The dead place bcadf-6

by Stephen Booth

  ‘No? Well, not unless ‘

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless he worked in the same office.’

  ‘We have to look at all her colleagues, then,’ said Hitchens. ‘How many are there?’

  ‘About forty people work at Peak Mutual,’ said Fry. ‘Male and female.’

  ‘Male and female? Good point, DS Fry. We mustn’t assume we’re looking for a male offender at this stage.’

  ‘The phone call, sir?’ said somebody.

  ‘The phone call may turn out to have nothing to do with the abduction.’

  DCI Kessen was present at the briefing, but sitting to one side and letting DI Hitchens take the floor. Fry wasn’t surprised to see the acting head of CID. If the Birley case became a murder enquiry, Kessen would be appointed Senior Investigating Officer. But for now, they had no body, no evidence that there had been a serious crime. The possibility that Sandra Birley had been abducted from the Clappergate car park was just that - a possibility.

  ‘Are we going to get the husband to make an appeal, sir?’ asked Cooper, raising his hand. Fry nodded reluctantly to herself. At least that was one tactic they could use without committing themselves to anything.

  ‘We think it’s too early yet,’ said Hitchens. ‘Besides, he

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  isn’t in any condition at the moment. I spoke to the family liaison officer first thing this morning, and it seems Mr Birley’s emotional state has deteriorated considerably since yesterday.’

  Then it turned out that the two retired DCs had been working an early shift, too. They’d already been through the CCTV footage from the Clappergate multistorey. That wasn’t anybody’s favourite job. Feelings in the room began to warm towards them.

  ‘First of all, we’ve eliminated the owners of the other two vehicles that were left in the car park overnight,’ said the one with the black-and-white tie. ‘The first bloke had drunk too much in the pub and sensibly decided to get a taxi. He turned up to get his car next morning, so we got a statement from him. He didn’t see anything. But how would he, when he was in the pub at the time?’

  ‘OK,’ said Hitchens. ‘And the other one?’

  ‘Even more innocent. He works in the IT department of a company with offices in Buxton Road. That afternoon, he dropped a computer monitor on his foot and broke two toes. He was in A & E at the relevant time. His girlfriend turned up to collect the car.’

  ‘They never really looked like contenders anyway. Why would Sandra Birley’s attacker leave his own vehicle in the car park as well as hers?’

  ‘Exactly, sir. But we had to eliminate them. We’ve also been through every bit of tape from the functioning cameras, and we’ve managed to trace all the vehicles that left the car park later that night - in other words, after Mrs Birley was abducted. There were only four of them, because the place was practically empty. In fact, we’ve matched all but one of those vehicles to CCTV footage of the owners returning to their cars. Two were lone males, and there was one couple but older, in their early sixties. It’s clear from the tape that the woman isn’t Sandra Birley. She’s the wrong age, wrong

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  height, wrong clothes, everything. All of these people have been spoken to, and they seem to be genuine.’

  ‘And none of them saw anything suspicious?’ asked Fry.

  ‘That’s right, Sergeant.’

  Fry sighed. That was the trouble with law-abiding members of the public - they never saw anything. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d attended a serious incident, only to be met by members of the public with helpful smiles and short-term memories.

  ‘If my maths are correct, there was one more vehicle.’

  ‘Unfortunately, the fourth vehicle seems to have been parked on Level 2.’

  ‘Where there’s a nonfunctioning camera?’

  ‘You’ve got it, Sarge. We do have footage of the vehicle exiting the car park at the barrier. It’s a blue Saab. There appears to be a male driving, no one visible in the passenger seat.’

  ‘And has the owner been interviewed?’

  ‘He lives in Sheffield. There’s a team on the way there now to talk to him.’

  ‘So if the Sheffield driver is eliminated,’ said Fry, ‘the only other possibility is that our man didn’t have a vehicle of his own in the car park.’

  ‘Well, he had to have a vehicle somewhere close by,’ put in the DC with the striped tie. ‘He must have been parked on the street.’

  ‘More CCTV footage, then. The town centre cameras?’

  ‘Right.’

  Fry turned back to the DI. ‘And what are we doing about the phone messages, sir? The clues he left…?’

  Hitchens had his map pinned up on the board - or at least, an adaptation of it, showing the whole six-mile circle around Wardlow, with labels marking a scatter of locations.

  ‘We’ve passed on a list of potential locations for the uniforms to check out when practicable,’ he said. ‘By that, I

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  mean any locations that might possibly be referred to as “the dead place”. Otherwise, unless his clues get any clearer, there’s nothing concrete for us to act on. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any reasonable theories, let’s hear them. If you haven’t heard the tapes and you want to listen to them, speak to DS Fry.’

  ‘When practicable? That could mean never,’ said Cooper.

  Hitchens shrugged. ‘As you said yourself, DC Cooper, the possibilities are endless. We need something more substantial.’ ‘We’re hoping he’ll phone again?’

  ‘Well, it would help, wouldn’t it?’

  DCI Kessen had been listening quietly to the discussion. When the meeting had finished, he stood up and put his hand on Hitchens’ arm.

  ‘Keep me in the loop, won’t you, Paul?’ he said. ‘Regular updates.’

  Ben Cooper was about to leave the briefing with everyone else, when the DI called him over. He thought at first he’d misheard, and Hitchens had to speak to him again - a bit louder this time, as if Cooper was daydreaming at the back of the class.

  ‘Oh, Ben. Have you got a minute?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  Cooper left his jacket over the back of his chair and walked to the front of the room, moving against the flow of bodies and conscious of the glances he was getting. But perhaps he was being over-sensitive. He still felt ashamed of his outburst at the hospital last night, and this morning he couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. His thoughts kept drifting back to the image of his mother’s pale, helpless body lying in that side room off the ward, amid the smells of disinfectant and the constant slapping of heels in the corridor outside the door, back and forth, back and forth, until he thought it would drive him mad. When he’d phoned

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  the ward first thing this morning, he’d been told that Mrs Cooper was ‘satisfactory’.

  ‘There’s something for you, Ben,’ said the DI, fiddling with some papers on his clipboard. ‘It looks as though you’ve had a bit of early luck. A member of the public called in to say she recognized the facial reconstruction.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘It was in the evening paper last night, and it got a couple of minutes on the local TV news, too.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  Hitchens looked at him critically, as if detecting something not quite right. Cooper wondered if he’d forgotten to shave properly, or had his tie on crooked. Both were perfectly possible.

  ‘The lady’s name is Ellen Walker. She believes the deceased is her cousin, Audrey Steele. Here’s the address, Ben.’

  ‘I’m on my way, sir.’

  Cooper grabbed his jacket from his chair and tried to straighten his tie. It was best to look professional when meeting law-abiding members of the public.

  ‘One more thing, Ben …’ Hitchens was holding out a sheet torn from a message pad. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Another bit of luck for you. This gentleman is a retired forensic anthropologist with a speci
al interest in Thanatology. Apparently, we’ve consulted him now and then in the past, and he’s been living in this area since his retirement. He’s willing to do a little consultancy work for us at no cost.’

  ‘At no cost? Who says?’

  Hitchens smiled. ‘The vice-chairman of the police committee, who’s a member of the same Rotary Club as Professor Robertson.’

  Cooper took the sheet of paper and looked at the contact details. ‘Is he ACPO accredited?’

  ‘Of course. Give him a try, Ben. He might be exactly the person you need.’

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  ‘Yes, I suppose he might.’ And he thought: Especially since he’s free. But he didn’t say it out loud.

  ‘OK then, Ben, that’s it.’

  Cooper was aware that the room had emptied round him, and the DI was impatient to get on. But his father had taught him he should never pretend to understand something when he didn’t. It always led to disaster, he’d said.

  ‘Er … just one thing, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What on earth is Thanatology?’

  Hitchens looked flustered for a moment, then snapped his clipboard shut and headed rapidly towards the door, as if he didn’t have a second to spare for inane questions.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Cooper - if you don’t know, look it up.’

  As he was getting ready to leave the office, Cooper noticed a book on Gavin Murfin’s desk. Gavin never had books on his desk. Pies and cakes, yes. Chocolate, obviously. Anything edible, in fact. So unless this book was made of iced sponge, it was a historic first.

  Murfin saw him looking. But before he could move the book, Cooper picked it up. Dozens of bits of paper protruded from it, marking specific pages.

  ‘A Promotion Crammer for Sergeants, Part One. I thought there must be some reason why you were suddenly talking like a training manual. What’s going on, Gavin?’

  ‘I’m just trying to improve my performance, like,’ said Murfin.

  ‘Your what}’

  ‘It’s something we should all stop and think about now and then, in my view. If we’re going to make any progress in our careers, that is.’

  Cooper stared at him. ‘But this is a crammer, Gavin - you’re surely not thinking of going for promotion?’

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  ‘As a matter of fact, I am.’

  ‘You’re going to put in for your sergeant’s exam? Are you serious?’

  Murfin snatched his book back. ‘Why shouldn’t I? Nobody around here seems to appreciate the depth of my experience. I was in CID when you were still in short pants. I’ve seen it all, I have. So it’s time I shared the benefit of my knowledge and expertise in a supervisory capacity.’

  ‘You’ve been practising your answers for the interview,’ said Cooper in amazement.

  ‘Go ahead, take the piss. I don’t care. One of the advantages of my years of experience is that I remain cool and unflappable, even in the face of extreme provocation.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Cooper. ‘How many years exactly?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many years’ experience, Gavin? How long have you been in CID?’

  Murfin didn’t answer. He opened his crammer and pretended to be studying a page.

  ‘Come on, Gavin - how many years?’

  ‘Eleven,’ said Murfin casually.

  Cooper let out a long breath. ‘Ah. Tenure. That explains everything. You’ve only got a year left, at most. And you don’t want to go back into uniform. Gavin, you’re getting desperate.’

  ‘Do you find the idea of me being promoted to sergeant inconceivable?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  Cooper laughed, then instantly felt guilty - not for laughing at Gavin, but because it didn’t seem right that he should have something to laugh about right now.

  They both looked up as Diane Fry came into the room. Her face was dark with irritation.

  ‘Hey up,’ said Murfin quietly. ‘Are we in for another go at boosting morale?’

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  ‘Shh. You’ll just wind up her again,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Well, these team-building exercises are wearing me down, Ben. I’m getting emotionally exhausted from all the love I feel for my colleagues.’

  Fry approached Cooper immediately. ‘Ben, the DI says he’s given you the name of some old professor to talk to.’

  ‘Yes. I’m hoping to see him this afternoon.’

  ‘When you get back, have a word with me, will you? I need to make a judgement on whether he might be of use in another enquiry. So I’ll be interested in your opinion of him.’

  ‘You’re not usually very keen on outside experts, Diane,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Personally, I wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. But I need a reason to justify my decision not to use him. Follow?’

  ‘You want me to come back and tell you he’s useless, right?’

  ‘Frankly, I expect you to come back and tell me he’s some barmy retired academic who drinks too much and has long hair, a smelly dog and holes in his cardigan, but likes to be visited by nice young police officers. Anything like that will do.’

  As Fry walked off, Murfin pointed at a page in his sergeant’s crammer, marked with a yellow Post-it. ‘“A supervisory officer should always be prepared to justify any decision,”’ he said. ‘See - I could do that.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Cooper, ‘if you’ve been raiding the reference library, did you happen to see that big dictionary?’

  ‘It’s on the shelf over there.’ ‘Thanks.’

  Cooper lifted the book down and flicked through the pages. There it was - Thanatology: The scientific study of death and the phenomena and practices relating to it. From the Greek Thanatos, meaning death.

  Lovely. His professor was the genuine Dr Death.

  Ill

  Ellen Walker’s home was a double-fronted stone villa in the middle of a nineteenth-century terrace near the parish church. The very last house in the row had been converted into a shop at some time, but now the shutters were down and there was no sign of what had once been sold. By the look of the lace curtains at the first-floor windows, somebody still lived in the flat above the shop. A retired greengrocer or ironmonger, perhaps, driven out of business by Tesco or the massive B&Q store on the outskirts of town.

  Through panes of frosted glass in the door of number 15, Cooper had a distorted glimpse into the hallway. All four windows at the front of the house had their blinds pulled down far enough to cover the upper sashes.

  ‘Mrs Walker?’ said Cooper when a middle-aged woman answered the door.

  ‘Are you from the police?’

  ‘Detective Constable Cooper, Mrs Walker.’

  ‘It’s Ellen.’

  ‘Thank you very much for calling us. You understand the circumstances? Why we had the facial reconstruction done?’

  ‘Well, I saw the photograph in the newspaper. My neighbour showed it to me. I didn’t really understand why it was there, but I was fairly sure …’

  ‘Let’s just take a look at it again first, shall we?’

  Cooper didn’t like the sound of ‘fairly sure’. It would be better to let the witness come to her conclusion more slowly.

  Ellen Walker seemed nervous at being visited by the police. It was so refreshing that Cooper forgot for a moment that it was so often a sign of guilt. He looked at the Victorian-style fireplace with its raised slate hearth. Disappointingly, it contained a coal-effect gas fire that had nothing Victorian about it. The windows faced on to the street, but through the kitchen he saw a conservatory leading on to a patio area enclosed by low gritstone walls.

  ‘The newspaper reproduction might not have been of very

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  good quality. This is the original, Ellen. Take your time and have a good look at it. Bear in mind some of the details might not be exactly accurate. The hairstyle, for example.’

  Mrs Walker obediently studied the picture. ‘The hairstyle isn’t too fa
r out, not really.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s your cousin?’

  ‘Fairly sure.’

  Cooper sighed. Fairly sure wasn’t much, but it would have to do for now.

  ‘The other details fit,’ said Mrs Walker. ‘Audrey was forty two, and an inch or two taller than me.’

  ‘Was Audrey married?’

  ‘For a while. She met a bloke called Carl, who worked offshore on the oil rigs. He was all right, but they drifted apart after a bit. I think he went to Germany after the divorce went through.’

  ‘Would you have his address, if we needed it?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I expect so.’ Mrs Walker frowned. ‘Audrey and I were always very close, you know. Her mother is Auntie Viv, my mum’s sister. Audrey was my chief bridesmaid when I got married.’

  ‘Excellent. So we could say that you knew her very well.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘And when did Audrey Steele go missing?’ said Cooper.

  Ellen Walker stared at him. ‘Missing?’

  ‘When was she last seen? We don’t have her recorded as a missing person. But it seems she must have been missing since at least February or March last year.’

  ‘She isn’t missing. She died.’

  ‘Yes, we know she died,’ said Cooper patiently. ‘We know now that she died. But before anyone knew what had happened to her, she must have been missing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Ellen Walker nervously. ‘Audrey died. She had a brain haemorrhage and died.’

  Now it was Cooper’s turn to stare. ‘How do you know what she died of?’

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  ‘It was on the death certificate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her mother will have it put away somewhere, if you want to see it.’

  With an effort, Cooper tried to focus his thoughts and figure out what Mrs Walker was telling him. ‘We are talking about Audrey Steele?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Ellen, when did your cousin die exactly?’