Black dog bcadf-1

by Stephen Booth

  ‘He was standing at the windows. He was using binoculars, looking at something in the garden. At first I thought he was watching birds. I was surprised, I didn’t know he had taken up a hobbv. He was never a man for hobbies, except golf — and even that is a business tool.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was about to ask him what species he had seen. There have been woodpeckers in the garden sometimes. Then he heard me come in, and when he turned towards me I saw him. I mean … I saw his face. He was startled, and angry at being interrupted. But most of all, he looked guilty. He asked me what I wanted. I wanted to know what he was looking at, but he wouldn’t say. He started to bluster about trying out the binoculars before he loaned them to a friend. But as I stood there, looking out of the window, I saw my mother.’

  The young man was silent for several seconds, until Tailby thought he had finished. The DCI began to frown, frustrated at the seeming pointlessness of the story. But Daniel had more to tell.

  ‘She was with Lee Sherratt. In the summerhouse down there. He was naked from the waist up, as he often was, and he was grinning. My mother had been wearing a red silk shirt, with the ends tied at the front in a sort of loose bow. When I saw her, she was just putting it back on. It was the first time I had seen my mother’s breasts.’

  The silence grew in the interview room. Somewhere in the

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  station someone started whistling. A telephone rang half a dozen times before it was answered. Tailby dared not move in his seat for fear of breaking the moment.

  ‘But that wasn’t the worst,’ said Daniel. ‘The most sickening thing of all was my father. When I came into the room and he

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  turned away from the window, I noticed two things straightaway. The first was the binoculars round his neck. The second was his erection.’

  The young man was staring at the desk, as if interested in the ballpoint pens and a scatter of paperclips. Tailby remembered Graham Vernon’s desk in his study. There had been a framed print propped against a table lamp, a photograph of a wedding couple, taken in the 1970s by the look of the bridegroom’s hairstyle and the lapels of his suit. Graham Vernon was recognizable by his salesman’s smile, and the sincerity of his direct gaze at the camera. But allowing for the changes in fashion, in his youth Graham Vernon had looked very much like this young man in front of them now.

  ‘It was sticking out at the front of his trousers like a monstrous

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  growth,’ said Daniel. ‘It was unreal. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was, you know. I thought he had something in his pocket. But he never carries anything in his pockets because it spoils the cut of his suit. Then I realized. The fact is, it turned him on to watch my mother having sex with the gardener. That’s my

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  father, Chief Inspector.’ His voice cracked. ‘That’s the bastard I call my father.’

  Tailby nodded slowly. He had spent too long in the police service to be shocked by other people’s sexual activities. They were merely facts to be noted now, data to be filed away as possible motives, to be assessed for their relevance to other details in the mass of information that was pouring into the incident room. The life and background of Laura Vernon were being pieced together, bit by bit, like a badly designed jigsaw. Everything that cast light on her circumstances was important. But how much could be trusted of what was said by an angry, bitter young man who hated his father and had just had his sister murdered?

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  The blue police tape still fluttered from the trees, A PC still stood guard further up the path. But die Scenes of Crime officers and forensic scientists had pone. They had other things to do now

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  — the scene of a suspected arson to attend in Matlock, a serious assault case at Glossop, a linked scries of aggravated burglaries in Edendale.

  ‘It’s too hot. It affects my brain. I can’t think straight out here.’

  Ben Cooper found himself back on the baking hillside again, standing with DCI Tailby at the murder scene.

  ‘So what was the weapon?’ asked Tailby. ‘A bough of a tree, a lump of wood? But there are no traces of bark in the head wounds, and Mrs Van Door says there would be. Besides, the injuries were made by something hard and smooth, not rough. So. A stone? Quite possibly. But no sign of it. You wouldn’t take a thing like that away with you, would you, Cooper?’

  Cooper was not too surprised to be asked his opinion by the DCI. He had worked under him before and had seen the contrast between the ease with which Tailby talked to individual officers, even a humble DC, and the awful stilted pomposity which seemed to overwhelm him when he had to deal with members of the public. The standard police jargon flowed unthinkingly from his lips when he had to address someone who was neither suspect nor fellow detective. There was no room in his vocabulary for normal conversation with ordinary, innocent citizens. It was as if they had to be held at arm’s-length, kept behind a barrier of meaningless formality. Despite his experience in criminal investigations, Tailby’s career was seriously handicapped by his lack of public relations ability. In time, he would probably be shunted to an administrative post, where he could compile reports and write memos in as pompous a style as he liked. Cooper thought it would be

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  a loss. But everyone had their fatal flaws — sometimes they were just less obvious.

  ‘If it was a rock, and you had your wits about you, sir, all you’d have to do would be to toss it into the stream.”

  They walked a few yards to look down into the gulley where the Eden Valley Trail footpath ran. The bed of the shallow stream was littered with handy-sized stones. There were hundreds of them. Thousands of them. And all of them constantly bcina

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  washed clean in front of their eyes by the cool, rushing water. ‘Let’s see if the Vernons are in,’ said Tailby wearily.

  Graham Vernon looked flushed, and his face was puffy, even before he started to get angry. Looking at the drinks cabinet, Cooper guessed that the man had been turning to the alcohol too much to help him cope with the situation.

  ‘I can’t imagine why you’re giving any credibility to this lurid picture of my daughter, Chief Inspector. You can’t seriously be taking notice of what the boy Lee Sherratt has been telling you?’

  Predictably, Tailby was responding to Vernon’s indignation by retreating into aloofness. They were like two well-groomed cats gradually throwing their veneer of civilization aside as they raised their fur and puffed their bodies up to make themselves look bigger than they really were.

  ‘Both Mr Sherratt and Mr Holmes have made statements, Mr Vernon. And naturally we are taking the information which has emerged from those statements into account in our enquiries.’

  ‘Who the hell is Mr Holmes?’

  ‘Simeon Holmes was Laura’s boyfriend.’

  Vernon began to splutter. ‘Her what?’

  ‘Does it surprise you that Laura had a boyfriend?’

  ‘Surprise me? You’re talking rubbish, man. Laura had no time for boyfriends. She spent her time studying during the week. She worked hard. At weekends she had her music lessons. She practised the piano for hours. On Sundays she would go riding — we kept her horse at the stables on Buxton Road. She was always either out hacking or we’d take her to a gymkhana somewhere. When she wasn’t doing those, she was at the stables anyway.

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  She was like a lot of fifteen-year-old girls, Chief Inspector — she was more interested in horses lh
  ‘Nevertheless ‘

  ‘Who is this Holmes, anyway? Someone she knew at school, I suppose. I would have preferred to send her to a single-sex school, but it would have meant her boarding somewhere.

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  My wite wanted to have Laura living at home. A mistake, it seems now.’

  Tailby ignored the turning down of Vernon’s mouth,
pressing on to prevent the man slipping into grief or self-pity.

  ‘According to Mr Holmes, Laura hated school. She used to play truant to meet him in Edcndale. Or indeed to meet other young men, it would seem. Were you aware of that, sir?’

  ‘No, I was not.’

  ‘Perhaps your wife would know more about that side of your daughter’s life, sir.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t ask my wife questions like that,’ said Vernon. ‘She is just starting to come to terms with all this, Chief Inspector. Don’t knock her back, please.’

  ‘Mrs Vernon seemed to cope very well in front of the television cameras this morning. I thought that went very well, sir.’

  ‘Clutching at straws.’

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  Ben Cooper stood in the background, watching Vernon carefully. The man had a square, heavy jaw and a face like an unfit boxer’s. It suited his aggressive manner, but went oddly with the atmosphere of the study. It was a large, high-ceilinged room with heavy pieces of furniture and a vast oak desk. A Turkish rug was thrown over a fitted oatmeal Berber in front of an arched brick fireplace and a cast-iron log basket on the hearth.

  ‘I know nothing of any boyfriends. Where does this Holmes live? Is he a friend of Lee Sherratt’s? Have you thought of that?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, Mr Vernon.’ ‘Well, you’d better be sure, hadn’t you, Chief Inspector?’ ‘Lee Sherratt, of course,’ said Tailby calmly, ‘is telling a similar story to that of Mr Holmes. Except that he insists that he had no relationship with Laura.’

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  ‘Lies and more lies. Something for you to sort out, eh? You’d !>e better employed proving wliich of them killed Laura instead of asking me these ludicrous questions. I’ve told you what sort of girl Laura was. She was my daughter. Don’t you think I

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  would know?’

  ‘You might know,’ said Tailbv, as if to himself. ‘But would you tell me, I wonder?”

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘i mean that 1 have to doubt what you say to me in view of the things that your own son tells me. Things that suggest you have been lying to us, Mr Vernon.’

  There was a silence in the study. Somewhere far away in the house, a vacuum cleaner started up. A telephone rang three times, then stopped. Tailby waited until Graham Vernon slumped and looked pained, as if an ulcer had suddenly flared in his stomach.

  ‘Daniel. What has he been telling you?’

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  Tailby smiled grimly and asked Ben Cooper to read his notes of the interview with Daniel. Cooper read them in as steady a voice as he could manage, trying to put no particular inflection on the sections where the young man had become angry or upset. Vernon listened in silence until he had finished. By the end, his head was bowed and he couldn’t meet their eyes. When Tailby spoke, he sounded almost sorry for the man.

  ‘Now, Mr Vernon. Shall we start from the beginning? What would you like to tell me about Lee Sherratt?’

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  The mood in the briefing room was subdued. Though they had followed up all the available leads, many officers felt that they still didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. It was the start of a feeling that the enquiry might be running out of steam. Cooper recognized it, and knew that Tailby would too. It was the DCI’s job, as Senior Investigating Officer, to keep the troops motivated.

  ‘OK,’ said Tailby. ‘We have traced and interviewed both Lee Shcrratt and the boyfriend, Simeon Holmes. But to eliminate one or both from the enquiry, we still need evidence, and that’s what I’m not getting. Forensics have given us very little so far. I

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  remain hopeful of the bite mark, but we’re still waiting on the odontologist in Sheffield. We’re told tomorrow for a preliminary report on the bite — but comparisons with the moulds that Sherratt and Holmes have provided will take longer.’

  Ben Cooper looked around the incident room, but saw no sign of Diane shee, or of DI Hitchcns. He concluded that the

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  party of hikers had been located, and that the two of them

  wore already somewhere to the north, following a lead that he

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  himself had reported from Moorhay.

  ‘Holmes’s story of Laura Vernon being sexually experienced is backed up by the postmortem findings,’ said Tailby. ‘Also by her own brother’s statement. So if Holmes is right about the victim’s sexual inclinations, can Lee Sherratt be believed when he says he had nothing to do with her? As Holmes stated in his interview, “You don’t say no, do you?”’

  Tailby shuffled his papers. There was a diminishing number of officers in the incident room tonight. It looked as though

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  the enquiry was already starting to be scaled down. Most of the TIE actions had been completed. Many of the individuals peripherally involved had been discounted. Traced, Interviewed and Eliminated.

  Now, though, the leads that were being followed up were

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  more focused. A shortlist of individual subjects were being

  targeted. Mr Tailby had sifted his priorities and chosen his lines of enquiry. He had to feel fairly confident of the avenues that were worth pursuing. There was an underlying belief that the forensic scientists would produce the evidence that would seal the case.

  ‘We also have the rest of Daniel Vernon’s story,’ said Tailby, ‘which may be totally irrelevant. But if he is telling the truth, then it indicates that Sherratt is lying. And we might ask ourselves — if Sherratt was willing to conduct an affair with the mother, why not with the daughter? We remain to be convinced on that. Until

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  Holmes’s alibi is satisfactorily checked out, we have to consider that either of these youths could have been the one seen talking to Laura earlier that evening. On the other hand, it could have

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  been someone else entirely. So we’re struggling without the physical evidence. There’s a weapon out there somewhere, but

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  there’s also a second trainer belonging to Laura Vernon. Both are crucial, but the trainer is going to be easier to identity.’

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  The DCI paused and tried to look at each officer individually. Some of them met his eye, but others were busy reading notes or staring at the photographs and maps on the wall.

  ‘So here’s what we do,’ he said. ‘We go round the houses in

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  Moorhay again. With all the publicity and activity in the village, no one’s going to want to hang on to evidence like that — and I’m reckoning it will have been disposed of in the area. So we check out streams, ponds, ditches. And we look for signs of recent digging or burning. That would be the most obvious way to dispose of something like a trainer. Burying or burning. Someone must have been doing that in the last few days.’

  Tailby pinned another blown-up photo on the wall behind him. ‘This is Holmes. We’re asking questions about both him and Sherratt now. But don’t overlook other possibilities, of course.’

  Ben Cooper sat up with a sudden lurch of excitement when he saw the photo of Simeon Holmes. He had seen him already, and in Moorhay too. Not only that, but at the time, the youth had been digging. And a friend with him had been burning something. Cooper hesitated for a moment. It seemed bizarre — but he knew he had to speak now, not later.

  ‘I’ve seen him, sir,’ he said. ‘Earlier today. In fact, he must have come straight from the smallholding to be interviewed here.’

  All eyes turned on Cooper. Hesitantly, he told them about the vast compost heap that had been taking shape at Thorpe Farm that morning. He told them about seeing Simeon Holmes

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  himself tipping barrowload after barrowload of fresh manure on to the heap, and about the old men carefully covering it over and treading it down. He told them about the unidentified youth with his small bonfire, and about what could have been a deliberately distracting conversation as he himself had sto
od in front of the heap.

  As he spoke, he could sense the officers in the room pulling faces and drawing away from him as though they could actually smell the manure on his clothes.

  When he had finished his story, he waited for a reaction. He

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  was thinking of the words repeated hv Sam Beeley and Wilford Cutts — ‘blood and bone’, they had said. And again: ‘blood and bone’.

  Tailby stared at him, and groaned.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to dig it up.’

  A hastilv assembled team arrived at Thorpe Farm an hour later in a variety of vehicles, which parked on the track between the jumble of outbuildings. A Task Force sergeant in a boiler suit and Wellington boots walked up to the house, where he found Wilford Cutts and Sam Beeley waiting outside, astonished at their sudden arrival. He served the search warrant on Wilford.

  ‘You want to search my house?’ said Wilford. ‘What for?’

  ‘Not the house,’ said the sergeant. ‘The outside property.’

  ‘Outside ?’

  ‘Starting with the field over there.”

  Officers were gathering on the track, fastening their boiler suits and pulling on Wellingtons and gloves as spades and forks were issued from a van.

  ‘You’re never going to dig my field up,’ said Wilford.

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  Sam waved his stick and started laughing as he saw where the policemen were heading.

  ‘Look at their faces,’ he said. ‘They’re not digging the field up, they’re going to dig up the muck heap.’

  The sergeant’s expression told them he was right.

  ‘What do you think you’ll find?’ called Wilford, but the sergeant walked away without answering.

  A Scenes of Crime officer was raking through the remains of the fire and bagging the ashes as Tailby and Cooper came up from their car to the field. The two old men were standing by the top gate to watch the operation, and Cooper could feel their eyes on him as they approached.