‘If that girl doesn’t watch out,’ Fleur said, ‘she’ll go down the same slippery slope as her mother.’
She spoke loudly, and Daniel noticed heads turn up on the gallery, in wordless disapproval. There was a blunt edge to her voice that the pricey education hadn’t smoothed away. That resemblance to Audrey Hepburn was no more than skin-deep.
The principal stepped back through the doorway, leading them away from the literary temple. ‘I shall ask Sham to enquire when we can expect her back.’
‘Good plan.’ Fleur closed the door behind them and turned back to Daniel. ‘Marvellous to meet you in the flesh. I can’t wait to tell my husband that I’ve met a television star.’
Exactly the sort of reaction he’d come up to the Lake District to escape. ‘I gather yours is one of the biggest parks in the area?’
‘Oh, several have more pitches, but size isn’t everything, is it?’ A sleek smile. ‘My father-in-law always drummed into Bryan and his brother that quality counts. You need to understand people’s expectations, and then exceed them. Which is why I’m so glad my family home is about to enjoy a new lease of life as part of the park.’
The principal struggled to suppress a cough of disapproval at the prospect. It didn’t faze Fleur Madsen.
‘Buildings can’t stay the same, Micah, just as people can’t. It’s true of St Herbert’s, and it’s true of Mockbeggar Hall. My family couldn’t afford to invest on upkeep after the Second World War, and it went to rack and ruin. How much better, Gareth said, if we reinvented the place as part of the park. It seemed like one of my brother-in-law’s more hare-brained ideas, but really it’s turned out to be a stroke of genius. The project has taken five years to complete, but believe me, it will be worth it. We’ve not only refurbished the entire building, we’ve built a new link road from the main park, across the beck. Planning permission was a nightmare, of course, always is in the National Park, but nobody’s as persuasive as Gareth, and my husband has some political clout.’
And so the rich keep getting richer, Daniel thought. He gave an ambiguous smile.
‘I wonder,’ Fleur said, ‘are you free to come over for dinner with us at the Hall? We would be honoured to have you as our guest. Together with your wife, or partner, of course.’
‘I live with my sister.’
‘Ah, shades of the Wordsworths!’
The teasing smile returned. Somehow she’d created a moment of intimacy. It was as if the principal had ceased to exist.
‘Not exactly. I bought a cottage in Brackdale with my ex. We split up, and then Louise’s own relationship came to a sudden end, shortly after she moved up to the Lakes. We decided to share until she found a place of her own. Six months on, she’s still looking.’ ‘I don’t blame her for staying on. Brackdale is lovely.
Though the Northern Lakes are even further from the madding crowd. Now, do say you’ll come!’
‘Thanks …’ Daniel was about to mutter something about checking Louise’s availability, but Fleur was too quick.
‘Splendid! Shall we say Friday evening?’
Before he could reply, the crash of heels along the parquet floor of the corridor made them all turn round. Sham Madsen was running towards them at full pelt, her cheeks pale, strands of hair flapping over her face.
‘Professor Bridge!’
The principal stretched out a hand. ‘What is it, my dear girl?’
‘The police are on the phone!’
‘What do they want?’ Fleur demanded.
‘It’s about Orla. Oh my God, it’s so awful!’
‘What about her, Sham?’
The girl stared, wide-eyed, as if unable to credit what she had been told.
‘They say she’s dead. Her father found her body.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘It’s horrific,’ the girl mumbled.
Fleur’s face was ashen. ‘How did she die?’
‘She suffocated in a tower of grain.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Suffocated?’
Hannah’s heart jolted. She grabbed the arm of her swivel chair, as if to check that she wasn’t dreaming and this wasn’t some nightmarish hoax. The walls of her tiny new office seemed to be closing in on her. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine sinking head first into the clammy embrace of tons of thick beery grain.
‘In the farm silo,’ Linz Waller repeated. ‘Like I say, she must have climbed up and jumped in.’
So Orla Payne had given up on life.
Shit.
Opening her eyes, Hannah glared at her surroundings. No pictures on the walls, only a year planner, charts, and a list of phone numbers. She kept forgetting to bring in potted plants, and no way was she putting up a photograph of Marc. A fortnight in her new domain, and the smell of paint still lingered. The team had been shifted without a fig leaf of consultation to the other side of the Divisional HQ building. Lauren sold it as a change for the better, on the basis that the windows gave a view of the fells rather than the car park, but the true rationale was workspace planning. By trimming the Cold Case Review Team’s head count, and cramming those who remained into half as many square feet as part of a package of dextrous manoeuvres, Lauren had kept office overheads below budget for the current financial year. Despite the cutbacks, Hannah had heard the ACC singing in the corridor first thing that morning. An off-key rendering of ‘I’m a Believer’. No wonder she was pleased with herself. Keep the politicians and the accountants happy, and the sky was the limit. The smart money said that if she carried on like this, she might even become the first woman commissioner of the Met. Give her two years in charge in London, Les Bryant maintained, and the capital’s police force would boast the highest number of PR apparatchiks in Europe, and the fewest front-line officers.
She wrenched her thoughts back to Linz’s bad tidings. ‘Tell me about the call you took from Orla yesterday.’
‘Listen to the tape, if you like.’
‘Later. First, you take me through it.’
Beneath her expertly applied make-up, Linz’s cheeks were pallid. She’d rung a mate in the Keswick neighbourhood police team to fix a night out. Her friend had just come back from Lane End Farm to make a start on the paperwork about the death of a woman whose corpse had been discovered by a farmer that morning. The body was buried in the grain. The farmer, Mike Hinds, had identified the deceased as his daughter, Orla Payne. She didn’t live on the farm, and he claimed he had no idea why she would have come there to die. They hadn’t spoken to each other since a brief telephone conversation a couple of days before had ended in a quarrel. He said she was drunk.
‘The woman must have been an alcoholic.’ Linz cast her eyes to the heavens. ‘I only took the call because Chantal was on her break.’
Hannah leant across her desk. ‘We’re not playing a blame game.’
‘Will the IPCC need to be involved?’
Every police officer dreaded becoming the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Once the IPCC started to crawl over your career, even the best CV could turn into a train wreck.
‘One step at a time, huh? What did Orla have to say?’
‘She was pissed out of her brain, you can hear it for yourself on the tape.’ Linz folded her arms tight across her chest, hugging herself for comfort. ‘All I could make out was that she had to speak to you, and nobody else would do. When it finally sank in that you weren’t around, she rang off.’
‘All right.’ Hannah exhaled. ‘How did they find the body?’
‘While Hinds was out in his fields, he caught sight of the top of a car parked in a lane at the back of his land. It was so unusual, he went to investigate, only to see it was Orla’s motor. On the way he spotted a brightly coloured headscarf, caught on a bramble. He recognised it as Orla’s. She wore headscarves all the time.
Hannah blinked. ‘Even in the height of summer?’
‘Yeah, seems she’d lost all her hair. Stress-related, apparently.’