The Dead Place

37

Although it was two days after his mother had died, Diane Fry was still being unusually attentive. It made Cooper nervous. Like an efficient supervisor, she’d been concerned for his welfare, tentatively asking the usual questions to test his state of mind, his ability to do the job, and wondering whether she should send him home, in case he embarrassed his colleagues. And now she’d left a message asking him to meet her here at the sculpture trail in Tideswell Dale, if he felt up to it. What was all that about?

In the end, she’d even agreed to collect Cooper at his flat, since his foot had stiffened up and was making it impossible for him to drive.

‘We’ve had a busy two days,’ Fry said in the car.

‘I’m sorry I missed them.’

‘We’ve had a whole mass of interviews to do. Not just Abraham Slack — who still won’t talk, by the way. But we’ve also had Melvyn Hudson in, and Billy McGowan again. And your friend Tom Jarvis. He’s a straight talker, isn’t he? Mr Jarvis, I mean?’

‘Yes, you could say that.’

‘I quite liked him.’

Cooper’s eyebrows rose at that. Fry never liked anybody.

‘And he speaks highly of you, Ben.’

‘I don’t know why. I never did much for him.’

‘They were a mixed bunch, those three. But they had one thing in common. They all hated Richard Slack.’

Fry stopped to fumble for change and put some money in the machine for the car park. The gate was unlocked, allowing them to drive through on to the track that led up to the picnic area above the sculpture trail.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Cooper. ‘They all knew Vernon’s history, I suppose. And none of them wanted to put him through any more than he’d suffered already at the hands of his father.’

‘Clannish people in the funeral business, aren’t they?’

‘It’s “them and us”. Remember?’

‘Don’t I just?’

Fry got out of the car to close the gate. The choked stream moved sluggishly just below the track.

‘Look down there in the water,’ said Cooper.

‘What? I can’t see anything.’

‘Look at the plants.’

‘The giant rhubarb?’

‘That’s Gunnera manicata, from the South American swamps. But that wasn’t what I meant. I was looking at the other stuff, the giant hogweed.’

‘Oh, yeah. And where does that come from?’

‘The Caucasus, I think.’

‘I never knew the vegetation of Derbyshire was so cosmopolitan.’

‘Be careful you don’t touch it,’ he said, as Fry took a step closer to the edge of the stream.

‘Why?’

‘It secretes a sap that burns the skin and causes blisters. It’s a photosensitivity problem, I think. But it can cause temporary blindness, and in some cases serious long-term damage such as recurrent dermatitis. You daren’t cut the things down with a strimmer without wearing protective gear. They’re a real menace.’

‘Vernon Slack had blisters on his hands,’ said Fry.

‘He got them from touching giant hogweed while he was crossing the stream at Litton Foot.’

‘On his way to Fox House Farm.’

‘Yes.’

‘Apparently, he used to leave his motorbike at Tom Jarvis’s, then cross the stream and climb up through the woods. He told Jarvis he was doing a bit of poaching on the Alder Hall estate. He probably left him a rabbit or a pheasant occasionally, as proof.’

‘Did Jarvis ever suspect there was more to it?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Fry. ‘He doesn’t say.’

‘No, he doesn’t give much away. But it’s best to pay attention to what he does say.’

Fry frowned. ‘He was clearly being intimidated by someone. I think the poachers must have been trying to warn him away from their territory, don’t you? All that business with the dog and the bag of excreta.’

‘I never thought Tom Jarvis was the type to be easily intimidated,’ said Cooper.

‘Maybe.’

Cooper reflected that there had never been any evidence that the bag had actually existed, either. Mr Jarvis might have had reasons of his own for laying a false trail.

Fry parked at the edge of the picnic area, near enough to reach the carved miner overlooking the road. Cooper remembered these carvings from when the wood had been a sort of reddish golden brown. Now they were weathered from exposure and had developed a patina of green mould.

‘There must still be some of Audrey Steele’s bones scattered across the hillside over there,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever find the last bits of her.’

‘We’re not even looking for them any more,’ admitted Fry.

‘So they’ll stay there for ever, unless they turn up in a bird’s nest some day.’

‘What’s the matter, Ben?’

‘I’m wondering whether it’ll make any difference to her family. They thought they already had all of her once. Then Audrey turns up again, but some of her is missing. I’m not sure how I’d feel about that myself. I’m trying to work it through in my mind.’

‘If you really need to know, you could ask them,’ said Fry.

Cooper looked at her, feeling a brief pity at her lack of experience in human relationships.

‘People never tell the truth about any subject that has to do with death,’ he said. ‘They only tell you what you want to hear, or what they think sounds respectable. All of it is a pretence. No one can examine their true feelings about death too closely. It’s much too frightening.’

‘You mean people don’t want to admit they’re glad someone is dead, because they’re expected to show grief?’

Cooper turned away. ‘That isn’t really what I meant. But never mind.’

On the other hand, he knew it was possible for people to accept death into their lives in unusual ways, like Mrs Askew keeping her husband’s cremated remains in her terrarium. It was practical and down to earth, yet her husband was never completely out of her memory. He just hoped Mr Askew had been fond of small reptiles.

‘What did you mean, then?’ said Fry. She sounded as though she was trying hard not to be irritable with him.

But Cooper shook his head. ‘You know, I was initially misled by Ellen Walker’s comments about the weather on the day of Audrey’s funeral. I pictured the family standing outside the crematorium chapel, admiring the floral tributes in the sleet. But they didn’t go to the crem, only to the funeral service at St Mark’s. They decided not to witness the final disposal — and that was a form of denial in its way, of course. It was a decision that provided the opportunity for what came afterwards.’

‘You haven’t said that to the family, surely?’

Cooper laughed. ‘Of course not.’

Fry took a deep breath, but seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say.

‘You know the teeth in the cremated remains that Vivien Gill was given?’ she said. ‘We were told they were non-human, but we had to wait for an expert opinion on what animal they came from. We just got it this morning.’

‘They were pig’s teeth, weren’t they?’ said Cooper.

‘How did you know?’

‘A dead pig is as close as you can get to a dead person, right down to the smell. The second set of remains at Ravensdale turned out to be from the carcass of a sow, didn’t they? From the cut marks on the bones, I bet it was used for practice. And Tom Jarvis used to keep pigs.’

Fry nodded. ‘We’re not sure how heavily Jarvis was involved. But he’s been trying to protect Vernon Slack, we know that.’

‘And Billy McGowan was doing that, too.’

‘Yes.’

‘I saw Vernon’s motorbike parked outside the Jarvis house the first time I went there, you know. He might have been watching from the woods when I went down to look at the grave site. The dogs would have been used to him, I suppose. They got used to me pretty quick.’ Cooper had a sudden thought. ‘I wonder if that was when he tried to cross the stream further down and damaged his hands on the giant hogweed.’

Fry pushed her hands into her pockets and sat on the wooden plinth next to the miner, resting her arm on his knee. From here, there was a wonderful view over the dale, down to Ravenstor and Miller’s Dale in the south. They might have been able to see the spire of Tideswell Church to the north, but for the hills in between. Fry didn’t seem to notice any of it.

‘We traced the owner of the rifle,’ she said.

‘Oh? The one that Vernon used to kill Freddy Robertson?’

‘He got it from one of the gang who poach in Alder Hall woods. Vernon had seen the lampers. And he recognized one of them. When he met up with the man at a funeral, he dropped some hints and was invited to go lamping a couple of times. Then Vernon told him he needed a rifle to shoot rabbits on his own property.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. And you might be interested to know that we got a match with the bullet the vet took from Mr Jarvis’s dog.’

‘You’ve identified the person who shot Graceless?’

‘That’s why Mr Jarvis thinks so highly of you, Ben.’

‘But I didn’t — ’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Cooper looked at Fry. For a long time, she’d regarded him as something to be avoided as far as possible. He seemed to be an irritant to her, every bit as noxious as the giant hogweed that had caused the burns on Vernon Slack’s arms.

‘Gavin Murfin came to see me, you know,’ he said. ‘Was it you who told him about something called the Death Clock?’

‘Yes. It’s a website that lets you put in your personal details, and it predicts how long you’ll live. It claims to give you the exact date of your death. Why?’

‘Well, Gavin found the website and tried it out.’

‘Ah. And did he get an interesting result?’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘It told him he’d died three months ago.’

‘Poor Gavin.’

Cooper couldn’t help smiling. ‘Actually, I think it did him good. He’s decided he might as well enjoy himself as much as possible if he’s living on borrowed time.’

‘Back to his old self, then.’

‘Freddy Robertson was right, you know,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s the unknown we’re most frightened of, the things we don’t understand. And more than anything else in the world, death is the great unknown. The only way to come to terms with it is to understand it. If you can do that, then death loses its power to be quite so frightening.’

‘I hope that’s so.’

‘He wasn’t right about everything, though. Vernon Slack had been listening to him too much.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The idea that the soul hangs around the body until the flesh is gone from the bones — that isn’t true at all. There’s a moment when the personality dies, when the person you loved is gone for ever. In the hospital, I knew exactly when that had happened. There was no doubt about it, none at all. And then nothing mattered any more. I mean, I wasn’t worried about what death would mean for Mum, all that business about decomposition and the body digesting itself. Because anything that took place after that moment wasn’t happening to her. It was just nature tidying up.’

Fry straightened up. ‘Have you seen the clouds over there?’ she said.

Cooper looked across the valley in amazement. He had never known her to notice the weather in the Peak District before, not unless it was actually raining so hard that she was in danger of drowning. But he saw what she’d noticed. There were banks of dense grey clouds over Hammerton Hill, but they were breaking up as they rose, allowing a glimpse of sky.

He turned to look at Fry. She was gazing past him at the view, as if seeing the landscape for the first time. Over her shoulder, Cooper could see the carved miner smiling as the sun touched his face. The miner didn’t care what happened to his body — and why should he? Someone had captured his spirit and preserved it for ever. His memory would never decompose, his soul was intact, his eternity was beyond the need for a physical body. Somehow, from somewhere, he’d found the secret of peace.

But Cooper had one more thing he needed to say. It was something that had been burning a hole in his heart since he’d spent those hours sitting by his mother’s bed, with too much time to think.

‘Vernon Slack said the dead place was in other people’s hearts,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ said Fry.

‘But he was wrong about that, too, wasn’t he?’

‘What do you mean, Ben?’

‘Everybody who knew Vernon lied to protect him. Everybody. They tried to shift the blame on to his father, who deserved it, God help him. And his grandfather decided he’d rather suffer himself than allow Vernon to go through the nightmare he’d face if he was arrested.’

Cooper put his hand on the shoulder of the carved miner, testing for a bit of warmth where the sunlight touched the wood.

‘In fact, Vernon was loved by everyone around him,’ he said. ‘He just never knew it.’

‘Ben …’

Cooper withdrew his hand and looked at Fry. But he wasn’t sure who he was talking to when he spoke again.

‘We know so little about death. But the fact is, most of us know even less about love.’