Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ cottages at Quith Holes back on to the Baulk,’ he said. ‘Not far from where Laura Vernon was found. There’s the Old Mill there too. It does teas and bed and breakfast now.’

      ‘Who doesn’t round here?’ said Fry as they passed another farmhouse advertising holiday accommodation.

      

      She had to admit that Ben Cooper was a competent driver. She felt able to concentrate on absorbing the details from the file before they arrived at Moorhay. There was a photograph of Laura Vernon as she had been in life, though her hair was a different colour from that of the dead girl Fry had seen – not quite so virulent a shade of red. The photo had been blown up from one supplied by the Vernons on the day their daughter had gone missing. Fry had seen the original picture in the action file, before the case had become a murder enquiry and had been removed from the CID room. The full shot had shown young Laura in a garden, with a clump of rhododendrons in full bloom behind her, a glimpse of a stone balustrade and the top of a flight of steps to one side, and a black and white Border collie asleep on the grass at her feet. But the enlargement showed only her head and the top half of her body. The background had been cut out, removing Laura from her environment as effectively as someone had removed her from life.

      There was a list of the names and addresses of all Laura Vernon’s known contacts in Moorhay and the surrounding area. It was a pitifully short list for a fifteen-year-old girl. Top of it was Lee Sherratt, aged twenty, of 12, Wye Close, Moorhay. He had worked as a gardener at the Mount until dismissed from his job last Thursday by Laura’s father, Graham Vernon. Sherratt had been interviewed when Laura was first reported missing, but had not been seen since Sunday. Unlike the Vernons, the Sherratts had not reported their son missing. His name was marked in red, which meant tracing him was a priority.

      Further down the list were Andrew and Margaret Milner and their daughter Helen. Andrew was also noted as an employee of Graham Vernon’s. As for Helen, Fry remembered her from her visit to Dial Cottage with Tailby and Hitchens. She had stayed close to the old man when the police had arrived – closer than his own wife, it had seemed. Close relationships within families always seemed a bit suspect to Diane Fry; she felt she didn’t quite understand them.

      She looked up at Cooper, watching his profile as he drove. She had a sudden urge to tell him to tidy himself up before they met the public. She wanted to straighten his tie, to push his hair back from his forehead. That boyish look did absolutely nothing for her.

      But she could see that he was completely absorbed with his own thoughts, his face closed to the outside world. It struck her that they were not happy thoughts, but she dismissed it as none of her business and returned to her file.

      

      Ben Cooper was remembering the smell. There had been a stink in the room worse than anything he had ever smelt on a farm. No cesspit, no slurry tank, no innards from a freshly gutted rabbit or pheasant had ever smelt as bad as the entirely human stench that filled that room. There was excrement daubed across the wallpaper and on the bedclothes piled on the floor. A pool of urine was drying into a sticky mass on the carpet near where other similar puddles had been scrubbed clean with disinfectant, leaving paler patches like the remnants of some virulent skin disease. A chair lay on the rug with one leg missing. A curtain had been torn off its rail, and the pages of books and magazines were scattered like dead leaves on every surface. A second pink slipper sat ludicrously in a wooden fruit bowl on the chest of drawers, and a thin trickle of blood ran down across the top drawer, splitting into two forks across the wooden handle. The drawers and the wardrobe had been emptied of their contents, which were heaped at random on the bed.

      It was from beneath the heap of clothes that the noise came, monotonous and inhuman, a low, desperate wailing. When he had moved towards the bed, the mound stirred and the keening turned to a fearful whimper. Cooper knew that the crisis was over, for now. But this had been the worst so far, no doubt about it. The evidence was all around him.

      He leaned closer to a coat with an imitation fur collar, but was careful not to touch the bed, for fear of sparking off a violent reaction. The coat was drenched in a familiar scent that brought a painful lump to his throat.

      ‘It’s Ben,’ he said quietly.

      A white hand was visible briefly as it clutched for a sleeve and the edge of a skirt to pull them closer for concealment. The fingers withdrew again into the darkness like a crab retreating into its shell. The whimpering stopped.

      ‘It was the devil,’ said a small voice from deep in the pile of clothes. ‘The devil made me do it.’

      The mingled odours of stale scent, sweat and excrement and urine made Cooper feel he was about to be sick. He swallowed and forced himself to keep his voice steady.

      ‘The devil’s gone away.’

      The hand slowly reappeared, and Cooper clasped it in his fingers, shocked by its icy coldness.

      ‘You can come out now, Mum,’ he said. ‘The devil’s gone away.’

      

      ‘Ben?’ said Fry.

      ‘Yes?’ He jerked back to attention. He looked to Fry as if he had been asleep and dreaming. Or maybe going through a familiar nightmare.

      ‘Why did you ask about Harry Dickinson during the briefing this morning?’

      She was curious why he had drawn attention to himself at the wrong time, when self-interest had clearly indicated that it was a time to keep quiet and keep his head down for a while. But she couldn’t ask him that outright.

      ‘The person who finds the body is always a possible suspect,’ he said.

      ‘Oh really? But I thought Dickinson only found the trainer. It was you who actually found the body.’

      ‘Yes, but you know what I mean.’

      ‘Anyway, Dickinson is seventy-eight years old. An awkward old sod, I’ll give you that. But a definite pipe-and-slippers man. He hardly looked strong enough to unzip his own fly, let alone commit a violent assault on a healthy fifteen-year-old girl.’

      ‘I’m not sure you’re right there, Diane.’

      ‘Oh? What are you basing your suspicion on?’

      ‘Nothing really. Just a feeling I had when I was there, in the cottage. A feeling about that family.’

      ‘A feeling? Oh yeah, right, Ben.’

      ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

      ‘You do? Is that another feeling? Tell you what, do me a favour – while we’re together as a team, don’t involve me in any of your feelings. I prefer the facts.’

      They lapsed into silence again for the rest of the drive. Fry mentally dismissed Ben Cooper’s talk of feelings. She didn’t believe he could know the facts about relationships in families. He was what she thought of as the social worker type of police officer – the sort who thought there were no villains in the world, only victims, that people who did anything wrong must necessarily be sick and in need of help. Not only that, but he was obviously well-settled, popular, uncomplicated, with dozens of friends and relatives around him, smothering him with comfort and support until his view of the real world was distorted by affection.

      She didn’t think he could possibly know what СКАЧАТЬ