They got in the car, and Cooper started the engine. He had Betty Wheatcroft’s phone number in his notebook, but he had to wait until they were well down the road and on to Batham Gate before he could get a signal. The old lady’s phone rang and rang, without even an answering machine or call minder cutting in.
‘No answer,’ he said. ‘She must be out.’
‘Where does Mrs Wheatcroft go now?’ asked Villiers, as they approached the sharp bend on Batham Gate.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What pub does she go to? She can’t have stopped going for a drink just because the Light House closed.’
‘Well, as I said before, she went to the Light House for the company, because she knew people there.’
‘Okay, so where did the people that she knew start going when it closed?’
‘I don’t know.’ But then Cooper stopped, and corrected himself. ‘Yes I do. Ian Gullick told me. He said they drink at the Badger, near Bradwell.’
‘Could Mrs Wheatcroft get there easily?’
‘It’s on the same bus route as the Light House, and a good bit closer to where she lives.’
‘It’s worth a try, if we have time.’
‘We’re almost there,’ said Cooper. ‘Another two minutes, and we’ll pass it.’
Betty Wheatcroft had found a corner for herself in the bar of the Badger, and was sitting with her glass and her plastic carrier bag, trying to ignore the loud background music and the beeps and buzzes of the fruit machines. This was a different kind of place, not what she’d been used to at the Light House.
Cooper saw her as soon as he came through the door. He noticed that her glass was almost empty, so he went first to the bar and bought her a half-pint of Guinness. She smiled when she spotted him, losing for a moment that slightly mad, desperate look. There was no surprise on her face. She gave the impression that she’d been expecting him, that he could even be slightly late. She might be putting a black mark next to his name in an imaginary attendance register.
‘How nice,’ she said. ‘And what a good idea not to come to my house. People would start to talk.’
‘I’m very glad I caught you, Mrs Wheatcroft,’ said Cooper. ‘There’s something I need to ask you.’
She looked anxiously round the bar, then buried her face in her glass. She seemed somehow reassured by the slosh of the black liquid.
‘What is it?’
‘Last time I visited you, I mentioned the ninth circle of hell, and you said it was—’
‘The Inferno. It’s by the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The first part of his Divine Comedy. All about the medieval concept of hell. Lovely, isn’t it?’
Cooper wasn’t quite sure what she was referring to. At first he thought it might be the Guinness, or the music now playing in the background. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Free Bird’, if he wasn’t mistaken. Not really Mrs Wheatcroft’s cup of tea, he imagined. So she must be referring to Dante’s vision of hell.
‘There’s something particular about the ninth circle,’ he said.
‘Judas, Brutus and Cassius.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Judas, Brutus and Cassius,’ she repeated more slowly, as if remembering that he was one of her slower pupils. ‘The ninth circle of hell. It’s all about treachery.’
‘Yes, that’s what I was thinking.’
She took another gulp of her drink. ‘In Dante’s Inferno, each of the nine circles is reserved for a particular sin. They get more and more wicked as they move towards the middle. The ninth circle was reserved for the very worst sinners – the traitors. Judas, who betrayed Jesus. And Brutus and Cassius who stabbed Julius Caesar in the back. Do you remember this at all?’
Cooper nodded, hoping not to have to reveal the true depths of his ignorance.
‘Is that what Aidan Merritt was talking about?’
‘Yes, I think it must have been.’
She seemed to lose track of the conversation, gazing across the bar at no one in particular, then poking in her carrier bag as if she’d lost something.
Cooper tried to curb his impatience. He had faith in Carol’s assessment. He had to let Betty Wheatcroft play her own game, at her own pace, if he wanted to get everything she knew out of her.
‘The traitors,’ he said slowly.
‘Oh.’ She licked her lips thoughtfully. ‘Thank you. Well, in the ninth circle there were three different grades of treachery. Betrayal of family, betrayal of community, betrayal of … guests.’
‘Guests?’
‘Yes. A breach of the unwritten laws. The ancient code of hospitality.’
Cooper sat back in his chair, and looked at the old lady, with her wild hair and her plastic carrier bag. Many people would pass her by without a second glance.
‘Mrs Wheatcroft, where do you get your information from?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I know it all,’ she said.
‘People tell you what they’re doing?’
‘No, not them,’ she said, with a flash of contempt. ‘Nobody ever spoke to me at the Light House, except for Aidan. As far as they were concerned, I was just the daft old trout in the corner. It’s the same here at the Badger. And because they don’t talk to me, they think I don’t hear anything. I suppose they reckon I must be deaf. But I do hear. I hear everything.’
‘And what did you hear in this case, Mrs Wheatcroft?’
She put a finger to the side of her nose. ‘They thought Aidan was going to betray them. But he was a decent man. Weak, but decent.’
Betty Wheatcroft suddenly looked very sad. Cooper knew she’d liked Aidan Merritt, and he’d wondered how long she could hold that back and pretend she wasn’t too disturbed by his death. Her charade of secrecy was just part of the game. Underneath, she was a frightened woman.
‘Who are they? Who thought he was going to betray them?’ he asked.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said.
‘Mrs Wheatcroft …’
‘No,’ she snapped firmly. ‘Be told.’
He shut up immediately, hearing the exact same words and tone of voice that his grandmother had used to him when he was a child, pestering for an ice cream.
In another moment, she’d changed the subject back to safer ground. The past, the theoretical – so much less dangerous than the real, physical present. He wondered if she was scared by a genuine threat from some specific source, or whether she feared to make herself one more soul who was guilty of the sin of betrayal.
‘Do you happen to have a copy of this book, Mrs Wheatcroft?’ asked Cooper.
‘The Inferno? No, why would I? Look it up, if you want.’
‘I’ll google it,’ he said.
‘Yes, you do that.’
She laughed then. It wasn’t quite a cackle, but a chortle with an edge of unhealthy glee. Cooper thought perhaps he shouldn’t have bought her that extra Guinness.
‘Would you like me to give you a lift home, Mrs Wheatcroft?’
‘That would be delightful,’ she said.
Outside the pub, Mrs Wheatcroft greeted Carol Villiers like an old friend, though they’d never met.
‘Hello, dear. Are we travelling together?’
‘Give me your arm,’ said Villiers. ‘And let me take your bag.’
‘No, no.’
Mrs Wheatcroft sounded suddenly distressed. She pulled her plastic bag out of reach, and clutched it to her bosom. Cooper heard the chink of glass. Full bottles, from the sound of it.
She settled in the back seat of his car. Villiers got in, looked at him, raised an eyebrow. Cooper shrugged. He fastened his seat belt, and they pulled out on to the road to head into Edendale.
‘Yes, I remember it very well,’ said Mrs Wheatcroft’s voice drowsily from behind him. ‘Right in the middle, hell wasn’t fiery, you know – the sinners were frozen up to their necks in a lake of ice.’
‘Ice?’ said Villiers.
‘Ice,’ she repeated. ‘And sometimes, they say, a soul falls into the ninth circle before the threa
d of life has been cut.’
‘Before they’ve died, you mean?’
‘Mmm. And the body left behind on earth is possessed by a demon, so what seems to be a living man is actually already dead, and has reached a stage beyond … repentance.’
On the last word, her voice faded away. Cooper looked in his rear-view mirror, and saw that the old lady was fast asleep.
An hour earlier, Diane Fry had taken a call from Nancy Wharton, the former landlady of the Light House.
Of course Mrs Wharton had really wanted to speak to Detective Sergeant Cooper, but he wasn’t around. In fact no one seemed to know how to get hold of him, so the call had been put through to Fry as the next best thing. How nice to be a more or less acceptable substitute for Ben Cooper.
Fry could have phoned Cooper to pass on the message, she supposed. But why should she? All bets were off since Cooper had gone rogue and carried out those arrests, pulling in Ian Gullick and Vince Naylor for questioning. As far as she was concerned, there was no trust left to be broken.
When she’d parked her Audi in the street on the Devonshire Estate, Nancy Wharton met her at the door of her home, with Eliot and Kirsten standing close behind her, crowding the hallway with hostile expressions on their faces. Fry saw that she wasn’t even going to get inside the house this time. Definitely second best, then.
‘We heard the news just now,’ said Mrs Wharton stiffly, speaking as though she’d rehearsed some lines to deliver.
‘Oh? You’ve heard about the bodies that were found,’ guessed Fry, though it didn’t need much guessing. The media had arrived at Oxlow Moor before she’d got there herself.
‘Yes, they’re saying it’s the Pearsons.’
‘We can’t be a hundred per cent sure at the moment, but …’
Even to Fry herself it no longer sounded convincing. Mrs Wharton treated the stock phrase with the contempt it deserved.
‘Well I’m sure,’ she said.
‘May I come in? And then we can talk about it properly, perhaps.’
Nancy shook her head. Instead she handed Fry an envelope. Then she began to back away into the hallway, as if she’d performed her role and was about to leave the stage.
‘What’s this?’ asked Fry.
‘It’s for you. Or rather, for Detective Sergeant Cooper – but they told me he isn’t available. So …’
‘Yes, but what is it?’
‘That,’ said Mrs Wharton, before she closed the door, ‘is my husband’s confession.’
27
There was a welcome awaiting Cooper when he and Villiers returned to West Street. Diane Fry was pacing the corridor impatiently, and pounced on Cooper as soon as he appeared.
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Where have you been? She’ll only talk to you.’
‘Who will?’
‘Nancy Wharton, of course.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In an interview room.’
‘Why?’
‘She gave us her husband’s statement, but obviously we have to question her. We need details, a full account of what happened.’
She was talking too fast, and Cooper wasn’t able to take it in.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘You’d better rewind a bit, Diane. You’re losing me.’
Fry stopped, took a deep breath. ‘Of course, you don’t know about it. You’re out of touch.’
‘I wonder whose fault that is?’
‘Okay, let’s take a few minutes.’
Cooper sat down in her tiny office and read through the letter handed over by Mrs Wharton. It was signed by her husband in a slightly shaky hand, and dated Wednesday – the day that Cooper had talked to him in the hospice. He remembered listening to Wharton tell his story about the Light House closing, seeing the windows of the pub going dark one by one.
It was a very brief letter. More of a note, really. It merely stated that Maurice Wharton admitted full responsibility for the deaths of David and Patricia Pearson in December 2009, while they were guests on his licensed premises at the Light House, Oxlow Moor, Derbyshire. Wharton referred to himself as ‘the undersigned’, as if the formal language might give his statement some kind of legal authority.
‘It’s useless without evidence, of course,’ said Fry, tapping her fingers impatiently as she watched Cooper read.
‘Of course.’
‘But there’s one other thing you should know. David Pearson’s financial activities were gone into at the time, during the original inquiry. But not thoroughly enough, it seems.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mr Mackenzie tasked one of the incident room teams to run a new analysis of Pearson’s business dealings. And guess what popped up? Among the people who suffered serious losses when the embezzlement was discovered and the company went into receivership, we found M. and N. Wharton, owners of the Light House Hotel.’
Cooper shook his head in despair. ‘You’re right, it should have been picked up.’
‘Well, I suppose it was just one of hundreds of cases in the files of Diamond Hybrid Securities. There was nothing actually fraudulent about their dealings with the Light House. The Whartons were just unfortunate victims. Collateral damage.’
‘So you’ve brought Nancy in?’ said Cooper.
‘She didn’t want to come. She seemed to think the letter would be enough – that we’d just accept it and go away, without asking any more questions. She’s in for a surprise, though. We need to know exactly what happened. And we need some proof – witness statements, forensic evidence. Someone will have to interview the children. Eliot is seventeen. He’s old enough to put in the witness box.’
‘It won’t ever come to court,’ said Cooper.
‘What? Why not?’
‘Maurice Wharton is dying. He can’t have more than a few days left to live, weeks at most. I bet Nancy would be at the hospice now, sitting at his bedside, if you hadn’t pulled her in.’
‘Well, yes – that is what she told me,’ admitted Fry.
Cooper nodded. ‘But you took no notice, did you, Diane?’
‘Well what would you have done?’ she snapped. ‘I had to bring her in. It’s all very well this caring and sensitive stuff, but there comes a point where even you have to follow procedure and do your job properly, no matter how many sob stories people tell you.’
With an effort, Cooper tried not to smile too much. He felt unduly pleased with himself for having provoked a response from her. Despite the impression she tried to give, Fry was very much on edge. Something had unsettled her, and he was content to think that it might have been him.
He stood up, still holding on to the evidence bag containing Maurice Wharton’s letter.
‘I’ll go and talk to her then, shall I?’ he said.
‘Obviously, I’ll have to sit in,’ said Fry.
‘Fine. But try not to upset her too much.’
Nancy Wharton was huddled close to the table, hunched in an awkward position, as if cowering away from the walls of the room. The interview rooms at West Street weren’t very attractive, but her reaction was extreme.
Cooper recalled the furniture crammed into the Whartons’ council house on the Devonshire Estate. He wondered if she’d already become constrained by her new life there, and now no longer knew how to relax and stretch herself out into the available space.
‘Maurice has always had his faults,’ said Nancy, before Fry had even started the tapes. ‘No one knows that better than me. But he’s not really a murderer.’
Fry shrugged. ‘Oh, no one’s a murderer,’ she said. ‘Not until they kill someone.’
Nancy tried to ignore her, though Cooper could see she found it difficult. So do we all, he thought.
The tapes began to turn, and Mrs Wharton was advised of her rights by Fry in a practised monotone that the older woman seemed to take no notice of.
‘The thing is, we thought the Pearsons had been forgotten,’ she said. ‘No one seemed to be asking questions about them any
more. So we relaxed a bit. It was a mistake, I suppose.’
‘Not your first mistake,’ said Fry.
Nancy turned towards Cooper. Though she’d been reluctant to come in and answer questions, she began to talk almost without prompting.
‘You have to understand the position we’d come to,’ she said. ‘Just that day, we’d told Eliot and Kirsten it might be the last Christmas we spent at the Light House. We had to explain to them why it had happened, about the people who said they’d invest money in the pub and be our business partners, about the big loan we’d taken out for the improvements they insisted on. And we told them that they’d pulled out, and left us with a pub that was losing money, with debts we couldn’t pay back.’
Nancy ran her hands over her hair and clutched her head tightly, as if to hold in the thoughts that were trying to escape.
‘The children needed to know that,’ she said. ‘They were old enough by then. Well, we thought they were.’
‘This would have been your arrangement with Diamond Hybrid Securities,’ said Cooper. ‘The company David Pearson worked for.’
‘Not just that. It was him we dealt with. Him who sweet-talked us into committing ourselves beyond our means. But we never met him. So of course we had no idea who he was when he came into the pub. Not a clue.’
‘Go on, Mrs Wharton.’
She paused for a while to collect herself.
‘Anyway, the children were very upset,’ she said. ‘Kirsten cried, and Eliot went really quiet, the way he does sometimes. I think that’s what hurt Maurice most. He loves his children. He’d do absolutely anything for them. And there he was, looking at the prospect of being unable to make a living and keep them in their home. It made him feel useless, a failure. Maurice was already a man on the brink. He’d tell you that himself, if he was able.’
‘And you kept quiet about it all this time,’ put in Fry.
Nancy looked up at her. ‘You can’t blame us for trying to protect our family. Anybody would have done it. Yes, we covered it up for nearly two years, never said a word. But then the bank called in our loan and the pub was closed. Even then, it was weeks afterwards before it occurred to us that there might be a problem. We imagined someone buying the pub and finding something we’d missed. And then …’
Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) Page 28