She contemplated her next move. She’d already lied to the police, and George had very likely been killed for whatever it was he knew. Perhaps so too had his colleagues. She had several options. She could forget about the whole thing and concentrate on something else, but the problem with that was that she had nothing else solid at the moment. She could continue nosing about here and find out more about George Murphy. Or she could book a hotel in Keswick, three hundred miles away, and snoop around up there.

She googled the small town and studied the photographs of the quaint market, the lake and the fells. She was enchanted. She knew enough about murder investigations to be aware that the body would be kept in situ until all the tests were complete. She googled the chief coroner in Carlisle, and Ted Wallis popped up. He looked like the kind of man she could have a pint with. She checked her bank balance: she had five hundred quid left or thereabouts, but she had a credit card. It was reckless, it was foolish, and it was utterly impulsive, but that was what she was in this game for. Something about it felt right. Something inside her made her want to find out what had happened to George Murphy. She brought up the Ravensword website and stared at his photo on the staff page. He had a kind face. There were photos of his colleagues on the same page, and she shivered as she looked at them.

As she sat staring at the screen, her bank balance changed. A sum from her pending transactions had just cleared into her account. The amount was ten thousand pounds, and it had been paid by George Murphy.

Tilly went to pack.

Chapter 13

It was an unusually choppy day on Derwent Water, and no one was on the lake. Not even the launch was keeping to its timetable. At the marina, all the kayaks, canoes and rowing boats were out of the water and stored in the shed, and Graeme sat behind the counter reading a book. If he had no customers by noon, he’d shut up shop. The stormy weather was forecast to last for three days, but in the Lakes, weather forecasts meant nothing. Yachts and Lasers bobbed up and down on the swell, and tarps flapped with the wind.

Graeme had given his staff the day off. Should anyone venture to rent a rowing boat on a day like this, he was capable of fitting them with a life jacket, giving them a map and reading them the rules. The office was warm, heated by a powerful portable radiator that Graeme had pulled close to him as he lounged on a comfy chair.