06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

  ‘So Robertson became a father figure?’

  ‘Very much so, I think. It’s all in the journal, Diane, when you have time to read it.’

  Fry glanced at the book on the table. ‘I’m not sure I want to read it.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s all there. Robertson’s big mistake was to come here to Greenshaw Lodge at the wrong time. He chose the moment when Vernon’s faith in him had been destroyed. As far as Vernon was concerned, his substitute father had let him down, too. Robertson was killed with a rifle, not a shotgun, wasn’t he?’

  ‘So the doctor says. A single bullet, close to the heart. Enough to cause fatal internal injuries and major blood loss.’

  Cooper felt a sudden stab of guilt. It was quite irrational, and something he could never admit to Fry. But, sitting here in this tragic house, almost surrounded by human corpses, he felt guilty that he’d never found out who shot Tom Jarvis’s dog. Now, poor old Graceless would be pushed so far down the list of priorities that her death would lie on the files for ever, and her killer would never face justice. Mr Jarvis would become just one more person Cooper hoped never to meet on the streets of Edendale, in case he was challenged for an explanation.

  He looked at Fry. There was something else that needed explaining.

  ‘Diane, there’s something about the tapes of those phone calls, isn’t there?’ he said. ‘A personal reason you find them so hard to listen to?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  Cooper almost told her, but held his tongue at the last second. Some instinct suggested it wouldn’t be wise to tell the truth for once.

  ‘I just guessed.’

  But Fry had that look on her face again, the one that suggested she didn’t believe him. ‘Don’t worry, Ben. I think I know who must have told you.’

  ‘No, really –’

  ‘Well, maybe you’re right,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

  Fry watched the scenes of crime team carrying out the last boxes to one of the vans. There was still a lot of activity around the nearest tent, where Freddy Robertson’s body hadn’t been removed to the mortuary yet.

  ‘But Robertson could still have told us what he knew,’ she said. ‘He could have saved his own life, he could have saved Vernon’s. What was wrong with the bloody man?’

  ‘Do you want my expert opinion?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘He was just weird.’

  Fry caught the look in his eye and saw the joke.

  ‘Oh, that’s your view as an expert? You haven’t just borrowed that opinion from someone else and used it as your own, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m very experienced in my field,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yes, as long as it’s a field of sheep.’

  Cooper struggled to keep pace with her as she walked out of the house and headed towards the lane, past the crime scene vans. ‘By the way, Diane, what sort of fees can expert consultants claim? Do I send my invoice to you, or to the DI?’

  And then Fry laughed. It was the first time he’d seen her laugh for months. It altered her whole face, the way the sun could change the landscape after rain. She looked at him and opened her mouth to speak, and Cooper felt his heart lift, as if she were about to tell him something he’d waited years to hear.

  But he would never know what Fry was going to say. Her first words were interrupted by the ringing of his mobile. With an instinctive expectation of the worst, Cooper looked at the number showing on the caller display.

  ‘It’s Matt,’ he said. ‘And there’s only one thing he’ll be calling me about.’

  If life were really a book, it ought to be possible to turn the last page without pain. The way a life ended shouldn’t make anyone forget the way it was lived. But Ben Cooper had a deeper fear. It was one that he hardly knew how to acknowledge. While his sister Claire sat with Matt watching over their mother, Ben waited outside in the trees, reluctant to miss the last shreds of light as the day came to an end. The dusk deepened so gradually that it was only when the air began to chill his skin that he realized he’d been standing in the dark for the last half-hour.

  After the past few days, he was afraid that he wouldn’t know how to accept death. He wasn’t sure that he’d understand how he was supposed to react, what other people would expect of him. When the reality of dying came close enough to touch him personally, he was terrified that his mind would go into denial. How could he face the physical truth of what he had talked about with Freddy Robertson? The slow process of decomposition that began with the final breath, the stages of decay and the mould of fermentation, the swarming bacteria and digestive enzymes that would return the body to the earth.

  Surely, when the moment came, it would be too much to cope with. He’d be frozen with fear, terrified to express a thought or emotion, in case it burst a barrier that held back the worms and the demons of the grave. Everyone would think he was heartless and cold, that he was showing no grief. He might not be able to face his family, feeling as he did.

  Ben wondered if there was anybody he could explain it to. He thought about talking to Matt or Claire, but he knew they wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t fair to inflict it on them anyway. Nobody wanted to think about death. Not really think about it. He was afraid he might shock them by referring to his mother’s body as ‘it’. But his perception of dying had changed. He no longer believed that what remained after death would still be the person he’d known and loved.

  For a moment, he watched the lights on the relief road. One after another, they flickered and died on the parapet of the footbridge, though the vehicles themselves weren’t visible behind the fencing. The hum of traffic reminded him of the garden of remembrance at the crematorium. He shivered, and went back to the ward and let the others take a break.

  Ben Cooper held his mother’s hand for a long time, until he finally fell asleep in the chair by her bed. He must have dozed for only a short while. Yet he woke feeling as if a long time had passed and the world had changed while he slept. He’d been dreaming about being lost in great, echoing caves where water ran all around him. But the dream slipped rapidly away as he opened his eyes and remembered where he was.

  He was still holding his mother’s hand, but her fingers felt limp and cold.

  ‘Mum?’

  Her eyes were closed – as if she, too, were asleep. He wondered what she’d be dreaming about. Ben put his palm against her forehead. It was smooth – smoother than her skin had been for years. And much cooler, too.

  He looked at the unnatural whiteness of her still face, and at first he thought that she must have been replaced with a marble statue of herself while he slept. A beautiful statue, finely sculpted, but lacking the vital spark of life.

  ‘Mum?’

  But he’d seen it often enough to know the truth. His mother’s stillness was beyond sleep, beyond the slightest trace of breathing.

  Ben laid his mother’s hand gently on the cover, making sure it was in a comfortable position. Then he patted it twice and looked up at the window. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to feel at this moment. He’d expected to go through all kinds of emotions, but none of them seemed to come. There was only a spreading numbness, a sort of emptiness waiting for something to fill it.

  Finally, he got up from the bed and opened the door. He turned once and took a last look at his mother. She seemed peaceful, for which he was grateful. And her bed had recently been made, so that she looked neat and tidy, clean and comfortable. That seemed to be important, too.

  Slowly, Ben walked the few yards down the corridor to the nurses’ station. A young nurse in a blue uniform looked up at him, and smiled.

  ‘Yes, sir? Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘It’s my mother,’ he said. ‘I think she’s dead.’

  37

  Although it was two days after his mother had died, Diane Fry was still being unusually attentive. It made Cooper nervous. Like an efficient supervisor, she’d been concerned for his we
lfare, tentatively asking the usual questions to test his state of mind, his ability to do the job, and wondering whether she should send him home, in case he embarrassed his colleagues. And now she’d left a message asking him to meet her here at the sculpture trail in Tideswell Dale, if he felt up to it. What was all that about?

  In the end, she’d even agreed to collect Cooper at his flat, since his foot had stiffened up and was making it impossible for him to drive.

  ‘We’ve had a busy two days,’ Fry said in the car.

  ‘I’m sorry I missed them.’

  ‘We’ve had a whole mass of interviews to do. Not just Abraham Slack – who still won’t talk, by the way. But we’ve also had Melvyn Hudson in, and Billy McGowan again. And your friend Tom Jarvis. He’s a straight talker, isn’t he? Mr Jarvis, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, you could say that.’

  ‘I quite liked him.’

  Cooper’s eyebrows rose at that. Fry never liked anybody.

  ‘And he speaks highly of you, Ben.’

  ‘I don’t know why. I never did much for him.’

  ‘They were a mixed bunch, those three. But they had one thing in common. They all hated Richard Slack.’

  Fry stopped to fumble for change and put some money in the machine for the car park. The gate was unlocked, allowing them to drive through on to the track that led up to the picnic area above the sculpture trail.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Cooper. ‘They all knew Vernon’s history, I suppose. And none of them wanted to put him through any more than he’d suffered already at the hands of his father.’

  ‘Clannish people in the funeral business, aren’t they?’

  ‘It’s “them and us”. Remember?’

  ‘Don’t I just?’

  Fry got out of the car to close the gate. The choked stream moved sluggishly just below the track.

  ‘Look down there in the water,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What? I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Look at the plants.’

  ‘The giant rhubarb?’

  ‘That’s Gunnera manicata, from the South American swamps. But that wasn’t what I meant. I was looking at the other stuff, the giant hogweed.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. And where does that come from?’

  ‘The Caucasus, I think.’

  ‘I never knew the vegetation of Derbyshire was so cosmopolitan.’

  ‘Be careful you don’t touch it,’ he said, as Fry took a step closer to the edge of the stream.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It secretes a sap that burns the skin and causes blisters. It’s a photosensitivity problem, I think. But it can cause temporary blindness, and in some cases serious long-term damage such as recurrent dermatitis. You daren’t cut the things down with a strimmer without wearing protective gear. They’re a real menace.’

  ‘Vernon Slack had blisters on his hands,’ said Fry.

  ‘He got them from touching giant hogweed while he was crossing the stream at Litton Foot.’

  ‘On his way to Fox House Farm.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Apparently, he used to leave his motorbike at Tom Jarvis’s, then cross the stream and climb up through the woods. He told Jarvis he was doing a bit of poaching on the Alder Hall estate. He probably left him a rabbit or a pheasant occasionally, as proof.’

  ‘Did Jarvis ever suspect there was more to it?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Fry. ‘He doesn’t say.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t give much away. But it’s best to pay attention to what he does say.’

  Fry frowned. ‘He was clearly being intimidated by someone. I think the poachers must have been trying to warn him away from their territory, don’t you? All that business with the dog and the bag of excreta.’

  ‘I never thought Tom Jarvis was the type to be easily intimidated,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Maybe.’

  Cooper reflected that there had never been any evidence that the bag had actually existed, either. Mr Jarvis might have had reasons of his own for laying a false trail.

  Fry parked at the edge of the picnic area, near enough to reach the carved miner overlooking the road. Cooper remembered these carvings from when the wood had been a sort of reddish golden brown. Now they were weathered from exposure and had developed a patina of green mould.

  ‘There must still be some of Audrey Steele’s bones scattered across the hillside over there,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever find the last bits of her.’

  ‘We’re not even looking for them any more,’ admitted Fry.

  ‘So they’ll stay there for ever, unless they turn up in a bird’s nest some day.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Ben?’

  ‘I’m wondering whether it’ll make any difference to her family. They thought they already had all of her once. Then Audrey turns up again, but some of her is missing. I’m not sure how I’d feel about that myself. I’m trying to work it through in my mind.’

  ‘If you really need to know, you could ask them,’ said Fry.

  Cooper looked at her, feeling a brief pity at her lack of experience in human relationships.

  ‘People never tell the truth about any subject that has to do with death,’ he said. ‘They only tell you what you want to hear, or what they think sounds respectable. All of it is a pretence. No one can examine their true feelings about death too closely. It’s much too frightening.’

  ‘You mean people don’t want to admit they’re glad someone is dead, because they’re expected to show grief?’

  Cooper turned away. ‘That isn’t really what I meant. But never mind.’

  On the other hand, he knew it was possible for people to accept death into their lives in unusual ways, like Mrs Askew keeping her husband’s cremated remains in her terrarium. It was practical and down to earth, yet her husband was never completely out of her memory. He just hoped Mr Askew had been fond of small reptiles.

  ‘What did you mean, then?’ said Fry. She sounded as though she was trying hard not to be irritable with him.

  But Cooper shook his head. ‘You know, I was initially misled by Ellen Walker’s comments about the weather on the day of Audrey’s funeral. I pictured the family standing outside the crematorium chapel, admiring the floral tributes in the sleet. But they didn’t go to the crem, only to the funeral service at St Mark’s. They decided not to witness the final disposal – and that was a form of denial in its way, of course. It was a decision that provided the opportunity for what came afterwards.’

  ‘You haven’t said that to the family, surely?’

  Cooper laughed. ‘Of course not.’

  Fry took a deep breath, but seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say.

  ‘You know the teeth in the cremated remains that Vivien Gill was given?’ she said. ‘We were told they were non-human, but we had to wait for an expert opinion on what animal they came from. We just got it this morning.’

  ‘They were pig’s teeth, weren’t they?’ said Cooper.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘A dead pig is as close as you can get to a dead person, right down to the smell. The second set of remains at Ravensdale turned out to be from the carcass of a sow, didn’t they? From the cut marks on the bones, I bet it was used for practice. And Tom Jarvis used to keep pigs.’

  Fry nodded. ‘We’re not sure how heavily Jarvis was involved. But he’s been trying to protect Vernon Slack, we know that.’

  ‘And Billy McGowan was doing that, too.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I saw Vernon’s motorbike parked outside the Jarvis house the first time I went there, you know. He might have been watching from the woods when I went down to look at the grave site. The dogs would have been used to him, I suppose. They got used to me pretty quick.’ Cooper had a sudden thought. ‘I wonder if that was when he tried to cross the stream further down and damaged his hands on the giant hogweed.’

  Fry pushed her hands into her pockets and sat on the wooden plinth next to the mine
r, resting her arm on his knee. From here, there was a wonderful view over the dale, down to Ravenstor and Miller’s Dale in the south. They might have been able to see the spire of Tideswell Church to the north, but for the hills in between. Fry didn’t seem to notice any of it.

  ‘We traced the owner of the rifle,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? The one that Vernon used to kill Freddy Robertson?’

  ‘He got it from one of the gang who poach in Alder Hall woods. Vernon had seen the lampers. And he recognized one of them. When he met up with the man at a funeral, he dropped some hints and was invited to go lamping a couple of times. Then Vernon told him he needed a rifle to shoot rabbits on his own property.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. And you might be interested to know that we got a match with the bullet the vet took from Mr Jarvis’s dog.’

  ‘You’ve identified the person who shot Graceless?’

  ‘That’s why Mr Jarvis thinks so highly of you, Ben.’

  ‘But I didn’t –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Cooper looked at Fry. For a long time, she’d regarded him as something to be avoided as far as possible. He seemed to be an irritant to her, every bit as noxious as the giant hogweed that had caused the burns on Vernon Slack’s arms.

  ‘Gavin Murfin came to see me, you know,’ he said. ‘Was it you who told him about something called the Death Clock?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a website that lets you put in your personal details, and it predicts how long you’ll live. It claims to give you the exact date of your death. Why?’

  ‘Well, Gavin found the website and tried it out.’

  ‘Ah. And did he get an interesting result?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘It told him he’d died three months ago.’

  ‘Poor Gavin.’

  Cooper couldn’t help smiling. ‘Actually, I think it did him good. He’s decided he might as well enjoy himself as much as possible if he’s living on borrowed time.’

  ‘Back to his old self, then.’

  ‘Freddy Robertson was right, you know,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s the unknown we’re most frightened of, the things we don’t understand. And more than anything else in the world, death is the great unknown. The only way to come to terms with it is to understand it. If you can do that, then death loses its power to be quite so frightening.’