Black dog bcadf-1

by Stephen Booth

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  of his briefs. Cooper was getting an erection.

  She looked up at his face. He had stirred and was regarding her with a bitter, aggressive stare through half-closed eyes. His face was red and his hair fell wildly across his forehead. At first she didn’t think he even recognized who she was. Then his eyes came momentarily into focus and fixed on her face.

  ‘Fry? What have you got that I haven’t got? Why don’t you ever get so that you can’t take all the shit any more? Are your tits made of steel, or what?’

  She jerked away to the edge of the bed as if he had slapped her. She turned her back on him, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth, attempting to control her anger at the taunt. The blood flushed through her face and neck and into her throat at the ingratitude. Her palms itched to reach out and hold on to

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  something, to prove the unfairness of the jibe. He was totally wrong. She was not a passionless bitch, not some machine with no feelings. He was so, so wrong.

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  She was conscious of Cooper’s bare, lean body only inches away, and tensely aware of the dark, curling hair spreading down his abdomen towards his tautly swelling erection.

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  Till show you steel tits,’ she said. She pulled her blouse roughly over her head and reached round to unhook her bra, in the same moment turning back towards him and leaning over his naked

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  chest. Then she stopped. Her breasts were swinging free, her

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  nipples beginning to harden with excitement as they brushed gently against his hot skin. The expression on her face changed and darkened with anger. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him violently. His head lolled forward, his cheek bouncing into the soft flesh of her breasts. Ben Cooper was unconscious and snoring.

  ‘Bastard!’

  Finally she went back to the sitting room, her mind repeating what he had said, over and over. Steel tits. What had he meant? She undressed, did her exercises automatically and without enthusiasm, pulled a rug over her and lay down on the sofa. Her body was weary, but her mind was whirling endlessly. She tried to read a book, but found the pages were a blur. She discarded the book, turned over restlessly and eventually put out the light. She pressed her face into her pillow, hugged her steel tits to herself, and wept.

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  The old man sat upright on the plastic chair in the interview room, staring at DC1 Taiiby and DC Fry with frozen dignity, as if he were the only one present who knew how to behave properly.

  ‘Interview commenced at 1430 Friday twenty-seventh August. Those present are Detective Chief Inspector Taiiby …’

  ‘Detective Constable Fry …’

  Taiiby nodded at Harry. ‘Could you identify yourself Jor the tape, please, sir.’

  ‘My name’s Harold Dickinson.’

  ‘You’re entitled to have a solicitor present, Mr Dickinson. Do you hare your own, or would you like the duty solicitor?’

  Till not need one of them.’

  ‘Areyou quite sure?’

  Harry ignored the question, waiting for the next one. Tape or not, he seemed to say, there were times when speaking was a waste of breath.

  ‘Have you been given food and sufficient rest?’ asked Taiiby formally. ‘Have you been given the opportunity to make a phone call?’

  ‘Where’s my dog?’

  ‘He’s being looked after, Mr Dickinson,’ said Fry.

  ‘She’s a she, not a he,’ he said, with open contempt.

  Taiiby glared back across the table. ‘We have to ask you some more questions, Mr Dickinson.’

  Harry stared at him impassively. Somehow he made his waxed paper suit look as if it had come from a rack at Marks and Spencers. The disposable plimsolls they had given him looked almost as if they had been polished overnight.

  ‘Well. You can ask,’ he said.

  They interviewed Harry at intervals throughout the day, making sure he was fed at the correct times, ensuring he got the proper rests, asking him repeatedly if he wanted a solicitor.

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  The Police and Criminal Evidence Act obliged them to make sure he understood questions, was not distressed or fatigued or under the influence of any substance that affected his level of awareness, and that he was offered refreshment and allowed access to toilet facilities.

  They alternated their teams of interviewers, aiming to break his story by changing direction and the type of question they asked. This also allowed the officers to spend time on the tedious job of listening to their recordings on earphones and transcribing them on to Record of Interview sheets. They analysed their

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  results in between sessions and considered the next strategy. Besides, the interviewers needed a rest, too, after an hour with Harry Dickinson.

  ‘Look, Harry, we all know that old men sometimes Jeel randy too. Your sexual urges don’t disappear altogether, do they? Eh, Harry? Not like some people think. I suppose the young girls still get you excited, don’t they?’

  DI Hitchens was leaning across the table, staring into Harry’s face. He was watching jot a crack in the impassiveJacade, probing and pushing for a reaction.

  ‘It’s just not a nice thought, is it, that your old granddad might be lusting after the young women like he always used to when he was young? Best to pretend it doesn’t happen, eh? Sweep it under the carpet and keep quiet. What you don’t know about doesn’t hurt. But we know better, don’t we, Harry?’

  Harry said nothing, secure in his superior experience, looking at Hitchens as if he were a simpleton.

  ‘Because sometimes it goes too Jar, doesn’t it? Sometimes you just can’t control yourself. Can you, Harry?’

  The old man raised an eyebrow dismissively, suggesting that he knew more than a thing or two about control.

  All the interviewers had been trained to use the proper interviewing techniques. Open questions were the key to the GEM AC procedure — Greeting, Explanation, Mutual Activity, Closure. The aim was to create spiral questions — open questions such as who, what, why, when, where and how, followed by probing

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  of the answers. The theory was that if someone was inventing a story, 11 was almost impossible lo mauiLaiu a lie under detailed probing.

  As for closed questions, which invited only a single-word rcplv — they were too much of a temptation for someone like Harrv.

  ‘We have the statement of a .Mr dary Edwards, a bird-watcher, who saw a person answering your description passing along the path near the place where Laura Vernon’s body wasjbund. A person accompanied by a dog. Was that you, Mr Dickinson?’

  Diane Fry looked up expectantly as Harry opened his mouth to speak. He was starting to look relaxed and calm, yet still somehow alooj from what was going on around him in the claustrophobic interview room. Ironically, he seemed immune Jrom the stresses the interviewers were suffering. They knew that they would shortly have to allow him another rest break without having made any progress at all.

  ‘Observant chap, was he, this bird-watcher? Did he describe the colour of my eyes, and all?’

  ‘It was an old man that Mr Edwards saw.’

  ‘Do we all look alike then?’ said Harry, with an infuriating smile.

  ‘Idle and foolish remarks will be disregarded’, the rule book

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  said. But the interviewers found themselves seizing eagerly on every remark that Harry Dickinson let drop, no matter how idle or foolish. At least it was a reaction, something more than that same stony, contemptuous stare.

  Harry had the air of a man patiently enduring an outrageous impertinence. He allowed them no emotional feedback, only the unspoken promise of a sober and abiding enmity.

  ‘Is that the policy you use towards your wife, Harry? What they don’t know about doesn’t hurt. Women will think the worst of you, no matter what you tell them. So you might as well tell them nothing. Isn’t that right? They’re hap
pier with their own imaginings anyway. Isn’t that right, Harry?’

  The one thing Harry wanted was his pipe, but he wouldn’t give them the pleasure of being able to refuse him. He looked from Hitchens to

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  fry with a blank, slightly puzzled expression, as if wondering how they came lo be in his room.

  ‘Or does Gwen knew all about your activities, Harry? Perhaps she’ll want to tell us all about it. Because we’ve got her here, Harry. She’s in another interview room now. mat do you think of that?’

  ‘Who’s going to feed my dog?’ said Harry.

  Ben Cooper was in the CID room, handling the routine crime reported overnight. His head was thumping as if someone was driving a pneumatic drill through his brain. His mouth was dry and tasted foul, and his body ached all over. He had told DS Rennie that the injury to his head was the result of an accident on the farm. For half an hour he had been forced to submit to a barrage of sheep-shagging jokes, while his stomach churned

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  and he fought the bile that constantly threatened to rise up in his throat.

  He had woken this morning with no idea where he was. A

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  strange bed in a strange flat, and no recollection how he had got there, apart from the clue of a thundering hangover and a body stiffened solid with bruises, as he discovered when he tried to move.

  But there had been a note scribbled on the back of an old envelope on the bedside table. ‘Have been called into the office. I suggest you call in sick. Whatever you do, I don’t want to know about it.’ In his groggy state, it had taken several minutes before he had been able to work out who the ‘DF’ was who had signed the note.

  Then a few grey, fragmented memories had started to trickle into his brain. The visit to the do jo he remembered; then the phone call to Helen Milner and how Diane Fry had shafted him, how she had planned to humiliate him. It was so obvious now that she had deliberately ruined his chances with Helen and had planned to make him look small in front of his friends at the Jo/o. She had not mentioned that she was a fourth clan black belt when he had boasted of his skill and invited her to a bout. She had lied to him, and when he realized what she had planned, he had walked out in a blazing fury.

  Vaguely he remembered the pub near the bus station. It was

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  the third pub he had been in, but he knew something had happened there, from that point on, though, the memories disintegrated completely. Had there been something to do with pigs? Yes, he thought there probably had. Which didn’t go anywhere near explaining how he had ended up in Diane Fry’s bed and what had caused his injuries. Had she beaten him up? It didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility. She had kicked him in the teeth in every other way she could find.

  Even sitting in the office when he eventually dragged himself into work, Cooper found the memories he needed still eluded him. All that he could think of were his black dogs — the series of disasters that had knocked the legs from under him, coming one after another.

  Then he thought of his mother lying in hospital, and he groaned. How could he have forgotten about her and done something so stupid? He thought of his meeting with Superintendent Jepson and swore vehemently. No doubt that was Diane Fry’s work as well — she had got in thick with DI Hitchens and used a bit of influence on him. No doubt it had been while they were away in Yorkshire overnight together. Very cosy. That was something he certainly couldn’t compete with.

  Then Cooper remembered lying to his mother and winced with shame. He remembered Helen Milner rejecting him, and

  felt despair. He was worth nothing to anybody. And now he had

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  made a fool of himself at the very least last night, got horribly drunk and done God knew what else besides. He might as well

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  go home now to the farm and throw himself in the slurry pit. There was nothing but those evil black dogs running through his mind, snapping and growling. Black dogs and pigs.

  Among the morning’s crimes was a report of three youths suffering minor injuries in a late-night brawl in Edendale. A falling-out among drunks was presumed. The youths themselves weren’t talking and had been sent home. There were other more

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  pressing matters — a list of burglaries and car thefts, a ram raid at a building society.

  And, as he had discovered from DS Rennie, there had been an alleged rape at Moorhay, for which Harry Dickinson had been arrested. Cooper shook his head and poked around in the drawer

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  of his desk for some painkillers, but found none. Nothing was right this morning. Just nothing.

  Later in the morning, Diane Fry herself appeared in the CID room. Cooper kept his eyes down, not knowing what to say to her. What did you say to a woman whose bed you had woken up in without a clue about what happened between you during the previous few hours? The only possible approach was to let her speak first — if she wanted to.

  But she made him wait in agony for several minutes, moving

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  papers around on her own desk, making notes, taking a phone call. Eventually she drifted over towards where he sat. He was aware of her presence, but didn’t look up, willing her to speak first.

  ‘You look like shit.’

  ‘Thanks. I feel it.’

  Fry walked on past his desk. Cooper sat in a daze for a while longer, until she came back, clutching a handful of reports.

  ‘You want some paracetamol or something?’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Just don’t throw up all over the desk, will you? I can’t stand the smell of sick.’

  ‘I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Right.’

  Even in his befuddled state, he sensed Fry hesitating, hovering behind him like a baleful matron. She gave off no aura of guilt, only a mood of simmering anger, tinged with reluctant concern. Cooper began to reconsider the possible scenarios of the night before. There were still huge blanks in his memory and there was no way he could make the stuff about pigs fit anywhere. But suddenly he knew for certain that he had done something awful, something totally stupid. So what was it that he was expected to say? Maybe it was ‘sorry’. But how could you apologize for what you couldn’t remember doing?

  ‘Thanks, anyway,’ he said feebly. ‘Thanks, Diane, for — whatever.’

  She sighed heavily, put down her papers and wedged herself on to his desk. Cooper winced at the movement and her sudden proximity.

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  ‘I don’t know if you’re in a fit state to talk about it. But you know we’ve got Harry Dickinson in?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Cooper glanced up at her. She was looking at him with a mixture of pity and scorn. It seemed like an improvement. ‘What has he said?’

  She snorted. ‘Damn-all. He’s more worried about his blasted dog.’

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  ‘So whcrc’s this girl who says he attacked her?’

  ‘Rape suite. They’re interviewing her now.’

  ‘And do Mr Tailby and Mr Hitchens think they’re going to break Harry Dickinson and get him to confess?’

  Fry looked thoughtful as she pulled up a chair next to his desk. She absently pushed some of his files aside to create a few inches of surface to lean on.

  ‘It’s a funny thing, that, actually. When the lads picked him up, they said he acted as though he was expecting them. “You were quick”, that’s all he said. But now I keep getting the feeling that he’s puzzled by what we’re asking him. It’s like we’ve been putting totally the wrong questions to him all along, and he can’t understand why.’

  ‘A feeling, Diane?’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Cooper was busy scribbling on a piece of paper with his ballpoint pen. The fog in his head was clearing gradually, revealing ragged patches of light. This was better than paracetamol for making your brain work.

  ‘What are you doing, Ben?’

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��I think you could be right about the questions you were asking. lust take a look at that. There’s got to be a link.’

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  He had sketched a rough diagram. It showed lines running between members of the Vernon and Milner families. Old Harry Dickinson was there, connected to Laura Vernon by the finding of the body; his son-in-law Andrew was linked to Graham Vernon through business; Helen Milner connected to Graham through the incident at the party; there was Helen’s cousin Simeon, who had been Laura’s boyfriend and had been helping Harry and his friends at the smallholding; and then there was Harry again, a

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  wavery line running from him to Graham Vernon, representing the proposed meeting, purpose unknown.

  Fry pointed at Harry’s name.

  ‘Strictly speaking, he didn’t …”

  ‘… find the body, 1 know. He only found the trainer.’

  ‘And that wasn’t really him, it was his dog.’

  ‘But die meeting he talked about with Vernon is bound to leave a question mark. What iras he up to? Besides, the bird-watcher saw him.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘Harry Dickinson is involved. No doubt about it.’

  ‘A feeling?’

  ‘No. A certainty.’

  He looked cautiously at Fry. Magically, the tension between them seemed to have dispersed as soon as they had begun to talk about the Vernon case. She had needed someone to talk to, and she had been drawn towards him despite the contempt which still lingered in her eyes. Whatever had happened between them, perhaps it could eventually be forgiven, or at least set aside so that they could get on with the job. One day, he might even manage to remember what it was that had happened.