06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘It would have to be someone fascinated by the process of death.’

  ‘You’re thinking that he might have strangled Audrey Steele after she was dead?’

  ‘Why else would he take the hyoid bone?’

  ‘We don’t know that he took it. We know that it’s missing, that’s all. The anthropologist’s report said it could have been carried away by an animal. A rat or a fox. Or a bird – he said it might have been a bird, too. Diane, that bone could be anywhere by now.’

  ‘He’s been coming back to the body,’ said Fry firmly. ‘If anyone or anything took that bone, it was him.’

  ‘How many people would recognize a hyoid bone if they saw one? How many would even know it exists?’

  But Fry wasn’t going to give in. ‘Anyone with some training in anatomy. In fact, anyone with experience of bodies.’

  For a moment, they watched the university team getting back to work with their spades and the dog quartering the ground lower down the slope.

  ‘Diane, I’ve been thinking abut Tom Jarvis,’ said Cooper. ‘He has four dogs running loose on his property down at Litton Foot. Well, three now. He’s had them a while, too – since they were puppies.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘How come none of them alerted him to the presence of a decomposing body a few yards from the edge of his property? Surely the dogs couldn’t have missed the smell, even if he didn’t notice it himself?’

  ‘Was the body exposed to the air during decomposition?’

  Cooper hesitated. ‘When it was found, it was.’

  ‘But it was already skeletonized by then.’

  ‘Yes. The thing is, we’ve been assuming it was exposed to the air the whole time. That would fit in with the time scale, the rapid rate of skeletonization. But in some of the earlier stages, the smell must have been pretty bad. It would have spread over a wide area, especially if it had been carried on the wind. You wouldn’t need a dog trained in locating human remains. Any mutt with a functioning sense of smell would have noticed it.’

  They walked on a few steps, Fry silent as she let Cooper think it through. He stopped and turned towards her.

  ‘On the other hand, if the body was originally covered or wrapped in something, the smell would have been confined, but the rate of decomposition would have been slower.’

  ‘There’s another implication to that,’ said Fry.

  ‘Yes, I know. It would definitely mean that someone returned to the scene – and exposed the body. But the lab didn’t report any indication of postmortem interference with the remains. None that might have been of human origin.’

  ‘We could get the SOCOs to go over the scene again.’

  ‘With a fine tooth-comb this time?’

  Fry put a hand on his arm. ‘With an eye to more recent physical traces, Ben. Last time, they were approaching it as a historic site. They probably thought we were asking them to be archaeologists.’

  ‘Sometimes I reckon they ought to bring back hanging for certain folk,’ said Tom Jarvis when Cooper called at Litton Foot. ‘Or something worse than hanging.’

  Jarvis had been working in a shed at the side of his house. Among the tools inside, Cooper could see a vice and a lathe. The aromatic scent of fresh wood shavings seeped out of the open door.

  ‘Worse, sir?’

  ‘There’s other things they used to do round here, so they say. There was a time when they didn’t mess around with murderers and criminals.’

  ‘That was a long time ago, Mr Jarvis.’

  Jarvis snorted and beat his hands together to dislodge some curls of pale wood from his work gloves.

  ‘Do you know that big rock on the eastern ridge, near the head of Cressbrook Dale?’

  He pointed up the dale. Just visible in the distance was the isolated limestone outcrop that Cooper had noticed a few days before. From here, it looked almost square, like a broken molar, the last tooth in a mouth crumbling from decay.

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed it. That’s Peter’s Stone, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, that’s the name it says on the maps,’ said Jarvis. ‘But Gibbet Rock is what it was always called round here.’

  Cooper stared at him as the unexpected words sank in. ‘Did you say “gibbet”? It was called Gibbet Rock?’

  ‘And still is, for those who remember.’

  Jarvis turned back into the shed, starting to pull off his gloves. He looked up in surprise when Cooper took hold of his arm.

  ‘Remember what, Mr Jarvis?’

  ‘Well, they reckon that’s where the last gibbeting took place. That’s what.’

  Cooper dropped his hand, embarrassed by his own response. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Anthony Lingard – that’s what the young chap was called. They hanged him for the murder of the toll-house keeper at Wardlow Mires. Then he was gibbeted at the rock, fastened up in an iron cage where everyone could see him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘The year of the Battle of Waterloo, they reckon.’

  ‘That was 1815, surely.’

  Jarvis shrugged. The details weren’t important, he seemed to say. It might have happened yesterday.

  ‘Well, something like a gibbeting was a bit of a treat in those days,’ said Jarvis. ‘No telly, you know. So many folk turned out to see Lingard that the local fly-boys set up stalls near the rock. Hotdogs and souvenir postcards, or whatever they had then. It didn’t last, of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When his corpse started to rot, the spectacle lost its novelty.’

  Cooper nodded. In Derbyshire, such pieces of history lived on in the landscape, memorialized in features like Gibbet Rock. The execution of Anthony Lingard could almost have been yesterday. For those who remembered.

  ‘Anyway, you came here for something,’ said Jarvis. ‘I expect you’re busy with more important things than me.’

  ‘Mr Jarvis, you told me that you used to let the dogs run in the woods at one time. Why did you stop them doing that?’

  ‘It wasn’t me that stopped them. The estate put new fences up. That was what stopped the dogs going into the woods.’

  ‘And when was this exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. The year before last, I suppose.’

  ‘Can we take a look at the new fence?’

  ‘If you like. There’s not much to see. It’s only a fence.’

  Jarvis led him down the path through the garden and entered the paddock by a side gate. Two of the dogs ran up to them immediately, their tongues lolling and their eyes rolling with excitement. Jarvis held out his hand, though he still wore his work gloves.

  ‘Now then, Feckless,’ he said, rubbing one dog’s ears. ‘That’s Aimless you’ve got there.’

  Aimless had his nose practically glued to Cooper’s boots. The dog sniffed like a bloodhound, almost inhaling the trailing ends of his laces. Cooper hardly dared to lift his feet, for fear of kicking the dog in its inquisitive muzzle.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Jarvis, noticing his hesitation. ‘Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling.’

  The old fencing on the eastern side of the stream was broken in several places and full of holes, more than big enough for one of Tom Jarvis’s dogs to get through, or even Jarvis himself. But a hundred feet above it, near the crest of the slope, was a new fence made of stout timber posts and weldmesh, topped by a strand of barbed wire. It was as if the estate had drawn in its boundaries, abandoning the new access land. In other areas, the national park had been busy putting in new stiles to provide access, but it hadn’t been necessary here.

  ‘No way through there,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to try climbing it either,’ said Jarvis.

  ‘When they put this up, did they refence the whole estate?’

  ‘No. Where the grounds of the hall border on to roads, there are stone walls. Ten feet high, those are. They were built a long time ago, to keep the common folk out. In other spots, there’s stock
fencing, and the farmers make sure that’s in good nick. No, it seemed to be the woods they were bothered about. Didn’t like the idea of anybody wandering in and enjoying themselves, I reckon.’

  ‘Did people used to go into the woods?’

  ‘Oh, aye. There’s a public footpath runs at the top of my land. It goes over the top and back down into Miller’s Dale. But if you knew where the fence was down, you could go off into the woods. I saw them now and then. At night time, you know.’

  ‘Poachers?’

  ‘Most likely. I’ve never asked them any questions. I’m not daft enough for that.’

  ‘Has the new fence kept them out?’

  Jarvis snorted again. ‘You don’t keep poachers out so easily, not these days. They’re professionals. They work in teams, and they come kitted up. No gamekeeper would tackle a poacher on his own these days. He’d likely get his head beaten in.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  The presence of poaching gangs might explain everything. They’d most likely be from out of the area, so no one would recognize them. They’d be armed, and not happy about someone else’s overly boisterous dog interfering with their business. If the estate had noticed poaching going on, it would explain the new fence, too. But what game was available in these woods that would be worth poaching? No more than a few rabbits, surely?

  Cooper looked around. Down here, the moss was so thick on the wall that it looked as though someone had knitted a bright green sweater for it, draping it in folds of Arran wool. A hollow in the rocks above the track was completely covered in moss and hung with ferns, like a waterfall without the water – except for the continual dampness seeping through the surface. He wondered if some of these fungi were the kind that excreted acids to dissolve rocks and reduce them to soil. Everything decomposed, in the end.

  They began to climb back towards the house. Seen from below, the heavy porch seemed to have pulled the house into an awkward shape. It looked hunched and low, like an animal waiting to spring. Cooper remembered the other thing he’d come here to ask Tom Jarvis.

  ‘Mr Jarvis, you have several dogs on the premises,’ he said.

  Jarvis looked at the dogs, then back at Cooper. Why did he need to waste words? Cooper had already wasted an entire sentence.

  ‘I’ve just been watching a special support dog in action.’

  Jarvis tugged off one of his gloves with his teeth, then removed the other and put them both into his pocket, like someone preparing for action, or a man who was finding the conversation boring. Cooper felt he was about to lose his attention altogether.

  ‘The thing I’m wondering, sir,’ he said, ‘is why none of your dogs detected the smell of a decomposing body that lay on the edge of your property for months.’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d better ask them.’

  ‘Most dogs would detect something like that. The odour is very strong for a while. In some stages of decomposition, it’s quite unmistakable.’

  ‘I don’t let them go into those woods,’ said Jarvis impatiently. ‘I told you, they never go in there. Well, except for the old lass, and look what happened to her.’

  ‘Even so …’

  ‘Look, I don’t know. Maybe the smell of cack threw them off the scent.’

  ‘The body was lying there for eighteen months,’ said Cooper. ‘But that bag was left only a few days ago.’

  Jarvis scowled across the valley. ‘There’s a lot of shit in the countryside.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Cooper realized he wasn’t going to get any further without antagonizing Jarvis. ‘By the way, what did you do with the excreta you found?’

  ‘What did I do with it?’ said Jarvis in amazement. ‘What do you think I did with it?’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘I chucked it on the compost heap. There’s no point in wasting good cack.’

  ‘And it’s still there?’

  ‘Of course it is. Unless some bugger snuck in during the night and nicked it. You never know these days.’

  ‘I wonder if I could ask you to leave it where it is for a while, sir.’

  Jarvis stared at him. ‘It’ll just rot down,’ he said. ‘That’s the point of a compost heap.’

  ‘I’d like to get someone to take a sample. Just in case we get the chance to do a DNA profile for comparison.’

  ‘A DNA profile?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  But Jarvis continued to look sceptical. Cooper couldn’t blame him. He didn’t rate his own chances too highly, either of getting it approved or of persuading a SOCO that it was high priority. Somebody was bound to list the request under ‘shit jobs’.

  ‘I don’t know much about DNA,’ said Jarvis finally, ‘but it has to be taken from cells in the body, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Any cells with a nucleus,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, cack …’ Then Jarvis paused, as if amazed that he was having to explain it, even to Cooper. ‘Cack is waste stuff, undigested food. It’s from whatever rubbish you’ve been eating. If you tested that crap, you’d likely get the DNA profile of a Big Mac and large fries with chicken nuggets. Not that there aren’t plenty of those walking around the streets of Edendale on two legs, but what good would it do you?’

  ‘We’d be hoping for some cells that might have sloughed off the gut lining as the material was passing through the intestine,’ said Cooper patiently.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘But we’d have to get to it pretty quickly. I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but I think the DNA in excreta will degrade within a couple of weeks. In this case, it hasn’t been exposed to the sun, which is a good thing. Ultra violet degrades DNA faster than anything.’

  ‘Bugger all this,’ said Jarvis. ‘What are you doing about the bastard who shot my dog?’

  Cooper looked across at the woods. ‘We’re visiting Alder Hall this afternoon to see what’s going on over there.’

  ‘Bloody hell, action. Well, I’ve got more spare timber – I’ll start setting up the gibbet, shall I?’

  20

  Vivien Gill wasn’t alone this time. The first hint Cooper had of company was the number of cars parked in the street near her house, not to mention the cluster of motorbikes. He had to leave his Toyota almost at the corner and walk down, wondering if there was a wedding taking place somewhere. Or a funeral, of course.

  The door was opened by a big man in his late thirties, with a beer belly and the shoulders of an ex-boxer. Cooper was unavoidably reminded of Billy McGowan. It was that sense of a man who was out of place in his occupation, a man who ought to be doing something more physical than opening the door to visitors. Preferably a job that involved hitting things.

  ‘Are you the bloke from the police?’ the man asked, with instinctive suspicion.

  Cooper produced his warrant card. ‘Detective Constable Cooper, sir. I’m here to see Mrs Gill.’

  ‘She’s waiting.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And you are?’

  ‘Family.’

  The word was barely a grunt, delivered as though he was imparting more information than he normally gave to the police. Cooper’s instincts began to prickle. He felt sure that if the man were to give his name, it would be one he recognized from a charge sheet or a magistrates’ court list.

  He held the door open, and Cooper squeezed past him into the hall. Maybe death and funerals were too much on his mind at the moment, but this person smelled as though he’d already died. Some time around last Monday, probably. Perhaps they hadn’t been able to schedule his funeral yet, and he was returning to the earth bit by bit as his body sloughed away.

  ‘Do I know you?’ said Cooper.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think I might have seen you around. Where do you work?’

  The man shut the front door and stared at him. He was only an inch or so taller than Cooper, but he carried a few extra stone in weight and most of it was in his belly and shoulders.

  ‘At the sewage works,’ he said. ‘I’m a s
hit stirrer.’

  Cooper turned as the door of the sitting room opened behind him. A woman he didn’t recognize was studying him. She had hair dyed deep red, and she squinted her eyes against a trickle of smoke from the cigarette in her mouth.

  ‘Is he the bloke from the police?’ she said to the man.

  ‘So he reckons.’

  Cooper showed his ID again. ‘Detective Constable Cooper.’

  ‘All right,’ said the woman. ‘She’s in here.’

  He could tell from the rumble of noise that the sitting room was full of people. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls, leaving a space in the middle of the carpet, as if in readiness for a performance. For a few moments, Cooper could hardly breathe from the smoke and the heat of so many bodies crammed into a small room.

  When he entered the room and was pointed towards a seat in front of a small forest of hostile stares, he realized exactly who was being expected to give a performance.

  Gavin Murfin offered the DI a miniature chocolate bar from a box of Cadbury’s Heroes, rattling it temptingly. Hitchens shook his head abruptly.

  ‘Sir, DC Murfin has been checking on Melvyn Hudson’s former business partner, Richard Slack,’ said Fry.

  ‘This is old Abraham’s son,’ said Murfin. ‘And father to Vernon. Richard was the second generation of the family on the Slack side of the business, so to speak.’

  ‘He and Melvyn Hudson were contemporaries?’ said Hitchens.

  ‘If you like. Their fathers set up the firm, but both retired and left their interests in the business to their sons. Old Mr Hudson died, but Abraham Slack is hanging on – he just doesn’t play an active part in Hudson and Slack any more.’

  ‘So what happened to Richard?’ said Hitchens.

  ‘He was killed in a car crash last year.’

  ‘You know, I remember it,’ said the DI, leaning forward in his chair. ‘There was a lot of stuff in the local paper about him. But it didn’t happen on our patch, did it?’

  ‘In C Division,’ said Murfin. ‘It was a bit ironic, actually. He was on a late-night call at the time, collecting a body from a house near Holymoorside. He was driving one of those unmarked vans with blacked-out windows.’

  ‘Was this before or after Audrey Steele’s funeral?’