Free The Hawkshead Hostage by Rebecca Tope Page B

again. ‘But are there gangs around here? In Hawkshead?’
    ‘Not that we know of. But they come from the cities on motorbikes. Glasgow, even, sometimes.’
    ‘On their summer holidays?’ She had an image of a battered charabanc full of Glaswegian yobs, waving bottles of beer and looking for trouble. ‘I’m not sure—’
    ‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘Neither am I. But we’ve got to start somewhere.’
    Outside the office there were raised voices. Simmy realised that she and Moxon were probably monopolising the vital heart of the hotel’s operation, even though the phone hadn’t rung and nobody seemed anxious to come in. There would be guests returning from their days out on the fells before long, and the manager was unlikely to want them to walk into the maelstrom of a police investigation. If the short-lived hunt for a small girl had raised complaints, how much more objectionable would a murder investigation be!
    ‘You won’t need to question all the guests, will you?’ she asked.
    ‘We’ll want to know where they all were this morning. Routine enquiries, as they say.’
    ‘The management will hate it.’
    ‘Too bad. A murder enquiry trumps just about everything. Nobody gets a choice in the matter.’
    She shivered. ‘It sounds so horrible. My mother would say—’
    ‘Yes, I know what your mother would say,’ he interrupted. ‘Now, I’d better go and see what’s happening out there.’
    She thought of her flowers, now so irrelevant and trivial. She had been so proud of them, only a couple of hours ago. It didn’t seem fair. All she wanted was to carry on her business, bringing colour and scent and beauty into people’s lives. Instead, there was fear and pain and mystery. She got up from the chair and followed the detective into the foyer, where the first person she saw was a woman shehad only met fleetingly before. But she knew immediately who it was and the recognition was mutual.
    ‘Where is he?’ the woman cried. ‘What have you got my boy into now?’
    Wordlessly, Simmy just stared at Mrs Helen Harkness, mother of the missing Ben.

Chapter Eight
    The injustice of it struck deep. She had been doing the boy a favour, giving him a lift. By rights, it was a job for his mother or father – but they were too busy, otherwise engaged. Moxon came to her rescue. ‘I don’t think Mrs Brown can be held responsible,’ he objected.
    ‘No, no. I’m sorry.’ Helen’s eyes were wide, her movements jerky. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying. Although …’ She looked back at Simmy. ‘It’s not the first time, is it?’
    Simmy couldn’t argue with that. Her very first encounter with Ben had been at the scene of a fatal shooting. Since then there had been other complicated police investigations in which they had been embroiled. Almost from the start, Ben had been passionately interested, deciding that his vocation was as a forensic scientist. Brilliantly clever, his way appeared smooth for the coming years of further education, his eventual career beyond question. He hadattracted favourable attention from an American university, with a promise of a postgraduate place some years hence. Meanwhile he was stacking up A-levels, with one more year at school still to go.
    ‘I don’t know how worried I should be,’ the woman said. ‘As a rule I’d trust him to know what he was doing. But I’ve never had the police come to the door before. He’s never gone missing before.’
    Helen Harkness was in her early fifties, mother of five children and a very successful architect. Ben was the second child, his great intelligence something the family had long ago accepted as a mixed blessing. Impatient with his siblings, awkward in social situations, he had gone his own way almost from the start. Both his parents erred on the side of neglect, by modern standards. But thus far, they had never found reason to regret their parenting style.
    ‘He’s a resourceful lad,’ said Moxon clumsily. ‘But given that