Dead in the Dark

19

Up the hill above All Saints Church in Bakewell was the Old House Museum. Wattle and daub walls, a vast open fireplace, and a Tudor toilet. And near the museum, on a narrow back street, was the address of Mr Evan Slaney.

Ben Cooper sat and waited in the Toyota until he saw Gavin Murfin’s green Skoda pull into the road. Murfin had trouble finding somewhere to park and had to walk down from about a hundred yards up the hill.

‘Why are these towns always built on hills?’ complained Murfin when he reached Cooper.

‘It’s the Peak District,’ said Cooper. ‘Where else would you build them?’

‘I’m surprised people don’t grow up with one leg longer than the other. They must always be on a slope.’

‘Come on, Gavin. We’re going to talk to Mr Slaney. He’s Annette Bower’s father, okay?’

‘Got it.’

Evan Slaney’s cottage was surprisingly small, with tiny windows on to the street that were overshadowed by the surrounding buildings. It was also crammed with furniture and antiques. Cooper first thought of it as bric-a-brac, but he could tell from the sheen and the careful placement that they were probably quite valuable.

Bookshelves lined the walls of the sitting room and there seemed to be a lot of antique lamps. Victorian, Regency, art deco. They were being used to light the room instead of the normal ceiling lighting. They cast a dimmer light, and their positions threw shadows everywhere.

Cooper was cautious about stumbling over some item on the floor, or a corner of a tasselled rug. In this sort of light you could imagine ghosts and shapes that weren’t really there at all. Perhaps that was why Mr Slaney liked it. Sometimes the harsh light of reality could be much too painful.

‘It’s been a long time now,’ said Slaney when he let Cooper and Murfin in. ‘A very long time.’

‘Since your daughter’s disappearance, sir? It’s been ten years.’

‘As I say. A long time.’

Evan Slaney was a tall man in his sixties with a permanently disdainful expression. His hair looked a slightly unnatural shade of brown, which probably came from a bottle. Cooper found it hard to imagine him handling these antiques with any gentleness.

‘We’re not reopening your daughter’s case as such,’ said Cooper.

Slaney gave him a thin smile. ‘Not “as such”. I see. Then it’s to do with my son-in-law. Or my ex son-in-law. I don’t know which it is — do you?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean, sir.’

‘Well, it depends whether my daughter is alive or not, doesn’t it?’

‘And what do you think now, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘Now? If you’ve read the reports, you know what I think.’

‘From the reports, I only know what you thought ten years ago. I’m asking you what you believe now.’

Slaney clenched his jaw. As if to calm himself, he stroked the shade of a Chinese porcelain lamp made in the shape of a dragon.

‘I still believe I saw Annette,’ he said. ‘I’ve never lost that belief, Inspector.’

‘I’d like to go over your sighting of her again, if you don’t mind.’

‘Again? After all these years? Why?’

‘It may be relevant.’

‘Relevant? What a mealy-mouthed expression.’

Cooper didn’t react. Slaney paced a free patch of rug and stopped suddenly. He glared at Murfin, then back to Cooper.

‘I’m sure you know this already,’ he said. ‘But one day I was doing some shopping at Waitrose in Buxton. When I came out of the store there were a lot of people around. As I reached my car, for some reason my attention was drawn to a woman on the other side of the car park. I recognised her immediately. It was like a thunderbolt.’

‘How exactly did you recognise her?’

‘Don’t you recognise a person you know well from the way they stand or move, from a little gesture, or how they hold their head? Besides, she was wearing a coat she’d had for some time. I was so certain that I shouted her name across the car park. People stared at me — I must have seemed like an idiot. But of course she didn’t hear me. And she’d loaded her shopping and driven off by the time I could get to her.’

‘The car...?’ said Cooper.

‘It was a white Ford Focus. That was the same make and model she drove when she was with Reece. They always had two cars, and she preferred it to the Vauxhall. It may sound ridiculous to you, but that small detail was the one that convinced me completely. I knew it was Annette. I thought she must have changed her name, started a new life, and was living somewhere locally.’

‘But you’ve never heard from her, sir?’

‘No.’

‘Not in ten years. Don’t you think—’

‘No, Inspector, I don’t think what you’re going to say. Call it faith, if you will. But I believe Annette is alive and living somewhere. Oh, not in Buxton any more. I think she’s gone far away from all of us.’

That last phrase could be interpreted in different ways. It sounded to Cooper like a euphemism for someone who’d died. That’s what people did these days. They talked about a person having ‘passed’, about a pet having ‘gone over the rainbow bridge’, as if they’d just gone to a better place. It seemed as though they used anything to avoid the word ‘dead’ and having to acknowledge their loved one no longer existed.

And he could understand that. He’d found himself doing it sometimes, not long after his fiancée Liz had been killed. That act of faith could be comforting. But, at the end of the day, she was still dead.

Slaney was watching Gavin Murfin moving around the room, wincing occasionally as he came too close to an antique lamp. He looked like a man who’d just let an unruly child into his collection and was regretting it.

‘Did Reece Bower did seem different after that, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘After Annette’s disappearance?’ said Slaney. ‘Of course. We were all different. Not only had we been through a difficult experience, but we’d suffered a great loss. It was inevitable that we would be changed by it. You can’t just get over something like that. I never have. I’ve found it difficult to feel really happy. I’ll never be content with life again.’

‘But Mr Bower? How did he change?’

Slaney pursed his lips in thought. ‘He became more morose, perhaps. He always rather serious, but whenever I saw him after that he seemed to be brooding about something. Not that I saw him often, you understand. We weren’t very close, Reece and I. But I did think, in view of what happened, he might have showed some, well... appreciation.’

‘Appreciation? Oh, you mean gratitude for the fact that you saved him from standing trial? Because you helped him avoid conviction for murder?’

Slaney flushed angrily. ‘That was never the way I saw it.’

Cooper was interested to see the way Slaney reacted to a provocation. If he could make Annette’s father lose his temper, he might get something more from him. But he had no justification for doing that. Mr Slaney was a witness, after all. Cooper just couldn’t be certain in his own mind which side of the case he was on. A witness for the defence, or for the prosecution?

‘Morose and brooding,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s how you described Mr Bower.’

‘I suppose it was to be expected, after the ordeal he went through.’

‘Certainly sir.’

That was possible, of course. But killing someone changed you too, no matter how much you thought they deserved it, no matter whether you believed you’d got away with it. Killing made you a different person. It changed you for ever.

Could Reece Bower have become such a different person that he was consumed with remorse for what he’d done years earlier? It was an impossible question to answer. Perhaps only Bower himself could know.

‘And do you have any suggestion of what’s happened to Reece, Mr Slaney?’ asked Cooper. ‘What does your faith tell you about his whereabouts?’

Slaney shrugged. ‘I haven’t any idea. Do you believe his disappearance is connected with the previous case?’

‘We think he might have been scared off by the possibility of some new information coming to light.’

‘Oh. You mean he’d been tipped the black spot, then.’

‘The black spot?’ said Murfin. ‘Some local Derbyshire custom I’m not aware of?’

‘No, it’s from Robert Louis Stevenson,’ said Slaney. ‘Treasure Island.’

‘Of course.’

Cooper saw Evan Slaney smirk at his visitor’s ignorance. Murfin responded by bumping into the dragon-shaped porcelain lamp. Slaney let out a pained cry, but Murfin caught it and steadied the shade before the base tipped over.

‘Oops,’ he said. ‘No harm done.’

Cooper waited a beat of a second. Slaney was off his guard now.

‘Are you aware of your daughter and her husband having a particular connection to Lathkill Dale, Mr Slaney?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Slaney seemed startled.

‘Lathkill Dale,’ repeated Cooper.

‘Yes, they walked there often. It’s right on the doorstep, you know. They also liked to visit a cafe in Monyash, I think.’

‘The Old Smithy, is it?’

‘Something like that.’

Cooper stood by the window, and had to bend to peer through it into the street. These old cottages were made for smaller people, he supposed.

‘What do you do for a living, sir?’ he asked.

‘I’m an accountant by profession,’ said Slaney. ‘I worked for a partnership in Chesterfield for many years, specialising in financial accountancy. But I’m a consultant now. It means I can take on as much work as suits me. Or as little.’

Murfin had reached the bookshelves and was running a finger along the spines. Cooper noticed that one shelf was full of Sherlock Holmes stories. The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Study in Scarlet, and several volumes of short stories. There were even some modern interpretations of the great detective. The House of Silk, The Servants of Hell. The collection was impressive.

‘You’re a big Holmes fan, I see.’

‘He’s an eternal character,’ said Slaney. ‘So rational. So astute. If he was alive now, Conan Doyle would be very proud of the way he’s endured.’

‘Didn’t Conan Doyle get fed up with his character and try to kill him off in that fight at the Reichenbach Falls? It was his readers who wouldn’t accept Holmes was dead.’

‘Yes, they believed in him too strongly to accept his death.’

‘Exactly.’

Slaney studied him. ‘I can see what you’re driving at,’ he said. ‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘And?’

‘And? Well, I’m still sure it was Annette I saw.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. That’s what I wanted to know.’

‘You should be following other lines of inquiry, Detective Inspector,’ said Slaney. ‘It’s Reece’s disappearance you ought to be investigating.’

‘Oh, we are,’ said Cooper. ‘We are.’

Slaney didn’t looked convinced. He led his visitors to the door.

Outside, it still felt dark and full of shadows, as if the whole world was lit by dim antique lamps that threw shapes against the walls that weren’t really there at all. Cooper found himself wishing for some sun, if only a little of it.

‘Actually, we don’t have Sherlock Holmes any more, do we?’ said Slaney as Cooper and Murfin stepped over his threshold. ‘All we’ve got left are the bumbling Lestrades.’

As he left Bakewell, Cooper tried to analyse why he felt so sure that Evan Slaney was lying.

There were certain signs to look for, of course. In interviews he’d heard them so many times. Repetition, as if a lie had to be spoken several times before it was believed. Lack of vehemence, lack of detail, inconsistency. None of those had been discernible in Mr Slaney.

But there had definitely been a lack of eye contact. Generally, if someone was lying they would not look you in the eye. In normal conversation people made eye contact for at least half of the time, so anything less prompted suspicion. Cooper had become so used to it now that he usually left an interview knowing instinctively whether it had verged on the negative side.

And that was definitely his impression on leaving Mr Slaney. It was more than just the difficulty of seeing his eyes in the gloom of his sitting room. Slaney had been looking elsewhere most of the time. He’d been gazing at the lamps, at the floor, at the window — anything but meeting Cooper’s eye.

There could be all kinds of reasons why people told lies. Sometimes they just wanted to present themselves in a better light and that was all. Some felt a need to be seen as braver, cleverer, or more successful than they really were. And the further they strayed from the truth, the more they had to lie. So dishonesty became a part of their day-to-day routine, a central theme in the narrative of their lives. Cooper had met people who hardly seemed to be aware they were lying. For them, deception took less effort than telling the truth.

There didn’t seem any point mentioning it to Gavin Murfin. Instead, Cooper called West Street and discussed his feelings with Carol Villiers. He knew Carol would understand what he meant.

First she had some information for him. Lacey Bower’s address in Sheffield.

‘No luck with Reece’s address book, though,’ she said. ‘We’ve spoken to a few of his golfing friends, but we’re drawing a blank so far.’

‘Thanks anyway.’

‘And I certainly can’t find anyone with a phone number in the Bridlington area.’

‘Well, that was a very long shot,’ laughed Cooper, remembering the holiday photographs in Reece Bower’s house.

‘Mrs Heath seemed quite happy for us to pursue the idea. She didn’t discourage us from thinking of friends he might go to.’

‘It’s still a possibility, to be honest,’ said Cooper. ‘But wherever Reece Bower is, I don’t think it will be Bridlington.’

‘So what do you think the chances are that Annette Bower is actually still alive?’ asked Villiers. ‘Could Mr Slaney be right?’

‘If Annette just decided to disappear, she wouldn’t stay around here, would she?’

‘The supposed sighting of her was in Buxton though.’

‘But nothing since,’ said Cooper.

‘No, that’s true.’ Villiers paused. ‘You said “supposed sighting”. I take it you have doubts about its authenticity.’

‘There’s always room for doubt, Carol.’

‘You don’t find Evan Slaney a reliable and truthful witness?’

‘I don’t know about truthful,’ said Cooper. ‘He may think he’s telling the truth, but that doesn’t necessarily make him reliable.’

He turned the Toyota on to the Sheffield road at Baslow and headed north towards Owler Bar.

‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘What is?’ asked Villiers.

‘That Annette Bower’s body has never been found after all these years. It’s the wrong way round, in my experience.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re saying, Ben.’

‘I’ve always thought the worst thing to have was an unidentified body. You know what I mean — so many bodies remain unidentified for years, sometimes for ever. The world is full of people who will never be missed by anyone.’

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘But Annette is missed,’ said Cooper. ‘Missed, but never found.’