Black Dog

They were, of course, assuming the body was that of Laura Vernon. There seemed little doubt, but it was not considered a fact until one of her parents had been dragged through the process of identification.

‘No hope of getting the caravan down here,’ said Tailby.

‘Nowhere near, sir,’ agreed Hitchens.

‘Is there a farm track nearby? What’s over that side of the trees?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

Hitchens and Tailby both turned to look at Fry. Hitchens frowned when he saw who she was, as if he had been expecting someone else.

‘See if you can find out, Fry,’ he said. ‘Closest access we can get for the caravan.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Fry wondered how she was expected to do this, when there was no habitation in sight. The village itself was invisible beyond the huge outcrop of rock. There was a cliff face at her back and dense woodland stretching in front of her down to the road.

She was aware of the tall DCI studying her. He had a thin, bony face and keen grey eyes with a vigilant air. She had not encountered him face to face until now – he had simply been a figure passing in the distance once, pointed out to her and noted as one of the people who mattered. The last thing she wanted to do was to look useless now, on their first meeting. First impressions lasted a long time.

‘Perhaps you could find somebody who has a bit of local knowledge,’ suggested Tailby.

Hitchens said: ‘Maybe we’d better ask –’

Then Diane Fry registered the noise that she had been aware of in the background all the time they had been on the hillside. It was a juddering and clattering noise, stationary now somewhere over the trees to the east. The helicopter was holding position until its crew were given instructions to return to base.

Fry pulled out her radio, and smiled. ‘I think I’ve got a better idea, sir.’

The DCI understood straightaway. ‘Excellent. Get them to let Scenes and Scientific Support have a location as well for their vans.’

Dr Inglefield had taken only a few minutes before he was walking back up the path towards Tailby.

‘Well, dead all right,’ he said. ‘Skull bashed in, I’d say, not to put too fine a point on it. You’ll get the technical details from the PM, of course, but that’s about it. Rigor is almost completely resolved and decomposition has started. Also we have quite a few maggots hatching in the usual places. Eyes, mouth, nostrils. You know … The pathologist should be able to give you a pretty good idea of the time of death. Normally I’d say at least twenty-four hours, but in this weather …’ He shrugged expressively.

‘Sexually assaulted?’ asked Tailby.

‘Mmm. Some disturbance of the clothing, certainly. More than that I couldn’t say.’

‘I’ll take a quick look while we wait for the pathologist,’ said Tailby to Hitchens.

He pulled on plastic gloves and approached to within a few feet of the body. He would not touch it or anything around it, would not risk disturbing any of the possible forensic evidence waiting for the SOCOs. Inglefield looked at Fry curiously as she pocketed her radio. She had been listening keenly to their conversation even while she made the call.

‘New, are you?’ asked Inglefield. ‘Sorry about the maggots.’

‘New to the area,’ said Fry. ‘I’ve seen maggots on a dead body before. People don’t realize how quickly flies will get into the bodily orifices and lay their eggs, do they, Doctor?’

‘In weather like this the little beggars will be there within minutes of death. The eggs can hatch in another eight hours or so. How long has the girl been missing?’

‘Nearly two days,’ said Fry.

‘There you are then. Plenty of time. But don’t take my word …’

‘It’s a question for the pathologist, yes.’

‘Mrs Van Doon will no doubt give your chaps the chapter and verse. A forensic entomologist will be able to tell you what larval stage they’re going through and all that. That can fix the time of death pretty well.’

There was the sound of engines beyond the trees, and the helicopter appeared again, flying low, guiding a small convoy along the forest track that had been found.

‘I’d better go and direct them,’ said Fry.

‘Somebody was luckier than me,’ said the doctor. ‘My car’s back up the hill there somewhere. Ah well, no doubt the exercise will do me good. It’s what I tell my patients, anyway.’

Fry shepherded the Home Office pathologist and the Scenes of Crime team down the hillside. The SOCOs, a man and a woman, were sweating in their white suits and overshoes as they lugged their cases with them to the taped-off area and pulled their hoods over their heads until they looked like aliens. Tailby was backing away, leaving the way clear for the photographer to set up his lights against the lengthening shadows that were now falling across the scene. The exact position of the body had to be recorded with stills camera and video before the pathologist could get close enough to examine her maggots. Fry turned away. She knew that the next stage would involve the pathologist taking the girl’s rectal temperature.

She was in time to catch DI Hitchens taking a call on his cellphone.

‘Hitchens here. Yes?’

He listened for a minute, his face slipping from a frown into anger and frustration.

‘Get everyone on to it that you can. Yes, yes, I know. But this is a priority. We’re going to look complete idiots. Pull people in from wherever you need to.’

Hitchens looked round to see where Tailby was, and saw him walking back up the slope towards them.

‘Bastard!’ said Hitchens as he pushed the phone into his pocket.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Fry.

‘A team went to pick up Lee Sherratt, and he’s done a runner.’

Fry winced. It was bad luck to lose your prime suspect just when you were hoping that everything would click together easily, that the initial witness statements would tie your man into the scene and the results of forensic tests would sew the case up tight. It was bad luck she didn’t want to be drawn into, she thought, as they watched the DCI approach, peeling off his plastic gloves.

‘We need to get that time of death ascertained as close as we can,’ said Tailby. ‘Then we need the enquiry teams allocated to doing the house-to-house again, Paul.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We need to locate a weapon. Organize the search teams to get started as soon as Scenes are happy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What was the call? Have they picked up the youth yet? Sherratt?’

Hitchens hesitated for the first time.

‘No, sir.’

‘And why not?’

‘They can’t find him. He hasn’t been at home since yesterday afternoon.’

‘I do hope you’re joking.’

Hitchens shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

Tailby scowled, his bushy eyebrows jutting down over cold grey eyes. ‘I don’t believe this. We interview the lad on Sunday when it’s a missing person enquiry, and as soon as a body turns up we’ve lost him.’

‘We had no reason –’

‘Well, we’ve got reason enough now. Reason enough down there, don’t you think?’ said Tailby angrily, gesturing at the spot where Laura Vernon lay.

‘We’ve got patrols trying all possible locations now. But so many men were taken up by the search down here –’

‘They’d damn well better turn the lad up soon. I want to wrap this one up quickly, Paul. Otherwise, people will be connecting it to the Edson case and we’ll have all the hysteria about a serial killer on the loose. We don’t want that – do we, Paul?’

Hitchens turned and looked appealingly at Fry. She kept her face impassive. If people chose to have bad luck, she wasn’t about to offer to share it with them.

‘Right,’ said Tailby. ‘What’s next? Let’s see – what’s his name? The finder?’

‘Dickinson,’ said Hitchens. ‘Harry Dickinson.’

Harry was in the kitchen. He had finally taken off his jacket, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to show white, sinewy arms. At his wrists there was a clear line like a tidemark between the pale skin untouched by sun and his brown, weathered hands, sprinkled with liver spots and something dark and more ingrained. Harry was at the sink using a small blue plastic-handled mop to scrub out the teacups and polish the spoons. His face was as serious as if he were performing brain surgery.

‘He always does the washing-up,’ said Gwen when the detectives came to the door. ‘He says I don’t do it properly.’

‘We’d just like a few words, Mrs Dickinson,’ said Tailby. ‘Further to our enquiries.’

Harry seemed to become aware of them slowly. He put down the mop and dried his hands carefully on a towel, rolled his sleeves down over his arms and reached behind the door to put his jacket back on. Then he walked unhurriedly past them, without a word, into the dim front room of the cottage, where there was a glimpse of the road through a gap in white net curtains.

Hitchens and Tailby followed him and found him sitting upright on a hard-backed chair. He was facing them like a judge examining the suspects entering the dock. The detectives found two more chairs pushed close to a mahogany dining table and set them opposite the old man. Diane Fry slipped quietly into the room and leaned against the wall near the door with her notebook, while Hitchens and Tailby introduced themselves, showing their warrant cards.

‘Harry Dickinson?’ said Hitchens. The old man nodded. ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Tailby, Harry. I’m Detective Inspector Hitchens. From Edendale.’

‘Where’s the lad?’ asked Harry.

‘Who?’

‘The one who was here before. Sergeant Cooper’s lad.’

Tailby looked at Hitchens, raising an eyebrow.

‘Ben Cooper is only a detective constable, Harry. This is a murder enquiry now. You understand that? Detective Chief Inspector Tailby here is the senior investigating officer who will be in charge of the enquiry.’

‘Oh aye,’ said Harry. ‘The man in charge.’

‘You are aware that we have found a body, Mr Dickinson?’ said Tailby. He spoke loudly and clearly, as if he had decided that they were dealing with an idiot.

Harry’s eyes travelled slowly from Hitchens to Tailby. At first he had looked unimpressed, now he looked stubborn.

‘The Mount girl, is it?’

‘The Vernon family live at the Mount,’ explained Hitchens for Tailby’s sake. ‘That’s the name of the house.’

‘The remains haven’t yet been formally identified, Mr Dickinson,’ said Tailby. ‘Until they have, we can’t commit ourselves to a positive statement in that regard. However, it is generally known that we have been conducting an extensive search for a fifteen-year-old female by that name for some hours. In the circumstances there would seem to be a strong degree of possibility that the remains discovered in the vicinity may be those of Laura Vernon.’

An old carriage clock in an oak case ticked quietly to itself on the mantelpiece, providing the only sound in the room as it counted off the seconds. Fry thought that time seemed to be passing particularly slowly within the room, as if it was sealed off from the rest of the world in a time zone of its own, where normal rules didn’t apply.

‘You talk like a proper pillock, don’t you?’ said Harry.

Tailby’s jaw muscles tightened, but he restrained himself.

‘We’d like to hear from you how you came to find the trainer, Mr Dickinson.’

‘I’ve told it –’

‘Yes, I know you’ve told it before. Just tell us again, please.’

‘I’ve got other things to do, you know.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Tailby coolly. ‘It’s dominoes night.’

Harry took his pipe from the pocket of his jacket and poked at the contents of the ceramic bowl. His movements were slow and relaxed, and his expression was studiously placid. Hitchens began to stir, but Tailby quelled him with a movement of his hand.

‘You’ll no doubt understand one day,’ said Harry. ‘That at my age you can’t go rushing up and down hill twice in one afternoon and be in any fit state to go out of the house later on, without having a bit of a kip in between. I don’t have the energy for it any more. There’s no fighting it.’ He ran a hand across his neatly groomed hair, smoothing down the grey, Brylcreemed strands. ‘No matter how many dead bodies you’ve found.’

‘The sooner we get it over with, the sooner we’ll be able to leave you in peace.’

‘I can’t do anything more than that, not even for some top-brass copper and all his big words. All this coming and going and folk clattering about the house – it wears me out.’

Tailby sighed. ‘We’d really like to hear your story in your own words, Mr Dickinson. Just tell us the story, will you?’

Harry stared at him defiantly. ‘The story. Aye, well. Do you want it with hand gestures or without, this story?’

To Diane Fry there seemed to be something wrong with the scene, a sort of subtle reversal. It was as though the two detectives were waiting to be interviewed by the old man, not the other way round. Hitchens and Tailby were unsettled, shifting uncomfortably in their hard chairs, not sure what to say to break the moment. Harry, though, was totally at ease, calm and still, his feet planted in front of him on a worn patch of carpet. He had placed himself with his back to the window, so that he was outlined against the view of the street, a faint aura forming around his head and shoulders. Hitchens and Tailby were looking into the light, waiting for the old man to speak again.

‘Without, then, is it?’

‘Without, if you like, Mr Dickinson.’

‘I was out with Jess.’

‘Jess?’

‘My dog.’

‘Of course. You were walking your dog.’

Harry lit a taper, puffed on his pipe. He seemed to be waiting, to see if Tailby were going to take up the story himself.

‘I were walking my dog, like you say. We always go down that way. I told the lad. Sergeant Cooper’s –’

‘Sergeant Cooper’s lad, yes.’

‘Interrupt a lot, don’t you?’ said Harry. ‘Is that a, what you call it, interview technique?’

Fry thought she detected the ghost of a smile on Tailby’s face. Hitchens, though, so genial at the office, did not look like smiling.

‘Do go on, Mr Dickinson,’ said Tailby.

‘We always go down to the foot of Raven’s Side. Jess likes to run by the stream. After the rabbits. Not that she ever catches any. It’s a game, do you follow?’

Harry puffed smoke into the room. It drifted in a small cloud towards the ceiling, gathering round the glass bowl that hung on tiny chains below a sixty-watt light bulb. A wide patch of ceiling paper in the centre of the room was stained yellow with smoke.

Fry watched the moving cloud, and realized that the old man must sit every day in this same chair, in this room, to smoke his pipe. What was his wife doing meanwhile? Watching Coronation Street or Casualty on the colour television in the next room? And what did Harry do while he was smoking? There were a few books on a shelf set into the alcove formed by the chimney breast. The titles she could make out were The Miners in Crisis and War and Trade Unions in Britain, Choose Freedom and The Ripper and the Royals. There seemed to be only one novel – Robert Harris’s Fatherland. It was lined up with the other books, all regimented into a neat row between two carved oak bookends. Three or four issues of the Guardian were pushed into a magazine rack by the hearth. But there was no television here, no radio, no stereo. Once the newspaper had been read, it would leave nothing for the old man to do. Nothing but to listen to the ticking of the clock, and to think.

Fry became aware of Harry’s eyes on her. She felt suddenly as though he could read her thoughts. But she could not read his in return. His expression was impassive. He had the air of an aristocrat, forced to suffer an indignity but enduring it with composure.

‘A game, Harry …’ prompted Hitchens. He had less patience than the DCI. And every time he called the old man ‘Harry’ it seemed to stiffen his shoulders a little bit more. Tailby was politer, more tolerant. Fry liked to observe these things in her senior officers. If she made enough observations, perhaps she would be able to analyse them, put them through the computer, produce the ideal set of character traits for a budding DCI to aim for.

‘Sometimes she fetches things,’ said Harry. ‘I sit on a rock, smoke my pipe, watch the stream and the birds. Sometimes there’s otters, after the fish. If you sit still, they don’t notice you.’

Tailby was nodding. Maybe he was a keen naturalist. Fry didn’t have much knowledge of wildlife. There hadn’t been a lot of it in Birmingham, apart from the pigeons and the stray dogs.

‘And while I sit, Jess brings me things. Sticks, like. Or a stone, in her mouth. Sometimes she finds something dead.’

Harry paused. It was the first time Fry had seen him hesitate unintentionally. He was thinking back over his last words, as if surprised by what he had said. Then he shrugged.

‘I mean a stoat or a blackbird. A squirrel once. If they’re fresh dead and not been marked too bad, there’s a bloke over at Hathersage will have ‘em for his freezer.’

‘What?’

‘He stuffs ’em,’ said Harry. ‘All legal. He’s got a licence and everything.’

‘A taxidermist,’ said Hitchens.

Fry could see Tailby frown. Harry puffed on his pipe with extra vigour, as if he had just won a minor victory.

‘But today, Mr Dickinson?’ said Tailby.

‘Ah, today. Today, Jess brought me something else. She went off, rooting about in the bracken and that. I wasn’t paying much attention, just sitting. Then she came up to me, with something in her mouth. I couldn’t make out what it was at first. But it was that shoe.’

‘Did you see where the dog got it from?’

‘No, I told you. She was out of sight. I took the shoe off her. I remembered this lass you lot were looking for, the Mount girl. It looked the sort of object she would wear, that lass. So I brought it back. And my granddaughter phoned.’

‘You knew Laura Vernon?’

‘I reckon I know everybody in the village,’ said Harry. ‘It isn’t exactly Buxton here, you know. I’ve seen her all right.’

‘When did you last see her, Mr Dickinson?’ asked Tailby.

‘Ah. Couldn’t say that.’

‘It might be very important.’

‘Mmm?’

‘If she was in the habit of going on to the Baulk, where you walk your dog regularly, Mr Dickinson, you may have seen her earlier.’

‘You may also have seen her killer,’ said Hitchens.

‘Doubt it,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t see anyone.’

‘Surely –’

‘I don’t see anyone.’

Harry glared at Hitchens, suddenly aggressive. The DI saw it and bridled immediately.

‘This is a murder enquiry, Harry. Don’t forget that. We expect full cooperation.’

The old man pursed his lips. The skin around his mouth puckered and wrinkled, but his eyes remained hard and cool. ‘I reckon I’ve done my bit. I’m getting a bit fed up of you lot now.’

‘Tough. We’re not messing about here, Harry. We’re not playing games, like you throwing sticks for your dog to fetch. This is a serious business, and we need all the answers you can give us.’

‘Have you seen anybody else on the Baulk, Mr Dickinson?’ said Tailby gently.

‘If I had,’ said Harry, ‘I’d remember, wouldn’t I?’

Hitchens snorted and stirred angrily in his chair. ‘Crap.’

‘Hold on, Paul,’ said Tailby automatically.

‘Right. I’ll not have that in my house,’ said Harry. ‘It’s high time you were off somewhere else, the lot of you, doing some good.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe towards Fry and her notebook. ‘And make sure you take the secretary lass with you. She’s making a mucky mark on my wall.’

‘Detective Constable Fry will have to stay to take your statement.’

‘She’ll have to wake me up first.’

Tailby and Hitchens stood up, straightening their backs from the hard chairs. The DCI looked too tall for the room. The house had been built at a time when very few people stood more than six foot. He must have had to stoop to get through the door, though Fry hadn’t noticed it.

‘We may want to speak to you again, Mr Dickinson,’ said Tailby.

‘You’d be better off sending that lad next time.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with DI Hitchens and myself. Sorry and all that, but we expect you to cooperate fully with our enquiries, however long they may take. Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to say to me just now, Mr Dickinson?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Harry.

‘What’s that?’

‘Bugger off.’

6

No sooner had the police left than the little cottage was again full of people. Helen watched from the kitchen as her mother and father fussed into the back room, flapping round her grandparents as if they were naughty children who needed scolding and reassuring at the same time.

‘My goodness, you two, what’s been going on? All these police up here? What have you been doing, Harry?’

Andrew Milner was in a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a frivolous blue and green pattern, but he still had on the trousers of the dark-grey suit he wore for the office. He smelled faintly of soap and a suggestion of whisky fumes. Helen didn’t need to be told that her father had showered after arriving home from work and had already drunk his first Glenmorangie of the evening by the time she had phoned. He wore clip-on sun shades over his glasses, which he had to flip up as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the cottage. Now they stood out horizontally from his forehead like extravagant eyebrows.

Harry looked up at Andrew from his chair, no gesture of welcome breaking the rigidity of his expression.

‘I dare say young Helen’s told you what you need to know.’

Margaret Milner was fanning herself with a straw hat. She was a large woman and felt the heat badly. Her floral dress swirled and rustled around her knees and wafted powerful gusts of body spray throughout the room.

‘A dead body. How awful. You poor things.’

‘It was a shoe your dad found,’ said Gwen, who had not yet tired of the excitement. ‘One of those trainer things. They said there was a dead girl with it, but your dad didn’t see her. Did you, Harry?’

‘It was Jess,’ said Harry. ‘Jess that found it.’

‘But there was … Was there blood?’

‘So they reckon.’

‘The young policeman took it away,’ said Gwen. ‘The first one, the young one.’

‘The Cooper lad,’ said Harry.

‘Who?’

‘Sergeant Cooper’s son. The old copper. You remember all the fuss, surely?’

‘Oh, I know.’ Margaret turned to her daughter. ‘Didn’t you used to know him very well at school, Helen? Is that the one? I remember now. You liked him, didn’t you?’

Helen fidgeted, ready to escape back to the kitchen to make more tea. She loved her parents and her grandparents, but she was uncomfortable when they were all together. She could communicate with them one at a time, but when they were gathered in a family group there was a kind of blanket of incomprehension that descended between them.

‘Yes, Mum, Ben Cooper.’

‘You always seemed to get on well. But he never asked you out, did he? I always thought it was a shame.’

‘Mum –’

‘I know, I know – it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Forget it, Mum. This isn’t the time.’

‘We’ve had a body,’ said Gwen plaintively, appealing to the room, as if someone, somewhere could give her consolation, even tell her it hadn’t happened.

‘And it was the Vernons’ girl?’ said Andrew impatiently. Helen noticed her father’s faint Scottish accent creeping through in the ‘r’s, as it did when he was under stress. ‘Did they say it was definitely Laura Vernon?’

‘She had to be identified, they said.’ Gwen looked challengingly towards Harry, letting it be known that she had been listening at the door when the police had been interviewing him. Harry took no notice. He was feeling at his pocket, as if all he wanted to do was pull out his pipe and retire to the front room, to escape to his sanctuary.