The Night Book Page 3

  ‘Was it actual drowning or an unrelated cardiac arrest? Can you remember?’

  His clerk looked faintly offended.

  ‘Course I can remember, sir. It was just like the poor young lady we’ve been hearing about today. Lungs full of water. She drowned.’

  Timothy Young steepled his fingers and closed his eyes, thinking hard. After a minute he opened them again.

  ‘John, how long have you been clerk here?’

  ‘Thirty-one years, sir.’

  ‘Do you ever remember so many deaths in the water happening in such a short space of time?’

  The clerk shook his head. ‘Not separately, no. We had a ferry go down once, September 1948, I think it was. Five souls lost that afternoon. But I don’t recall three unconnected fatalities in as many weeks, no.’

  ‘And neither of us recalls a summer as fierce as this one, do we?’ The coroner began tapping with his pencil again. ‘I think there is a connection here, John.

  ‘In fact, I think we may have a problem.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AUGUST

  Seb Richmond hadn’t been sacked, but he was still on thin ice. His interview with Margaret Thatcher, thanks to skilful editing by Jess, had been just enough to win him a grudging extension to his probation at Lake District FM – three more months, one last chance to prove himself.

  ‘It’s like living under the fucking Sword of Damocles,’ Seb grumbled on the phone to his girlfriend in London. ‘Honestly, Sarah, if I didn’t have you to talk to, I don’t know how I’d stand it. When can you next come up here?’

  The line crackled.

  ‘Sarah? You still there? Sarah?’

  The voice at the other end had been distinctly subdued since the beginning of the conversation. Now it was almost inaudible.

  ‘Yeah, I’m still here, Seb.’ The line crackled again. ‘The thing is . . . about coming up . . . the thing is . . . look, Seb, I’ve got something to tell you . . .’

  He’d never been dumped before. A week later, as he drove in for the morning news conference, Seb still couldn’t quite believe it had happened to him. He’d always been the one to move on, with all the usual honeyed, hackneyed words and expressions.

  ‘It’s not you, it’s me . . .’ ‘It’s because I love you that I want you to be free . . .’ ‘You deserve someone so much better . . .’

  He had to admit that, after her initial hesitancy, Sarah had certainly got into her stride. She’d been impressively blunt.

  ‘We’re three hundred-plus miles apart, Seb, I hardly ever see you, the last time I came up you slept most of the bloody time – yes, I know you were on breakfast-show shifts, but still . . . All you can talk about is your rotten job and how much you hate it, and anyway, to be quite honest I’ve met someone else and d’you know what? From time to time he actually asks me how my day’s been. Can you believe that? I’m sorry, Seb, but I’ve had enough. Oh, and another thing, you never even think to—’

  Fortunately, he’d called her from the pub.

  Now, Seb parked his Triumph Spitfire two-seater sports convertible in the radio station’s car park and regarded it sadly as he pointlessly locked the door. It was the easiest car in Britain to break into or steal. Back in London he’d thought it looked fashionably urban with a sort of scruffy-to-naff chic about it. Up here in the Lakes it just looked naff. He sighed and made his way through the building’s front doors.

  The news editor was busy handing out the morning’s assignments when Seb walked into the office.

  ‘Ah, Seb. How kind of you to join us. About bleedin’ time. I want you to go down to Kendal. Take the radio car. You’re probably going to be doing a live voice piece into the lunchtime news and I want speech quality, not a crappy phone line.’

  The station only had one radio car. Actually it wasn’t a car, it was a big Ford Transit van with an extendable twenty-foot radio mast on the roof and if you were assigned it, it meant you were on a decent-sized story. Seb brightened up.

  ‘Great. What’s the job?’

  Bob Merryman, a chain-smoking ex-newspaperman from Birmingham, shook his head. ‘Not exactly sure but I’ve got a feeling about it. There’s a press conference at the town hall. It’s at eleven-thirty, which is why I’m pissed off you’re in late again. You’ll only just make it even if you leave now. Get weaving.’ He tossed the van’s keys across the newsroom and Seb caught them one-handed.

  ‘But what’s it about?’ he asked. ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘Not a lot. It’s something to do with these drownings in the lakes this summer. The local freelance guy down there says he’s heard they’re linked in some sort of way and that’s what the press conference is about. The coroner and some hydrographer from Lancaster University are going to make statements. Make sure you record them and take Jess with you to do the edits while you write your script.’

  ‘I can do both.’

  ‘Maybe you can and maybe you can’t. But like I say, I’ve got a feeling about this and I don’t want any fuck-ups, OK?’

  Seb hesitated. ‘Why are you sending me, then? I thought you thought I was still—’

  Merryman lit a fresh cigarette. ‘I’m sending you, Sebastian old chap, because, believe it or not, I actually have the teeniest tiniest fragment of faith in you.’ The Brummie accent was very pronounced. ‘You covered some big stories when you were in London and you did OK. I’ve seen your cuttings. I think you just need something to get your teeth into and get your confidence back. You did good with Thatch the other day. Now piss off before I change my mind. I want you to—’

  Seb was already running down the corridor to find Jess.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jess pushed the ageing Transit to its limits as they thundered down the M6 towards Kendal. All the windows were rolled down in a futile attempt to combat the heat, and the roaring slipstream made it almost impossible for the two men to talk. The needle on the van’s temperature gauge was moving into the red band as they raced past the pretty little market town of Penrith and into the wide, deepening valley that separated the steadily rising Yorkshire Dales to the east from the brooding Cumbrian fells to the west.

  A fretting Seb had neither the time nor inclination to appreciate the savage grandeur that was beginning to unfold around them. ‘D’you still think we’ll make it for eleven-thirty?’ he yelled at the engineer, as Jess indicated for the Kendal turn-off.

  ‘Bloody hell, Seb, how many times? I keep telling you, yes! Only just, though . . . are you all set up?’

  The reporter tapped the compact reel-to-reel tape recorder nestling in his lap and checked the mic connection yet again before giving the thumbs-up.

  ‘Yup. Good to go.’

  To their relief the noise level dropped appreciably as Jess slowed for the exit roundabout.

  ‘Right,’ he said, in a more normal voice. ‘Let’s go through it one more time. When we get to the town hall you run in while I get the mast up and establish the live link to base. When the press conference is over, give me the tape, tell me the sound bites you want, and I’ll get editing while you write your script. Then when we go live, I’ll play them in on your hand cues – just point at me very clearly each time. Got it?’

  ‘Er . . . I think so. I’ve never done a live news insert before, Jess. Hope I don’t screw up.’

  ‘Not with your Uncle Jess with you, you won’t. Ah, here we are – town centre coming up. Out of my way, matey.’ Jess performed a hair-raising overtaking manoeuvre around a lumbering livestock lorry full of bleating sheep, and suddenly Kendal was before them, the pale stonework of the town hall’s Victorian clock tower rising above the old rooftops, its spire gleaming dully in the baking heat of an already aggressive mid-morning sun.

  Directly beneath it, a story was about to break.

  Timothy Young had toyed with the idea of issuing some kind of public warning about swimming in the lakes, but in the end he decided against it. He only had a hunch that the cluster of deaths that summer were somehow
connected, and that was hardly evidence.

  But as soon as he recorded his verdict of accidental death on the girl who had drowned in Buttermere, he phoned his daughter in London.

  Christine was a systems analyst in the City (she’d explained her job to him many times but he still didn’t really understand what it was she did) and after a few minutes of father–daughter banter he came to the reason for the call.

  ‘Do you remember that professor when you were a student at Lancaster? You know, the one with a bit of a thing for you, the old devil.’

  Christine laughed. ‘He wasn’t old and he wasn’t a devil either, Dad. But yes, of course I remember Brian. We went out for a few months. He was only about ten years older than me. He was nice.’

  ‘Didn’t he try to get you to switch courses? Study under him, if that’s the right expression.’

  His daughter laughed again. ‘He certainly did. It wasn’t entirely self-serving of him, though. I was fascinated by his subject – hydrography. You know, the study of seas and rivers and lakes. When Brian discovered our family lived above Bassenthwaite he was incredibly interesting about it and the Lake District generally. He used to joke that at least it couldn’t possibly be a dry subject.’

  ‘Yet you drifted apart.’

  ‘Oh, very funny, Pops, ha-ha! Anyway, why are we talking about Brian? It was years ago. Water under the bridge – there, gotcha back!’

  Her father smiled. ‘One-all . . . Look, Chrissie, I need to speak to him, or someone like him. An expert on lakes. Something’s going on up here that’s not right. Do you still have his number?’

  ‘Gosh, how intriguing! Yes, I think I do. Give me a sec.’

  Half an hour later Kendal’s coroner was talking to Professor Brian Parker of Lancaster University.

  And, like the coroner’s daughter, the professor was intrigued.

  ‘Thanks so much for this, Brian. I’m amazed you’ve turned things round so quickly – it’s less than a fortnight since we first spoke.’ Timothy smiled gratefully at the professor as they prepared to go into the press conference together. The chief executive of the county council was with them.

  ‘Well, these guys helped,’ Parker said, nodding at the official. ‘They came up with the boats and paid for most of the equipment I needed. And it wasn’t that difficult to do, technically. The results were a hell of a surprise, though, in this country and this far north. Not what I was expecting at all. Just goes to show how profound this summer’s effects are becoming on surface-water temperature. Everything’s being influenced – human behaviour, aquatic reproduction cycles . . . I’m going to write a paper on it.’

  The coroner turned to the council boss. ‘And you’re happy, Peter, with the public warning I want to give? You don’t think it’ll hit the tourist trade here?’

  The executive shook his head. ‘No. Bookings are solid and this thing in itself won’t stop people coming. Anyway, we have a duty to get the information out there. We’ve got to do something to stop these drownings.’

  ‘Right.’ The coroner looked at his watch. ‘It’s exactly half past. Let’s get in there.’

  Ninety minutes later, inside the radio car, Seb was ready. Just. The press conference had only wrapped up a quarter of an hour ago – it had overrun due to an unexpected development – but somehow he’d managed to scribble down his script while Jess edited the tape in an incredible blur of razor blades and spinning spools.

  As if he wasn’t nervous enough, Seb had just been told that the network’s main lunchtime news was going to take his report simultaneously along with his own station. He’d be broadcasting live from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.

  He swallowed and held his handwritten script a little tighter.

  In his earphones he could hear the final words of the introduction to him from the presenters in both Carlisle and London. They were synchronised to the second and suddenly the two voices – one male, one female – were simultaneously saying his name.

  ‘. . . live from the Lake District, Sebastian Richmond.’

  Bugger. He’d told them he wanted to be catch-lined ‘Seb’. Too late now. He took a deep breath and suddenly, miraculously, his nerves evaporated.

  He had a story to tell.

  ‘Thank you . . . Today’s press conference was called by local coroner Dr Timothy Young in the wake of a spate of drownings here in the Lakes. Dr Young has become concerned at the unusually high number of summer deaths in the water and took it on himself to commission an emergency survey of all three lakes involved, looking to identify any possible connection.

  ‘As if to underline his concerns, and in a moment of extraordinary drama here this morning, news came of a fourth drowning that took place earlier today. Here’s how that story broke as Dr Young was about to introduce expert testimony about the previous tragedies.’

  Seb pointed with a chopping motion at Jess and the engineer instantly fired off the first tape. Timothy Young’s clear, confident tones could be heard being interrupted mid-sentence by a low, almost inaudible voice and the faint crackling of paper.

  ‘. . . without further delay I’d like to hand you over to Professor Br— I’m sorry . . . bear with me for one moment, please, I’m being handed a note.’

  After more rustling and what sounded like a sharp intake of breath and a muttered ‘Good Lord,’ the coroner continued, more slowly this time.

  ‘I have just been informed that the body of a man, believed to be aged between thirty and forty, was recovered earlier this morning from Derwent Water, several hundred yards from the shore near Portinscale. Early indications are that the victim had drowned, but of course there will need to be an autopsy followed by an inquest to establish the full facts.’

  A low murmur could be heard sweeping through the roomful of journalists, and then the tape spooled out and Seb was back at the mic again.

  ‘If, as seems likely, the latest death turns out to be drowning-related, it would bring the number of such incidents in the waters of the Lake District during this long, hot and unprecedented summer of ’76 to four. This represents a record number for a single season. Causing increasing concern is the fact that the frequency of the tragedies appears to be accelerating – and that was before this morning’s shock news. Meanwhile Dr Young told the press conference that recent expert surveys of three lakes – Buttermere, Bassenthwaite and Thirlmere – appear to show a hitherto hidden and sinister cause. The scientist conducting those surveys, leading hydrographer Professor Brian Parker, had this to say.’

  Seb pointed almost fiercely at Jess and the second tape began to play. Parker’s flat, Lancastrian vowels filled Seb’s earphones as they simultaneously rippled across the entire nation.

  ‘Morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll keep my remarks as free of jargon as I can. As you know, the entire UK has been enduring – I think we can all agree that’s the appropriate word for it now – exceptional high temperatures for many weeks. Not only has there been no rainfall, there has been virtually no cloud cover. So the sun has been shining more or less unbroken from sunrise to sunset, and at a time of year when it is at its highest point in the sky.

  ‘As you would expect, this has directly resulted in a rapid warming of the lakes, which to some extent is normal at this time of year. However, the heat, which as I say has continued without even the briefest of interruptions, has resulted in an exceptional effect – one I doubt has occurred here in living memory.

  ‘The entire upper surface of these waters has now been superheated to a remarkable degree. The lack of any significant breeze has denied the possibility of any wind-chill effect and nights have been exceptionally warm. Each successive day the sun’s rays strike the waters, for hours at a time, so the temperature inexorably rises a little further.

  ‘This produces a dangerously misleading effect for swimmers, because however far they venture out into the lake, they feel they are surrounded by pleasant, balmy water. As indeed they are.

  ‘But, what they do not realise is
that these conditions are what we might describe as skin-deep. Directly beneath the superheated layer lies a body of water that is almost as cold as it is in mid-winter. In itself, that is not necessarily dangerous. Many hardy swimmers take to the lakes in winter and are invigorated by the experience. The danger comes in the absolute contrast between moving from the unprecedented surface warmth to the freezing cold just beneath it.

  ‘It is the coroner’s belief – and I concur – that these deaths are occurring when strong, confident swimmers decide to dip down deeper below the surface and encounter the intensely cold water that lies there. They may gasp in shock – hence the inhalation of water and subsequent drowning – or, in other cases, suffer a cardiac arrest.’

  The second tape spooled out and Seb was speaking again.

  ‘The coroner acknowledged that swimmers, particularly strong ones, might still be tempted by the unprecedentedly warm waters to venture further into the lakes than is usual. He had this message for them.’

  He pointed towards Jess for the last time, and Timothy Young’s calm, clear tones returned.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how good a swimmer you may be: if you move from the upper warmth into the deadly cold immediately beneath, it could be the last thing you ever do; your body will respond automatically to the shock. As coroner for Kendal, and all the beautiful Lakeland countryside that surrounds it, I have no wish to preside over one more of these immensely sad incidents. I implore all swimmers – please, stay close to the shore.’

  Seb was back at the mic.

  ‘This is SEB Richmond reporting live from Kendal for Lake District FM, and Network News.’

  The red transmission light winked out and Jess grinned at him.

  ‘What did I tell you? Piece of piss.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘This is Seb Richmond reporting live from Kendal for Lake District FM, and Network News.’

  Meriel switched the Mercedes’ radio off as she pulled into the railway station car park and nosed slowly around for a space. Seb Richmond. Yes, she was aware of him; the new boy in the newsroom, having a bit of trouble settling in, apparently.