The Night Book Page 5

  ‘Of course I have. The businessman. Major player. Isn’t he much older than her?’

  ‘Yes. He’s also probably the richest man in the Lake District.’

  ‘Oh well, no chance there then. Pity. She’s gorgeous. What’s someone like her doing stuck up here?’

  His boss frowned. ‘Less of the stuck up here if you don’t mind. We were radio station of the year last year, I’ll have you know. And Meriel’s show doesn’t just go out locally – it’s syndicated. I think everywhere except London takes it now. Anyway, you’ll just have to worship from afar, matey. Like I said, she’s taken – and by a bloke with more money than you’ll earn in a hundred lifetimes.’

  Seb shook his head. ‘Money isn’t everything. Poverty has its virtues. And I have youth on my side. Maybe I can persuade her to give someone closer to her own age a look-in.’

  ‘Stroll on, sunshine.’

  Meriel immediately understood why the girls in the office kept going on and on about Sebastian Richmond.

  He was quite the package. Probably five or six inches taller than her – she was five-eight – and slim-hipped in black Levis and matching black trainers. He was wearing a tight-fitting, off-white cheesecloth shirt, and dirty-blond hair hung in a ragged fringe above intelligent blue eyes.

  He was making a complete idiot of himself reading the news, mispronouncing everything and getting the time check all wrong, and she was pretty sure that was because of her. She was perfectly aware of the effect she could have on men, and the truth was that she’d made a special effort.

  When she got into her car that morning and heard him on the breakfast show, she realised he’d be the newsreader for her segment later, so she’d found time to dash into the bathroom on her way in.

  This is ridiculous, she thought to herself. You’re behaving like a bloody schoolgirl with a crush, Meriel. You don’t even know what he looks like.

  But that hadn’t stopped her from reapplying lipstick, adding some extra mascara, and spraying Yves St Laurent’s Rive Gauche behind her ears. Not that anyone outside her studio would be able to tell she was wearing it.

  Still . . .

  Seb’s shift ended at one o’clock but he stayed on to listen to the lunchtime news. He’d written four or five of the stories and he wanted to hear them go out.

  When the early afternoon music and talk show began, he stuffed his things into his shoulder bag and headed for the lifts. The sliding doors were just closing as he got there and he thrust his arm into the narrowing gap. ‘Hang on! Room for one more inside?’

  The doors juddered before slowly reopening.

  He found himself looking into the dark-brown eyes of Meriel Kidd.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bob Merryman slammed the phone back down and swore out loud as he looked around the empty office. The lunchtime news team had gone to the pub and it would be almost an hour before the next shift came in, working on the early-evening bulletin and the following day’s breakfast show. He was on his own.

  Then, remembering that Seb had only just left, he ran to the window that looked out over the car park below. Yes, there he was, leaning against his sports car talking to Meriel Kidd. The crafty bugger didn’t let the grass grow, did he?

  Heaving the window up, the news editor stuck his head out.

  ‘Seb! Seb! Up here!’ he yelled as the startled reporter looked confusedly around him.

  Seb squinted up against the sun.

  ‘Bob! What is it?’

  ‘There’s been another of these bloody drownings,’ his boss called down to him. ‘Two, in fact – it’s a double one this time. Mother and daughter. Get your arse up here so I can brief you. I need you to get down to Windermere, prontissimo.’

  Seb turned back to Meriel. He’d been working up to ask her to join him for a drink or even lunch at the radio station’s adopted pub in the city centre, but that would have to wait now.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Duty calls. I was going to suggest we adjourn to the Prince of Wales for a post-programme bite of something, but . . . well . . .’

  Meriel smiled back at him. ‘That would’ve been nice. Really. Maybe next week, after my show. I can give you the inside story on what goes on at Lake District FM. Your newsroom’s so busy chasing down stories they don’t see what’s happening in their own back yard.’

  Seb extended his hand. ‘I’d like that. It’s a date – lunch this time next week.’

  His palm and fingers felt warm and dry, Meriel thought, and the ball of his thumb on the back of her hand was firm. A distinct tingle ran up her spine and she caught her breath.

  For the first time in as long as she could remember, she was feeling the faint but unmistakable twitch and pull of desire.

  Seb cursed under his breath as the lift rumbled its way back up to the top of the building. After the initial surprise of seeing Meriel Kidd up close and in such a confined space he had rallied, making her laugh with self-deprecating references to his blooper-strewn bulletin earlier.

  Outside in the sun-drenched car park she’d seemed happy to stand and chat with him, and Seb began to think she might be open to joining him at the pub. Then Merryman had put the kybosh on everything.

  Mind you, it sounded like a hell of a story. Two more drownings – and barely twenty-four hours after the appeal to swimmers to stay in the shallows. The papers had been full of it that morning. He’d have to check with Bob, but he was pretty sure Windermere was the biggest of all the lakes, and it was definitely the busiest. And what if there were more deaths to come? This was rapidly turning into the news sensation of the summer.

  The lift doors opened and Seb walked, then jogged, down the corridor towards the newsroom.

  The long drive down to Windermere had barely left him enough time to establish the basic facts of the story. There’d been a police press conference on the banks of the lake at four o’clock, but all the eyewitnesses to the tragedy were holed up in the police station making statements, so there were no worthwhile interviews to be done yet.

  Now it was almost five and Seb was about to go on air. It was far too late to script anything; he’d just have to busk it as a two-way ad-libbed conversation with the programme presenter up in Carlisle. Once again the network had muscled in on the act and London was taking the interview, live.

  With perfect timing the radio car was off the road having its annual service, so Seb had been forced to find a phone. He’d talked his way into a Bowness-on-Windermere hotel. The manager had been most helpful, guiding him through to a little office behind reception.

  ‘Here you are, Mr Richmond, I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed. This is quite becoming your story, isn’t it? I heard you on the wireless yesterday.’

  Seb, receiver jammed to one ear, listened to the programme’s headlines being read out and then it was his cue.

  ‘But first, breaking news this afternoon: another drowning in Cumbria’s lakes, a double tragedy that takes the death toll this heatwave summer to six in as many weeks. Over to our reporter Seb Richmond, live from Lake Windermere. Seb, what can you tell us?’

  Seb had made a brief list of bullet points on the back of a hotel beermat, but he didn’t really need them. The story virtually told itself.

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘Thanks, Graham. Shock and grief are the dominant emotions here in Windermere this evening as the community struggles to come to terms with yet another tragedy. As you say, this time not one but two lives have been simultaneously lost to this summer’s extraordinarily treacherous waters – seemingly so inviting, and yet proving to be so deadly.

  ‘This afternoon Cumbria police confirmed the deceased as Keswick teacher Mrs Brenda Whately and her nine-year-old daughter, Karen. Details are still being established but it appears that the little girl had ventured some distance from the shoreline and was being summoned back by her mother when she, Karen, got into difficulties and disappeared beneath the surface. Mrs Whately, who police say was a strong swimmer, went to her daughter’s r
escue and made an attempt to dive down to find her, but then also got into trouble. A boat launched from a nearby pier eventually located both mother and daughter, but all attempts to revive them were unsuccessful.’

  The presenter’s voice broke in again.

  ‘I appreciate that it’s very early to speculate, Seb, but is the feeling there that this is another case of people being lured into water that may feel invitingly warm on the surface, but remains dangerously cold just a little way down?’

  Seb considered his answer.

  ‘Well, it’s hard to avoid that thinking, isn’t it? The specific warnings to the public about the treacherous state of the lakes this summer – this unprecedented summer – were only issued yesterday and perhaps Mrs Whately and her daughter were unaware of them. Cumbria Police say hazard signs will shortly be erected along stretches of shoreline popular with swimmers, and they have requested that the media play its part by giving regular reminders of the dangers. I understand that Lake District FM will itself be broadcasting explicit warnings after every hourly news bulletin until conditions in the lakes are judged to have returned to normal. However, with long-range weather forecasts predicting no let-up in the heatwave conditions, that’s unlikely to be any time soon.’

  ‘Seb Richmond in Windermere, thank you.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Meriel loathed her marriage, but she loved her house.

  It was built as a rectory in the late 1880s by a Church of England priest, who lived comfortably on a substantial private income from his family trust.

  The building was beautifully placed. It nestled like a bird beneath its mother’s wing, tucked as it was under a giant shoulder of ivy-clad rock, one of a series of ascending outcrops that stacked their way upwards like a towering natural cathedral. Indeed, the mountain had been known locally as Cathedral Fell long before the clergyman chose to build his home there, naming it Cathedral Crag.

  The Reverend Thomas Bolton had sired a large family. Three sons and five daughters grew up in the rambling rectory. There were ten bedrooms – twelve, if you counted the servants’ quarters at the back of the house – and three enormous reception rooms. The largest of these looked directly east across Derwent Water and towards the distant rooftops and spires of Keswick, which lay to the north.

  When Cameron Bruton had bought the house it was in an extremely run-down condition. He planned to convert it into a hotel, but had never quite got around to it. Soon after he married Meriel he brought her to Cathedral Crag to show her the place. She fell in love with it on the spot.

  ‘Oh darling, can we live here?’

  So for six months builders and decorators had swarmed over the rectory, transforming it into a luxury home. Windows were subtly heightened and widened to make the most of the stunning views over mountains and lake; ceilings were raised and their ornate plaster cornices and mouldings restored to past glories. The woodwormed oak banisters running up both sides of the wide stairway that climbed all the way to the top of the house were ripped out and replaced with expensive teak. The decaying cellar was transformed into a gymnasium and swimming pool and, outside, the mossed and lichened brickwork was sandblasted so that the front of the house glowed rosy red in the rays of the rising sun, just as it had nearly a century earlier when the rector and his family had lived there.

  Meriel adored it.

  She’d been sunbathing on the elevated terrace to the southern side of the house when she realised it was approaching five o’clock in the afternoon, and the breaking story that had robbed her of lunch with Seb Richmond was about to air.

  Meriel was curious. She went inside, switching on the expensive sound system as she passed through the kitchen. Immediately, discreetly hidden wall speakers popped and crackled into life, and she heard the voice of the man she’d been talking to – no, come on now, Meriel, be honest with yourself, flirting with – just a few hours earlier.

  He communicated an unfolding sense of tragedy and she found herself genuinely moved. Mother and daughter. Dear God. How awful.

  When Seb’s report was finished she poured herself a gin and tonic from the drinks tray on the sideboard, added ice from the huge crimson American fridge-freezer in the kitchen, and went back outside to enjoy the last of the sun. Cameron would disapprove of her drinking so early, but he was up in Edinburgh negotiating a property deal so she could do as she pleased.

  As she sank back in the recliner, her thoughts flickered around a triangle formed by three men – David Weir, Cameron, and Seb Richmond.

  She mentally replayed her agent’s acid analysis of the consequences if people discovered she’d been lying through her teeth about her marriage. David had been absolutely right, of course, but he’d merely confirmed what she already knew. If she wanted to keep her career – and the increasingly bright prospects that were now coming into view – the charade of her relationship with Cameron must continue.

  So, for now, her secret diary would remain a work in progress. Although she was beginning to understand that it was not simply a release for her humiliation and anger.

  It was more; it was wish-fulfilment, if in a distorted form. Of course she didn’t want Cameron to die in the grotesque ways she graphically described. She wasn’t a monster.

  But she was coming to realise that deep down, in her secret heart, she did want him gone. She really, really did. It would solve everything. The quicker and cleaner the better. A heart attack, say.

  Actually, that wasn’t entirely out of the question.

  Cameron’s father had succumbed to a fatal coronary some years before, as had an uncle and a first cousin. Heart disease was known to be embedded in the family genes; it was one of the reasons Cameron had installed the gymnasium and pool. That hadn’t prevented him developing a potbelly, but otherwise he was generally fit and healthy. He didn’t smoke and rarely drank spirits. The only occasion Meriel had seen him drunk was that ghastly Christmas the year before.

  She felt ashamed of holding this death-wish over her husband. Keeping a diary was one thing, but picturing him having a heart attack was different – that was something she actually, literally wanted to happen.

  She imagined various scenarios. Finding him dead in bed one morning, or slumped behind the wheel of his car in the drive, or floating in the bath.

  She knew it was wrong of her, but she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that she was frightened of Cameron – he had never struck her – but he was just such an odious person to be married to. The very antithesis of a man like . . .

  Well, a man like Seb.

  Meriel slowly sipped her gin and wondered exactly what was happening to her. She’d been thinking about the young reporter before she’d even set eyes on him, hadn’t she? Entirely because of some silly office gossip. Then, when she’d realised she was finally going to see him in the flesh, she’d gone into the bathroom to get herself all prettified. Why? What exactly did she think was going to happen?

  But actually something had happened, hadn’t it? Seb had, in the nicest possible way, come on to her in the car park. And she’d encouraged him. Oh yes, she’d most certainly encouraged him. Indeed she was the one who’d made their date for next week.

  She’d been thinking about him on and off ever since.

  Meriel stretched out her long legs in the hot sunshine. They were good legs, one of her most attractive features. They looked their best in heels, which was why she’d slipped on a pair earlier. If she was honest she’d been slightly disappointed that Seb could only see her from the waist up when she was sitting behind her studio desk. She’d been glad when he joined her in the lift, and then walked with her outside. She couldn’t help noticing him covertly admiring her figure, and failing to disguise it. He was sweet.

  She found herself thinking about their age difference. Meriel reckoned it was around three years. Nothing, really. A fraction of the gap between her and Cameron; her husband was over a quarter of a century older than her. He’d be sixty in a few months. The difference hadn’t bothered h
er at first; when she married him he was a still vigorous-looking man in his late forties. She’d lost her father to cancer several years before and, looking back, she was in no doubt now that she had been craving a paternal substitute.

  She’d met Cameron at a glittering charity ball in London’s Dorchester Hotel. Meriel was working as features writer for a women’s magazine and was covering the event for them. She found herself seated next to Cameron and he’d been a charming dinner companion, talking very little about himself but asking her what seemed to be genuinely interested questions about her background and emerging career.

  When he led the bidding at the charity auction that followed dinner, she realised just how wealthy he was. He paid thousands for a diamond ring donated by a minor member of royalty and, to her utter astonishment and against all her protests, insisted on presenting it to her.

  ‘I was dreading this evening, quite frankly,’ he confided. ‘But sharing it with such a beautiful woman transformed my expectations. I’m afraid there is a condition attached to this little gift, though; you must agree to have dinner with me tomorrow. I won’t take no for an answer.’

  And so the courtship had begun. Meriel had been won over by Cameron’s old-fashioned charm and attentiveness (‘I feel like I’m going out with Cary Grant,’ she told a friend) and, if she was honest with herself, she couldn’t help but be attracted by the security the rich Scotsman represented.

  When the same friend teased her – ‘It’s obvious, Mel. You’re looking for a sugar daddy’ – she hadn’t troubled to deny it.

  ‘What if I am? Lots of women have a bit of a thing for the older man. I’m not ashamed of it. Cameron makes me feel safe and secure and, yes, his money is part of that. I’m wouldn’t say I’m in love with him, exactly – but I definitely love him. If he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes.’

  He had, and she did.

  But it gradually became clear to Meriel that if she had been looking for a sugar daddy, Cameron had been hunting for a trophy wife. Now he’d acquired one his inner character, so well hidden from her to begin with, had slowly emerged into view. His delight in tormenting and humiliating her was now so fully formed that she wondered whether, even as he assiduously wooed her, he had been fantasising about the time he would harrow and persecute her.