Dead and Buried

25

Diane Fry knew that Henry Pearson was staying at a hotel in Edendale. Even if he hadn’t left his contact details, she had seen him on the TV news — a shot of him getting into his BMW with an armful of files, looking serious and dignified, like a lawyer going into court to fight an important case.

Pearson had also done a few sound bites directly to camera, speaking about how determined he was to discover what had happened to his son and daughter-in-law. That clip would be used over and over in the news bulletins.

Fry could see clearly that the sequence had been filmed in the car park of the Holiday Inn on Meadow Road, with the spire of All Saints Church visible in the background at the bottom of Clappergate.

When she rang the hotel that morning, she was put straight through to Mr Pearson’s room.

‘Yes?’ he said eagerly, when Fry announced who she was. ‘Is there any news?’

‘Not at the moment. But we’d like you to come into the station for a chat. If you could, sir.’

‘I’ll be right there,’ he said.

Well, that was short and sweet. Eager wasn’t the word for it. Mr Pearson sounded positively desperate.

While she waited, she checked in with DCI Mackenzie, who was presiding over the incident room as SIO. Fry was grateful that he’d spared her this, the routine tasking and data analysis that went with a major inquiry. So far he’d given her a free hand, and she appreciated his faith in her.

Mackenzie confirmed that search teams were being assembled to begin operations on Oxlow Moor, focusing on the abandoned mine shafts.

‘It’s quite technical,’ he said. ‘The maps aren’t as accurate as we’d like, and the extent of visible surface remains is unpredictable. So we need the specialists. But it will be done.’

‘What about forensics?’ asked Fry.

Mackenzie shook his head. ‘Still no luck on the major blood source. We know it doesn’t match the DNA profiles for the Pearsons. However, the lab say they’ve isolated another profile from the bloodstains. Small traces, but DNA from a separate individual.’

‘A fourth person, then?’

‘Yes, someone else who lost a small amount of blood. Also, there’s a partial print recovered from David Pearson’s mobile phone. Not David’s or Trisha’s. It should help.’

‘If we can produce a suspect to compare it to,’ said Fry.

‘Exactly.’ Mackenzie looked up. ‘One thing we can be sure of, anyway.’

‘What?’

‘DS Cooper’s two suspects aren’t in the frame. These DNA profiles aren’t a match to the samples Gullick and Naylor gave on arrest.’

When Cooper reached the weed-covered car park of the Light House, he could see only a few firefighters in the distance, still flailing with their beaters where hotspots were smouldering in the heather. Their activities had moved on and away from the pub. The nearest appliance was just visible on the edge of the moor, framed against the long ridge of Rushup Edge and the far-off Kinder Scout.

On the horizon, Kinder was also burning now, a double disaster. A brisk wind was whipping up flames twenty feet high across a front that must stretch more than a mile and a half. As the ranger had predicted, most of the firefighting equipment and resources had been drawn away from Oxlow to tackle the new wildfires spreading on the higher plateau.

If the fire was burning below ground level here, there was a danger it could burst up through the peat at any time. If that happened, the Light House could be at risk. There weren’t enough men and equipment left on the moor to provide a spray curtain over the building and ensure those floating embers didn’t land on the roof.

Again Cooper was overwhelmed by the impression of how isolated the Light House was. He and the empty pub were alone in the devastated landscape, like the last survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Despite the height and its commanding vantage point, he felt as though he was being observed. He imagined a movie camera in a helicopter, one of those dizzying overhead shots, pulling back to reveal that his tiny figure was the only movement in an expanse of desert.

‘I don’t know what film that would be from,’ he said. Then he looked guiltily over his shoulder, in case he was caught talking to himself out loud.

Cooper shook himself and went to the back door of the pub, where a bored uniformed PC stood guard at the tape marking the cordon. The door was fixed permanently open now, and lights had been sent up inside the bar, where the body of Aidan Merritt had been found. How long ago had that been? Only a few days, surely? It seemed like a lifetime, though. Diane Fry had walked in here. And by that simple act, she had turned everything round.

Carol Villiers had already negotiated her way over the stepping plates to reach the main bar.

‘So what are we looking for?’ she asked.

‘Cellars.’

She looked down at her feet, an automatic response.

‘Access to the cellars,’ said Cooper.

‘I knew that.’

The furniture in the bar looked sad and rather seedy in the totally artificial illumination. From the ceiling hung horrible lights in fittings shaped like candles, but made out of some kind of rigid green plastic. Cooper could see the pictures on the walls more clearly, baffling images of steam trains and fly fishermen that bore no relationship to the history or location of the pub.

Somewhere there must be a trapdoor to provide access to the cellar from inside the pub. Cooper found it behind the bar counter, concealed by a pile of flattened cardboard boxes and old beer crates. He didn’t think it had been hidden deliberately, just lost and forgotten under the general rubbish and disorder.

‘We need to move all this stuff aside.’

Villiers helped him with the task. When the hatch was cleared, an iron handle became visible, set flush into the wood. Slowly Cooper eased the door up, and Villiers switched on her torch to locate a flight of stone steps. She recoiled at the aromas rising from the hatchway.

‘Phew,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing worse than the smell of stale beer.’

Cooper agreed. But there was more to the odour than that. A miasma rose around him, putting thoughts of ancient damp and mould into his mind. He felt as though he’d just opened Count Dracula’s tomb, releasing centuries of decay.

He pulled out his own torch. ‘Down we go, then.’

‘You first,’ said Villiers.

Cooper looked at her in surprise. ‘What? Spiders?’

‘Maybe,’ she said defensively.

At the bottom of the steps, Cooper found a light switch. He was amazed when it worked, and the cellar sprang into view. Unlike the shuttered pub above, the cellar had always looked like this, bathed in artificial light. They were below ground, so there were no windows. And the air immediately felt cooler, with that hint of dampness.

Beer lines snaked up towards the bar, and a bewildering assortment of equipment lay around, some of it on shelves or left on empty kegs, or stored in the corner of the cellar. He saw a wooden mallet, stainless-steel buckets, disposable paper towels, a scrubbing brush, a pressure hosepipe, filter funnels and papers, a dip stick, beer taps and a gas bottle spanner.

A tiny space off the cellar had been turned into an office. Well, more of a storage room really, with a few dusty filing cabinets lined up against the wall, a desk covered in box files, and a pile of old magazines — The Publican, Morning Advertiser.

On a shelf, Cooper found a stack of old sepia and black-and-white photographs in their frames, which must once have hung on the walls upstairs. He picked up a particularly old photo in a gilt frame, and wiped the dust off the glass. It was a group shot, taken some time around the start of the twentieth century, he guessed. A formally arranged bunch of people was pictured outside the front entrance of a pub. A large man with enormous whiskers posed importantly in the middle of the group, with men in leather aprons and women in white smocks spread out on either side and behind him, some of them standing, others sitting awkwardly on wooden chairs brought outside from the bar.

The pub was recognisably the Light House, its windows almost unchanged to the present day, the shape of its chimneys visible along the top of the print. But the lettering painted over the door didn’t say The Light House. The pub had gone by a different name a century ago. Cooper squinted a bit more closely, trying to make out the lettering. Surely it was …? Yes, he was sure. The pub had once been called the Burning Woman.

He put the photo down, and it slid off the pile with a scrape of glass. His automatic sense of disturbance at the name was probably a twenty-first-century response. No one would have thought anything of it back then. There were plenty of rural pubs whose names reflected gruesome episodes from history, or some lurid folk tale. The people of these parts seemed to have had particularly vivid and bloodthirsty imaginations.

He couldn’t see the swinging wooden sign because of the angle the photograph had been taken from, but he guessed there would be a suitably graphic image to accompany the name. Someone would know the legend of the burning woman. Stories like that survived by word of mouth long after the signs had been taken down and the names sanitised.

‘I can’t help feeling the moulds are sending their spores directly towards me, even as I speak,’ said Villiers.

‘How did they get deliveries?’ asked Cooper ‘Can you see?’

‘Over here.’

The double cellar doors to the outside were at the top of a narrow set of stone steps, with equally narrow ramps on either side. The hatches themselves were bolted on the inside. The bolts and hinges were old and starting to rust, reminding Cooper of the iron plate over the abandoned mine shaft.

He couldn’t see even a crack of daylight round the edges of the doors. He tried to figure out where they emerged. Why hadn’t he noticed them from the outside? The only possible answer was that they too were covered by something. He remembered the pile of old furniture stacked against the back wall. Heavy tables with metal bases, wrought-iron chairs, a heap of torn parasols on steel posts. They had been chucked on a mound like so much rubbish. They must be lying right on top of the cellar doors. Maybe it had been for additional security. Or perhaps no one expected beer deliveries to be made at this pub for the foreseeable future.

‘What was through there?’ asked Villiers.

‘A desk, a few filing cabinets. Loads of old paperwork just mouldering away. I suppose it’s been left for the new owners, if anyone buys the pub at the auction.’

‘What sort of paperwork?’

‘Accounts, I suppose. Orders, deliveries, records of paying guests, VAT returns. Whatever. That would be part of the business history, wouldn’t it? If you took the place on, you’d want to get an idea of how many bookings there were for the rooms. The time of year, where they came from and all that.’

‘Yes, of course. But we’re not thinking of buying the pub, are we? I mean — are we?’

‘No. But it seems to me that the information we want might be down here anyway. We need to get scenes of crime here.’

Cooper inhaled deeply. He was trying to detect the presence of other smells in the cellar that shouldn’t be there. No stink of petrol, thank goodness. So at least Maurice Wharton hadn’t kept a motorbike down here. But his brain was running along another track. He was thinking of the temperature control. That cool twelve degrees Celsius.

‘Carol, what is the temperature inside your fridge?’

Villiers looked startled. ‘A fridge should be about three degrees Celsius. Anything higher and you have the risk of bacteria. Anything lower and food starts to freeze.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Cooper.

‘Don’t worry. Food probably doesn’t stay long enough in your fridge for it to matter.’

Cooper nodded thoughtfully. Twelve degrees was too warm, then. Too high a temperature to preserve anything for very long. There would definitely be a smell by now.

‘What are you thinking, Ben?’ asked Villiers, watching the expression on his face.

‘Oh, nothing important,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering about the deterioration in the quality of the beer down here.’

‘Ben, that wasn’t what you were thinking at all,’ said Villiers.

He liked the way Carol understood him. She never seemed to read the wrong messages as Diane Fry so often used to do when they worked together.

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘You’re right.’

In fact, the memory that had been eluding him had just come back exactly as he’d hoped, in a moment when he wasn’t even trying to remember it. He’d recalled a look from Betty Wheatcroft, the slightly dotty old woman, the former teacher who’d been so disappointed at his lack of knowledge, the way teachers in his childhood always had been.

‘No, actually,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I was thinking about the ninth circle of hell.’

Diane Fry took Henry Pearson into the little office she’d been given. She felt a bit embarrassed by it, because it was so clearly makeshift. None of the furniture even pretended to match, and the walls showed unfaded patches where the previous occupant had taken down his charts and year planners.

She promised herself she would have a better office one day. And it wouldn’t be too long now, either.

But Pearson didn’t seem to notice, or care, what sort of room he was in. He sat in the only available chair, declined tea or coffee, but accepted a glass of water.

He’d brought his briefcase with him, no doubt containing those files Fry had seen him carrying so importantly on the TV news. When he placed it on the desk, her heart sank. She hoped he wasn’t about to whip out a file and start trying to win her over to his case. His obsessive earnestness reminded her of UFO nuts, conspiracy theorists and other cranks she’d encountered. Mostly harmless, but not the sort of person you’d want to get cornered by at a party.

Instead, he produced his leather-bound writing pad, opened it and placed a pen next to it before giving her his attention.

‘First of all,’ she said, ‘I realise that some of my questions will have been asked before.’

‘Many times, I’m sure,’ said Pearson. ‘The same questions have been asked over and over until I know them by heart. It was a surprise to me at first, the way the police work. But I’m accustomed to it now. Hardened would perhaps be a better word.’

‘I understand.’

His grey hair was smoothed neatly back, and his eyes regarded her sharply. She remembered how, when he’d arrived in Edendale earlier in the week, he’d studied each officer he met, as if hoping to see something in them that he hadn’t yet found.

‘All that doubt and suspicion,’ he said. ‘All that cynicism. I’ve found it quite shocking. Why does no one want to accept the truth? David and Patricia haven’t left the country and changed their identities. They would never do that. A horrible crime has been committed, and my son and his wife are the victims. I really wish you and your colleagues would regard them that way.’

‘You remain convinced of that?’

‘I’m as convinced of that as I have been of anything in my life.’

Fry was pretty sure she’d heard him use those exact same words on TV, when facing the cameras.

‘Despite the evidence?’ she asked.

She was being provocative, of course — angling for a response beyond the practised phrases. But Pearson seemed to know that too. His answer came with a suggestion of weary resignation in his voice.

‘Evidence? What evidence?’ he said. ‘Do you mean all those unconfirmed sightings, fake photos, forged emails, non-existent credit card purchases? Is that what passes for evidence these days? I think not.’

‘But something we do possess,’ said Fry, ‘is compelling evidence of your son’s illegal financial activities, prior to his disappearance.’

Pearson still regarded her calmly. ‘I’ve never tried to make any secret of that, Detective Sergeant. In fact you might be aware that it was my cooperation with the authorities that led to the information coming to light.’

‘Yes, you permitted the original inquiry team access to your son’s private papers, and his computer records. It was very helpful of you.’

‘I thought it would ultimately be in David’s best interests.’

‘Absolutely. Though it might be said that the embezzlement would have come to light anyway, in the course of inquiries. Then it might have cast a different light on subsequent events.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ said Pearson.

‘I mean that it’s all about interpretation. Creating a consistent story.’

His jaw clenched then, his face set as if for an argument. She could see the amount of determination that was in him, the strength of purpose that had kept him going so long. For more than two years now, Mr Pearson had been campaigning to convince the world that his son and daughter-in-law were innocent victims who’d been caught up in some terrible fate.

Fry’s phone rang then, breaking the tension.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘It might be important.’

‘Certainly.’

She could feel his intense gaze fixed on her as she took the call. When she grasped the information she was being given, she wished she’d stepped outside the office to answer it. She couldn’t help making eye contact with Pearson just once as she listened. Then she had to look away in embarrassment.

Fry ended the call and stared at her desk, knowing there was no way she could conceal her expression. The news had caught her off guard, with no opportunity to prepare for contact with the bereaved relative. This wasn’t the way it should be.

But at least she was about to tell Henry Pearson that he’d been right along. That was some kind of consolation, perhaps.

It was Pearson himself who finally shattered the silence.

‘What is it?’ he said. ‘There’s something. I can tell.’

Fry took a breath and lifted her eyes to face him. ‘Yes, that was my boss, DCI Mackenzie, in the incident room. We’ve had a call. It seems that some human remains have just been found in an old mine shaft on Oxlow Moor.’

‘Human …?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Fry helplessly.

‘A body?’ said Pearson. ‘You mean a body. Just one? Well, it could be anybody.’

Fry shook her head. ‘Two bodies. We can’t be certain at this stage, but …’

She didn’t need to say any more. She looked at Henry Pearson, saw the sudden draining of colour from his face. The attitude and expression were all gone, ripped from him like a worn-out coat. He’d turned instantly into an old, old man, exhausted and desolate.

But surely it couldn’t have been such a shock? Hadn’t he been expecting this discovery for more than two years?

As she watched Pearson disintegrate in front of her eyes, Fry was horrified at the realisation that crept into her mind, a certainty that she had been the victim of a huge scam, just like everyone else.

‘You never thought they were dead at all,’ she said. ‘You’ve been playing your part all this time, waiting for the moment when they’d make contact again.’

Pearson hung his head and twisted his hands together. It was astonishing how a person could change so quickly. He looked smaller than he had a few minutes ago, more frail and crumpled, emptied of any strength or energy.

‘There really was a plan for them to disappear, wasn’t there?’ said Fry. ‘But it all went wrong.’

‘Yes, it’s true. I suppose there’s no point in pretending any more.’

So it had all been a facade. Henry Pearson had been playing a role. The effort of putting on the performance must have been what kept him going. The necessity of maintaining appearances had been the only thing that drove him on.

But this … well, the person now sitting in front of Fry was a different man. He was the real Henry Pearson, the face behind the mask. And the face was a pitiful one, broken and wretched. This was a man who’d had to wait more than two years for the moment when he was allowed to grieve for his son.

‘I didn’t know whether they’d gone or not,’ said Pearson. ‘All this time, I thought they might actually have got away, that they’d just left the country a bit sooner than they originally planned. I assumed that David didn’t get a chance to tell me or his mother what they were going to do. Or that … well, perhaps that he’d wanted to break all contact with us, too.’

‘So you kept on with the pretence that your son and his wife must have been attacked and murdered here in Derbyshire. That was your agreed role, a way of distracting attention from the real story, from David and Trisha’s actual whereabouts. The only trouble is, Mr Pearson — it wasn’t a pretence.’

‘In the end, we didn’t know what to think. It was part of the plan that there would be no communication for a while, until we judged it to be safe. That time should have come over a year ago, when the police inquiry was shelved and the publicity had died down. Surely then, we thought, it would be safe? But no word came from David.’

‘And you just kept on playing your part?’ asked Fry. ‘How could you do that?’

Pearson threw his hands out in a desperate appeal. ‘What else was there for me to do? Please, can you tell me that? What else?’