The Dead Place (37 page)

'Mr Hudson,' said Fry, 'we've been talking to Christopher Lloyd, the manager of Eden Valley Crematorium. You know him?'

'Of course. Well, in the way of business, you know.'

'He tells us that your partner, Richard Slack, asked him to do something illegal, but he refused. Do you know anything about that?'

'No. I have no idea what Lloyd means. But Richard knew him better than I do. They were both members of the Rotary Club.'

'This would have been shortly before Mr Slack was killed in the road accident.'

'Yes, that was last May.'

'How exactly did the accident happen?'

'He ran off the road late one night, on his way to do a removal. There was an inquest, so you can read all about it, if you want to.'

309 'He was alone at the time?'

'So it seems.'

On the surface, Hudson seemed composed and relaxed. But the look in his eyes didn't match either his voice or his manner. It was more difficult to control the expression in the eyes. Ben wondered if Fry had noticed it.

'Where were you at the time, sir?' asked Fry.

'Here at home, with my family. Why do you ask?'

A door closed somewhere in the house, and Hudson seized on the distraction.

'Excuse me,' he said. 'That will be my daughter. I must have a word with her.'

'He's going to lie to us,' said Fry when Hudson left the room. 'Just like Christopher Lloyd did. But he's buying a bit of time to decide on his story.'

'Yes, I know.'

'Probe him. But gently.'

'You want me to do it, Diane?'

'He'll take it better from you.'

'OK.'

But it wasn't Melvyn Hudson who came through the door. A dark-haired woman of about thirty hovered on the threshold.

'Hello. Dad asked me to tell you that he's just had an urgent call. He'll be back in a few minutes. Can I get you anything while you're waiting?'

'No, but you can stay and talk to us,' said Fry.

'Oh, well, I'm not sure Dad would like that.'

'Sorry, your name is . . .?'

'Natalie.'

'Do you work with your father?'

'No, I'm an aerobics instructor.'

'You're not interested in the family business, Miss Hudson?'

Natalie shuddered. 'Certainly not. The very thought!'

'And there's no son to follow in your father's footsteps?'

310 The woman hesitated. She took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, not bothering to ask whether they minded, or to offer them one. It was her home, after all. She could do what she liked. But Cooper noticed her fingers trembling slightly as she used the lighter and took the first drag of nicotine into her lungs.

'There was a son,' she said.

'Oh?'

'David. My younger brother. He would have followed in Daddy's footsteps, all right. That's exactly what he was born for. It was all planned out.'

'What happened?'

'He was killed.'

'Do you mean he was killed, or that he died in some other way?'

'He was abroad, travelling in Indonesia,' said Natalie. 'They think it was bandits. A robbery that went wrong - that's what you'd call it here, isn't it? But I'm not sure it would apply to David's death. I think they probably intended to kill him. He was twenty-two.'

'I'm sorry.'

'The worst thing was that he liked to send postcards from wherever he got to. David thought in images, and he always chose the picture carefully when he sent one. His postcards took a long time to arrive from the countries he visited. They kept arriving for weeks after David died. They were postcards from a dead person. At first, it was wonderful, and I cried to think that he was still communicating with me. It was as if he was still out there somewhere, thinking about me. But then I began to pray for them to stop. I think we all did. We needed an ending.'

'How long ago did this happen?'

'Ten years, four months. Dad was devastated when it happened. For a long time, we thought the loss would kill him. That's the phrase everybody used: "The loss will kill

311 him." Ironic, really, for a man who spends his life dealing with other people's grief. The consummate professional. The person to call on in your hour of need.'

Natalie's voice had become more bitter. When she blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke, her mouth was twisted into a sardonic smile.

'The truth comes out at times like that, doesn't it?' she said. 'Dad made no secret of the fact that he thought the wrong child had died.'

Natalie released more smoke and watched it drift in a lazy cloud before dissipating in the breeze from the open window.

'You have no other brothers or sisters?'

'No.'

'Then presumably you'll inherit your father's share of the business some day.'

Natalie laughed. 'Will I? I doubt it somehow. I don't know if my father has made a will or not, or who he intends to leave his half of Hudson and Slack to when he dies. Probably my mother will take over the reins herself. Female funeral directors are becoming quite fashionable these days. I don't know what will happen when the old man dies, either.'

'Abraham Slack?'

'Yes. There's Vernon, of course. But Dad doesn't think much of Vernon, as you might have noticed.'

'I got the impression that he doesn't regard Vernon as a potential business partner,' said Cooper.

Natalie laughed. 'You have a way with understatement, don't you? It's quite sweet.'

Cooper felt himself starting to blush. He'd never hear the last of this from Fry.

T must try to get the chance to talk to Vernon himself some time,' he said, as he began to put his notebook away.

'Good luck. He isn't very communicative.'

'He fits in OK at the firm, though, doesn't he?'

Natalie shrugged. 'On his own terms. Nobody goes out of

312 their way to make Vernon feel as though he belongs. Especially not my dad. If Vernon ever had the idea that he might become a sort of substitute son to my dad, then he soon got a rude awakening. Dad didn't see things that way. Once David was gone, he was gone, and nobody else has ever mattered to Dad. Yet you ought to hear him sometimes, when he's talking to bereaved families. All the stuff he spouts about families turning to each other for support in their time of need. Oh, he's full of advice then, all right. It's enough to make you feel sick.'

As if on cue, the door opened and Melvyn Hudson came back into the room. He looked surprised to see his daughter still there, and then surprise gave way to anger, which was rapidly controlled and disappeared from his expression.

'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,' he said. 'Death happens at the most inconvenient times, as I'm sure you know. Has my daughter been keeping you entertained?'

'Yes, we've had a very interesting conversation,' said Fry.

'Oh? Well, Natalie probably has other things to do. So if there's anything else I can help you with, I do have a few minutes.'

Fry stood up. 'Actually, I think we have all that we need for now, Mr Hudson,' she said.

Cooper was caught off guard and was a bit slow getting to his feet.

'Are you sure?' said Hudson.

'We'll be in touch, if necessary. But there are quite a number of other enquiries to make.'

Hudson followed them to the door. Cooper had a sudden, irrational urge to walk past the big ornate mirror in the hallway with him, to see if Hudson was reflected in the glass.

'Just one thing, Mr Hudson,' he said. 'Have you ever been to Alder Hall?'

'No, I don't believe so.'

'Or visited the grounds for any reason?'

'Not that I can recall.'

313 When they got to the car, Cooper turned to Fry. 'Why did you do that?' he said. 'Hudson hadn't told us anything at all. We never got round to asking him the important questions.'

'Do you think he would have told us the truth?'

'Well, no.'

'So what was the point? Now we've left Mr Hudson with the impression that his daughter may already have told us what it was we wanted to know. It's obvious they don't trust each other an inch. I'm going to leave him worrying about that for a while, and he might be more forthcoming when we tackle him again.'

'That's sneaky.'

Cooper started the car and they drove back towards West Street.

'How does inheritance law stand?' he asked. 'What if Melvyn Hudson hasn't made a will - who would actually inherit?'

'I think it would have to go to probate,' said Fry. 'There's some complicated formula the courts use to share out any part of the estate that isn't willed to a specific individual. There are probably other beneficiaries entitled to a share.'

'But Natalie Hudson would be a principal beneficiary, wouldn't she?'

'Yes, I'm sure she would. But she doesn't want the business. She has no interest in it.'

'She might want the money,' said Cooper. 'If there's one of the big American corporations lurking in the wings to snap up Hudson and Slack, Natalie could find herself suddenly very well-off.'

'Mmm. Especially if Abraham Slack could be tempted to part with his share, too.'

'Well, his beneficiary would be Vernon, surely? I wouldn't fancy the idea of Vernon Slack running my business, would you?'

314 'No.' Fry looked thoughtful. 'I wonder if that's what it says in Abraham's will.'

'These family-owned businesses do produce a lot of problems. It's the way feuds start. Bad enough when it's all within the same family, must be worse when there are two families involved. The founders may have got on together perfectly well, but it doesn't mean subsequent generations will.'

Ben Cooper's phone was ringing as he walked into the office. He snatched it up, his head still full of images of furtive funeral directors and unidentified coffins slipping into the flames.

'At last,' said a voice. 'I didn't think anybody was going to answer. I thought you must all be out fighting crime.'

'Who am I speaking to?' asked Cooper.

'My name's Mead. David Mead.'

'What can I help you with, Mr Mead?'

'I thought it was you lot that wanted help from me.'

'Was it?' Cooper frowned. A lot of names had accumulated in the enquiry already, but he was sure he hadn't heard this one before. He wrote it down on his desk pad, but it didn't look any more familiar. 'David Mead, did you say?'

'That's right. But you might know me better as Dangerous Dave.'

315 27

'Petrus Two isn't actually my cache, you understand,' said David Mead. 'But I know it well. And I've got a few of my own in this area. Some of the best, if I say so myself.'

Dangerous Dave wasn't quite what Cooper would have expected. He was a tall, athletic man in his thirties, with his hair cropped very short. He could have been a police officer, but he explained that he was a fireman based in a station on the outskirts of Sheffield. He liked to spend his off-duty time walking in the Peak District, and had been fascinated to hear from a friend that there was a sport where he could use his GPS unit as well.

'But you do know the person who left this particular cache, Mr Mead?' asked Fry.

'Oh, yes. He's OK. He's been a geocacher for years. I've met him a few times, but I think he's on holiday at the moment.'

'All right. And what about these other people?'

She passed Mead a list of names transcribed from the log book left in the cache. He looked through it, nodding occasionally. 'They're all familiar names. Some of them I've met. The rest I've seen posting their reports on the website, or signing in other log books.'

316 'You'd say they were all genuine, er .. . geocachers, then?'

'Yes, I would. It's quite a small community in the sport. We tend to know each other.'

'What about the items that people put into a cache? What's the protocol?'

'We do have some rules. Common sense, really. No explosives, ammunition, knives, drugs or alcohol. Nothing illegal. Oh, and food items are always a bad idea - animals will chew through the box and destroy the cache. So most people leave small toys, novelty items, perhaps a CD or a book, stuff like that.'

'And what is this exactly?' asked Fry, holding up the bag containing the purple grasshopper with its metal tag.

'A hitchhiker.'

'A what?'

'Or, if it has a Groundspeak tag, a Travel Bug.'

'Yes, it does.'

'Well, a hitchhiker is an item that you can move from cache to cache,' said Mead. 'There's a candle that has travelled from Australia to Arizona, and a Mr Potato Head that hops from cache to cache all over the place. With a Travel Bug, you can track your hitchhiker's travels through the website.'

'And all this is done with the help of GPS?'

'A good GPS unit can give you an approximate location within around six to twenty feet, as long as it isn't located somewhere really inaccessible where you need specialist equipment. But you don't need to know all the technical jargon. All you need to be able to do is to enter a waypoint.'

'And when you reach the co-ordinates and locate a cache, you open it up to make an entry in the log book?'

'Sometimes you have to wait for muggles to get clear of the area,' said Mead.

'Muggles?'

'Members of the public. Non geocachers. Usually hikers or mountain bikers, just passing by on a footpath or trail. But

317 now and then they can do something infuriating, like settling down near a cache site to have their lunch. You can't open a cache while they're there, because it gives the location away to muggles. You either have to sit it out and wait for them to go, or move on to another site.'

'Aren't muggles the non-wizards in the Harry Potter books?' asked Cooper.

'It's the same sort of thing, really.'

'People who aren't in the know and have to be kept out of the secret?'

'Exactly.'

Fry sighed. 'And in addition to making an entry in the log book, do I understand that the normal practice would be to take an item from the cache?'

'Only if you put something else in to replace it,' said Mead. 'That's the rule. Otherwise it's TNLN.'

'I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to explain that.'

'TNLN: Take Nothing, Leave Nothing.'

TNLN. Cooper liked that idea. It was a good motto for anyone visiting the national park, where the number of wild flowers picked illegally was exceeded only by the amount of litter left behind. Visitors were constantly urged to take only photos and leave nothing but footprints. If only it were so simple.