‘Pity it had to be dragged out of him. See what I mean? Stereotypical Yorkshireman.’ He put on a cod Leeds accent. ‘If tha does owt for nowt, do it for thissen.’
‘He’s supposed to have all the right experience.’
‘Meaning that he knows just which buttons to press if he wants to be a pain.’
‘You could be right. I can’t see him joining my fan club, somehow.’
Nick gave her a cheeky grin. ‘That’s a pretty select grouping anyway, isn’t it? Never mind, solve a couple of cold cases and everyone will love you. Above all, Lauren Self will love you.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to say I don’t care about being loved. So far as her work as a detective was concerned, it was the unembroidered truth. Yet she realised that if she said it to Nick, she’d feel uncomfortable. Would he infer a dig at Marc, even though she didn’t mean it like that? She didn’t want to risk being misinterpreted. Not by Nick, not about her feelings for Marc.
When she got home that evening, the lights were on upstairs. Marc had converted the loft into an office and he spent hours alone there, revising his stock catalogues and checking prices charged by American book-dealers on the internet. They lived in a sprawling old house with a cellar and out-buildings and he’d been assiduous in filling every inch of available space with books. Books everywhere. Books in boxes, books on shelves. Books lurking behind table lamps, books propping up plant pots, books crammed into racks intended for magazines and videotapes.
Until she’d met Marc, she’d thought herself a book-lover, but now she was not so sure. He was so well-read as to make her feel half-educated, but it was more than that. He worshipped books in a way she had never experienced before. For Marc, books were far more than mere texts to be read. He protected their jackets with archival Brodart sleeves and cosseted those with unwrappered spines for fear that they might split. When there was dampness in the air, he would prowl the cellar feverishly, fearing that moisture in the atmosphere would cause bindings to bulge and pages to curl, rendering the books valueless. Condition was crucial, content seldom came into the equation. An ex-library reading copy of Anna Karenina was worthless, a first edition in a fine wrapper of The Curious Mr Tarrant by the late C. Daly King (whoever he might be) was worth its weight in gold. All this was a mystery to Hannah. When provoked, she would tell their friends that it left her slightly foxed.
She hurried into the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine. As it began to burble, she called out that she was home. Soon, Marc came tramping down the stairs. Head shaking, brow corrugated, footfalls so heavy that they might have belonged to an unhappy policeman.
‘You’ll never believe this,’ he said and recounted the iniquities of the day’s dealings with an especially finicky collector of nineteenth century Cumbrian guide books. After delivering the punch-line, he had an afterthought. ‘By the way, how did your thing go?’
‘My thing?’ she asked, without expression.
‘You know, the press conference. Cold cases and stuff.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘Great.’ He gave a brisk nod. ‘Told you so.’
As she climbed into bed, he said, ‘Forgot to mention. We had a celebrity visitor at the shop today.’
‘Oh yes?’ From his over-casual tone, she sensed that he hadn’t forgotten, he’d just been biding his time to mention it.
‘He was just looking round, but when I spotted him, I persuaded him to sign his book for me.’
‘Salman Rushdie? Terry Pratchett?’
‘Not even warm.’ He put his hand on her bare shoulder and tugged casually at the strap of her night-dress. ‘I’ll give you a clue. He’s a historian.’
‘David Starkey? Simon Schama? One of the other guys you watch on the box?’
‘You’re not being serious,’ he said. ‘No, the answer is Daniel Kind.’
She sat up at once. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘As true as I’m lying here. Daniel the scruffy don, expert in horrible history. Son of your old boss.’
‘What on earth is Daniel doing up here? It’s rather late in the day to be taking a look round his father’s haunts.’
‘Oh, I think there’s more to it than simple sight-seeing. He’s bought a cottage in Brackdale.’
‘He’s what?’
‘Thought you’d be surprised,’ Marc said complacently. ‘And he hasn’t just bought it for the occasional weekend break. Seems as though he and his partner have decided they want a new way of life, and they want it here in the Lakes.’
‘What about his job? He was one of Oxford’s shining stars.’
‘As far as I can gather, he’s walked out on his college. What’s more, he doesn’t have any more television scripts in the works. He simply wants to sit in his cottage and do a bit of writing. When he comes up for a breath of air, with any luck he’ll drop in at the shop and treat himself to a couple of first editions.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘It’s not that unusual. We know plenty of people who came here to live the dream.’
‘But Daniel. It’s — very strange.’
‘Trust me, it gets stranger. You’ll never believe which house he’s bought.’
‘Go on, nothing can surprise me now.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said, slipping his hand inside her night-dress and stroking her nipple. ‘He’s become the proud owner of Tarn Cottage.’
She pulled his hand away. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Never more so.’
For all the warmth of the bed, Hannah had gooseflesh. ‘Ben was never convinced that Barrie killed the girl.’
‘Perhaps it helped him to feel better about failing to lock Barrie up.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ she said angrily. ‘Ben was bigger than that.’
Marc grunted and Hannah cursed herself for falling into a trap. Long before Nick Lowther, Marc had been jealous of Ben Kind. She’d taken pains to convince her lover that she and Ben used to talk about nothing but work, work, work. But she and Ben both cared so much about the job that work always became something more, something intensely personal. Maybe that was why Marc suspected that their relationship was not merely platonic. Or maybe he just liked having someone of whom to be jealous.
‘My guess is, the son’s like the father,’ Marc muttered. ‘He simply can’t bear to let things go.’
Chapter Seven
‘Daniel, tell me about Barrie.’
Daniel was sitting with Miranda in the kitchen, nursing a mug of coffee. When he’d arrived back from his encounter with Cheryl, the cottage had been filled by a cacophony of drilling and sanding, but at last the workmen had finished for the day and the place was still.
Forget about the murder. He remembered his injunction to himself that first morning as they drove over the fell and into Brackdale. He should have known better. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t forget history.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m curious.’ Miranda gestured at their surroundings. ‘I mean — he spent the whole of his life here, this was the only home he ever knew. You were fond of him, but most people think he was responsible for a shocking crime.’
He sneezed. Unexpectedly, and yet it kept happening. It was the dust from the builders’ work, the dust that was everywhere; sometimes he feared his sinuses would never be rid of it.
‘I suppose you think I’m crazy, to imagine for a moment that he was innocent. Probably it is crazy. After all, we were only together for a few days, a long time ago.’
‘Why do you believe in Barrie? In his innocence, I mean?’
‘Because people don’t change, that’s what I believe. They learn, they make mistakes, they grow, they get older — but their nature doesn’t change. And the Barrie I knew was kind, not cruel.’
He left the room for a few moments. When he returned, he was carrying an aged Revelation suitcase. He opened it up and took out a thick photograph album, thumbing through the pages. Each picture was carefully pasted in, and carried a brief caption in careful, immature script. On the final page, he came to a snapshot of two boys, leaning against a beech tree. In neat childish handwriting the shot was labelled: Barrie and me, in his garden.