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

‘Very interesting,’ said Tailby when he had finished summarizing his interviews at Dial Cottage. ‘But do you feel you pressed him hard enough, Cooper?’

Cooper remembered what he had said during the morning meeting, and wondered if the DCI was making fun of him. He was glad he had decided not to mention any of what had taken place at Thorpe Farm before he had managed to get Harry into the car.

‘He’s a bit of an awkward character, sir.’

‘I know. Perhaps we’ll have to bring him in and interview him under caution. That would upset his apple cart, eh?’

‘Possibly.’

‘So what do you make of it, Cooper? Do you believe him?’

‘Well, yes, sir, funnily enough.’

‘Mmm?’

‘Well, I believe what he said, because of the things that he didn’t say, if you follow me.’

‘I don’t think I do, Cooper.’

‘Well, it seems to me that he neatly avoided telling a lie. Where there were things he didn’t want to tell me, he just avoided it. Because of that, I think everything he said was true. I think it’s probably against his principles to lie.’

‘Are there still people around like that? I may be a cynical old detective chief inspector, but I thought that idea went out with George Washington.’

‘It’s old-fashioned, I know, but there are still people round here who were brought up like that. My feeling is that Harry Dickinson is one of them. That’s a good reason why he says no more than necessary. The less you say, the less temptation there is to lie.’

‘Tell the truth or say nowt.’

‘That’s it, sir. Exactly.’

‘That’s what my old shift sergeant told me many years ago when I was a new recruit,’ said Tailby. ‘But it was a long time ago. Things change, Cooper.’

‘Not everything changes, sir. With respect.’

Tailby ran a hand vigorously through his hair, as if trying to mix the grey at the front with the darker hair at the back to create something that looked less like a session with the Grecian 2000 that had gone badly wrong. His face was even gaunter than usual, and he looked tired.

‘All right. So has the bird-watcher got his times wrong? Was it earlier than he thought when he saw Dickinson and his dog?’

‘It’s possible. You can lose track of time when you’re up on the hills. It can be very deceptive.’

‘We’ll have to check with him.’ Tailby shuffled a file of reports. ‘Damn it, there’s no mention of whether he had a watch on, or whether it was usually accurate. A bit of a sketchy interview altogether, in fact. Who did that?’ He grimaced. ‘Oh yes, DS Rennie.’

Unconsciously copying the DCI’s gesture, Cooper raised a hand to push a lock of hair back from his forehead and found some of the strands stuck to his skin by sweat.

‘I can’t reconcile the idea of all those people we’re interested in being on the Baulk at the same time,’ he said. ‘Laura, Harry Dickinson, Graham Vernon. And a fourth person – the killer? It seems like too much of a coincidence.’

‘We can’t let Dickinson get away with refusing to say why he wanted to talk to Graham Vernon,’ said Tailby.

‘Can we show that his reasons are relevant to the enquiry?’

Tailby considered it. ‘The whole question of Dickinson and Vernon being out on the Baulk at that time is very relevant.’

‘The bigger question is – what was Vernon doing?’ said Cooper.

‘The Vernon family have got some more questions to answer, I’m afraid. There’s clearly something not right about their account of events just before Laura vanished. Yet they were very convincing during the appeal this morning. Graham Vernon will come over very well on TV.’

Ben Cooper felt distinctly unimpressed by the thought of Vernon’s television persona. In his own experience, anything that was said for the sake of the TV cameras was even less likely to approach the truth than the normal tangle of fabrications and evasions he had to deal with every working day. Lies told under a bright gloss of lights and cameras were lies just the same.

He watched Tailby fiddle with the knot of his tie like a man worried about his appearance, and he knew the DCI felt the same way.

‘What about Daniel Vernon?’ asked Cooper.

‘Oh, there are several reliable witnesses to place him in Exeter at the critical times. Seems he’s a member of some left-wing group with social consciences. I can’t imagine where he got ideas like those from. A shame, that, too – I had a feeling about young Daniel. In the end, I let DC Weenink call round at the Mount to ask him about his transport arrangements. It emerges that his father had offered to pay for his rail fare or even to drive down to Devon and collect him when Laura turned up dead on Monday. But Daniel preferred to hitchhike, and it took him all night and half the next morning. We traced the driver of a cattle transporter who dropped him at Junction 28 on the M1 in the early hours.’

‘Interesting.’

‘People aren’t so willing to pick up scruffy youths by the side of the road as they were in my day.’

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘I know what you meant, Cooper. And I agree. But it can wait for a while.’

Cooper wondered whether this was the signal for him to leave. But the DCI seemed to be in an amenable mood, so he decided to press on.

‘How is Lee Sherratt shaping up, sir?’

‘He’s denying everything. Says he had no relationship with Laura Vernon at all, that he hardly knew her, in fact. But the used condom shook him, all right. The DNA will pin him down on that. All we have to do is wait for the results.’

‘Suggesting he had been indulging in some outdoors sex? But it won’t prove the sex was with Laura Vernon.’

‘It’ll be enough to put him under pressure. But we have another alternative anyway. DS Morgan has traced the boyfriend.’

‘Ah.’

‘A lad by the name of Simeon Holmes. Aged seventeen. He lives on the Devonshire Estate in Edendale. Do you know it?’

Cooper knew it well. He had patrolled the beat there as a young bobby, watching out for stolen cars being raced round the streets or gathering information on local drug dealers who operated from the sprawl of prefabricated concrete houses mistakenly slung up in the 1960s.

The Devonshire Estate occupied low-lying land in the valley bottom which had once been wetlands and water meadows until they had been hastily drained for the housing scheme. For thirty-five years the damp had gradually been creeping back into the foundations of the houses, staining the walls with mould and rotting the doors and windows. Many of the houses had become virtually uninhabitable, with fungus growing through the floorboards and water pouring through the roofs. But there was almost nowhere else for the poor of Edendale to go. It was the closest thing the valley had to an inner-city area.

‘How does he come to be Laura Vernon’s boyfriend? He sounds like entirely the wrong type.’

‘He’s not someone her parents would approve of, I don’t suppose,’ said Tailby. ‘Rides a motorbike for a start. He says he met Laura here in town one lunchtime when they should both have been at school. In fact, he says she initiated the relationship, and had been skipping school ever since to meet him in various convenient spots.’

‘Bunking off.’

‘Is that what they call it these days? I thought it was bonking, not bunking.’

‘Missing school, sir, not the other thing.’