Blind to the Bones. Stephen Booth

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       7

      Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin had arrived outside a modern office building made of steel, concrete blocks and aluminium cladding. It stood in the middle of a business park on the southern outskirts of Edendale, constructed on what had once been the flood plain of the River Eden.

      ‘This is it,’ said Murfin. ‘Eden Valley Software Solutions. Have you seen all that smoked glass and fancy furniture? It looks like a brothel.’

      ‘You must know some high-class brothels in Edendale,’ said Fry.

      ‘OK. A hairdresser’s, then.’

      As Murfin got out of the car, Fry glanced suspiciously at a paper bag he had left on the ledge over the fascia.

      ‘What’s in the bag, Gavin?’ she said.

      ‘Don’t worry. It’s for later,’ he said.

      ‘Much later, I hope.’

      Fry had taken her Peugeot to be valeted only two days before, and it was largely because she could no longer stand the debris left by Gavin Murfin when he had been a passenger. There had been crumbs and sticky traces of all kinds ground into her carpet and upholstery. In fact, the man at the valeting company had asked her how many children she had. He had imagined her to be a mum who got lumbered with a car full of whining toddlers on the nursery school run every day. It had been embarrassing, and it was Murfin’s fault.

      As soon as they announced themselves at Eden Valley Software Solutions, Alex Dearden emerged from a corridor to meet them in the reception area. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with a designer logo on it that was so small Fry would have had to rest her nose on his left nipple to read it. Dearden’s face was slim and fine-boned, but his looks were spoiled by two little pouches at the sides of his mouth, which made him look a bit like an angry hamster. His beard might have disguised the effect, except that current fashion dictated he could only have a goatee.

      ‘You have to sign in and get ID badges,’ said Dearden. ‘Sorry about that. Security, you know.’

      ‘That’s quite all right, sir,’ said Fry. ‘We’re lucky that you’re open at all on a Saturday.’

      ‘Oh, it’s seven days a week for some of us here at the moment.’

      When they had signed in, Dearden went to a solid-looking door and stood with his back carefully turned towards them as he keyed numbers into a keypad. The door clicked, and he pulled it open. A burst of noise came down the corridor – voices talking and laughing, someone shouting, a printer humming.

      ‘It’s just like going into our custody suite back at the station,’ said Murfin. ‘I guess they don’t want your inmates escaping and running amok on the streets either?’

      Dearden laughed politely. ‘Actually, we’re thinking of switching over to fingerprint-recognition technology,’ he said. ‘Much more secure. Code numbers are too easy to get hold of.’

      ‘Absolutely. We can’t fault you for your security measures.’

      ‘You have to be careful,’ said Dearden. ‘There’s a lot of crime about.’

      ‘Have you ever had any problem with break-ins here?’

      ‘Actually, no. We had a bit of vandalism a while ago. Somebody broke the window in the front of reception. We’ve had reinforced glass put in since then. They scrawled graffiti on the outside wall, too. Something about Manchester United FC, all spelled wrong.’

      ‘That doesn’t sound like Edendale’s gang of notorious computer software thieves, anyway.’

      Dearden stopped. ‘My God, who are they?’

      ‘Just joking,’ said Fry. But she saw that Dearden wasn’t amused.

      ‘There’s an awful lot of money tied up in what we’re developing here,’ he said. ‘Unbelievable amounts of money. There’s no way of calculating how much.’

      ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

      ‘You don’t appreciate what we’re developing here. It’s really ground-breaking stuff. If we roll some of these programs out for all platforms –’

      ‘There’s no need to explain,’ said Fry. ‘That wasn’t what we came about.’

      But Dearden wanted to explain. Or at least, he wanted to talk about a subject that had nothing to do with a visit by the police.

      ‘We’ve actually used top consultant psychologists in the development of this concept,’ said Dearden. ‘That’s how serious we are about it.’

      ‘Mmm.’

      Dearden had led them down the corridor and into a small conference room, where there was a long table, a flipchart on a stand, and a projection screen against the end wall. It looked like a million other meeting rooms that Fry had been in for briefings and training sessions. She looked around for an overhead projector to go with the screen. But of course presentations here would be done in PowerPoint from someone’s laptop.

      To her surprise, Alex Dearden sat at the head of the table as if he were about to chair a meeting. Fry had expected to be facing him across the table. This way suited her, though. It meant she and Murfin could be on either side of him. Dearden couldn’t concentrate on both of them at once.

      ‘It’s about Emma Renshaw,’ said Fry, taking a chair.

      ‘Emma? But that’s a long time ago,’ said Dearden. ‘It was all dealt with a long time ago.’

      ‘It wasn’t exactly dealt with, sir. Emma has never been found.’

      ‘Of course, I know that. And it’s been very distressing for all of us who knew her.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘But, I mean, I told the police everything I knew at the time, which wasn’t very much. It was all gone through over and over, though it didn’t do any good. Tragic though it is for her family, I think there comes a point when we have to put these things behind us and move on, don’t you?’

      Fry stared at him. She had to remind herself how old Alex Dearden was. Twenty-two, according to his file. But he sounded like someone thirty years older. He sounded like a respectable middle-aged citizen irritated at being pestered over something that had happened long ago in his past, when he had been a different person entirely.

      ‘You knew Emma from a very young age, I believe,’ said Fry.

      ‘For ever. We lived in the same village. In Withens. Do you know it at all?’

      ‘I haven’t been there yet.’

      ‘Well, СКАЧАТЬ