Death on the Lake Jo Allen (the ebook reader .TXT) 📖

was beyond Howtown and heading towards a lakeside property owned by a man named Robert Neilson.’ She looked at him with a raised eyebrow, as if questioning him.

‘Local lad,’ he obliged. ‘Filthy rich. New money. Brought up in Pooley Bridge. Parents scraped everything together to send him away to boarding school and he went off to the City to make his money. Came back not that long afterwards able to buy a huge property and a few tens of acres with one of the best views in the Lakes. Married, divorced, remarried. Twins from the first marriage, I think.’

‘You’re astonishingly well-informed.’

There was nothing astonishing about it. Jude had been accumulating information about the countryside and the people who lived in it since long before he’d ended up in the police. Thirty-six years of insatiable curiosity had matured into a store of rock-solid local knowledge. Luke Helmsley had slipped below his radar but the more intriguing Robert Neilson had not. ‘The kids are eighteen, I think. Spoiled brats, according to Mikey. My kid brother,’ he added, for clarification.

‘I see. Well, I’m interested to hear what the local gossip is on Mr Neilson. He’s one of several subjects of a wide-ranging, very hush-hush, investigation into fraud and money-laundering on an international scale. Our colleagues delving into organised crime are very interested indeed in what he’s been up to, how he’s managed to make so much money so quickly and what he’s spending it on. I’m not entrusted with the details of it, and I’d probably find it too difficult to understand if I was.’

‘But you’ve been asked to keep a watching brief?’

‘I’ve been asked to keep them informed of anything unusual I hear about the Neilsons and anything unusual that goes on at their property. I don’t want to attract too much attention to it and of course, you’re right. You’re far too senior to be directly involved at this sort of investigation at this sort of stage.’ Her nod did duty for an apology for her earlier slight. ‘I did think, however, that it might be smart to send a detective down to join your two constables. Send someone junior. That way we can pretend it’s normal procedure. He won’t know any different.’

There was an obvious candidate. ‘I’ll send Ashleigh.’

‘Hmm.’ Faye stared over his shoulder into the distance, as if they hadn’t both slept with Ashleigh O’Halloran and weren’t both fully aware of her charms as well as her skills. ‘She does have the talent for getting people to talk, doesn’t she? I imagine she’d do the job very well.’ Mention of Ashleigh seemed to have unnerved her. She nodded towards the door, a subtle signal that the interview was over. ‘She doesn’t need to know why, of course. I’m sure you can think of some reason why we might want a detective on the case.’

‘There’s already a very good one.’ Jude pushed back his chair and folded the missing persons report in half, as if that would make his interest in it look casual to any passer by. ‘Her current boyfriend, Luke Helmsley, has a record of violence and as far as I’m aware it’s associated with sexual jealousy.’

‘Is that right? Well, goodness. How interesting. And yes, a very good reason to send someone down to run an eye over the dale,’ she said, and turned back to her desk.

Three

The old dry stone walls that marked the edge of the road up to Howtown and beyond towards Sandwick gave way, very suddenly, to a set of imposing and incongruous wrought iron gates. A slab of carved slate announced this magnificence as Waterside Lodge. After a moment’s pause to consider her surroundings, Ashleigh negotiated the cattle grid with care and drove slowly along the driveway that unwound ahead of her to offer her views of trees, of the steep rising slope of Hallin Fell, and at last of the silver sheet of Ullswater.

A marked police car was parked in the paved courtyard in front of the house. She pulled up beside it, noting the two-faced nature of the property in front of her. Old slate on the lower storey paid homage to its humble origins, with brighter, newer slate, carefully-chosen to match but not quite aged, showing just how much the original building had been extended. As she paused before getting out of her car, she snatched a glimpse through one of the downstairs windows and saw plate glass beyond. So the house was one of those, all traditional at the front and daringly modern at the back to make the most of its lakeside setting.

She sighed. Life had been kind to her and her parents had enough money to give her and her brother everything they could possibly have needed, even if not everything their young souls had yearned for, but the family’s three-bedroomed holiday cottage in North Wales was a hovel compared to this. It was rare she coveted anything, but the Neilsons’ summer mansion brought out the worst in her. How well did such ostentation go down in the rest of the dale where, her drive had shown her, there was money but not a lot of it and some people still seemed to scrape an existence that depended from year to year on how many other people visiting were rich?

She snatched a final glance at her notes. A girl had gone missing. The boyfriend (the violent boyfriend, Jude had observed) had reported her; but that meant nothing. Summer Raine was young, she was fit and she was adventurous, possibly too much so. In normal circumstances she’d expect the girl to turn up, sheepish after some unplanned adventure.

Jude clearly didn’t think these were normal circumstances. His briefing had been casual at most, but she sensed he hadn’t told her everything. Go along and help Charlie and Tyrone out, he’d said to her, as if either the vastly experienced Charlie Fry or the talented rookie Tyrone Garner needed any help from anyone in a routine enquiry. She smiled.