06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

  She looked around the storage area. A doorway straight ahead of her led into what she remembered as the staff room, used by the bearers and office staff for their lunch breaks. There were a couple of tables and some tubular steel chairs, a sink, a cooker, a fridge. Paper had been seared from the walls and hung in shreds, like burned skin. The vinyl flooring had melted and bubbled into twisted shapes, lunar contours that swallowed the shadows from the crime scene lights.

  To the right, a second door stood open. Fry moved cautiously across the room, following the aluminium stepping plates. She was irrationally afraid of touching anything – not in case she left fingerprints, but for fear that the scorched surfaces would leave black marks on her skin and clothes. She felt as though they’d somehow contaminate her, bring out on her body the dark stains she could feel growing in her mind ever since she’d listened to those phone calls.

  Everywhere she’d gone during the last few days, she’d been wondering if she was in the dead place. She’d been expecting to find a body at any moment, as if a decomposing bundle of bloodied sacking lay behind every door, or the rustling of feeding maggots waited somewhere on the edge of her hearing. But now she wasn’t even supposed to be looking. No more chasing around the countryside.

  Hardly realizing she was still moving, Fry found herself in the next room. What place was this? At first, she couldn’t interpret the sea of black pulp at her feet, sodden heaps rising several inches out of the water. A row of grimy shapes ran along one wall, stained metal drawers gaping open. Filing cabinets. She was in the room behind the main office, where the records were kept.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Fry turned and saw Cooper behind her in the doorway. He reached out a hand to one of the filing cabinets and rubbed the soot off a laminated label.

  ‘Personnel files,’ he said. ‘They’ve burned the personnel files.’

  31

  Later that morning, Cooper finally got a chance to catch up on the files filling his pending tray, refreshing his memory of them in case there was anything important he’d forgotten. He didn’t achieve much. But handling the files made him feel a bit better, as if touching them might keep an enquiry alive.

  He looked up to make sure he could get Diane Fry’s attention.

  ‘I think some of Audrey Steele’s family were responsible for that arson attack,’ he said. ‘Revenge on Audrey’s behalf.’

  ‘Revenge for what? We don’t know what happened to her yet.’

  ‘It would be an emotional response, not a logical one. But they were understandably upset, and they had to find someone to blame. I think they heard all they really wanted to hear last time I visited Mrs Gill.’

  ‘I saw some of the family at the woodland burial,’ said Fry. ‘I bet a few of them are known to us. One of them was Micky Ellis’s brother, for a start. Let’s see if we can find any violent offences on their records.’

  ‘This is the Devonshire Estate we’re talking about,’ said Cooper. ‘If they didn’t carry out the arson attack themselves, they’re bound to know people who’d do it for a few quid.’

  ‘You’re right. But we need to put some effort into it. I’d like to feel sure in my own mind that Audrey Steele’s family were responsible. Otherwise, I might start suspecting that someone at Hudson and Slack did it.’

  Cooper nodded. ‘It could turn out to be very convenient for somebody that the personnel files were burned.’

  ‘Exactly. I’ve asked Forensics to recover as much as they can. But the fire and the firemen’s hoses did a pretty good job between them, from what I saw.’

  ‘That’s an odd thing, actually,’ said Cooper. ‘Those filing cabinets were steel. They’re designed to be fire resistant, as long as you keep the drawers closed.’

  ‘Those drawers looked as though they were open when the fire started.’

  ‘Yes, I think they must have been, for the contents to burn like that.’

  Fry looked at him. ‘No, it means nothing. The arsonists probably opened the drawers and threw the files on the floor to get a better blaze going, that’s all.’

  ‘Confidential files? The cabinets should have been locked, surely?’

  ‘We need to ask the office staff.’

  Cooper looked at his watch and began to put on his jacket. ‘Well, let me know if there’s anything you want me to do, Diane.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘I want to speak to Vernon Slack again. He’s frightened of something, and I’m going to find out what. And then I might tackle Billy McGowan.’

  ‘McGowan? Not on your own, you don’t. Do you hear me?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And, Ben – what about the dog?’

  ‘I talked to one of the officers working with Poacher Watch. According to local intelligence, lampers often operate on parts of the Alder Hall estate, but there have never been any complaints from the owners.’

  Fry smiled. ‘How strange. What do you bet that Mr Casey is making a bit of money on the side by giving them access?’

  ‘Taking a cut from poaching gangs? It’s possible.’

  ‘It would explain why he wants to keep the place to himself.’

  ‘Maybe that ex-employee would have something to tell us.’

  ‘Maurice Goodwin, yes.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Cooper, ‘I reckon it was probably lampers who shot Tom Jarvis’s dog. They could have mistaken it for a fox, or a small deer. But Jarvis doesn’t seem to want to believe that. He’s assuming someone did it deliberately. In fact, I suspect he might even have a name or two in mind, but he’s not saying who they are.’

  ‘You’ll have to find a way of getting him to open up, Ben.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Fry, ‘David Mead called. You remember the rambling fireman?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, Mr Mead has done a good job for us. He’s tracked down the people who left items in the Petrus Two cache – all except one. There’s just a single item on the list that no one is owning up to.’

  Cooper studied her face, detecting the frustration she was trying to restrain.

  ‘Just one?’ he said. ‘Let me guess – the glow-in-the-dark skeleton key-ring? The classic symbol of death, a clever reminder from our caller.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Fry, ‘the key-ring was left by a twelve-year-old girl from Hathersage who goes out walking with her grandmother every Sunday. She bought the thing as a souvenir in Whitby.’

  ‘The Dracula Experience?’

  ‘Probably.’ Fry sighed. ‘As a matter of fact, the one unidentified item from the Petrus Two cache is the bloody Beatrix Potter book.’

  Cooper sat watching his windscreen wipers as he waited for the funeral cortege to pass. Then he turned the Toyota round. He eased out into the road, cutting in front of a delivery van and raising his hand in a conciliatory gesture when the driver glared at him. He soon caught up with the last mourners’ car and stayed close behind it as the cortege wound its way through the wet streets. The limousines were so distinctive that he’d spotted them coming towards him before he got within three hundred yards of Hudson and Slack. There wasn’t much chance around here of staying unnoticed in a Daimler with personalized number plates, even without the oak veneer coffin in the back.

  When Cooper arrived at the crematorium, Melvyn Hudson was already standing in the porte-cochere talking to Christopher Lloyd. Hudson seemed to recognize the Toyota. He lost interest in what Lloyd was saying to him as he watched Cooper park behind the mourners’ cars.

  But Cooper didn’t approach Hudson directly. Let him worry for a few minutes. It was a good tactic, and he intended to exploit it. So he walked through the car park, past the floral tributes and the metal stakes with the day’s name cards on them. Many of the people cremated here were commemorated by rose bushes in the garden of remembrance. There were long, circular beds of them, separated by neatly mown grass. Cooper recalled Madeleine Chadwick’s enthusiasm for roses. The triumph of good
over evil. The scented bloom and the eternal thorns.

  The garden wasn’t as peaceful as he’d expected. Traffic on the ring road created a constant background to the sound of birdsong. The traces of mercury emitted from the crematorium chimney would be battling against exhaust fumes in the pollution stakes.

  After the funeral party had gone into the chapel, Cooper looked around for the Hudson and Slack bearers. Having taken in the coffin, the bearers had left the chapel and were taking the chance to have a break until the service was over. They were standing in their black suits in the shelter of a wall near the cars, smoking cigarettes and chatting.

  ‘Mr McGowan? Could I have a word?’

  ‘Melvyn won’t like you turning up at funerals like this,’ said McGowan, watching Cooper with a thin smile. ‘It might be bad for business.’

  He had a cocky waggle of the head when he spoke. Cooper had seen it before, usually in people who had experience with the police and thought they knew their rights.

  ‘Where’s Vernon today?’ he asked.

  ‘He called in sick.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Had he mentioned that he wasn’t feeling well?’

  ‘Not to me. Come to think of it, he’s not usually the type to be sick, or skiving either. Vernon’s the most reliable bloke we’ve got, in his way.’

  ‘Perhaps he had a hard night,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t suppose it’s the best thing in the world to turn up at a funeral with a hangover.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said McGowan. ‘A few pale faces and sunken eyes would probably suit the occasion. A touch of the undead, if you get what I mean? As long as you don’t actually throw up in the hearse.’

  Cooper smiled politely. He’d heard worse comments at scenes of violent crime – the ghoulish humour of people who had to laugh in the face of death, because they met it every day.

  ‘Anyway,’ said McGowan, ‘Vernon doesn’t drink.’

  Ironically, it was something Vernon Slack had said that was bothering Cooper. And that puzzled him. After all, it wasn’t as if Vernon had actually told him anything – certainly nothing he didn’t already know. But he did see Melvyn Hudson and Christopher Lloyd and the others on a day-to-day basis, when they were off guard. Perhaps they weren’t too careful about what they said when Vernon was nearby with his head under a bonnet. In a way, Vernon might be the very person to see through the façades and know the truth.

  Cooper went back over his conversations with Vernon. They’d been limited and brief. Awkward and unhelpful, in fact. He shook his head. There was nothing jumping out at him. So maybe it wasn’t anything Vernon had said, but the way that he’d said it. If he hadn’t registered it at the time, he’d probably never recall it now.

  ‘There isn’t any need for it, you see,’ Vernon had said. ‘We do the job and look after the grievers, and then we go home. Sometimes, you don’t even know the details of a call until you turn up at the house to do a removal. The boss sees to everything else.’

  Cooper’s pace slowed a little as the memory came to him. He could hear Vernon saying it now, word for word, yet he hadn’t taken any notice of it at the time. It was probably nothing, of course. But it was something to mention, when the moment was right.

  Gavin Murfin collapsed into his chair with a sigh, threw a paper bag into the bin and ripped open a plastic sandwich box.

  ‘Getting these names was like pulling teeth,’ he said.

  Fry looked up. Was this an early lunch or a late breakfast? She could never tell with Gavin.

  ‘What names?’ she said.

  ‘The staff who worked at Hudson and Slack eighteen months ago.’

  ‘The what?’

  Startled by her tone, Murfin stopped with a sandwich halfway to his mouth. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Did you say you had a list of staff who worked at Hudson and Slack?’

  ‘Yeah. You asked me to get the background on Richard Slack’s RTA. Well, some clever bugger at the time thought it was a bit funny that Slack was doing a call-out on his own. What with that and the woman who thought she saw someone running off, this DC decided to check with everyone at the firm, in case Slack had contacted them before the accident. A waste of time, as it happens, but you’ve got to admit it’s thorough.’

  ‘Gavin, you’re wonderful.’

  Murfin bit into his sandwich with satisfaction.

  ‘Cheers. Do you want to phone my missus and tell her that? She’d appreciate it.’

  ‘We lost Hudson and Slack’s personnel records in the fire last night,’ said Fry. ‘Very convenient for Mr Hudson, it seems. He tried to make out his records weren’t comprehensive, because some of his staff were casual workers.’

  ‘Presumably he must have known who they were, though. He had to pay them, after all.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that might have been the problem. Cash with no questions asked.’

  ‘And nothing going to the tax man, like?’

  ‘Well done anyway, Gavin. Is there anyone we know on the list?’

  ‘Not that jumps out at me. But I’ll get them run through the PNC and do an intelligence check.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Murfin passed across the list. Fry was glad to have it in her hand before any more crumbs landed on it. She glanced quickly down it, noting a few familiar names, but several that were new to her. Eighteen months wasn’t all that long ago, but there seemed to have been quite a turnover, particularly among the bearers and drivers.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ she said.

  ‘What’s up now?’

  ‘That’s one name I didn’t expect. Thomas Edward Jarvis, Litton Foot. This is the man with the dogs, isn’t it, Gavin?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Murfin. ‘Didn’t one get shot?’

  Fry put down the list. ‘Who would have guessed that Mr Jarvis once worked for Hudson and Slack? Not his friend Ben Cooper, I bet.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him, Sarge?’

  But Fry only stared at him again as he finished off his sandwich.

  ‘Gavin,’ she said, ‘what do you mean “the woman who thought she saw someone running off”?’

  This morning, the bereaved had opted for traditional music. Cooper could hear the sound of an electronic organ playing the first mournful notes. He was watching the previous party of mourners file past the flowers in the rain when his mobile rang, and he recognized Fry’s number on the caller display.

  ‘Yes, Diane?’

  ‘Thomas Jarvis. Did you know he worked at Hudson and Slack eighteen months ago?’

  ‘No, I had no idea,’ said Cooper.

  ‘He’s never mentioned that when you talked to him?’

  ‘No. Well, there’s no reason why he should have done – the subject of Hudson and Slack never came up. But you’re sure he worked there? Eighteen months ago?’

  ‘He was listed as an employee during the enquiry into Richard Slack’s crash.’

  ‘It’s certainly an odd coincidence, isn’t it?’

  ‘Coincidence? Ben, you do like to give people the benefit of the doubt, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We wondered why none of Jarvis’s dogs detected the presence of a decomposing corpse while it was lying in the woods close to his property,’ she said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Yes, but there was a possible explanation for that. Somebody might have returned to the site and exposed the remains fairly recently, after they’d already become skeletonized and the odour had dissipated.’

  ‘But there’s no evidence to support that theory, is there?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘So we should consider an alternative scenario.’

  Cooper didn’t like the sound of that. In Fry’s vocabulary, an alternative scenario usually meant bad news for somebody.

  ‘You have a scenario in mind, do you, Diane?’

  ‘Of course. What’s more likely than that one of Jarvis’s dogs did detect the decomposing
corpse? Maybe all his dogs knew the corpse was there and made a fuss about it – barked or pointed at it with their noses, or whatever dogs do.’

  Cooper laughed. ‘And don’t you think Tom Jarvis would have realized?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone as Fry waited expectantly. Cooper knew he was supposed to reach the same conclusion that she had, without having to be prompted. In this case, there was a conclusion he didn’t want to come to. But she’d lose patience if she had to wait too long.

  ‘For God’s sake, Ben,’ she said. ‘What if Jarvis didn’t take any notice of the dogs’ behaviour for one very simple reason – he already knew perfectly well that the body was there.’

  Cooper began to pace up and down, aware of some of the mourners for the next funeral watching him.

  ‘Yes, I understand what you’re saying, Diane.’

  ‘You’ve got to make Jarvis talk. I know what you’re like when you get together with one of your rural soul mates, Ben. You communicate in manly grunts and meaningful silences. But make sure you ask him some tough questions.’

  ‘I’ll do it today. But I have one other visit to make first.’

  ‘OK. And there’s another thing you need to know …’

  Cooper had already started heading back to his car. He swapped the phone to his other hand to reach the pocket with his keys in.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Do you remember that Mr Slack was on his own when he died in the car crash?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I wondered about that. How likely is it that a funeral director would go out to a call on his own? There’s no way one person can shift a dead body easily, unless it’s a small child’s.’

  ‘Maybe someone was going to meet him there?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Well, it’s possible. But Gavin had a look at the inquest report.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There was some question over the testimony of a witness – a female motorist who was first at the accident scene and called 999. She told the traffic officers she’d seen someone about half a mile back, before she came on the crash site, which was just around a bend. She saw somebody jogging near the side of the road. It was pitch dark, of course. Unfortunately, she had no reason to take notice at the time – it was before she knew there was a crash. She was just struck by the fact that the individual was running. And, most importantly, he wasn’t running along the verge but up the banking, as if he was heading across the fields away from the road. She had the impression he’d done that because he heard her car coming.’