Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders) Read online

  Ryan couldn’t believe that his day could actually get any worse, but it had. The TV news report had said that the body of a teenage girl had been found in Serpentine Woods, but she hadn’t been identified.

  Ryan booted up his mum’s laptop, and in five minutes he knew for sure that it was Amy Hamilton who’d been found dead in the woods. It was all over the social networking sites. He was sorry for Amy, too shocked and surprised to feel grief, but frightened for himself too. So Ryan did what he usually did in these situations, and went up to his room, locked the door, and rolled himself a joint.

  He needed to contact Adam as soon as he could, but that might be difficult. The cops had his laptop and his phone, and even they would soon find the messages that they’d exchanged. So that meant that Ryan couldn’t use that method in future.

  And then Ryan cheered up, and not just because of the dope. Because when they looked at emails they’d also see that what he’d said about collecting the car had been true, and he reckoned that might just be enough to put the cops off. They just didn’t follow up on anything difficult, which is why he never admitted to anything, even when they had loads of evidence. It was surprising what you could get away with if you stuck to that policy. And since he was in the unusual position of having mostly told the truth, then surely he was safer than usual?

  Ryan turned off the bedside lamp, got off the bed and looked out of the window. Normally he wouldn’t have worried at all, but that looked like a shed-load of drugs in the car, so maybe the drugs squad would be keeping an eye on him, at least for a day or two. He couldn’t see any sign that they had the house under observation though.

  Ryan was sure that if they were watching the house they’d be in a car, so he went downstairs, opened the back door and found his younger brother’s rusty old BMX bike. If it ever had lights they’d been nicked long since, but that wouldn’t matter.

  He pushed the bike down along the side of the house, and out on to the street. He rode quickly, past the parked cars, then turned up a narrow ginnel that led up to the main road. No car could follow him along there, and every cop he knew - except possibly that tough looking Sergeant who’d interviewed him today - was much too old, fat and unfit to ever get near him on foot when Ryan was on the bike.

  Ryan had already decided that there was no chance that they’d staked out his mates, especially with a murder investigation on, but he still cycled past Wayne’s house a couple of times before he knocked. The lights were all on, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, they always were. But Wayne would certainly know how to contact Adam, and get this all sorted out.

  Detective Inspector Andy Hall had already reached John Hamilton’s house. He’d stopped on the way at the supermarket and bought a sandwich, an apple, a fizzy drink and a bar of chocolate. He only had the apple left. He’d texted Carol, his wife, and said that he hoped to be home before 10pm. She hadn’t replied, and he hadn’t expected her to. She’d stopped being interested in anything about him months before. But he’d still texted anyway, as he always did.

  The house was what Hall had expected, as soon as he’d heard the address was on Kendal’s prime residential road. Not a mansion, but a fine Arts & Crafts detached house on a big plot, sheltered by several mature trees. Hall hardly ever came to houses like this professionally, nor socially come to that.

  He waited for Mann to arrive. He’d just taken a walk round the streets near Serpentine Woods to catch up with the uniforms doing door-to-door. They’d get the written reports in the morning, and be contacted immediately if anything significant came up, but Mann liked to show that he understood what it was like for the coppers on the ground, and to show that their work was appreciated. The cops seemed to warm to it too, but Hall knew that they’d have been cautious and deferential if it had been him.

  However, Hall was pretty sure that he’d be able to make as effective a contact with Hamilton as any other officer could. Perhaps he had a sympathetic face, perhaps he had a bit more imagination than some of his colleagues, or maybe he just hadn’t become quite as hardened as they had during his service. Perhaps that was his problem.

  And since he had two daughters of almost the same ages as Hamilton Hall felt that he had just the tiniest of insights into John Hamilton’s state of mind. Hamilton’s grief would still be mixed with astonishment, always visible in parents’ faces, that their child had died before them. That they’d never see Amy graduate, let alone have children of her own.

  But in Hall’s experience it was the few hours after a death that the next-of-kin made most sense, and were able to provide reliable information. Because when the grief really poured in, as the mind opened itself to it, then pretty much everything else went dark. So best to get this done while the shock was still having a numbing effect.

  Mann’s newish Ford Focus pulled up, as pristine as Hall’s BMW was dirty. Hall had been half listening to The Blue Nile, turned down very low, and he turned the music off before Mann had opened his door. He didn’t want Mr Hamilton to hear it, and for some reason that he couldn’t quite identify he didn’t want Mann to hear it either. Neither man spoke as they crunched over the gravel drive to the front door, and Hall found himself falling into step with Mann. There really wasn’t much to say.

  They waited for a minute or so after ringing the bell, and heard an express train in the distance running north towards Scotland in the gathering dark. When Hamilton came to the door he had a wine glass in his hand. Hall wasn’t surprised, but he was relieved it wasn’t anything stronger. For now the objective was simple: try to establish a reliable time-line for Amy’s last night on this earth, get as much material as possible to assist the background enquiries and, of course, to begin to try to eliminate the father from the enquiry.

  Hall noticed that Hamilton wore his street shoes inside the house, something that Hall didn’t do. He didn’t feel quite old enough for slippers, but not wealthy enough to be having carpets cleaned and replaced on a regular basis. He doubted that Hamilton had any such concerns though.

  Hamilton was casually but smartly dressed, a trick that Hall could never quite pull off himself, which is why he always wore a suit to work, invariably covered by a Burberry raincoat, a 40th birthday gift from his wife. He still loved the coat, despite the inevitable ‘just one more thing’ that everyone at work used to shout whenever he put it on in the office, and had sworn to himself that when it reached a Columbo-style state of dilapidation he would treat himself to a new one. Because he certainly couldn’t see his wife forking out again.

  Hamilton offered them a drink and both Hamilton and Mann asked for coffee. Getting the relative to do something routine tended to help, rather than hinder the process. All three stood in the kitchen watching the kettle boil and then, while Hamilton made the drinks, Hall started to talk.

  ‘The reason we need to talk to you at such a terrible time is that the sooner we can establish the chain of events last night, and learn more about your daughter, the nearer we will be to finding whoever did this. So would it be alright if we took half an hour or so to go over a few points tonight Mr Hamilton?’

  ‘Call me John; and of course it would. I’d rather talk to the two of you than sit here on my own anyway. My mother’s been round, but for some reason I just couldn’t stand her being around tonight. And Lucy is with her mum tonight.’

  Mann noted that Hamilton hadn’t said that he wanted to help in any way he could, and in Mann’s book that was good. The man clearly didn’t regard himself as a potential suspect, which could mean that he was entirely unconnected with the murder of his daughter. The middle classes weren’t immune from crime of course, but the likes of John Hamilton had probably never spoken to a policeman in his life before tonight.

  ‘Ok John, I’m Andy, and this is Ian. Can we start with what happened yesterday? I assume that your daughter went to school and came home at the normal time?’

  ‘Yes, as far as I know she got home around four, she usually did, and she was here when I got home from
work at about five-thirty. She must have been home well before, because she’d popped some jacket spuds in the oven for us, and they were almost ready when I got here.’

  Mann was taking notes, sipping his coffee when his boss was talking. Hall took Hamilton carefully through what sounded like a perfectly normal evening. Amy and her younger sister both had bedrooms in both houses, and both normally stayed with John Hamilton at least a couple of nights during the week and also often at weekends. ‘I think it’s mainly because my house is nearer the girls’ school than their mum’s, and it’s also easier to get back to from town in the evenings if they go out. Amanda lives out near Staveley now.’

  Hall cut to the chase: why had Amy gone out, at what time? He prompted Hamilton to try to get him to narrow it down as much as he possibly could. And what contacts had she had in the time running up to her going out? Had she received any texts and emails? Did she use social networking sites?

  ‘You’re joking, they never stop. I know chief executives of major companies who get fewer emails. Her phone never stopped beeping while we were eating, but there’s nothing unusual in that. We have an agreement that she doesn’t look at her mobile while we’re eating, but it makes different noises for texts, emails, and for social media. And they were all going off I expect. I don’t think they use Facebook much now, probably because me and her mum both joined, but they do use some kind of other messaging thing. You’ll probably find them on her mobile.’

  ‘Amy had her phone with her when she went out?’

  ‘Of course. Kids never go anywhere without their phones, why do you ask?’

  ‘We haven’t located it as yet, that’s all.’

  As Hall had expected John Hamilton didn’t have much to add to the facts that they already knew, but why would he? Hall couldn’t have named more than two or three of his eldest daughter’s friends, and as far as he was concerned it was healthy to give kids a bit of space.

  Amy’s computer had been removed earlier in the day, as well as a desktop in the study that she used sometimes, but Hall still wanted to get a feel for the way that the kid lived. He asked if they could have a look at Amy’s room, and her father led the way. The bedroom was large, expensively furnished and remarkably tidy.

  ‘I had a tidy up earlier’ said Hamilton, apparently reading Hall’s mind.

  ‘No posters’ said Hall, ‘didn’t she like music?’

  ‘Oh yes, but they tend to leave marks, and since her mum ran off with odd job man...’ Hamilton tried to smile. Hall tried to decide if he sounded bitter or not, but couldn’t begin to judge from Hamilton’s tone. ‘So ridiculous to have rules like that’ said Hamilton, sounding angry with himself. ‘What the hell does it matter?’

  ‘Would it be OK if Ian had a bit more of a look round in here, and we can pop back downstairs?’

  Hamilton nodded, asked if Mann needed anything, and led the way back downstairs. He asked if Hall would like another drink, and when he said no, Hamilton poured himself another glass of wine, but a small one. Hall explained that he’d like to ask a few general background questions, not directly connected to what had happened to Amy, but just to get the wider picture.

  Mann already had a list of her friends, with ‘no boyfriend’ underlined and followed by a question mark. Hall would smile when he saw that later, because while Mann had no kids he had obviously realised that teenage kids most certainly didn’t tell their parents everything. He hadn’t when he was a youngster, and his kids certainly didn’t now. So Hall asked about the children’s living arrangements, and how it had worked after the divorce.

  ‘Much better than some, and in many ways it’s been the only good thing to come from the whole thing. Because I’ve got to know both of my kids so much better since it happened, as people you know?’

  Hall nodded. He didn’t need to pursue that line, but Mann was still moving around upstairs - he wasn’t the bloke you’d want when a silent tread was required - and he was interested.

  ‘I shouldn’t ask, but I think I might be about to go through much the same thing myself’ said Hall, glancing up from his notebook at Hamilton. He just nodded. Perhaps he’d guessed, or perhaps it was such a common experience that it didn’t generate even the slightest surprise any more.

  Hamilton took a sip of his wine, and looked back at Hall.

  ‘Until this happened I would have said that nothing worse could happen. It wasn’t just my wife leaving, it was the feeling that my family was smashed up, and that I’d failed in the one job in my life that mattered.’

  ‘Do you still feel that way?’

  ‘Yes, it hasn’t really faded at all yet, but I expect it will eventually. Especially now. But a couple of months after it all happened my late dad, who had been happily married for over 50 years, said something that really struck home. I can’t remember the exact words, but the gist of what he said was that if, in twenty years, one of my kids came to me and said that she didn’t love her husband, and that she needed to have a better life, would I encourage her to leave? And basically I said I would. If it wasn’t possible to fix the marriage then yes, she should leave. Because everyone deserves a chance to be happy, even if it means that someone else isn’t.’

  ‘And did that help?’

  ‘It did, at least until she tried to get sole custody, even though she knew full well that I wanted shared, and the kids did too. I won that of course, just a couple of months back actually, so we do have shared custody. But it struck me then that not only does she love someone else, but that she doesn’t care at all how I feel now, or what she puts me through. And that does still feel strange actually, because we were together for over twenty years.’

  Hall thought that ‘strange’ probably wasn’t the word that he would have used. He tried very hard to think of a line of questioning that he hadn’t already explored, and was relieved when he heard Mann coming down the stairs. He waited until Mann had joined them before he asked the question that mattered most. He knew that some coppers liked to get it out of the way as soon as they could, but Hall tended to wait until he’d built up a rapport with the other person. ‘And where were you last night John?’

  ‘I was here all evening.’

  ‘You didn’t go out, have anyone round?’

  ‘No, I was here all evening. I went to bed at about 11 but couldn’t sleep. Funny enough I never can ‘til the kids are home, if they’re staying with me. When she wasn’t home by about midnight I called her friend’s parents, it took me a while to find their number, and then I called you.’

  ‘How did you find the number?’

  Good question, thought Mann admiringly. He wouldn’t have thought of that, but there could be an evidence trail that they could prove that Hamilton had spent time and effort tracking down the contact details. If he had it still didn’t prove for certain that he hadn’t killed his daughter, but it would be a useful piece of supportive information.

  ‘I didn’t know her friend’s surname, so I called my other daughter, she was at her mum’s last night, and she told me. Then I looked them up online in the phone book. They’re not ex-directory, so I called them then. It went to voice mail the first time, but when I tried again the mum answered.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s helpful.’

  ‘I suppose that you’ll be asking the same questions at my wife’s?’

  ‘Oh yes, and all of Amy’s friends too. By tomorrow morning I’m looking to have a very detailed picture of exactly what happened last night.’

  ‘I still can’t understand what she was doing in Serpentine Woods. She never went for a walk at night, and why would she go in there? It doesn’t make any sense at all.’

  ‘Those are the right questions to ask John, and as soon as we know more I will be the first to tell you.’

  ‘I’ll be here. I’m not going in to work for a couple of days at least. No point really. So come round any time you like.’

  Wayne certainly did know how to get in touch with Adam, and he wanted Ryan to know that he did. It
showed who was the boss. So he left the sitting room, with the huge plasma left on and more than lighting up the room in flickering shades of blue and green, and he came back after a couple of minutes with an old mobile phone.

  ‘Can’t be too careful’ he said. He turned the phone on, sent a text, then put the phone down on the floor, next to his can of German beer. ‘Want one?’ he asked, following Ryan’s eyes. Ryan shook his head and sat next to Wayne on the sofa. They both turned their attention to the TV.

  It was almost half an hour before the phone rang. Wayne answered, and passed it to Ryan without a word. They both knew that Adam liked to keep calls brief and that he had a strict one SIM, one phone, one call policy.

  ‘Hello’ said Ryan cautiously.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  Ryan had never spoken to Adam before, their contact had been strictly by text and via social media, and he couldn’t picture him at all. So what could he tell from Adam’s voice? Youngish probably, and maybe local too. Wayne had always been even more vague than usual when Ryan asked about Adam.