Dead and Buried

5

An hour or so later, Ben Cooper was standing uncomfortably in the middle of a room. He was used to entering people’s homes, studying their furniture and bookshelves, getting an idea of the way they lived from an observation of small details. But this was different. He was being asked to examine things he wasn’t really interested in, and which seemed to have no significance. The size of the windows, the height of the ceilings, the decorative stonework on the exposed lintels. It was making him feel uneasy — especially when he was aware that he was being closely observed himself.

‘And look at this. We installed this ourselves.’

He found he’d been ushered into a bathroom. There was something very odd about four people crowding into a bathroom all at once, the whole lot of them gazing at a free-standing claw-footed bath with whirlpool effect, as if it was the prime exhibit at a crime scene.

The thought sent Cooper’s imagination spinning out of control. He began to picture a dead body lying in that bath, a head sprawled against the taps, blood pooling around a claw foot on the laminate flooring as it dripped from a slashed wrist. The wrist would be his if he didn’t escape soon. This house was making him feel suicidal.

‘Lovely, isn’t it?’

‘Oh … yes.’

Actually, it wasn’t this house, but all the other houses that had come before it. Number fifteen Meadow Drive was just the latest in a long series of properties he’d looked at this week, not to mention all the others last week and the week before. If he’d been asked, he would have suggested there were far too many homes for sale in the Edendale area right now. If it was a difficult time for the housing market, then surely some of these vendors should be holding off putting their properties on the market for a while. That would make the list shorter, at least.

Not that anybody was likely to ask him, of course. But he’d obediently turned up for the viewing appointment. He’d even taken the opportunity presented to him by Diane Fry to escape from the scene on Oxlow Moor. Normally he’d never have done that. Deep down, Cooper felt as though he’d abandoned a job half done. He hoped Liz appreciated the compromises he made for her.

‘Perhaps you’d like to talk about it.’

That was the estate agent. She was one of a long line of anonymous salespeople with a folder full of glossy brochures and a mouthful of misleading terminology. He’d learned that ‘easy to manage’ meant ‘not enough room to swing a cat’ and ‘full of period features’ meant ‘needs knocking down and completely rebuilding’.

Cooper nodded, and stepped outside. As soon as they were out of earshot, Liz leaned closer.

‘What do you think, Ben? I love it.’

‘We can’t afford it.’

‘But look at the size of the kitchen, and those fireplaces. Look at the garden, and the view. We won’t find anything better than this.’

‘But we can’t afford it.’

The estate agent looked round the edge of the door with a bright, artificial smile.

‘How are you getting on?’ she asked.

Liz smiled at her. ‘We need to talk about it a bit more.’

But as they walked back through Edendale town centre towards his flat in Welbeck Street, the one thing they didn’t do was talk about it.

Liz was good at this. She could detect his mood with great accuracy, and know exactly how to respond to it. She instinctively saw that it wasn’t the right time to discuss the subject most on her mind. He supposed this was how couples were when they knew each other very well. It had been a new experience for him over the last year or two, one which he would gladly get used to.

Instead, they chatted away about inconsequential things — the weather, their families, the gossip in the office, and of course the wedding arrangements. Well, perhaps not all so inconsequential.

‘This new evidence in the Pearson case,’ said Liz. ‘I suppose DS Fry is hoping to make it into a murder inquiry.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it helps to justify her existence, doesn’t it? There’s no point in having a Major Crime Unit without major crime.’

‘You’re so cynical sometimes,’ said Cooper.

‘Come on, Ben. We all have to justify our existence these days.’

He had to admit that was true. They were all looking over their shoulders, wondering whether their job would be the next to be declared surplus to requirements in this time of austerity. When police stations were being closed and the most experienced officers forced into retirement, the concept of front-line policing was becoming less and less clear. No role or department was really safe from the cuts. There was no such thing as job security, not any more. If you couldn’t make a good case for the importance of your role, then you shouldn’t expect anybody else to be doing it on your behalf during all those meetings going on at headquarters in Ripley. Even for Liz, there was no immunity from cuts in her job as a civilian crime scene examiner.

They passed the little baker’s shop in Clappergate, which during the day had wicker baskets standing outside on the pavement and an ancient delivery boy’s bicycle strung with onions. A few doors down, the New Age shop was still there, though it wasn’t so new any more. Its rich smells of aromatherapy oils and scented candles and the glint of crystals in its window were strangely redolent of the 1970s.

On the corner of Hulley Road, near the market square, they stopped automatically in front of one of the estate agents and gazed at its darkened display of properties.

Most of their searching for a home was done online, just like everyone else. Liz had set up email alerts on all the main property sites. Rightmove, Primelocation, Findaproperty. Her search parameters were way out, in Cooper’s opinion. She’d set the maximum price too high, the minimum number of bedrooms too many, the requirements for a garden and double garage too ambitious. But it meant that suggestions were flooding in, without any effort on their part. Everything was found on the internet now. And yet there was something irresistible about an estate agent’s window when you were house-hunting.

Properties in the more desirable parts of old Edendale were well out of their league. The picturesque lanes of Catch Wind and Pysenny Banks, where the River Eden ran past front gardens filled with lobelias and lichen-covered millstones. Those were just a dream. The properties they were looking at were smaller, newer, less full of period features. But still too expensive.

‘Why would anyone visit an estate agent’s at night?’ said Liz. ‘Who would do that?’

‘We would,’ said Cooper.

She squeezed his arm. ‘So we would. We must be mad.’

‘I don’t think so. It’s nice to dream sometimes.’

‘That’s one of the things I like about you.’

In fact they’d looked at this estate agent’s window before, in daylight. It was very upmarket, handled high-end properties for equestrian interests and buyers with plenty of spare cash. If he looked, he knew he would see plenty of nice properties displayed on those boards. Old farmhouses full of character, with stable blocks and pony paddocks. But he wasn’t looking too closely, and he never would. The prices made his eyes water. They rose to seven figures and just kept on going.

‘We ought to have a list of estate agents,’ said Liz. ‘There might be some we’ve missed.’

‘Oh, of course. Why not?’

There was a list for everything. So many choices to be made before the day. Which photographer, what sort of music, whether to have a video made. If it wasn’t on a list, it didn’t exist.

Liz squeezed his arm.

‘Everything’s going to be perfect,’ she said.

‘Of course it is. Perfect.’

And he so wanted it to be perfect. For himself, he would be happy just to be married to Liz, no matter whether the ceremony was in the local register office or Westminster Abbey. To be married and planning the rest of their lives — that would be enough.

But he knew how important the wedding was for her. The bride’s big day and all that. And he aimed to make it absolutely perfect.

She was a little tired now, he could tell by her voice. It was such a warm voice, soft and caressing. He loved to hear that familiar sound, the intimate touch on his arm.

Cooper remembered standing right here once before, and catching their reflections in the glass of the estate agent’s window. It didn’t surprise him any more how well matched they looked. Being with Liz felt comfortable, as if it was what he’d always been destined for.

‘What are you looking at, Ben?’ she said.

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Not that very, very expensive house, then?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Shame. I thought you might be having the same dream that I do when I see a property like that.’

Liz always looked small at his side, her dark hair shining in the street lights, her face lit up with a simple, uncomplicated pleasure. It delighted him that she could respond this way whenever they spent time together. Who wouldn’t love to have that effect on someone?

‘Kiss?’ she said, as if remembering the same moment that he was reliving.

He kissed her. And it was only then that he remembered it was her way of making him agree to anything.

Later, after he’d parted from Liz, Cooper entered his ground-floor flat at number eight Welbeck Street, just by the river near Edendale town centre.

He was only a tenant here, but it had been home for some time now. The flat carried its own significance in his life. It marked his break away from the family, the first place he’d lived in apart from Bridge End Farm, where he’d grown up. The day he moved into Welbeck Street had been the first real step towards independence. It was only after he left the farm that he realised quite how stifling the constant proximity of your family could be. He loved them all, of course. But it was such a relief not to have them around all the time.

But the flat would have to go soon. His landlady, Mrs Shelley, who lived next door at number six, was aware of his approaching marriage and the fact that he and Liz were house-hunting. She’d expressed her regrets about losing him, twisting her ancient cashmere sweater about her shoulders with hands that were becoming increasingly arthritic. The old lady found a lot of advantages in having him living right next door. She’d considered him available to call on in an emergency, even if it was nothing more urgent than changing a light bulb she couldn’t reach herself. And she appreciated the reassurance, she said. Young Ben was in the police, after all.

But when it came right down to it, he didn’t think she was sorry that he’d be giving her notice soon. She was ageing now, and becoming quite frail. The pain of the arthritis was etched more deeply into her face day by day. Cooper could see in her eyes when she talked to him that giving up the responsibility of having tenants would be a relief. In the first-floor flat there was a student called Matilda, from Lund in Sweden, gaining experience with a local placement before she completed her training. She would be gone at the end of the year, too.

And he had no doubt that number eight Welbeck Street would be put up for sale then, another property added to the housing market. This one would sell quickly, though. It was a small stone-built semi, and would make an ideal first home for a young family. The conversion into two flats hadn’t been perfect, and the stud walls were a bit shoddy, if the truth were told. But it had always felt comfortable to Cooper. Cosy, even. It would never suit Liz.

He took off his jacket and walked through the flat into the decrepit conservatory at the back, overlooking the garden. And there was another problem.

The cat came running towards him, tail up, purr like a motorbike engine. Cooper bent to stroke the tabby fur and look into the bright green eyes.

‘And I really don’t know what’s going to happen to you,’ he said quietly.

When everyone had finally left the scene on Oxlow Moor, Diane Fry reversed her Audi down the track, turned and drove back over the moor towards the deserted pub.

She’d measured the distance at about a mile and a half from the scene on Oxlow Moor. Not an easy walking distance. But Fry was sure she’d seen it. A figure, running through the smoke. Impossible to tell whether it was male or female.

The building was dark and silent, in a way no pub should ever be. Fry walked round the outside in the gathering dusk, examining the windows. Even the first floor had been boarded up. High above her, just a single dormer window set into the roof had been left uncovered. A determined vandal had managed to reach it with a stone, and the glass had shattered outwards from a small hole, as if it had been hit by a gunshot.

She did a complete circuit, and ended up standing outside the back door, which had clearly been forced open.

Fry pulled her jacket closer around her shoulders as she stepped through the broken door frame. She took two paces into the darkened pub, and stopped, all her senses twitching. Something was wrong, and it was right here. Her instincts had drawn her to it unerringly.

Slowly, she backed up. She fetched her Maglite from the Audi, and went back into the pub. The electricity supply was turned off, of course, and she had no hope of finding the consumer unit to switch it back on.

Bit by bit she swept the light around the room she’d entered. Not a room exactly, but a passage that seemed to widen out to her left into a storage area where empty cardboard boxes had been stacked.

The light of her torch showed that the dust on the floor had been disturbed close to the doorway. Not just footprints, but distinct signs of a disturbance. Two sets of feet at least, she guessed. Two or three people involved in a recent scuffle.

And what was that? Dark spatters on the floor, a spray of droplets spreading towards her, stopping just short of her feet. She smelled a familiar metallic tang. Not overwhelming, but definitely fresh. The odour was so distinctive that she felt the hairs stirring on the nape of her neck.

Fry took a step back towards the door, made another sweep of the interior, focused her beam on a darker patch in the shadows across the other side of the room. A huddle of clothes and awkwardly sprawled limbs.

She sucked in a sharp breath, all her suspicions confirmed.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘How did anyone miss this?’