The Dead Place (44 page)

Cooper studied her face, detecting the frustration she was trying to restrain.

'Just one?' he said. 'Let me guess - the glow-in-the-dark skeleton key-ring? The classic symbol of death, a clever reminder from our caller.'

'Actually,' said Fry, 'the key-ring was left by a twelve-year old girl from Hathersage who goes out walking with her grandmother every Sunday. She bought the thing as a souvenir in Whitby.'

'The Dracula Experience?'

'Probably.' Fry sighed. 'As a matter of fact, the one unidentified item from the Petrus Two cache is the bloody Beatrix Potter book.'

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Cooper sat watching his windscreen wipers as he waited for the funeral cortege to pass. Then he turned the Toyota round. He eased out into the road, cutting in front of a delivery van and raising his hand in a conciliatory gesture when the driver glared at him. He soon caught up with the last mourners' car and stayed close behind it as the cortege wound its way through the wet streets. The limousines were so distinctive that he'd spotted them coming towards him before he got within three hundred yards of Hudson and Slack. There wasn't much chance around here of staying unnoticed in a Daimler with personalized number plates, even without the oak veneer coffin in the back.

When Cooper arrived at the crematorium, Melvyn Hudson was already standing in the porte-cochere talking to Christopher Lloyd. Hudson seemed to recognize the Toyota. He lost interest in what Lloyd was saying to him as he watched Cooper park behind the mourners' cars.

But Cooper didn't approach Hudson directly. Let him worry for a few minutes. It was a good tactic, and he intended to exploit it. So he walked through the car park, past the floral tributes and the metal stakes with the day's name cards on them. Many of the people cremated here were commemorated by rose bushes in the garden of remembrance. There were long, circular beds of them, separated by neatly mown grass. Cooper recalled Madeleine Chadwick's enthusiasm for roses. The triumph of good over evil. The scented bloom and the eternal thorns.

The garden wasn't as peaceful as he'd expected. Traffic on the ring road created a constant background to the sound of birdsong. The traces of mercury emitted from the crematorium chimney would be battling against exhaust fumes in the pollution stakes.

After the funeral party had gone into the chapel, Cooper looked around for the Hudson and Slack bearers. Having taken in the coffin, the bearers had left the chapel and were

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taking the chance to have a break until the service was over. They were standing in their black suits in the shelter of a wall near the cars, smoking cigarettes and chatting.

'Mr McGowan? Could I have a word?'

'Melvyn won't like you turning up at funerals like this,' said McGowan, watching Cooper with a thin smile. 'It might be bad for business.'

He had a cocky waggle of the head when he spoke. Cooper had seen it before, usually in people who had experience with the police and thought they knew their rights.

'Where's Vernon today?' he asked.

'He called in sick.'

'What's wrong with him?'

'No idea.'

'Had he mentioned that he wasn't feeling well?'

'Not to me. Come to think of it, he's not usually the type to be sick, or skiving either. Vernon's the most reliable bloke we've got, in his way.'

'Perhaps he had a hard night,' said Cooper. 'I don't suppose it's the best thing in the world to turn up at a funeral with a hangover.'

'Well, I don't know,' said McGowan. 'A few pale faces and sunken eyes would probably suit the occasion. A touch of the undead, if you get what I mean? As long as you don't actually throw up in the hearse.'

Cooper smiled politely. He'd heard worse comments at scenes of violent crime - the ghoulish humour of people who had to laugh in the face of death, because they met it every day.

'Anyway,' said McGowan, 'Vernon doesn't drink.'

Ironically, it was something Vernon Slack had said that was bothering Cooper. And that puzzled him. After all, it wasn't as if Vernon had actually told him anything - certainly nothing he didn't already know. But he did see Melvyn Hudson and Christopher Lloyd and the others on a day-to-day basis, when

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they were off guard. Perhaps they weren't too careful about what they said when Vernon was nearby with his head under a bonnet. In a way, Vernon might be the very person to see through the facades and know the truth.

Cooper went back over his conversations with Vernon. They'd been limited and brief. Awkward and unhelpful, in fact. He shook his head. There was nothing jumping out at him. So maybe it wasn't anything Vernon had said, but the way that he'd said it. If he hadn't registered it at the time, he'd probably never recall it now.

'There isn't any need for it, you see,' Vernon had said. 'We do the job and look after the grievers, and then we go home. Sometimes, you don't even know the details of a call until you turn up at the house to do a removal. The boss sees to everything else.'

Cooper's pace slowed a little as the memory came to him. He could hear Vernon saying it now, word for word, yet he hadn't taken any notice of it at the time. It was probably nothing, of course. But it was something to mention, when the moment was right.

Gavin Murfin collapsed into his chair with a sigh, threw a paper bag into the bin and ripped open a plastic sandwich box.

'Getting these names was like pulling teeth,' he said.

Fry looked up. Was this an early lunch or a late breakfast? She could never tell with Gavin.

'What names?' she said.

'The staff who worked at Hudson and Slack eighteen months ago.'

'The whatr

Startled by her tone, Murfin stopped with a sandwich halfway to his mouth. 'What's up?'

'Did you say you had a list of staff who worked at Hudson and Slack?'

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'Yeah. You asked me to get the background on Richard Slack's RTA. Well, some clever bugger at the time thought it was a bit funny that Slack was doing a call-out on his own. What with that and the woman who thought she saw someone running off, this DC decided to check with everyone at the firm, in case Slack had contacted them before the accident. A waste of time, as it happens, but you've got to admit it's thorough.'

'Gavin, you're wonderful.'

Murfin bit into his sandwich with satisfaction.

'Cheers. Do you want to phone my missus and tell her that? She'd appreciate it.'

'We lost Hudson and Slack's personnel records in the fire last night,' said Fry. 'Very convenient for Mr Hudson, it seems. He tried to make out his records weren't comprehensive, because some of his staff were casual workers.'

'Presumably he must have known who they were, though. He had to pay them, after all.'

'Well, I suppose that might have been the problem. Cash with no questions asked.'

'And nothing going to the tax man, like?'

'Well done anyway, Gavin. Is there anyone we know on the list?'

'Not that jumps out at me. But I'll get them run through the PNC and do an intelligence check.'

'Let me see.'

Murfin passed across the list. Fry was glad to have it in her hand before any more crumbs landed on it. She glanced quickly down it, noting a few familiar names, but several that were new to her. Eighteen months wasn't all that long ago, but there seemed to have been quite a turnover, particularly among the bearers and drivers.

'Oh, wow,' she said.

'What's up now?'

'That's one name I didn't expect. Thomas Edward Jarvis, Litton Foot. This is the man with the dogs, isn't it, Gavin?'

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'You're right,' said Murfin. 'Didn't one get shot?'

Fry put down the list. 'Who would have guessed that Mr Jarvis once worked for Hudson and Slack? Not his friend Ben Cooper, I bet.'

'Are you going to tell him, Sarge?'

But Fry only stared at him again as he finished off his sandwich.

'Gavin,' she said, 'what do you mean "the woman who thought she saw someone running off"?'

This morning, the bereaved had opted for traditional music. Cooper could hear the sound of an electronic organ playing the first mournful notes. He was watching the previous party of mourners file past the flowers in the rain when his mobile rang, and he recognized Fry's number on the caller display.

'Yes, Diane?'

'Thomas Jarvis. Did you know he worked at Hudson and Slack eighteen months ago?'

'No, I had no idea,' said Cooper.

'He's never mentioned that when you talked to him?'

'No. Well, there's no reason why he should have done the subject of Hudson and Slack never came up. But you're sure he worked there? Eighteen months ago?'

'He was listed as an employee during the enquiry into Richard Slack's crash.'

'It's certainly an odd coincidence, isn't it?'

'Coincidence? Ben, you do like to give people the benefit of the doubt, don't you?'

'What do you mean?'

'We wondered why none of Jarvis's dogs detected the presence of a decomposing corpse while it was lying in the woods close to his property,' she said. 'Remember?'

'Yes, but there was a possible explanation for that. Somebody might have returned to the site and exposed the

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remains fairly recently, after they'd already become skeletonized and the odour had dissipated.'

'But there's no evidence to support that theory, is there?'

'Well, no.'

'So we should consider an alternative scenario.'

Cooper didn't like the sound of that. In Fry's vocabulary, an alternative scenario usually meant bad news for somebody.

'You have a scenario in mind, do you, Diane?'

'Of course. What's more likely than that one of Jarvis's dogs did detect the decomposing corpse? Maybe all his dogs knew the corpse was there and made a fuss about it - barked or pointed at it with their noses, or whatever dogs do.'

Cooper laughed. 'And don't you think Tom Jarvis would have realized?'

'Yes.'

There was silence on the other end of the phone as Fry waited expectantly. Cooper knew he was supposed to reach the same conclusion that she had, without having to be prompted. In this case, there was a conclusion he didn't want to come to. But she'd lose patience if she had to wait too long.

'For God's sake, Ben,' she said. 'What if Jarvis didn't take any notice of the dogs' behaviour for one very simple reason he already knew perfectly well that the body was there.'

Cooper began to pace up and down, aware of some of the mourners for the next funeral watching him.

'Yes, I understand what you're saying, Diane.'

'You've got to make Jarvis talk. I know what you're like when you get together with one of your rural soul mates, Ben. You communicate in manly grunts and meaningful silences. But make sure you ask him some tough questions.'

'I'll do it today. But I have one other visit to make first.'

'OK. And there's another thing you need to know . . .'

Cooper had already started heading back to his car. He swapped the phone to his other hand to reach the pocket with his keys in.

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'What's that?'

'Do you remember that Mr Slack was on his own when he died in the car crash?'

'Yes?'

'Well, I wondered about that. How likely is it that a funeral director would go out to a call on his own? There's no way one person can shift a dead body easily, unless it's a small child's.'

'Maybe someone was going to meet him there?' said Cooper.

'Well, it's possible. But Gavin had a look at the inquest report.'

'And?'

'There was some question over the testimony of a witness a female motorist who was first at the accident scene and called 999. She told the traffic officers she'd seen someone about half a mile back, before she came on the crash site, which was just around a bend. She saw somebody jogging near the side of the road. It was pitch dark, of course. Unfortunately, she had no reason to take notice at the time it was before she knew there was a crash. She was just struck by the fact that the individual was running. And, most importantly, he wasn't running along the verge but up the banking, as if he was heading across the fields away from the road. She had the impression he'd done that because he heard her car coming.'

'Definitely a man?'

'She was fairly confident about that.'

'It's very vague, Diane.'

'That's what the coroner thought. There was no convincing evidence that anyone was in the van with Richard Slack. The staff at the firm were interviewed, but they all said the same thing - Richard hadn't asked them to go with him on the call.'

'What are you saying?'

Cooper was still standing by his car when the organ started

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up in the crematorium chapel. Not 'Abide With Me', but something else that he couldn't identify at first. The voices of the congregation coming in on the opening lines disguised the tune, rather than making it clearer.

'It was a very late call,' said Fry. 'Three o'clock in the morning. I think Richard Slack wouldn't have wanted to call out one of the casual staff. A family firm like that, I think he would have phoned his partner to do the job.'

'Melvyn Hudson.'

'Of course.'

'Diane, even if your theory is correct, a passenger leaving the scene of an accident isn't a major crime. If Hudson was in the van, he might have been injured himself. He might have been in shock or something.'

'Like I said, this was a really late call. Early hours of the morning, in fact. There was no traffic around on that road at three a.m. The lady who found the crash was only on the road because she had to catch an early flight from East Midlands Airport and it was a shortcut from her home to the Ml. As the coroner said, the absence of traffic was unfortunate. Because Richard Slack wasn't killed immediately. He died from loss of blood, and from choking on his own vomit, as a result of the position he was left in after the crash.'

'Oh, God.'

'Exactly. The medical reports said he would most likely have survived, if only somebody had been on hand to put him into the recovery position and phone for an ambulance. But nobody was. And so Richard Slack died.'