Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders) Read online

  ‘Someone must have broken in then.’

  ‘There’s no sign of forced entry. We have checked. We’ll leave you to your meal, but in our experience people don’t seek to frame others for murder without having a very good reason, at least in their own mind.’

  Mrs Hamilton did not look at all convinced.

  Ian Mann found potential eye-witnesses frustrating. And he didn’t know which were worse, the ones who had seen something useful, or the ones who hadn’t. The ones who hadn’t always seemed to take forever to get to the point, and the ones who had seen something usually had such faulty memories that their recollection had little or no evidential value. Did everyone live their lives on auto-pilot?

  Throw in the fact that everyone to be seen had already been interviewed at least once, almost certainly twice, and that one of those interviews would have been carried out by a CID officer, made Mann feel even less enthused about the task in hand. He knew that Andy Hall was a good copper, certainly the cleverest he’d worked with, but he’d got this one wrong. For some reason he just didn’t want to believe that John Hamilton was a killer. But that mobile phone said otherwise, no matter that his brother’s alibi was now undermined.

  But Mann was determined not to miss anything, and so he patted his first interviewee’s dog, admired the condition of its coat and lack of a range of arthritic conditions to which the breed was prone, and drank almost half of the disgusting coffee that he was served. He left none the wiser, but with a burnt tongue and a slightly odd taste in his mouth.

  All of the walkers lived within a couple of streets of each other, and the next one was a 35-year old woman called Julie Bowness. Mann stopped outside her front door, and read the interview notes. She had walked past the entrance to Serpentine Woods at about nine, and again, on the way back, at about twenty five past. The timings were perfect, and the notes said that Julie had seemed intelligent and helpful: but she’d still seen nothing.

  Mann knocked and waited. He could hear a dog barking, or rather yapping. He started to picture a proper leg-humper. But he liked the look of Julie Bowness when she came to the door. There was a nice mountain bike in the narrow hall of the cottage, and pictures of the fells in the snow on the walls, some with her in them. As he expected when she spoke her accent wasn’t local, more like posh Yorkshire, Otley maybe. From the notes he knew that she was a science teacher at one of the secondary schools in town.

  They went into the small living room, where the woodburner was on and thankfully the TV off, and sat on small sofas facing each other.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of pictures that I’d like to show you’ said Mann, putting the pictures of Simon Hamilton’s Mercedes down on the coffee table.

  ‘Oh yes, I saw that car parked just opposite the entrance to the woods’ said Julie firmly. ‘It was last week, either Tuesday or Wednesday.’

  Mann tried to look as if this was the answer he’d expected.

  ‘That car, or a similar one?’

  ‘It was that one. I noticed the bike holder on the roof rails. Look, you can see them clearly in this picture. It’s a very expensive type, and your bike is sort of winched onto the top of the car by an electric motor. I’ve been thinking about buying one you see, that’s why I noticed.’

  It wasn’t definitive, but it might do.

  ‘Can you remember which evening it was?’ He resisted the urge to tell her how important it was. In the silence he heard a log cracking in the fire.

  ‘No, I think it was Wednesday but I can’t be absolutely certain. I go that way most nights, Jasper gets very angry if we go a different way. Sometimes he just lies down and I have to carry him home. But I’m sure it wasn’t last Monday, and it can’t have been Thursday, because I walked round to see a friend, and Japer came with me. And that’s right across on the other side of town, on Appleby Road. We had an end of term work do on Friday, so I took Jasper out early.’

  Mann waited, hoping that Julie Bowness would remember something else.

  ‘No, I can’t be absolutely certain which day it was. But I do remember that it was drizzling with rain when I was out that night. Because I thought about stopping to look properly at the roof rails, but I was starting to get a bit cold and wet, so I didn’t. And I remember drops of rain on the car’s paintwork.’

  ‘That’s good. Was it raining the other night that it might have been, so either Tuesday or Wednesday?’

  ‘No, it was dry, but quite cold.’

  ‘And you’re sure it was raining on the night that you saw this car?’

  ‘Lightly, yes. It started almost as soon as I left the house. Sod’s law, isn’t it?’

  Mann smiled encouragingly.

  ‘And now I think about it I remember something else. The car wasn’t there when I walked back.’

  ‘Are you sure? What time was this?’

  ‘Let’s see. I left the house just before nine, and that walk takes about thirty five minutes. So I would have seen the car sometime around nine, and it was gone by about nine thirty. Maybe five minutes later.’

  ‘You didn’t notice the registration, or any part of it?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. But I’m certain it was this car, because I wanted to check who made the rails, and look for a model number on them. I’ve only got an old Renault estate car, but the size looked about right. So I walked right up to the car. Anyway, have I been any help?’

  ‘You certainly have, but I’m afraid I’m going to ask you and Japser to come down to the station, and say it all again.’

  ‘Is it really OK to bring Japser?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Do you like dogs?’

  ‘Love them.’

  Ryan Wilson had woken up late. He could hear daytime TV, maybe from downstairs, perhaps from his mum’s room, maybe even from next door. He felt under his pillow. The envelope was still there.

  As he showered he thought about his meeting with Hamilton’s man Carl in Manchester. Now he was more the sort of guy that he’d expected to meet. He looked plenty hard enough not to need the huge bloke who was with him, let alone the evil looking smaller one. Wayne thought that he fitted in much better than Simon had, and maybe Carl agreed, because he quickly agreed to Simon’s suggestion that Ryan should move up the ladder. They didn’t talk for long, and when they’d finished Carl cut a line of coke on the table, and gestured to Ryan.

  ‘A little toast to our success?’

  Ryan shook his head, and Carl looked surprised, and maybe a bit impressed. Ryan noticed that Carl just left it too, but Simon took a line.

  Simon talked for most of the drive home, and bragged about the size of his territory. ‘It’s pretty much the whole county now, so if you see a County Council bin lorry going about then the chances are those streets are ours.’

  Ryan asked how Simon stopped anyone else muscling in on their ground.

  ‘I don’t. Carl and his crew take care of that. They don’t mind traveling if there’s a bit of aggro to be had. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you know that lad who went missing in Workington last year?’

  Ryan didn’t.

  ‘He drowned, they said he fell off the harbour wall while he was off his head.’

  ‘But he was pushed?’

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt about it. He was working for us, and started selling a bit on the side, you know, nothing big.’

  ‘And they killed him for that?’

  ‘No, they were just planning to do him over, but I hear he annoyed Carl’s boy Jacko.’

  ‘Is he the big one?’

  ‘Funny enough he’s the smaller one. Looks a bit like a pit bull that’s just eaten the postie’s leg, and wouldn’t mind a go at the other one.’

  ‘The one that doesn’t say much?’

  ‘Doesn’t need to, does he?’

  Ryan wondered if what Simon had said was true, so when he was dressed he looked online, to see if he could find details of the lad’s death. He soon did. In fact he found quite a trail, from the time the lad va
nished to the time his body was discovered, two days later, right up to the coverage of the inquest. Misadventure was the verdict, and the reports certainly seemed to confirm what Simon had said.

  Ryan felt slightly uneasy, even though he knew that Simon might just have been winding him up. The inquest might have been right, it might just have been misadventure. No doubt Simon would want to try to intimidate Ryan by bigging-up Carl and his boys’ capabilities, but would he really have been able to remember the details of a year-old story well enough to tell the tale as convincingly as he had? Unless, of course, Carl really was responsible.

  Ryan had already decided not to take any chances. He’d agreed to meet Simon at his house that evening at nine. Simon had said his wife would be out. The house wasn’t isolated, but the neighbours weren’t close and the lake wasn’t far away, if Simon and Carl had another death by misadventure planned.

  But there was one easy way to find out, and that was to keep an eye on the house. There was always the risk that Simon had worked out where he’d been hiding the last time, so Ryan decided to arrive just after dark, at about half four, and keep an eye on Simon’s house from the neighbour’s garden who lived on the side away from the lake. Ryan had a good look at the satellite photos online, and checked that he’d have a good sight line of the drive to Simon’s place, good cover and an easy way out for his bike. He reckoned that he could easily pedal back to his own car before any pursuers could reach their own car and give chase.

  At half three Ryan left the house and walked down to the shop, bought a paper, a couple of pies and cans of drink, then walked back, past his own house, before crossing over and walking back. There was no-one sitting in any of the parked cars. He unlocked his mum’s Fiesta, folded down the seats and pushed his brother’s BMX inside. He’d have to remember to go back to the station and get his own bike, if someone hadn’t nicked it. Then he threw his bag onto the passenger seat, locked the car and went back to the house.

  The TV was on in the empty sitting room so he sat and watched for a few minutes, called goodbye to his mum, who shouted something back that he couldn’t make out, and then he left the house. He drove slowly to the top of the road, turned right towards Windermere, but at Plumgarths he turned sharp left, back towards the M6. The Fiesta accelerated slowly up the hill, but Ryan didn’t mind. If anyone was following him he wanted them to get nice and close.

  Ryan was overtaken by a couple of cars, as he’d expected, and was almost sure that there was nothing behind him. But he needed to be sure, so without indicating he took the unmarked slip road near Scout Scar, and turned left at the top, then followed Greenside back down towards town. When he spotted a parking space he pulled in and turned off the engine.

  After ten minutes he drove on, following the one way system round town, then the main road all the way to Windermere. He parked where he had before, pulled the bike out of the boot and stuck the bag on his handlebars, with the paper sticking out. He cycled down the drive, trying to look like an overgrown newspaper delivery boy.

  He pushed the bike down the neighbour’s drive, and hid it behind some bushes. There were no proper street lights and it was already getting dark, and cold too, with a strong wind blowing. But at least it was dry again.

  An hour later it wasn’t dry anymore, and Ryan was beginning to doubt that he’d made the right decision. Nothing much had happened, although he’d seen Simon’s wife drive away a few minutes before.

  Ryan didn’t pay much attention to the anonymous looking hatchback that came slowly down the drive a few minutes later, and he was surprised when it pulled into Simon’s drive. Three men got out, and Ryan was certain that he’d seen them all the night before.

  All three flicked on torches and moved quickly into the bushes where he’d hidden the night before. They disappeared round the back of the house, and Ryan watched and waited. When they came back they went into the house. He’d seen enough.

  Ryan gave it five minutes, then pushed his bike back to the road and pedalled as fast as he could back to his car. He chucked his brother’s bike into the bushes, swore loudly with relief when the car started, and drove down the lake for a mile or two, then turned and headed north again. His arrangement had been to meet with Simon alone, Carl’s arrival could only mean one thing.

  Ryan was almost at Ings when he realised that going home, even to pick up some stuff, might not be such a good idea. He wondered, if he just drove as far as he could and kept out of sight for a while, that maybe they might just forget about him. It didn’t take him long to realise that this was very unlikely. He’d left the five grand at home, but he couldn’t risk texting his brother and asking for his help.

  And then he thought of Ian Mann. His folks lived on the estate, so he stopped and went online and looked for their phone number, which soon gave him the address. To his surprise Ryan wasn’t concerned about the thought of grassing Simon, Carl and his friends up, but he was worried that even if he did they wouldn’t get taken off the streets. Because Ryan knew from experience that there was a big difference between getting nicked for something and getting charged, let alone going to jail.

  So if he did tell the cops what would happen? Ryan guessed that the whole thing would get passed on to the drugs squad, and that at best Simon and Carl would become targets for them, which wouldn’t help him at all. In fact it would just make things even worse.

  Ryan needed time to think, so he drove into Staveley and parked in the old woodyard. He ate one of his pies, read the paper by the light of the courtesy light, and when the indigestion wore off he managed to get to sleep.

  Andy Hall was thinking about going home for the night when Mann called and told him the news. Fifteen minutes later Julie Bowness was in an interview room, and when Hall came in he was surprised to see a small dog asleep at her feet.

  Ian Mann led the interview, and Hall had hardly ever seen him so upbeat. Hall decided that it must be because of the breakthrough. Julie confirmed exactly what she’d said in her house, and then Mann moved on to the issue of which evening it was. ‘So you can’t be sure which evening it was that you saw this Mercedes with the bike rack on top, but it was either Tuesday or Wednesday of last week?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It can’t have been Monday, or Thursday? Or some other day?’

  ‘No. It was definitely Tuesday or Wednesday.’

  ‘And it rained while you were out on the night that you saw the car.’

  ‘Yes. It started to drizzle soon after I left the house on whichever day it was, and it was raining quite hard when I got home.’

  Mann pushed five pieces of paper across the table.

  ‘Here is the weather for all of the weekdays last week, from Monday to Friday, for Kendal, and covering 6pm until midnight. You’ll see that they’re just numbered, and that you can’t see which day each refers to. Can you confirm that you understand what you’re looking at?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Julie didn’t need more than a few seconds, before she tapped one of the sheets.

  ‘It’s this one, number five. It shows the weather dry at six, wet at eight and dry again after ten. And when I took the dog out before I went to bed that particular night I noticed that it was dry again, and that was about eleven.’

  ‘So you’re quite sure that it was this night, number five, when you saw the Mercedes with the bike rack?’

  ‘Yes, I’m quite sure.’

  ‘Would you look at this key and tell me which day number five corresponds with please?’

  Mann passed another sheet over the table.

  ‘It’s Wednesday.’

  ‘And just for the avoidance of any doubt, you had no knowledge of which day was which until I gave you this sheet.’

  ‘No, none at all.’

  ‘On the basis of what you’ve seen, can you now tell me for certain on which night you saw that Mercedes with the bike rack parked on Queen’s Road?’

  ‘Yes. It was Wednesday.’

  Mann sat ba
ck, and Hall took over, as they’d agreed. ‘Julie, can we talk a bit more about the car itself? Are you certain that the car in the photograph is the one that you saw?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How can you be so certain? Neither the car nor the bike carrier are unique, are they? They’re both mass-produced.’

  ‘It’s a few things. First, you don’t see that many cars with bike racks on in winter, and as I said to Ian I remember that the water had formed little globules on the car’s roof, so it must have been all polished and shiny. Just like the car in the picture’

  ‘But a shiny Mercedes is hardly a rare sight, surely?’

  Julie thought for a moment.

  ‘That bike rack is expensive, and it’s a new model. I just can’t believe that very many have been sold yet.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know the model number that you think it is?’ asked Hall. He knew that, if it came to a prosecution, Julie’s testimony would be central in both the prosecution and the defence’s case.

  ‘As a matter of fact I do. It’s called an Alpine 12. I know because I’d been looking at it online that same evening, Wednesday, and I recognised it as being the same. They’ve changed the design of the rails themselves over the previous model, and I was looking at that particularly.’

  ‘Good, thanks. Please make sure that you include that point in your statement. Now, think back, and tell me if you noticed anything else about the car. Take your time.’

  Julie Bowness didn’t need long.

  ‘The only thing I noticed was that there was a little bit of steam coming off the bonnet when I passed the car. So it must have come quite a long way and been very hot, and it can’t have been parked more than a few minutes.’