Текст книги "Black Dog"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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

‘It's no good. You won't ever understand,' he said.

Gwen's face crumpled into tears, and the detectives stood in the middle of the room, embarrassed.

‘What happened during the war?' asked Cooper.

‘Was it something to do with the French tarts?' suggested Fry, and Cooper raised his eyebrows.

Aye, those French girls,' said Harry. Did Sam tell you? It's not something I've ever told Gwen. I never told her much about the war. Women only worry -they get everything out of proportion.’

He nodded wisely at them. 'We were lucky, me and Sam. But Wilford wasn't so lucky. He was always a bit too upright. Didn't approve, you know. But there was this lad he thought the world of – he was looking after him, like. And one day they came across this French lass standing in an alley. She wasn't very old, and she gave them the come-on, hot and hard. Wilford didn't want to know, of course, but the lad was excited. He went into this dark little house, and Wilford had to tag along, trying to talk him out of it all the way. The lad almost changed his mind, but the lass grabbed him and stuck his hand down her drawers. Well —’

Harry sucked his pipe, remembering.

‘There were two Jerry soldiers hiding in that house, waiting for the girl to tempt a Tommy in. They bayoneted the lad. When Wilford walked through the door, the lad's guts were already spilled on the floor. Wilford had his bren gun ready, and he shot the Jerries. Then he shot the girl. But he got a Jerry bullet lodged in his skull, and they sent him home. He was never quite right after that, the old lad. His brain never healed somehow. You could never quite tell when he'd have these rages. He had one at the Mount, by all accounts. No wonder Vernon sacked him. And sometimes he'd get them with the animals, though it broke his heart to hurt them.’

Fry drew her breath in sharply. Cooper looked at her, sharing the memory. He saw a cloud of dark feathers drifting out of a hut, settling on Wilford Cutts's shoulders and sticking in his hair. He remembered the van driver looking wild-eyed and frightened by whatever had happened inside the hut. And he remembered the hen dangling from Wilford's hand, its wings broken, its eyes glazed with pain, waiting to be put out of its suffering.

Harry continued, unaware of their exchange of glances. 'When the Vernon child tormented him, he couldn't put up with it. It reminded him of France and the lad who left his guts on the floor of that house. She was like that French tart all over again. Evil. So he picked up a stone . . .' Harry's eyes focused on Fry, as if seeing her for the first time and wondering why she was there. 'It was just a moment's mistake, you see. You can't forget sixty years of friendship for that.'

‘Friendship?’

Aye. Friendship.’

Harry studied Diane Fry. On her first visit to the cottage, he had ignored her as completely as he had during the interviews at the police station. Now, though, he was looking at her in a different way, as if he sensed a change in her. He looked from Fry to Ben Cooper, assessing them both curiously.

‘You knew, didn't you, lad?’

Cooper nodded. 'It was the pigs, of course.’

Fry looked at him in amazement. 'The ones in the compost heap? Come on. The pigs were a joke.’

‘No. It was after I had that bit of bother in the pub, you remember —? Anyway, one of those youths in the pub said something about pigs. And it stuck in my brain. Like that music you were playing in the car. Tanita Tikaram? They're about the only two things I can remember.’

The old man' was nodding at Cooper like a proud father, encouraging him to do his stuff.

‘What the hell have the pigs got to do with it?' asked Fry.

‘Well, it suddenly dawned on me what was going on at the smallholding. They were helping Wilford get rid of all the animals. He didn't want to leave them behind. He couldn't just abandon them, because he cared about them too much. They were his family, if you like. Apart from the pigs, every last one of them went during the course of a week.'

‘Honestly?'

‘You remember the hens, when we went to Thorpe Farm that first time? He sold all of them. When I went up a couple of days later, the goat had gone too. And there were no geese. I should have figured it out then, but I didn't. It was the pigs that really clinched it. You can't just sell swill-fed pigs, you see. You've got to get movement permits from the Ministry of Agriculture before they can leave the premises.'

‘Because of Swine Vesicular Disease,' put in Harry. 'But there wasn't time to do that, was there? He had to get rid of them quickly, and there was only one way he could think of. That was to have them humanely killed and bury them in the compost heap.’

`So everything went? All that menagerie.’

‘Everything. The place is deserted now. All that's left of Wilford's family is the dog.’

Harry nodded. 'We kept her out of the way after we heard about the bird-watching bloke. You nearly saw her once, in the pub, but she was out the back with Jess. You see, Wilford needed time, that's all. That's what I was doing for him – buying him time. We couldn't let him get arrested. He knew what he had to do, but he needed more time. We helped him do it, me and Sam. Like you say, there's just the dog now.'

‘So he took all his family with him. As a matter of interest, Diane,' said Cooper, 'what gave you the idea that Wilford Cutts was married?'

‘I don't know,' she frowned. 'Wasn't he?''His wife died years ago.'

‘Oh well, I don't suppose it's important. I just remember wondering how on earth Connie managed to put up with him and his friends. He spoke about her once, when I was there. Perhaps he'd just forgotten she was dead.'

‘His wife was called Doris,' said Cooper.

Harry nodded. 'Maybe you're almost Inspector Morse, after all.'

‘You also did your best to throw suspicion on Graham Vernon. Did you really see him on the Baulk that night? Or was that a lie?'

‘No, lad, no lie. He was there, all right. He was out looking for the girl, I reckon. No doubt he had an idea in his mind of what she would be up to. The mother hadn't a clue, of course. She always thought the lass was some sort of angel.’

The old man curled his lip contemptuously. 'Aye, Vernon was there, all right. I would have had a few words to say to him too, if I'd got near him. You know what about, lad, if Helen's told you. You don't need to ask me what I would have said to the man. But he saw me coming, and he cleared off sharpish. I wasn't complaining. It kept him out of the way. And it did no harm for you lot to be asking him your questions, did it?’

And then you even tried to attract suspicion to yourself.’

Harry shrugged. 'It didn't matter if you thought I had killed the girl anyway.'

‘Didn't matter?'

‘Well, I was innocent, wasn't I? I knew Wilford would prove it, in the end. He did the right thing, you see. He always said he would.'

‘But what you put yourself through,' said Cooper. 'It must have been appalling.’

Harry shrugged. 'It's what you do. For a friend.’

But Fry wasn't satisfied. She was still angry. She stepped forward, and the old man looked up at her from his chair as they faced each other across a short stretch of carpet. 'You've caused a lot of trouble for us, Mr Dickinson,' she said. `Do you realize you've just admitted to committing several offences?'

‘If you say so.'

‘Mr Dickinson, you've deliberately misled the police. You've concealed evidence of a very serious crime. And that's only for starters. At the moment, there's no proof that Wilford Cutts's death was suicide. There may be more serious allegations to follow, depending on the results of forensic examination.'

‘Sam has the suicide note,' said Harry. 'If that's what you need. It was all done properly.'

‘I see.’

Concern clouded Harry's impassive face. 'Somebody ought to go and see Sam. He's not well.'

‘Detective Constable Cooper is just about to do that,' said Fry.

Cooper looked at her, and their eyes met for a long minute. There was everything in their stare, all the pent-up resentment and jealousy, all the disdain for each other's views and methods, their lifestyles and backgrounds, all the memories of the things that had passed between them, all the pain of intimacy and betrayal. Cooper could sense that she was also asking him to trust her.

‘Ben, please.’

She said it as if it was a request. But now the words had a note of authority, naturally assumed, as of a right. She expected him to obey. This was her case, she seemed to say. And she was right, of course. Diane Fry had done everything properly; she had called in, she had sent for back-up, she had secured the scene. As for Ben Cooper, he was officially off the enquiry. He shouldn't even be here. So how could he possibly expect to take any of the credit? He nodded and went towards the front door, looking for a passing patrol car to flag down for a lift to Thorpe Farm. As he left the room, he heard Fry begin the litany.

‘Harold Dickinson, I am arresting you on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence . .

Sam Beeley looked relieved when the police car came up the track to the smallholding. He was holding an envelope, sealed and addressed 'To Whom It May Concern'. Cooper realized that he and Fry had actually watched the three old men composing the letter on the bonnet of the pick-up, but had thought they were doing a crossword puzzle.

He looked closely at Sam. 'We'll take you to a doctor, Mr Beeley. It's all over.’

Sam waved his stick weakly. 'Someone has to look after the dog.'

‘Oh yes.’

Cooper went to the shed and opened the lower door. A black and white Border collie emerged from the darkness, coming eagerly to sniff his legs and lick his hand, gazing up hopefully into his eyes. He guessed that she knew her master had gone. Dogs always did seem to know these things. The bonds of trust and affection they forged with people were so powerful that they could only be broken by death.

He reached down to stroke the animal's head, an inadequate gesture of consolation.

‘We'll look after you, Connie,' he said.

30

A few evenings later, Diane Fry left her flat and drove her black Peugeot out of Edendale. She headed southwards towards the limestone plateau, skirting Durham Edge and Camphill, where the flying club was. She gazed up at the gliders launching themselves into the air, soaring on the thermals rising from the valleys and slipping sideways in the warm breezes stroking the tops of the hills. She felt as though she could take off like one of those gliders and fly over the countryside that was now becoming her own. No matter what view she got from up there, she wouldn't have been able to see her future any more clearly than she did now. Everything was working out fine.

She found Bridge End Farm and crawled down the track to park in the farmyard. She could see Ben Cooper standing by a field gate in the shadow of a barn. He was talking to an older, more heavily built man who had the same colour hair and the same open, boyish look to his face. This must be Matt, the brother who was the farmer. The two men were comparing the guns they held over their arms, and there was a dog on the ground at their feet.

^Fry took the cassette from her glove compartment and slipped it into her pocket. Tanita Tikaram's 'Ancient Heart'. He had asked about it, and said he liked it. Maybe, just maybe, it would help to bring back some more memories.

Cooper turned as she got out of the car. His face was a picture of amazement.

‘Diane – is something wrong?'

‘No, Ben. It's a social call.'

‘I see.' He seemed suddenly flustered and looked at his brother. 'This is Matt, by the way. Matt – Diane Fry. A colleague.'

‘Nice to meet you,' said Matt, with a smile and a strange sideways look at his brother. 'Sorry I can't stop to chat, though. There's a lot of work to do. I'll see you later, Ben.'

‘Our mother's home,' said Cooper, as if it explained everything. But it meant nothing. Fry had never known his mother was away.

They stood and looked at each other in front of the barn. She had worked out what she was going to say, but now the words didn't seem to spring so easily to her lips. She was suddenly full of doubt. There was something about the way he had introduced her to his brother as 'a colleague' that didn't sound right. In the end, it was Cooper who broke the uneasy silence.

‘How was your meeting with the superintendent?' he asked. 'A pat on the back, was it?’

She took a breath, clutching the cassette case in her pocket for luck. 'Actually, he's asked me if I'll put in for the sergeant's job when they interview again next month,' she said. 'I thought I ought to tell you myself.’

Before she could read his expression, Cooper had turned away to put his shotgun in the Land Rover, where he locked it into a steel box. Though she couldn't see his face, she could tell that his shoulders were rigid and arched with tension.

A tractor engine coughed into life in the field beyond the barn. A sudden clattering of machinery sent a flock of rooks spiralling into the air, where they wheeled against the distant silhouettes of the Camphill gliders. The hoarse, mocking calls of the birds drew echoes from the barns and the cattle sheds, and the noise multiplied and swelled until it seemed to fill the entire farmyard.

‘I'm very pleased for you,' said Cooper, with his back still turned. 'I'm sure you'll make a very good detective sergeant, Diane. Always in control. Always doing the right thing. You'll get on fast. You'll shoot up that promotion ladder.' He slammed the Land Rover door too hard. 'Like you've got a rocket up your arse.’

Fry winced. She had rarely heard him swear. Only once before had he spoken to her in that tone. It had been in the bar of the Unicorn, when he had been consumed with drunken rage. He had called her a bitch then, but somehow she had persuaded herself it was only the beer speaking.

Now she felt the conversation was drifting away from her badly. This was not the way it was supposed to have been. Desperately, she cast round for something to say and finally nodded towards the dog.

‘Is she taking to it well?'

‘Connie? Yes, she's a natural. Very loyal.’

A good companion, I suppose.’

Cooper patted the head of the Border collie, who looked up at him adoringly. 'Connie's more than a companion,' he said pointedly. 'A friend.’

Fry turned at a sound behind her. Another car had pulled into the yard, one that she vaguely recognized. The door opened and a woman got out of the driver's seat, but hesitated and remained standing by the car, waiting for Ben. It was Helen Milner. Fry felt a chill run under her skin and seep into her arms, even as a flush started in her neck, and she knew she had made a fool of herself.

‘Well. It looks as though your other friend's come for you, Ben. Better not keep her waiting.’

Cooper turned angrily at the sneer in her voice, but controlled himself with a visible effort, remembering the superintendent's warning about emotional outbursts. He strode a few paces across the yard towards Helen's car before he stopped and faced Fry again. By now he was calm, and his words were chosen with care.

‘You may not understand this. But we all need friends sometimes, Diane.’

Then he turned and left her standing in the shadow of the barn. Fry found she had been squeezing the cassette in her pocket so tightly that its sharp edges were digging into the palm of her hand, and the pain was making her eyes water. She spoke then, but in a voice so quiet that Cooper could not possibly have heard.

‘So they tell me, Ben,' she said. And she watched him walk away.

*

A kestrel hung in a hot up-current of air, searching for moving prey among the limestone crags high in the daleside. In this valley, most of the lower fields had been turned to rye-grass leys and silage pasture. But halfway up the hill towards Great Hucklow there was still a single meadow full of wild flowers, ox-eye daisies and marjoram, their colours contrasting with the uniform green of the pastures.

They had almost reached the meadow when Ben Cooper asked Helen to pull into a gateway. She looked at him curiously, wondering what could have gone wrong. But she turned off the engine and wound down the window, and for a few moments they watched a glider that was slipping silently across the valley, tilting its wings against the sun before disappearing over Durham Edge.

They were on their way to have lunch together at the Light House, because it had seemed like the natural thing to do. But for Cooper, it was more than that. He felt as though he was on the point of emerging from the darkness into another world, a moment to be tasted and savoured. As Helen leaned out of the car window to track the movement of the glider, her hair caught the sunlight and turned it into an elusive, coppery haze that he could have watched for ever.

But finally; his eyes were drawn back down the valley, where Bridge End Farm lay half in the shadow of the hill against a curtain of wych-elm woods. He could see the windows of the cool, dark rooms, where his mother lay asleep, dreaming drug-assisted dreams, escaping from a strangely altered reality. He could see, at the back of the house, his brother's tractor trailing a cloud of dust as it dragged a disc harrow across the top field. And he could just make out Diane Fry's black Peugeot as it began to crawl up the track to the road, hesitating at every pothole as if nervous of falling in. The face of the driver was invisible behind the reflection from the windscreen.

Then the echo of a bark drifted up the hillside. In the farmyard, waiting patiently by the gate, lay the Border collie that had once belonged to Wilford Cutts. The dog turned its head into the shade to follow the tyres of the Peugeot, and the wiry texture of its fur softened and faded for a moment, darkening its outline against the dusty ground. But then the collie stirred again and looked up the hill, as if sensing Cooper's presence. Now the white patches on its face and flanks sparkled and shimmered as they picked up the glare of the sun from the limestone walls.

For Ben Cooper, it was all perfectly clear. From here, in this light, at this moment in his life, there was no way that he could make a mistake. He could see no black dog.

THE END