Page 14 of Worse Than Murder (DCI Matilda Darke Thriller #13)

M e and Carl take the dogs on a long walk through the woods.

It doesn’t have the same openness and sense of freedom as when I was out with them yesterday.

The sky is heavy and dark. The clouds are rolling in off the Irish sea and, for the first time in weeks, there’s a breeze that’s picking up strength by the hour.

Without sounding melodramatic, it’s a harbinger of doom.

We walk over uneven ground. The leafy canopy above gives the woodland a darker edge, particularly with the sun hidden by the clouds.

It could almost be nighttime. The temperature is still hovering in the twenties, but it feels cooler.

Icy fingers of uncertainty stroke the back of my neck, and it’s not just fear of the impending storm.

I have a dark feeling that something is happening right now. I’m just not sure what.

I keep thinking of the killer in Sheffield.

If he hadn’t emailed me and bragged about his crimes, he would have gotten away with them.

He really is the embodiment of evil. My detective brain is kicking in and trying to figure out who he is and why he turned to murder.

Was he born that way or did something happen to turn him into a killer?

Try as I might, I can’t fully let go of being a detective.

‘What shall we do tonight when the storm hits?’ Carl asks, bringing me out of my reverie. Thank goodness for Carl. ‘I mean, if the power goes off, we won’t have a TV to watch or anything.’

‘Do you have any board games?’

‘A few. I’ve hidden Monopoly, though. Dad gets really competitive with that one.’

‘I used to like Operation. Me and my sister…’ I stop myself. It’s still too raw to think of me and Harriet in happier times, especially now she probably wishes I was dead.

‘I fucking hate you!’

‘I’ve got Dinosaur Operation,’ Carl says.

‘Really? How does that work?’

‘You operate on a T-Rex.’

‘Oh. Sounds fun. I think we should play that even if the power doesn’t go out.’

* * *

We return to the restaurant at the same time as Sally pulls into the car park.

She’s been into the village to collect a few more provisions such as extra batteries for the torches and candles in the case of a power cut.

Carl runs off to clean up the dogs while I attempt to make a coffee using the machine.

I’ve been in so many coffee shops over the years, why didn’t I pay attention to the baristas when they made my black Americano?

Are all these buttons really necessary? The door from the kitchen is pushed open and the cleaner, May, breezes in with her caddy of cleaning supplies.

May is in her early sixties but doesn’t have a single grey hair.

It’s dyed a dark blonde. She’s wearing a long flowing shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and combat trousers with a duster sticking out of every pocket.

A different cloth for a different job, I’ve heard her say.

She’s short, not much over five feet, trim, and always has a smile on her face.

‘You’re a braver woman than I am,’ she says. ‘I daren’t go anywhere near that machine. It keeps hissing at me.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder what’s wrong with a kettle and a jar of instant.’ I place a cup on a tray under a spout and press a button. Nothing happens. I press it again. Still nothing.

‘It’s like all these flavoured teas you can get nowadays,’ May says. ‘They all taste like scent to me. And, I’m sorry, but when I have a mug of tea, I want something I can dip my Digestives in.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ I say as I give the Gaggia a dirty look. I decide to leave it until Philip comes back from wherever he’s gone to. ‘May, can I ask you a question about something?’

‘Course you can,’ she says, not stopping in her work. She goes over to the tables and begins clearing one of its place settings before vigorously polishing the smooth surface with a dry microfibre cloth.

‘Philip tells me you’ve lived here all your life; I was wondering if you remembered the Pemberton twins going missing.’

May suddenly stops what she’s doing. ‘Oh, my goodness, that was a nightmare and a half. That poor family. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the father went missing in that storm.’

‘He got into difficulty driving home, didn’t he?’ I ask. I don’t want May to think I know more than I do. It’s better to let people think you know nothing.

‘Yes. He’d been to see his mother, if memory serves me correctly.

He had Alison in the back. We knew a storm was coming but I don’t think any of us expected it to hit as hard as it did.

He must have been taken by surprise with it.

Bless him. Fingers crossed we don’t get a repeat today. I don’t like the look of those clouds.’

‘No,’ I say, turning to look out of the window. Are they nimbostratus rolling in? Does it bloody matter? I turn back to May. ‘Lynne Pemberton was lucky not to lose her other daughter, too.’

She nods. ‘She didn’t let that girl out of her sight for weeks afterwards. I mean, you wouldn’t, would you?’

I go over to the table May has just cleaned, pull out a chair and sit down. ‘What happened with the twins?’

‘Nobody knows. They’re out playing on a lovely summer’s day, all three of them. Suddenly, two of them are gone, driven away. Never to be seen again.’

‘No suspects?’

May pauses while she thinks. ‘There was something about one of the teachers at the primary school. He’d changed his name when he was a teenager– can’t remember why– police thought it was strange and latched onto him.

Of course, he was innocent, but the damage had been done. He left soon afterwards. Poor man.’

‘No-one else?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. It really was as if they vanished off the face of the earth. I mean,’ she looks around her to make sure no-one is listening and lowers her voice, ‘When Carl was taken, there was a ransom, wasn’t there? Not with the Pemberton twins.’

‘Speaking as a detective, in a case like this, we look close to home for the perpetrators. Anything about Jack and Lynne?’

‘No. I don’t think… hang on,’ she stops in her work again.

A heavy frown appears on her forehead. ‘I don’t think either of them had alibis.

Lynne was home alone. I mean, she was looking after the kiddies, but they were out.

Jack… I don’t know where he was, possibly out on the farm with Iain.

That’s another thing as well. Travis Montgomery. ’

I remember the name from one of the news articles I’d printed off last night. ‘Who’s he?’

‘He worked on the farm for a while. There was a rumour– now I’m only telling you this because of what I heard, I’ve no evidence of it myself– but there was a rumour that Travis and Lynne were carrying on.’ She practically whispers those last two words.

‘Carrying on as in having an affair?’

‘I don’t think it was a full-blown affair or anything, but there was talk, and you know what they say…’ she says, leaving the comment hanging in the air.

‘No smoke without fire,’ I finish for her.

‘Precisely.’

‘Does Travis still live around here?’

‘No. He wasn’t local. He went back home not long after Jack went.’

That raises a few more questions. ‘What did everyone in the village think happened to Celia and Jennifer?’

‘Well, let’s just say people held onto their kids a bit more closely after they went missing. Understandable, isn’t it? Two pretty girls like that, it doesn’t take a detective to twig on why they were taken. No offence.’

I smile. ‘None taken. And Jack disappearing like he did, what did people make of that?’

‘Jack was always a quiet man. He suffered with depression, had done since he was a child, according to Lynne. Something big like that happens, I suppose he’s a ticking time bomb.

You have to wonder what was going through his mind to leave Alison on the back seat of the car during a storm and walk out into the lake. ’

‘You think he deliberately drowned himself.’

‘I do.’

‘Yet, there have been sightings of him.’

‘There have. I’m not sure what to make of those. They upset Lynne, that’s for sure. I mean, she can’t move on.’

‘Are you close to Lynne?’

‘Not as close as I used to be. We had kids the same age. She had the twins in the September. I had my Rupert in the December. I think she found it difficult to be around me straight afterwards.’

‘Do you know what Lynne makes of all these sightings of Jack?’

She sighs. ‘The same as us all, I suppose. If one person had seen him, you’d think it was a trick of the light or something, maybe even someone who looks a bit like him, but they kept on coming.

You have to start believing them, don’t you?

’ May pulls out a chair at the table she’s cleaning and slumps into it.

‘As I said, I’ve known Lynne for decades.

I honestly don’t know how she’s coped. She’s completely different to how she once was.

I mean, it’s going to change you, isn’t it, everything she’s been through, but she was always such a happy, confident woman.

Before the girls went, she worked all hours as a midwife, she ran about this village helping anyone and everyone, a real backbone.

Then, well, it was as if all the life had been torn from her.

You look at her now and you can see she’s a shadow of her former self. I hardly recognise her myself.’

‘Lucky she has Iain.’

‘Yes.’

‘How long was it after Jack disappeared before she and Iain got together?’

May sucks in her lips as she thinks. ‘Do you know, I’ve no idea.

I never expected Iain to settle down. I know he doesn’t look much now, but he was a very handsome man when he was younger.

Tall, thick dark hair, broad shoulders. You saw him most weekends with a different woman on his arm.

He seemed to get caught up in Lynne and Jack’s tragedies and realised family was more important.

He did a lot for Lynne after the twins went missing.

When they announced they were getting married, it just seemed right.

We were all happy for them. It was about time Lynne had some good luck for a change. ’

I’m starting to get a headache. Is it so strange for Lynne to marry her brother-in-law following the disappearance of her husband?

Was it love that brought them together or a shared grief?

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Jack’s disappearance was through guilt rather than grief.

If so, how much do Iain and Lynne know, and what are they keeping from Alison?

Then there’s the mysterious Travis Montgomery.

Were he and Lynne having an affair? If so, why didn’t she turn to him when Jack had gone and not Iain?

Or did she shun Travis because she felt guilty for cheating on her husband?

There’s that word guilt again. Maybe guilt has nothing to do with any of this. Maybe it’s me feeling guilty about my actions leading to the deaths of my family and I’m trying to force it onto them so that I’ll feel better.

‘Or, perhaps I’m overthinking things.’

‘What’s that?’ May asks.

‘Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself.’

‘First sign of madness.’

‘Yes, that ship sailed a long time ago.’