06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

  In the doorway of the abandoned building, Abraham Slack stood outlined for a moment in the light of the blast, a double-barrelled shotgun trembling in his hands.

  36

  By morning, crime scene tents had sprung up like mushrooms in the autumn rain. SOCOs, photographers and police officers were finding different ways of getting lost while travelling from the old engine house at Greenshaw Lodge to the ruins of Fox House Farm on the Alder Hall estate.

  As a result, the forensic work went slowly, and it was well into the day before the bodies of Professor Freddy Robertson and Vernon Slack were removed. Longer still before recovery work began on the skeletal remains from the abandoned building.

  Meanwhile, Abraham Slack wasn’t talking. In the interview rooms at West Street, detectives were used to frustrating silences. But the old man, sitting with his solicitor, refused to offer even the beginnings of an explanation for his decision to kill his grandson. The first discharge of the shotgun had torn apart Vernon’s torso, and pellets from the second barrel had shredded both his lungs, so he’d died breathing his own blood.

  As he listened to Diane Fry reading the description of Vernon’s injuries, Slack hung his head and sagged with distress. The interview had to be suspended while a doctor examined him. To Fry, the old man looked as though he’d given up at that point. Perhaps he had. But when they got him back into the interview room, he still wasn’t talking.

  Fry was relieved when DI Hitchens called her out of the room. She was exhausted, and her head was aching again, worse than ever. Though she’d managed to get home some time in the early hours of the morning, she hadn’t slept at all. Whenever she’d started to drift out of consciousness, those steel springs had snapped in her forehead and plunged deep into the nerves behind her eyes, like the teeth of a gin trap.

  ‘Billy McGowan is changing his story,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It looks as though he’d decided that Richard Slack was the perfect scapegoat. Being dead can make you useful sometimes.’

  Fry nodded. ‘McGowan used to work for Abraham, didn’t he? Was he protecting the old man?’

  ‘No,’ said Hitchens. ‘Vernon.’

  ‘But Professor Robertson –?’

  ‘The team at Robertson’s house found comprehensive records on the professor’s computer. It turns out that Vernon Slack was one of his private students. Perhaps Vernon thought he had something to prove to the people who thought he was so useless.’

  ‘A funny way of doing it, sir.’

  Hitchens shrugged. ‘I don’t know. A special insight into the death business? Maybe he intended to defy expectations and take over Hudson and Slack one day. He could have been planning to take the firm in a different direction.’

  Fry squinted uneasily at the DI, but realized he was joking.

  ‘He was Richard Slack’s son,’ she said. ‘He could have inherited his father’s ruthless business streak, but it got twisted somewhere along the way. And instead, everyone ended up feeling sorry for him.’

  ‘Everyone, Diane?’

  ‘Well, Billy McGowan must have felt some sympathy for him. If someone like McGowan was willing to keep quiet about Vernon’s arrangement with Professor Robertson, then Vernon must have had something about him that I couldn’t see.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Fry looked at the door of the interview room. ‘That still doesn’t explain why the old man killed him. Why did he do that?’

  On the other side of the door, Abraham Slack sat looking at the triple-deck tape machine with a dead stare, devoid of emotion. Even the tapes had ceased to record his silence.

  *

  Ben Cooper was in the kitchen of Greenshaw Lodge when Fry found him later that day. He’d been watching the house gradually become sparser and more empty as the forensic team carried away items for examination. In the sitting-room display cabinet, he could still see the photograph of Abraham Slack and his family, though the SOCOs’ lights reflecting off the glass made the individual figures impossible to identify.

  ‘There was something about the way Vernon spoke,’ he said, when Fry negotiated the safe path to reach him. Cooper was trying to get his thoughts clear in his own mind, and Fry was the only person he thought might understand.

  ‘Shouldn’t you still be in hospital?’ she said.

  ‘They’ve stitched me up and given me a tetanus jab. There was no point in staying there any longer.’

  She looked at his bandaged foot. ‘No bones broken or anything? I’ve seen such horrible stories about animal traps.’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘The trick is to lie still and minimize injury. Animals don’t know that, so they end up tearing their own legs off.’

  Fry grimaced. ‘What do you mean about the way Vernon spoke?’

  ‘When I talked to him, he never once said “I” or “me”. It was always “we” or some passive form, like “There’s a job to be done”. Most people would have said “I’ve got a job to do”. But when Vernon spoke, he made it sound as if none of it was anything to do with him personally. It was as though he was distancing himself from the whole thing.’

  Cooper looked at Fry to see if she was listening. She was studying the marks of the shotgun pellets in the wall, where Abraham Slack had loosed off his first, and wildest, shot. The cartridge case had been found in the hallway, near the foot of the stairs.

  ‘It’s exactly what Dr Kane said about some of the phrases used in the phone calls,’ he said. ‘An unconscious form of denial, suggesting underlying guilt.’

  ‘So Vernon made the phone calls?’ said Fry.

  She was trying to sound as though it was a minor detail. But Cooper knew that the calls were very important to her.

  ‘Yes, Diane. I think they’ll find a voice changer somewhere among all that stuff they’ve taken out of the house. Or maybe in Vernon’s car.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘He was at the councillor’s funeral in Wardlow, you know. That was a Hudson and Slack job, and Vernon was one of the drivers. It might have looked odd for one of the mourners not to go into the service, and someone might have noticed that. But the drivers wait outside the church. Vernon was ideally placed to make that call.’

  ‘What about the call from the crematorium, though? That funeral was being conducted by a firm from Chesterfield. It wasn’t Hudson and Slack’s job.’

  ‘But the one before it was theirs, Diane. There was a half-hour turnaround at the crematorium. The limousine drivers from the previous funeral were just waiting for the mourners to finish inspecting the floral tributes. They were away out of the gates long before we arrived.’

  Fry had been looking at the pellet marks too long now. She couldn’t even have been seeing them any more.

  ‘And Vernon was there?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure he must have been driving one of the limos that day.’

  She looked at Cooper then with an eager expression, as if there was something she needed from him.

  ‘Ben, he said there was going to be a killing. What killing did he mean?’

  Cooper frowned. ‘I don’t know. There’s only one person’s death you can fully control, isn’t there? There’s just one form of dying that has an unambiguous meaning. That’s when you take your own life.’

  ‘You think that’s what he planned to do?’

  ‘People don’t get to choose how they die. With one exception: suicide. It’s the only way we can have any control over our own death. The only way we can give the end of our lives any meaning.’

  Cooper knew that suicide was often an act of anger against people who were close to the victim but had failed to recognize their despair. Or it could be aimed at those who caused the despair in the first place. In its way, suicide was an especially cruel form of revenge.

  But Fry looked unconvinced. He guessed she might be remembering the words of one of the phone messages: As a neck slithers in my fingers like a sweat-soaked snake … They would never know wheth
er Vernon had been referring to a real killing or re-living a fantasy. Was that what he’d been thinking as he sat in the wrecked van with his father helpless at the wheel? It was a moment when he might have acted out his fantasy of killing the man he hated.

  ‘You know Vernon Slack studied under Professor Robertson?’ said Fry. ‘He was the professor’s star student, apparently.’

  ‘So he’s not quite as dumb as he seems.’

  Cooper paused, letting the sentence repeat in his head. It seemed to be accompanied by faint and unidentifiable music.

  ‘Isn’t that a line from a song?’

  ‘Damn, you’re right,’ said Fry. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can’t remember. But it’ll come back to me later on, when I’m not thinking about it.’

  ‘I hope so. Otherwise it’s going to keep going through my head for the rest of the day.’

  Cooper stood up with some difficulty, trying not to show too much discomfort. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think Freddy Robertson would consider a star student to be the person who took in every precious word and echoed his own views most faithfully.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Ben. I bet he liked Vernon because he was easy to influence. Faithful is a good word. And loyal, too – like a dog.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, he’d kept the professor’s secrets for a long time. He stayed loyal, even when Robertson himself started to worry that Vernon would crack and give him away.’

  Cooper frowned. ‘Is that the way you read it?’

  ‘What do you mean, Ben?’

  ‘I think the loyalty was the other way round. Vernon thought he was doing Robertson a great service by obtaining a real body for him. It was meant to be a special gift, the way a cat brings its kill into the house for its owner.’

  ‘Are you talking about Audrey Steele?’

  ‘Yes, of course. The theft of her body was nothing to do with Richard Slack – it was Vernon’s idea. But Robertson rejected his offering. It was a step too far for the professor – it brought death a little bit too close. Perhaps he was completely horrified by the idea.’

  ‘So he was nothing but talk, after all.’

  ‘But he didn’t give Vernon away, did he?’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what I meant about loyalty.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Ben?’

  He slid a plastic evidence bag across the kitchen table. It contained an exercise book with a red cover, the pages well thumbed and loose. The outside of the bag was stained with a streak of blood. Cooper realized the blood was probably his own.

  ‘It’s Vernon’s journal,’ he said. ‘This is what his grandfather found when he started to get worried about Vernon’s behaviour and searched the house. You don’t need to read much of it to realize why the old man reacted the way he did. He was witnessing the destruction of everything he’d built up. Not only the business, but his family, too. And the cause of it was the one thing that he thought he had left – his grandson.’

  ‘A journal? You mean like a diary?’

  ‘Take a look,’ said Cooper. ‘Read it.’

  Fry accepted the journal with the expression of someone who’d just been handed a ticking bomb. She opened it near the back, as if she hoped to avoid the worst.

  MY JOURNAL OF THE DEAD, PHASE SIX

  On the day I was born, my bones were soft. So soft that you’d hardly have heard them break. Perhaps, if you’d listened carefully, you might have caught the gentle crunch of a forearm as it fractured, or the crack of my thigh bone splintering. But they’d hardly have been audible, I’m sure. Not above the sound of my screams.

  Now, my bones are older and stronger. If I live long enough, they might twist and become brittle, until they won’t support my body any more. But deep down, the marks of my childhood would still be there – the tracks of fracture lines, the signs of incomplete healing. They’re invisible now, except to an X-ray machine. Invisible, except in the jagged lines of pain etched in my memory. My bones will never forget, until the day I die.

  There’s magic in our bones. They produce our red blood cells, trillions of them surging through our bodies. I think the magic must lie in the marrow, that pale, mysterious jelly. If only I could suck out enough of it, my blood might be stronger, and my bones might heal.

  Yet every time I think about blood or pain, I get a sensation along the nerves in the backs of my calves, an involuntary cringing, a sudden discomfort like the blood withdrawing from my veins, like shallow water dragging over sharp stones. What kind of direct connection is there between my brain and the muscles in my legs? It’s one of those peculiarities of the body, a secret that no pathologist will ever bring to light with his knife.

  But soon he’ll be gone, the man who made me like this. When the last shreds of his flesh are stripped away, his grip on my life will be broken. Finally, his spirit will separate from his body, prised away like a dead snail sucked from its shell, like sewage pumped from a septic tank. His voice will fall silent in my head, the pain of his presence will stop, and the nightmares will be over. No more of those endless memories of beatings, the feel of his neck in my hands, a neck soaked with sweat as he lies helpless and bleeding – but I can’t, can’t bring myself to kill him.

  Just one more day. And then I can be like everyone else. It takes just one more day.

  And this will be a real killing. The final, complete and perfect destruction. By tonight, he’ll be gone for ever. Gone from the dead place.

  Fry thought the journal had finished. She turned the page at what seemed to be the last entry. But on the other side, there was a final scrawl – two lines in hastily printed capitals:

  IT WAS ALL A LIE. HE’S STILL HERE IN MY HEAD. WHO ELSE DO I HAVE TO KILL TO GET RID OF THIS THING INSIDE ME?

  ‘There’s an earlier entry that looks identical to one of the phone calls,’ said Fry, when she’d finished reading.

  Cooper nodded. ‘Some of it is borrowed from Professor Robertson. Notes from when Vernon was his student, perhaps? He seems to have taken in every word as gospel. But the professor could be very persuasive. Mesmerizing almost.’

  Fry slid the journal back into its plastic bag and took off her gloves.

  ‘And what about the human remains at Fox House Farm, Ben?’

  ‘I think that’ll turn out to be Vernon’s father.’

  ‘Richard Slack? You think Vernon stole the body of his own father?’

  ‘It would have been easier to achieve than with Audrey Steele,’ said Cooper. ‘Especially as Richard was due to be buried rather than cremated. There were people already complicit by then.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It would make sense, if Vernon took on board some of the ideas that Freddy Robertson was teaching him – the practice of excarnation, the sarcophagus and the charnel house. He left a body in “the dead place” to be sure that all the flesh had gone from the bones.’

  ‘And he was going back at intervals to check on progress?’

  ‘He wanted to be sure that his father’s spirit had gone. He was afraid it would linger unless the bones were completely clean and dry. That’s what Robertson had told him, you see.’

  ‘And when the bones were finally clean –’

  ‘Vernon thought he’d be free. Free of the nightmares, free of the memory of his father. He seems to have believed that his father was still in his head somehow. Well, you’ve read it, Diane. He expresses it clearly enough himself in his journal.’

  ‘So perhaps when he called, he knew he was getting close: “Soon there will be a killing.” He might not have been talking about his own death at all.’

  Cooper sat back, suddenly weary. ‘Vernon must have hated his father very much. It appears his father abused him badly as a small child. Vernon bore the pain in his bones all his life. I noticed him moving stiffly, but thought it was a recent beating. It wasn’t – it was a very old one. A series of vicious beatings, dating back to infancy.’

  ‘Richard Slack was worth more as meat for th
e worms than he ever was alive.’

  ‘Yes, you might say that.’

  ‘And if his father was still alive, no doubt he’d turn up at the child’s funeral and send flowers,’ said Fry distantly.

  Cooper stared at her.

  ‘Diane, are you all right?’ he said.

  Fry seemed to shake herself out of some reverie. ‘Fine. Look, I understand now what Vernon meant about the dead place being in other people’s hearts,’ she said. ‘But there had to be a physical place too, didn’t there?’

  ‘Where else for him but his own home? The house he grew up in, the place he associated with his parents, particularly with the man he’d always hated so much. This house was always a dead place for Vernon.’

  Fry was quiet for a few moments. Watching her, Cooper knew she’d return to the same subject that had obsessed her all along, though he didn’t know why.

  ‘Those messages he sent,’ she said. ‘The gibbet and the rock, and all that. Do you think Vernon was hoping we’d work out the clues in time and stop him?’

  ‘We’ll never know, will we?’

  ‘If he was, Ben, we were too late.’

  There was nothing Cooper could say to that. ‘Too late’ were the saddest words in the language, and they both knew it.

  ‘Was it Rod Stewart?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That line from a song. “I’m not quite as dumb as I seem”.’

  ‘I don’t know any Rod Stewart songs,’ said Fry.

  ‘Come on, you must do.’

  ‘Well, I hope I don’t.’ Fry shivered suddenly. ‘Bloody Freddy Robertson. He could have saved us so much time. Why didn’t he tell us what he knew?’

  ‘This Lucy Somerville, his daughter,’ said Cooper. ‘I imagine she’s an only child?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘It means Professor Robertson never had a son of his own.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘And Vernon never had a real father. Not one that he cared about.’