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

‘That’s right, Mrs Sherratt.’

She clutched the washing-up liquid bottle to her bosom without closing the cap, so that a small squirt of sticky green liquid spurted on to her pink smock. She seemed not to notice.

‘Lee hasn’t done anything,’ she said.

‘He worked at the Mount,’ said Tailby, ‘so he knew Laura Vernon. And since his whereabouts are unknown …’

‘I know, I know, that’s what the others kept saying. But it means nothing. He often goes off for a day or two. He’s a devil for wandering off for a bit, is Lee. But that doesn’t mean he’s done anything wrong, does it?’

‘If you could help us find him, Mrs Sherratt, we’ll soon be able to establish that, won’t we?’

‘Anyway, he didn’t work there any more. At that place. They gave him the push last Thursday. Them Vernons. Unfair, it was.’

‘Did he resent the fact he had been sacked?’

‘’Course he did. He was unfairly dismissed. He’d done nothing wrong.’

In Tailby’s experience, nobody’s son or daughter had ever done anything wrong. They were all angels, pure as the driven snow, every one of them. It was a wonder there was any crime at all.

‘Mr Vernon claims that Lee was pestering his daughter.’

‘Rubbish. Lee has a steady girlfriend. They might be getting married.’

‘Might they?’

‘That’s why he was set on getting a bit of a job, earning some money. There’s nothing round here for the young ones, you know. God knows, them Vernons didn’t pay him much, but at least he was trying.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. But it doesn’t prevent him from having taken a fancy to Laura Vernon, does it?’

Mrs Sherratt sniffed. ‘Well, if you want the truth, she wasn’t his type. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead and all that, but he could never bear them stuck-up types, all posh accents and jodhpurs. It was more likely the other way round. I reckon she took a fancy to him. He’s a good-looking lad, my Lee. I bet that’s what it was, and Mr Hoity-Toity Vernon wouldn’t like that, his girl fancying the hired labour.’

‘And, if that was the case, you don’t think Lee might have responded?’

‘No. Like I say, she wasn’t his type.’

‘Did he mention Laura Vernon much?’

‘Hardly at all. He hardly mentioned any of them much. ’Course, he didn’t see much of him, or the girl either, except in the school holidays. It was mostly her he saw, when he went up there.’

‘You mean Mrs Vernon?’

‘That’s right. Not that she would do anything but give him his orders, I suppose. None of them Vernons has ever mixed with anybody in the village, you know. They think they’re better than the rest of us, just because they’ve got a bit of money to spend on big houses and flashy cars. Well, it isn’t so. Having money doesn’t make you a good person, does it? It doesn’t give you any better morals than the rest of us. Some of us know what’s right and what isn’t. If you ask me, them Vernons have forgotten all about that, with their money.’

Tailby’s attention was wandering. His gaze drifted out of the kitchen window, across a small garden with a few vegetables struggling to force themselves through the weeds. There was a rickety garden shed and a small flock of house sparrows fluttering their wings in a depression in the dust in front of its door. A low wooden fence separated the garden from the field at the back of the property. It would present no barrier for anyone to climb over if they wanted to approach from the field instead of from the road.

‘So, as far as you are aware, there was no relationship between Lee and Laura Vernon, apart from the fact that she was the daughter of his employer?’

‘I told you, he didn’t like her.’

‘He actually said so?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure he did. Stuck-up little madam, he called her, something like that.’

‘Why did he call her that? Did he give any particular reason?’

Mrs Sherratt screwed up her face, which Tailby took to be a sign that she was thinking. ‘It was not long after he had started working up there that he said it the first time. He’d had a bit of a run-in with her one day, I think.’

‘You are referring to Laura now, aren’t you?’

‘I said so, didn’t I? She was at home from school one day. It must have been their holidays or something. I don’t know. But he said she was out in the garden, weighing him up, asking him questions. Lee said he made a joke, and she took exception. Told him to keep his remarks to himself, sort of thing. He was a bit put out when he told me about it, and he never liked her after that.’

‘Was that anything to do with why he was sacked, do you think?’

‘I couldn’t say. Because she took against him, you mean, and told her dad? I don’t know. But he hadn’t done anything wrong, I know that.’

‘You don’t think Lee might have arranged to meet Laura after he had been sacked by Mr Vernon?’

‘No, I don’t. He’d be glad to get away from her, if anything. He wouldn’t have touched her, not in any way.’

‘Mrs Sherratt, where does Lee usually go when he’s off wandering for a day or two?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t tell me.’

‘Not to his girlfriend?’

‘I doubt it. But you can ask her, can’t you? I gave the other lot her name and address, to be helpful.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Tailby sighed. They had already interviewed the girlfriend in question, along with several others whose names had been suggested by Lee Sherratt’s drinking pals. If he really was intending to get married, it hadn’t stopped him spreading himself around half the female population of the valley. But none of them admitted to knowing where Lee headed for when he went wandering. Here at Wye Close, officers had also already searched the house, turned over Lee’s room, and checked out that garden shed.

‘Besides,’ said Mrs Sherratt, as if suddenly remembering something. ‘That girl at the Mount. She was only fifteen, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, Mrs Sherratt, she was.’

‘Well then.’

Leaving the house, Tailby crossed the street to the Vauxhall again.

‘Give it a few minutes, then check that garden shed round the back again,’ he said. ‘But don’t make a fuss about it. You never know, the saintly Lee might just have appeared by some miracle.’

Helen Milner found her grandfather sitting on a boulder on the path leading up towards Raven’s Side. A small cloud of pipe smoke marked his position. His knees were spread, and his back was as straight as if he had been sitting on one of the old upright chairs at the cottage. At his feet was Jess, chewing at a stick. The dog had stripped the bark to shreds and was splintering the soft inner flesh of the wood with her teeth, dropping the fragments on the ground like a scattering of confetti. Jess looked up cautiously as Helen approached, gave her a soulful look and went back to her stick. Her teeth gleamed white and sharp as they ripped into the wood.

This was not Harry’s usual route for his morning walk. But below the ridge the reason for the change in routine was obvious. A white caravan sat in the corner of a field, where it had been dragged by a Land Rover. It was the furthest spot the caravan could reach before the woods began and the ground grew steep and rocky as it plunged towards the valley bottom. Three more four-wheel-drive vehicles were parked behind it. Further down the slope, figures in white boiler suits and hoods were moving slowly around in the undergrowth, which had been cut down and removed in a wide circle. Other men and women could be glimpsed in the trees on either side. Some were on all fours, as if they were praying to some strange god for guidance in their bizarre task. Blue plastic tape had been wound round the trees, and it danced and flickered in the sun, signalling the spot where Laura Vernon’s body had lain.

‘If the ground wasn’t so dry, they’d never have got that caravan to that spot,’ said Harry, as his granddaughter crouched down beside him.

‘What do they use it for?’

‘Making a brew and having their snap in, as far as I can tell.’