Free Dead Man Walking by Paul Finch Page B

a certain Bill Ramsdale, a onetime married man and academic who now, in his mid-fifties, had become a reclusive loner and apparently, a writer, though Heck had never seen his name in a bookshop, either online or in the real world. His house was a small, scruffy cottage, the downstairs of which was almost entirely taken up by his study, but it was also surrounded by acres of untrimmed lawn, which rolled impressively down to the waterside and terminated at a private jetty. Given the usual prices in the Lake District, such a plot ought to have cost him a pretty penny. Whether he was rich or poor, Ramsdale was notoriously ill-tempered about his privacy. Twice he’d been spoken to by Mary-Ellen for showing a belligerent and even threatening attitude to hikers who’d strolled down across his land to the tarn’s edge, unaware they were trespassing thanks to most of his perimeter wall having collapsed and his grass being overgrown.
    The second resident, Bessie Longhorn, was an altogether more likeable sort. Just turned twenty, she was a little rough around the edges – only poorly educated, and thanks to a lifetime of semi-isolation in the Cradle, minus a fashion sense or any real knowledge about youth culture in general – but she was a friendly kid and always eager to please, especially when it came to Heck. Bessie’s cottage, formerly a farmhouse and so considerably larger than Ramsdale’s, with numerous run-down outbuildings attached, belonged to her mother, Ada, who was only sixty-five but in poor health and residing in sheltered accommodation in Bowness. For obvious reasons, Ada considered it important that Bessie get used to being independent, even though this meant the younger woman didn’t get to visit her old mum as often as they’d both like. For all that, Bessie was a happy-go-lucky character, who filled her time doing odd jobs for the residents of Cragwood Keld at the other end of the tarn. She’d once offered to help Ramsdale by mowing his unruly lawn, but the surly neighbour had responded by telling her to ‘keep the fuck away’, so now Bessie, who was reduced to tears quite easily, did exactly that.
    Perhaps the task she prized most highly was minding the keys to the police launch. This was convenient for all concerned because the boathouse in which the launch was kept was part of Bessie’s property. Approximately the same size and shape as a suburban garage, the boathouse was propped up on stilts and in a generally dilapidated condition, its timbers tinged green by mildew – but it was better than nothing. The cement path leading down to it crossed the middle of Bessie’s neatly-trimmed back garden, so it was always necessary to call on her first.
    They halted before walking up Bessie’s front path, and looked towards Ramsdale’s house, his presence indicated by a very dull glow from one of its windows and the pale smoke issuing from its chimney.
    ‘Wouldn’t have liked to be one of the two girls if they came looking for help and knocked on that miserable sod’s door,’ Mary-Ellen said.
    ‘Neither would I, now you mention it,’ Heck replied thoughtfully. ‘But it’s a good point.’ He veered back along the road and down the path towards Ramsdale’s house. ‘Go and check with Bessie, would you?’
    ‘Who the fuck is it?’ came a muffled response to Heck’s full-knuckled knock.
    ‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg, Mr Ramsdale,’ Heck replied. ‘Cragwood Keld police station. Can you open up please?’
    What Heck always thought of as a guilty silence followed. Whenever you arrived at someone’s house and announced yourself as a copper, it was the same – whether it was some flash manse in the suburbs, or a scumhole bedsit in the urban badlands. Everyone, it seemed, no matter what their station in life, had some itsy-bitsy secret that occasionally kept them awake at night.
    A chair finally scraped on a stone floor and heavy feet thudded to the door. It opened, but only by a few inches, and