Текст книги "Black Dog"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

Соавторы: Stephen Booth
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

27

Ben Cooper lifted the binoculars and swung them across the hillside, resting his elbows on the warm rock. The light was starting to fade and the straggle of buildings looked grey and flat. For the first time in days, a bank of cloud had built up in the west and had blotted out the setting sun. But he could easily make out the white vehicle that had bumped up the track, and he could identify the three figures that were now moving slowly in front of the dilapidated farmhouse.

All three of them are there now.'

‘Let's see.’

He passed the binoculars across carefully, shifting his body to make his position more comfortable. He lay prone, keeping his profile below the skyline, knowing his dark clothes would make him almost invisible against the rocky outcrop.

‘Harry has the dog with him.’

As always.'

‘They just seem to be standing around at the moment.'

‘They would normally go to the pub at this time.

They're late already. Besides, why would Harry and Sam Beeley come up to the smallholding? Surely it's much easier for them just to meet Wilford down at the pub? They both live close to it, and Wilford's the one with the transport.’

Diane Fry kept the binoculars to her face. Cooper watched her, anxious to see her expression. She had agreed to come with him to Raven's Side when she came off duty, but he knew he had a long way to go to convince her that he wasn't making a fool of himself again. Two days ago, when he had sat on Raven's Side and recalled the legend of the black hounds that haunted the hilltops, he had noticed the vantage point on the east side of the tors from.which there was a perfect view of Thorpe Farm.

‘Maybe they've just come to help Wilford feed the animals,' she said.

Cooper smiled. 'What animals?’

*

Fry wondered what she was looking for as she swung the binoculars backwards and forwards again, surveying the buildings. There could be anything within those ramshackle sheds and huts. They would be a nightmare to search, if it ever came to it.

To the right of the buildings, she could just make out the famous compost heap. It lay like a vast heap of droppings freshly left by some monstrous creature passing across the hillside towards Moorhay. Even from this distance, she could see the tendrils of steam rising from its surface. She shuddered, imagining that she could even detect the smell on the evening air.

‘It's certainly quiet in the fields,' she said. 'The animals must all be in bed.’

Cooper snorted derisively, until she pulled the binoculars away and glared at him. Like him, she was dressed in denims and a dark jacket. She was uncomfortable lying on the hard ground, and uneasy about what they were doing. Memories of the incident on Tuesday night were still clear in her mind, when she had followed Ben Cooper into trouble at the poacher's hut. She could not understand why she had done it again – let him persuade her into doing something she knew wasn't right. 'Sorry,' he said. 'What are they doing now?'

‘Nothing. Probably Wilford's wife has got something cooking and they're all going to be having their dinner in a minute.’

He frowned at her. 'What did you say? Who's got what —?'

‘I said having dinner. Just like we should be doing, Ben.'

‘OK, OK. I'll buy you a Chinese meal later on. How about that? We'll go to Fred Kwok's. It's the best Chinese in Edendale. Fancy some deep-fried won ton later?'

‘Make it right now, and I'd even accept meat pie and mushy peas at the Drover.’

He was silent. But she knew that he would simply be looking at her with that pleading expression that baffled her and made her angry at the feelings it stirred up inside her. They were feelings she had long since tried to suppress. Feelings that she had already allowed to surface once recently, with humiliating consequences. She wasn't about to let it happen again.

‘I'm sure I'm right, Diane,' he said.

Looking at Cooper's face now, she knew that this was what it was really all about for her. This was why she had let him persuade her into this mad expedition, this spell of unauthorized surveillance. It was the sheer strength of his conviction, the intensity of his belief in himself. All he had done was put a few facts together with a whole load of half-baked ideas, instincts and feelings that were entirely his own, and as a result he was filled with a pure, heartfelt certainty that he was right. She could see that Ben Cooper was a man who believed strongly in things; he had faith, he had genuine passion. It was ridiculously attractive.

‘Ben – you've made this mistake once already. You're not even on the case any more. You should back off now, or you'll regret it.’

And what exactly have I got left to lose?' he snapped. 'Shh. You'll let everybody down there know we're here.'

‘I promise you I'm right.'

‘OK, OK.’

Immediately below their position was a patch of woodland clinging to the side of the hill. It was full of the quiet noises of creatures settling down for the night or stirring, ready for their evening's hunting. The woods petered out fifty yards away, where the millstone grit erupted from the hillside and the ground became bare and rocky. At their backs were the 'tors' themselves – gritstone outcrops sculpted by geological forces and the weather into strange, twisted shapes. Their names owed a lot to the dark imagination of the rural Peak dwellers – the Horse Stone, the Poached Egg Stone, the Mad Woman.

But I'm the mad woman, thought Fry. I'm mad for even being here.

*

Cooper knew he had to handle her carefully. She was like a coiled spring – one wrong word and she would walk off and leave him. But it was difficult to avoid the wrong word with Diane Fry. Besides, there were so many things he wanted to ask her, away from the office. Number one on his list was what had happened between her and DI Hitchens on their trip to Yorkshire. But it might be wise to save that one for later.

‘Is Mr Tailby still hopeful of Andrew Milner?' he asked, steering the way into a safer subject.

‘Your diagram encouraged him. That and the lack of evidence against Simeon Holmes. If Harry Dickinson was protecting somebody, it has to be Milner.'

‘Yeah. Harry doesn't think much of Milner, but he'd protect him for the sake of his daughter. For the sake of the family.'

‘Family loyalty. As you say, a powerful motivation.’

‘Yes, it fits,' said Cooper sadly.

‘Milner had been pushed to the limit by Graham Vernon. Maybe he finally cracked and took revenge.’

‘Not only was he pushed to the limit by Vernon, but he was also reminded of his failure by his own family. Harry in particular taunted him with his weakness. If Harry found out what had happened, he would have felt guilty – partly responsible, in fact. He would try to make amends. I can see that.’

Cooper cast his mind back to his first visit to Dial Cottage. He remembered the bloodstained trainer standing on the kitchen table on a copy of the Buxton Advertiser, the atmosphere of tension lying on the cramped rooms like a thick blanket. He remembered the old lady, distressed by something beyond the innocent discovery of a missing girl's trainer.

‘I wonder if that was what the row was about,' he said. 'And, if so, who was on which side?’

Fry frowned, but let it pass. 'Anyway, Milner's account of his whereabouts was crap from the start.'

‘Really?'

‘There was no possibility of tracing anyone who could remember him. He could have been anywhere at that time.'

‘But he can't be placed at the scene either.'

‘The DCI thinks he's worth pursuing. And that one is no Harry Dickinson, either. Mr Tailby will have been running rings round him back at Division.’

Cooper was silent for a moment, lying quite still to ease the pain in his chest.

Andrew Milner isn't in the frame,' he said.

‘But you just said it fits!'

‘Of course it does. It fits the facts, anyway. But he can't have killed Laura Vernon.'

‘Why not?’

He shrugged. 'He just can't, that's all.'

‘You're nuts, do you know that? You're a sandwich short of a picnic.’

They didn't speak to each other for a few minutes. They lay listening to the noises in the woods. A small flock of jackdaws appeared and circled the face of a neighbouring crag. Their harsh, metallic cries drownedout all other noises coming up from the valley until the birds gradually settled on to their roost.

The minutes passed without incident. The three old men were still gathered around the white pick-up in front of the house. In another half-hour the light would have gone completely. Fry passed the binoculars back to Cooper. Then she eased over on to her side and dug a hand into the pocket of her jacket. She pulled out a bag of coloured sweets.

‘I read somewhere you should have something with you when you're on the hills. For the energy.' Cooper took a sweet and sucked it thoughtfully. He looked at her with a faintly puzzled expression. She seemed to feel his eyes on her and turned away, pretending to study something in the woods. Beyond the valley, a jet airliner was leaving a faint trace across the sky towards Manchester.

‘Diane —' he said tentatively.

‘Yeah?'

‘What happened to your family?’

Fry remained staring straight ahead. A tendon twitched in her neck as her jaw tightened. She showed no other sign that she had heard him.

He studied her profile, trying to tune in to what she was thinking, to get a glimpse of how she was feeling. But her face was stony and expressionless, her eyes fixed on something that might have been deep in the wood, or even beyond it.

A blackbird scratching in the old leaves beneath the trees whistled and chattered to itself. A partridge wound up its rusty spring somewhere down the hillside. They followed the sound of a car travelling up out of Moorhay towards Edendale.

‘You don't have to tell me if you don't want to,' he said gently.

She turned her head then. Her lips had narrowed to a hard line, but her eyes had returned from their invisible horizon to seek out his own.

‘I just can't believe you sometimes, Ben.'

‘I'm that amazing, eh?'

‘What sort of time is this to decide you want to discuss my private life?'

‘I thought you might like to talk while we wait.'

‘Would it surprise you to learn that all I'd like to do at this particular moment is punch you on the nose?’

‘Oh, I shouldn't do that. My screaming would give our position away.'

‘Right.’

They stayed unmoving for five minutes more. The blackbird chattered amongst the old leaves on the woodland floor. A squirrel rustled the branches as it leaped from one tree to the next. A large, pale moth appeared, fluttering in front of Fry's nose until she waved it away. A tawny owl hooted from the slopes of the Baulk. Finally, she gave a deep sigh.

‘I was taken into care by Social Services when I was nine. They said my parents had been abusing my sister, who was eleven. They said it was both my parents. We were fostered after that, but we kept moving on to different places. So many different places that I can't remember them. It was years before I realized that we didn't stay anywhere long because of my sister. She wasbig trouble wherever we went. Nobody could keep her under control. But I worshipped her, and I refused to be split up from her.'

‘What about you?'

‘What about me? Do you mean was I abused too? I can't remember.'

‘Was it —?'

‘I can't remember.’

The blackbird flapped away through the undergrowth, cackling its alarm call. The squirrel froze on an oak branch, its body upright, its head alert for danger. Cooper and Fry automatically ducked their heads and hugged the ground more closely. Gradually, the normal sounds of the hillside returned. The squirrel relaxed and moved on.

‘So what happened to your parents?'

‘For God's sake. I've no idea. And I don't want to know. All right?'

‘And your sister?’

Fry hesitated. When she spoke, her voice had lost its hard edge. Her eyes had drifted away, back to the images floating somewhere in a darkness that only she could see. 'I haven't seen her since she was sixteen. She disappeared from our foster home and never came back.’

Her voice died, and Cooper thought she had told him all she was ever going to say. But then came a whisper, full of anger and unresolved pain.

‘Of course, she was already using heroin by then.’

*

A skein of geese passed slowly overhead in a straggly 'v' shape. They honked hoarsely to each other, communicating their presence, binding themselves together as a living unit that moved as a single creature. A combine harvester was working late lower down the valley. Its headlights were on, and the clatter of its blades was clear and sharp on the air as it flattened a field of barley. A cloud of dust marked the combine's position, golden specks glittering in the fading light.

Fry tried to persuade her memories to fly away with the geese, to fall into shreds beneath the combine's blade, to disappear in a cloud of dust. But in the dark valley of her mind, the nightmares roosted permanently; the harvest never came.

‘Diane —'

‘What now?'

‘I guess you must have taken me home last night.’

‘Who else?'

‘Well . . . thanks.'

‘Think nothing of it. But don't expect the same favour too often. It wasn't exactly the most fun I've ever had in one night.'

‘Right.’

He sucked the last of his sweet and polished the lenses of the binoculars on his sleeve.

‘There's just one other thing, Diane. Most of last night is a complete blur. But there is something I can sort of remember. Something I wanted to ask you about. I can't get it out of my mind.’

Fry went completely rigid, her arm and leg muscles locked tight as if she had multiple cramp. Her stomach tied itself into a painful knot, and she turned her face away, praying that he couldn't see her blush. How could she have hoped that he wouldn't remember that excruciatingly embarrassing moment? She had no idea what she was going to say to him. Her mind was a total blank.

‘Diane —?’

She barely managed a grunt of acknowledgement, but it was enough to encourage him to continue.

‘I remember some music you were playing in the car on the way back to your flat. I guess it sort of stuck in my mind while I was drunk, and I can't get rid of it again. I just wondered what it was, that's all.’

Fry laughed out loud with relief. 'That's ridiculous!’

‘Some woman singer. I'm more into the Waterboys and the Levellers. But that tape sounded all right.’

‘It was Tanita Tikaram. It's called "Ancient Heart."‘

‘Thanks.'

‘I'll lend you the cassette, if you like. You can make a copy of it.'

‘That's great —’

A bleeping sound came from Fry's jacket pocket. 'Oh shit.'

‘What have you brought that thing for?’

Fry pulled out her pager and switched off the sound as she read the phone number. 'It's somebody I've been trying to get hold of all day,' she said. 'He's just tried to ring me back at last.'

‘Important?'

‘The bird-watcher – Gary Edwards.’

Ah. You remembered.'

‘Do you still think it's important? Should I go back to the car and phone him, then?’

Cooper hesitated for a moment. 'Yes, you should.’

She straightened herself up and scrambled over the rocks towards the car park that lay a few hundred yards below them at the Old Mill. 'See you in a few minutes, then.'

‘Yeah.’

*

Damn, thought Cooper. And just as he was getting round to asking her about Hitchens.

He swung up the binoculars again. He had to peer hard now to make out the figures by the white pick-up. They seemed to have been gathered over a piece of paper, consulting together, nodding their heads, as if they were doing a crossword or something.

A few minutes after Diane Fry had left, he saw two of the dim shapes begin to move away from the house. He realized they were heading back down the track leading from the smallholding. The third stayed behind, leaning against the pick-up.

Cooper followed the two figures as they passed through the first gate on foot and continued along the track towards the road. When they turned and crossed the road towards the squeeze stile that led to the path on to the Baulk, he knew he would have to follow them.

He looked at his watch. Nearly eight o'clock. Who else had mentioned eight o'clock? He flicked through his mental notes, and remembered Fry's account of her interview with Charlotte Vernon. It was this time, every night, that Charlotte visited the spot on the Baulk where her daughter's body was found.

*

'So let's just go back over it again, Mr Edwards, shall we?' said Fry. 'You were standing near the cairn on Raven's Side when you saw an old man with a black dog walk past the end of the footpath below.'

‘No.'

‘What do you mean "no"? That's what you said in your statement.'

‘No, I didn't. Where've you got that from?’

Fry stared through the windscreen at the car park and the lighted windows on the front of the Old Mill. She was still unsure what it was she hoped to establish by speaking to the bird-watcher. Gary Edwards had already insisted that he would stick by his estimate of the time he had seen the old man. His watch was accurate, and he was sure of the time. He always recorded the exact time of a sighting, he said.

Now, though, she did seem to have touched on something. She consulted her notes, taken from his earlier statement.

‘I've got it right here, Mr Edwards – the statement that you signed. Let me read part of it to you. Your statement reads: "I saw the head of a dog through my binoculars. It appeared through some undergrowth. It was close to the ground, sniffing at a fallen branch. It was black." '

‘Right.'

‘You go on: "Then I saw there was a man with the dog. He was an old man, wearing a cap. He passed out of my vision to the left, walking, not running. I took the binoculars away from my eyes and I saw the man and the dog move away into the trees. This was near the stream that runs by the footpath called the Eden Valley Trail."'

‘Well —'

‘So the dog was a black dog.'

‘No, that's not what I said.'

‘It's here. You've signed it. "It was black", you said.’

‘You're not listening. Like the other bloke – he didn't listen either.’

'Detective Sergeant Rennie?'

‘Yes, him. He just wrote what he wanted to, didn't he? But listen. I only saw the dog's head through the binoculars. The head was black.'

‘So?'

‘So maybe the rest of the dog wasn't. Get it? I couldn't tell when I took the binoculars away, see? I could only make out the rest of the thing then, when it came out into the open. But the light was funny by that time. It was late on, and the sun was so low. You lose the definition of the colours.'

‘OK, I know what you mean. But as far as you could tell, the dog was black, yes?'

‘No. Well . . . I reckon it was probably black and white.'

‘Why? You've just said —'

‘Well, they usually are, that type of dog. When you see them on the telly – they're mostly black, with some white. They reckon it's good camouflage, so the sheep can't see them on the hillside.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘One Man and His Dog. It was a sheepdog type of thing, with a shaggy coat. A Border collie, they call it.’

A Labrador, surely. A black Labrador you saw.'

‘I'm telling you, I'm telling you. Will you write it down properly, for God's sake? I know a Labrador from a collie, see? And this was a Border collie. A black and white collie. Definite.’

Fry sighed. 'We'd better see you and take another statement in the morning, hadn't we, Mr Edwards?'

‘Whatever you like. But we'll have to make it quick. There's been a pair of snipe sighted on Stanton Moor.’

As she finished the call to Edwards, a memory came back to Diane Fry, and she almost dropped the phone. The memory was of a photograph of Laura Vernon. It was the original photograph, the one from which her face had been enlarged for use in the murder enquiry. Fry had seen it only once. She had sneaked a look in the file when the girl was still officially just a missing person. It had been a photo of Laura taken in the garden at the Mount, at a time when she was laughing and happy in the sunshine. And at her feet in the picture had been a dog. A black and white Border collie.

*

Stewart Tailby called DI Hitchens into his office. It was late, but they were both too senior to qualify for overtime payments.

The two men were tired and tense. They were awaiting the results of fingerprint examination on a find made earlier in the evening. They hardly dared to say it to each other, but they knew the results could be crucial.

Tailby had openly pinned his hopes on forensics so often during this enquiry that it seemed like tempting fate even to voice the hope that a set of prints other than Laura Vernon's would be found on the second trainer. That second trainer they had spent so many expensive man-hours looking for. The trainer which had now been found by searchers, where it lay in the roots of a hedge inside the back wall of the garden at the Mount.

Meanwhile, a tearful Andrew Milner had been sent home for the night, with the warning that they might want to talk to him again tomorrow – and the friendly advice that he should talk to his wife.

‘So Margaret Milner was right that he hadn't been Charlotte Vernon's lover,' said Tailby.

‘But she didn't know about the secretary.'

‘Mmm. Has it occurred to you, though, that Graham Vernon might well have known about the affair?' Hitchens snapped his fingers. 'Of course. The hold he had over Milner wasn't just to do with his fear of losing his job. He knew Milner's dirty secret.’

And he certainly made the most of it. The result was that Andrew Milner felt unable to act even when Vernon made a move on his own daughter.’

Are we discounting Milner, then?'

‘No. There's enough hate there. Hate for Graham Vernon, but self-disgust too. It has to be directed somewhere.’

Tailby leaned wearily on his desk, his shoulders stooped. The air conditioning was still running, and his office was turning cold as the evening temperature dropped. 'No, I'd like to eliminate Milner, but we can't.

Not without confirmation of his movements that night. Poor sod. He couldn't even switch his story and claim he was with the mistress.’

Tailby glowered at Hitchens's raised eyebrow, real– izing the DI was amused either at his use of the old-fashioned term or his sympathy for the suspect. Perhaps both. Maybe he was getting too old for the job if his junior officers were laughing at him, thought Tailby. Maybe he ought to take that job in the Corporate Development Department at County Headquarters in Ripley. They needed a chief inspector to take charge of Process Development. Whatever that was.

‘We have no case against Andrew Milner,' said Hitchens. 'I know that, damn it.'

‘Of the other names on the list, Simeon Holmes is in the clear. He was nearly twenty miles away at the time, and his story is well supported.'

‘Bikers,' said Tailby.

‘This lot weren't exactly Hell's Angels, sir. You'd be surprised at the types who gather at Matlock Bath in their best leathers on a weekend. Some of them that we talked to were married couples with kids. Some were in their fifties.’

Tailby decided he disliked Paul Hitchens. It was his youth and his condescending smile. He would probably go far. In fact, he would probably be DCI very soon. What did Process Development mean exactly? He recalled that the three other CIs in Corporate had sections called Strategic Planning, Policy Development and Quality Assurance. Not much help.

Hitchens was counting on his fingers, like a primary school teacher. 'We know Lee Sherratt could have been there. He could have been the youth seen talking to Laura, but he's sensibly keeping mum. Without forensics, we'll not pin that one down. Nobody saw him who can identify him.'

‘OK. Take the father, Graham Vernon.'

‘Yes, sir.' Hitchens held up another finger. It looked dangerously like an insulting gesture to a senior officer. 'Graham Vernon was seen and identified. By Harry Dickinson. But, of course, Mr Vernon went out to look for Laura when she didn't come back to the house for dinner. Perfectly natural. An innocent explanation. He looked around for a while, perhaps called her name a few times, then got worried when he couldn't find her, went back to the house and phoned us. Just what we would expect from a concerned father.’

Tailby's expression must have betrayed his feelings about Graham Vernon. 'I know you didn't like him, sir. But we can't act on feelings, can we? We need evidence.’

Hitchens was really warming up now. 'Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs' was an expression that sprang to the DCI's mind. He wanted to stop Hitchens, to take back control of the conversation, but he felt powerless to halt the flow. His words had an air of inevitability. 'Harry Dickinson.'

‘Yes, Harry Dickinson. He was definitely there.' Hitchens looked at his fingers. He seemed to have lost count. He was already holding up five fingers and was trying to find a sixth. 'But was he there at the right time? Nobody can tell us so for definite. There's no firmidentification of him, not even from the bird-watcher.’

‘He did find the body, Paul.'

‘Well, strictly speaking —'

‘Yes, I know!’

Tailby knew he was losing his grip on the situation. He shouldn't lose his temper. But how could he stand this waiting? What were the fingerprint people doing down there? Of course, he knew the difficulties of lifting latent prints from a leather surface, and it could take hours. They were praying that the suspect had handled the leather upper of the trainer, and that his hands had been sweaty. They were praying that he hadn't handled the trainer by its laces, or by the cloth interior. They were praying he was someone they knew.

If they lifted a suspect print, the enquiry was back on track and they could start making comparisons for identification. If they lifted no prints, they had hit another brick wall.

‘We may have to start pulling in every youth in the Eden Valley for elimination,' said Hitchens, with an air of too much satisfaction.

‘We might as well pull in all the foxes in those woods and identify the one that took a bite out of Laura Vernon's leg. That's about as useful as forensics have been to us so far.'

‘It could have been a fox,' said Hitchens. 'Or it could have been a dog.'

‘Oh yes,' said Tailby. 'That's about the best we can do. It could have been a bloody dog.’

*

But did the Vernons have a dog? Jesus, had nobody found that out? As Diane Fry punched the buttons of her phone again, she wondered how something so obvious could have been missed. Had everybody been fixated on Harry Dickinson? She banged the dashboard of the car irritably. No answer from the Vernons.

What was she going to do now? She could, of course, try to get hold of Mr Tailby or DI Hitchens and ask them what to do. But what would Ben have suggested? The answer came to her as if he had been there next to her: Sheila Kelk, the Vernons' cleaner. Her address was on file back at the office. It only took a call to the duty operator in the incident room to get the phone number of the house at Wye Close.

Mrs Kelk sounded terrified when Fry told her who she was, as if the council house she was speaking from might be full of guilty secrets.

‘I just want to ask you something, Mrs Kelk. Do the Vernons have a dog?'

‘Oh, no. Mrs Vernon doesn't like them.'

‘But there's a photograph in the sitting room at the Mount showing Laura with a black and white collie. So they must have had one when that picture was taken?'

‘No, I think that was the gardener's. Laura always loved animals. Dogs and horses and that. I think she did mention that dog to me once, when I was dusting round the knick-knacks on the cabinet. She told me its name too, but I can't remember what it was.'

‘It belonged to the gardener? So that's Lee Sherratt's dog in the photograph?'

‘No, no, not him. What, Lee Sherratt? He was never really what you'd call a gardener anyway. Or one forkeeping animals either, I should think. He'd rather shoot 'em than look after 'em. No, it was the one before him. That photo must have been taken a year ago, I'd say.'

‘Who was that, Mrs Kelk? Who did the dog belong to?'

‘The old gardener. I'm sorry, it was before my time at the Mount, you see. I don't know his name. But Laura said it was an old man that used to come. A strange old man from the village.’