‘Aidan never mentioned the Light House, once it had shut,’ said Samantha. ‘He started going somewhere else. Actually, he’s been going to several different places. He never settled on a regular pub after the Light House.’
‘Did he talk about meeting anyone?’
‘No. Not that I can remember.’
‘Didn’t you go to the pub with him sometimes?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t like pubs. I do take a drink now and then, but I prefer to stay at home with a nice bottle of wine and watch a DVD.’
‘Perhaps you can give me the names of the other teachers,’ said Fry.
‘Who?’
‘The ones he used to drink with sometimes after school.’
‘Oh, certainly. I can give you one or two.’
Fry offered her a notebook. ‘Please write them down while you’re thinking about it.’
Mrs Merritt did as she was asked, scrawling two or three names with a shaky hand and passing the pad back to Fry.
‘I need to ask you …’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘How did he die exactly?’
Fry had a copy of the post-mortem report right in front of her. When Mrs Merritt asked the question, she instinctively covered the file with her hand, in case any details were visible.
‘Blunt-force trauma,’ she said, repeating the Home Office pathologist’s practised phrase.
Most murders in the UK were the result of blunt force or a bladed weapon. Bashing or stabbing – the two methods favoured by the British for doing each other in.
Samantha nodded, balling a tissue in her fist.
‘Do you know what he was hit with?’
‘Not exactly. Something heavy, made of wood. We’re doing more tests, of course. We’re hopeful of getting some forensic evidence that will help us catch the person who did it.’
‘You haven’t found the … weapon, then?’
‘No.’
Fry knew that Mrs Merritt had identified the body of her husband earlier. Although Merritt had been cleaned up in the morgue, it would have been obvious what his fatal wounds were. It was impossible to conceal head injuries in the way the mortuary staff could sometimes keep damage to other parts of the body from the family.
The report in front of Fry talked about the results of the blows on Aidan Merritt’s skull. There had been brain injuries both at the site of impact, and on the opposite side of the skull due to the contrecoup effect of the brain ricocheting within the skull.
In fact there had been three blows, the pathologist said. The first two had not been immediately fatal, but they had cracked the skull and certainly concussed the victim. They had also caused the leaking of cerebrospinal fluid, cerebral contusions, lacerations to the scalp and haemorrhaging of the skin. If Merritt had survived those two injuries, he might well have been left in a coma and suffered permanent brain damage. The bruising from the floor, the glass cuts to his face and hands – they seemed almost irrelevant.
But the third blow, the one that had struck Aidan Merritt when he was already on the ground, was the one that had pulverised the right side of his brain.
‘Mrs Merritt, did your husband ever talk about David and Trisha Pearson?’ asked Fry.
She shook her head in confusion. ‘Who? Do they work at his school?’
‘No. They were two visitors to the area who went missing a couple of years ago.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Mr Merritt was interviewed at the time. The Pearsons visited the Light House shortly before they disappeared.’
‘I think I remember that,’ said Samantha, with a great effort. ‘I didn’t like him being interviewed by the police just because he was there at the pub that night. But he told me it was only routine. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Fry.
‘Well then. I don’t understand. I don’t seem to understand anything.’
Fry watched her, judging that the moment had come when she wouldn’t get any more information. She hadn’t got very much at all from the visit. But she hoped that some day Mrs Merritt would be able to understand a little bit better.
Ben Cooper examined the buildings critically. On the night they disappeared, the Pearsons had been setting off from Castleton to walk here, to their holiday cottage, which turned out to be a two-bedroom conversion from some ancient outbuildings on Brecks Farm.
The Old Dairy, it was called. Looking at it, Cooper suspected it had been used for some less picturesque purpose than a dairy, but he supposed the name sounded better in the tourist brochures. The cottage stood well away from the farmhouse and the more modern agricultural buildings that had been erected much closer to the tarmac roadway running south towards the back road out of Peak Forest.
Whatever their purpose, the buildings that had become the Old Dairy would quickly have become awkward and inconvenient for modern farming practices. A rough track running back from the present farmyard had been maintained for the benefit of paying guests, but otherwise the situation of the cottage was quiet and undisturbed. Ideal for a peaceful holiday. Perfect if you wanted to drop out of sight for a while.
Cooper turned until his back was to the door of the cottage. The view was pretty peaceful too. It encompassed several acres of rough grazing dotted with sheep, and a backdrop of moorland, with a few other farmsteads nestled here and there in the landscape, all of them a good walk away from The Old Dairy.
And there, prominent on a rise to the north-west, was the Light House. Unlike the distant farms, its position made it seem surprisingly close. If he was a visitor to the area staying at this cottage, he would certainly have been tempted to walk to the pub in the evening. Probably every evening. Although it was uphill, the slope wasn’t too steep and didn’t look difficult to manage. No problem for anyone reasonably active, and eager for a pint or a bar meal. And there was always the reassurance that it would be mostly downhill coming back.
The Pearsons would have been familiar with the Limestone Way. They’d used it earlier in the week, according to the statements. Coming back in the dark, in the snow, they would have looked for the little circular signs with their yellow arrows identifying the route. For most of its length here, the trail ran between dry-stone walls, which would have offered some protection from drifting snow for a while. In his own mind, there was no question. That was the way he would have come.
Well, as long as he was in his senses and not too befuddled by drink. Then, there was no saying what he might have done. The Pearsons might have taken the most familiar route, but not necessarily the safest.
David Pearson had that look in the eyes. Confident, but unpredictable – the sort of man who would get an idea in his head, and then move heaven and earth to follow it through, against all the best advice and in the teeth of good sense. Trisha must have seen that in him. It was probably what had appealed to her, that aura of danger and unpredictability.
Cooper consulted the OS map again, and scanned the countryside around Brecks Farm.
‘Where does that track go to, I wonder?’ he said.
‘Shall we see?’ asked Villiers.
‘Fine.’
They bumped up the track, kicking up dust from their wheels, until they turned a bend and were stopped by a steel barrier.
It was an abandoned quarry. Some sites in the Peak District had been cleared up and machinery removed, then either converted to a different use, such as landfill, or restored to agriculture. This one was too recently abandoned, perhaps. The entrance gate was blocked by large chunks of calcite, left as if for display as geological samples.
Just inside the site, a series of blue shipping containers stood at one side of the roadway, with their doors left gaping open. One of them had been used as a store for equipment spares such as conveyors, pumps and screens. The sides of the interior still carried labels with faintly mysterious names: Transfer Conveyor, Crusher, Cobbles Belt, Pearls One. The door had been wedged open with a wooden pallet, and there was little left insi
de it now.
Outside, though, the ground was littered with long strips and rolls of black conveyor belt. They were heaped and scattered everywhere, as if the departing workers had simply thrown everything out of the containers before they left the site. Among the debris were broken bits of machinery, part of a drive shaft from a quarry vehicle. Two smaller containers were perched precariously on a pile of corrugated-iron roofing sections.
Further into the quarry was an abandoned lorry, digging equipment, a caravan that might once have been used as a site office. The signs warned of blasting and cautioned Cooper to observe a ten miles per hour speed limit. The barriers would not stop anyone who wanted to enter the site, but the machinery was too big to steal, so it had been left.
Now, only the sound of birds disturbed the site, where once there would have been a deafening cacophony of machinery, crushed stone and blasting.
‘This must have been searched at the time,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh, surely.’
He wished he could feel as confident as he was trying to sound. Something had gone wrong in the original investigation of the Pearsons’ disappearance, and he wasn’t yet sure what it was. In fact, he had no firm idea at all.
Back at the office, Luke Irvine had been landed with the job of ploughing through all the old witness statements, search reports and case files. It was a thankless task, but someone had to do it, just in case a fresh pair of eyes spotted something new.
‘I’ll get Luke to check,’ said Cooper. ‘It might make him feel a bit more involved.’
Returning to the entrance, Cooper found himself standing in a gateway looking at a little circular sign with its yellow arrow identifying the Limestone Way. He’d noticed that right below it was another sign, with no words on it, only a simple graphic. It showed a small human figure falling head first into a hole in the ground.
Its message ought to be clear. But how many people set off to walk across the moors without any realisation of the dangers under their feet?
Cooper tried to imagine the Pearsons thinking they could follow the Limestone Way in the dark, and in a snowstorm too. If that was what they’d done, it could only be called foolhardy in the extreme. He supposed they weren’t the first ill-prepared travellers to have lost their lives on these moors. But it shouldn’t happen in the twenty-first century.
12
When they arrived back at West Street, Cooper soon heard that the body at the Light House had been identified, and the dead man’s wife already interviewed. That was Diane Fry, working fast as usual. If he wasn’t careful, she’d have this whole thing tied up in a neat bow within a few days, and all his vague doubts would count for nothing.
Cooper made a point of asking Fry to bring the team up to date. He suspected it wouldn’t happen otherwise. She would be reporting to her own DCI, and local CID would get bypassed. He couldn’t bear the thought that he’d continue to be left out in the cold, wondering what was happening, until he heard about some development on the office grapevine.
Fry had been allocated an old office that had recently been vacated by some centralised civilian staff member. It was little more than a cubbyhole, with frosted glass in the windows. It meant that she couldn’t be seen when she closed the door, except as a blurred movement inside.
Rather reluctantly, she emerged from her little office and joined everyone else in the CID room. Watching her enter, Cooper could see her already in the role of a detective inspector, shutting herself off from the troops because she had more important things to do than the same old donkey work. He wondered when her promotion would come. It was long overdue now, surely? He bet Fry herself secretly thought so. It might even be eating away at her inside, making her even more grouchy than usual.
‘Aidan Merritt was never a suspect,’ Fry explained, when she had everyone’s attention. ‘He was interviewed when officers in the original inquiry were trying to trace the Pearsons’ movements over the last couple of days before their disappearance.’
‘What was his connection?’
‘The Pearsons were at the Light House the night before their visit to Castleton. So far, that seems to be the only connection with Aidan Merritt, who was a regular there. It’s a rather tenuous link, admittedly. But the fact is that Merritt’s name was in the system from the original inquiry. An officer spoke to him when they were trying to plot the Pearsons’ movements. And once you’re in the system, the computer is likely to keep coughing your name up whenever there’s a hint of a match.’
‘I went through the statements taken from Merritt and some of the other regulars,’ said Irvine. ‘It seems there was another group of visitors in the pub that night. Two men and two women. Several witnesses mentioned seeing them talking to the Pearsons. They were thought to be staying in a holiday cottage nearby too.’
Cooper looked out of the window at the distant edges of the moor. ‘Do we know which one exactly?’
‘No.’
‘The Pearsons were definitely alone at the George, weren’t they? They didn’t meet up with this other group?’
‘It doesn’t seem so.’
‘We’ll never know what was said between them, anyway. Not unless we can trace the unknown group, and that looks like a very tall order.’
‘Yes, I agree.’
For a start, they would have to identify all the holiday cottages within walking distance of the Light House. Some of them might have been sold in the last two years and converted into permanent homes. More likely, though, the trend would be the other way round. He expected to find a greater number of holiday cottages in the area now than there were when the Pearsons visited.
‘Another rented cottage, I suppose?’ he said. ‘Not one they owned themselves.’
‘Oh, I think so. If they owned it, they would probably have visited the area regularly, wouldn’t they? Someone would have known them.’
Cooper nodded. In that case, he’d be relying on a property owner with good records, or a lucky entry in a guest book.
‘Needle in a haystack come to mind?’
‘I don’t suppose it was followed up all that well,’ said Fry. ‘Another lead that was just recorded and written off, I imagine.’
This was what Cooper had been worried about. The Pearsons had been in the Light House the night before they disappeared. That had been picked up by the original inquiry, with all those unproductive witness statements taken from the likes of Aidan Merritt and the other regulars and staff at the pub.
But he was pretty sure the couple had been there the previous evening too, the night of the YFC party. Why had no one ever mentioned that?
Well, it seemed the investigation had only examined the final two days before David and Trisha Pearson went missing, at least in any detail. The SIO might have made a decision not to expend resources needlessly on trying to trace the Pearsons’ movements earlier in the week. There was a law of diminishing returns in these things. You could spend more and more time on a particular line of enquiry, allocating more and more resources, but find that you got fewer and fewer returns on the effort. Someone had to make a decision where the cut-off point came.
Still, it was a little bit odd, if the Pearsons had also been present at the Light House the night before, that no mention was made of it anywhere in the statements. Was that actually the case? He hadn’t been through the statements himself, so he couldn’t be certain. He’d better tell someone now, before things went any further.
‘Diane,’ he said, ‘have you got a minute?’
She raised an eyebrow, but led him back into the little office she’d been allocated.
‘What is it?’
Cooper explained to her about the evening at the Light House, the Young Farmers Club, and his recognition of David Pearson.
‘A Young Farmers’ event?’ said Fry. ‘You mean prehistoric mating rituals, with extra straw?’
‘Something like that,’ said Cooper, feeling a flush rising.
‘And I suppose a vast amount of alcohol was con
sumed?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Fry studied him for a moment, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. Cooper rarely saw her break into a smile, and he didn’t care for this one. He knew he was the object of her amusement, and he found it infuriating.
‘From experience, I’m guessing that you weren’t entirely sober either, DS Cooper,’ she said.
‘It was a Christmas party.’
As he said it, he could hear Matt’s voice in the back of his mind. You were as pissed as a newt that night. If Matt thought he was drunk, then it was certainly true. Fry’s ‘not entirely sober’ was an understatement, for once.
‘I just thought it would be surprising if no one mentioned it in the statements taken from the Light House.’
‘Due to a communal alcoholic haze perhaps?’
‘Possibly. I’ll get Luke Irvine to double-check, shall I? He’s been going through the files. What do you think?’
Fry had stopped smiling now, which was a relief. He could see her brain working, weighing up the advantages.
‘Yes, good idea.’
‘I’ll get on to it.
Cooper felt a bit more bounce in his step as he went back into the CID room. He had a slightly different view to Fry’s, though that was perfectly normal. He wasn’t thinking of a communal alcoholic haze on the part of the Light House staff and customers – more of a rather curious bit of collective amnesia.
In fact, the original inquiry had done a surprisingly thorough job of examining accounts of the Pearsons’ visit to the Light House. There was an entire file containing statements from staff and customers, and even a sketch plan showing where all the people spoken to had sat or stood in the bar, in relation to the Pearsons. Someone had worked quite hard on that. It must have taken a considerable amount of time to put together. Above and beyond the call of duty, really.
Then Cooper noticed the date on the plan, and realised it had been drawn up some months after the disappearance. He wondered if the date would correspond with some particularly high-profile bit of media coverage, or additional pressure from the Pearson family.
Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) Page 12