Chapter 28
It wasn’t difficult for Kelly to relocate Melvin Stone.
He was showing Acorn off to a small group of young women who were waiting for a taxi. The guests had almost all gone now. Kelly stood behind him and waited for the cooing to stop.
‘We’ve got a lot to talk about,’ she said. He spun around and gathered himself, draining his tea.
‘Excuse me, ladies, duty calls,’ he said.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, introducing himself all over again.
Kelly noticed his sincerity and it dawned on her that the man she’d met earlier wasn’t there now.
The realisation saddened her immensely and she thought of Ted and worried about his future.
Surely he wouldn’t lose his mind? He used it too keenly.
‘How is your wife?’
‘My wife?’
‘Yes, I thought you cared for her? Forgive me, I was told you looked after her.’
‘Of course. Let me introduce myself.’
The three young women left the table and Kelly sat down. He did too and they shook hands, then as quickly as the mist had descended, it lifted, and Melvin was lucid again. That’s what dementia was like, she supposed. It was dreadfully wretched. She wouldn’t keep him long.
‘I can feel the stares in my back,’ she said. ‘My presence makes people feel uncomfortable.’
It was an ice breaker. An ex-army man would understand. She’d briefly read the notes on him; like all witnesses, their context might come in handy.
‘It doesn’t matter that the dreadful incident was nothing to do with them; you represent the law. Rules. Authority. It puts anyone on edge.’
‘Is that your military training talking?’
He smiled a warm and generous smile.
‘Shall we go to the lake and get Acorn some air?’ she said.
He followed her and Acorn trotted behind.
‘So, you’re in charge?’ he asked.
‘I am.’ She quickly got down to business as they walked, not wanting to lose him again. ‘Where were you when you heard the screams?’
‘Over there.’ They stopped and he pointed to the beach access.
Kelly turned back to the hotel and then back to the lake. ‘It carried that far?’ she said to herself more than anyone else.
‘It was horrendous; I haven’t heard screams like that for years.’
‘What’s your story?’
‘My story?’
‘I can tell you’ve seen your fair share. Which regiment were you in?’
Melvin put his hands in his pockets and stared at the lake.
The surface was flat calm, like glass. Not even the trace of a duck’s wing broke the magic.
Clouds reflected off the lake and the sun had baked relentlessly into the mud around the edges.
They heard a shout and Kelly looked across the lake, making out an almost imperceptible splash as a couple of tourists waded in and frolicked.
Sound really did travel when the world stood still.
‘I started out in the Royal Engineers, but I was attached to different units. I finished in intelligence.’
Kelly side-eyed him. That explained a lot. ‘Do you always walk Acorn this way?’
‘Yes. It’s our favourite route. It is glorious this time of year and they don’t mind me using their beach. I came up here as fast as I could, then I saw the lights and heard the sirens, and I knew it was serious.’
‘You have experience with disaster scenarios?’
‘I do, sadly. I could reel off all the combat zones I’ve been sent to but I don’t want to bore you. Suffice to say that my first aid skills weren’t needed here. The fella was beyond help.’
‘When you got here, can you recall the people who were aiding him?’
‘Of course. The manager, Lee, was superb, poor sod. He slipped on top of him. Terrible.’
‘You’re good with details. Have you ever worked with the RMP?’
He nodded. He had a critical brain – when it worked – and Kelly suspected he might have had some experience with investigative cases.
The Royal Military Police was just a good guess.
He could even have been MI6. She reckoned he was in his late sixties.
Too young to suffer from such a horrible disease.
‘Are you retired?’
‘Yep. That’s why we came here.’
‘You and your wife?’
‘Yes. Ursula, my wife, loves the Lake District. The idea was that we would live here and walk every day and do all the things you dream about before life takes over.’
Kelly allowed him to expand. It didn’t seem to her as if things had quite worked out as planned.
‘We discovered Ursula had early onset dementia shortly after coming here. I’m her carer.’
They sat at a bench.
‘I’m sorry.’ Life surely was cruel, but she got the impression Melvin was unaware he was struggling too. He seemed to drift in and out of cognisance. He’d make an unreliable witness but that didn’t mean he wasn’t valuable.
‘It changed our plans somewhat.’
They watched the couple swim out to the centre of the lake and pretend to sink one another.
She was reminded of when she and Johnny used to do that and found herself wandering away from her job here at Heron Hall and back in time when things were simpler.
She gazed at her ruby ring and touched it for some kind of support. She felt silly.
‘Do you need to get back to her?’ Kelly asked.
‘I do, but she also needs to maintain her freedom else it will get worse quicker, or that’s what we’ve been told. I don’t really trust doctors, do you?’
‘Erm, I suppose I do, yes. My father is the coroner, and I trust him with my life.’
‘The old chap?’
‘Same.’
‘Now I see the resemblance. Nice fella. I bet you two are the dream team.’
Kelly smiled. ‘Why don’t you trust doctors?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he said. Kelly found Melvin Stone cryptically fascinating. She’d like to share a pint with him to learn all his stories.
‘All this lot,’ he added, pointing his thumb at the hotel.
‘At the end of the day they’re all in it for the money, aren’t they?
I spent all day yesterday chatting to them and none of them talked about Jamie Robbins.
I know more about him because of asking questions than any one individual could tell me. They’re corporate animals.’
‘What has that got to do with doctors?’
‘They’re all cut from the same cloth, aren’t they? This lot mess with food and drugs, doctors deal them.’
Kelly thought about his synopsis and couldn’t argue with it. She found herself smiling. He sounded like her father. Ted never used to be cynical, it was only in the last couple of years that she’d watched him become less tolerant of bullshit.
‘To be fair, they’re not personal friends, they’re colleagues. I know the army is different. You live with your work mates, but civilian life isn’t like that,’ Kelly said, offering some defence.
‘I know, but look at what they’re peddling here.
This shit.’ Melvin produced a sachet of YouthBlast. ‘They’ve got these kids fighting one another to show that this crap works.
They’ve lost the plot. Health is just a business, and the docs are all in on it.
They’re glorified drug pushers. When was the last time you went to your GP, and they tried to get to the heart of what was wrong with your body?
Or did they just send you away with a prescription? ’
Kelly thought about it.
‘Fair point.’ She sighed. ‘And I came out here to have a straight conversation.’
They laughed.
‘I know I’m a grumpy old sod at times.’
‘Just tell me your version of the events of Tuesday evening and you can get back to your wife.’
‘The two in charge,’ he said. Suddenly, the razor-sharp coherence was back.
‘Tilda Dent and Hank Hampton?’
Melvin nodded. Then he mumbled something incoherent and looked over his shoulder.
‘They stood and watched the whole thing unfold. They didn’t move. I know shock plays a part, but they were about as useful as tits on a fish – excuse me – they just remained rooted to the spot as if Jamie’s death was… inconvenient.’
Kelly watched him. He’d got to know more about some of these delegates in two days than she reckoned they knew about each other over a four-day conference.
‘Anything else?’
‘The lad I was speaking to earlier, Paul.’
‘Paul Burlington?’
‘He came to see what was going on and he had a coat on as if he’d been outside. I expected him to smell of cigarettes, but he didn’t, and he had exactly the same look on his face when he was desperate to get his mouth around this rubbish. Do you know what’s in it?’
Kelly stared at the sachet and back to Melvin.
Sandy Cooper had told her she couldn’t see Paul that night either.
She felt deep sympathy for his situation and the fact that he was trying to help, but he was hypothesising wildly, and she wished he’d slow down.
But more importantly, if Paul was outside, he might have got his boots muddy.
Kelly recalled looking at the floor around Jamie’s body on Tuesday night. Somebody had mopped. Badly.
‘They handed out some messed-up shit in Iraq, and I always wondered what it really did to people. I asked young Paul what is in it, and he told me it’s a mood booster apparently, but it doesn’t perhaps work well with testosterone and a diuretic at the same time.’
Melvin spoke technically and took Kelly by surprise. He knew a lot.
‘It sounds like you know what you’re talking about,’ Kelly said. He described it exactly as Paul had done and it struck her that if Melvin suffered from some kind of mental deterioration, then it was normal for him to recall trivia but not be able to explain links.
Melvin turned the sachet over. ‘I’ve read the ingredients,’ he said, proudly.
Kelly nodded, humouring him.
‘They all take weird stuff now, these young ’uns,’ he added.
Melvin looked over his shoulder again and called Acorn, who’d wandered down to the water’s edge.
‘You must be getting back to your wife,’ she said.
‘My wife?’
She stared at him. Then she got up and he did too. As they walked back to the hotel, Kelly looked towards the rear, to the staff carpark, where she knew the back door was concealed. The door which led to the network of private corridors that could take somebody directly to the guest floors.
‘When you first arrived on Tuesday night, did you see anyone upstairs?’
‘Yes. Paul, that lovely fella who drinks this rubbish like it’s going out of fashion, he eventually made an appearance from upstairs about half an hour after I got here. No one else noticed. But I did.’
‘I thought you said he came in from outside with his coat on?’
‘Did I?’
Kelly knew from living with an army man for six years that Johnny saw everything.
Even if they were in a toy store, Johnny would clock every person inside, what they were wearing, and if he deemed them a threat.
Melvin had just given her some breakthrough information.
However, if he was suffering from a progressive loss of mental acuity, then his evidence wouldn’t be worth much to her.
Also, he could have imagined it. His recollections were conflicting and unhelpful.
Kelly stretched and took in the wondrous lake air to recharge her batteries.
Perhaps she wouldn’t need to visit Dow Bank House after all.
If Tilda Dent was right here at Heron Hall.
Also Dan had passed on a message from Carleton Hall police HQ that the bodyguards were protected by diplomatic immunity and if Kelly wanted to interview them she’d have to get embassy approval, which she knew would never happen.
She’d need to think of an alternative means to get access to Mercedes man.