Page 4 of The Girls in the Lake
Smiling, she was out of there as fast as she could walk and made her way back along the long corridors to get to the mortuary. As she keyed in the number on the keypad she was hit by the strong smell of fresh coffee and smiled with delight. Now all she had to do was to eat her breakfast and try to find out why Abe was acting so strange.
He was in the staffroom waiting for her. She sat down and slid a box across the table towards him. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten yet; if you don’t want it you can warm it up for lunch.’ She winked at him.
‘Thanks, Beth, you shouldn’t have.’
He passed her the bottle of tomato sauce and she smothered her sandwich in it. He shuddered.
‘Why don’t you have some food with your ketchup? It’s gross you know, watching it drip out of the sides of your toast.’
Beth choked, trying not to laugh and splatter fried egg everywhere. ‘I thought you had a stomach of steel! I’ve told you, when your cooking skills are as dire as mine you need all the ketchup you can get.’
‘You’re not that bad a cook.’
‘You haven’t had the pleasure of an actual meal. Sandwiches, pasta and packed lunches I can do.’
They ate in silence and when Beth was satisfied Abe was done, she stood up and poured out two mugs of coffee.
‘Now we’ve both eaten and are ready to face the day are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
He moved his head up and down slowly.
‘Why are you acting strangely?’
‘I am?’
She arched one eyebrow at him.
‘They brought a suicide victim in from the prison late last night.’
‘It’s been a while since we’ve had one of those; why is it making you so edgy?’
She took a sip of coffee, then another. Feeling her brain begin to kick into action as she put Abe’s behaviour and a prison suicide together, she came to a revelation that made her blood run cold.
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She stared down into the mug she was holding, a multitude of emotions rushing through her veins towards her brain. Guilt, despite the fact she had nothing to be remorseful about, closely followed by a surge of relief. She hid her face behind her coffee cup. She needed time to process this information and decide how she was going to handle it. Abe stood up and left her alone, taking his mug into the mortuary with him, and for that she was thankful. A few minutes, she just needed a few minutes and then she’d be good to go.
Six
Sitting at his desk sipping the mug of coffee his colleague, DC Sam Thomas, had made him to take away the chill he was feeling, Josh scanned through the scene photographs from the marina. He was erring on the side of accidental death, but the final call would be down to Beth.
He was waiting for DC John Paton to get back from the hospital, where the witness who’d pulled the victim out of the lake had been taken. Looking down at his notebook, Ethan Scales seemed like a decent lad; he worked out of the Freshwater Marine Biology site on the shore of Lake Windermere, and the boat belonged to a friend of his. It sounded as if they’d been doing what most twenty-year-olds do, drinking and having a good time. His phone began to ring, so he answered it and stood up.
‘We’re here. I’ve taken him to interview room A and gone to make him a brew.’
‘Cheers, John, I’ll be down now. I don’t need a drink, I’ve already got one.’
The call ended and he smiled. DC Paton hated brewing up at the best of times and only ever did it when he had to. Josh grabbed his notepad and pen off his desk in one hand, coffee in the other and he made his way down to the custody suite, where his witness would be waiting for him.
Knocking on the grey steel door of the small room, he opened it and walked in. The lad sitting at the table looked up him, and Josh got the impression he was still in shock by the paleness of his complexion and wide eyes. He sat opposite him, reaching out a hand.
‘I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself properly earlier. I’m Detective Sergeant Josh Walker.’
Ethan took his hand and shook it. ‘Ethan Scales.’
Josh smiled. ‘First of all, thank you for doing what you did. It takes a brave man to jump into that lake at this time of year.’
