06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

‘And the chances of an ID?’ Cooper had asked.

  ‘To a specific individual? None.’

  Dr Jamieson had sounded impatient. Probably he had a thousand other things to do, like everyone else.

  ‘Look, all I can give you is a general biological profile – it’s up to you to match it to your missing persons register. I’m just offering clues here. I don’t work miracles.’

  ‘But it’s definitely a woman?’ Cooper persisted.

  ‘Yes, definitely. That should narrow it down a bit, surely? You don’t have all that many missing women on the books in Derbyshire, do you?’

  ‘No, Doctor, we don’t.’

  And Jamieson had been right. The problem was, no one had ever filed a missing person report answering the description of Jane Raven.

  Fry got herself a cup of water from the cooler and waited a few moments before she went back into the DI’s office. She was vaguely aware of Gavin Murfin lurking rather furtively in the CID room, sitting down again when she looked his way. But the rest of the place was already deserted. It smelled stale, and ready for the arrival of the cleaners.

  She walked back in and put her water down on Hitchens’ desk.

  ‘He was on the phone for more than three minutes,’ she said. ‘Why haven’t they traced the call?’

  ‘They have. He was in a public phone box.’

  ‘Of course he was. No doubt in some busy shopping centre where no one would notice him. And I suppose he was long gone by the time a patrol arrived?’

  Hitchens looked at her with the first signs of impatience, and Fry realized she’d gone a bit too far. She blamed it on the headache, or the fact that she felt so exhausted.

  ‘Actually, Diane, the phone box was in a village called Wardlow.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ She screwed up her eyes to see the map on the wall of the DI’s office, making a show of concentrating to distract him from her irritability.

  ‘On the B6465, about two miles above Monsal Head.’

  Fry kept the frown of concentration on her face. She thought she had a vague idea where Monsal Head was. Somewhere to the south, on the way to Bakewell. If she could just find it on the map before the DI had to point it out …

  ‘Here –’ said Hitchens, swinging round in his chair and smacking a spot on the map with casual accuracy. ‘Fifteen minutes from Edendale, that’s all.’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘We can’t be sure. At first glance, it might seem a risky choice. It’s a quiet little place, and a stranger might be noticed – or at least an unfamiliar car parked by the road. Normally, we’d have hoped that somebody would remember seeing a person in the phone box around that time.’

  ‘So what wasn’t normal?’

  ‘When a unit arrived in Wardlow, a funeral cortege was just about to leave the village. There had been a burial in the churchyard. Big funeral, lots of mourners. Apparently, the lady who died came from Wardlow originally but moved to Chesterfield and became a well-known businesswoman and a county councillor. The point is, there were a lot of strangers in the village for that hour and a half. Unfamiliar cars parked everywhere.’

  Hitchens drew his finger down the map a short way. ‘As you can see, it’s one of those linear villages, strung out along the road for about three-quarters of a mile. While the funeral was taking place, every bit of available space was occupied, including vehicles parked on the grass verges or on the pavement, where there is one. Some of the villagers were at the funeral themselves, of course. And those that weren’t would hardly have noticed one particular stranger, or one car. On any other day, at any other time. But not just then.’

  ‘So it was an opportunist call? Do you think our man was simply driving around looking for a situation like that to exploit and took the chance?’

  ‘Could be.’

  Fry shook her head. ‘But he had the speech all prepared, didn’t he? That didn’t sound like an off-the-cuff call. He either had a script right there in front of him in the phone box, or he’d practised it until he was word perfect.’

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right.’

  ‘Either way, this man is badly disturbed,’ she said.

  ‘That doesn’t mean he isn’t serious about what he says, Diane.’

  Fry didn’t answer. She was trying to picture the caller cruising the area, passing through the outskirts of Edendale and the villages beyond. Then driving through Wardlow and spotting the funeral. She could almost imagine the smile on his face as he pulled in among the mourners’ cars and the black limousines. No one would think to question who he was or why he was there, as he entered the phone box and made his call. Meanwhile, mourners would have been gathering in the church behind him, and the funeral service would be about to get under way.

  ‘The recording,’ said Fry. ‘Have Forensics been asked to analyse the background noise?’

  ‘We’ll make sure they do that,’ said Hitchens. ‘But why do you ask?’

  ‘I wondered what music was playing. “Abide With Me”, perhaps. Or “The Lord’s My Shepherd”. We might be able to tell what stage the funeral service had reached, whether he was already in the phone box as the mourners were going in, or waited until the service had started to make the call. Maybe there were some late arrivals who noticed him. We’ll have to check all that. If we can narrow it down, we might be able to trace the people who were most likely to have seen him.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘And another thing –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wonder if he just drove away again as soon as he’d finished the call.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, that would make him stand out, wouldn’t it? Someone might have wondered why he left without attending the service. If he was really so clever, I’m guessing he’ll have stayed on.’

  ‘Stayed on?’

  ‘Joined the congregation. Stood at the back of the church and sung the hymns. He might have hung around the graveside to see the first spadeful of dirt fall on the coffin. He probably smiled at the bereaved family and admired the floral tributes. He’d be one of the crowd then.’

  ‘Just another anonymous mourner. Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘One of the crowd,’ repeated Fry, struck by her own idea. ‘And all thinking about the same thing.’

  ‘What do you mean, Diane?’

  ‘Well, we know nothing about him yet, but I bet he’s the sort of person who’d love that idea. All those people around him thinking about death while he made his call.’

  She paused and looked at Hitchens. He turned on his chair and met her eye, his face clouded by worry. Fry saw that she’d reached him, communicated her own deep uneasiness. The caller’s words in the transcript were bad enough. Now she found herself anticipating the sound of his voice with a mixture of excitement and dread.

  ‘Except that his death,’ said Hitchens, ‘the one he was talking about in his call, was nothing to do with the deceased councillor who was being buried in Wardlow churchyard. It was a different death altogether.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ said Fry. ‘But we have no idea whose.’

  The DI looked at his watch. It was time to call it a day. Unlike some of his officers, he had good reasons for wanting to get home on time – an attractive nurse he’d been living with for the past two years, and a nice house they’d bought together in Dronfield. But it’d be marriage and kids before long, and then he might not be so keen.

  ‘It’s the Ellis case in the morning, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What time are you on, Diane?’

  ‘Ten thirty.’

  ‘Is everything put together?’

  ‘DC Murfin is doing a final checklist for me.’

  ‘Good. Well, the undertaker who conducted the funeral at Wardlow is based right here in town,’ said Hitchens. ‘You’ll have time to drive round and speak to him in the morning before you’re due in court.’

  Fry wasn’t looking forward to her court appearance next morning. But at least she’d done everything she could to mak
e it as straightforward as possible and give the CPS a solid case. With a bit of luck, there’d be another long-term resident occupying a bunk in Derby Prison by the end of the week.

  Many of the details of the Micky Ellis case were depressingly predictable. Whenever officers of E Division got a call-out to a body on Edendale’s Devonshire Estate, they expected it to be another domestic. A killing in the family, a Grade C murder.

  ‘You know, it never ceases to amaze me how often the offender calls in the incident himself in a case like this,’ said Fry, checking through the files Gavin Murfin had gathered for her. ‘They can’t think what else to do when they see the body on the floor, except dial 999.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s very considerate of them to worry about our clear-up rate at a time like that,’ said Murfin.

  ‘Is everything there, Gavin?’

  ‘All tied up with a neat bow. Fingers crossed for a short hearing, then,’ said Murfin as she closed the top file. ‘I hear Micky is pleading guilty, so it should all be over by Christmas. Not that he had much choice in the matter.’

  ‘It was just a walkthrough,’ said Fry.

  ‘The best kind. I hate the whodunits, don’t you? All those computers thinking they can tell me what to do, and every bugger in the building complaining about my paperwork.’

  ‘I presume you’re referring to the HOLMES system.’

  ‘HOLMES – who thought up that name? Some Mycroft down in Whitehall, I suppose. One day they’ll sack all the dicks and let the computers out on the streets.’

  ‘When is your tenure up, Gavin?’

  Murfin said nothing. He worked in silence for a while. Out of the corner of her eye, Fry could see his mouth still moving, but no words came out.

  ‘Only a few months left now, aren’t there?’ she said.

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Back to core policing for a while, is it?’

  ‘Unless I get promoted,’ said Murfin bitterly.

  ‘Let’s hope for the best, then.’

  Fry was aware of the look that Murfin gave her. Of course, they might have different ideas as to what the best might be.

  Ben Cooper was still smiling as he cleared the outskirts of Sheffield and dropped a gear to start the climb towards Houndkirk Moor. At the top of this road was the Fox House Inn, where he crossed back into Derbyshire and entered the national park. As soon as he passed the boundary marker at the side of the road, Sheffield seemed to fall away behind him quite suddenly. And when he saw the moors opening out ahead of him, burning with purple heather, it always filled his heart with the pleasure of coming home.

  Cooper looked again at the file on the passenger seat. In all likelihood, the area he was entering had been home for Jane Raven Lee, too. Somewhere in the valleys and small towns of the White Peak would be the place she’d lived, a house full of her possessions, perhaps a family who still missed her and wondered what had become of her. But a family who loved and missed someone reported them missing, didn’t they?

  The previous weekend, Cooper had spent a couple of days walking in the Black Mountains with his friends Oscar and Rakesh. There had been plenty of fresh air to blow away the cobwebs, and a chance to forget the job for a while. But there had been an undercurrent of unease that he hadn’t been able to identify until they were on their way home, driving back up the M5 from South Wales.

  It had been Rakki who dropped the first bombshell. He was due to get married next April, and he’d started to talk about moving back to Kenya. His reasons had seemed impractical, even to Cooper – something to do with the smell of lemon chilli powder, tiny green frogs in the grass, and the moonlight on the beach at Mombasa. But Rakki had been five years old when his family emigrated to Britain in the late seventies, and those were the only memories he had. Later, when they stopped off at Tamworth Services, he’d mentioned Gujarat, the Indian province his grandparents came from. Rakki had never even seen it, but his brother Paresh had visited last year. There were endless opportunities for the educated Gujarati, apparently.

  And then it had occurred to Cooper that Oscar had been in a serious relationship for almost a year. He could sense his old High Peak College friendships slipping away, a process that had started when they went their separate ways and took up different professions – Oscar to become a solicitor and Rakki to go into IT. Points of contact were becoming difficult to maintain. And one day soon, as they stood on top of a hill somewhere in the country, they would quietly agree. It would be their last weekend together.

  Cooper put his foot down a little harder on the accelerator as the Fox House came into view, outlined against the evening sky. He sensed the Toyota surging forward, eager to cover the ground. An irrational feeling had come to him, one probably born of relief at getting out of the city. It was a sudden burst of confidence, a certain knowledge that he was going to achieve his task.

  The facial reconstruction had given him the chance he needed, and he was sure it was going to work. Once he crested that hill, Jane Raven Lee would be coming back home, too.

  With a sharp backwards kick of her right foot, Diane Fry slammed the street door of the house. But the noise from the ground-floor flat didn’t even falter. Disco-house with urban drum loops at full volume. No matter how hard she slammed it, the damn students wouldn’t hear the sound of the door over the din of their stereo system.

  For a moment, she thought of ringing their bell and complaining. It might give her a brief feeling of satisfaction to shout at them. But she knew she’d be wasting her time, and she’d only get herself wound up unnecessarily. Coming home from work was supposed to help you relax, not pile on more stress. Wasn’t that right?

  Fry looked up the stairs at the door of her own flat. Yeah. Some hopes.

  Inside, there was no noise but for the thud of the drum loops through the floor. So Angie was out. There was no note, nothing to indicate when she might be back. Fry opened the door of her sister’s room and looked in. If it was anyone else, she might have been able to tell by what clothes were missing whether the person who lived there had gone to the pub, gone out for a run, or set off for a job interview. But not in Angie’s case. One T-shirt and one pair of jeans would do as well as any other, whatever the occasion.

  Since her sister had moved into the flat with her, Fry found herself worrying about her almost as much as she had when Angie was missing. Perhaps more. During all those years when they were separated, Angie’s whereabouts had been a generalized anxiety, deep and nagging, but an aspect of her life she had learned to accept, like an amputated finger. Now, the worry was sharper and more painful, driven in by daily reminders. By her sister’s presence in the flat, in fact.

  Fry found a cheese-and-onion quiche in the freezer compartment and slid it into the microwave. Then she opened a carton of orange juice, sat down at the kitchen table and turned to the Micky Ellis file. She’d appeared in crown court to give evidence many times, but always found it a difficult experience. Defence lawyers would be waiting to pounce on her smallest slip, the slightest hint of doubt in her manner, the most trivial inconsistency between her oral evidence and written statement. A case could so easily be lost on a suggestion of failure in procedure. Forget the question of innocence or guilt. That was yesterday’s justice system.

  And yet this defendant was certainly guilty. There couldn’t truly be any doubt.

  There was an old joke on Edendale’s Devonshire Estate that you had three options when someone in your family died. You could bury them, cremate them – or just leave them where they fell when you hit them with the poker. Micky Ellis had chosen the Devonshire Estate third option.

  When Fry had arrived at the scene, the body of Micky’s girlfriend had still been sprawled right where she’d fallen, half on the rug and half under the bed on the first floor of their council semi. She remembered that the bedroom had lemon yellow wallpaper in pale stripes, and a portable TV set standing on the dresser. She’d noticed a series of cigarette burns on the duvet cover close to the pillow on the
left-hand side of the bed, where a personal stereo and a half-read Bridget Jones novel lay on the bedside table. Fry had looked up at the ceiling for a smoke alarm then, but there wasn’t one. And she remembered thinking that maybe Denise Clay had been lucky to live as long as she did.

  In this case, it had been the uniforms who made the arrest. The first officers to arrive had found Micky Ellis in the kitchen washing the blood off his hands and worrying about who would feed the dog. It was a walkthrough, a self-solver. Somebody had the job of doing the interviews, of course, as well as taking statements, gathering forensic evidence and putting a case together for the prosecution. And that was down to CID. The DI would be able to add the case to his CV, notching up a successful murder enquiry. It was all very predictable, but at least it didn’t tie up resources the division couldn’t spare. No one wanted the cases that stayed on the books for months, or sometimes years – the cases that Gavin Murfin called ‘whodunits’.

  Fry heard a sound and looked up from the file. But it was only one of the students leaving the house. She could tell by the way the music increased in volume as a door opened, then reverted to its normal mind-numbing thud.

  The microwave pinged, and she realized she’d forgotten to get out a plate for the quiche. But first she put the orange juice back and opened a bottle of Grolsch instead. There was a shelf full of swing-tops in the fridge. Maybe she’d get a bit drunk on her own tonight. It would ruin her fitness programme, but she needed something to help her sleep. Come the morning, she would have a chat with a funeral director to look forward to before her court appearance in a grubby little murder trial that might drag on for days. And then, if Ripley finally got their act together, she could expect to spend a bit of quality time listening to the voice of a sick, disturbed individual with violent fantasies and intellectual pretensions.

  Fry stabbed a fork into the quiche. The outside was hot, but the centre was stone cold. Some days, this was about the best that it got.

  3

  Hudson and Slack was one of the oldest established funeral directors in the Eden Valley. A dependable family firm, according to the sign over the entrance. Diane Fry pulled her Peugeot into the car park next to the chapel of rest. The company might be long established, but the premises dated from the 1960s, flat-roofed and square, with a modern plate-glass frontage. The place had been built discreetly out of sight in a side street off Fargate.