Dead Man Walking. Paul Finch

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СКАЧАТЬ voice echoing eerily.

      Heck took the loudhailer from the boot. ‘At least if these lasses are stuck somewhere nearby, it shouldn’t be difficult getting them to hear us.’

      They set off down the side path which dropped steeply from the car park, and led along the front of the two houses on the water’s edge.

      The house on the right was called Lake-End Cottage, and its inhabitant was a certain Bill Ramsdale, a onetime married man and academic who now, in his mid-fifties, had become a reclusive loner and apparently, a writer, though Heck had never seen his name in a bookshop, either online or in the real world. His house was a small, scruffy cottage, the downstairs of which was almost entirely taken up by his study, but it was also surrounded by acres of untrimmed lawn, which rolled impressively down to the waterside and terminated at a private jetty. Given the usual prices in the Lake District, such a plot ought to have cost him a pretty penny. Whether he was rich or poor, Ramsdale was notoriously ill-tempered about his privacy. Twice he’d been spoken to by Mary-Ellen for showing a belligerent and even threatening attitude to hikers who’d strolled down across his land to the tarn’s edge, unaware they were trespassing thanks to most of his perimeter wall having collapsed and his grass being overgrown.

      The second resident, Bessie Longhorn, was an altogether more likeable sort. Just turned twenty, she was a little rough around the edges – only poorly educated, and thanks to a lifetime of semi-isolation in the Cradle, minus a fashion sense or any real knowledge about youth culture in general – but she was a friendly kid and always eager to please, especially when it came to Heck. Bessie’s cottage, formerly a farmhouse and so considerably larger than Ramsdale’s, with numerous run-down outbuildings attached, belonged to her mother, Ada, who was only sixty-five but in poor health and residing in sheltered accommodation in Bowness. For obvious reasons, Ada considered it important that Bessie get used to being independent, even though this meant the younger woman didn’t get to visit her old mum as often as they’d both like. For all that, Bessie was a happy-go-lucky character, who filled her time doing odd jobs for the residents of Cragwood Keld at the other end of the tarn. She’d once offered to help Ramsdale by mowing his unruly lawn, but the surly neighbour had responded by telling her to ‘keep the fuck away’, so now Bessie, who was reduced to tears quite easily, did exactly that.

      Perhaps the task she prized most highly was minding the keys to the police launch. This was convenient for all concerned because the boathouse in which the launch was kept was part of Bessie’s property. Approximately the same size and shape as a suburban garage, the boathouse was propped up on stilts and in a generally dilapidated condition, its timbers tinged green by mildew – but it was better than nothing. The cement path leading down to it crossed the middle of Bessie’s neatly-trimmed back garden, so it was always necessary to call on her first.

      They halted before walking up Bessie’s front path, and looked towards Ramsdale’s house, his presence indicated by a very dull glow from one of its windows and the pale smoke issuing from its chimney.

      ‘Wouldn’t have liked to be one of the two girls if they came looking for help and knocked on that miserable sod’s door,’ Mary-Ellen said.

      ‘Neither would I, now you mention it,’ Heck replied thoughtfully. ‘But it’s a good point.’ He veered back along the road and down the path towards Ramsdale’s house. ‘Go and check with Bessie, would you?’

      ‘Who the fuck is it?’ came a muffled response to Heck’s full-knuckled knock.

      ‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg, Mr Ramsdale,’ Heck replied. ‘Cragwood Keld police station. Can you open up please?’

      What Heck always thought of as a guilty silence followed. Whenever you arrived at someone’s house and announced yourself as a copper, it was the same – whether it was some flash manse in the suburbs, or a scumhole bedsit in the urban badlands. Everyone, it seemed, no matter what their station in life, had some itsy-bitsy secret that occasionally kept them awake at night.

      A chair finally scraped on a stone floor and heavy feet thudded to the door. It opened, but only by a few inches, and Ramsdale’s big frame filled the gap. He wasn’t just burly, he was tall – at least six-three – and permanently dishevelled, with a head of shaggy, iron-grey hair and an unkempt grey beard, all of which when combined with his tarnished earring, had a distinct air of the scuzzy. Today’s attire did little to offset this: a shapeless white t-shirt stained by tea or coffee, baggy stonewashed jeans torn at the knees, and a pair of floppy, moth-eaten slippers. He also smelled strongly of tobacco. And it wasn’t just the householder who was a less than wholesome sight. Heck caught a glimpse of the room behind. There was a desktop computer on a table and a wall of lopsided shelving crammed with buff folders, while the floor was buried under a mass of disordered paperwork.

      ‘How can I help, detective?’ Ramsdale asked, regarding Heck over the tops of his reading glasses. His anger had abated a little, but his tone implied hostility.

      ‘Just a quick one really, Mr Ramsdale. We’ve got two people missing in the Pikes.’

      ‘You don’t say.’

      ‘You’ve heard about it already?’

      ‘No, but it’s the silly season, isn’t it? Same thing every year. First bit of really bad weather and all the idiots come out to play.’

      ‘Yeah, well … we’re pretty worried about these two. Their names are Jane Dawson and Tara Cook. Young girls, both aged twenty-four. They were last seen yesterday, rambling south from Borrowdale. As far as we know, they weren’t planning to come down into Langdale, but they could easily have got lost up on the tops. Just wondered if you’d seen or heard anyone coming down the Cradle Track late last night?’

      Ramsdale remained blank-faced. ‘I’m hardly likely to, am I?’

      That was a fairer comment than it sounded. The walls in these old farm cottages were several feet thick, and at this time of year all doors and windows would be closed, while both Ramsdale’s house, and Bessie’s house next door, were a good fifty or so yards from the parking area at the foot of the Track.

      However, Ramsdale’s scathing tone provoked Heck into prolonging the interview. ‘They’d have had to be well off-course, I suppose …’

      ‘That could never happen, could it?’ Ramsdale scoffed. ‘Bunch of kids left to their own devices. Fucking up.’

      ‘These weren’t kids, sir.’

      ‘Oh, excuse me. Twenty-four years old. I bet they’ve seen everything.’

      ‘It just struck me that if they did get lost and come down this way, it would be the middle of the night … so they might have knocked on the door, asked for shelter.’

      ‘Nobody did. I just told you.’

      ‘Maybe a drop of tea … to warm them up?’

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘Or just to ask directions. I’m sure even you wouldn’t have had a problem providing those, Mr Ramsdale.’

      Ramsdale smiled thinly. Despite his blustery exterior, he was no bully; he didn’t reserve his anger for those who couldn’t fight back. But he was intelligent enough to know not to get on the wrong side of the Cumbrian Constabulary. ‘Like I say, no one came here. But if you want to do a thorough job, Detective Heckenburg, it might be worth having a word with Longhorn next door.’

      ‘That’s СКАЧАТЬ