Black dog bcadf-1

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Why should I do that? I’d already been once.’

  ‘Did you take the dog?’

  ‘Jess was with me. But Kenny makes you put the dogs out the back when you’re in the pub. He says they upset the tourists.’

  210

  Cooper wondered whether Harry would get round to asking him the purpose of the questions. He decided he wouldn’t.

  ‘We have a witness who saw someone answering your description at about seven-fifteen, in the area where Laura Vcrnon’s body was found.’ The description had been vague enough, so he wasn’t actually being misleading.

  ‘Have you now?’ said Harry. ‘That’s handy then. That’ll help you no end.’

  ‘But you’ve just told me that you were back here in the house at about six-thirty, Mr Dickinson. Is that right?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right. My tea was ready.’

  ‘And you said you didn’t go out again until seven-thirty. So, according to you, you were here in the house at seven-fifteen. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t have been in both places at once.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘That’s your problem, I reckon.’

  ‘What about Sunday?’ asked Cooper, desperate for a change in the conversation.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Did you go out on the Baulk with your dog that day?’

  JOJO>

  ‘Nine o’clock in the morning and six o’clock at night. ReguOOO

  lar.’

  ‘On the same path? To Raven’s Side?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘And on Monday morning the same?’

  j&

  ‘Nine o’clock.’

  ‘It’s a bit odd then, isn’t it, that you didn’t find that trainer before Monday night? When you had already made four visits to the area. One about the time Laura Vernon was killed, and three afterwards. Without seeing a thing?’

  OO

  Harry tapped his pipe into the fireplace, stared at the empty grate, and looked up at Cooper. He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. Cooper thought he was in for another uncomfortable spell of silence.

  ‘I was going to talk to Vernon,’ said Harry suddenly.

  ‘What?’ Cooper was taken by surprise, both at the information and the fact that Harry had actually volunteered it

  211

  without having to have it dragged out of him with red-hot pincers.

  ‘On Saturday night. I thought I saw Graham Vcrnon while I

  ,’OO

  was out with Jess. I was going to talk to him.’

  1o o

  ‘Why was that, sir?’

  ‘I had burnt-thing 1 wanted to discuss with him. Personal.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Personal.’

  ‘How well do you know Mr Vernon?’

  ‘I don’t. I’ve never met him.’

  ‘So why did you want to speak to him?’

  ‘I’ve said it twice. I’m not intending to say it again.’

  ‘I could insist, Mr Dickinson. I could ask you down to the station to help with enquiries, and we’ll conduct a formal interview and ask you to make another statement.’

  ‘I’m making a statement,’ said Harry. ‘It was personal. That’s a statement.”

  ‘But you do see that if it was anything to do with Mr Vernon’s daughter —’

  o

  ‘I can tell you that. It wasn’t.’

  ‘To do with your own family perhaps?’

  Harry smiled benevolently, as if at a clever student. ‘Happen so, lad.’

  ‘Where did you meet Mr Vernon?’

  ‘Assumptions again.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said I wanted to talk to him. But I couldn’t find him. He’d disappeared again.’

  Cooper’s mind was setting off on a different track now. He saw Harry Dickinson out wandering on the Baulk at the same time as both Laura Vernon and her father, not to mention whoever had killed Laura. And he pictured the bird-watcher, Gary Edwards, who had been in a wonderful vantage point, but had only seen one of them. And then he realized that, if Harry had met Graham Vernon while he was out, then their conversation would surely have meant that Harry would have been later back at the cottage than usual. But would it have kept him out until after seven-fifteen? Gwen would

  212

  have to he lying too. But then she would, wouldn’t she, to protect Harry?

  ‘Next question then,’ said Harry.

  Cooper decided he was getting into deep water. ‘No more questions for now, Mr Dickinson.’

  ‘No?’ Harry looked suddenly disappointed. He pursed his lips and cocked his head on one side. ‘That’s a poor do. I was hoping for a proper grilling. An interrogation. You know, like Cracker.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That fat bloke that used to be on the telly.’

  ‘Robbie Coltrane, you mean. He played a criminal psychologist.’

  ‘Aye. He always used to give ‘em a proper grilling. Shouting and swearing at ‘em and all. Threatening to thump “em if they didn’t tell the truth.’ Harry squinted at Cooper critically. ‘Aye well. You’re not him, though. Are you, lad?’

  ‘No, Mr Dickinson, I’m not Cracker. I’m not Inspector Morse either.’

  Cooper got up to go, shoving his notebook in his pocket. ‘Somebody will want to talk to you again, probably, Mr Dickinson.’

  ‘Fair enough. You’ll no doubt find me without any trouble.’

  ‘Thanks for your time then.’

  Cooper reached the door and looked out at the village, struck by the contrast between the bright sunlight hitting the street and the cool, shady corners and heavy furniture of the room behind him. Passing through the door of Dial Cottage was like stepping out of the entrance to a deep cave. In ancestral memory, caves must have represented security. But there was always danger too. There was always the possibility that a dangerous wild beast might be lurking in that cave. Cooper turned to say goodbye to the old man and found the sharp blue eyes fixed mockingly on his face.

  ‘No. And you’re not even Miss Marple,’ said Harry.

  213

  17

  IJCI Tailbv’s office was one of the few rooms in the Edcndalc

  J

  Divisional HQ with air conditioning. In the past couple of weeks, there had hecn a lot of excuses for meetings that had to take place in the DCI’s office and nowhere else. Ben Cooper, though, was sure his visit that afternoon was justified by something besides the unbearable temperature.

  ‘Very interesting,’ said Tailby when he had finished summarizing his interviews at Dial Cottage. ‘But do you feel you pressed him hard enough, Cooper?’

  Cooper remembered what he had said during the morning meeting, and wondered if the DCI was making fun of him. He was glad he had decided not to mention any of what had taken place at Thorpe Farm before he had managed to get Harry into the car.

  ‘He’s a bit of an awkward character, sir.’

  ‘I know. Perhaps we’ll have to bring him in and interview him under caution. That would upset his apple cart, eh?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘So what do you make of it, Cooper? Do you believe him?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir, funnily enough.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Well, I believe what he said, because of the things that he didn’t say, if you follow me.’

  ‘I don’t think I do, Cooper.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that he neatly avoided telling a lie. Where there were things he didn’t want to tell me, he just avoided it. Because of that, I think everything he said was true. 1 think it’s probably against his principles to he.’

  ‘Are there still people around like that? I may be a cynical old detective chief inspector, but I thought that idea went out with George Washington.’

  ‘It’s old-fashioned, I know, but there are still people round here who were brought up like that. My feeling is that Harry

  214

  Dickinson is one of them.
That’s a good reason why he savs no more than necessary. The less you say, the less temptation there is to lie.’

  ‘Tell the truth or say nowt.’

  ‘That’s it, sir. Exactly.”

  ‘That’s what my old shift sergeant told me many years ago when I was a new recruit,’ said Tailbv. ‘But it was a long time

  1JO

  ago. Things change, Cooper.’

  ‘Not everything changes, sir. With respect.’

  Tailby ran a hand vigorously through his hair, as if trying to mix the grey at the front with the darker hair at the back to create something that looked less like a session with the Grecian 2000 that had gone badly wrong. His face was even gaunter than usual, and he looked tired.

  ‘All right. So has the bird-watcher got his times wrong? Was it

  ooo

  earlier than he thought when he saw Dickinson and his dog?’

  Oo

  ‘It’s possible. You can lose track of time when you’re up on the hills. It can be very deceptive.’

  ‘We’ll have to check with him.’ Tailby shuffled a file of reports. ‘Damn it, there’s no mention of whether he had a watch on, or whether it was usually accurate. A bit of a sketchy interview altogether, in fact. Who did that?’ He grimaced. ‘Oh yes, DS Rennie.’

  Unconsciously copying the DCI’s gesture, Cooper raised a hand to push a lock of hair back from his forehead and found some of the strands stuck to his skin by sweat.

  ‘I can’t reconcile the idea of all those people we’re interested in being on the Baulk at the same time,’ he said. ‘Laura, Harry Dickinson, Graham Vernon. And a fourth person — the killer? It seems like too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘We can’t let Dickinson get away with refusing to say why he wanted to talk to Graham Vernon,’ said Tailby.

  ‘Can we show that his reasons are relevant to the enquiry?’

  Tailby considered it. ‘The whole question of Dickinson and Vernon being out on the Baulk at that time is very relevant.’

  ‘The bigger question is — what was Vernon doing?’ said Cooper.

  ‘The Vernon family have got some more questions to answer,

  215

  I’m afraid. There’s clearly something not right about their account oi events just before Laura vanished. Yet they were very convincing during the appeal this morning. Graham Vernon will come over very well on TV.’

  Ben Cooper felt distinctly unimpressed by the thought of Vernon’s television persona. In his own experience, anything that was said for the sake of the TV cameras was even less likely to approach the truth than the normal tangle of fabrications and evasions he had to deal with every working day. Lies told under a bright gloss of lights and cameras were lies just the same.

  He watched Tailby fiddle with the knot of his tie like a man worried about his appearance, and he knew the DCI felt die same way.

  ‘What about Daniel Vernon?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Oh, there are several reliable witnesses to place him in Exeter at the critical times. Seems he’s a member of some left-wing group with social consciences. I can’t imagine where he got ideas like those from. A shame, that, too — I had a feeling about young Daniel. In the end, 1 let DC Weenink call round at the Mount to ask him about his transport arrangements. It emerges that his father had offered to pay for his rail fare or even to drive down to Devon and collect him when Laura turned up dead on Monday. But Daniel preferred to hitchhike, and it took him all night and half the next morning. We traced the

  oo

  driver of a cattle transporter who dropped him at Junction 28 on the Ml in the early hours.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘People aren’t so willing to pick up scruffy youths by the side of the road as they were in my day.’

  ‘I didn’t mean —’

  The know what you meant, Cooper. And I agree. But it can wait for a while.’

  Cooper wondered whether this was the signal for him to leave. But the DCI seemed to be in an amenable mood, so he decided to press on.

  ‘How is Lee Sherratt shaping up, sir?’

  ‘He’s denying everything. Says he had no relationship with Laura Vernon at all, that he hardly knew her, in fact. But the

  216

  used condom shook him, all right. The DNA will pin him down on that. All we have to do is wait tor the results.’

  ‘Suggesting he had been indulging in some outdoors sex? But it won’t prove the sex was with Laura Vernon.’

  ‘It’ll be enough to put him under pressure. But we have

  another alternative anvwav. DS Morgan has traced the boy

  j j^>}

  friend.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘A lad by the name of Simeon Holmes. Aged seventeen. He lives on the Devonshire Estate in Edendale. Do you know it?’

  Cooper knew it well. He had patrolled the beat there as a young bobby, watching out for stolen cars being raced round the streets or gadiering information on local drug dealers who

  ooo

  operated from the sprawl of prefabricated concrete houses mistakenly slung up in the 1960s.

  The Devonshire Estate occupied lowlying land in the valley bottom which had once been wetlands and water meadows until they had been hastily drained for the housing scheme. For thirty-five years the damp had gradually been creeping back into the foundations of the houses, staining the walls with mould and rotting the doors and windows. Many of the houses had become virtually uninhabitable, with fungus growing through the floorboards and water pouring through the roofs. But there was almost nowhere else for the poor of Edendale to go. It was the closest thing the vallev had to an

  oo^

  inner-city area.

  ‘How does he come to be Laura Vernon’s boyfriend? He sounds like entirely the wrong type.’

  ‘He’s not someone her parents would approve of, I don’t suppose,’ said Tailby. ‘Rides a motorbike for a start. He says he met Laura here in town one lunchtime when they should both have been at school. In fact, he says she initiated the relationship, and had been skipping school ever since to meet him in various convenient spots.’

  ‘Bunking off.’

  ‘Is that what they call it these days? 1 thought it was bonking, not blinking.’

  ‘Missing school, sir, not the other thing.’

  217

  ‘Oh. Well, by all accounts they were doing the other thing as well. Holmes says she told him she was sixteen.’

  ‘They always say that.’

  ‘It’s bloody difficult, though, isn’t it? I certainly couldn’t tell you whether one of these girls out there was fifteen or sixteen. Sometimes they look every bit of eighteen and turn out to be twelve. The GPS wouldn’t entertain a prosecution for statutory rape anvwav. Not at seventeen.’

  ‘There are certainly plenty of leads, then, sir.’

  Tailby sighed. ‘Too many. A positive over-abundance of suspects. I’d much prefer to narrow it down to one at an early stage. But at least it avoids the talk of a link with the Edson case.’

  ‘Were there any reports of motorbikes in Moorhay from the house-to-house?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Several. They’re being sifted out from the computer. Holmes is coming in shortly to be interviewed. Perhaps we ought to have a look at him ourselves, you and I. We could leave Harry Dickinson and the Vernons until later. This lad seems to be more than happy to talk. What do you say, Cooper?’

  ‘I’d like to do that, sir. Thank you.’

  Then the phone rang, and Tailby took a call from downstairs. He nodded with the beginnings of a small smile.

  oo

  ‘Change of plan,’ he said. ‘DI Hitchens can tackle Holmes

  or ‘

  instead. If you pop downstairs, you’ll find Mr Daniel Vernon waiting. Apparently he has a few things he wants to tell us.’

  One of the twin tape decks had developed a faint, irritating squeak. Diane Fry thought it could almost have been designed to do that deliberately, to unnerve a
n interviewee. But today it was likely to unnerve the interviewers first.

  ‘We go to the arcades at lunchtime from school, see. Sometimes we stay all afternoon. Nobody bothers about us.’

  Simeon Holmes was still dressed in the bottom half of his black biking leathers, but had taken off the jacket as a gesture towards the stifling atmosphere of the interview room. He was wearing a black Manic Street Preachers T-shirt that revealed

  O

  smooth, well-developed arms and shoulders, and there were

  218

  small blue tattoos at the base of his neck on either side. His hair was cropped close on top, but had been left to grow long at the back. He had a gold earring in one ear and a small birthmark

  Oo

  near one eyebrow. Diane Fry remembered that DS Morgan had described Holmes as the sort of muscular lout that some girls liked. And he had a 500 cc motorbike as well. ‘But you’re a pupil at Edendale Community School,’ said Hitchens with barely concealed amazement.

  ‘That’s right, mate.’

  ‘How can you take all afternoon off from school?’

  ‘We get study periods, see? It means we can do what we like, with no lessons to go to.’

  ‘Do what you like? Do anything but study, I suppose.’

  Holmes shrugged. ‘Everybody does it.’

  ‘I see.’

  Hitchens exchanged glances with Fry, who raised her eyebrows. It was no surprise to her what lads like Simeon Holmes got up to.

  ‘You told Detective Sergeant Morgan that you met Laura Vernon at one of the amusement arcades in Dale Street.’

  ‘Tommy’s Amusements, yeah. I was playing one of those computer fight games, you know? Tommy’s has the best games, and I was knocking up a high score. There were a few of us in there, maybe six or seven of us.’

  ‘Fellow sixth formers?’

  ‘Some of them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, one of my mates, who was near the front window, shouted to me that there was this tart messing with my bike outside. So I went out, and there she was sitting on the saddle waggling the handlebars. A bloody cheek, it was, to be honest. If it’d been a bloke doing that, I’d have decked him. I don’t like people messing with my bike. But it was this tart, Laura.’