The Dead Place (43 page)

'Leaving Casey himself with free run of the estate?'

'Yes.'

'But a free run to do what, Diane? Dump dead bodies in the undergrowth?'

'Or provide the opportunity for somebody else to do it.'

Tt'd be a bit risky,' said Cooper. 'What if a buyer came along to inspect the property? He could have ended up with surveyors and builders swarming all over the estate.'

'Not without plenty of warning. Casey is the man with the keys, remember. Besides, the hall has been on the market for two years. I'll bet he exhausted the supply of potential buyers a long time ago.'

'Two years, that's right. . .' Cooper worked the timings out in his head. 'I bet whoever dumped Audrey Steele's body was

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hoping the hall would never find a buyer, and the estate would stay neglected. He overlooked the fact that "right to roam" would give walkers free access.'

'I wonder if Casey ever suggested bringing the price of the property down,' said Fry.

'Why?'

'Well, that's what an agent would normally do if he couldn't find a buyer. He'd advise the seller to come down a bit. If you refuse to lower the price, it looks as though you're not serious about selling.'

'You seem to know a lot about the property market all of a sudden, Diane. I thought you'd never owned a house of your own. You rent a flat, like me.'

'I haven't always lived in Derbyshire. I had a life in civilization before I came here.'

Fry turned away and looked out of the car window, as if her thoughts had started to stray.

'Well, if Alder Hall is "the dead place",' said Cooper, 'then John Casey was right about one thing, at least.'

'What's that?'

'It's a little different from the normal house sale.'

He laughed, and glanced at Fry. But her face never changed. She'd drifted off somewhere, to a place where there wasn't much to laugh about.

The car park at Hudson and Slack was empty, except for the fire investigator's van and two police vehicles. There appeared to be no damage to the building at first, as Cooper and Fry drove down the street. The sign over the entrance was intact, and still claimed Hudson and Slack to be a dependable family business. It was only when they parked next to a patrol car that they saw the blackened walls and shattered windows. The parking area was running with water, but it was difficult to tell how much of it was rain and how much was from the firefighters' hoses.

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'The damage is serious, but confined to the offices and a store room,' said the fire investigator, brushing soot off his fluorescent jacket. 'Luckily, the internal doors are all pretty solid and fitted with automatic closure mechanisms. They resisted the flames long enough for the first appliance on the scene to get the fire under control within half an hour or so.'

'There's no doubt it was started deliberately?' asked Fry.

'None at all. The back door has been forced, and there are indications of accelerant all over the store room. The fire ignited within five or six feet of the doorway. Similar story with the vehicle.'

'Vehicle?'

He gestured towards the compound behind the building. 'There's a burnt-out hearse. Your arsonists smashed the windscreen, chucked accelerant in and torched it. I found the remains of a plastic petrol can on the front seat.'

'That might be useful.'

The investigator smiled. 'Plastic doesn't hold up well in a fire, so it's just a molten lump. But you're welcome to it. I doubt Forensics will tell you much, except that it's green.'

'Green? What does that mean?'

'Well, if they were following regulations, the petrol should have been unleaded.'

Two lines of crime scene tape stretched from the building to the fence, and a uniformed officer in a waterproof jacket stood by with a clipboard, guarding the perimeter. There was a cough and a shower of rubble, and a scenes of crime officer emerged from the damaged doorway. Cooper saw with pleasure that it was Liz Petty. Well, given current staffing levels, it was a fifty-fifty chance she'd have been called out.

Petty smiled, then looked at Fry and ducked her head to wipe a smear of soot from her face with a gloved hand.

'No secret about what happened here,' she said.

'So we hear,' said Fry. 'But no doubt you've got a contribution to make.'

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The SOCO blinked slightly, but carefully avoided meeting anyone's eye. She pointed at the fence. 'That's the way the offenders entered the property. They cut the fence and came over the wall from the railway line.'

Cooper walked to the wall and looked down into the cutting. 'There are some industrial units on the other side of the line.'

'Security cameras?' asked Fry.

'A few, but they're covering their own premises. There's no reason they should have a camera pointing this way.'

'We'll have to see if any of them had a night shift working.'

Petty ran a hand along the edge of the door frame. 'I've lifted some good tool marks from the door. But it was probably just an ordinary crowbar or wrecking bar they used.'

'Why does this door open outwards?' asked Fry.

'Ironically, because it's a fire exit.'

'And there was accelerant used in the store room?'

'Yes, and two inner doors were forced open. By the way, I'd like to get the doors removed and taken to the lab.'

'Why?'

'Well, your offenders were in a hurry, so they didn't bother to jemmy the inner doors - they just kicked them open. I'm pretty sure there are boot prints on the panels. But with the amount of fire damage, we'll need lab facilities to get anything useful from them.'

'You keep saying "they",' said Cooper. 'What makes you think there was more than one person?'

Petty shrugged. 'Well, there's no direct evidence, unless we can get two separate boot prints from the doors. But they didn't hang about here, you know. The fire service say they had a crew on the scene within ten minutes of the alarm. I'd say there were two people, possibly three. Two to break the doors open, while the third spread the petrol. Then they got out of the building quick, chucked in a match or a lighted rag, and left the scene. Apart from the one who wasn't satisfied with what he'd achieved . . .'

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'You mean the hearse.'

'Yes. That wasn't really necessary. It looks like spite. It must have delayed their getaway by a couple of minutes.'

Without crossing the tape, Cooper moved to where he could see the compound and the scorched paintwork of the hearse. Curiously, only the front end of the vehicle had been damaged, leaving the rear compartment almost intact, though blackened inside by smoke.

'What happened to the other vehicles?' asked Fry. 'There were several limousines in there, and another hearse, too.'

'The staff were allowed to remove them,' said Petty. 'They had a funeral scheduled first thing this morning, so the uniforms let them get on with it. There was even a body in the fridge. That part of the building is undamaged, but the power's off, so they could hardly leave the poor soul in there.'

'I suppose it was the right decision,' said Fry grudgingly. 'Can we get inside, or are you still keeping the place to yourself?' 'Just walk on the stepping plates and stay close to the wall.'

Cooper hung back as Fry went inside. He looked at Petty. 'Sorry about Diane. She's been like that ever since I came on duty. I don't know what's up with her.'

The SOCO began to strip off her gloves. Her face was flushed and glittering with rain. T think I might know.'

'Really? Has she talked to you?'

'I can't tell you, Ben.' She looked at the window of the store room, protected by steel bars but with its glass shattered from the heat of the fire. 'You'd better go, or you'll be in trouble.'

Cooper began to move towards the doorway, but hesitated. 'See you later?'

Petty nodded. 'Yeah.'

Diane Fry stood in the burnt-out building, her nostrils filled with the stench of smoke and charred furniture. Water still

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sloshed around on the floor from the fire crew's hoses, black and floating with ash. She was aware of Cooper talking to Liz Petty outside, but she couldn't hear what they were saying, and she didn't want to. She moved further away from the window, in case she overheard her name. Deep inside, she was holding on to a tide of anger. It felt too strong to resist for ever, or the dam would burst. She had to channel it in some way.

She looked around the storage area. A doorway straight ahead of her led into what she remembered as the staff room, used by the bearers and office staff for their lunch breaks. There were a couple of tables and some tubular steel chairs, a sink, a cooker, a fridge. Paper had been seared from the walls and hung in shreds, like burned skin. The vinyl flooring had melted and bubbled into twisted shapes, lunar contours that swallowed the shadows from the crime scene lights.

To the right, a second door stood open. Fry moved cautiously across the room, following the aluminium stepping plates. She was irrationally afraid of touching anything - not in case she left fingerprints, but for fear that the scorched surfaces would leave black marks on her skin and clothes. She felt as though they'd somehow contaminate her, bring out on her body the dark stains she could feel growing in her mind ever since she'd listened to those phone calls.

Everywhere she'd gone during the last few days, she'd been wondering if she was in the dead place. She'd been expecting to find a body at any moment, as if a decomposing bundle of bloodied sacking lay behind every door, or the rustling of feeding maggots waited somewhere on the edge of her hearing. But now she wasn't even supposed to be looking. No more chasing around the countryside.

Hardly realizing she was still moving, Fry found herself in the next room. What place was this? At first, she couldn't interpret the sea of black pulp at her feet, sodden heaps rising several inches out of the water. A row of grimy shapes ran

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along one wall, stained metal drawers gaping open. Filing cabinets. She was in the room behind the main office, where the records were kept.

'Oh, God.'

Fry turned and saw Cooper behind her in the doorway. He reached out a hand to one of the filing cabinets and rubbed the soot off a laminated label.

'Personnel files,' he said. 'They've burned the personnel files.'

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Later that morning, Cooper finally got a chance to catch up on the files filling his pending tray, refreshing his memory of them in case there was anything important he'd forgotten. He didn't achieve much. But handling the files made him feel a bit better, as if touching them might keep an enquiry alive.

He looked up to make sure he could get Diane Fry's attention. 'I think some of Audrey Steele's family were responsible for that arson attack,' he said. 'Revenge on Audrey's behalf.'

'Revenge for what? We don't know what happened to her yet.'

'It would be an emotional response, not a logical one. But they were understandably upset, and they had to find someone to blame. I think they heard all they really wanted to hear last time I visited Mrs Gill.'

'I saw some of the family at the woodland burial,' said Fry. 'I bet a few of them are known to us. One of them was Micky Ellis's brother, for a start. Let's see if we can find any violent offences on their records.'

'This is the Devonshire Estate we're talking about,' said Cooper. 'If they didn't carry out the arson attack themselves, they're bound to know people who'd do it for a few quid.'

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'You're right. But we need to put some effort into it. I'd like to feel sure in my own mind that Audrey Steele's family were responsible. Otherwise, I might start suspecting that someone at Hudson and Slack did it.'

Cooper nodded. 'It could turn out to be very convenient for somebody that the personnel files were burned.'

'Exactly. I've asked Forensics to recover as much as they can. But the fire and the firemen's hoses did a pretty good job between them, from what I saw.'

'That's an odd thing, actually,' said Cooper. 'Those filing cabinets were steel. They're designed to be fire resistant, as long as you keep the drawers closed.'

'Those drawers looked as though they were open when the fire started.'

'Yes, I think they must have been, for the contents to burn like that.'

Fry looked at him. 'No, it means nothing. The arsonists probably opened the drawers and threw the files on the floor to get a better blaze going, that's all.'

'Confidential files? The cabinets should have been locked, surely?'

'We need to ask the office staff.'

Cooper looked at his watch and began to put on his jacket. 'Well, let me know if there's anything you want me to do, Diane.'

'Where are you off to?'

'I want to speak to Vernon Slack again. He's frightened of something, and I'm going to find out what. And then I might tackle Billy McGowan.'

'McGowan? Not on your own, you don't. Do you hear me?'

'OK.'

'And, Ben - what about the dog?'

'I talked to one of the officers working with Poacher Watch. According to local intelligence, lampers often operate on parts of the Alder Hall estate, but there have never been any complaints from the owners.'

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Fry smiled. 'How strange. What do you bet that Mr Casey is making a bit of money on the side by giving them access?'

'Taking a cut from poaching gangs? It's possible.'

'It would explain why he wants to keep the place to himself.'

'Maybe that ex-employee would have something to tell us.'

'Maurice Goodwin, yes.'

'The thing is,' said Cooper, 'I reckon it was probably lampers who shot Tom Jarvis's dog. They could have mistaken it for a fox, or a small deer. But Jarvis doesn't seem to want to believe that. He's assuming someone did it deliberately. In fact, I suspect he might even have a name or two in mind, but he's not saying who they are.'

'You'll have to find a way of getting him to open up, Ben.'

'I'll try.'

'By the way,' said Fry, 'David Mead called. You remember the rambling fireman?'

'Of course.'

'Well, Mr Mead has done a good job for us. He's tracked down the people who left items in the Petrus Two cache - all except one. There's just a single item on the list that no one is owning up to.'