The dead place bcadf-6

by Stephen Booth

  Cooper glanced around the room. The place was very neat. In fact, the lack of decoration had a rather minimalist feel. But finally he found what he’d been unconsciously looking for. Everyone had family mementos in the house, even Freddy Robertson. Here, a framed photograph stood on a shelf in an alcove.

  ‘Is this yours, sir?’

  ‘Yes, it’s my family. My wife and I, with our three children.

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  Vernon grumbles about it, but he knows how much it means to me. Richard would have been about twelve at the time.’

  ‘He looks very solemn,’ said Cooper.

  ‘He was the eldest of the three, and he made it his job to look after his little sisters. Richard took the responsibility seriously.’ ‘What age was he when he was killed in the accident?’

  ‘Forty-six.’

  Cooper did a quick mental calculation. The photograph must have been taken around 1970: the year that flower power died, the summer of love already a distant memory. You would never have known from this family group that the sixties had ever happened. The adolescent Richard had the suggestion of an unruly fringe to his blond hair, but no more than that. The whole family looked respectable and well dressed, as if they’d put on their Sunday clothes specially for the photograph. They were posed like a Victorian group, the dignified patriarch with his wife and children gathered around him.

  ‘You must have been proud of him, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes. And he made a very good funeral director, you know. The firm was in good hands with Richard there.’

  Cooper looked up. Was he mistaken, or had he detected a hint of criticism of Melvyn Hudson? It would be understandable, in the circumstances. The old man must deeply regret that his own son wasn’t still there to play his part in running Hudson and Slack. Abraham must be reminded of his son’s death every time he heard the name of the company or saw it on the letterhead.

  ‘Are the books yours, too?’

  ‘No, those are Vernon’s. I brought a few books and knickknacks with me, but I keep them upstairs in my own room mostly. It’s Vernon’s house, after all.’

  Actually, Cooper thought the room could have done with a few knickknacks. The shelves could have taken a few more

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  books. In fact, it felt really sparse, a stripped-down room. Perhaps this was the way Vernon liked it. It was, after all, a male household.

  ‘That’s my chair in the corner, though,’ said the old man. ‘I brought a few bits of my best furniture with me. The display cabinet is mine, too, and the grandfather clock.’

  As Abraham pointed out his possessions, Cooper wondered what the room had been like without them. There must hardly have been anything in here at all. No woman would have tolerated such a lack of interior decoration.

  ‘When did you retire from Hudson and Slack, sir?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Strictly speaking, I haven’t retired,’ said Abraham. ‘I still own a half-interest in the company, so I attend meetings occasionally. But I haven’t been active in the business for more than seven years now. I was lucky enough to be able to retire at sixty-five.’

  ‘Because you had your son to pass the mantle on to?’

  ‘Yes. But Richard … he died, you know.’

  ‘That must have been a great blow.’

  ‘We come to terms with these things after a while. But that’s why there’s just me and Vernon now.’

  ‘What about Vernon’s mother?’

  ‘She and Richard were already divorced when he died. She remarried and lives in Shropshire now. Vernon phones her, and he’s visited them in Oswestry a couple of times, but he doesn’t like her new husband, so he doesn’t see as much of his mother as he’d like to.’

  ‘So, Mr Slack, you weren’t actively involved in the firm at the time of your son’s death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or in the period immediately before that?’

  ‘Seven years ago, I passed day-to-day running of the company over to Richard. And Melvyn, of course. Is there something wrong?’

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  ‘We’re investigating an incident that may have happened shortly before your son died.’

  ‘May have happened?’

  ‘Sorry, I should say it did happen. And someone at Hudson and Slack may have been involved.’

  ‘We have a very high reputation,’ said Abraham stiffly. ‘We can’t afford any irregularities. None at all. It’s a very sensitive business we’re in.’

  ‘Nevertheless, there was a body which didn’t get cremated as it should have been.’

  ‘I know nothing about that. Neither Richard nor Melvyn ever mentioned it. I’m sure you must be mistaken.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Abraham shook his head vehemently. ‘No, I would have known about it. There are too many regulations and double checks. Something like that couldn’t be concealed. And why, anyway?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Why on earth would anyone do a thing like that?’

  The old man glanced out of the window, and Cooper followed his gaze. He saw a car drawing up in the yard, an old Escort with a rattling exhaust. Vernon Slack got out, looked at Cooper’s Toyota and fiddled nervously with his keys, as if he might get back in the Escort and drive off again.

  ‘That’s handy,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ll just have a quick word with your grandson on my way out, sir.’

  ‘Don’t bully him,’ said Abraham suddenly.

  ‘Now why would I do that?’

  Vernon had seen him coming. He looked nervous, but then he always seemed nervous. He remained standing in the yard while Cooper came out of the front door. His eyes flickered to the window, so his grandfather was probably giving him some kind of signal, telling him how to behave or what to say. Maybe just a finger to the lips, enough for Vernon to understand: Say nothing.

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  ‘Just home from work, sir?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yes, I finished a bit early. We were quiet today.’

  ‘I suppose that’s bad for business, but good in a way, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It means fewer people are dying,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  Looking past Vernon, he noticed an access to a cess pit concealed below flags between the hedges. It was well designed, almost invisible. There was a workshop attached to the house, with strip lighting and power points. On the other side, a garage contained an inspection pit, shelves full of tools and a large roof space used for storage. The only thing in a state of disrepair was an ancient stone-built privy in the corner of the garden.

  ‘Do you enjoy the work at Hudson and Slack?’ asked Cooper.

  Vernon shrugged. ‘It’s OK. I don’t do anything too difficult.’

  He looked at the window again, but the old man had disappeared. Vernon started to look anxious.

  ‘What were you talking to Granddad about?’

  ‘Mr Slack, I wonder if you remember doing a funeral about eighteen months ago for a lady called Audrey Steele?’

  ‘I wouldn’t remember anything like that. You’ll have to speak to the boss,’ said Vernon.

  ‘The service was at the parish church in Edendale, St Mark’s, and it was followed by cremation. Did you drive the hearse that day?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Mr Hudson has the records. He makes all the arrangements.’

  Cooper looked at him. ‘Don’t you ever know whose funeral you’re assisting at?’

  ‘Why would I need to? I just drive and help carry the casket.’

  ‘What about when you collect a body?’

  ‘I might get told the name. But I don’t know any more

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  about it than that. There isn’t any need for it, you see. We do the job and look after the grievers, and then we go home. The boss sees to everything else, and he tells us when we’re wanted.’

  ‘You’re not the least bit curious?’

  Vernon shrugged. ‘Sometimes, you don’t even know the details of a call until you turn up at the
house to do a removal.’

  He began to edge past Cooper towards the house. Even walking slowly, his movements were a little awkward. Cooper was reminded of Freddy Robertson. But the professor must be nearly forty years older than Vernon, and it was understandable if he was showing his age. Vernon was a young man. He looked like someone who’d suffered recent bruising.

  ‘So you don’t remember Audrey Steele’s funeral, sir?’ said Cooper, trying to keep Vernon from disappearing altogether.

  ‘We do a lot of funerals. We do them every day. How would I remember?’

  ‘Tell me, do you work with Billy McGowan often?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘You get on with him all right?’

  “Course I do.’

  Cooper was about to press him further about the funeral of Audrey Steele, when he saw Vernon’s nervousness and remembered how Diane Fry had left Melvyn Hudson to stew for a while. Even if the trick didn’t work on Hudson, it should work on Vernon Slack. In any case, he was keen to be back in the office to hear the geocacher’s news.

  Then his attention was drawn by the jingle of car keys, and he noticed Vernon’s hands.

  ‘How did you get those burns on your hands, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re not burns, it’s just a rash.’

  ‘A pretty nasty rash, Mr Slack.’

  ‘I was doing some gardening, and I must have touched something I was allergic to.’

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  ‘Perhaps you ought to see a doctor.’ ‘No, it’ll go down in a day or two.’ ‘Is that why you’ve been wearing gloves?’ ‘Yes, it looks better in front of the grievers.’ Cooper raised his eyes and looked at Vernon Slack steadily. But Vernon shifted his gaze. There was no doubt he was frightened of something or somebody. And it wasn’t Ben Cooper.

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  The office was deathly quiet when Cooper returned to West Street later that afternoon. Only Diane Fry was in the CID room, working her way through a stack of reports she’d been neglecting. One of the reports was waiting for Cooper on his desk. It was an initial forensic report on five sets of cremains. No points of comparison.

  ‘I wonder if Vernon has ever told the old man how badly Melvyn Hudson treats him,’ said Cooper when he had Fry’s attention.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sometimes people who’re bullied on a regular basis feel ashamed of it and don’t tell anybody. It’s a particular problem with children in schools. And Vernon still seems to be a child, in some ways. He might be afraid of admitting to his grandfather that he’s too frightened to stand up for himself.’

  ‘Especially as he’s in a position of the carer now?’ said Fry.

  ‘That’s it. Vernon will know that Abraham wants to see him as somebody strong. Besides, what could the old man do, except have a row with Hudson?’

  ‘I wonder if Vernon could afford to give up his job at the firm?’

  ‘It depends how much money he was left by his father. He

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  has the house, but that’s not worth anything unless he sells it. He may have no other income.’

  ‘The old man is probably worth quite a bit, given his half share in the firm.’

  ‘You think that’s what Vernon is hoping for, to inherit from the old man too?’

  Cooper looked at her. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They certainly sound an odd pair. Some bond is keeping them together.’

  ‘They’re family. That’s enough for most people.’

  But Cooper was thinking about his last visit to Vivien Gill’s house, and the family gathered in the sitting room. People held together by that kind of bond weren’t always good news for everyone else.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Fry. ‘Family.’

  A phone was ringing somewhere down the corridor, but no one was answering it. Cooper felt a strange sense of isolation, as if the whole building had been evacuated, except for him and Fry.

  ‘Diane, last time I saw Vernon Slack, he had red weals on his hands. They looked to go part way up his arms, too. They were so bad I thought at first they were burns, but he said it was an allergic rash.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m wondering if they might have been formaldehyde burns.’

  ‘An accident at work?’ said Fry.

  ‘Possibly. But why wouldn’t he have said so? Why lie about them? And why did he seem so frightened? He was moving stiffly, too, as if he was bruised.’

  ‘You think somebody beat him up and shoved his hands into formaldehyde - what, as a warning? “Look, Vernon, this is what will happen to you if you don’t keep quiet”?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘But who would do that?’

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  ‘Two people spring to mind. For one thing, I don’t believe Melvyn Hudson could have been entirely ignorant of what was going on. But he doesn’t seem the type for direct intimidation either. He’s a bully all right, but his bullying is psychological, not physical. He’s quite capable of scaring Vernon without throwing formaldehyde on him.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘But then there’s Billy McGowan.’

  Fry flicked through the files on the Hudson and Slack staff. ‘Yes, I remember him. A nasty-looking customer, all right I wouldn’t want him handling my dead relative. But we shouldn’t make assumptions from the way a person looks, should we? Mr McGowan could be a PhD in Nuclear Physics, just filling in time between Nobel Prizes.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Mmm. He has a handful of convictions for assault and affray, according to the PNC. Suspended sentences and probation, so he’s never actually been inside. Intelligence links him to organized theft from industrial premises, but only as casual labour on heavy jobs. He’s a smash-and-grunt man. It’s all pretty low-level stuff, Ben.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t suppose he was the brains behind the operation.’ ‘You think he’s doing the dirty work on behalf of Hudson?’

  ‘Well, that’s basically what he’s paid to do at Hudson and Slack, isn’t it? How big a step is there between what he does with a dead body and what he might feel capable of doing to a living one?’

  Fry seemed not to have heard him as she turned a page. ‘And no educational qualifications, to speak of. So I don’t suppose he’s won any Nobel Prizes, after all.’

  ‘I’d like to look into McGowan a bit more, Diane.’

  ‘OK, you do that.’

  She was silent for a moment, deep in thought. ‘Speaking of Nobel Prizes,’ she said finally, ‘this Professor Robertson

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  of yours - how did he come to be involved in this case, exactly?’

  ‘He knows a member of the police committee. Wasn’t that who recommended him? I’m sure Mr Hitchens said it was.’

  ‘Yes, but was Robertson asked to help out? Or did he volunteer?’ ‘Meaning what, Diane?’

  ‘Look, we all know there’s a certain type of creep who’ll commit a murder, then go to any lengths necessary to get himself involved in the investigation. That’s so he can watch what’s going on and laugh at us getting things wrong. It’s usually the creep who thinks he’s much cleverer than the rest of us.’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘You’ve just got it in for Freddy Robertson because he rubbed you up the wrong way the first time you met.’

  ‘You can’t deny that he fits the profile, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘Let’s face it, as smug, arrogant creeps go - he’s the smuggest.’

  ‘It’s just his manner.’

  ‘OK. So you think it’s a coincidence that he knows all about the same subjects that interest our killer?’

  ‘Professor Robertson is an expert in Thanatology. That’s the point. That’s why he’s involved.’

  ‘I called the anthropologist at Sheffield University,’ said Fry. ‘He said there’s no evidence for any of it.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘All that stuff about sarcophagi. He said archaeologists have never established clear evidence of burial rites from tha
t time. Excarnation just seems to have been one variant. At some sites skeletons have been found separated from their small bones. But, as we know, those are the bits most likely to fall off if a body is moved after skeletonization. The rest of it is conjecture.’

  ‘Well, experts disagree sometimes,’ said Cooper. ‘Anyway, Professor Robertson seemed to know all the details.’

  ‘You know what these enthusiasts are like - they develop

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  their own theory from selective evidence, and then there’s no hope of convincing them they’re wrong. They carry on riding their hobby horse no matter how many times it’s shot from under them.’

  ‘Would you describe Freddy Robertson as an enthusiast?’

  ‘Probably. If only to avoid a slander charge.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, there’s a very fine line here, isn’t there? A fine line between enthusiasm and obsession.’

  ‘And you think Robertson might have crossed that line?’

  Fry shrugged. ‘It isn’t always easy to tell. He might just have been having a joke with us.’

  ‘A jokeV

  ‘There’s one other thing I’ve been thinking about, in relation to our caller. It concerns educational qualifications.’

  ‘You don’t need any to be a crematorium technician. You don’t need GCSEs to carry a coffin or drive a hearse either.’

  ‘Exactly. But we’re looking for somebody well educated, aren’t we?’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘You heard the tapes. Eros and Thanatos. The life instinct and the death instinct. Even without the Freud references, he talks like an educated man. Someone who needs to show off his education, in fact. I think this is a man who likes to feel superior to everyone else.’

  ‘So who qualifies, by your definition?’ said Cooper reluctantly. Fry dropped a file on the desk. ‘Melvyn Hudson is a graduate. He studied at Hallam University in Sheffield.’

  ‘What subject did he take?’