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  The reverend had agreed to meet her, and she walked to the entrance and opened the large oak door. He’d already given a statement, but Kelly wanted to meet him personally. He’d stated that he’d never met Moira and, indeed, no-one in the village knew her.

  The church was cold, and Kelly appreciated the break from the sun. The contrast between the hot summer outside, and the cool, cavernous mausoleum interior was striking. The place was vast inside, thanks to high ceilings and huge stained glass windows. Her small heels made a racket on the stone floor. There was a desk to one side, and she checked her watch and waited, absently flicking through leaflets and flyers. For such a quiet village, it would seem that it had an active community.

  Kelly was struck by the stillness, and it instantly impelled one to quiet. The smell of incense wafted around and she noticed a metal and glass burner near the pulpit. A cloud must have passed outside because light, in shades of blues and yellows, hit the stone floor, as it flooded through stained glass windows. If she’d been religious – which she wasn’t – she might have been moved by the significance. The reverend was late, and she studied the images splayed all over the c hurch more carefully. Images of saints and sinners, and hell’s pitfalls, were everywhere. The potential religious significance of Moira’s death nagged her.

  She heard a door creak, and a man in a long black cassock with a white dog collar round his neck, came towards her. He smiled and held out his hand. He was a small man but thick-set, and Kelly wondered when and how he’d found his calling. He wore glasses but they couldn’t hide his open face.

  ‘Reverend Neil Thomas?’ she said.

  ‘Kelly Porter? Pleasure. Please, let’s go to my office, unless you’d like to walk in the grounds? It’s a wonderful day,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that would be fine. It is gorgeous out there,’ Kelly said, relieved. He beckoned her to lead and she did so. The Reverend Thomas was proud of his church and he pointed out details for her as they wandered towards a bench. It had a metal plate screwed onto the back of the backrest and an inscription: ‘For Hilda Alty. 1909-1973. Missed every day.’

  They sat. Birds chirped, and the reverend waited.

  ‘Reverend, I’d like to ask you some questions about the place. You must know a lot about the village, and, I’m guessing, it’s inhabitants. How long have you been here?’

  ‘Twelve years. I couldn’t believe my luck, being sent here. But now, I’m afraid visitors might come here for something entirely different,’ he said.

  Kelly was sure that if visitors came here on some weird pilgrimage tour of a gruesome murder, then the reverend wouldn’t mind the extra traffic. They could set up a tea shop.

  ‘I’m wondering if there was a reason why the woman was left here. I have reason to believe that this place was chosen on purpose, but from what I can make out, she had no connection with Watermillock,’ she said.

  Kelly didn’t mention the relevance of dump sights, or the fact that she believed it to be a punishment killing – thus flagging up a whiff of religion at least.

  The reverend looked at the sky, as if God would provide him with the key to her quandary. She wished that He would.

  ‘It’s a beautiful place, Miss Porter,’ he began.

  ‘Please call me Kelly,’ she insisted. He carried on.

  ‘I suppose one could think that she was brought here to make peace with God. You could think that it was an act of mercy. Or, it could have been an accident,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think it was an accident, and I don’t think it was mercy. The lady’s husband told us that she was not at all religious, in fact, she was vehemently against it,’ said Kelly.

  ‘So a conversion perhaps?’ said the reverend.

  It was an attractive theory, and Kelly did believe that Moira knew her killer, because he was making a statement about her personality and character. Kelly wondered if the reverend had ever considered becoming a forensic psychologist.

  ‘What do you know about the Romantic Poets, Reverend? Specifically the Lakes poets. I noticed you had some of their work for sale at the entrance.’ The trinkets, pamphlets, maps, guides and sweets for sale in churches had become a normal sight, and there was nothing unusual about this one.

  He looked at her oddly. ‘Has that got something to do with your enquiries, detective, or are you just making conversation?’

  ‘I have reason to believe that they might be relevant.’

  He looked at her questioningly but Kelly divulged nothing further. He knew the score. He looked at the sky once more, thoughtful and introspect, then answered.

  ‘Well, they loved the Lakes. They loved the majesty, the vastness and the fact that in such a wilderness, one was closer to God. Well, perhaps not God, but a god of sorts: their god. The creator, whatever form that came in for them. I think Wordsworth was religious, but they were all more believers in the human spirit. Or they thought they were. In reality, I think they all believed in the God who created all of this.’ He wafted his hands around the churchyard and beyond, to the fells. It was singularly romantic, and Kelly could sit and listen to this man for hours. He must spend much of his time alone, in contemplation and study, but he didn’t seem to mind. His speech was calm and measured. A bit like Ted Wallis.

  ‘I think they were tortured souls, Kelly, looking for the meaning of life, escaping the evils of the time,’ he said.

  The word torture jarred her. ‘What were they escaping from? What tortured them?’

  ‘The degeneracy of industrialisation. Lust for money and capital. The slide of man into a hedonistic and politically crooked existence, where nature was forgotten. Why?’ he asked.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about them, Reverend, is it a hobby of yours?’ she asked. She thought about Moira’s fingers again, and an image of miserly money lenders in Grimm nursery tales came to her, their fingers sticky with money and corruption.

  ‘Absolutely. I love any literature or art to do with the Lakes, it’s the most beautiful place on Earth! I take guided walks on trails following in the footsteps of poets like Wordsworth, and artists like De Breanski.’

  His enthusiasm was infectious. She felt like staying here in this alluring place, discussing poetry and the meaning of life, all day long. But she had a job to do, and despite wanting to spend hours with this reverend-cum-professor, she had to pull herself away. She wondered if, at some point, she could join one of his tours – it could be relevant. Indulgent, but relevant.

  ‘What do you think of this? It’s from Shelley’s ‘The Flower that Smiles Today, Tomorrow dies.’ She showed him the lines that had only yesterday been retrieved from the cavity of a murder victim, and today copied onto clean note paper, and he read them, engrossed.

  ‘This is one of the more depressing elements of Lakes poetry, Kelly. They were all guilty of it: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, although there’s no evidence that Keats ever stayed here for any length of time. They couldn’t help themselves, it was their way of trying to make sense of man’s existence. The Age of Reason tried to do it with science, and the Romantics tried to do it with feelings. It drove a lot of them to opium, I can tell you.’ He laughed.

  ‘So what’s depressing about it? I always thought that the Lakes poets just wrote about the beautiful scenery. What am I missing?’ she asked.

  Kelly had a vision of Coleridge, Shelley and Southey, wasted on hard drugs, on top of Wordsworth’s cottage roof on a heady summer evening, swigging from bottles of Port and reciting their poems to one another. But she still didn’t understand the meaning of the verse clearly.

  ‘I suppose they compared themselves to nature, and always fell short. Ironically, though, they were all narcissists. They espoused poetry that came from the heart, but they were still members of the privileged elite, like all philosophers. Champagne socialists, shall we say.’

  ‘So they were hypocrites?’ Kelly asked.

  The reverend laughed.

  ‘Yes, you could say that. Look, it’s about innocence, and not
being as beautiful as we once thought, and about losing something because it’s essentially tainted.’ He looked at her. His eyes were soft, and his face deeply etched with experience; real and theological. His face was tanned and she imagined him taking groups of walkers around the major sights, reciting lines from verse as they listened attentively. A philosophical theologian was a rarity indeed, well at least one who was so balanced. In all the time he’d taken to answer her questions, he hadn’t once tried to preach to her.

  Kelly was no English graduate like Emma. She’d majored in Biology. But it was beginning to make sense. Especially the notion of being judged.

  Punished.

  ‘How regular are your tours, Reverend?’ she asked. ‘Does anyone help you?’

  ‘Every Friday morning, and yes, my good friend, Professor John Derrent, at the University of Lancaster, comes along now and again, and when he does, he always puts his own spin on things; the walkers love it.’ The reverend was enthused once more, and he became more animated.

  ‘And you follow in the footsteps of the poets?’

  He nodded. ‘Most of them,’ he said.

  ‘Percy Bysshe Shelley?’

  ‘Yes, when we go to Keswick. But he was only here for three months. He didn’t like it and he moved on, finding it not in the least romantic, but tainted and full of tourists. A bit like today, some would argue,’ he said, mischievously.

  ‘And is that what you think, Reverend?’ she asked.

  He thought for a moment before he replied.

  ‘Anything that is beautiful is sought after, and one would like to think that we are the only pursuer. It’s like going to The Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, and getting there, only to find that you have to queue up behind a thousand other people to get a glimpse, when your fantasy was you sitting in front of it, on your own, taking it in, and appreciating the beauty like no-one else could,’ he said. Kelly shivered.

  ‘So their idea of perfection was tainted after all?’ she asked.

  ‘Exactly!’ he said, his eyes twinkling. His accent was from the midlands somewhere, and Kelly wondered if he had a family.

  ‘Do you stay alone in the Vicarage, Reverend?’

  ‘I do. Divorce isn’t picky like God is,’ he said. Sadness tinged the corners of his mouth and his eyes looked glassy.

  ‘Well, I really could stay here all day, but I need to get back to work, I’ll contact you should I need anything further, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch should anything jog your memory – anything at all, even if it doesn’t seem important,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I will. I’ll walk you to your car.’

  ‘Could you write down the name of your professor for me, and your phone number?’ she asked, and passed him a card and her pen.

  He did so. The reverend was right handed.

  She stood up and held out her hand.

  ‘Thank you so much, Reverend. I’ll join one of your tours one day.’

  ‘I do hope so, that would be very fine indeed.’

  As she walked back to her car with him, Kelly thought to herself that she hoped he hadn’t always been religious. It seemed such a waste. She hoped he’d smoked weed and necked vodka at university. She did that a lot with people who fascinated her: made up stories about their past.

  They arrived at her car.

  ‘Is it a close community, Reverend?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, and everybody is in deep shock. I’m organising meetings to bring everyone together so we can grieve as a community. We didn’t know her, but she came to rest here, and it will never be the same,’ he said.

  ‘Have you seen Mr Walker?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve been for several pints of the strong stuff. He’s taken it badly, but he’s a survivor, Conrad is, he’s made of tough stuff.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t put him off his morning routine of coming to sit with his wife.’

  ‘No, he’s here like clockwork, every morning.’

  ‘Good, I was worried about him.’

  They said their goodbyes and Kelly drove away. The lake glimmered in the distance and she considered that the killer had chosen somewhere fairly remote: it wasn’t random. Had he planned the timing too? Perhaps he had watched Conrad Walker go into the churchyard every morning, and placed Moira near his bench. If the community was as close as he said it was, then Kelly wondered why on earth no-one seemed to have seen anything at all. It’s as if Moira was brought here under circumstances shrouded in absolute secrecy, and the whole village had been asleep.

  Chapter 17

  The nurse had been true to her word, and phoned Kelly as soon as Warren Downs appeared at the hospital to visit his grandmother. Instead, the poor bastard had been told that both his mother and grandmother were dead, and one at the hands of a brutal murderer.

  He’d been prepared for the passing of his grandmother – people over eighty were supposed to die, even if you loved them more than anything in the world. But Warren Downs was struggling to process the death of his mother: the finality of it as well as the savagery of it. It wasn’t grief; just shock. The nurse didn’t know the details, and so Warren waited patiently for the detective.

  Kelly was beginning to detest the Penrith and Lakes Hospital. It was a sprawling place, half new, half ancient and crumbling, with corridor after corridor of pale looking people, shuffling along in a half-dead stream of malady and despair. The people in the café looked no happier or better; mothers looked at their iPhones and ignored toddlers demanding more cake, wives worried about husbands, and mothers worried about sons; all looked anguished and dog tired. Kelly made her way to the female medical ward, and was shown to the day room. It was a sparse room, badly decorated, airless, and boasting only one tiny window that overlooked a brick wall. The TV blared out something, albeit quietly, and a man got up from a shabby sofa as Kelly walked in. She knew the room well; her mother had resided on the very same ward, twice.

  He was in his late twenties, tall, with hunched shoulders, and a mass of shaggy hair. He looked as though he’d die of a heart attack, should you speak too loudly, or too directly to him. He looked like the son of a domineering mother. He also looked as though the exertion needed to carry a chair would be too traumatic for him. Pending evidence, she discounted him straight away.

  ‘Warren? I’m Detective Kelly Porter. Pleased to meet you,’ she said, and held out her hand. He took it and it was a limp comparison to hers. He didn’t speak.

  ‘You’ve had quite a shock, Warren, I know. I’m sorry.’ Kelly waited. Warren went to sit back on the shabby sofa. He bit his nails. His hair was unkempt, and Kelly guessed that, by habit, he didn’t wash every day.

  ‘Warren, I’d like to ask you some questions about your mother,’ she said. He looked at her, and for the first time, Kelly saw emotion. It was a mixture of disgust and defiance.

  ‘What was your relationship like with your mother, Warren?’

  ‘What kind of question is that?’ His voice caught Kelly off guard. It was quiet, but aggressive and bitter. It was bigger than him.

  ‘It’s just a question. Some of the nurses have told me that you didn’t visit when your mother was here,’ she carried on.

  ‘It’s none of their business. Why are they telling you stuff?’ He was angry.

  ‘They kind of have to, Warren. I’m a police officer, so it’s in everyone’s best interests to tell me what they know. It’ll help me catch your mother’s killer quicker.’ Kelly had decided that Warren Downs was tougher than he looked, and she played hard. ‘Why did you avoid her, Warren?’

  ‘I couldn’t stand the old bitch. She was a money grabbing leech,’ he spat.

  Kelly remained calm. She thought of the money stuffed into Moira’s vagina. It was a personal, intimate act, full of hate and rage. Fingers sticky with money. The flower that smiles… Vanity.

  ‘To the extent that someone would want to kill her?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had loads of enemies. Start
with her stepchildren, they hated her,’ he said, and looked away.

  ‘As did you, it would seem,’ Kelly suggested.

  ‘Yes. I did. It’s no secret. She…she let everyone down,’ Warren said, quieter now. He softened and looked at his hands.

  ‘Warren, did you kill your mother?’ Kelly pushed him.

  ‘No! Are you accusing me? Jesus Christ, I couldn’t…I…’ He floundered, as if the thought of being seen as a suspect was ludicrous.

  In fact, it was the most natural thing in the world for the victim’s family to be investigated, one by one, until the police were satisfied that they were innocent. The police were used to being lied to by relatives, and investigating them was a matter of course. Only last month, yet another live TV plea had gone out in Leicester for a missing ten-year-old girl. A week later, the police discovered that she’d been killed by her own father: the same father who’d appeared on TV in tears.

  But Warren Downs displayed too much passion to be faking it. His reactions were instant, not contrived.

  ‘So, who do you think did?’ she asked. He wasn’t off the hook yet. ‘Where were you between eight p.m. on Monday, to two a.m. on Wednesday? Can you account for all that time, Warren?’

  ‘No, I can’t. I’m sure that for most of it I was alone, and that looks bad. I didn’t know where my mother was staying. I didn’t see her the whole time Gran was here. I work on the other side of town, in a warehouse, I can give you my shifts. But I live alone, so I can’t get anyone to verify the evenings.’

  The lad was talking as if to a lawyer, and Kelly was inclined to believe him. His body was open, and more relaxed now. But whoever killed Moira was capable of more than mere story-telling, so even if Kelly stared the killer in the face, she wouldn’t be sure.

  Society was full of functional psychopaths, holding down jobs, having families, going on holiday, and buying fried chicken. Whoever killed Moira Tate, Kelly surmised, was probably a damned good actor.