Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue

Harry puffed smoke into the room. It drifted in a small cloud towards the ceiling, gathering round the glass bowl that hung on tiny chains below a sixty-watt light bulb. A wide patch of ceiling paper in the centre of the room was stained yellow with smoke.

Fry watched the moving cloud, and realized that the old man must sit every day in this same chair, in this room, to smoke his pipe. What was his wife doing meanwhile? Watching Coronation Street or Casualty on the colour television in the next room? And what did Harry do while he was smoking? There were a few books on a shelf set into the alcove formed by the chimney breast. The titles she could make out were The Miners in Crisis and War and Trade Unions in Britain, Choose Freedom and The Ripper and the Royals. There seemed to be only one novel – Robert Harris’s Fatherland. It was lined up with the other books, all regimented into a neat row between two carved oak bookends. Three or four issues of the Guardian were pushed into a magazine rack by the hearth. But there was no television here, no radio, no stereo. Once the newspaper had been read, it would leave nothing for the old man to do. Nothing but to listen to the ticking of the clock, and to think.

Fry became aware of Harry’s eyes on her. She felt suddenly as though he could read her thoughts. But she could not read his in return. His expression was impassive. He had the air of an aristocrat, forced to suffer an indignity but enduring it with composure.

‘A game, Harry …’ prompted Hitchens. He had less patience than the DCI. And every time he called the old man ‘Harry’ it seemed to stiffen his shoulders a little bit more. Tailby was politer, more tolerant. Fry liked to observe these things in her senior officers. If she made enough observations, perhaps she would be able to analyse them, put them through the computer, produce the ideal set of character traits for a budding DCI to aim for.

‘Sometimes she fetches things,’ said Harry. ‘I sit on a rock, smoke my pipe, watch the stream and the birds. Sometimes there’s otters, after the fish. If you sit still, they don’t notice you.’

Tailby was nodding. Maybe he was a keen naturalist. Fry didn’t have much knowledge of wildlife. There hadn’t been a lot of it in Birmingham, apart from the pigeons and the stray dogs.

‘And while I sit, Jess brings me things. Sticks, like. Or a stone, in her mouth. Sometimes she finds something dead.’

Harry paused. It was the first time Fry had seen him hesitate unintentionally. He was thinking back over his last words, as if surprised by what he had said. Then he shrugged.

‘I mean a stoat or a blackbird. A squirrel once. If they’re fresh dead and not been marked too bad, there’s a bloke over at Hathersage will have ‘em for his freezer.’

‘What?’

‘He stuffs ’em,’ said Harry. ‘All legal. He’s got a licence and everything.’

‘A taxidermist,’ said Hitchens.

Fry could see Tailby frown. Harry puffed on his pipe with extra vigour, as if he had just won a minor victory.

‘But today, Mr Dickinson?’ said Tailby.

‘Ah, today. Today, Jess brought me something else. She went off, rooting about in the bracken and that. I wasn’t paying much attention, just sitting. Then she came up to me, with something in her mouth. I couldn’t make out what it was at first. But it was that shoe.’

‘Did you see where the dog got it from?’

‘No, I told you. She was out of sight. I took the shoe off her. I remembered this lass you lot were looking for, the Mount girl. It looked the sort of object she would wear, that lass. So I brought it back. And my granddaughter phoned.’

‘You knew Laura Vernon?’

‘I reckon I know everybody in the village,’ said Harry. ‘It isn’t exactly Buxton here, you know. I’ve seen her all right.’

‘When did you last see her, Mr Dickinson?’ asked Tailby.

‘Ah. Couldn’t say that.’

‘It might be very important.’

‘Mmm?’

‘If she was in the habit of going on to the Baulk, where you walk your dog regularly, Mr Dickinson, you may have seen her earlier.’

‘You may also have seen her killer,’ said Hitchens.

‘Doubt it,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t see anyone.’

‘Surely –’

‘I don’t see anyone.’

Harry glared at Hitchens, suddenly aggressive. The DI saw it and bridled immediately.

‘This is a murder enquiry, Harry. Don’t forget that. We expect full cooperation.’

The old man pursed his lips. The skin around his mouth puckered and wrinkled, but his eyes remained hard and cool. ‘I reckon I’ve done my bit. I’m getting a bit fed up of you lot now.’

‘Tough. We’re not messing about here, Harry. We’re not playing games, like you throwing sticks for your dog to fetch. This is a serious business, and we need all the answers you can give us.’

‘Have you seen anybody else on the Baulk, Mr Dickinson?’ said Tailby gently.

‘If I had,’ said Harry, ‘I’d remember, wouldn’t I?’

Hitchens snorted and stirred angrily in his chair. ‘Crap.’

‘Hold on, Paul,’ said Tailby automatically.

‘Right. I’ll not have that in my house,’ said Harry. ‘It’s high time you were off somewhere else, the lot of you, doing some good.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe towards Fry and her notebook. ‘And make sure you take the secretary lass with you. She’s making a mucky mark on my wall.’

‘Detective Constable Fry will have to stay to take your statement.’

‘She’ll have to wake me up first.’

Tailby and Hitchens stood up, straightening their backs from the hard chairs. The DCI looked too tall for the room. The house had been built at a time when very few people stood more than six foot. He must have had to stoop to get through the door, though Fry hadn’t noticed it.

‘We may want to speak to you again, Mr Dickinson,’ said Tailby.

‘You’d be better off sending that lad next time.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with DI Hitchens and myself. Sorry and all that, but we expect you to cooperate fully with our enquiries, however long they may take. Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to say to me just now, Mr Dickinson?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Harry.

‘What’s that?’

‘Bugger off.’

6 (#ulink_122b465b-c90e-5275-a8e0-65ff3389848e)

No sooner had the police left than the little cottage was again full of people. Helen watched from the kitchen as her mother and father fussed into the back room, flapping round her grandparents as if they were naughty children who needed scolding and reassuring at the same time.

‘My goodness, you two, what’s been going on? All these police up here? What have you been doing, Harry?’

Andrew Milner was in a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a frivolous blue and green pattern, but he still had on the trousers of the dark-grey suit he wore for the office. He smelled faintly of soap and a suggestion of whisky fumes. Helen didn’t need to be told that her father had showered after arriving home from work and had already drunk his first Glenmorangie of the evening by the time she had phoned. He wore clip-on sun shades over his glasses, which he had to flip up as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the cottage. Now they stood out horizontally from his forehead like extravagant eyebrows.