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  ‘Christ. Excuse my language. She was only here – when was it? – Monday, I think.’

  ‘Sister Grey?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The nurse was obviously shaken.

  ‘I need to get as much information about Mrs Tring’s daughter’s last movements as I can. I’d like to speak to your staff. I have reason to believe that Mr Warren Downs visited his grandmother too?’

  The nurse thought. ‘I’m not sure. You’re better asking Nurse Richmond. I remember the daughter well. And I remember them arguing. But I don’t remember a young man. I think Nurse Richmond had more to do with Mrs Tring, you’ll need to ask her.’

  ‘Arguing?’ Kelly asked. ‘Is Nurse Richmond on shift?’

  ‘They argued a lot. I don’t know what about. Nurse Richmond is in with Mrs Tring, laying out the body. She was with her when she passed, thankfully. I’ll get her.’ Sister Grey walked away.

  Nurse Richmond came out of the room with the sister, and walked towards Kelly. The two nurses appeared to have a good relationship and talked animatedly. Sister ran a tight ship. With formalities over, she left them to complete her duties, and Kelly asked the nurse about Warren.

  ‘Yes, he did come a few times,’ the nurse said.

  ‘And Mrs Tring’s daughter?’

  ‘She was here a lot, but they fought constantly, so she spent most of her time in the canteen,’ said the nurse. Kelly made notes.

  ‘Did you hear what the arguments were about?’ Kelly looked at the nurse’s badge. ‘May I call you Amy?’

  The nurse nodded. She was clearly put out, and probably had a million things to do, but she also wanted to be helpful. She ran her hand through her short hair and put her hands on her ample hips. Together with Sister Grey, these two were a formidable force.

  ‘Yes. I do. It was always money. I didn’t eavesdrop; it was obvious – I mean, the whole ward heard it. So when I next went in, I asked Mrs Tring if she was alright – after her daughter had gone – and she told me that she wanted to leave her money to her grandson, and that she’d changed her will. It hadn’t gone down well with her daughter.’ Nurse Amy raised her eye brows knowingly as she spoke. Kelly figured that the nurse enjoyed a bit of gossip, and it was something to talk about when she was changing beds.

  ‘Thank you, Amy. Can I give you my card, in case you remember anything? Especially if Warren turns up, I’d really like to speak with him. Anything at all. Did she have any other visitors?’ Kelly asked.

  The nurse thought carefully. ‘No. She didn’t. Can I go now?’ she asked.

  ‘Just one more thing. When did Mrs Tring become dazed and confused? She seemed to have deteriorated quickly,’ Kelly said.

  ‘She started to slip away yesterday. She’d asked for her daughter.’ The nurse smiled and walked away, keen to get on with her duties.

  Kelly closed her notebook and made her way out of the ward.

  Chapter 11

  Kelly drove back to Eden House. She was keen to assemble her team and get an update.

  DS Umshaw had managed to get hold of the reverend of the church in Watermillock. He’d been on holiday when Moira was found, which explained the closure of the church. He was in shock, but keen to help the inquiry, and he was due back tomorrow.

  The sun was beginning to lower in the sky, shining brightly through every window in Eden House, and it made everything the familiar orange of summer. The red sandstone of Penrith became more vibrant, and the town slowed for the evening. Most offices were closing up, but Kelly had a lot of work to do. She had no intention of going home early, but as long as her team had written their reports for the day, then there was no reason why they couldn’t be allowed to leave. She wanted to give them as much time as she could now, because if the case dragged on, none of them would be leaving early.

  There’d been nothing of interest flagged up from interviews in and around Watermillock, and most of the day’s jobs had been collated. The whiteboard, as well as HOLMES was up to date, and Kelly decided to let her team go home and get some rest. They couldn’t live without the dynamic reasoning engine named after the celebrated sleuth. Kelly marvelled at how much manpower it would take to check and double check the facts that the software was able to churn around electronically without breaks or sleep. Their mood was sombre. A press release had been given from Clifton Hall and Kelly picked up the phone to call Cane. She had plenty of things to do, but they all had an order and none of them (at the moment) could be done in the middle of the night.

  Journalists from as far as Manchester had begun arriving in the area: it wasn’t just the rarity of such a crime in the Lake District, it was the nature of it. They had an attention seeker on their hands, and with twenty-four hour news on loop; it was bees to a honey pot.

  After her call, Kelly sat alone in the incident room, sipping from a cup of water, wishing it was something stronger, and began drawing diagrams and links on a piece of paper around Moira Tate’s name. Personally, she’d discounted James Tate after meeting him, but his name would stay on the board until his involvement was disproven. She wrote the names of the reverend, the nurses caring for Catherine Tring, and Warren Downs, as well as James Tate’s first wife and their children. They’d been interviewed and Kelly read the transcripts. Nothing of note flagged up, and the interviewing officers had recorded their impressions that the family wasn’t overly moved by the horrific news. Kelly’s theory was panning out: there was no love between James Tate’s first and second wives. Moira emerged as a woman who had opinions, and cared little for those she offended.

  An MO formed in Kelly’s mind, but she’d need the autopsy results to flesh it out. She took off her shoes and stretched. She sat back deeply in the chair, put her bare feet up on a table, and looked at Moira’s photo – taken when she’d been alive. She then flicked through the photos taken at the dump scene, and she noticed that the essence of Moira – her character – had been preserved. The vision of the woman alive was very similar to the vision of the woman dead, in the sense that her personality hadn’t been rubbed out. She was proud and confident. The body hadn’t been hacked, ruined, or destroyed in a rage. Apart from the dirt in the nose and mouth (which had been done very neatly), and the missing fingertips, which had again been done expertly, Moira was…tidy. Yes, that was the word, thought Kelly…she’d been left tidy.

  But Kelly didn’t pretend to know what it meant, she was merely the observer and gatherer of evidence. Only when the two began to match, would she be able to interpret any of the information at all.

  She wondered if Ted Wallis had finished the autopsy yet, she knew he’d call her as soon as he had, and they were well overdue a catch up. Ted Wallis was a man who was good to be around, he had the ability to slow things down, so they meant something, he made Kelly feel calm – and not many people could do that. Maybe it was something to do with his profession: the phlegmatic composure needed to work through a body and all its parts, not missing a single fibre or residue. The purity of examining life at its very tiniest form: tissue.

  Kelly had seen one autopsy and that was enough.

  The first thing that had hit her was the smell. It was the same smell that had taken her by surprise (it always did) under the tarpaulin at Watermillock: the sweet waft of dead blood. In her haste, she’d forgotten to put Vicks under her nostrils. The second thing that struck Kelly about an autopsy was the quiet. The morgue was such a peaceful place – and so should it be – and business was mostly conducted in silence. Of course, the coroner spoke into his or her microphone from time to time, but even that was done gently, and assistants worked autonomously and diligently in the background.

  She guessed that the operation performed on the dead was less frenetic than those performed on the living. She’d witnessed operating theatres in full swing, full of professionals – all fulfilling different roles – buzzing around the place, barking instructions and shouting statistics. A post-mortem operation was different. There was no rush: the patient wouldn’t go into card
iac arrest, nor would they react badly to the anaesthesia. An autopsy couldn’t save a life, but it might explain a death.

  The next thing she remembered was the saw. Kelly had never had a weak stomach: she’d shot, plucked and drawn countless game birds with her father, and the touch of butchered meat didn’t disturb her, in fact the penchant for veganism in the capital positively disturbed her, and it was good to be back among carnivores again.

  But watching a human being butchered was not what Kelly had expected, and she knew that whoever had sliced the tops of Moira’s fingers off had a taste for it: they were not only unshrinking in the face of atrocity, they were also precise and talented.

  She padded over to her bookcase and retrieved a book written by an eminent crime scene investigator called Margaret Steiner, because something had jogged her memory. Kelly had loved reference books since she was a little girl, and it didn’t really matter what they were about; it wasn’t so much the topic that impelled her to trawl through a thousand pages of facts, it was the consuming of them. And most of it stuck. Occasionally, like now, something would trigger a fact learned long ago that became relevant, and she’d flick through her collection until she found it.

  There it was. 1992: the murder of five young women in Massachusetts, USA. All the women had dirt pushed into their various orifices: eyes, nose, mouth and even anus. Margaret Steiner’s theory was that the murderer was tidying up. Death was a messy business and bodily fluids drained everywhere at the moment of expiration. So, the slicing was tidy, the body was tidy, and the orifices were tidy. Someone who went to such lengths to keep their work so methodical and well ordered, must be very proud indeed. A bit like Moira herself.

  And pride always precedes a fall.

  Chapter 12

  Ted Wallis was more than happy to meet for a pint.

  It was a happy diversion for Kelly, but it meant that she could work at the same time. She’d checked in with her mother, and she and Nikki were happily eating fish and chips. For tonight, at least, there was calm, and she decided that she could afford the time away from the house. She may get judged later, but she didn’t really care. Kelly surmised that as soon as her mum texted her and said that she was ready for her bed, then Nikki wouldn’t be there for much longer, and it’d be safe for her to return, but not before.

  Kelly kept a few toiletries at work, and she went to the bathroom to freshen up. She topped up her makeup and sprayed some perfume. As she looked in the mirror, she noticed a few lines under her eyes and she accentuated her smile to see how deep they were. Her large brown eyes didn’t need much mascara but she put it on anyway, and swept a little blush on her cheeks. Her suntan made her look fresh, but she applied some lipstick anyway. She took down her hair and ran her fingers through it to plump it up. Despite having worn the skirt and blouse for close to twelve hours, she was happy with the way she looked. Not that it would matter to Ted Wallis, who was thirty years her senior, but it wasn’t about that; it was about how she felt. It was like body armour: the better she felt about herself, the less shit could stick. The tinge of pain, felt when she thought about London, was fading.

  She walked to the pub in the centre of town; she could grab a cab home. Ted said he could make it by around eight o’clock, as he was driving from Carlisle. He’d bought a place in Penrith and this surprised Kelly. She didn’t know much about his personal life, and she wondered that, if he was married, did his wife know he had a place in Penrith?

  The air was cooler now, but it was still warm enough for Kelly not to need her jacket, she carried it over her arm for later. Traffic was negligible, as most workers had left the centre, but there were still plenty of tourists milling about and at this time of year, the shops closed late, the light from their dressed windows flooding onto the streets. The best views were to be had from the Beacon, but on a clear day like today, tourists posed for photographs with the mountains as a backdrop all over town. She was used to being asked to take photos for people, and she did it with pleasure. For fifteen years she’d forgotten about the same views, and it still bemused her. Now, after only a year, they were her backdrop again, and she felt at home. She was forgetting the smell and the shapes of the city.

  The pub was fairly busy and, as always, a woman alone attracted attention. Kelly had enjoyed the anonymity of the capital: no-one cared if a woman walked into a bar alone, but here, it raised eyebrows, and it made Kelly smile. Men moved aside for her, and allowed her to get to the front of the queue, it was such a dated gesture, but one that amused her. It was reassuringly familiar.

  She ordered a pint of Bray, locally brewed across the M6, and a few men nodded their approval. She took her drink and found a seat with a table. She looked at her watch, and it was gone eight. Ted should be here any minute. She watched the frequenters of the pub and ten minutes had passed without her realising it. The clientele was eclectic. A group of youngsters played pool, walkers compared photos on their iPhones, and singles eyed each other up.

  She saw Ted come in and caught his eye. He was a man who looked exactly how one would expect a senior pathologist and Home Office Coroner to look: deliberate, well dressed, and in charge. She stood up and he strode towards her. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. He kissed her on both cheeks and this was one thing that reminded her of London: everyone kissed in greeting. Up here, it was still seen as namby-pamby or ‘posh’. To Ted, it was just good manners.

  ‘I see you’re alright for a drink, Kelly. It’s good to see you, it’s been too long,’ he said. Some of the men at the bar watched them, and Kelly could tell that it was assumed that she was meeting her older sugar daddy for a date. Let them think it, she thought.

  ‘It’s good to see you too, Ted,’ she replied. He went to the bar, and the men parted once more, jealous of the much older man.

  When he came back, he sat down opposite her and took off his tie. ‘That’s better,’ he said. His face was tanned, despite spending long hours in his vault. Kelly assumed he played golf or something equally fitting for his age and demeanour. He wore a tailored suit, with a white shirt, and the tie he’d taken off was expensive. His cuff links were gold and he smelled of a decently branded cologne. His smile was wide and genuine, and he immediately disarmed Kelly. His hair was a soft grey and Kelly imagined that he was quite the catch in his day. He had large brown eyes and well-manicured hands; like a lawyer or a banker.

  ‘So tell me, Kelly, how’ve you been?’ he said.

  ‘It’s all good, Ted,’ she lied, and instantly regretted it. ‘In fact, that’s not entirely true. We found out that Mum has cancer,’ she said. She felt at ease with him and the words came out naturally.

  ‘That’s terrible news, Kelly. So soon after your father,’ he said.

  It had been three years, but it felt like less. Ted put his hand on top of hers and he didn’t have to say much at all. She knew that he was well meaning, and, at his age, he must be thanking something up above that he was fit and well. He wasn’t even seventy, and so nowhere near old, but cancer didn’t tend to check details first. He must be the same age as Wendy, but she’d been down that route before: the unfairness of it all, the random nature of cancer’s rampage, and it got her nowhere. There was simply no sense to it.

  ‘Did you know my dad?’

  Ted paused. He remembered Wendy well. He recalled her long emerald green dress, dancing with her husband at Wasdale Hall. Kelly had the same look: the intense brown eyes, the honey-tinged auburn hair, and the nipped-in waist. It must have been twenty years ago.

  ‘Barely, but I met him on a few occasions. The old Earl, at Wasdale Hall, used to throw grand balls every year and I was invited. Your father, being a respected member of the force, was invited too and I remember your mother. You look like her.’

  Ted’s voice was comforting. It was slow and measured, unlike any other around Kelly at the moment. She was surrounded by people who shouted down hospital wards, barked into phones, dominated meetings, and demanded answers. This was differ
ent and most welcome. She sipped her pint.

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  Ted nodded at Kelly’s beer.

  ‘Good choice, I’ve got the same,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know you owned a place in Penrith,’ she said. She was prying but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘I like the place,’ he said. ‘I’m no longer with my wife, so I thought I deserved a treat, I come and walk in The Lakes when I can. I’m doing the 214 Wainwrights.’

  ‘I’m impressed, Ted. I’d love to do them all. It’ll probably take me twenty years, the way I’m going. I’m sorry about your wife.’

  Kelly was intrigued. She assumed that people who divorced in their late sixties had simply grown tired of one another. She wondered what Ted’s story was.

  ‘I’m not, Kelly, I should have done it years ago,’ he said. Kelly showed mock irreverence and Ted spread his hands.

  ‘The children aren’t children anymore, it was time,’ he said.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Kelly thought of the tension between her own parents, and wondered if John and Wendy Porter would have been happier apart. Nowadays, everybody gets divorced, or that’s how it feels. But two generations ago, it wasn’t like that. People stayed together for life. For better or for worse.

  She was glad she wasn’t married. Maybe that’s what pissed her sister off so much; that Kelly had only herself to think about. Matt, Nikki’s husband, was a bit of a twat – like her own Matt the Twat in London – how ironic that she had to go all that way to find her own.

  She and Ted were essentially colleagues, here to discuss murder, but it felt like they were just two people sharing space and time. They’d spent so much time together last year, and all for the wrong reasons. They’d met for drinks occasionally, and they’d discussed the weather and the fells. But they always got round to murder.

  ‘So, Moira Tate,’ Kelly spoke first. Ted shook his head.