‘I understand.’
His grey hair was smoothed neatly back, and his eyes regarded her sharply. She remembered how, when he’d arrived in Edendale earlier in the week, he’d studied each officer he met, as if hoping to see something in them that he hadn’t yet found.
‘All that doubt and suspicion,’ he said. ‘All that cynicism. I’ve found it quite shocking. Why does no one want to accept the truth? David and Patricia haven’t left the country and changed their identities. They would never do that. A horrible crime has been committed, and my son and his wife are the victims. I really wish you and your colleagues would regard them that way.’
‘You remain convinced of that?’
‘I’m as convinced of that as I have been of anything in my life.’
Fry was pretty sure she’d heard him use those exact same words on TV, when facing the cameras.
‘Despite the evidence?’ she asked.
She was being provocative, of course – angling for a response beyond the practised phrases. But Pearson seemed to know that too. His answer came with a suggestion of weary resignation in his voice.
‘Evidence? What evidence?’ he said. ‘Do you mean all those unconfirmed sightings, fake photos, forged emails, non-existent credit card purchases? Is that what passes for evidence these days? I think not.’
‘But something we do possess,’ said Fry, ‘is compelling evidence of your son’s illegal financial activities, prior to his disappearance.’
Pearson still regarded her calmly. ‘I’ve never tried to make any secret of that, Detective Sergeant. In fact you might be aware that it was my cooperation with the authorities that led to the information coming to light.’
‘Yes, you permitted the original inquiry team access to your son’s private papers, and his computer records. It was very helpful of you.’
‘I thought it would ultimately be in David’s best interests.’
‘Absolutely. Though it might be said that the embezzlement would have come to light anyway, in the course of inquiries. Then it might have cast a different light on subsequent events.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ said Pearson.
‘I mean that it’s all about interpretation. Creating a consistent story.’
His jaw clenched then, his face set as if for an argument. She could see the amount of determination that was in him, the strength of purpose that had kept him going so long. For more than two years now, Mr Pearson had been campaigning to convince the world that his son and daughter-in-law were innocent victims who’d been caught up in some terrible fate.
Fry’s phone rang then, breaking the tension.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘It might be important.’
‘Certainly.’
She could feel his intense gaze fixed on her as she took the call. When she grasped the information she was being given, she wished she’d stepped outside the office to answer it. She couldn’t help making eye contact with Pearson just once as she listened. Then she had to look away in embarrassment.
Fry ended the call and stared at her desk, knowing there was no way she could conceal her expression. The news had caught her off guard, with no opportunity to prepare for contact with the bereaved relative. This wasn’t the way it should be.
But at least she was about to tell Henry Pearson that he’d been right along. That was some kind of consolation, perhaps.
It was Pearson himself who finally shattered the silence.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘There’s something. I can tell.’
Fry took a breath and lifted her eyes to face him. ‘Yes, that was my boss, DCI Mackenzie, in the incident room. We’ve had a call. It seems that some human remains have just been found in an old mine shaft on Oxlow Moor.’
‘Human …?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fry helplessly.
‘A body?’ said Pearson. ‘You mean a body. Just one? Well, it could be anybody.’
Fry shook her head. ‘Two bodies. We can’t be certain at this stage, but …’
She didn’t need to say any more. She looked at Henry Pearson, saw the sudden draining of colour from his face. The attitude and expression were all gone, ripped from him like a worn-out coat. He’d turned instantly into an old, old man, exhausted and desolate.
But surely it couldn’t have been such a shock? Hadn’t he been expecting this discovery for more than two years?
As she watched Pearson disintegrate in front of her eyes, Fry was horrified at the realisation that crept into her mind, a certainty that she had been the victim of a huge scam, just like everyone else.
‘You never thought they were dead at all,’ she said. ‘You’ve been playing your part all this time, waiting for the moment when they’d make contact again.’
Pearson hung his head and twisted his hands together. It was astonishing how a person could change so quickly. He looked smaller than he had a few minutes ago, more frail and crumpled, emptied of any strength or energy.
‘There really was a plan for them to disappear, wasn’t there?’ said Fry. ‘But it all went wrong.’
‘Yes, it’s true. I suppose there’s no point in pretending any more.’
So it had all been a facade. Henry Pearson had been playing a role. The effort of putting on the performance must have been what kept him going. The necessity of maintaining appearances had been the only thing that drove him on.
But this … well, the person now sitting in front of Fry was a different man. He was the real Henry Pearson, the face behind the mask. And the face was a pitiful one, broken and wretched. This was a man who’d had to wait more than two years for the moment when he was allowed to grieve for his son.
‘I didn’t know whether they’d gone or not,’ said Pearson. ‘All this time, I thought they might actually have got away, that they’d just left the country a bit sooner than they originally planned. I assumed that David didn’t get a chance to tell me or his mother what they were going to do. Or that … well, perhaps that he’d wanted to break all contact with us, too.’
‘So you kept on with the pretence that your son and his wife must have been attacked and murdered here in Derbyshire. That was your agreed role, a way of distracting attention from the real story, from David and Trisha’s actual whereabouts. The only trouble is, Mr Pearson – it wasn’t a pretence.’
‘In the end, we didn’t know what to think. It was part of the plan that there would be no communication for a while, until we judged it to be safe. That time should have come over a year ago, when the police inquiry was shelved and the publicity had died down. Surely then, we thought, it would be safe? But no word came from David.’
‘And you just kept on playing your part?’ asked Fry. ‘How could you do that?’
Pearson threw his hands out in a desperate appeal. ‘What else was there for me to do? Please, can you tell me that? What else?’
26
The two bodies had been tightly rolled in heavy-duty black bin liners. The plastic wrapping meant that some areas of flesh had been protected from exposure to the air. If there was any good news, that was it. The uneven pattern of decomposition would increase the chances of a positive identification.
Fry shuddered as she joined the small group of people gathered on the edge of the hole. For her, the blackened heather further up the hill heightened the nightmarish nature of the location on the shoulder of Oxlow Moor.
The sight of the yokels playing open-air charades with their sheep down in the fields below didn’t make things any better. It must be some kind of rural festival taking place. When she looked around, Fry felt as though she was trapped between two different kinds of hell.
‘Wasn’t this one of the mine shafts searched during the original missing persons inquiry?’ asked DCI Mackenzie.
‘It must have been. They all were.’
‘So how is it we have this?’
‘A secondary crime scene,’ said Fry.
Wayne Abbott looked up from where he was crouching in the shaft.
>
‘Well I can tell you one thing for certain,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been here for two and a half years. The condition of the plastic is too good. In fact, the bodies look generally too well preserved. The pathologist will be able to tell you a lot more. She should get plenty of information from the post-mortem, given the state of the remains.’
Mackenzie looked at Fry, who allowed herself a smile. Where’s the best place to hide something so that it won’t be found? Where it’s already been looked for. She wished she could remember who’d told her that, so she could thank them. It had been well worth repeating.
‘So Henry Pearson wasn’t expecting this outcome after all?’ said Mackenzie.
‘Not at all. It knocked the ground from under him completely. He won’t be doing any more media interviews for a while.’
‘Interesting.’
‘More sad than interesting. He was still clinging to the belief that David and Trisha had managed to get out of the country and change their identities. Somehow he’d convinced himself that they’d covered their tracks so well that no one could make contact with them, not even him. So he just carried on playing his part regardless.’
‘And yet his son and daughter-in-law have been dead for … well, how long would we say?’
‘Shall we say about two years, four months, at a guess?’ said Fry.
‘From the moment they disappeared, then.’
‘Yes.’
Mackenzie looked at the remains in their makeshift grave. The edges were crumbling, and the thick plastic was scattered with debris, stones and lumps of peat. The damage had been done by the fell runners. The impact of scores of feet pounding over the cover had shaken it loose and broken it into two pieces, which lay just inside the shaft. According to the initial reports from witnesses, one of the back markers had almost fallen right through.
‘Is it possible,’ said Mackenzie, ‘that someone knew David Pearson was planning to do a bunk and followed him up here to stop him?’
‘To make sure he didn’t escape justice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s possible,’ said Fry. ‘We’d have to go through his business records again, follow up on everyone affected by his activities. But …’
‘What?’
‘Well, if the bodies haven’t been buried here the whole time since the Pearsons disappeared, where were they until now?’
A short while later, Liz Petty arrived at the Light House with her crime-scene kit, looking a bit disgruntled at the call-out.
‘There’s a much better crime scene than this across the moor there,’ she said. ‘Two nice bodies, and all I get is a smelly cellar. I bet it’s full of spiders, too.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Villiers.
Cooper heard her voice from the bottom of the steps.
‘Liz?’ he called.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s all right. It’s me. Come on down.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the cellar, of course.’
Liz’s face lit up when she saw Cooper.
‘Ah. Did you do this just so you could see me before tonight?’
‘Obviously,’ he said.
‘I think I’d better get out of the way,’ said Villiers. ‘I’ll be upstairs if you need me.’
As soon as she looked at Cooper properly, Liz drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the bruise on his temple. He’d almost forgotten it himself, though his arm and shoulder were painful when he moved suddenly. But this was the first time Liz had seen him since it happened. He’d forgotten that, too.
‘Oh, that looks sore,’ she said.
‘It’s not too bad.’
She touched the side of his head gently with the tips of her fingers. Luckily she’d removed her latex gloves, and the touch was quite soothing.
‘What on earth were you doing, going there on your own without backup?’ she said.
‘Oh, don’t. It’s just something that happens now and then.’
‘Not to my husband.’
‘Future husband.’
‘Well, I want to make sure you’re still around by then.’
She looked at the bruise again, and winced as if she felt his pain. But he wouldn’t ever want her to do that.
Liz smiled and took Cooper’s arm – a firm, affectionate touch that made him forget for a while that he was on duty and working.
‘We shouldn’t,’ he said.
‘I know. But it’s a cellar, and no one else is around.’
‘Even so.’
She squeezed his arm again. ‘You’re so well behaved. You could relax a bit more sometimes, you know.’
Cooper felt the temptation, but pulled himself together. It was a shame, but there were more urgent things to deal with.
‘What was that you were saying to Carol just now about another crime scene?’ he said.
‘They’ve found two bodies. Haven’t you heard?’
‘Damn it. No, I hadn’t.’
Cooper looked at his phone, and saw Network lost. They were below ground level, of course. Even if there was mobile phone reception on this part of the moor, the signal would be blocked by the cellar walls and the depth of peat lying around them.
He hated being out of touch. It was bad enough at the best of times, but now there seemed to be a major development, and he was unreachable. But someone could have called the officer outside on his radio. Airwave worked here, surely.
That led him inevitably to the suspicion that he was being deliberately kept out of the loop. The thought made him unreasonably angry.
‘The bodies,’ he said. ‘Is it the Pearsons?’
Liz looked at him in concern at the change in his tone. ‘Oh, I couldn’t say. But that seems to be the assumption being made right now. Two bodies, dead for some time. They were found in an abandoned mine shaft up on the moor.’
Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘A mine shaft? Really.’
‘You don’t sound too surprised.’
‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I suppose the bodies haven’t been there for two and a half years, though. Not likely.’
‘Again, I couldn’t say. You’ll have to ask someone else for information, Ben. I’m just a crime-scene examiner.’
He tried to calm himself. Of course it wasn’t Liz’s fault. Far from it. He shouldn’t be speaking to her as though it was.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’ She looked round the cellar. ‘But we have our own scene, such as it is. So what’s here?’
‘It’s more what’s not here,’ said Cooper.
‘Such as?’
‘Chest freezers.’
‘What?’
‘There are no chest freezers. They must have had big freezers here. They left all this equipment in the pub when they went – the kitchens are full of stuff. But no freezers.’
‘Okay.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s a space against this wall where something of that size has been standing. You can see still the shape of it on the floor.’
‘Stay back,’ said Liz. ‘There are shoe marks in the dust right in front of you. And if someone carried a freezer out, there might be prints on the wall.’
Cooper took a step backwards. ‘And I think we should check the whole cellar for traces of blood.’
‘Oh Lord, that means turning the lights out.’ She sighed. ‘Your theory being that this might be a primary crime scene?’
‘Yes, possibly.’
‘In that case, I’ll need to call in and get a full team,’ she said.
‘But I’m guessing everyone is fully committed already.’
‘Yes, we’d have to wait some time.’
‘Come on, Liz …’
‘Oh, now you’re turning on the charm. You know I can’t resist. Okay, you can leave me to it.’
‘Thanks. I owe you a favour.’
‘I’ll think of something, don’t worry.’
Cooper ran up the steps, and Villiers met him at the top.
&
nbsp; ‘Have you heard, Ben?’ she said.
‘Yes, just now. Two bodies.’
‘That stinks, doesn’t it?’
‘To high heaven.’
Villiers gave him a hand up out of the hatch. The space behind the bar counter was awkward and narrow. It couldn’t have been easy for a man of Maurice Wharton’s size to get through.
‘If it is the Pearsons,’ said Villiers, ‘they should be able to ID them pretty quickly. There are DNA profiles on record. And of course there’s a family member on hand. It depends what condition the bodies are in, I suppose.’
‘It would be very useful to know that. I mean, what stage the decomposition is at. I wonder when anyone will bother to tell us.’
‘Briefing tomorrow, at a guess?’
‘That’s no good.’
Villiers looked thoughtful as they walked out of the pub, past the rattling tape.
‘Ben, what was that stuff you were saying earlier about the circles of hell?’
‘The ninth circle, to be exact.’
‘Isn’t that what Aidan Merritt was rambling about when he called his wife, just before he was killed?’
‘That’s right. Everyone thought it was to do with the fires on the moor. He must have gone right through the smoke to get to the Light House. But there was something Betty Wheatcroft said to me. She pointed out that it was from Dante’s Inferno.’
‘The old biddy’s not as daft as she looks, then?’
‘No, not at all. I don’t know where she gets her information from, but she knows more than she lets on. She’s stubborn, though. Likes to play her own game. There was some detail she would have given me, if I’d asked the right question. I just didn’t know what the question was.’
‘Perhaps she just needs you to show a bit more interest,’ said Villiers.
Cooper stopped by his car. ‘You think so, Carol?’
‘A lonely old lady, isn’t she? I bet she really took to you, and enjoyed having a chat. So instead of telling you everything, she thought of a way of making you come back to see her again.’
He stared at her, astonished by the clarity of the insight. To him, it seemed a devious way of thinking. But in Mrs Wheatcroft’s case, it rang so true.
Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) Page 27