Death on the River: A gripping and unputdownable English murder mystery (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 2) Read online

  Death on the River

  A gripping and unputdownable English murder mystery

  Clare Chase

  Also by Clare Chase

  Murder on the Marshes

  Death on the River

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Murder on the Marshes

  Hear More From Clare

  Also by Clare Chase

  A Letter from Clare

  Acknowledgements

  To Margaret, with thanks for everything; from giving the kids a love of piano to generously sharing your expert knowledge of the Fens. Any mistakes I’ve made in this book are my own.

  Prologue

  Late September, the Fens

  Agneta Larsson watched an eel slide off the dead man’s arm as the police divers removed his body from the car he’d been driving. The classic Alfa Romeo was still partially submerged in the waters of the Forty Foot Drain, dark and swirling where the team worked. Agneta stood at the top of the bank, clothed in her white overalls. She’d observe for now, then move down by the water once the body was pulled clear to give her first impressions. She wouldn’t be sorry to get back to the mortuary at Addenbrooke’s, though. It might be where she cut up cadavers, but there was something far eerier about the Fens.

  The Forty Foot Drain itself was notorious; countless drivers landed themselves in it having come off the raised road that ran along its bank. Problems were more common in winter, when the weather was bad. But last night had been a warm autumn evening. The accident investigators would be working overtime to try to find out what had happened. Of course, the body might provide the answer: a heart attack at the wheel, or too much to drink, leading to a mistake with catastrophic consequences.

  Larsson shivered in the morning air and looked out over the landscape. All that black soil, and the endless sky. Flat land, lonely and bleak, as far as the eye could see. Today, the heavens were almost indigo, and rain fell in thick droplets, the weather finally breaking after a two-week Indian summer. The birds were absolutely silent. It was as though everything had paused, holding its breath.

  And then, at last, the first hint of thunder came; a low, angry rumble, threatening something more. Above it, she could hear the voice of Detective Sergeant Patrick Wilkins, making light of the scene in front of him. She knew it was a defence mechanism, but there were ways and ways of dealing with death. And now he and Detective Constable Max Dimity seemed to be arguing. She zoned out. Wilkins made her feel argumentative too, but this wasn’t the time or the place.

  It wasn’t long before they were ready for her to take a closer look. She made her way down towards the water, edging forwards, her weight on the balls of her feet to avoid slipping on the wet grass.

  The dead man was dressed in a white linen shirt and well-cut casual trousers. The saturation of his clothes meant Agneta could see the shape of his body underneath; the slight thickening of his waist, the lack of firm definition around his ribcage. The smell of the water weeds rose off him.

  His head was bruised – probably where it had hit the steering wheel as he’d crashed. But it was his right hand and arm that surprised her. They bore multiple bruises too, and not the sort she’d expect from the impact of his car hitting the water.

  She thought for a moment about the road, at the top of the bank. There had been no skid marks – no sign that the driver had made any attempt to avoid his fate. That suggested he might have passed out at the wheel – have fallen asleep perhaps, or simply been too drunk to display the normal reactions.

  But the bruises suggested otherwise. They spoke of wild flailing limbs. His left hand and arm wouldn’t have connected with much, but his right would have hit against the partially lowered driver’s side window and the car’s frame.

  The drowned man had thrashed around before he died.

  If he’d suffered from seizures, that might explain the circumstances, but then why would he have been driving? Unbridled fear up on the road would explain the bruising – and the fact that he hadn’t braked. But what could have caused such a reaction?

  She sighed. It was pointless speculating. She needed to cut him open and let the physical evidence speak for itself.

  One

  Late November, Cambridge

  There was something about the face of the woman at Tara’s front door that made her hesitate before opening up. Spyholes always gave a distorted view, and the effect was accentuated in this instance. The woman’s face was right up close, as though she thought she could somehow see Tara there on the other side. Tara knew damn well that she couldn’t, but still something inside her stomach curdled. She’d had the spyhole installed four years earlier, before she’d left Cambridge to train as a police officer, after she’d received a death threat. Her cottage was isolated; her only neighbours were swans, ducks and cattle.

  The woman had wild, dark hair, streaked with strands the colour of storm clouds. It blew sideways across her face in the fierce wind outside on Stourbridge Common. Her eyes were a piercing grey. Whoever she was, she looked pretty damned keen to come in. She battered at the door again as Tara turned the key in its mortise lock and pulled it ajar until it snagged on its chain.

  The woman reached a thin arm through the gap, her wrist sinewy, the joints in her hand rather swollen. ‘Tara Thorpe?’ she said. ‘My name is Dr Monica Cairncross. I want to talk to you about the death of my brother.’

  Tara accepted her ice-cold hand and shook it, but kept the chain on the door. ‘I’m not on duty at the moment. You’d better go to the police station, over on Parkside. They’ll be able to help you.’ How the hell has this woman managed to find my house? But Tara guessed the answer to that before she’d finished having the thought. Her return to Cambridge as a detective constable had been covered in the press.

  ‘It’s you I wanted to speak to,’ the woman said, almost shouting against the gale. ‘There was an article about you in Not Now magazine. I found a copy in the lounge of the hotel where I’m staying.’

  It was as she’d thought. Once again, Tara cursed Giles, the editor of Not Now. The headline he’d used had been ‘Victim joins the Force that saved he
r’. Victim. He knew she’d hate that label. But there was no love lost between her and Giles. The piece had even included a photograph of her house, leaving her wide open to any weirdo who felt like tracking her down. Her place was easy to spot – an isolated cottage on a bit of no-man’s land in the centre of the common.

  ‘The article said you used to be one of Not Now’s journalists,’ Monica Cairncross said, ‘and that you’d trained to be a police officer after you were almost killed.’

  Tara didn’t need to be reminded; she knew the piece almost word for word. It had implied that her cavalier attitude whilst researching a story about a murder victim, Samantha Seabrook, had led her into danger. Anyone reading the piece would believe she’d caused the police who rescued her a whole lot of bother because of her own arrogance. It had also raked over her past; something she’d rather not have highlighted – particularly to any of her new colleagues who didn’t yet know the story.

  ‘If you’re thinking I’m judging you on what I read, you’re right,’ Monica Cairncross said, leaning forward, hard up against the door, her grey eyes intense. ‘It’s those details that made me single you out. It was clear to me that you were determined to get to the truth, even if it meant bypassing the official channels. And using unorthodox methods. And yet now you’ve joined the police force yourself. It made me think you’d understand my concerns and see the matter from both sides. You’re not one to take things at face value.’

  ‘Concerns?’

  The woman nodded. ‘My brother – the author, Ralph Cairncross – was found drowned in the Forty Foot Drain in September.’ She pronounced his name ‘Rafe’. ‘His vehicle had come off the road. As far as anyone knows, he was alone. I don’t believe it was an accident.’

  For a second the name distracted Tara. She knew it – and had heard of the man’s death too – without remembering the precise circumstances. But within a moment she was back in the here and now. The freezing winter air rushed round the door; Tara’s house was badly insulated, as she knew, now that she was finally occupying the place in winter. It would take hours to get it warm again.

  ‘The best thing would be to go to the investigating officer who worked on your brother’s case.’

  ‘I contacted the man at the time.’ Her dry lips were pursed. ‘It was a Detective Sergeant Wilkins. He didn’t take me seriously. I met with him when I flew back to the UK for Ralph’s funeral. I had to return to New Zealand almost immediately to complete my visiting scholarship there but I’ve been doing my best to make headway with him ever since. As he wasn’t helpful when I stood opposite him at the police station, you can imagine he was even less so when I tried to get a response remotely.’

  Patrick Wilkins. Tara’s new boss and a patronising idiot. She’d been trying to give him a chance; it hadn’t worked.

  ‘Contacting me behind DS Wilkins’ back isn’t likely to help your cause,’ Tara said. She was leaning forwards too now, so that the woman could hear her above the wind. The whole thing was getting faintly ridiculous. ‘You’d be best off approaching him again now that you’re around to do that in person. If you don’t get anywhere, you could take your complaint to his superior, Detective Inspector Blake.’

  Blake. The man who’d helped save her life. And who at one point she’d thought was going to ask her out… but who was now back with his wife and their young daughter. The dynamics of her new working environment promised to be complicated. When she’d moved away from Cambridge to train as a police officer, she’d never imagined having to work directly with him or Wilkins. But personal reasons had brought her back. Bea, her mother’s cousin, who’d all but brought her up, had just lost her husband. Now she was struggling to run their boarding house on her own. Bea had been there for Tara when she’d needed her. It was more than time to return the favour.

  Monica Cairncross’s tone didn’t change. ‘I’ve no desire to speak to DS Wilkins again.’

  In fairness, that was relatable.

  The woman met Tara’s gaze once more. Her stare was reptilian. ‘Ralph’s “accident” wasn’t the first. Please can I come in and talk to you?’

  DS Wilkins was in hot pursuit of promotion to detective inspector. Digging her nose into a case that he’d already investigated to his satisfaction would go down about as well as pâté de foie gras at a vegan picnic. It made the prospect more appealing, but all the same, Tara wasn’t sure about Monica Cairncross.

  The woman seemed to sense her scepticism. ‘When I read more about your background I saw you’d been let down by the police when you were a teenager, too,’ she said. ‘You gave them evidence when you were stalked, and they ignored it. They missed catching the person who’d been tormenting you, and they’re still out there.’ For a second she looked over her shoulder, out towards the dark common. When she turned back again her face was just inches from Tara’s. ‘You know first-hand how much can slip through the net because officers have closed their minds or taken shortcuts.’

  Tara rubbed her fingers together to try to keep some feeling in them. ‘All right,’ she said, and took the chain off the door, letting Dr Cairncross in as quickly as possible now, so that she could shut out the bitter winter night.

  She took the woman through to her kitchen. She didn’t want to extend her visit, but she needed a drink to warm herself up. ‘Can I get you a coffee or a hot chocolate?’

  ‘Something stronger, if you have it,’ Dr Cairncross said, pulling out a chair at the table.

  ‘I haven’t.’ It was a lie, but there were limits. She might be a public servant, but this wasn’t a bar.

  ‘In that case nothing. Thank you.’

  Tara made herself a hot chocolate and sat down opposite the woman. ‘You’d better tell me everything.’ It would be the quickest way of getting her house back, but in truth, there was something compelling about Monica Cairncross too.

  ‘The week before he drove off the road, on a clear, calm, September night,’ she paused, presumably to make sure Tara had got the point, ‘he was nearly killed by electrocution.’

  Tara found herself pulling a notebook and pen from her jeans pocket. She’d got changed the moment she’d come in from work. She’d enjoyed being able to wear more stylish clothes since she’d moved into CID, but at home her outfits were restricted by the temperatures in her cottage. It was back to an unvaried uniform: this time of jeans ‘teamed’ with an assortment of warm jumpers. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He put on a lamp in his garage – an old one, but one that he used quite regularly – and got an almighty shock from it. Jolted him across the room, apparently. I believe it had been tampered with. Why hadn’t he had any trouble with it before, otherwise? He mentioned it to me in an email and I told him to watch out. He took no notice, and by the end of the following week he was dead. He was an assured driver, and he knew the road well. Some of the banks out in the Fens are far narrower than the Forty Foot.’

  ‘What makes you think someone would have wanted to harm him?’

  ‘He created waves, Constable Thorpe. He lived an unconventional life; the sort that would make him a target. But although he was a public figure, my mind always ran closer to home when I thought of those most likely to do him harm. My sister-in-law, or their daughter.’

  Their family parties must be fun. ‘Do you have any evidence for that?’

  ‘I heard my niece say she wished he were dead.’

  That wasn’t what Tara would call evidence. She’d heard plenty of other kids shout similar abuse at their parents. It didn’t mean they were about to act on the matter. ‘I presume you mentioned the lamp incident to DS Wilkins?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He mumbled about faulty wiring and said that it wasn’t uncommon for “the bereaved” to look for someone to blame.’ Her mouth was tight. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of a detective being qualified to psychoanalyse people. I didn’t appreciate his efforts. And I had the impression his point about the wiring
was based on supposition rather than fact. He wouldn’t confirm that he’d checked.’

  Tara could imagine that. He probably hadn’t. ‘And did you ever contact Patrick Wilkins’ boss, DI Blake?’

  Monica Cairncross shook her head. ‘I decided you’d be the best person to talk to next. I’m staying locally until everything is sorted out to my satisfaction.’

  Tara could have done without the favour. She just wanted to go out in the morning, do her job, and then retreat inside her cottage. And for everyone else to back off. All the same, it was a novelty to find someone who wanted to talk to her in preference to an older – or more male – colleague.

  She sighed. ‘Where was your brother travelling, the night he died?’

  The woman nodded, as though Tara had given in, and her cooperation had never seriously been in doubt. ‘He was on his way back from a social gathering made up of a group of young academics and free-thinkers,’ she said. ‘They were all his fans – his entourage, if you like. He called them the “Acolytes”. They’d gathered at a house Ralph owned, out in the Fens. He’d travelled there earlier on – in the late afternoon – from his place on Madingley Road.’ A moneyed, leafy main route into Cambridge, full of large detached houses, set well back from the street. ‘He left my sister-in-law and niece at home.’