‘What did he mean about the wrong kind of wheels on the snow?’ she said.
‘Oh, that?’ Cooper smiled. ‘The dog handlers in Derbyshire are equipped with adapted Vauxhall Zafiras, which are underpowered anyway. They’re also front-wheel drive, and with all the weight of equipment and dogs at the back, they don’t go anywhere in snow.’
‘So what happens?’
‘Well, for four or five weeks in the average winter, our handlers are reduced to operating on foot, or begging a lift from a traffic officer in a four-wheel drive. Not many of the traffic boys like the idea of having a salivating long-haired German Shepherd sitting behind them on the back seat of the car, though.’
‘I can’t blame them really,’ said Villiers.
‘You don’t like dogs?’ asked Cooper in surprise. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d got an idea in his mind that Carol was a dog person. Horses, dogs, anything related to the outdoors.
‘Not when they remind me too much of a wolf,’ said Villiers.
Hitchens took Cooper aside for a moment.
‘Ben, Mr Mackenzie has asked us for a DC to work with DS Fry. Short term, of course.’
‘One of ours?’ said Cooper.
‘Yes. Who would you suggest?’
Cooper ran quickly through his team in his mind, dismissing Gavin Murfin immediately, following him closely with Luke Irvine. Fry would eat Irvine alive. Carol Villiers, or Becky Hurst? Both could cope with the assignment, and one of them would benefit from it tremendously.
‘DC Hurst,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell her?’
Hitchens nodded. ‘Yes, Ben. Good choice. And someone needs to liaise with the firefighters. Find out exactly what they saw.’
Cooper looked round. ‘Gavin, can you do that?’
‘I dare say it’s within my capabilities.’
Cooper turned as the DI left, and saw Fry scooping up the photos of the Pearsons. Murfin gave her a mock bow as he moved out of her way.
Fry nodded at him brusquely. ‘Gavin.’
‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘I won’t be in the way. I’m off to talk to Trumpton.’
Fry turned to Cooper with a raised eyebrow.
‘Trumpton?’ she said. ‘Do police officers still talk like that in the middle of the twenty-first century?’
‘I didn’t hear it,’ said Cooper.
‘I see.’
In fact, it was the first time he’d ever heard Murfin use that expression, though it had been common at one time as a derogatory reference to the fire service. The children’s TV series had, after all, finished decades ago. He hoped Murfin wouldn’t address the Edendale crew as Captain Flack, or Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub.
Murfin was proving difficult enough these days, but Cooper had never been able to figure out Diane Fry. Never. And he didn’t think that was ever going to change now.
When she’d gone back to Birmingham to resolve the issues that had been haunting her for years, he’d imagined there might be some kind of closure for her, that she would be able to put the past behind her and start living a more normal life. Yet still he sensed a dark shadow in her life, one whose cause he couldn’t even guess at. She was far too complex for him to comprehend, and he was past the point where he wanted to keep trying. It was like grasping at smoke and expecting it to stay in one place. No matter what you did, or how hard you tried, it always slipped through your fingers and left you holding nothing.
‘Wait,’ said Cooper. ‘Diane, could you let me see those photographs again?’
Fry looked at him curiously for a moment, but flipped open the file. Cooper could sense her watching him closely. She had never known quite what to expect of him, but he couldn’t blame her. Right now, he didn’t know what to expect of himself.
The man in the photo was about thirty. He was leaning on a sports car, smiling at the camera with the sort of intimate smile that suggested he knew the photographer very well. He wore faded jeans and a white T-shirt with a slogan that had been made illegible by the angle of his arms stretching and folding the fabric. Cooper thought he could see a ‘the’. Perhaps it was the name of a band.
In the background, familiar hills and the glint of water. One of the major reservoirs in the Upper Derwent. Howden, he guessed. The picture could have been taken at one of the pullins along the single-track road that skirted the edge of the reservoir.
‘Do they look like hikers to you?’ asked Cooper.
‘I think Trisha was the outdoors type. She had a couple of horses back in Surrey, member of the RSPB, donated to animal charities.’
‘A bit of an odd couple, do you think?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Had they been to the Peak District before?’
‘Yes. They’d even stayed in the same cottage, but during the summer of the previous year.’
‘I see.’
‘And?’ said Fry impatiently.
But Cooper ignored her. There was something familiar not only about the background, but about the stance of the man, the intimate expression. But most familiar of all was the face – blue eyes, a shock of fair hair. Yes, a young Robert Redford, with a hint of Brad Pitt.
‘Do you fancy him, or what?’ said Fry.
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘But I remember him.’
‘So when did you see David Pearson?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘You never were a good liar, Ben.’
He shrugged. ‘It might just be that I’ve seen the photographs before. In connection with the missing persons inquiry. I don’t know.’
Fry was silent, forced to accept it as a possible explanation. But he could tell that she still wanted to ask more questions.
‘He’s distinctive,’ she said at last. ‘Looks like a film star. I can’t quite remember which one …’
‘Robert Redford.’
‘Oh?’ She seemed to think about it for a moment. ‘Before my time, I think.’
‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? All the President’s Men?’
‘I can’t quite picture—’
‘Think of Brad Pitt, then.’
‘I suppose so. I prefer Johnny Depp myself.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘Wrong type altogether.’
‘So – you’ll be going over the ground again in the Pearson inquiry. Where are you heading first?’
He looked at her vaguely.
‘Back into the past, I think,’ he said.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t say it …’
‘What?’
‘Best place for you,’ said Fry.
‘No, you shouldn’t.’
Murfin was beaming at them from his desk, his phone poised in mid-air. He seemed reluctant to let Fry leave the office without a parting jibe.
‘Happy to be back among the sheep again, Diane? I bet you’ve been missing the little woolly darlings.’
Fry spun on her heel, an angry glower on her face.
‘Once I drive away from Edendale for the last time, I’m never going to leave civilisation again. Trust me, I’ll be happy if I don’t have to see another damn sheep ever in my life.’
As an exit line, it wasn’t bad. It was certainly one Cooper would remember.
8
It really was such a shame about the Light House. For generations, people had known where they were when they saw the pub. They had chosen it as a meeting place, as a halfway point on a journey, as a perfect spot to stop for a breather and admire the view.
The trouble was, not enough of them had actually been going inside, except to use the toilets. No one had recommended eating a meal there for years. No one even chose the Light House for a drinking session. It was impossible to include in a stag-night pub crawl because it was so far out of town. In its last few years it didn’t even have real ale on tap to attract the aficionados, and that meant even morris dancers stayed away. Reputation was everything in the pub business. The Light House had possessed a good reputation once. But that had long since trickled aw
ay – and with it the majority of its customers.
Cooper walked up from the car park on to the front terrace, which looked out over the valley. It had been a favourite spot to sit in the summer, when the weather was good. He’d sat there many times himself, gazing towards the horizon where the hills disappeared in a warm haze.
But his eye was still drawn towards the pub itself – blank, windowless and dead. The facade had looked Georgian in style, with big sash windows placed in perfect symmetry. Now, those windows had vanished underneath the boarding. He wondered if they would ever re-emerge and light up the way they once had, re-creating that familiar landmark. He didn’t feel optimistic about the prospect. Once things had gone, they tended to stay that way. The past didn’t come back.
‘I thought they would be here already,’ said Villiers, leaning against the bonnet of Cooper’s car. ‘I wonder where they are.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘They don’t intend to share everything they do with us, that’s obvious.’
‘Is that the way it is these days?’
‘I think we just got unlucky,’ said Cooper.
‘DS Fry is a good officer, I think.’
Cooper glanced at Villiers, wondering why she felt the need to defend Diane Fry.
‘Yes, of course she is.’
He couldn’t make his mind up about Carol Villiers any more. He’d thought he knew her well, but the woman who’d transferred into Derbyshire Constabulary wasn’t the same person who’d left the area for service with the RAF Police.
He recalled the day not long after Villiers had arrived when he’d see her driving away from the car park at E Division headquarters with Diane Fry. He’d thought about the moment many times in the weeks afterwards, trying to imagine what they might have in common, what they might have had to talk about. But he’d never come to any logical conclusion, not one that made any sense to him anyway. Not one that he wanted to think about too deeply.
And it was a sign of how his trust in Villiers had begun to ebb away that he’d never felt able to ask her the question. It was too late now, of course.
Villiers looked at her watch. ‘Maybe we should get on.’
‘We’ll be okay for a few minutes.’
‘If you say so.’
Cooper had wanted to get a look at the pub one way or another. It wasn’t right that he’d let Fry find a body when he should have been here himself. This building seemed to stand like a rebuke, a symbol of his failure. He needed to find out what its secret was, if it had one.
Close up, the story of the Light House was even sadder. Weeds sprouted in the tarmac of the car park, along the edges of the walls and even in the guttering. Green stains ran down the stone where the gutters were blocked. Bird droppings streaked every surface. Foxes had left their spraints in the long grass growing rank and untidy where the beer garden had once been. From the looks of it, the only visitors to the pub in recent months had been a string of vandals, who’d scrawled casual graffiti on the boards over the windows.
It was disturbing how quickly a building began to deteriorate when it was left unoccupied. The pub was like a grand old lady down on her luck, left alone and unloved, with her elegant clothes frayed at the edges, her hair unwashed and her fingernails dirty. She looked lost and ashamed, with her eyes closed against the light.
At the rear stood a range of outbuildings that had been used for storage, including two garages. Rubbish had been burned in an open space. A huge pile of old furniture was stacked against the back wall of the pub. Heavy tables with metal bases, wrought-iron chairs, a heap of torn parasols on steel posts.
On the south side, even the conservatory had been boarded over. Since it consisted mostly of glass, the result was a monstrosity of hardboard, like some giant armoured beetle or an above-ground nuclear bunker. In its time it had been a pleasant place to sit, even on a cold day, its bright and airy space a contrast to the dark interior of the pub.
This was the place where he’d once sat with Diane Fry. But that was in a whole different universe.
He turned and looked up the hill. The smoke was drifting closer again. Cooper screwed his eyes up against the light, unsure of what he was seeing. Shadows. Yes, shadows in the smoke. Dark and insubstantial, moving in and out of the murk, their movements flickering and unnatural. He tried to follow their direction, but quickly lost them. It was as if they had simply slipped out of the world around them and stepped into another dimension.
He strained his eyes to probe the billowing clouds, and thought he saw something once again. But it resolved into the corner of a stone wall, which dropped teasingly into sight for a moment, then vanished again. Perhaps they had been just shadows after all, an effect of the sun still shining down through the smoke. Or maybe it had been a couple of stray sheep, lost and bewildered on the moor.
‘Really,’ said Villiers. ‘We should probably get moving.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Although Fry and Mackenzie weren’t here, the pub was far from deserted. It was a suspected murder scene, and that changed everything. The scenes-of-crime team were at full stretch now, with scene examiners drafted in from other divisions. He couldn’t see Liz, but he knew she was on duty, so she’d be working somewhere. They tried not to see too much of each other on duty, in case there was talk.
The forced door and loose panel had been examined for tool marks and dusted for fingerprints, and the position of the suspect white pickup had been established from evidence of flattened weeds in the car park. It was lucky that the road had been closed for the fire on the moors. It meant that no one had been here between the departure of the pickup and the arrival of Fry’s Audi, which she’d left in the entrance.
Inside the pub, lights had been set up and a series of stepping plates and yellow evidence markers surrounded the position of the body, as well as the route the victim and his assailants had taken from the door. Two SOCOs in scene suits were still combing the adjacent floor and walls for traces, tracking the direction of blood spatter and photographing shoe marks in the dust.
‘DS Cooper, isn’t it? You’re on my crime scene.’
Cooper backed away from the door and found DCI Mackenzie behind him, with Fry at his elbow. Mackenzie’s voice was mild, but there was a cool undertone to his words, and a penetrating gaze in the eyes below the quizzically raised eyebrows.
‘I thought DC Villiers ought just to see the location,’ Cooper said.
He gestured towards Carol Villiers, who was waiting at a safe distance. Trust Carol – she had more sense than he did at a crime scene.
Mackenzie nodded. ‘Okay. Well while you’re here, Cooper, you might see if you can deal with the natives for us.’
‘Who’
Cooper looked towards the road, and saw a silver Volvo estate that had been stopped at the outer cordon. An elderly man in a suit was standing talking to a uniformed officer just outside the tape.
‘Fine,’ said Cooper. ‘I know who that is.’
Thomas Pilkington was the old man of the auctioneers Pilkington and Son. He’d been around the Eden Valley for years – a member of the Rotary Club, a former town councillor, a drinking companion of the golf club captain and the editor of the Eden Valley Times. The son of the firm was Jeremy Pilkington, quite a different proposition, more often to be seen in a red MG on his way to the sailing club at Carsington. Cooper felt sure Jeremy must now be the driving force behind the company.
Old Thomas had been the auctioneer at the cattle market in Edendale for decades. His voice was familiar to generations of farmers and livestock dealers. In fact it had been hard to escape for anyone passing within two hundred yards of the sale ring near the town’s railway station. Cooper remembered the sound as an integral feature of shopping trips to Edendale on cattle market days. Thomas Pilkington’s voice still played as part of the soundtrack to his childhood memories, along with the pop music he’d grown up listening to during all those long, hot summers.
But Edendale cattle market ha
d closed years ago, losing the battle against movement restrictions and competition from the new agricultural business centre fifteen miles away at Bakewell, part of a twelve-million-pound regeneration project. With the loss of the mainstay of their business, Pilkington and Son must have been close to the edge. No doubt it had been Jeremy who pushed for the move towards property auctions. That was still a thriving sector. Booming these days, in fact. But it was ironic that the firm should find itself auctioning off other businesses that could no longer compete.
Pilkington must be well into his seventies now. He was a red-faced man with an expanding belly almost bursting the buttons of his suit jacket. His complexion was just right to allow him to blend in with the farmers and livestock dealers who’d been his customers for all those years. He could have passed for a butcher or gamekeeper. But as a property agent, he was projecting the wrong image.
Cooper escorted him from the cordon via the safe route that had been marked out, and Fry cut across to intercept them, as if she didn’t trust Cooper within fifty yards of the crime scene.
‘My son is dealing with this property actually,’ Pilkington said, confirming Cooper’s suspicion. ‘I don’t know all that much about it. But he’s out of the country at the moment and it seems I’m responsible for it, so I’m the one who was called out by your people.’
‘Can’t you tell us anything, Mr Pilkington?’
‘Well, this is a free house and can be sold with all fixtures and fittings, should someone wish to continue with the current use. Alternatively it can be sold as a development opportunity and could feasibly be turned into residential accommodation, or a bed and breakfast business. Ample parking, et cetera.’
‘The pub was owned by the licensee himself? Not by a brewery or a pub company?’
‘No, Mr Wharton owned the pub outright. Or rather …’
Fry looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Let me consult the file.’
‘Please do.’
After a moment, Pilkington seemed to find the form he was looking for.
‘Yes, here we are. There’s quite a substantial charge against the property. Mmm. Yes, quite substantial. Mr and Mrs Wharton committed themselves to a large refinancing package, with the property as security. It seems they defaulted on payments to the financial institution involved. That’s very unfortunate. It should never have been allowed to get to that stage. I suspect Mr Wharton must have received some bad advice.’
Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) Page 8