Chapter 23
The hotel was down to a skeleton staff and Kelly thanked a young waiter for bringing more coffee.
The server worked silently as if he was being paid overtime at a funeral wake.
Kelly decided she didn’t give a stuff what the experts said about coffee, she wasn’t giving it up anytime soon.
The smell of the recently ground beans filled the room and comforted her with renewed strength.
It was a good job Emma was elsewhere. A call from her father grounded her further after feeling unsettled from her chat with Doctor Cooper.
It wasn’t that Kelly was intimidated by the older woman whose presence sucked the air out of a room, more that she got the impression that Sandy Cooper was lying.
‘How’s Lizzie?’ she asked her dad.
‘She seems hot, but she’s in my arms and sleeping,’ he told her.
The contrast between their jobs and their personal lives couldn’t be more brutally on display in that moment, she thought.
‘You spoil her; she deserves you.’
‘Don’t be too late,’ he said, but he knew as well as she did that it was out of her control. She would leave when she was done.
Ted always managed to cheer her up. He helped her out in all sorts of ways without even realising he was doing it.
He helped her financially on occasion, though it hurt her pride.
He eased her burden without her ever asking for it.
He saw her struggling on her copper’s wage and spoilt her.
She’d put the money from the sale of her mother’s house into her current property and she loved it there.
Since Johnny had moved out, she’d shouldered all the bills, and it was tough.
Ted stayed over regularly and insisted he was merely paying his way, but he left little gifts around the place, replaced firewood and arranged workmen to fix things.
They were a small but tight family and Josie – Johnny’s daughter from his previous relationship with Carrie – still visited during her university holidays.
They were truly modern and blended. Now all they needed was a dog.
A pooch like Melvin Stone’s would do nicely, one that sat and grinned all day, and was a constant companion.
They said goodbye and Kelly turned her attention to Paul Burlington, Jamie’s business partner.
She smarted at how much these people were worth on paper.
Kelly couldn’t imagine spending millions of pounds, or even having it at her disposal.
A holiday a year might be nice. A decent car, a new kitchen would be lovely, but at the moment all she could hope for was managing to pay her gas bill, which had gone up again, feeding Lizzie real food without going bankrupt, and paying her ever-increasing mortgage.
These people had so much money they must get lost in counting it, she thought and it begged the question yet again why the conference was held here in the first place.
Highflyers usually chose places like New York, Hong Kong, London or Singapore.
They could have gone anywhere. The reason she’d been given was that the UNESCO status of the Lake District promoted connection to nature, which was spot on trend for their brand.
There was also the Dow Bank House association.
It made sense but something still nibbled at her.
She turned when she heard a noise, expecting Paul for his interview, but instead Emma joined her in the conference room.
‘How are you doing?’ Kelly asked her.
‘This is my least favourite part of an investigation,’ Emma confided.
‘You have a favourite part?’
‘I mean talking to witnesses in an enclosed space like this. It’s impossible to know who’s telling the truth and they’ve had a few days to make up fiction.’
Kelly nodded. It was unavoidable. Discovering the ID of Water Nymph had drawn their resources elsewhere.
‘Who’ve you spoken to? Some of the staff?’ Kelly asked.
‘The awful American woman giving orders out, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s told them all what to say.’
‘Tilda Dent? I thought she’d gone to Dow Bank House.’
Emma shrugged. ‘Well, she’s still here.’
‘There’s a lot at stake; she must be nervous,’ Kelly said.
‘They act so sycophantic around her, like they’re celebrities. Something about this feel-good conference doesn’t sit right with me,’ Emma said.
‘What exactly?’
‘I spoke to a couple of YouTubers who just left for Manchester Airport and I saw they had sachets of YouthBlast tucked into their bags. I asked if they found it effective. They laughed and looked at me as if I was an idiot. “We don’t drink this stuff,” they said, “it’s just for Reels” and walked off. ’
Kelly perched on a table next to her.
‘And that old guy, Melvin Stone? He’s back with his dog. He’s waiting for you, he said.’
Kelly raised her brows.
‘What I don’t understand is why they came to an average hotel in the middle of the Lake District for a conference attended by so much wealth you could write off the debt of an African nation between them,’ Emma said.
‘Average?’ Kelly asked.
‘Not for us, but to them, this is so… basic.’
Kelly contemplated what she said; Emma was right. It chimed with her earlier misgivings.
‘Do you think it’s a bit hidden away for a reason? Why not hold it at Dow Bank House?’ Emma asked.
The mention of the luxury estate got Kelly thinking.
‘Because it’s all a facade? They don’t need the money or the exposure,’ Emma said.
‘But they need the legitimacy,’ Kelly said. ‘Why?’
‘Did you see the catering? I mean, I know the staff have tried hard but these people are used to private jets flying crab a thousand miles for a snack. You know I once heard Barbra Streisand actually does that; she has this favourite crab place in Miami and she flies it to LA.’
‘Goodness me, that’s true?’ Kelly asked, incredulous.
‘It’s true.’
‘I can’t even afford bay shrimp bussed in from Morecambe,’ Kelly said.
They laughed.
‘What were you watching when I came in?’ Emma asked.
‘Clem Allins.’
‘Who?’
Kelly turned her phone around. She’d googled the guru as she waited for Paul Burlington.
‘The spiritual guide Jamie was watching before he died.’
‘Ah, him.’ Emma nodded.
They looked at the screen and Kelly pressed play. The sage was a small thin man with tiny spectacles and messy hair. He looked of Indian origin.
Kelly informed Emma of the man’s background as they watched him practising meditation whilst in a distinctly impractical yoga pose.
‘Born and raised in Canada, to an Indian mother and American father, he travelled extensively and dropped out of his engineering degree at Stanford. After wandering for ten years, he wrote a book and it sold ten million copies.’
‘I think there was a poster of him up in the lecture hall,’ Emma said.
Kelly raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s done some work for Hampton-Dent too, group wellness retreats, according to their website.’
‘It’s such a cliché isn’t it?’ Emma said, which took Kelly by surprise because she thought, unlike herself, Emma was the type to buy into this stuff.
They watched him on screen and Kelly felt her eyelids grow heavy.
Clem Allins spoke about contemplation, his voice was calm and demonstrably zen, he wore loose clothes and changed position like an elegant leggy giraffe gliding across the plains. He lurched and dipped.
‘That’s quite beautiful,’ Emma said.
Kelly stared at her. Hormones got to every mother in the end. Even ultra-fell running legends weren’t immune and Kelly felt rather relieved that it wasn’t just her who turned to mush because she was pregnant. She put her arm around her junior and squeezed her.
‘Has this case changed your view of all this wellness stuff?’
Emma laughed. ‘Dan’s always telling me they’re full of crap, these self-styled teachers.
And their supplements have the same additives in them as kids’ sweets, but I take them mainly on long endurance runs, which I’m not doing at the moment because I feel so shit.
I’m a sucker for a good ad campaign, what can I say, but yes I think it’s made me wary. ’
‘Answer me this,’ Kelly asked. ‘Why do fit and healthy people like you, and all of these people here, need reminding to keep fit and healthy when you already do it?’
‘Because they sell health, they don’t practise it,’ Emma said. ‘We’re millennials; we fall for branding and believe we need something else to make us whole.’
Kelly stared at her. Now she understood why Sandy Cooper didn’t practise what she preached. The reality of a fairytale was never the same as the promise.
Did Jamie’s rose-tinted spectacles fall off?
‘What does that make me? A dinosaur? I thought I was a millennial.’
‘I think you’re the tail end of Gen X. You’re… sturdy.’ Emma winked.
Kelly pretended to slap her playfully. She hopped off the table and looked at her notes.
Then her phone buzzed and it was Fin.
Kelly answered it chirpily.
Fin had returned to Skelwith Bridge this morning to continue the inquiries around the local area.
‘I’m at Angelina Robbins’ cottage in Chapel Stile,’ he said.
‘Something come up?’ Kelly asked.
‘Well there are photos of her with Jamie everywhere; I think it’s safe to say they were close.’
‘Good, anything else?’
‘There’s a photo attached to the fridge with a magnet that I think you should see; I’ve sent it to your phone. Jamie bought this place seven years ago. Her studio is full of incredible work,’ Fin added.
‘It sounds like it’s a tough visit,’ Kelly said. She acknowledged that rifling through the detritus of somebody’s life after they’d been brutally murdered wasn’t easy. ‘Wait, I’ve just got it.’
Kelly switched screens and opened the text from Fin.
She stared at the photo and called Emma over, who joined her.
On the phone, staring back at them, smiling, happy, ecstatic even, were two friends – more than friends – hugging and carefree like two young lovers on holiday at the height of their passion.
The stage of a relationship when each laugh at the other’s little annoying habits that with age grow divorce-worthy.
It was two people who looked as though they were about to spend the rest of their lives together.
‘That’s the DiggerMan,’ Emma said. ‘With Angelina.’
‘I know. It’s Joe Folly.’