The House: A Cumbria Crime Novella by Rachel McLean and Joel Hames, book 5.5 in the Cumbria Crime series - Chapter 1

Bobby Silver pushed through the door and stood, dripping onto the carpet, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

It was shit out. Worse than shit. Like someone had thrown a bucket of ice and water over the country, and most of it had landed on Cumbria.

Still, no surprise. Not for someone who knew the county. And at least it was dry inside the Henry Bessemer.

She spotted Miles, the overhead lights picking out the lines, scars, and bruises of thirty years’ work at the port. He was in the corner of the pub, where the music was quietest.

Stacey was with him; no missing those earrings.

Bobby smiled and made for the bar. It was busy, a night for gathering inside, shutting out the cold and pretending it wasn’t there. It took her nearly five minutes to get a pint of the guest bitter, served by a young barman she didn’t recognise. He peered around in confusion before she pointed him to the tap.

Everything was different these days. Bobby Silver had lived and worked around here all her life. She’d been drinking in the local pubs for more than forty years – they started early in Workington – and she knew the people the same way she knew the roads, without having to think about it.

But for the last year, there’d been a sense that things had changed too much. That the ground she’d been sure of could move at any moment, sending her…

Stupid. Stupid to think like that. Victor was dead, and it was terrible. He’d been her best friend. The closest thing she’d had to a son. But it had been a year, or near enough.

She had to move on.

Bobby made her way through the press of people, clutching her glass, until she reached her friends. They’d found a spot to one side, with a ledge she could balance her beer on.

“’Right?” asked Miles.

“’Right,” Bobby replied. Stacey was watching her. Bobby smiled and shrugged. “Not bad, anyway.”

She couldn’t hide things from people who knew her like this lot did.

“Next week, isn’t it?” asked Miles, catching on.

Bobby sighed and gave him a nod. “Next Thursday. You’re coming, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Memorial drinks. It would be a year since they’d found Victor’s body. They’d be gathering in the Henry Bessemer, everyone who wanted to, the people who’d worked alongside him. And they’d be drinking themselves stupid.

No more than Victor deserved.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tub of Vaseline, applying it to her lips before putting it beside her half-empty pint on the ledge.

Stacey smirked. “Still using that shit, are you?”

Bobby raised an eyebrow. “We don’t all have your miracle skin, Stacey.”

Stacey shrugged.

“And,” Bobby added, “some of us can’t be arsed spending a fortune on moisturisers and pretending it’s all natural.”

Stacey opened her mouth to object. Bobby raised the eyebrow further. Beside her, Miles was trying not to laugh, his mouth full of beer.

“It’s not a fortune,” said Stacey. “I just have a regime. Look after myself.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bobby replied. “We can’t all look like Miles here.”

“Hey!” said Miles.

“It’s a compliment, lad. The thousand-year-old man look suits you. Take the win.”

Miles took a long gulp of lager. Bobby turned to survey the crowd, seeking out more familiar faces at the bar. When she turned back, Aaron Keyes was approaching.

“Bloody hell,” she said, pointing him out to the others.

“Cop’s coming,” observed Miles.

“He’s OK,” Bobby replied. “Victor liked him.”

“That he did,” Miles nodded. “But then, Victor liked you. Great man, Victor, but you can’t say he had good taste in friends.”

“Fuck off,” said Bobby, laughing, as Aaron joined them.

“Alright?” he asked. He held a glass of something clear. Lemonade, knowing him.

“Great,” Bobby replied. Miles just nodded. Stacey gave Aaron one of those dirty winks she was famous for, and the cop blinked and took half a step back.

DS Aaron Keyes. Stacey knew he was gay, didn’t she?

“Miserable out there,” Aaron said, pulling off a damp coat and folding it over one arm. “Feels like it’s been like this for weeks.”

“Months,” Miles observed.

Bobby took another drink and applied more Vaseline to her lips. She looked up to see Aaron eyeing her.

“Wind on the docks dries your skin up,” she explained. She watched his gaze pass over Stacey’s expensively smoothed face and come to rest on Miles, who shrugged. It was alright for him. He was happy looking like a dried-up riverbed.

“Listen,” said Aaron. “Any of you lot heard of a man called Josh McKenzie?”

Bobby forced her face to remain in a neutral frown. Don’t move. Not a single muscle.

Not a fucking nerve.

“Sorry,” said Stacey. “Not me.”

Miles shook his head. Bobby slipped into what she hoped was an easy smile.

“Nope,” she said.

Aaron was watching her.

Was there something careful in that look? Had he asked her because he already knew?

Or was it just coincidence?

“Why?” she asked. “He owe you money?”

“No.” Aaron smiled and looked away.

She forced herself to breathe again. He had no idea that she knew McKenzie, that he worked with her. For her, really. That he was one small part in the secret little operation that had quietly made a very wealthy woman of her. Aaron Keyes didn’t know a thing.

It made you paranoid, this business.

She took a deep gulp of bitter. To think. To recover.

Aaron was talking again.

“Someone slashed the poor bastard’s throat and dumped him in Ennerdale Water,” he said.

All the beer she hadn’t got round to swallowing ended up on the floor. “Fuck.”

All three of them were staring at her, but then, you would stare at someone who’d just spat a quarter of a pint on the floor.

And spitting a quarter of a pint of beer on the floor wasn’t suspicious, not after hearing that. Even if she didn’t know McKenzie.

“Sorry,” she added. “Didn’t mean to do that. What you asking us for, Aaron?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, and she eyed him.

Was it true? McKenzie, dead? She hadn’t heard from him in a while, but she tended to deal directly with Cummings. He dealt with McKenzie. McKenzie dealt with the rest. She didn’t much like dealing with any of them, and Cummings was the worst of the bunch, but still, it was easier that way.

But why had Aaron asked them? Was he hoping she’d give something away? She could sense him becoming uncomfortable under her gaze.

“I’m trying to figure out if he had any connection with the port,” he explained.

“He work there?” asked Miles. “Don’t recognise the name, but there’s enough of us.”

Aaron shook his head. “He worked at the Bassenthwaite Manor Hotel.”

So he knew that, then. How much else did he know?

Stacey gave a whistle. Bobby was shaking her head, but Aaron wasn’t looking at her. Not obviously, at least.

Trying to still the tremor in her hands, and hoping it wouldn’t come through in her voice, she lifted her glass and drank again. “Do me a favour, Aaron,” she said.

He turned to her.

“Will you stop being a copper, just for a minute?”

A shrug. “I’ll give it a go. But since I’ve got to head back to the station in a bit, it won’t be easy.” He lifted his own glass, finished his drink, and checked his watch. “Come on, then. My round.”

He was gone for five minutes, long enough for Bobby to establish that Stacey and Miles, at least, didn’t suspect a thing. She could tell. Didn’t have to ask; it was in their body language.

If they’d been watching her when Aaron had been talking, they’d have seen it in her, but their attention had been on him.

By the time he was back, moving through the crowd with a tray laden with three full pint glasses and another lemonade, Bobby felt more herself.

“You coming next week?” she asked.

He frowned. “What’s next week?”

He didn’t know. How could he?

“Drinks,” she said. “For Victor. Here. Next Thursday at two.”

He nodded, frowning. “Shit,” he said. “It’s a year, right?”

“One year on Thursday, yeah.”

Not a year since he’d died. No one knew when he’d died. Not exactly. A year since they’d found his body.

“Shit,” he repeated. “Sorry. I’ll try. Supposed to be⁠—”

“Working, yeah,” she said. “Don’t worry. I know you’ll come if you can.”

It felt grubby. Using Victor’s death to change the subject. But she had no choice.

Aaron’s lemonade was empty. He was checking his watch again.

A murder investigation. It wasn’t like he could swan around doing nothing while the rest of them figured out who’d killed McKenzie.

But how the fuck was McKenzie dead?

“Got to run,” said Aaron. “See you if I can.”

“I hope so,” Bobby told him.

He reached out and held the top of her arm. “I mean it,” he said. “He was a good man.”

Victor Parlick had been a good man. Unlike Josh McKenzie, who’d had his throat slashed and been dumped in Ennerdale Water. McKenzie hadn’t been a good man, and the world would be a better place without him.

But who’d killed him?

And would they be coming for Bobby next?