06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

  ‘What part of the Old Testament was he quoting?’ asked Fry.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It might be relevant. What was he trying to tell you?’

  Cooper cast his mind back to the conversation with Robertson. ‘Something about death.’

  ‘Naturally. But what?’

  ‘Ecclesiastes, he said it was. That’s right. Ecclesiastes 3.’

  Now Fry looked interested. ‘The famous part?’

  ‘Famous part? I suppose so. It was the bit about “dust to dust”, but it wasn’t quite worded like that in the quote.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you were thinking of?’

  ‘No. Something a little earlier in Ecclesiastes.’

  ‘Diane, I didn’t know you were so familiar with the Bible.’

  ‘It must be a sign of my misspent childhood.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s due to one of my sets of foster parents. Everybody has their obsession, and theirs was the most depressing, pessimistic book in the whole of the Old Testament. But everyone knows the verse I’m thinking about. Even you, Ben.’

  ‘What do you mean, “even me”? I went to Sunday school.’

  ‘“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,”’ said Fry.

  ‘Ah. The Pete Seeger song, “Turn, Turn, Turn”. Some hippy sixties band had a big hit with it, didn’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. The words are from Ecclesiastes. Don’t you remember the next part? “A time to be born …”’

  Cooper remembered. Whether from his Sunday school lessons, or from the old pop song, he couldn’t be sure. But the words came almost unbidden into his head. A time to be born …

  ‘“… and a time to die,”’ he said.

  Fry paused at the passenger door and studied Cooper across the roof of the car.

  ‘Professor Robertson is enjoying himself too much, don’t you think? This is the way he gets his kicks.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your work, I suppose. Some of us do.’

  Cooper got into the car and started the engine. Fry fastened her seat belt and turned to him.

  ‘Will you turn into a Freddy Robertson when you’re retired, Ben? I can just picture you constantly hanging around the door at West Street, volunteering your services free and gratis in the public interest.’

  ‘I’ll probably be glad to get away from the place by then. Won’t you?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Fry. ‘Besides, what special expertise would I have to offer?’

  Ben Cooper didn’t possess a Bible. At least, he hadn’t brought one with him to the flat when he moved out of Bridge End Farm. There had been one he’d won as a prize for regular attendance at Sunday school when he was ten years old. But that had been a children’s edition, with illustrations of a handsome, golden-haired Jesus walking on water and feeding the five thousand. Cooper wasn’t sure it had included the Old Testament. Probably not. There was far too much begetting and Sodom and Gomorrah for the trendy curate who’d been in charge then.

  The only other copy he could remember was the old Cooper family Bible, presented to his great-grandfather and great-grandmother when they married in 1921. It had all the family’s subsequent births, marriages and deaths recorded on the first few pages, just ahead of Genesis. But that one lived in the sideboard at Bridge End, wrapped in tissue paper and preserved like a sacred relic.

  Cooper left his flat, went out on to Welbeck Street and knocked at the door of number six, where his landlady lived. Yes, Mrs Shelley had a Bible she could let him borrow. It was the King James version, of course. No Good News nonsense for her.

  She invited Cooper in while she fetched the book, and he stood in her hallway, trying not to make too much noise. He could hear his landlady’s Jack Russell terrier whining and yapping at the back of the house. If the dog realized someone was on the premises, it was likely to explode into full-blown hysteria. Best not to make any careless movements. Also, he couldn’t afford to get involved in conversation with Mrs Shelley. Discussions with her were likely to get complicated and bewildering, and he didn’t have time for it tonight. He was finally going on his date – a table for two was booked for seven forty-five at the Raj Mahal. Just one of the reasons he hadn’t been keen to eat there with Gavin Murfin.

  But Mrs Shelley wasn’t gone for long. She came back wiping a layer of dust off a heavy black volume before offering it to him.

  ‘I hope it helps, Ben,’ she said.

  To Cooper’s embarrassment, she seemed to be about to burst into tears, despite the smile she gave him. She even patted his arm. OK. So Mrs Shelley thought she’d just been instrumental in saving his soul. What had given her that impression?

  ‘How is your mother, by the way, Ben?’ she said.

  Ah, so that was it. He should have known that his landlady would have her ear to the grapevine. Mrs Shelley wasn’t saving his soul, but bringing him comfort in a time of need.

  ‘I phoned the hospital this evening, and they say she’s stable. Thank you for asking.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do …’

  ‘No, everything’s fine. Thank you, Mrs Shelley.’

  Cooper held the book up in front of him, not sure whether he was using it to ward off his landlady, or acknowledging that he already had what he needed.

  Back in his flat, he got himself a beer and sprawled on the old sofa with the Bible. Then it struck him that drinking beer might not be appropriate while reading the Old Testament. He hesitated for a moment. Nobody would ever know, surely? But he had a clear vision of himself spilling Corona in the middle of Ecclesiastes. With his luck, the stain would form an image of a horned goat leaping across the pages, and Mrs Shelley would evict him from the flat as a disciple of Satan.

  He sighed and put the beer to one side. Randy positioned himself on the rug, intrigued by the unusual behaviour.

  ‘It’s the Bible,’ said Cooper. ‘You ought to read it – you might learn something. Thou shalt not kill, for a start.’

  The cat blinked sceptically, and began to wash his whiskers with concentrated relish. They probably still bore traces of blood from his last victim.

  And here it was – Ecclesiastes 3:1. Cooper read the first few lines quietly to himself, while Randy cocked an ear in case food was being mentioned.

  To everything there is a season,

  And a time to every purpose under the heaven,

  A time to be born, and a time to die;

  A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

  A time to kill, and a time to heal;

  A time to break down, and a time to build up;

  A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

  A time to mourn, and a time to dance.

  It was appropriate, of course. But had Professor Freddy Robertson really been trying to draw his attention to this verse with his reference to the Book of Ecclesiastes, or was that simply Diane Fry’s unreasonable prejudice against him? If it was Robertson’s intention, it had proved a little too subtle. It meant the professor had assumed a greater knowledge of the Bible than Cooper possessed. And then, there was that discussion of body snatching they’d had in the churchyard. Robertson had thought that his comments about superstition had offended Cooper, though they hadn’t. The professor knew a great deal about a lot of things, but he wasn’t a terribly good judge of people, was he?

  Cooper looked at the verse from Ecclesiastes again. A time for everything. So what was the time for right now? A time to kill? A time to die?

  He suspected it was neither of those. Not yet. The mystery caller would be thinking of another part of the verse as he sat smug and satisfied in his lair somewhere. He would be considering the possibility of another message, something to keep the police on their toes, to point them subtly in the right direction, or in the wrong direction altogether. Or perhaps he’d be deciding whether he should keep quiet for a while longer and let them stew.


  Cooper could almost read his thoughts now. There was a right time for all things, he would be thinking. As it said later in the same verse of Ecclesiastes 3:1:

  A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.

  Diane Fry watched Angie getting dressed. The flat was too small for her to avoid it, and in any case her sister had never bothered about modesty.

  They’d been like that with each other as teenagers, so Diane knew she must be the one who’d changed in the last decade and a half. What was it that had changed her most, she wondered. Which aspect of her life had made her incapable of the closeness with her sister that she’d fought so long to recapture? She knew which it was that gave her the most nightmares and ruined her sleep, even now. Moving away from Birmingham couldn’t wipe out that pain; it had followed her in her dreams.

  ‘Where are you going, Sis?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘But where exactly?’

  ‘Just out.’

  Diane was aware that she sounded like a possessive parent, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. And she knew that her sister’s answers were deliberately designed to make her sound that way. Angie had always been clever like that. As a child, she’d been the manipulative one who knew exactly how to drive the most patient foster parent wild with frustration.

  ‘Who are you seeing?’ asked Diane, trying not to sound too desperate.

  Angie pulled on a clean T-shirt. ‘Somebody nice, maybe.’

  ‘And will he still be as nice after he’s met you?’

  Her sister laughed. ‘Who said it was a “he”? You can’t catch me out, Mrs Detective.’

  Diane started to lose patience. ‘Come on, Angie, what’s all the secrecy for?’

  But Angie headed for the door. ‘If you speak to me a bit better, I might tell you all about it tomorrow.’

  Throwing herself on to the settee and folding up her legs, Diane settled down for another evening on her own. After so many years of restraint, she couldn’t believe how often she now found herself saying things she regretted. But there were thoughts that forced themselves into her mind and heart so forcibly that she could no longer hold them in. Even Liz Petty had put her hand instinctively on a tap that had been waiting to be turned on, ever since Diane had read the transcript of the phone calls and visited Melvyn Hudson at the funeral director’s.

  The one thing she hadn’t told Petty about the Balsall Heath case was the most shocking fact of all, in its way. The parents of that dead and decomposing child had attended her funeral, and sent the largest floral tribute. They had made a great show of mourning their own victim. What was the meaning of all that? She would never figure it out. Never.

  The Raj Mahal restaurant in Hollowgate was quiet on Sunday nights, which suited Ben Cooper fine. He’d arrived first – a little early, in fact. But a waiter moved in quickly.

  ‘Mr Cooper? Yes, a table for two, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The first thing he did when he’d settled at his table was check out the other diners. Anywhere in Edendale, there was a dangerously high probability that he’d know somebody, or they would know him. If he was sitting a few feet away from a felon he’d once arrested, it could sour the atmosphere badly. Admirers of his father, or friends of Matt’s, could be just as embarrassing.

  But tonight, he was in luck. There were few customers, none of them familiar, and they all seemed too wrapped up in each other to pay him any attention. Cooper made sure his mobile phone was on, and set it to vibrate. ‘Stable’ was all very well, but he couldn’t afford to be out of touch if the hospital called.

  Then he fiddled with the menu for a while, knowing he’d have difficulty choosing what to eat. It was one of those menus where he could happily order any of the items and be confident he’d made a right choice. And on a first date there was always that awkwardness of trying to keep a conversation going to break the ice, making it impossible to concentrate on the menu at the same time.

  He looked out of the window, but couldn’t see much on the street. The lights from Hollowgate and the windows of the Market Square pubs reflected off the wet pavements and refracted through the drizzle that had started falling just before dusk. Eight o’clock, and the centre of Edendale looked deserted. The car park by the town hall was almost empty.

  Cooper knew all the warnings about forming a relationship with another police officer. When it was someone of a different rank that you worked with closely, it was definitely a problem. But this wasn’t another police officer. Close, though, in a way.

  Finally, the door opened and the waiter hurried over. She looked around the restaurant, saw him immediately, and smiled. Cooper waved. He put down his menu and stood up as the waiter brought her to the table. They kissed chastely on the cheek. Her skin was cool and slightly damp from the rain.

  ‘I’m not late, am I?’

  ‘No.’

  She was wearing tailored cream trousers, but he was used to seeing her in trousers. She looked a lot better than when she was bundled up in one of those thick blue sweaters the SOCOs wore, or a white paper crime-scene suit. Very unflattering.

  ‘You look great, Liz,’ he said.

  The back wall of Hudson and Slack’s vehicle compound bordered the railway line where it ran through a cutting between Fargate and Castleton Road. Later that night, after the last train had passed through Edendale, three figures in hooded sweatshirts made their way along the cutting. They moved confidently, as if sure there would be no one to observe them from the industrial units on the other side of the line.

  When they reached the compound, the biggest of the three men used a pair of bolt cutters to open a gap in the weldmesh fence, and they clambered over the wall. Within a few minutes, they had jemmied open a rear door of the funeral director’s, with only a splintering of wood and the occasional grunt of effort. Then the company’s new security system activated, and the burglar alarm began to scream. But no one was interested in committing burglary.

  No one spoke as they entered a store room. Two of them kicked open inner doors, while the third swilled petrol from a plastic container on to the floor and furniture, drenching a stack of chairs and a spare desk, spraying fuel into the adjoining rooms as far as he could reach. Then he lit a petrol-soaked rag and tossed it through the doorway as his companions ran out.

  With a dull roar, a blaze flared instantly. Flames engulfed the store room and burst from the open door to lick at the stones of the outside wall. Windows cracked as air was sucked in and drew the blaze deeper into the building. Paintwork scorched as the building filled with billowing black clouds. A smoke alarm burst into life and added its noise to the security system. The three men moved with sudden urgency as they raced back across the compound towards the wall.

  But one of the figures paused as he passed between the rows of black vehicles. The other two turned, gesturing to him impatiently. With a ferocious swing of his arm, the biggest man brought down the blades of his bolt cutters and smashed the windscreen of a hearse. The toughened glass crazed, and he jabbed at it until it fell in fragments. Then he tossed the plastic container and the remaining petrol on to the driver’s seat and dropped in a lighted match. He laughed at the heat and shock of the explosion as he ran to join the others at the gap in the fence. They clambered over the wall and sprinted back the way they’d come along the railway cutting. A car was waiting for them in a back street near Chesterfield Road.

  By the time the first fire appliance turned off Fargate, the three men were long gone. In the street, people who’d come out of their houses to watch the flames had to cover their mouths as the wind changed direction, blowing acrid smoke and flakes of ash into their faces. Something was burning well at Hudson and Slack.

  Despite his best efforts, it was inevitable they would end up talking shop. The current point of contact between them was the mystery caller.

  ‘Diane Fry is taking these calls very seriously,’ said Cooper. ‘Very seriously.’

  The lamb curry he’d chos
en was good, not too hot. With a few side dishes, the meal was living up to expectations.

  ‘The tapes have really upset her, you know,’ said Petty.

  ‘They’re pretty awful. Nobody likes listening to them.’

  ‘It’s more than that with Diane.’

  ‘Is it? Why?’

  Petty hesitated. ‘I can’t say. She told me in confidence.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Cooper was surprised by a surge of jealousy. There had been occasions when Fry had confided in him. But very few occasions. It was some time ago now that she’d told him about her childhood in foster homes in the Black Country, about her older sister who’d been a heroin addict by the time she ran away from home and disappeared from Diane’s life. She’d talked to him about Angie again recently, too, but only because she had to. Cooper had somehow got himself involved in events that were nothing to do with him.

  But that was really all he knew about Fry’s life. Most of the time, she seemed to be trapped inside a bubble of her own, a little capsule of isolation that no one could penetrate. Had Liz Petty managed to penetrate that bubble?

  Cooper looked across the table at Liz as she scooped up her curry with a poppadom.

  ‘Do you get on well with Diane?’ he said. ‘How long have you been friendly with her?’

  ‘Ben –’

  ‘I didn’t think she had any friends at West Street. What does she talk to you about?’

  Petty put down her fork and gave him a quizzical smile.

  ‘Ben, could we talk about something other than Diane Fry?’

  Cooper felt his face start to grow warm. Perhaps the curry was too hot for him, after all.

  MY JOURNAL OF THE DEAD, PHASE FIVE

  Tonight I went back for the last time. Moonlight filtered through the trees, glinting on steel as I crouched in the grass and took the scalpel from my pocket. I lowered my head to pray. God, give me what I need. I know it’s wrong, but please take this soul.

  When I placed my hands in the damp grass, I could feel the grittiness of the soil under my fingers, the hard, knotty lumps of the roots. I was able to savour the closeness of the earth, and draw in the power I could sense below the ground.