Dead in the Dark

by Stephen Booth

  ‘What happened to your mother?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘She died. She was killed in a car crash eight years ago, about two years after Annette went missing. It broke my father up, as you can imagine.’

  ‘So she wasn’t around to support his sighting of Annette in Buxton?’

  ‘No. That was my father’s personal conviction.’

  Cooper put down the tool.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Swann,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we’ll need your husband to come in some time anyway.’

  When he returned to Edendale, Cooper had Evan Slaney brought back into the interview room. He showed Slaney a photograph of the knife in its evidence bag.

  ‘What about this, sir? Do you recognise it?’

  ‘Well, yes. I know what that is.’

  ‘Do you own a knife like this yourself?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘No. But my son-in-law uses them. I mean Adrian Swann. It’s a woodcarving knife.’

  ‘Do you know how it got into your house?’

  ‘In my house? No. Adrian has been there a few times, of course, but he would never have brought his tools. He keeps them in his workshop at Over Haddon. He’s very particular about who handles them.’

  He met Cooper’s eye. In fact, his eye contact throughout the interview had been noticeable. Cooper was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this man was telling the truth now, in a way that he hadn’t done before.

  ‘Mr Slaney, did you have a surprise visitor recently?’ he asked.

  Slaney stared at him. ‘Why, yes I did. Have you spoken to her? Did she tell you she’d been here?’

  ‘Who are you talking about, Mr Slaney?’

  ‘My granddaughter, of course.’

  ‘Lacey?’

  ‘Yes, Lacey Bower. She’s grown into a fine young woman. I’m pleased that she hasn’t forgotten her grandfather, but I was surprised. I hadn’t heard anything from her for a long time, not even a birthday or Christmas card. She has her own life to live, of course. I understand that. So it was quite a surprise when she turned up on my doorstep.’

  ‘Did she give any particular reason for her visit?’

  ‘Does she need one? But, no. We only exchanged small talk, very inconsequential chat. I asked her how her college course was going, but I didn’t really understand the details. I know Lacey is struggling financially as a student, but aren’t we all?’

  ‘Did you think she’d come to ask you for money?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Well, she has done in the past. When Lacey first went to live in Sheffield, she asked me if I could help her with the deposit on a flat. I had to refuse, I’m afraid. Times are hard for everyone.’

  ‘But she didn’t ask on this latest visit?’

  ‘No, not at all. Lacey seemed a bit restless, to be honest. She didn’t want to stay very long. She probably had better things to do than spend time with her old granddad in his gloomy cottage.’

  ‘Did she stay long enough for you to make her a cup of tea?’

  ‘Coffee,’ said Slaney. ‘She asked for coffee. I also happened to have some of her favourite cake in. She likes Genoa.’

  ‘I see.’

  Cooper recalled a discrepancy he’d noted in Lacey Bower’s statements. He hadn’t thought it was important at the time. On Wednesday, Lacey told him that she’d only ever mentioned her memory of visiting the cave to her grandfather. In fact, she’d specifically claimed never to have told her Aunt Frances when Cooper had asked her about it.

  But yesterday, in Lathkill Dale, Lacey had let slip a different version of events. I was sure I could remember it, but when I asked Aunt Frances about it, she told me it wasn’t possible. That was what she’d said. And they couldn’t both be true, could they? So which should he believe?

  Evan Slaney was staring at him across the table.

  ‘I don’t understand how this could be relevant, Inspector.’

  ‘But I think I do,’ said Cooper.

  He stood up from the table.

  ‘Are you going to charge me?’ asked Slaney.

  ‘No, sir. I have a few more inquiries to make, then I expect we’ll be able to release you.’

  ‘Well, thank God.’

  Cooper left the interview room and walked slowly back to his office. He needed to think carefully about what had just entered his mind. Could it be true? Someone had been leading him up the garden path. And it didn’t quite lead to the garden he expected.

  He sat for a long time with a coffee going cold on his desk and letting his calls go to voicemail. Cooper was recalling his conversation with the neighbour in Aldern Way. The woman with the Yorkshire terrier called Henry. He’d forgotten her name now. But when he asked her about Lacey, hadn’t she said something important. She was here on Sunday, of course. But Naomi Heath claimed not to have seen Lacey for weeks, and the girl had said the same. Almost exactly the same, in fact.

  And there was Frances Swann, who’d lost contact with Lacey and didn’t even know her address or phone number. Yet Lacey had let slip that she’d seen the carved owl sitting in Adrian Swann’s workshop, ready for the show this weekend. How had she seen that, unless she’d been to the Swanns’ house in Over Haddon recently?

  Finally, Cooper thought about the knife, the nine-inch wood carving drawknife that was missing from Adrian’s desk. Frances Swann had told him the only other person who would have access to the tools was Evan Slaney. Why had she volunteered that information? Had she calculated that Slaney would be so angry about the knowledge that he’d been manipulated by Reece Bower that he would blindly draw suspicion on himself?

  But how could Frances possibly have known that it would lead to the discovery of the knife at Slaney’s home?

  How indeed. There was the crucial question. It ought to have been impossible for her to know that. She had claimed to be unaware of what had happened to the knife, just as she’d claimed ignorance of Lacey’s whereabouts.

  And along the way Cooper had become more and more convinced that Evan Slaney was guilty of killing Reece Bower. Now it dawned him that he’d been wrong. And not only wrong – he’d been manipulated towards his conclusion. Naomi, Frances and Lacey, they had all played their part in leading him towards that destination. Up the garden path to what seemed an obvious outcome.

  Cooper could have kicked himself. He’d been stupid. Worse, he’d been gullible. During these last few days, he’d been the instrument of a conspiracy between three clever women. Naomi, Frances and Lacey. Together they’d taken their revenge on one man, and set up another to be the suspect.

  And yes, they’d used a third as their pawn. Detective Inspector Ben Cooper. He hadn’t believed everything they told him. But he’d believed far too much.

  30

  By late afternoon, a scene-of-crime team had finished digging out the flower bed in the Bowers’ garden on Aldern Way. Reece Bower’s corpse had been wrapped in layers of black plastic bin liner, tied with clothes line. The outline of a human body was clear, even through the plastic. Whoever had done the tying had made the line far too tight, as if afraid that Reece might escape from his makeshift shroud.

  Cooper knew the smell would be overpowering when they opened those bags. He turned away and saw Dr Chloe Young waiting by the house to get access to the body. Sometimes, she had the worst job.

  Naomi Heath perched uneasily in an armchair in the sitting room of the house she’d shared with Reece Bower, with a uniformed female officer standing over her. She was moving her hands restlessly on the arms of her chair, her head turned away from the window so that she couldn’t see what was going on in the garden. It was too late for her to be in denial, though.

  Cooper stood directly in front of her.

  ‘You knew where he was, didn’t you?’ he said.

  After a moment, she nodded. It was a curt nod, so quick and precise that he could have mistaken it for an involuntary twitch, a nervous response to his question. But he could tell the truth from her expression.

  ‘Of course you did,’ he said. ‘Yo
u killed him.’

  She didn’t answer. Cooper nodded at the officer, who put the handcuffs on to Naomi’s wrists and led her to a car waiting on the drive. No doubt the neighbours in Aldern Way were already at their windows to see her being taken away.

  Carol Villiers came in from the garden, where Dr Young had finally got access to the body.

  ‘Naomi Heath,’ said Villiers with a note of surprise.

  ‘She either killed Reece Bower herself,’ said Cooper. ‘Or at least, she was involved in his death and the disposal of the body.’

  ‘Surely she must have had help. She couldn’t have dragged his body out there on her own and buried him. That would take at least two people. And somebody tied those knots really tight.’

  ‘Somebody angry, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But not Evan Slaney,’ said Cooper. ‘Not him.’

  ‘Who would have thought a woman like Naomi was capable of it?’

  ‘If you put people under enough stress, they’re capable of pretty much anything,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘She was very clever, actually. She let me form my own conclusions.’

  ‘By suggesting it was something to do with new evidence about the disappearance of Annette Bower?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘And of course there was, in a way. The new evidence was Lacey.’

  He waited for Chloe Young to finish with the body. She smiled at him faintly.

  ‘Another one?’ she said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘This one is fairly fresh. A few days, I’d say, but the speed of decomposition has been affected by the plastic wrapping, which was fairly airtight.’

  ‘Cause of death?’ said Cooper hopefully.

  ‘That’s easier. He was stabbed.’

  ‘Any sign of a weapon?’

  ‘No, it was removed after the attack and before he was buried. Some kind of bladed weapon certainly, but not the usual kind. From the wounds, I’d suggest a knife with a short but very sharp blade. It wouldn’t take any great strength, because a weapon like that could have been wielded by anyone. But you would have to get in very close to the victim to use it, Ben.’

  Young looked at the well-kept garden and the French windows leading on to the patio.

  ‘Not your normal sort of crime scene, is it?’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t expect to get a murder in a place like this.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Cooper, ‘in my experience, this is exactly the sort of place you’re likely to get a murder.’

  Later, when Naomi Heath had been processed through the custody suite at West Street, Cooper and Villiers went in to record the first interview.

  Cooper watched Naomi’s shoulders relax as she spoke about the events of the previous Sunday. She looked positively relieved. It dawned on him this may have been what she’d been wanting to tell him all the time. She’d just been waiting for right moment to get it off her chest.

  But as she spoke, he changed his mind. Naomi wasn’t relieved. She was proud.

  And Cooper had to admit she’d pulled it off well. She’d always talked about her partner in the present tense, as if she never doubted he was still alive. It was a difficult thing to do, when you knew perfectly well someone was dead and not just missing. They might already be past tense in your head and your heart, but they still had to be present in your words. It took an unusual level of control to maintain that pretence.

  But who had helped Naomi? Someone angry – that was what he’d said when Bower’s body was found.

  And there was another pressing question. Who’d left Reece Bower’s phone and wallet in Lathkill Dale? It would have been a risky undertaking. During the day there were always walkers up and down the trail. A car would have been seen, an individual might have been spotted acting in an odd manner. It was hard to imagine who would have the nerve to risk that.

  Wait a minute. There was one person who lived within walking distance of Lathkill Dale. It would have been no trouble for her to walk down the road one night and distribute the missing items in the dark, when no one was around.

  *

  Frances Swann was brought into Interview Room Two. The custody suite was starting to fill up, though Cooper didn’t think he’d quite finished yet.

  There was no pretence about Mrs Swann. On the contrary, it seemed that she intended to be quite open about her part.

  ‘It was such a sense of betrayal,’ she said. ‘He was still having the affair, you know.’

  ‘The same affair? With the work colleague, Madeleine Betts?’

  ‘Yes. He’d either restarted it, or perhaps it never ended, I’m not sure. Annette didn’t know that. Nor did poor old Naomi. He took her for a fool, all right.’

  ‘How did you find out about Annette? I mean, about what really happened to her?’

  ‘Lacey told me.’

  ‘Lacey was only eight years old at the time.’

  ‘It’s old enough,’ she said. ‘Children at that age might not understand everything that’s going on, but they still have the memories. Sometimes it’s only years later that they manage to put the pieces together.’

  He went back in to Naomi Heath, who was still waiting in the next room, a cup of water on the table in front of her. That was all she’d asked for.

  ‘And Mr Slaney?’ Cooper said.

  ‘Evan Slaney was just as much at fault with his delusions. It was he who prevented Reece from being brought to justice. If it hadn’t been for Slaney, it would all have been over and done with ten years ago. And we wouldn’t have had to go through this nightmare.’

  ‘He feels betrayed,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh, we were all betrayed, Inspector.’

  ‘And you managed to keep up the pretence that Reece had just disappeared,’ said Cooper in amazement.

  She smiled. It was a tight, humourless smile.

  ‘I learned that from an expert,’ she said.

  ‘But it was Lacey who brought the knife that day,’ said Cooper. ‘She got it from her uncle’s workshop.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Oh, I know that’s true.’

  ‘Then why are you asking me?’

  ‘What I want to know,’ said Cooper, ‘is who actually stabbed him?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Couldn’t say? You were there, Mrs Heath, so you must know. Who stabbed Reece Bower?’

  She didn’t answer directly.

  ‘It was an accident really. When it happened, we panicked. I don’t suppose we were thinking straight, any of us. You do stupid things in the heat of the moment, don’t you? And with three of us together, it seemed to make things worse. None of us was able to think it through logically. Someone said we should hide the body.’

  ‘So you buried him?’

  ‘We couldn’t have taken him far. A body is heavy, as we found out. Oh, I suppose the three of us could have lifted him into the boot of a car with a bit of struggle, but the cars were out at the front on the drive, right by the road. All our neighbours would have seen what we were up to.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure they would.’

  ‘So there was only one option. The back garden isn’t overlooked. Frances remembered the police searching it when Annette disappeared. They thought it was the most logical place to dispose of a body. And so it was. And that’s what we did.’

  ‘All three of you?’

  She nodded. ‘We spent a lot of time digging. I can’t believe how shallow the grave was when we finished because it seemed to have taken us so long. And then not all the soil would go back in again. It seems obvious, but we hadn’t accounted for that. It took us another hour to disperse it throughout the garden so it wouldn’t be noticed.’

  Naomi stared into the distance, somewhere beyond the confines of the tiny interview room.

  ‘It’s funny, you know,’ she said. ‘Once you set out on a job like that, there’s no going back. We couldn’t put him in the hole, then change our minds and dig him up again, could
we? The evidence was too damning. We’d already moved him, put him in the bin bags, dragged him out into the garden. There would have been no way of explaining all that when the police came knocking. When you came knocking, Detective Inspector Cooper. Besides, we thought, without a body …’

  ‘There would no murder charge?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Well, Reece got away with it.’

  ‘It wasn’t because there was no body. He would have been tried, and probably convicted, if it hadn’t been for the sighting of Annette alive and well in Buxton.’

  ‘Oh, Annette’s father,’ said Naomi. ‘What a gullible old idiot.’

  ‘Tell me one thing,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What? Isn’t it all clear for you?’

  ‘There will be a lot of questions yet, I’m afraid,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh, of course. You have to build a case. Make sure the Crown Prosecution Service have a reasonable likelihood of a successful prosecution.’

  Cooper read in her sardonic smile a reference to the failure of the charges against Reece Bower ten years ago. They were probably the exact phrases that someone had used then, perhaps the SIO herself, Hazel Branagh, as she explained why the prosecution would not go ahead after all. Naomi Heath wasn’t around at the time, but the words would have been remembered very clearly by Frances Swann, he imagined. They were the words that had killed any chance of justice for Annette Bower.

  ‘What I want to know,’ said Cooper, ‘is why you didn’t just dispose of Reece’s wallet and phone – or even bury them with him in that shallow grave? Why did you decide to plant them at locations in Lathkill Dale? Whose idea was that?’

  ‘It was Frances’s idea,’ she said. ‘She wanted to force you into searching the dale. Frances always believed you would find Annette if you looked hard enough, if you searched thoroughly, in the proper way that didn’t happen all those years ago.’

  Naomi looked straight at Cooper. He saw satisfaction in her eyes.

  ‘And you know what?’ she said with triumphant smile. ‘It worked.’

  Back in his office, Cooper was reflecting on the interviews and waiting for Lacey Bower to be brought in from Sheffield. He was convinced the three women had been in on the death of her father together but though the circumstantial evidence was strong, he wasn’t any closer to knowing who had struck the fatal blow. That was a crucial question.