find.’ He put the phone down and turned back to Ashleigh. ‘What’s this about?’

‘I’m surprised at you.’ She shook her head. ‘At me too. We should have made the connection when we knew Ryan came from Australia.’

‘Australia’s a huge place.’

‘And Martindale is very small. So it’s a bit of a coincidence if Ryan turns out to have been in the place where Elizabeth Bell died, and then shows up in Martindale where Miranda is, don’t you think?’

Jude turned back to the phone. ‘No, that’s great. Ah, right.’

Ashleigh leaned right in so she could pick up the Australian voice at the other end of the line. ‘Mate, you might be on to something. The accident he was questioned over. Elizabeth Bell died in it.’

‘Right,’ Jude said, his voice neutral as always, though surely he must feel the same rising excitement as Ashleigh did, over a hunch that now looked like inspiration. ‘Questioned but not charged, you say?’

‘Yep. The woman was doped up to the eyes with antidepressants and God knows what else. She should never have been on the road. He said the car was all over the place and he couldn’t avoid her. No witnesses. It was an open verdict. I can send the coroner’s report over to you if you want.’

‘That would be brilliant. Thanks. I do believe we’ve got something.’

‘I’ll get back to you if we can dig up anything else. Have a good evening.’

‘I intend to.’ Jude said, with a grin, and hung up.

Work waited, but only until the distraction of having Ashleigh O’Halloran in his bed when they were both in the mood for love had passed. Just before he reached out to switch off the light, Jude remembered the call, remembered the note. He grinned. He must be mellowing in his old age, if he was leaving his mind roaming loose while a woman got in the way. He rolled back onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. Luke. Ryan. Maybe Summer. There was an answer. ‘Okay. Before you led me astray we were talking about Elizabeth Bell.’

‘I led you astray?’ she pretended to grumble, rolling in against him and resting her head on his shoulder. ‘That’s not how I remember it. But since you ask, shall I tell you what I think?’

‘I think I know. I wondered briefly if Miranda might actually be Elizabeth, but I can’t stretch my credibility to two fake identities in one case. It might be worth going back to check, I suppose, but in this day and age it’s only worth trying to be someone else when you’re alive. When you’re dead, the science will get you.’ As they’d discovered with Karl Faulkner.

‘Yes. And then Ryan, or Karl, turns up in Martindale when Miranda’s there. I knew there was something.’

‘The messages on the phone specifically referred to Robert.’ Jude inspected the shadows on the ceiling. ‘They describe him as the target. They say when he’s at the property.’

‘But they say who else is at the property, too. And I can’t remember them in detail, but I’m pretty certain you can work out who else is there. And that means that you’d have been able to tell not just when Robert was on his own but when Miranda was there by herself. And on the basis of those messages, I’m going to bet she never was. Because if she had been, she’d be dead.’

A fly beat its sluggish way across the room, through the dim circlet of the light the bedside lamp left on the ceiling. ‘Miranda was on her own. She went out walking on her own. She was alone when she found Luke.’

‘But Ryan didn’t know that. My guess is that Miranda had a very lucky escape that day, and if Ryan hadn’t bumped into Luke, realised the game was up and killed him, she’d have met him on the road and it would have been her who was found in the stream, not Luke.’ Jude watched the fly again. There was something curiously therapeutic about it as it battled its way across the room. In the corner, a cobweb loitered, one he never had any time to remove. ‘A trap. That’s what it was.’

‘Yes, but what—’

‘Ollie’s phone. When I went down there, after we found Luke dead, Miranda was shouting at Ollie for having lost his phone. She’s a cool woman, and she doesn’t lose her temper, but here she is shouting at some kid for being casual. Why did Miranda get so stressed? Maybe — just maybe — it was because someone had messaged her on that phone. And maybe someone had tried to lure her into a trap.’ He sat up.

‘Jude.’ Ashleigh sat up, too, pulling the duvet up in a pointless gesture to hide her modesty. ‘This is speculation. You’re not telling me Miranda went up to the house, was surprised by Ryan, stunned him, carried him down to the churchyard, buried him and went back home. All on her own.’

‘No. She must have had help, and the help must have been Robert. I need to—’

‘No.’ Ashleigh lay back down, pulling him down, too, with a hand on his arm. ‘Jude. You don’t have to do anything right now. You need to go to sleep and in the morning we can start thinking about what happened. Because we still don’t know who might have paid someone to kill Miranda, if they did.’

‘And we don’t know who was calling Ryan on that burner phone.’

‘Surely not one of the twins?’

‘I can’t believe it was one of them. Eighteen’s young to be luring their stepmother into a trap, and they’re too smart to be conned into it. But