Текст книги "Dead and Buried"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

16

At the council house on the Devonshire Estate, Nancy Wharton was on her own. She examined Cooper critically for a moment on the doorstep. He knew she would be weighing him up, placing him for what he was, but hopefully remembering him too.

She glanced then at Gavin Murfin. It had been a difficult decision whether to bring Murfin along. In many ways, Carol Villiers would have been a better choice. But Gavin had been well known at the Light House. Mrs Wharton should recognise him, even if she didn’t know Cooper himself.

‘Old faces,’ she said. ‘I suppose you want to come in.’

‘Please, Mrs Wharton.’

Every house had a unique smell. Cooper never got tired of walking into someone else’s home and trying to identify the aromas. Sometimes it was a mix of artificial scents – air fresheners, perfumes, furniture polish. At other times it could only be called a stench. Substances too noxious to mention oozed out of the furniture, and the carpet stuck to his feet as he crossed a room.

Here, the Whartons seemed to have brought subtle hints of the Light House with them on to the Devonshire Estate. He couldn’t quite put a name to the smells, but they were creating those momentary flashes of memory, the way scents sometimes could, being so much more evocative than the other senses.

It might be the type of furniture polish used, or the mingling of old beer and smoke that you might get used to if you’d lived with it for years. But if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself sitting in the snug at the Light House. He could practically taste the beer, hear the buzz of conversation around him.

One smell in particular was teasing him. When he caught a fleeting whiff of it, Matt’s face loomed up in his mind, red and sweating, with the suggestion of a snatch of conversation that he couldn’t quite grasp. It was like the elusive memory of a dream that he knew was still there in his mind when he’d woken up, but which slipped away whenever he thought about it.

As a result of the sensations Cooper was experiencing in the Whartons’ sitting room, Murfin was the first to speak.

‘You might remember us, Nancy. We both knew Mad … er, Mr Wharton. Sorry.’

Nancy noticed Murfin’s moment of embarrassment, and her face slipped into a bitter smile.

‘Oh don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard it all before. Don’t you think I know what people used to call him? Imagine what it was like being “Mrs Mad Maurice” for all those years.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Murfin again, though it wasn’t necessary and was obviously too late.

Cooper gave him a warning glance. If Gavin was going to mess up with the public, it was a different thing altogether from what went on in the office. That couldn’t be tolerated.

He knew he had to tread carefully with the Whartons if he was going to get any more out of them than Diane Fry had. Questions about Maurice’s tendency to alcoholism were probably out, then.

‘It was such a shame about the pub closing,’ he said. ‘You and Mr Wharton must have been devastated.’

Mrs Wharton shrugged. ‘We could see it was inevitable for a long time. We had a balance sheet like Journey to the Centre of the Earth. It looked as though we were tunnelling to Australia. You can only fall so far before you hit rock bottom.’

‘But how did it happen?’ asked Cooper.

‘How? Well, it started with the crackdown on drinking and driving. Nobody gets up there any other way, do they? Then there was the smoking ban in 2007. We did our best, but who wants to sit outside in this environment? Customers were getting blown away by the wind in the winter, and eaten by midges off the moor in the summer. Then the recession came along. We actually thought that might help us for a while. People staying at home for their holidays instead of going abroad, you know. What do they call that?’

‘A staycation?’

‘Yeah. What a load of crap. Oh, more folk came to the Peak District, I suppose, but they weren’t spending any money. Not in our pub.’

‘The Light House used to have a very good reputation.’

‘Oh yes. At one time Maurice Wharton was known far and wide. My husband was respected for the quality of the beer he served. Traditional ales, you know. We used to serve Hardy and Hanson, William Clarke, Marston’s Pedigree. We had guest beers on draught, rotated on a monthly basis.’

‘Greene King,’ said Murfin.

‘Timothy Taylor’s Landlord,’ said Cooper.

Nancy smiled again, just a little. ‘All those. And we had a selection of over twenty malt whiskies. Irish and Welsh, as well as Scotch. Sales of beer declined by another ten per cent in our last year, in spite of a warm spring and a royal wedding, and all the things we thought might bring people out to the pub. The budget put duty up to nearly eight times what it is in France, and over twelve times the duty in Germany or Italy. And that’s not to mention an escalator, so duty goes up two per cent more than inflation every year. It was crippling.’

For a moment Cooper had a sense of déjà vu, as if he was listening to the familiar litany of complaints from farmers like his brother. Things were always bad in the farming industry. Prices were never right, costs were always too high, the weather was either too dry or too wet. Small farmers were going bust for much the same reasons that Nancy Wharton was giving him. In a nutshell, they couldn’t make their businesses pay any more.

‘We’re not alone,’ said Nancy. ‘Not by a long way. Jobs are being lost throughout the industry. The pub trade is being decimated.’

‘My colleague Detective Sergeant Fry came to talk to you about Aidan Merritt,’ said Cooper tentatively.

‘I can’t tell you any more than I told her.’

‘I’d particularly like to know about any contact Mr Merritt had with other customers.’

‘You know what? Aidan kept himself pretty much to himself.’

‘Could there have been anyone who had a grudge against him?’

‘A grudge? Like who?’

‘Ian Gullick is a name that’s been mentioned.’

Nancy looked away, no longer willing to meet Cooper’s eye. It was a perfectly natural reticence, he supposed. Who would want to criticise their own customers? It was a kind of loyalty – and Cooper understood loyalty.

‘I wouldn’t know anything about it,’ said Nancy finally. ‘I’m sorry, really I am. It’s horrible what happened to him, but what else can I say?’

Cooper nodded. A roadblock, then. Move on.

‘I understand.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘And I suppose you’re going to ask me about those tourists, too – like the woman did?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. The Pearsons. They were in the Light House the night before they disappeared.’

‘Yes. We went through it all with the police when it happened. They spoke to everyone who might have had any contact with them, including me. It seems I served them at the bar.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen your statement.’

‘Well, then. I don’t know what earthly use it could have been. Those two people were certainly alive and well when they left the pub. What good does it do going over every minute and every second of what they did in the days before they skipped off?’

‘In case someone noticed anything about them, or the Pearsons gave away a clue of some kind about what they were going to do.’

Nancy picked up a woollen sweater and pulled it around her shoulders, as if she was cold.

‘Well, there was nothing. Nothing at all. For heaven’s sake, I didn’t have a clue who they were. They came in the pub, and they were just some tourists, that’s all. We used to get hundreds of them every week. Thousands in the summer. I had no idea they were going to be in the least bit different to any other tourists. When they came to the Light House, we didn’t even know their names.’

‘And then there was the previous night,’ said Cooper.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The night no one ever talked about.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.’

‘The night before,’ repeated Cooper. ‘It was the night of the Young Farmers’ Christmas party.’

‘Party? Oh yes, that. Of course it was. But no one ever mentioned the Pearson people being there.’

‘Did you not see them?’

‘Why would I? The place was packed. It was just before we closed for Christmas. On a night like that, you never really noticed anybody. It was head down over the bar, trying to remember what drinks to ring up on the till.’

‘You have two children, don’t you?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, Eliot and Kirsten. They’re seventeen and fifteen. I don’t know what I’d do without them. Kirsten is at Hope Valley College. She’ll be doing her GCSEs this summer. She doesn’t want to stay on after that, though. She’s interested in becoming a beautician or a hairdresser.’

Cooper thought she sounded vaguely disappointed.

‘Nothing wrong with that, Mrs Wharton.’

‘No, no. Of course not, Well, Eliot is the clever one, anyway. He’s in the sixth form at Lady Manners in Bakewell.’

‘I wonder if we could speak to them?’

‘They’re not here.’

‘Pity.’

Just then, they both heard a key turn in the front door, and a male voice calling through the house.

‘Mum?’

Eliot Wharton was a tall young man, with short fair hair, flushed cheeks and large hands that dangled by his sides. Cooper wondered if he was a rugby player.

He looked at his mother, and then at Cooper and Murfin with the beginnings of hostility.

‘Who’s this?’ he said.

‘The police, love.’

‘Oh. Again.’

‘Is Kirsten with you?’ asked Nancy.

‘Yes, I’m here,’ said Kirsten from the hall.

Cooper realised that there was hardly any room for anyone else in the lounge since Eliot had entered. They seemed to be uncomfortably close together, too close for anyone who might have problems over their personal space.

Nancy explained to her children what Cooper was asking. They both began shaking their heads simultaneously.

‘That night, the night before the people went missing,’ said Eliot. ‘They were in the pub then, weren’t they? The police asked us questions. But other than that …’

Cooper turned to Eliot’s sister. ‘Kirsten?

She shrugged. ‘How would I know? I wasn’t even old enough to be in the bar, was I?’

He wasn’t sure about that. Too young to drink alcohol, or serve it to customers, yes. But not too young to be in the bar. Children under sixteen could go anywhere in a pub as long as they were supervised by an adult.

‘I know your husband is very ill,’ said Cooper. ‘And there’s nothing I can say that will help.’

‘Maurice has good days and bad days,’ said Nancy. ‘Of course the bad days can be very bad indeed. The drugs control the pain, but they have a lot of side effects.’

‘I understand.’

She studied Cooper closely for a few moments, pursing her lips and frowning, as if trying to make a difficult decision.

‘Your colleague who came here asked if she could talk to Maurice,’ she said at last.

‘I’m sure she did, but if it’s impossible …’

‘I could ask him, if you like,’ said Nancy. ‘He might like to see someone who knew the Light House. It would only be for a few minutes. He gets terribly tired.’

Cooper realised that he must have achieved some kind of honorary status as a pub regular. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn that honour, whether it was his own infrequent visits to the Light House, his presence at the YFC booze-up with Matt, or maybe even the fact that he’d chosen Gavin Murfin to accompany him to the Whartons’.

Whichever it was, he felt grateful for the results.

‘That would be very kind of you,’ he said.

‘I’ll see.’

He looked round, and saw both Eliot and Kirsten watching disapprovingly. He wondered if there would be a family argument after he’d gone. They clearly didn’t trust him the way their mother had decided to.

‘The Light House was a good pub,’ said Cooper. ‘I remember when I was a teenager, the beer there was a revelation.’

‘Greene King,’ said Murfin.

Cooper looked at Eliot Wharton for confirmation, forgetting the young man’s age because of the size and maturity of him.

‘Eliot doesn’t drink,’ said Nancy.

‘Because you’re not old enough?’ he asked in surprise.

‘No, I’m just not interested,’ said Eliot.

‘It must have been tough growing up in a pub, then. Or perhaps that’s why you don’t drink?’

Eliot shrugged. ‘I can do without it. I see plenty of people who drink a lot making idiots of themselves all the time. What’s the point of it?’

Then Cooper remembered what Niall Maclennan had told him, and realised that this young man would have seen his own father deteriorating through alcohol consumption. It was a bit too close to home when it was within the family. He decided it was probably best not to ask any more questions on the subject.

‘Still, you must all have found it very difficult moving from the Light House,’ he said, as he got ready to leave.

Mrs Wharton winced, as if at a sudden pain. ‘It was awful. We knew we’d never be able to find anywhere else that would suit us. And this is where we ended up. Look at it. I know the town isn’t so bad, but this estate …’

‘Not so bad?’ said Eliot, a sudden anger in his voice. ‘I never wanted to live in Edendale. It’s a place where people come to die.’

Cooper looked up sharply at the expression. He’d heard it often before. He knew it as a reference to the number of retired people who moved into the area when they wanted a bit of peace and quiet in their declining years. But said out loud, it sounded odd, as if Eliot was referring to something else entirely.

Before he left the Whartons, Cooper paused in the doorway and turned.

‘I was in the pub earlier that week, Mrs Wharton,’ he said. ‘The night the Young Farmers’ party was held.’

‘Oh, I know you were,’ said Nancy. ‘I remember you very well. I almost had to get Maurice to throw you out. You were, well … how should I put it?’

He held up a hand. ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, there’s no point in apologising now, is there? It’s all water under the bridge. All just history.’

‘Was I …?’

‘Yes?’

‘Was I very obnoxious? When I had too much to drink, I mean.’

Nancy smiled sadly. ‘Don’t worry. You could never be as an obnoxious as some. There are people born into the world just to be a pain in the arse. You soon learn that in the pub trade.’

As he left the house and walked the short length of scrubby garden to the gate, Cooper looked at the street packed with old council houses. Both sides of the road were lined solidly with cars for which there were no garages or off-road parking spaces.

For a moment he was overwhelmed by the difference between this and the setting of the Light House – the wild open landscape, the sense of absolute isolation. Nature was right on the doorstep as you left the pub. All he saw here were clusters of wheelie bins, and motorbikes shrouded in multicoloured polyester covers.

From Oxlow Moor, the views stretched for miles in every direction, to the glowering presence of Kinder Scout in the distance. Here, he saw no further than an identical house twenty yards away across the street.

DI Hitchens tapped Cooper on the shoulder as he arrived back in the CID room at West Street.

‘Ben, don’t forget Henry Pearson is due to arrive with us this morning.’

‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ said Cooper. ‘Is Mrs Pearson coming too?’

‘No, I understand it’s just her husband. I’m sure he will have planned it that way.’

‘To minimise the emotional complications, I suppose.’

‘Yes.’

‘What have we told Mr Pearson?’

‘Just that some items have been found that we believe belonged to his son and daughter-in-law, which we’d like him to help us identify. He didn’t question that; he hasn’t even asked what items we found. But he seems to have dropped everything to come straight up from Surrey.’

‘He’ll want to know more when he arrives.’

‘Yes, I’m sure he will. But we need to be a bit discreet, Ben.’

‘Discreet? You mean we’re going to hold back some information?’

‘Yes. Until we’re, you know … sure.’

‘Sure about the identification of the items? Or sure that Mr Pearson hasn’t been involved in some kind of conspiracy over these last couple of years?’

‘It never does any harm to be certain,’ said Hitchens.

Cooper felt a spasm of discomfort. That was going to be an awkward encounter. Relatives of victims often wanted to be told everything. It put a police officer in a difficult position to know far more than he was able to share.

17

Sometime during the past six months, Josh Lane had found himself a job at one of the biggest hotels in Edendale. Cooper had thought he might have moved on to a different industry altogether. Bar work wasn’t the best-paid occupation in the world, after all. But he supposed some people enjoyed it. Lane had stayed on at the Light House right to the end, so why shouldn’t he have looked for a similar job elsewhere?

But the hotel he was employed at now was rather more upmarket than the Light House had ever been, not to mention much easier to find. It stood on a rise overlooking Edendale town centre, with a view over Victoria Park towards the town hall and the market square. It was favoured by the more well-heeled tourists, and by production companies filming at locations in the area.

Lane was polishing glasses in a plush lounge bar behind the lobby. A few hotel guests sat around on sofas drinking coffee, rather than anything alcoholic. Cooper couldn’t recall the Light House ever serving coffee. Anyone who asked for it would have been pressing one of Mad Maurice’s red buttons.

It smelled very good, though, and Cooper was pleased when Lane offered him one.

‘Latte?’

‘Thank you.’

‘A pleasure.’

Cooper sat on a high stool at the counter to drink his coffee. Lane was older than he’d expected. Another mistaken preconception perhaps. He’d imagined a young man in his twenties, maybe Australian, doing a bit of bar work before finding a real job in marine biology or whatever his degree had been in.

But Lane was probably in his late thirties, a little over-weight, a discreet piercing in one ear, his hair gelled into short blond spikes.

‘Yes, I remember Merritt,’ he said when Cooper opened the subject.

‘Was there ever any trouble?’

‘With Aidan Merritt? No.’

Cooper detected a subtle hint there. He felt he should take that reply as an invitation to ask a different question. There was a bit of information that Lane wasn’t going to volunteer, but it was there to be obtained if he persisted.

‘Who, then?’ he asked.

‘There were other customers who weren’t so well behaved as Aidan Merritt.’

Okay, so that was the deal – Cooper needed to produce a name. He tried the first one that came to mind.

‘Ian Gullick?’

‘You’re close,’ said Lane.

‘This isn’t a guessing game,’ snapped Cooper.

He immediately regretted losing his patience. Many individuals would clam up when they were spoken to the wrong way.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Lane. ‘I’m just … well, I know we’re not exactly doctors or priests, but if people thought we were gossiping about them, it wouldn’t be good for business. I like to chat to my customers a bit – it makes them feel at ease. So they often end up telling me things they wouldn’t want to be passed on.’

‘Vince Naylor?’ said Cooper.

Lane visibly relaxed.

‘So there was trouble involving the two visitors, the Pearsons?’ asked Cooper.

‘A customer who’d had far too much to drink started trying to chat up … what’s her name? Trisha. I’d rather not be too specific, but you’ve mentioned the name already, so you’re halfway there.’

‘Okay.’

‘Anyway, he became a bit persistent, and it turned nasty very quickly. Her husband got into an argument with him. There would have been punches thrown, but Maurice stepped in.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He threw the drunk out, along with a couple of his friends who stuck up for him.’

‘But not the Pearsons.’

‘No, he let them stay. It wasn’t their fault, what had happened. Not at all. Though I think her hubby had a bit of a temper on him, you know. He looked like a man who’d try to sort out a problem with his fists, even if he was likely to come off worst. You understand what I mean, don’t you? You can see it in their eyes sometimes. You can tell someone who is a little bit too close to the edge, and won’t take much pushing to go over.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve seen people like that, especially when they’ve got a bit of alcohol inside them. Do you think Maurice Wharton could see it too?’

Lane shrugged. ‘He’d run pubs for a long time. He must have seen plenty of customers like that. You develop a nose for trouble after a while, I reckon. You learn to spot the type.’

‘He had a pub over in Chesterfield for a while, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, and in a pretty rough area, not far from the football ground. Now that place was never known for its food and accommodation. It’s a real drinker’s pub.’

‘So Maurice had enough experience to judge the situation and step in at exactly the right moment.’

‘Yes, I reckon that would be a fair summary. His word was enough to sort it out at that point. He didn’t need to call the dogs.’

‘Dogs?’

‘He had two Alsatians that lived out the back of the pub. He’d call them if there was real trouble. Not that it happened often at the Light House. They came with him from the Dragon.’

‘From where?’

‘The pub in Chesterfield. He needed them there.’

‘I see.’

‘I wasn’t up there at the Light House when it all kicked off, of course,’ said Lane. ‘I mean, the fuss about that couple going missing in the snowstorm. When the police arrived, it was Christmas Eve, as I recall – a Thursday. I’d done my last shift on the Tuesday night.’

‘Tuesday? Oh, and the pub wasn’t open after that, am I right?’

‘Yes. The Whartons liked to spend Christmas Day and Boxing Day on their own, as a family. So they always gave the staff a couple of days off. No one wants to work over that period anyway, if they can help it. And very few customers are interested in driving out on to the moors for their Christmas dinner, even when the weather isn’t as bad as it was then.’

‘So Maurice and Nancy would have been looking forward to a quiet time on their own with the kids.’

‘Right. They certainly wouldn’t have expected the police and mountain rescue teams all over the place two days after the pub had closed for Christmas.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

Lane laughed. ‘I can just imagine what Mad Maurice must have said to them. In a way, I wish I’d been there to hear it. I bet it was priceless.’

‘Yes, he’s known as quite a character.’

‘You can say that again. Everyone talks about Maurice Wharton. Even some of the staff here know of him.’

Lane arranged some glasses on the shelf above his head, and cast an eye around the lounge to see if there were any customers requiring attention. But all was quiet. It was a little too quiet for Cooper’s liking, but that was probably why people came here.

‘Have you seen the Whartons since they left the pub, Mr Lane?’ he asked.

‘A couple of times. It was sad to visit them in that little council house. Losing the pub hit Nancy hard. I think Kirsten and Eliot were the worst affected, though. It was their life, the place they’d grown up in. They used to love being able to walk out of the door and wander about on the moors. And both of them detested the idea of moving into town and living on that housing estate. They even had to get rid of the dogs. To be honest, I’m surprised Eliot’s still there. But of course he was always devoted to his dad. He wouldn’t leave Maurice.’

‘I see. You must have got on all right with the Whartons. You worked at the Light House quite a while.’

‘Yes, it was fine once you got used to Mad Maurice. Everyone liked Nancy, and Eliot and Kirsten are nice kids. People could take or leave Maurice, I suppose. But he was the one who got all the attention.’

‘So what do you think went wrong at the Light House?’ asked Cooper.

‘Wrong? Oh, you mean the reason for it closing down?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Lots of things. I think it began when we had fewer pumps on the bar than there used to be. That’s a bad sign.’

‘Why?’

‘The number of pumps reflects your throughputs. You’ve got to shift lager and keg ale within five days, and cask in three. Beer is a living product, you see. Overstocking leads to fobbing and deterioration in quality. If you’re not going to sell the beer, you have to reduce the number of pumps. Maurice’s throughputs had been going down for years.’

‘Fobbing?’ asked Cooper.

‘Too much foaming when the beer is pulled through.’

‘Is the quality of beer that important?’

‘Of course. What do you think – that people just drink any old rubbish? Have you never heard of CAMRA?’

‘I suppose so. It just never occurred to me that beer quality might have contributed to the failure of the business.’

‘Well, there were other factors. All kinds of things might have affected the bottom line. Stock going out of date because of overordering, credit lost because goods were returned after their best before date. You can see there’s a cumulative effect.’

‘A slippery slope,’ said Cooper.

‘Exactly. I think it must have been difficult for the Whartons to get good staff, too. The students who worked there never had proper training. They were constantly spilling beer into the drip trays. Filling one tray a day with wasted beer is like losing fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of sales over the course of a year for a pub that size.’

Cooper was impressed. ‘You’re very well clued up about the business.’

‘I’ve got qualifications, my friend. NVQ Level Three and a National Certificate.’

Reluctantly Cooper put his empty cup down on the counter. ‘Thanks for the coffee. It was very good. All we get at the station is something hot and wet from a machine.’

‘No problem. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.’

‘Can I contact you here?’

‘I’ll write my mobile number down for you.’

Lane scribbled the number on a sheet from an order pad and handed it to Cooper.

‘Of course, you realise it was all show,’ he said. ‘I mean that “mad Maurice” business. Maurice Wharton was a top landlord in his time. Good at his job, loyal to his customers. They were like a big family to him. If you showed that you were willing to fit in at the Light House, he’d do anything for you.’

‘Anything?’ said Cooper.

Lane hesitated. ‘Well, yes – I think so.’

At West Street, Luke Irvine had been busy tracking down the information that Cooper had asked him for.

‘Ian Gullick is a market trader. Forty-five years old, married with one grown-up child, a son. They live close by, in Lowtown. Nothing on him in the way of a criminal record. Vince Naylor is a couple of years younger, and has a house right here in Edendale. He seems to be a jack-of-all-trades. He’s had all kinds of work, mostly driving jobs. But he got a twelve-month ban for a drink-driving offence, so he had to take labouring jobs on local construction sites for a while. Now he’s set up his own business doing small-scale property maintenance – kitchens, bathrooms, driveways, patios. You know the sort of thing.’

‘What kind of vehicle does he drive?’

Irvine looked up from his notes. ‘I don’t know. But I’ll find out.’

‘Gullick, too.’

‘I’m on it.’

There was no escaping the fact that the night after the argument with Naylor, the Pearsons had left the George and were never seen again. Their behaviour up to that point had seemed perfectly normal. The original inquiry team had traced their movements over the previous couple of days before their evening in Castleton, hadn’t they?

‘Where else had the Pearsons been in this area, apart from the Light House?’ asked Cooper.

‘Earlier on the day they went missing, they’d stopped for petrol at the Sickleholme service station near Bamford,’ said Irvine. ‘They’d bought a hundred litres of unleaded, which was close to a full tank on a Ranger Rover III series.’

‘Sickleholme service station?’ said Cooper.

‘You know it?’

‘Oh yes.’

Everyone who drove up the Hope Valley towards Castleton knew the service station. It was located at the bottom of the road up to Bamford, right by the traffic lights on the A6187. But the name was particularly familiar to Cooper at the moment. The garage at Sickleholme had a fleet of wedding cars, including classic Bentleys. They were on a list.

Irvine looked up, and Cooper nodded for him to continue.

‘When the car was found at the cottage after the Pearsons were reported missing, it still had almost a full tank,’ said Irvine. ‘From the service station they visited the Riverside Herb Centre just across the road, where the credit card receipt showed they bought cheese, olives and some herbal tea. Only the tea was found in the cottage when it was entered two days later.’

He stopped speaking again, and Cooper realised that Irvine was looking at someone over his shoulder. There was only one person who could arrive so silently and immediately create such an air of tension around her.

Diane Fry stood in the doorway with her shoulders hunched as if she was cold.

‘So where do you stand on this case, DS Cooper?’ she said. ‘What theory are you pursuing?’

Cooper could tell by her tone that she welcomed the opportunity to put him on the spot. And not just her tone either, but the use of his rank and surname. It was too formal, as if she was deferring to his position, respecting his opinion. But everyone in the room knew different.

‘Would it surprise you if I said I was keeping an open mind?’ he said mildly. ‘We need more evidence one way or the other. At the moment, the bloodstained clothing is definitely leading towards the conclusion that foul play is involved in the disappearance of the Pearsons.’ He saw Fry beginning to smile. ‘But it’s not enough without some confirmation.’

‘You want a body?’ she said.

‘That would help.’

‘What about these other visitors who spoke to the Pearsons the previous night?’ asked Irvine tentatively. ‘We haven’t even made a start on trying to trace them.’

Fry shook her head. ‘I think they’re a red herring. Four red herrings, in fact. I mean, four unidentified strangers? It seems a bit like overkill to me.’

‘You don’t think they’re important at all?’

‘No, of course not. In my opinion, it’s a deliberate effort to distract our attention. We could be chasing our tails for months trying to find those people.’

‘But they could have information that would help,’ said Irvine. ‘One of the Pearsons might have let something slip about what they intended to do.’

‘Seriously? If the Pearsons were plotting to do a bunk, I can’t imagine they would have said anything to give the plan away. Especially not to complete strangers they met in the pub.’