Dead in the Dark

2 Day 1

Flies buzzed around the armchair. A mass of them covered a tiny window, like a moving black curtain. Detective Sergeant Diane Fry watched from the doorway as figures in scene suits moved around the overheated sitting room. Apart from the chair, there was little other furniture. A small table in one corner, a TV set on a stand, a stack of shelves containing two candles, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a half a dozen books in Polish.

In a tiny kitchen area, there was barely enough room to turn round between an ancient gas cooker, a fridge and a sink. The off-white paintwork was scuffed, and the wallpaper looked damp, with a sheen of black mould under the window. Dust had gathered along the skirting boards and a trail of mouse droppings lay scattered near the bin.

Fry sniffed. The smell in the flat wasn’t the stink of death, though it soon would be. The aroma was a mixture of rancid pork and fried onions. A thin, half-eaten sausage lay on a plate. The door of a wall-mounted cupboard hung open, revealing a row of cans and a few cups and plates. A plastic bag stood near the door. Fry glimpsed a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, some pots of yoghurt. Somebody’s shopping.

The body itself lay curled in an awkward position, its head tilted back, one arm hanging towards the floor. Where the tips of the fingers touched the carpet, the skin was a livid purplish red. Blood had pooled to the lower parts of the body, red cells sinking slowly through the serum in the arteries when the victim’s heart stopped pumping. The carpet was so thin that the blood from the victim’s head wound would soon have soaked through to the floorboards and dripped on to the ceiling of the shop below.

‘There’s a trail of blood all the way from the alley, Sergeant. As far as we can tell, that must be where he was attacked.’

Detective Constable Jamie Callaghan was standing outside in the yard, looking up at her from the bottom of a narrow metal stairway. Yellow evidence markers had been placed on the steps, marking the blood spatter left by the victim as he climbed unsteadily up to the flat. A smear of blood left on the handrail halfway up showed the clear impression of a palm print.

From her position above him, Callaghan looked tall and lean, the darkness of his eyes emphasised by the yellow glare of a security light overhead. It had been daylight for a couple of hours, but it still hadn’t gone off. Perhaps something had triggered the motion sensor.

‘So instead of seeking help, he came back here and sat in his chair to die,’ said Fry. ‘Why would anyone do that?’

Callaghan shrugged. ‘He probably didn’t realise how serious his injuries were.’

Fry looked at the splatter on the stairway. ‘Perhaps. But he must have seen how much blood he was losing.’

‘Shock?’ said Callaghan. ‘You can’t expect people to use sensible judgment in those circumstances.’

‘Are there any witnesses, Jamie?’

‘We’re still looking. Nothing so far.’

‘Well, keep trying. It seems very unlikely that no one would have seen either the attack itself or an injured man bleeding his way back to this flat. The distance between the two scenes is... what? A hundred yards or so? And right in the middle of town.’

‘We’ve got some local officers on it,’ said Callaghan. ‘No one is being very helpful at the moment.’

‘Isn’t that always the way?’

‘In this part of the world, yes.’

Fry turned back to the room. The victim was a man in his late thirties, heavily built around the shoulders and thickening at the waist. His fair hair was cut short, and he had at least a day’s growth of beard. He was dressed in jeans and a bloodstained blue T-shirt, and he was still wearing trainers, which had left damp prints on the carpet. A padded jacket lay where it had been dropped on the floor by the armchair.

Fry’s boss, DCI Alistair Mackenzie, was deep in conversation with the crime scene manager, who she didn’t recognise. The forensic medical examiner straightened up from her examination of the body and turned to the doorway, narrowing her eyes as she peered at Fry’s face. She looked as though she was about to diagnose an unusually serious medical condition from her appearance.

‘Do you want my initial assessment, Detective Sergeant Fry?’ she asked.

The FME was an Asian woman wearing a hijab below the hood of her white scene suit. Fry vaguely recalled meeting her in the Accident and Emergency department at Edendale General Hospital once, when a recently arrested suspect had required urgent medical attention. As a doctor, she must have become tired of the day-to-day stress of A & E, so had moved to something more stable, like sudden death and the examination of detainees in police custody. Fry couldn’t remember the doctor’s name, though. She could have asked, but it probably wasn’t important.

‘That would be helpful,’ she said. ‘I imagine that’s why you’re here, doctor.’

The FME began to strip off her latex gloves, carefully peeling them from one finger at a time.

‘Well, the cause of death appears to be a substantial loss of blood from the stab wound in the left side of the thorax. The weapon entered through the ribs here, as you can see from the extent of the bloodstains on the clothing. But there’s also an extensive head injury, which is serious enough in itself to have caused concussion.’

‘So he may have been in a confused state after the assault?’

‘Almost certainly.’

Fry pointed. ‘And the blood on his hands?’

‘His own, probably. Most of the blood is on his left hand. I imagine he would have clutched it to the wound. It wouldn’t have done much to reduce the flow. On the other hand, if he’d received immediate medical attention, it would have been a different matter.’

‘So he could have been saved?’

The FME nodded. ‘A paramedic would have been able to reduce the loss of blood. An ambulance could have got him to A & E in ten or fifteen minutes. King’s Mill Hospital is only seven miles away.’

Fry looked at the dead man’s blank eyes. Seven miles was a long way when you were dying on your own, weakened by loss of blood as it pooled on the floor around you. And there was no sign of a phone for the victim to have dialled 999. No landline, which wasn’t so unusual. But no mobile either. That was odd for a man of this age.

‘I see there’s post-mortem lividity,’ she said.

‘Yes, particularly noticeable in the right hand where it’s close to the floor. If the pathologist finds similar lividity in other areas of the body, it will confirm that the victim died in situ and hasn’t been moved since.’

‘What does it tell us about time of death, doctor?’

‘Well, livor mortis starts from about twenty to thirty minutes after death, but it isn’t usually observable to the human eye for two hours or so. The pathologist may be able to give you a more accurate estimate after she’s assessed the point of maximum lividity.’

‘So he’s been dead for two hours at least?’ persisted Fry.

‘Yes, at least.’

‘But how long did he take to die?’

‘Now, that’s an impossible question to answer,’ said the FME. ‘He looks a strong, healthy individual. It could have been several hours.’

On the victim’s dangling arm, the purplish-red colour of the hand was very noticeable. But Fry was looking at the fingers where they touched the floor. The tips were oddly pale in comparison to the rest of the hand. Strange, when the fingertips were the lowest point of the body.

The doctor followed her gaze.

‘Of course, the discolouration of livor mortis doesn’t occur in parts of the body that are in direct contact with the ground. The contact compresses the capillaries.’

‘Thank you, doctor,’ said Fry.

The FME flapped a hand in front of her face, as if waving away Fry’s thanks. But that wasn’t what she was doing.

‘I must say, these flies seem to have found the body very quickly,’ she said.

Fry looked around the flat. ‘No, doctor,’ she said. ‘I think they were here already.’

For a few days the weather had been unseasonably warm for September. But on the previous night a storm had hit after darkness fell. Heavy rain and gusty winds had battered the Peak District for six hours until daylight came.

This morning, the roads were littered with broken branches as Detective Inspector Ben Cooper drove from his home in Foolow. In low-lying lanes, soil and leaves had been swept into the middle and piled up on the bends as road surfaces turned temporarily into rivers.

Cooper was feeling optimistic this morning. He couldn’t explain why. It was a sensation he wasn’t used to experiencing as he headed to work. Not recently, anyway. Since he’d become a DI and taken on management responsibilities, the burden on him had increased rapidly. Sometimes he felt as though the ground was constantly shifting under his feet and he didn’t know what to expect next.

On the descent into Edendale, a farmer was cutting a fallen chestnut bough to clear a field entrance, the whine of his chainsaw sounding angry and spiteful in the bright, clear air. Cooper slowed the Toyota as he edged past the obstruction. He gave the farmer a friendly nod, but got only a blank stare in return.

He had a new CD in the player that someone had asked him to listen to. He liked discovering new music and new bands. And this one was certainly different. They were called Stary Olsa, a Belarusian folk band who covered classic rock tracks on medieval instruments. It shouldn’t have worked, but Cooper found himself singing along to a version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ played on flute and Belarusian bagpipes. That was definitely new.

In Edendale, the police station in West Street looked much the same as it had when it was built back in the 1950s. But nothing stayed the same in policing. There were only two divisions of Derbyshire Constabulary now, where once there had been five. The old alphabetical system had been abandoned completely. In the latest reorganisation, E Division had been become just one part of North Division, which covered all but the city of Derby and the southern fringes of the county. It was properly known as the Eden Valley Local Policing Unit, neighbouring the LPUs of North East Derbyshire, High Peak, and Derbyshire Dales.

Stary Olsa were getting into Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ as Cooper drew into the secure car park at West Street and keyed the code number to enter to building. After so many years based here, he found it strange and disorienting to realise there was no longer a divisional organisation in Edendale. He didn’t even have direct access to his boss. Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh was now based twenty miles away in Chesterfield. In some ways it gave him more autonomy and freedom, but he’d come to rely on the guidance of Superintendent Branagh. A more distant physical relationship changed things for everyone.

The corridors of the station had been feeling empty for months. Cooper supposed it was only a matter of time before someone at headquarters in Ripley decided it would be a good idea to sell off some of the buildings. Disposal of surplus assets to meet a revenue shortfall. He could see the words quite clearly at the head of a report. Yes, an email would drop into his inbox one day. And it wouldn’t be long before it happened.

But that seemed to be his job now. Every day of his working life was spent adapting to change.

When he reached his department, Cooper went straight into the CID room. As usual, Detective Constable Carol Villiers and Detective Sergeant Devdan Sharma had arrived before him. It was as if they were engaged in an unspoken competition to see who get could into work first.

‘DS Sharma. What’s happening this morning?’

‘Not much, sir,’ said Sharma gloomily. ‘It’s pretty dead around here as usual.’

‘Not dead. Just under control,’ responded Cooper.

‘If you say so, sir.’

Cooper laughed. But Sharma just gazed at him, his dark brown eyes unblinking. Sharma was about as impenetrable as anybody he’d met. This was hard work.

When asked, Cooper had said several times that DS Sharma would fit in. But he wasn’t sure it was true, rather than just something you said when you were asked. He knew a little about Sharma, but it was only superficial information. Though he’d been born in the Peartree area of Derby, Sharma’s family were from the Punjab, where Hindus were in a minority to Sikhs. Cooper had learned that his wife’s name was Asha, that they had no children yet, that they attended the Geeta Bhawan Temple on Pear Tree Road in Derby. But he still didn’t feel that he knew the man, even though he’d been based in Edendale for several months. Perhaps it would take longer.

But would his DS stay that long? For months now, Cooper had been trying hard to be positive about him, but he couldn’t resist a niggling doubt, a suspicion that he and the Eden Valley LPU were being used, treated as a stepping stone to something else, something better. DS Sharma was destined for higher things.

He recalled Sharma telling him that he’d applied for a transfer to EMSOU’s Major Crime Unit from D Division, but didn’t get it. Cooper had wondered whether he knew Diane Fry. He’d denied it at the time, but they had worked together since. Cooper mentally corrected himself. By ‘worked together’, he meant Fry had used Sharma for her own reasons. She had a habit of doing that. It meant nothing to her that an officer was a member of someone else’s team.

Carol Villiers had said Sharma was ‘full of himself, thinks he’s God’s gift’. Was there a reason she resented him so much? On the other hand, Sharma had made a good impression on Gavin Murfin. A retired DC working as civilian support might be easily impressed, though — even if Sharma had been winding Gavin up. It was hard to tell whether he had that kind of sense of humour, or whether he had a sense of humour at all.

Before that, Murfin had made a reference to Devdan Sharma ‘doing his diversity training’ by transferring to the rural territory of North Division. Was it really just part of the relentless drive to create a service that reflected the diverse population it served? Up here in the High Peak and Derbyshire Dales, ethnic minorities represented only two per cent of the population. Police officers recruited from the Asian community were in such short supply that they were most often deployed in areas where their presence might help community relations, as well improving the public perception of the police.

Carol Villiers couldn’t wait to chip in.

‘Another farmer lost a barn full of hay last night,’ she said.

‘Arson?’ asked Cooper.

‘Of course.’

‘No animals killed this time? No vehicles burnt out?’

‘No,’ said Villiers. ‘But it’s still someone’s livelihood.’

‘Yes, yes. I know.’

Cooper felt momentarily irritated that Villiers should feel it necessary to point that out to him. Was she suggesting that he’d forgotten his own history, abandoned his own background? He’d grown up on a farm, for heaven’s sake. His brother was still in farming. He could hardly escape it, or leave it behind. Yet it seemed as if Villiers thought he was becoming a townie, like Dev Sharma. But surely he wasn’t?

Sharma was definitely a city boy, though. He had no idea what a barn full of hay was worth to the owner, and no idea how easily it could be destroyed in a fire. In a way, it was just like with Diane Fry all over again.

Cooper sighed. The optimism he’d set off with from Foolow this morning seemed to have dissipated pretty quickly.

Cooper fetched himself a cup of anonymous brown liquid from the vending machine, then went into his own office and began to check his emails.

He was becoming far too familiar with the jargon used in the internal memos. He’d even fallen into the trap of using some of the phrases himself when he was writing a report. Re-prioritising resources. Due diligence. Overarching strategy to ensure best practice. They seemed to leap naturally from the keyboard to the screen. He imagined a superintendent or chief inspector at headquarters in Ripley nodding in approval when he read them. The words might not mean much, but they ticked all the boxes, rang all the right bells. So why did he feel so guilty about doing it?

Within a few minutes there was a knock on his office door and Carol Villiers appeared.

‘Carol, come in.’

‘Have you got a few minutes, Ben?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

There was just enough room for a couple of chairs on the other side of the desk. Cooper had thought about asking for a move to more spacious accommodation, which now lay vacant on another floor. But he was nervous about the answer he might get. Someone was likely to tell him that his next office would be in the storage shed at the back of the yard.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yes, fine,’ she said.

Cooper studied her expression, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that he didn’t believe her.

The woman sitting across the desk from him was a different Carol Villiers from the one he remembered when he was growing up. When she returned to Edendale, she was older, leaner and more tanned. And there had been something else different, an air of self-assurance, a firm angle of the jaw. He still sometimes saw her as she was in her military photograph, the uniform with black-and-red flashes, her corporal’s stripes on her sleeve, an MP’s badge. And there was that extra dimension — a shadow in her eyes, a darkness behind the professional façade.

Since he’d moved to Foolow, Cooper now lived only a few fields away from Carol Villiers. Her parents ran a bed and breakfast on Tideswell high street. But had it really brought him any closer to her?

‘You must be wondering when you’ll stand a chance of getting promotion,’ he said, forced to guess at the reason for her visit in the face of her silence.

Villiers shook her head. ‘Not really. It’s not something worth worrying about. It’s probably never going to happen anyway.’

‘Oh, it will. There just isn’t a vacancy right now.’

‘I’m not waiting anxiously to push Dev Sharma out of the way.’

‘Do you like working with him?’

‘Of course,’ said Villiers. ‘He’s fine. He’s a good DS.’

Cooper nodded. ‘You’re loyal. That’s one of your best qualities. I wouldn’t want to change it.’

Villiers looked at him quizzically, but didn’t ask any more.

‘I bet you’re sorry you ever left the RAF Police to come here,’ said Cooper. ‘Derbyshire Constabulary has probably been a disappointment to you.’

Villiers smiled. ‘Not at all. It was the right time for me to get out of the Snowdrops when Glenn was killed. And where else was I going to go?’

Cooper wondered if it had been insensitive to remind Villiers of her husband’s death. They had both been serving with the RAF Police, whose white-topped caps gave them the nickname ‘Snowdrops’, when Glenn Villiers had died in an incident in Helmand Province. But as he watched Carol now, she seemed calm and unperturbed. Her eyes narrowed in the familiar way as she brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead. She still looked the tough, competent ex-servicewoman he’d seen that day at West Street when she joined E Division CID. Derbyshire hadn’t softened her in the meantime. Not too much, anyway.

‘I wanted to tell you about a report DS Sharma didn’t mention,’ said Villiers. ‘He doesn’t think it’s important, but...’

Cooper was intrigued. ‘What is it, Carol?’

‘A misper.’

He frowned. ‘A priority case? A child?’

‘No, an adult male in his early forties.’

‘So why are you bothering me with it? You know we won’t take any action on a missing adult unless they’re vulnerable or there’s a reason to suspect a crime.’

‘Well, true. But you might remember this one.’

‘Someone I know?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Who is it?’

‘A gentleman named Reece Bower. He has an address in Bakewell.’

‘Reece Bower...’

The name was certainly familiar. Cooper felt sure it must be an old case he’d been involved with, but years ago. So many names passed in front of his eyes, written in reports that came across his desk or listed on his computer screen that he couldn’t possibly remember more than a fraction of them. Yet his team seemed to expect him to have an encyclopedic memory stacked with the details of every major case from the past twenty years.

‘Reece Bower,’ said Cooper again, reaching for his keyboard to search the database.

‘There’s no need for that,’ said Villiers. ‘I can tell you the basics. I looked up the case.’

‘Go ahead, then.’

‘Ten years ago Mr Reece Bower was the primary suspect for the death of his wife Annette, and was subsequently charged with her murder.’

Ah, now that rang a bell.

‘I remember,’ said Cooper.

‘I thought you would.’

‘It was a very unusual case.’

Villiers nodded. ‘It certainly was.’

‘But that case is more than a decade old,’ said Cooper. ‘Why are you telling me about it now?’

‘Because this time,’ said Villiers, ‘it’s Mr Bower himself who has disappeared.’