06.The Dead Place Read online

  ‘Right,’ said Cooper. ‘Keep trying.’

  ‘What else have you got there?’

  ‘I’ve had the dental mapping done by the odontologist. Now I need a dentist who can match the chart to his records.’

  Cooper had found a copy of the postmortem dental chart on his desk. Most of the dark areas where work had been done seemed to be in the sides of the mouth, in the molars and pre-molars. The front teeth were almost free of fillings, and were described by the odontologist as ‘regular’.

  ‘I wish it was as easy as they make it look on TV,’ he said. ‘Like all we had to do was enter details for any set of teeth into some huge database and get an instant identification.’

  Fry was no longer listening, but Gavin Murfin looked up from his desk.

  ‘You mean it isn’t like that?’ he said. ‘The BBC has been lying to me, then.’

  Cooper remembered the moments that Ellen Walker had spent staring at him while he tried to recover from his surprise at hearing Audrey Steele had been cremated. All he’d been able to think of to do after that was to ask her for a recent photograph of Audrey.

  ‘You mean, from not long before she died?’ she’d said.

  ‘Preferably.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have one normally. Nothing since we were in our twenties, anyway. But her mum had some cards done for the funeral. They were like a memorial tribute, with a bit of a poem on them. Do you know the sort of thing I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Well, I kept mine, so it should be around here somewhere. The quality isn’t too bad. I think Auntie Viv spent quite a bit of money on having them done. But then, she would do. She thought the world of Audrey.’

  ‘Viv is her mother, I take it?’

  ‘Vivien Gill. Auntie Viv is my mother’s sister.’

  ‘Would you be able to find the memorial card for me, Mrs Walker?’

  Ellen had hesitated. ‘I don’t know why you want to see it. What use can it be to you?’

  ‘I’m not really sure myself. But, all the same, if it isn’t too much trouble …?’

  ‘All right. But it might take me a minute, so sit yourself down while you’re waiting.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She’d gone through into the next room, and Cooper had heard her opening a drawer.

  ‘Here we are. It didn’t take long, after all.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The photo of Audrey Steele had been in colour, with a little too much red tone, but printed on good quality card, with a gloss finish. Audrey was smiling, enjoying herself somewhere in the sun, with a cocktail on a table in front of her and a patch of blue sea in the background. She was wearing a white, sleeveless T-shirt with thin straps that revealed her shoulders, pink from the sun.

  ‘Audrey always had boyfriends when she wanted them,’ Ellen Walker had said. ‘Men liked her.’

  ‘Yes, she looks … Well, she looks fun.’

  ‘That’s exactly right. That’s what she was. Everybody liked Audrey, because she was such fun.’

  ‘Was she an only child?’

  ‘No, she has a brother and sister.’

  Cooper had hesitated, more questions burning in his mind that he was almost afraid to ask.

  ‘I don’t suppose she ever had any children?’

  ‘She had a little girl when she was with Carl – that’s the oil-rig man. But the child was born premature and died before they could get her home from the hospital. It was a real shame. I think those two would have settled down together if Corinne had lived.’

  ‘Can you remember if Audrey ever broke her arm?’

  ‘She might have done. Or was it her leg? No, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Or had a head X-ray?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Ellen Walker had started to look uneasy then, and Cooper had known she would either clam up, or demand an explanation.

  ‘One last thing. Could you let me have an address for your Auntie Viv, please?’

  ‘Yes, if you like.’

  Finally, Cooper had stood up, still troubled. ‘Ellen, are you certain?’

  ‘Certain?’ Mrs Walker had looked at him as if he’d challenged her on her prediction for the weather. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Are you certain your cousin was cremated?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think there was much doubt. Why else would they have taken her to the crematorium?’

  ‘We could try a different eye colour,’ said Suzi Lee reluctantly, when Cooper phoned her at the university later that morning. ‘I can do that on the computer, if you like. Or a change of hairstyle. Glasses, perhaps.’

  ‘Would that make a lot of difference?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘As I said before, it’s the bone structure and tissue depth that decide the shape of the face. And I’m confident that’s accurate.’ She paused. ‘Why do you think it isn’t?’

  ‘A wrong identification.’

  ‘I see.’ She sounded unreasonably disappointed. But Cooper knew how she felt.

  ‘I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with your reconstruction,’ he said.

  ‘No, of course not. You’re just saying it looks like the wrong person.’

  Cooper studied the photograph for a moment. Its eyes were fixed on the middle distance, and the face held no expression. But it didn’t need to. He wondered if Suzi Lee was doing the same thing at the other end of the line.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said.

  ‘In your own mind,’ said Cooper, ‘do you feel the first reconstruction is as accurate as you could have got it?’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, I am. Not in my mind, but in my heart. I feel sure that’s Jane Raven Lee.’

  Cooper nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s my feeling, too.’

  Audrey Steele’s mother lived on the Devonshire Estate, in a cream – rendered semi that had a washing line full of sheets billowing in the back garden. You didn’t see many washing lines these days, but maybe Vivien Gill was the old-fashioned type.

  Inside, a rustic-effect brick fireplace had been set into one wall of the sitting room, and a central heating radiator on another. Above the picture rails, the ceiling was coved and artexed. At the back of the house was a kitchen smelling strongly of disinfectant. When he followed Mrs Gill into it, Cooper became aware of a sickeningly sweet scent that might have several sources he didn’t want to think about. A baby sat in a high chair at the table, its mouth smeared with something sticky and yellow. Doidy Cup and Bickiepegs were set out on the counter.

  ‘This is my granddaughter,’ said Mrs Gill. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Cooper, giving the child a brief wave. He might learn the attraction of babies one day, but for now the appeal was lost on him. Once they could walk and talk, and look after their own toilet arrangements, he had no problem with children. But babies made him a bit nervous.

  In the sitting room, Vivien Gill made him sit down in one of the armchairs, though he told her he couldn’t stay long.

  ‘Mrs Gill, I don’t know whether you’ve spoken to Ellen Walker today …’

  ‘I talked to Ellen last night. She had some idea about a picture in the paper. An artist’s impression, or something.’

  ‘A facial reconstruction, yes.’

  ‘I thought it was a daft idea myself.’

  ‘Did you see the picture?’

  ‘No. I don’t get the evening paper.’

  Cooper looked out of the window and saw a man watching the street from a house opposite. Maybe that was why Mrs Gill had wanted him to sit down, so that he couldn’t be seen by nosey neighbours. She hadn’t otherwise seemed particularly hospitable. Of course, this was the Devonshire Estate, where residents were practised at recognizing a police officer, even out of uniform.

  ‘It was on the TV news, too,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got the child to look after. I don’t spend all my time watching telly.’

  ‘May I show you a copy of the photo?�
�

  Mrs Gill squinted at the picture he handed her, held it up to the light, then put it down while she found her glasses. ‘It doesn’t look human,’ she said. ‘It’s just a clay model, painted up.’

  ‘Does it bear any resemblance to your daughter?’

  ‘No. It’s daft.’

  She handed the photograph back dismissively. But Cooper noticed that her hand was shaking a little more. The baby was snivelling and getting ready to start crying, but Mrs Gill ignored it.

  ‘What about these items of clothing?’ said Cooper gently. ‘I’m sorry about the condition of them. Do they look familiar at all?’

  Mrs Gill barely glanced at the second set of photographs. They had been taken in the mortuary after the remnants of clothing had been removed and laid out on a table. They were stained and partially rotted, and they had an air of squalor despite the mortuary lights.

  The old woman turned pale, but shook her head, perhaps a little too vigorously. She looked at Cooper, then out of the window.

  ‘No, they mean nothing to me.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Cooper, ‘and then I’ll get out of your way. Could you tell me what doctor your daughter went to?’

  Mrs Gill breathed an audible sigh of relief. Now she was on safer ground, and she didn’t question why Cooper wanted to know such information.

  ‘Doctor? Well, the same one as me. Crown House Surgery, here in Edendale.’

  ‘And a dentist?’

  ‘Moorhouse’s in Bargate. He’s NHS, so you have to go for a check-up every six months or you get kicked off his list. Audrey always went regularly. She was a nurse – she knew about looking after her health.’

  Cooper smiled as he gathered the photographs together. ‘I bet she took regular exercise, too.’

  Mrs Gill stood and gazed out of the windows as she waited for him to leave.

  ‘She swam as often as she could,’ she said. ‘Audrey competed in the county championships when she was a youngster. Her brother was a good swimmer, too – this is his child I’m looking after.’

  ‘Audrey also has a sister, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, her. She doesn’t live around here any more.’

  There was something about the way Mrs Gill said ‘her’ that reminded Cooper of Tom Jarvis, as though there was a name that mustn’t be spoken. But there had been a gruff affection in Jarvis’s voice when he referred to his wife. There was none in Mrs Gill’s when she spoke of her daughter.

  ‘Has there been some kind of rift in the family?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You’ve fallen out with your other daughter?’

  ‘We just don’t see as much of each other, not since she re-married. I don’t trust that new husband of hers. A leopard doesn’t change its spots so easily – no matter what she says.’

  *

  Cooper ust had time to call in at West Street before he was due to meet Professor Robertson. But the moment he walked into the office and sat down, the phone rang on his desk. It was Tom Jarvis.

  ‘The old girl’s dead,’ said Jarvis. ‘Somebody shot her.’

  Cooper sat bolt upright.

  ‘Dead? Have you called 999, Mr Jarvis?’

  ‘Nay. But I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Where –? I mean, where’s the body?’

  ‘I laid her out on the porch. But I’ll bury her by and by. I thought I’d put her in the orchard. She always liked it there.’

  ‘No, Mr Jarvis, don’t touch her. Just wait until someone gets there. I’ll send the paramedics, and a doctor. We need to get scenes of crime there. And she was shot, you say? My God, we need the armed response unit as well. You really should have called 999 straight away.’

  Jarvis breathed down the phone at him for a few moments in puzzled silence.

  ‘Well, I didn’t think you’d be all that bothered,’ he said. ‘Not for a dog.’

  11

  Professor Freddy Robertson’s home stood on rising ground in a cluster of newer houses on the outskirts of Totley. It had a flat, brick face broken by bay windows and an oak front door. Its gardens were reached from a broad gravelled driveway that ran past a detached garage with a dark blue BMW drawn up outside.

  Cooper had been given the impression that the professor had retired to Derbyshire, but this wasn’t strictly true. Totley was an outer suburb of Sheffield, and it lay in South Yorkshire. But the county boundary was only a stone’s throw away across the fields, and the national park a few hundred yards further on. The rural setting was one of the attractions for those who could afford to live here.

  Cooper had spent the drive to Totley listening to a Runrig CD. ‘The Edge of the World’ didn’t quite describe his journey across Froggatt Edge and the eastern moors, but it came close.

  ‘This is an Edwardian gentleman’s residence,’ said Robertson, meeting Cooper at his car. ‘As you can see, we had it refurbished in a manner sympathetic to the Arts and Crafts movement. Four bedrooms on a galleried landing, original beams, a wine cellar. And look at these gardens –’

  The professor was a big man in his early sixties, his hair greying and rather too long at the sides to compensate for the bald patch at the front. He wore a rather baggy pinstripe suit like a lawyer’s, and moved a little stiffly, as if suffering from the first symptoms of arthritis.

  They entered an L-shaped reception hall with mosaic tiles on the floor and a staircase with mahogany balustrades. On the wall was the ugliest coat rack Cooper had ever seen. It was covered in imitation deer hide, and had four real hooves turned upside down to act as hooks.

  Robertson took him through into a study lined with books, the floor space almost filled by an oak desk and a set of deep leather armchairs. The professor sat at his desk, with his back to a window looking out on to the garden. He offered Cooper a drink, which he refused, but poured himself a whisky from a bottle of Glenfiddich he took from a cupboard. Then he linked his fingers, like a headmaster with an errant pupil on the carpet.

  ‘I’m sorry to have messed you around, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘I hope I haven’t disrupted your afternoon too much.’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad you could make it. I was worried that you’d decided you didn’t need to call on my services after all. But I suppose you were detained on urgent police business?’

  ‘You might say I had to speak to a man about a dog.’

  ‘Oh, dogs,’ said Robertson. He sniffed suspiciously, as if Cooper might have smuggled one into the house, or at least brought in the smell and a few stray hairs. ‘Now I’m really wounded, Detective Constable. I’d have been happy to come in second to anybody or anything, except a dog.’

  Cooper smiled hesitantly, not sure whether the professor was joking.

  ‘You don’t like dogs, sir?’

  ‘I find their form of domestication offensive, on an ethical basis.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Well, dogs are basically animal slaves, aren’t they? People find them useful for certain menial tasks, or for massaging their egos. Dogs fawn on their owners shamelessly. Don’t you find it so? No, I expect you disagree with me.’

  ‘Many people would value dogs for their loyalty,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh, you’re thinking of the dog that will dive into the river to save its master when he’s drowning? Well, the fact is that nine dogs out of ten would sit on the bank and watch you drown. And then they’d go off to see where their next meal was coming from. Loyalty is skin deep, you know.’

  Cooper shifted uneasily under the professor’s gaze, but didn’t argue.

  Robertson smiled. ‘Now, I presume there was something you wanted to ask me about. Which case is it, now? Somebody mentioned skeletonized remains …?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  Briefly, Cooper explained the background to his enquiry and showed Robertson photographs of the scene at Litton Foot.

  ‘You see, sir, the feet were pointing to the east and the head to the west. For a start, I wondered if that might have any significanc
e.’

  ‘That was very observant of you,’ said Robertson. ‘Well, it certainly reflects the Christian cemetery tradition. The practice was based on the belief that the Lord’s Second Coming would be from the east. When you rise from your grave on Judgement Day, you want to be facing your God, not turning your backside to him.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Burials in Roman Britain were already east–west oriented by the end of the second century AD, so the tradition lasted a long time. But this isn’t an ancient burial, or you wouldn’t be here, surely?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  Robertson waved a hand. ‘It’s all right – you don’t have to tell me more than you want to. I can see you’re not sure whether you can trust me.’

  ‘It isn’t that, sir. We don’t know a great deal at the moment.’

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink? Something non-alcoholic, of course, since you’re so very much on duty.’

  ‘No thank you, sir.’

  Robertson took a gulp of his whisky. ‘There are other practices you may be familiar with. In some of our older churchyards, it’s still possible to see the traditional pattern of burials. At one time, a person’s place in the social hierarchy was preserved for posterity by the location of their grave. The better class of people were buried on the south side of the church, in the sunniest position. The poor were planted on the west, and the clergy on the east.’

  ‘And the north?’

  ‘Ah, the fourth side of the church was known as the Black North because it was always out of the sun. It was reserved for suicides and murderers, who were denied Christian burial rites. Those poor souls were condemned to the darkness, both literally and spiritually.’ The professor pursed his lips as he looked at Cooper. ‘Normally, a funeral procession would enter the churchyard from the eastern gate and follow the direction of the sun to the newly dug grave. On the other hand, a murderer or suicide would be brought in at the west gate and carried against the sun.’

  Robertson lifted his shoulders and let them drop again, as if shrugging off any personal responsibility for such practices. But Cooper was thinking of the dark woods in Ravensdale, the dripping canopy of ash trees, the dank moss coating everything, never drying out because it was hidden from the sun.