Shared Remains: An unputdownable must-read crime thriller

Chapter 1

The road was brutally unforgiving, and the vehicle bumped and jumped about. The occupants of the truck were used to it, having lived here on the land for decades.

Farmers across the Lake District didn’t need fancy bits of tarmac criss-crossing their land. They preferred to leave them to the elements. That way, nosy tourists were kept out by the potholes and muddy crossing points, where the road disappeared into slate, boulder and marsh. It didn’t matter how many ‘PRIVATE LAND’ signs one hammered to trees and gates, some bloody adventurer from the south always thought they could wander around with an upside-down map looking for paradise.

Cracks and crevices, which filled with rocks and water from the outlying hills, froze over in winter and only the very basic maintenance jobs made them barely driveable, or at least fairly even. Come spring, everything thawed and mulched into one sloppy mush with the rain. In summer, the dirt dried to dust and great piles of rubble fell away under the wheels. Autumn was unpredictable. It could be hot or cold, muddy or dry, and one took their chances along the track. If you got stuck, no one was coming to help, that was for sure. For a start, it was miles to the nearest telephone box, if it still worked after being decommissioned by British Telecom years ago. The red ones ended up at auction or in celebrity houses, where they were showed off to hangers-on who cooed at how quirky and quaint they were, while exhibiting their own rarity and privilege by the very fact they had one. Secondly, it was private land so nobody would know you were there. And thirdly, if the farmer got to you first, well then, you’d sooner have a shotgun pellet in your backside than face him.

The vast marsh-like valley between the A66 that sliced the north fells off from the rest of them, the wilderness of Dockray to the south, the last hamlet before the glory of Ullswater, and the Helvellyn range to the west, was to those who knew, once one vast farm, owned by the Morningside family. The sheep loved the flat, spongy grassland, and the little balls of white wool dotted the landscape, making it look like a child’s play farm when gazed upon from the road. Protected woodland was scattered about like bunches of Christmas trees, similar to the ones sold to decorate cakes, here and there, as if plopped down by the same kids playing with the farm. The trees hugged one another as if for safety and the outer ones stood tall and proud, daring anyone brave enough to venture in.

The fading October light was beautiful, but the driver and his companion weren’t here to gaze at the view. Locals of the Lake District were overfamiliar with the hills that never went anywhere. The sunset dipped in the same place every day, and the lakes and hidden waterfalls had been forged by ancient rock long before the photographs that snapped them were discarded.

The two men concentrated on the road ahead, and the fact that it’d soon be dark. Orange and purple turned to dark grey.

The nights were drawing in and it’d soon be time to put the clocks back.

Spring forward, fall back…

The chassis was their biggest concern as they tumbled over the uneven surface. Was she strong enough to hold? The thud of boulders hitting the wheel arches clanged like metallic ghouls inside their heads and reverberated around the metal bodywork. The sharper stones pinged off the side like a percussion accompaniment. There was no radio signal, so it was the only symphony of sorts they were going to enjoy this evening.

Both men wobbled this way and that and held onto the ceiling straps for comfort and safety. At least the driver had the steering wheel to cling onto for good measure. A rough ride in a truck wasn’t something that scared them, but being bashed against the doorframe was. A big enough hole in the road could send you into it at a rate of knots and break your arm. The driver kept his left hand on the wheel and his right hand on the band above his head, squinting to see in the fading light. He didn’t use headlights, and he didn’t change gear. There was no point, and he knew where he was going. He constantly needed the thrust of first gear to get out of yet another gaping aperture. He navigated by listening to the engine.

There was also no point in talking. They’d have their conversation back in the pub, when they’d finished, and didn’t have to shout over the din. It was thirsty work, all this concentration. And a lot of effort. But they were paid handsomely for it.

Jobs were getting harder to find in Cumbria. Foreign transient workers, who were cheap, took all the catering jobs. Farming and forestry positions were declining as fast as the Titanic went down, leaving little else, apart from drug running, which was a good earner but could land you a hefty stint at His Majesty’s pleasure. Something legal and well paid was what everybody desired, but didn’t get, so this was good work, if you could get it. It wasn’t the type of position you could simply apply for, and it didn’t require GCSEs or apprenticeships, which was fortunate because the two men had dropped out of school as soon as they could. Education was for the high and mighty and those who paid attention to teachers droning on about stuff that didn’t matter. It was a waste of time for anybody wanting to get a real job, in the real world.

The engine stopped screaming and the light shifted as they entered the forest. It had been raining all morning but in the late afternoon, as was not uncommon in these parts, the drizzle had stopped and the sun had come out, as if God was announcing that he was ready for his dinner. Swords of light had dropped from the clouds and, facing west, threw piercing rods of silver onto the surrounding land. Now there were only shadows as they entered the forest.

‘This is the spot, lad.’

The driver pulled off, adjacent to a grass field, and the change in driving surface was akin to sleeping in silk sheets after having only a scratchy woollen blanket for ten nights. The landowner at least looked after this part of the road, because he’d once had a hare-brained idea to open a bird sanctuary. That is until they all died. Then an alpaca centre. Until they died too. Weary of what it took to keep exotic animals alive, he gave up and tried something new. Others thought Arthur Morningside was cursed by his father. Local gossip had it that Percival Morningside bequeathed the fertile half of the farm to his favourite son; Arthur’s brother Samuel, and Arthur had been left with just the forest and scrubland. But whatever the reason, it was collectively accepted that Samuel was the better businessman.

The narrow lane led to a collection of abandoned outbuildings, and a watermill, where the bird sanctuary had been housed for a short while. They stopped the vehicle.

The grave had already been dug, under the trees and slightly to the left of the old dry stone sheep pen, used at one time for the Herdwick sheep that had shaped the land around these parts. The old mill which had stood unused for a hundred years or more, and the beck underneath it, made the ground softer here, and easier to dig. The smiling white faces of the Herdies, as they were otherwise known, had bent and nodded as they chewed their way over hills and dales, for a thousand years or more. But they weren’t here any more. They were long gone too, over to Samuel’s side, having been too much work for Arthur. The Herdies had once been the only serious living to be had here on Morningside Farm, the other animals had been for the tourists. But Arthur couldn’t even make that work.

The men’s heads rattled and buzzed from the rough ride, and their bones felt misplaced inside their skin, but after a shake and a stretch they were ready to begin their work. They turned off the engine and slammed the truck doors. The noise echoed into the approaching night, inviting anyone on the surrounding fells to call back, but they didn’t. It was about as desolate out here as you could get, this side of the newly divided farm. Not even the sound of sheep, from over the boundary of Samuel Morningside’s inheritance, pierced the evening sky – just the gentle purr of wind rustling the trees.

‘Shhh, you’ll wake her up,’ one of the men said, bending over laughing. The other rolled his eyes.

‘Don’t give up your day job, pal.’

They opened the back of the truck and rolled the tarp towards them. The package had been shaken roughly during the short journey and had rolled about in the back violently. They were used to the thumps every time she hit the side but ignored it because it just melted into the background noise of all the other bangs and crashes, expected for that journey down the lane.

One man lit up a cigarette.

‘Come on, we haven’t got all night,’ the other complained.

‘It’s not as if we’re in a rush, beside my nerves need bloody calming down after that road. I feel like a box of frogs.’

‘You’re as mad as one.’

They unloaded spades, which had likely been bouncing off the corpse as they drove. It didn’t matter because she was already dead. All her troubles were over, and the two men would sleep soundly tonight, after a few pints and a bath.

The smoker crushed his cigarette against a tree and threw the stub away, then signalled he was ready to help fill in the grave. They took one end of the cadaver each, which was easy because she was well wrapped up, and dragged it out of the back of the truck. They carried the load over to the grave and dumped it on the ground next to the hole with an unexpected thud.

‘Oops, heavier than I thought, sorry, love.’

They both smirked.

‘Shall we?’

One of them checked the grave hadn’t been tampered with. You never knew if a stray cat or dog, or even a lost baby goat from another farm, or some other intruder, might have climbed down there and got stuck. It was empty, just as they’d left it. They rolled the body in and began covering it over with soil, one spadeful at a time.

‘Night, night,’ one of the men said, waving goodbye.

Chapter 2

Later that evening, a mile away, on adjacent land, two figures stood silhouetted by the light of the moon, peering down into the Morningside quarry.

‘I never expected it to sound like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Silent. No noise at all. Just a thump.’

The body had rolled clumsily off the edge and disappeared into the night, like a good-luck coin dropped by a child into a deep medieval wishing well. The delight of discovering that the shaft went on for miles, and the penny dropping forever into the cavernous crevice, instilled a belief in magic. But this was no sorcery, and they weren’t children.

The body had stopped.

The light of the moon cast shadows across the quarry, but they couldn’t quite see far enough. Torchlight soon confirmed that their work had been for nothing. All the effort to get him up here and dispose of him, causing them to sweat and curse, seemed wasted and they stood panting, with their hands on their knees, wondering what to do next.

‘I’ll get the bike.’

It took an hour to get the quad bike to the lip and another twenty minutes to drive down to the ledge. The bike only carried one – there was no room for a passenger and so one of them stayed at the top, peering down, not daring to shout out loud, lest the wind carry the grim messages to the farmhouse a mile away and tucked into the night. The torch was switched off and the wait interminable. The smell of petrol floated in the air as the quad rumbled and then stopped.

What was he doing?

The delay allowed unwelcome thoughts to creep in and halt the malice for a moment. It caused a sudden shock of fear and self-loathing. But it would do no good now. It was done. The stupid son-of-a-bitch wouldn’t listen. There was no reasoning with him.

But no one should end up like this…

The quad revving up triggered a moment’s further panic and the machine roaring in the night threatened to cause a collapse of the quarry wall, it seemed so vicious. Soon he was back, and thoughts of regret floated away into the darkness.

‘Done.’

‘Where did he land?’

‘At the bottom.’ He smirked, making him look like an evil apparition, only appearing to compound the sense of wrongdoing.

‘It’s cold. Let’s go. I’ve been doing this all bloody day.’

At the bottom of the quarry face, close to the rock wall, the local undertaker lay on his side, smashed and broken, but still alive. He murmured something into the moonlight, to the two people who he knew were there at the top staring down at him. He felt no pain, even though he could feel his skull bleeding dark, oozing blood, and his body was broken from the trauma. But as he stared at the ground, and the fragmented rocks around him, a single tear escaped from his eye, and rolled across his cheek to the cold slab of slate underneath him.

And then stopped.

Chapter 3

Detective Inspector Kelly Porter wasn’t familiar with Morningside slate mine, but she’d visited Honister plenty of times, climbing and walking in its vicinity, as well as buying Christmas presents for family. The report of a dead body there sent chills down her spine because nobody wanted to hear the words mine and death together in the same sentence. However, the first uniforms on the scene had said that it wasn’t a working accident. The victim was not a member of the staff there. There were no reports of climbers in trouble, and she’d checked with Johnny and his colleagues at the mountain rescue. Apparently, from what the first responder told her, the bloke wasn’t dressed in walking gear either. He hadn’t even been wearing a coat.

She and Johnny had argued this morning before she’d left for work.

Again.

It was always the same, but different. Something as trivial as a scalding hot cup of tea, spilled by accident on an envelope discarded and seemingly unimportant on the kitchen counter could kick it off. Then, after an exchange of unnecessary words, it dawned on them that they weren’t fighting about the envelope. They were quarrelling over Rob.

She sighed and tried to concentrate on the road.

With Detective Sergeant Kate Umshaw busy interviewing the family of a missing local man, Kelly had made the decision to visit the mine by herself. She mulled over what she’d been told so far by the uniformed coppers who’d been first on the scene. It looked like a suicide. People with a death wish often looked for tall features to throw themselves off, but Morningside was private land and she had to maintain an open mind. It could have been an accident, or a fight, or simply old age gripping a wanderer at the wrong time in the wrong place. But then she had to consider the possibility that it could also be their missing person. She’d read the new file, opened less than a week ago, before she left the office.

Victor Walmsley had been reported missing by his wife, Irene, five days ago. The problem was that he was a grown man of sixty-one years, and unless there was evidence to the contrary, foul play wasn’t an automatic assumption, given the majority of men his age who decided to wander off turned up again after clearing their heads. However, according to his wife, their joint bank account hadn’t been used and his mobile phone was switched off.

She rang Kate on Bluetooth. The traffic between Penrith and Keswick was slow. They were widening the road – which was sorely needed – but it was causing pandemonium on the A66, which was the only route into the Lakes from Penrith. It caused impatient drivers who’d travelled from the south to become aggressive and there’d been a spike in road accidents.

‘No news,’ Kate said. ‘The wife is worried sick. It’s not like him, apparently. He’s got everything going for him, she says.’

‘Don’t they always say that?’ Kelly asked. Her cynical tone was as a result of suffering her own personal dilemmas and Kate knew it was out of character.

‘They seem a charming couple, and to be fair, their house is stunning, they are due to retire soon and travel the Med, you know, the usual stuff.’

‘Dementia?’ Kelly asked. ‘Happiness isn’t all about material wealth, is it?’

‘Not that she’s noticed.’

Kate sighed and Kelly knew she needed to snap out of her petulant depression. Things hadn’t been the same since the death of their colleague, Rob Shawcross. He’d been chasing a suspect across the crags, but that wasn’t the issue.

Her problem was that Johnny had been leading the group as the mountain rescue expert, and she’d never forgiven him. And he’d never asked her to.

‘I’m on my way to Morningside slate mine, do you know it?’ Kelly asked.

‘Yes, it’s off the A66 isn’t it?’ Kate asked.

‘That’s the one, have you been?’

‘Years ago, to take the kids. Why?’

‘We’ve got a dead body and it’s an adult male.’

‘And you’re thinking it might be Victor?’

‘That’s why I’m going.’

‘Do you want me to meet you there? I’ve finished here.’

‘Remind me of the circumstances.’

‘Victor went to work last Thursday but never arrived. She’s heard nothing since.’

‘No communication at all?’

‘None.’

‘What was his state of mind?’

‘She told me there was nothing out of the ordinary and he hadn’t seemed unusually distracted or worried.’

‘So why report that he was depressed? I read the file.’

‘She’s kind of retracted that. She said she assumed he must be, not that he definitely was.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘I’ve got a detailed description, I’ll send it over to you now, then I’ll meet you there.’

They hung up.

The traffic stopped and she tapped the steering wheel. The great grey shape of Blencathra loomed ahead of her to the north. Like its ancient name, Saddleback, it languished like a sleeping animal, soaking up the sunshine, ready for its next hunt. Her eyes wandered over the sloping ridge which looked like the beast’s spine, and she gripped the steering wheel tighter. He’d died up there.

She felt Rob’s absence keener every time she passed his desk, almost pulling at her to sit down and chat with him. The pain was still raw for her team, and she felt a tinge of irritation that tomorrow, DS Fin Maguire would be sat in his place. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe it’d help; a new kid on the block.

When she’d read his file and seen his photo, she’d realised she knew him. Like her, he’d served in the Met, in murder squads for ten years. Like her, he’d left the cosy safety of a rural force, in his case Ireland, and gone off to conquer the big smoke. Like her, he’d soon had enough of it. He was younger than her by a couple of years, not yet forty. She willed herself to be charitable. The guy had been given the unenviable task of filling Rob’s shoes. There was no doubt that Fin was well qualified and experienced, but her main concern was how he’d fit in.

Now, any excuse to get out of the office was welcome. A change of scenery had an enormous impact on her nervous system, like going for a run, or cruising across a lake. The crushing weight of Rob’s non-existence had sullied her working space and she worried what Fin would make of it.

Chapter 4

Samuel Morningside sat in the cabin of his new Can-Am Traxter off-road buggy and surveyed his land. Penny, his young sheepdog, sat panting beside him. The Herdies were on the fellside, munching the landscape to within an inch of its life, and his job this afternoon was to check a few of the stone walls. Skilled tradespeople were few and far between nowadays, and soon he’d be hard pushed to find anyone willing or able to do the task.

Stone walls landscaped the hills of the Lake District and Samuel’s land was no different, but it took deft craftsmen to maintain it. A master stonemason could select pieces of rock and boulder that fitted perfectly together, their weight holding the structure together for centuries. It was the very end of the season when building stone walls could be attempted, down to the cold, nothing else. Spring and summer were the ideal times to get it done, but this October was relatively warm, and he thought he might as well have a go at filling some of the worst holes.

He was conducting a final check to see which walls might need some form of serious repair, come the spring. In the back of the Can-Am he had a load of Borrowdale stone. The slate quarry on his land churned out enough mass for him to build a thousand stone walls, but it was more lucrative for him to sell that on. Slate stone walls looked pretty, but his Herdies weren’t fussy.

He stopped at the top of the creek, and from his vantage point he could see all the way across to the seemingly benign summits of Skiddaw and Blencathra in the north, which looked like sleeping giants. To the south, on a fine day such as this, he could trace the whole Helvellyn range in the distance, from Clough Head, across to the three Dodds and beyond. The hills sloped down to valleys and at the bottom, great lakes nestled hidden and silent. It was his favourite place on the farm and had been since he was a boy. He and Arthur, his younger brother, used to come up here with their father, on a battered old tractor, sat in the back of the trailer, rolling about with laughter as they jostled and fought for the prime spot. Sometimes, their father would go faster if he had a clear run across a field and they’d pretend they were inside a washing machine, flinging themselves to one side of the trailer and back again.

Some things had changed since then, but not all of them had.

The landscape hadn’t, along with the secrets it kept. It had, of course, been cleaved in half when their father died, and the farm suddenly ripped asunder. It had been Percival Morningside’s wish that the farm remained in the hands of his bloodline for centuries to come, and his two boys had done their best with the land they had, but each had dramatically different ideas about what the future should look like.

Percival was buried out here, in the grounds of their private chapel, true to his wishes, but Samuel never went there. It was on Arthur’s land now; his farm having been renamed Promise Farm. The new title had made Samuel smirk with condescension over his brother’s flighty ideals and those of his young wife. It hadn’t lived up to its lofty epithet; there was no promise of anything over that way. Percival had known it when he split the land. So had Samuel.

His pride had prevented him from ever raising the issue of the grave with his brother. As far as he knew, the slate headstone, extracted from their own quarry, was still there, possibly lopsided by now, and overgrown, and perhaps covered in sheep shit. From here, Samuel could see the chapel roof, and could just make out the small stone cross on top. He could also see the nursing home: an eyesore on the land.

But Arthur’s land was no good for farming, so it was no surprise that he eventually developed it. It was only the apparent success of the place that came as a shock. Percival knew his sons well, or he thought he had. He’d given Samuel the more lucrative of the two hemispheres, and Arthur knew it. He felt it keenly. They’d barely spoken since. But from local gossip, Samuel heard that Promise Farm, and the nursing home, made a profit somehow.

Arthur had surprised everyone with his business nose, to the extent that folk doubted it was even him behind it. It was more likely to be his wife who had a sense for money, like a shark for blood in the water. Beryl was an outsider from the start. Not only was she a wanderer and a loner who Arthur had met when he was lost in his own sorrow and self-pity, but she didn’t fit into the Morningside way. She was sharp, not homely like a good farmer’s wife should be, and she was loud, not demure. But her worst sin was that she was skinny, and she was in charge. Samuel was unclear if she was even English, never mind Cumbrian, unlike his own wife who he’d known since they were seven years old.

Samuel cut the engine and slid out of the cabin, bracing for the impact on his knees, which weren’t getting any younger. His heavy boots didn’t help, and his doctor had told him he should wear soft soles. He was told to take it easy but saying that to a farmer was like telling a mama to choose between her sons. At sixty, he should be thinking about retiring, but there was nobody to take the reins after him, and Dorian, his only son, wasn’t fit.

He stood for a moment, surveying what Percival had nourished for half a century before him, and the familiar sadness at what Arthur had done welled up inside him. Predictably, he hadn’t made much of the farming up there to the north, which Samuel cast a disapproving eye over now. Instead, he’d cooked up various hare-brained schemes to make money, no doubt egged on by his punchy foreign wife. Traditional arable farming was always going to be too much like hard work for his little brother. In fact, Beryl was from Cornwall, but, to Samuel, she might as well have been from the moon.

He approached the stone wall and looked behind him for Walker, his brown Labrador. But he tutted as he remembered he wasn’t there with him. The animal had been by his side for fourteen years, but he hadn’t come home two days ago. He missed the mutt, and he could tell that Penny did too. Walker usually trotted beside the Gator, slower of late, but always there. Each morning, since he’d last seen him, Samuel had searched the expanse of his land, believing him to be injured, or exhausted, or both. His pride prevented him from searching Arthur’s land, or even telling him. At fourteen, Walker was in his swan song, and Samuel knew that his time was close, or maybe it had come already. He didn’t dwell on it and concentrated on the wall. Dogs wandered off all the time, and soon came back. That’s what he told himself.

He paused and scratched his head. Gloria, his wife, said he did that when he was in deep thought. He joked with her that he did it to make his hair grow back. It never did. So, he covered it with a flat cap, like Percival used to wear. It dislodged as he scratched the side of his scalp and he straightened it. The military style Shemagh had been his father’s. Percival had brought it back from the deserts of Africa after his service there in the Second World War. It was gnarly and faded, like the old man himself. But even Percival Morningside hadn’t lived