‘You know him well?’
‘We grew up together, but we have never been close. His father had a chip on his shoulder about the Hopes family, even though we’d become as poor as church mice. As Mike grew up, he had a reputation as a ladies’ man, but he never exercised his charm on me.’
She feigned a rueful expression, and Daniel shook his head in polite disbelief.
‘Besides, Bryan asked me out on a date not long after my eighteenth birthday, and after that I was pretty much spoken for. Mike always gave me a wide berth — he and Bryan have never been pals. Poor Bryan assured me that one day he’d be prime minister, though I never got to see inside ten Downing Street. But we’ve been together for over thirty years. Through good times and bad, so to speak.’
‘Mostly good, I’m sure.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh yes, I’m very fortunate. Bryan was never cut out for the national political stage, and he was badly injured in an accident ages ago, which didn’t help. But the combination of his business acumen and Gareth’s salesmanship and flair is hard to beat. The park has gone from strength to strength, while farming is a struggle these days. Mike isn’t an easy man, but he works damned hard.’
‘Orla gave me the impression she and her father weren’t close.’
‘There were bound to be tensions after Niamh left the farm to live with Kit.’ Fleur paused. ‘Sham tells me you spent a lot of time talking to Orla.’
‘We chatted, yes.’
‘She saw the two of you munching baguettes together the other day. Orla’s last at work, I think. She seemed upset, and you were trying to calm her down.’
Orla underestimated Sham, he thought, when she dismissed the girl as just a pretty airhead with rich parents, who played at working nine-to-five until she found a man she wanted to settle down with. The pretty face included a pair of lynx eyes.
‘Orla told me about her brother who went missing.’
‘Callum? That was heartbreaking. But … it was twenty years ago.’ Fleur’s brow furrowed. ‘She never seems to have reached closure; it was such a shame.’
‘I told her that if she had any concerns, she should talk to the police.’
‘Surely they want hard evidence, not wild speculation? The case was finished once Philip hanged himself.’ Fleur breathed out. ‘Poor Orla, she must have been depressed. She loved fairy tales, and I can’t help thinking she made one up for herself about Callum.’
‘So you believe Philip killed his nephew?’
‘Absolutely, no other explanation made sense. Callum was a strange boy, but he’d never run away from home. I can’t believe he is still alive, that he’s stayed out of touch for all these years. Why did Orla torment herself, when the passage of time made it more certain that Philip was responsible for his death, not less?’
‘She seemed to think someone else murdered him.’
‘But that’s ridiculous! Who else could have killed Callum?’ Fleur shook her head. ‘A passing tramp? I don’t think so. You’re not saying she had a suspect in mind?’
‘If she did, she never told me. I had the impression she was flailing around, trying to make sense of stuff she didn’t understand. Which is why I encouraged her to talk to the Cold Case Team. The woman who’s in charge of it is a friend of mine; I thought she’d give Orla a fair hearing, and see if there was anything worth investigating.’
Fleur arched her eyebrows. ‘You have friends in the Cumbria Constabulary?’
‘My father used to be a police officer here.’
‘I didn’t know you come from the Lake District?’
‘I don’t. We lived in Manchester, but he left my mother for another woman and came up to the Lakes with her.’
‘And now you’ve followed him?’
‘He died some time ago.’
‘I’m sorry, Daniel.’ Fleur considered. ‘Perhaps Orla was seeking attention. You’re a well-known person, and if I may say so, a bit of a catch for anyone, let alone a girl like her. She probably wanted to make a big impression.’
‘She was genuinely interested in history. And I am sure about one thing.’ As he spoke, Daniel’s intuition hardened into certainty. ‘Orla had good reason to believe that Philip Hinds didn’t kill her brother, even if she wasn’t sure who did.’
Aslan knew the man and woman he’d seen at Lane End were police officers. They didn’t have to be in uniform or to be driving a Panda car; he’d had enough to do with representatives of law and order to recognise that mix of watchfulness and assurance common to cops the world over. Ironic, deeply ironic. He’d taken so long to make it to Mike Hinds’ home, and the moment he arrived, he’d needed to beat a hasty retreat to St Herbert’s.
But nothing was lost. On the way back, he’d kept thinking about Orla, and some of the fuzziness in his mind was clearing. It was like groping your way through the mist as it cleared from the slopes of the Langdale Pikes.
Orla’s muddled thinking and lack of coherence, coupled with the fact that in her last few days alive she’d rarely been entirely sober, meant that people paid little attention to what she said. Her habit, no doubt learnt from Callum, of keeping cards close to her chest, made matters worse.
Now he was getting somewhere at last after a false start the other day. He’d taken it into his head on a whim to break into Orla’s room at the library while she was off sick, and see if he could find anything of interest. He’d committed a few petty thefts in his time, and never been caught, even though he’d had a few narrow squeaks; the secret of success was not worrying too much. Orla’s door was locked, and when, in his frustration, he climbed up on to the parapet outside, and began to prise open an ill-fitting window, Daniel Kind’s unexpected appearance in the garden, which was usually deserted in the morning, forestalled him. But once again, he’d got away with it. Daniel suspected nothing.
He’d toyed with the idea of picking Daniel’s brains, seeing if he could cast more light on what Orla had told him. It might be worth the risk. Or it might just be a big mistake.
With hindsight, he was unlikely to have found anything worthwhile in Orla’s room. She wasn’t the type to write stuff down, she just let things whirl around in her head, as she struggled to make sense of fragments of knowledge.
The last time he was with her, she’d talked about Callum, and Castor and Pollux. He was bored rigid with her fondness for talking in riddles; she only did it to make herself seem interesting, and the moment he showed any interest, she’d retreat into coy evasion. Typical Orla. Once she had your attention, she never made good use of it. As for Castor and Pollux, he didn’t have a clue who they were. But he meant to find out.
Orla was right about one thing: a library was the perfect place to learn stuff. He did a Google search the moment he got back to St Herbert’s, and supplemented his knowledge with a glance at a couple of reference books. Within minutes he discovered that, in Greek and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux were twin brothers who had the same mother but different fathers. One boy was mortal, and the other immortal. One destined to live with the gods, another doomed to lie among the dead.
The librarian, a rotund woman in her sixties, had, since his arrival at St Herbert’s, formed a deep distrust of his lack of interest in the literary treasures under her care, and watched him conducting his researches with ill-concealed suspicion. When he bestowed a charming smile upon her, she scowled like a gargoyle. The ungrateful old cow was impervious to charm. He found himself patting the butterfly knife in his pocket. Orla’s reference to the old legend didn’t make any sense to him, but he found it strangely disturbing.
‘Provoking a deranged farmer to attack us with a scythe,’ Greg Wharf said as Hannah accelerated away from Lane End. ‘I’ll be honest, ma’am, when we were discussing suicide, that particular MO never occurred to me.’
‘Yeah, well, a close-up encounter with a wannabe Grim Reaper adds a touch of excitement to our tedious lives. What do you reckon to him?’