Dead and Buried

29

When Cooper and Villiers returned to the Light House, the scene seemed almost deserted. Cooper looked around for a scene guard, but saw no one. A forensics van was in the car park, and a marked Corsa stood at the corner of the building, with no driver in sight. The only sound was the crack and rustle of crime-scene tape, like the bones of the dead pub rattling in the silence of the moor.

Cautiously he walked round the exterior of the building. Apart from the absence of a guard, something else felt wrong.

But then he came across the pile of old furniture stacked against the back wall of the pub. Heavy tables with metal bases, wrought-iron chairs, a heap of torn parasols on steel posts. It was obvious now that they covered the trap doors for beer deliveries into the cellar. In an open space nearby, someone had burned rubbish, but only a patch of charcoal and pale grey ashes remained.

Bending closer, Cooper pointed out one of the tables to Villiers.

‘This furniture has been moved at some time,’ he said. ‘Look, there’s thick mould on the bottom, while the upper surfaces are relatively clear. It must all have stood somewhere else, and it’s been piled up on the hatch.’

‘If they removed chest freezers from the cellar, they must have brought them out this way, rather than through the pub. Then they covered the hatch to keep it closed, or to prevent it from being seen.’

Cooper straightened up. ‘Yes, that seems likely. A couple of men could have done it, with a suitable vehicle. If only we could find where they dumped the freezers.’

Inside the pub, Liz Petty was still on her own, though she’d brought her gear back up from the cellar.

‘Liz, who’s supposed to be on scene watch?’ he said.

‘I can’t remember his name. He went off to have a brew with the firefighters. It’s dry work being up here for hours on end. I said it would be okay, since you and Carol were coming.’

‘All right, I suppose.’

‘Is something wrong, Ben?’

‘No, no. Everything’s fine.’

‘Sorry, this is a slow job on my own,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping to get some help later. I shouldn’t be single-handed, but you know what it’s like.’

‘Any results?’

‘Well, I can’t find any traces of blood in the cellar, so that’s not your primary crime scene, I’m afraid. Shoe marks and fingerprints all over the place. Sorry again. Unless you can turn up the actual freezers for me?’

‘No, but we need you upstairs, Liz. I think you’ll find your bloodstains up there, though there’s probably been a thorough clean-up.’

‘Not too thorough to beat me,’ said Liz cheerfully. ‘Not with my luminol and UV light. You’ll see me all lit up in a blue glow shortly. Which room in particular?’

‘One of the guest rooms on the first floor. Room One — they call it the Bakewell Room.’

‘No problem.’

She hesitated before picking up her case, and looked round to see if Carol Villiers was within earshot.

‘By the way, the venue is booked. I thought it was best to go ahead and confirm with them. Is that okay?’

‘Oh, yes. Fine. It was the perfect place. I loved it.’

‘I’m so glad.’

Her face lit up the way it always did when she was thinking about the wedding. The big day couldn’t come quick enough for Liz. He wondered how often she thought about it when she was at work. Was she figuring out the seating plan for the reception in her mind while she sprayed luminol in the cellar, looking for blood residue? Did brides-maids’ dresses take priority in her consideration over the lives of the two murder victims?

It was an unworthy speculation, and Cooper suppressed it. Of the two of them, Liz was the one who had her priorities right. While he was obsessing about details, and looking at the marks in the dust where an old freezer had once stood, she was thinking about their future together. Of course he knew which of them was right. It was why he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Liz would keep him grounded and sane. Without her, he would be lost. His future would have no shape or meaning. It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘And I looked at some menus,’ she said, speaking a little more quietly as she heard voices in the entrance. ‘I’ve got some ideas. We can talk about them tonight.’

‘All right. Over dinner somewhere?’

She laughed. ‘Dinner? Are you trying to placate me for standing me up last night?’

‘Of course not. But if we’re going to be talking about food …’

Liz touched his arm as footsteps approached the bar. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Are you going to book a table?’

‘I won’t forget.’

Cooper thought he’d better make a note of it, before it slipped his mind. But a voice called to him from the doorway, as someone stood back to let Liz get past on her way to the stairs.

‘Hello!’

‘Hi. Is that Josh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come this way. Just stay clear of the taped-off areas.’

‘Your colleague outside gave me instructions,’ said Lane.

‘That would be DC Villiers.’

Lane was casually dressed in denims and a grey sweatshirt. He must change into his working clothes when he got to the hotel. The casual gear didn’t suit him actually — he was a little too middle-aged to carry off the jeans. But his hair was already groomed, the discreet piercing in place, his smile affable. Despite his clothes, he was ready to be of service. If only everyone was so cooperative.

It was odd seeing Josh here — it felt a bit like the way Cooper had failed to recognise Roddy when he was on the wrong side of the bar at the Hanging Gate.

‘What do you want me to look at?’ asked Lane.

Cooper pointed at the open hatchway behind the bar. ‘I’d like you to show me around down here.’

‘In the cellar?’

‘You’re not afraid of cellars, are you?’ asked Cooper.

‘No, why?’

‘I thought you sounded a bit nervous.’

‘I’ve spent half my life in cellars.’

A moment later, Lane stood with him at the bottom of the steps and looked around the cellar. He examined the tangle of beer lines, the equipment lying around, the row of empty kegs. He reached out a hand to pick up the wooden mallet, then changed his mind, perhaps remembering that it was a crime scene. He shook his head over the stainless-steel buckets, the hosepipe and the piles of filter funnels.

‘Most of this will have to come out,’ he said. ‘It’s been standing too long. The new owners will have to scrap it and do a major clear-out before they can reopen.’

‘We’ll need to spend quite a bit of time here before they can do anything with it, I’m afraid,’ said Cooper.

Lane bent over a pile of beer taps, and made a disgusted expression at the smell.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘What is going on exactly? You didn’t explain anything to me before. I mean, I’m glad to help, if I can, but …?’

‘I can’t really tell you much at the moment,’ said Cooper.

Lane shrugged. ‘Story of my life.’

‘I’m truly sorry. I know that sounds pompous, but we’re right in the middle of a major inquiry here.’

‘Is it about the tourist couple, the Pearsons? Can you tell me that, at least?’

‘Yes, I don’t suppose that’s much of a secret.’

‘Not around Edendale.’

The lighting in the cellar consisted of fluorescent tubes. They cast a harsh light, and Cooper could hear a faint whine as if one of them was wearing out and getting close to needing replacement. It was a high-pitched noise, like a mosquito, and it would start to bother him if he had to spend much time down here.

‘Josh, can you remember what used to be down here?’ he said. ‘I mean, anything that isn’t here now?’

‘I don’t know. There was an awful lot of junk,’ said Lane. ‘Old Maurice got a bit slack in his last couple of years.’

‘Slack?’

‘He used to run a tight ship at one time, but gradually standards slipped. The cellar is a place you put things so they’re out of the way.’

‘A dumping ground,’ said Cooper, consciously echoing the phrase used by Roddy.

‘Exactly. A dumping ground.’

Cooper indicated the clean area on the floor. It was surrounded now by Liz Petty’s evidence markers, the wall scattered with white dust.

‘For example, what used to stand here?’ he said.

Lane stared at the markers, and seemed at a loss for an answer. Cooper was disappointed. But he couldn’t complain, really — he knew how unreliable memory could be, especially when the context was wrong.

‘A freezer, perhaps?’ he suggested.

‘A freezer? Yes — I think you’re right. A freezer.’

‘Just one?’

Lane hesitated, still reluctant to commit himself. ‘Well, I think there might have been two. Old freezers. They weren’t used for the kitchen. There’s a full-sized commercial freezer upstairs.’

‘Do you happen to know when they were taken out?’

‘No idea.’

‘That’s all right.’

Perhaps Lane wasn’t going to be as useful a witness as he’d hoped. Nevertheless, Cooper led him to the far end of the cellar.

‘What about this area partitioned off?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Lane. ‘Maurice and Nancy called it the office. Actually, it was more of a place for them to be on their own when they felt the need. And somewhere to put things so they were, well …’

‘Out of the way?’

‘Yes.’

‘But there are filing cabinets in here.’

‘Yes, old business records, I suppose. Nothing of any interest.’

‘No?’

Lane was getting a bit fidgety now. He looked at his watch. ‘I’m sorry to be awkward, but I really should be leaving soon if I’m going to get to work on time. They don’t like you being late at the hotel.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He smiled uncertainly. ‘Have I helped at all?’

‘Actually, I think you have, Josh,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh?’

Lane looked at him, hoping for more, but seemed to realise that he wasn’t going to get any information. He went to the steps and climbed up through the hatch.

‘Did I tell you that I used to come here sometimes?’ called Cooper. ‘I remember this pub when it was all lit up and you could see it for miles.’

There was no reply for a moment, and he wondered if Lane was still there. Then a voice came down to him through the hatch from the floor above. He almost didn’t recognise it, the tone of the words was so different.

‘Don’t worry, Sergeant,’ said Lane. ‘The place will be lit up again soon.’

Cooper frowned. What did that mean? Lane must be referring to the prospect of the pub reopening under new owners. The date of the auction wasn’t far off now. Thomas Pilkington and his son would be getting stressed about the possibility of the police refusing to release their crime scene because the investigation was still ongoing, or of a potential buyer being put off by the story of a double murder.

On second thoughts, that might be a pretty good marketing angle. There were plenty of ghoulish individuals who would flock to visit a pub with a reputation like that. They would probably fight each other to book an overnight stay in the Bakewell Room. In no time, business would be booming again, with locals telling gruesome stories of the murderous Mad Maurice.

Cooper went into the area where the filing cabinets had been stored, and looked at the desk covered in box files and magazines. The office, Lane had called it. A place to be alone? Well it was certainly quiet enough down here. But also a place to put things out of the way.

He found that the cabinets were unlocked. He slid the drawers out one by one, their runners squealing in protest. The noise seemed unnaturally loud in the cellar, reverberating painfully against the stone walls in the narrow space.

He flipped through the tabs on a series of suspension files, discarding invoices for deliveries, electricity bills, insurance documents, copies of VAT returns. He finally found an entire drawer marked ‘Guest Records’. They went back to a time almost five years before the closure of the Light House, but fortunately they were arranged in date order.

Cooper wondered who had been responsible for keeping the records up to date. Was that Mad Maurice in his saner moments? Or had Nancy been the one with the organising brain?

Whoever he had to thank, it was easy enough to locate the record of the Pearsons’ overnight stay in the Light House. Thank goodness the Whartons had been old-fashioned enough not to store all their records on computer. A copy of the entry from the register slid into his hand, dated that night in December.

Holding the page carefully by the edges, Cooper read the names of David and Patricia Pearson, their address in Dorking, their home phone number and nationality. The space for their car registration was left blank. The Range Rover had been at the Old Dairy, of course. But, as Nancy had said, they were checked into Room One, the Bakewell Room.

His eyes scanned down to the bottom of the page, until he located the signature of the member of staff who’d checked them in and taken their payment. But surely that wasn’t an ‘M’? No, it was definitely an ‘E’. The signature read ‘E. Wharton’. The Pearsons had been signed in by Eliot.

‘Do you know what?’ said Cooper to himself, his voice echoing off the cellar walls. ‘I think we might find it’s Eliot’s blood on David Pearson’s clothes.’