Black dog bcadf-1

by Stephen Booth

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  ‘He’s at university, Chief Inspector. Exeter. Studying politics. Not my idea oi a subject, but there we are. He’s a bright boy, and he’ll make a success of something one day, I suppose.’ ‘He was close to Laura?’

  ‘Oh, very close. They doted on each other.’ ‘He’ll be extremely upset then, by what’s happened.’ ‘He was dreadfully cut up when we told him. He’ll take it very hard indeed.’

  Tailby considered this. He wondered if the son would put on a better show of being cut up than the father was doing. Shock and grief took people so many different ways, of course. And Graham Vernon had already had three days in which to go through the range of emotions expected of a man whose fifteen-year-old daughter had gone missing and had then been found again,

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  hattered to death. There had been emotions, certainly. Anger most of all — but directed almost obsessively in one direction, towards the boy called Lee Sherratt, who had, it was claimed, lusted after young Laura. The intelligent, innocent, extremely attractive Laura. But if there had been genuine grief in Graham Vernon’s heart, then Tailby had missed it.

  ‘It’s a little early to be back at university, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Surely August is still the summer holidays for these students, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Suddenly, Vernon looked as though he might be losing patience. ‘But there are always things to do before the term starts proper. Summer schools, revision, settling into new digs.’

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  Tailby nodded. ‘Tell me again about Lee Sherratt.’

  ‘Again? Surely you know enough about him already? I don’t think there’s any more I can tell you that will help you to find him, if you haven’t managed it already.’

  ‘We’re looking as hard as we can, sir. I’m hopeful we’ll locate the boy soon. But I’d just like to get the alleged circumstances clear in my mind.’

  ‘The alleged circumstances?’ Vernon looked a little red in the face.

  ‘His relationship with Laura.’

  Vernon sighed. ‘He’s a young man, isn’t he? Twenty years

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  old. You know what young men are like. Laura was a very attractive girl. Very attractive. You could see by the way he looked at her what he was thinking. I had to get rid of him in the end. It never occurred to me when I took him on — I blame mvself for that.’

  ‘So he looked at Laura.’ said Tailbv. ‘Anything else?’

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  ‘Well … he took any excuse to strip off his shirt when he worked in the garden. Whenever he knew she was watching him. I thought of telling him not to, but it would only have drawn attention to the fact.’

  ‘It’s not what I’d call a relationship,’ said Tailby.

  ‘It was obvious that he wanted to go further. I don’t need telling about young men like Sherratt, Chief Inspector. I had to nip it in the bud. I couldn’t have him pestering my daughter.’

  ‘Did she say he was pestering her? Did she complain?’

  ‘Well, in a way.’

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  ‘Mmm. Yet from what you say, it sounds as though Laura was equally interested in the young man.’

  ‘For God’s sake, she was only fifteen. That age is … difficult. They’re easily influenced, in the full flush of adolescent hormones. Surely you understand that.’

  It was obvious to them both that Vernon was floundering.

  ‘So you sacked him.’

  ‘Yes. Last week. I told him we didn’t need him any more. He wasn’t very pleased, I can tell you.’

  ‘You tend to deal with these things yourself, do you, sir? Rather than your wife.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re away all day on business. Sometimes you work long hours, no doubt. You arrive home late in the evenings. But your wife is at home most of the time, I gather. She would have

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  had more contact with a gardener. Yet you would do something like that yourself, rather than letting your wife do it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  “I just thought, it might have been difficult to find the

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  opportunity to speak to Sherratt, if you weren’t at home during the day.’

  ‘I made a point of it on this occasion, Chief Inspector.’

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  ‘I would also have thought it might be difficult for you to get the chance to observe the boy.

  ‘Observe him? You’re losing me.’

  ‘I’m going on your description just now. You described him looking at your daughter and showing off to her while she watched. That suggests to me, sir, that you must have spent some time observing him. Perhaps I should say, observing them both ‘

  Vernon was pacing towards the windows with his whisky. His hands were moving again now, touching his lips as if he feared his

  mouth miwht react of its own accord. ‘I don’t know what vou’re

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  getting at. It’s quite natural. Are those men of yours finished up there yet?’

  ‘Shall we see, sir?’ suggested Tailbv.

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  Sheila Kelk’s gaze passed over Daniel’s shoulder to the doorway from the main hall. The tall policeman stood there, smiling politely, raising a slightly quizzical eyebrow. She wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there.

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  Daniel turned and stared at him. ‘And who exactly are you?’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Tailby, Edendale CID. Here with Mr Vernon’s permission, of course.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  There were more footsteps in the hall behind Tailby.

  ‘Daniel?’ Graham Vernon looked tired rather than impatient now, the conflicting pressures starting to wear him down. He looked from Tailby to his son. ‘We didn’t expect you quite so soon.’

  ‘Mr Daniel Vernon, is it? I’d like to have a chat with you sometime, sir, when it’s convenient.’

  Sheila looked at Daniel and received a glare so venomous that her mouth shut suddenly, and she began to drag the Dvson

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  towards the dining room, awav from the scene of confrontation.

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  ‘Of course, Chief Inspector.’ The young man walked towards the policeman, staring up at him with an expression of undisguised fury. T’m absolutely dying to tell you a few things you may not know about my parents.’

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  11

  Where to next, then?’ said Cooper.

  ‘What’s up with you? Eaten too much cheese at lunch?’

  ‘I’m fine. Where to next?’

  ‘Thorpe Farm,’ said Fry, consulting the map.

  ‘That’s one of the smallholdings. There’s another one at the end of the same lane. Bents Farm. We’d better make sure we don’t miss it out.’

  Cooper had to wait while two women on horseback passed them, the horses walking slowly and elegantly, their muscled hindquarters shining with good health. The riders nodded a greeting and looked down into the car to study them, as if motorists were unusual in Moorhay. Someone appeared at the door of the bar at the Drover, wedged it open and propped a blackboard outside. From the tiny shop and post office came the sound of laughter.

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  Across the road, a workman was playing a transistor radio as he repointed the wall of a cottage. An old lady emerged from the open doorway to speak to him on his ladder, probably asking him if he wanted a cup of tea. She saw the Toyota and said something else to the workman, who turned round to look. Cooper had already visited the old lady, who had seemed to know more about everyone in the village than was good for her. But she had known nothing about Laura Vernon. Nothing at all.

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  It seemed to Cooper that there was more life about the village of Moorhay today than ever before when he had been there previously. It was as if the murder of Laura Vernon had given it a new vitality, had brought its inhabitants together in the face of adversity. Or maybe it had just given them
something to talk about.

  He turned the Toyota confidently into a rutted lane overshadowed by trees, with a tall border of grass growing up the middle that brushed along the underside of the car. The trees were mostly beech, with some huge horse chestnuts creating

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  a dense canopy overhead. In the autumn, the children of the village would be drawn to this track with their sticks and stones to knock down the conkers.

  ‘Who lives out here, then?’ said Fry. ‘I suppose it’s your Auntie Alice or something, is it? It’s bound to be someone who greets you like the prodigal son. Some second cousin or other. Have your mother and father got big families? Inbreeding affects the brain, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know these places,’ said Cooper.

  Within a few yards of leaving the road the track took a turn and they were reduced to a crawl to protect the suspension. Already they might as well have been miles from the village. The trees completely cut off their view of houses that were only a couple of hundred yards away. It was a very old patch of woodland they were driving through, and Cooper could see

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  it was not managed, as a woodland should be to remain healthv.

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  Many dead branches and boughs brought down by winter gales lay rotting among the remaining beeches. They were covered

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  in lichen and clumps of white fungi, and the bracken and ferns were chest-high. Parts of the stone wall in front of the wood had

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  collapsed, and a makeshift post and wire fence used to block the gaps had long since given up the battle. A handsome cock pheasant walking along the edge of the wood paused with one foot in the air, its claws frozen in surprise. The greens, reds and golds of its plumage were vibrant and iridescent, and for a moment Cooper wanted to stop the car and reach out for the bird. But it suddenly burst into a run and dodged and weaved its way back into the dense undergrowth, its tail extended straight out behind it.

  The pheasant had started a train of thought for Cooper about poachers, and he turned towards Fry to mention it. But he realized that she hadn’t even noticed the bird.

  ‘There are no signs,’ she complained, frowning out of the window, as if the A A had failed her.

  ‘There don’t need to be,’ said Cooper. ‘Everyone in Moorhay will know that Thorpe and Bents Farms are this way.’ And though the thought inspired by the bird stayed with him, he decided to keep it to himself for a while.

  Soon the trees gave way to a view up the slope of the hill. The

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  land here was largely rough grass. It was divided by stone walls, then divided again by strands of electrified fencing. A hundred yards up the slope was a jumble of makeshift buildings — wooden hen huts and sheds, a row of breezeblock pig sties. Two old railway carriages stood rotting in the corner of one paddock, and an ex-Army Nissen hut with an arched corrugated-iron roof stretched the full width of one field.

  A rich smell drifted through the open windows of the car — mud and soiled straw, and the odours of animals of all kinds. Somewhere there was certainly a fully operating dung heap. There seemed to be poultry everywhere — in the fields, on the track, perched on the roofs of the buildings. There were red hens and speckled grey hens, a variety of ducks and a dozen large white geese which immediately waddled towards the car, honkin? an aggressive warning at the intruders. Their

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  noise started dogs barking somewhere in the midst of the shanty town, and a goat could be heard bleating from one of the sheds as Cooper drove up to a gate across the track.

  He waited for Fry to get out and open the gate. This was, after all, the usual practice for the passenger on a gated road. But he saw she needed coaching.

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  ‘Would you open the gate for me?’ he said. ‘Are those things safe?’

  ‘What, the geese? You just have to show them you’re not frightened of them.’ ‘Thanks a lot.’ Fry struggled with the wooden gate, which was tied to its

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  post with a length of baling twine and at the other end hung on only by its top hinge. But at last the car was through.

  ‘Are you sure anybody actually lives up here?’ said Fry. ‘Where’s the farmhouse?’

  ‘Well, though they’re called farms, these places, they’re really just bits left over from the days of the old cottagers, when everyone had their own plot of land, with a cow and a pig. They’re the bits that the bigger farms haven’t swallowed up yet, and the developers haven’t got round to buying up for housing. There’ll be a cottage somewhere. They’ll know we’re here, with all this noise.’

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  Cooper pulled up against the back wall of the Nissen hut. There was a rickety garage next to it, where a white Japanese pick-up truck was parked with a metal grille across the back. Enormous clumps of brambles grew over a wall which ran up to a range of low stone buildings that seemed to be growing out of the hillside.

  ‘Do you want to take this one?’ he said. ‘I’ll drive on up to Bents Farm and pick you up a^ain on the way back down.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Fry got out and hesitated, looking at the threatening geese.

  ‘Take no notice. Remember, you’re not frightened of them,’

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  said Cooper as the Toyota bumped away.

  Fry took a deep breath and began to walk up the slope towards the cluster of buildings. The geese immediately fell into formation behind her, hissing and honking and darting at her ankles with

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  their long beaks. One of them pulled itself up to its full height and beat its wings angrily.

  Fry fixed her gaze on the buildings ahead. They looked

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  neglected and badly in need of repair. There were slates missing from the roofs and a gable wall of one of the outbuildings had bulged and slipped into an unnatural shape like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

  After a few steps, she realized she was walking on an uneven flagged path, the stone flags almost invisible under creeping dandelions and thistles. A trickle of water ran on to the path from a broken drainage pipe protruding from a stone wall. Where the water gathered on the dusty ground it was stained red, as if

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  it had run through rusted iron.

  Fry cursed out loud as she tripped over the edge of a sunken flag. Behind her trooped the geese, still honking in outrage at being ignored. They made a strange procession as they approached the buildings.

  ‘Not exactly on undercover operations, then?’ said a voice.

  An old man was leaning on a fork on the other side of the

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  wall. He was standing in a paddock that had been converted into a large vegetable patch. His red-checked work shirt was open at his chest to reveal wiry grey hairs, and his sleeves were rolled

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  up over plump arms. Ancient trousers that had onre been brown were barely held together at the waist and sagged alarmingly over

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  his crotch. They were pushed awkwardly into black Wellingtons. His face was red, and there were irregular bald patches on his scalp that were turning dangerously pink.

  In the corner of the paddock was a small lean-to building like an old outside privv, with an adjoining fuel store converted to a tool shed. On a wooden chair in front of the door sat a second old man. He had a stick propped in tront of him, wedged between his knees, with its end dug into a patch of earth. His cuffs were rolled back over his long, thin wrists, and he had a sharp knife in one hand, with which he was trimming cabbages.

  ‘Do you gentlemen live here?’ asked Fry

  ‘Gentlemen, is it?’ said the man with the fork. ‘Are you a gentleman, Sam?’

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  The thin one laughed, flicking the knife so that it caught the sun, its blade sticky with liquid from the stems of the cabbages.

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  ‘Are you the owner, sir?’
shee asked the first old man, raising

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  her voice above the continuing noise of the geese.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘Let me turn the siren off.’ He thrust his fork deep into the ground with a heave of his shoulder, and walked to the wall. Then he picked up two clumps of weeds with balls of dry earth sticking to their roots. He hurled them one after the other at the geese, shouting at the top of his voice.

  shee thought the sounds he was making could easilv be some

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  local dialect descended directly from the Ancient Scandinavian of the Viking invaders. But probably they were just noises. The geese, at least, understood him, and turner! and waddled away back down the track to wait for the next intruder. Without the geese, it was quieter, but not silent. There was a continual background clucking and muttering of poultry, a dog

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  barking, the grunting of a pig. And, not far away, the yelling of the goat.

  ‘I’m Wilford Cutts. This is my place. Over there’s my pal Sam.’

  Sam waved the knife again and slashed at another stem. It

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  severed in one clean blow, and the trimmed cabbage was dropped into a bucket.

  ‘Sam Beeley,’ he called.

  ‘Are you police? I suppose you’re asking about that lass,’ said Wilford. ‘The Mount girl.’

  ‘Laura Vernon, yes.’

  ‘I saw the lass about sometimes, I suppose. Is that what you want to know?’

  ‘Were you in the vicinity of the Baulk on Saturday night or Sunday morning?’

  ‘Ah. Sam’ll have to tell you what I did Saturday night. I can’t rightly remember.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m quite fond of a drink, you see. At my age, it only takes a couple of pints and the old brain goes a bit. Do you know what I mean? Ah, probably not.’

  ‘Where do you go drinking?’