Stephen Booth - The Dead Place

‘Where else for him but his own home? The house he grew up in, the place he associated with his parents, particularly with the man he’d always hated so much. This house was always a dead place for Vernon.’

Fry was quiet for a few moments. Watching her, Cooper knew she’d return to the same subject that had obsessed her all along, though he didn’t know why.

‘Those messages he sent,’ she said. ‘The gibbet and the rock, and all that. Do you think Vernon was hoping we’d work out the clues in time and stop him?’

‘We’ll never know, will we?’

‘If he was, Ben, we were too late.’

There was nothing Cooper could say to that. ‘Too late’ were the saddest words in the language, and they both knew it.

‘Was it Rod Stewart?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That line from a song. “I’m not quite as dumb as I seem”.’

‘I don’t know any Rod Stewart songs,’ said Fry.

‘Come on, you must do.’

‘Well, I hope I don’t.’ Fry shivered suddenly. ‘Bloody Freddy Robertson. He could have saved us so much time. Why didn’t he tell us what he knew?’

‘This Lucy Somerville, his daughter,’ said Cooper. ‘I imagine she’s an only child?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘It means Professor Robertson never had a son of his own.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘And Vernon never had a real father. Not one that he cared about.’

‘So Robertson became a father figure?’

‘Very much so, I think. It’s all in the journal, Diane, when you have time to read it.’

Fry glanced at the book on the table. ‘I’m not sure I want to read it.’

‘Believe me, it’s all there. Robertson’s big mistake was to come here to Greenshaw Lodge at the wrong time. He chose the moment when Vernon’s faith in him had been destroyed. As far as Vernon was concerned, his substitute father had let him down, too. Robertson was killed with a rifle, not a shotgun, wasn’t he?’

‘So the doctor says. A single bullet, close to the heart. Enough to cause fatal internal injuries and major blood loss.’

Cooper felt a sudden stab of guilt. It was quite irrational, and something he could never admit to Fry. But, sitting here in this tragic house, almost surrounded by human corpses, he felt guilty that he’d never found out who shot Tom Jarvis’s dog. Now, poor old Graceless would be pushed so far down the list of priorities that her death would lie on the files for ever, and her killer would never face justice. Mr Jarvis would become just one more person Cooper hoped never to meet on the streets of Edendale, in case he was challenged for an explanation.

He looked at Fry. There was something else that needed explaining.

‘Diane, there’s something about the tapes of those phone calls, isn’t there?’ he said. ‘A personal reason you find them so hard to listen to?’

‘How did you know?’

Cooper almost told her, but held his tongue at the last second. Some instinct suggested it wouldn’t be wise to tell the truth for once.

‘I just guessed.’

But Fry had that look on her face again, the one that suggested she didn’t believe him. ‘Don’t worry, Ben. I think I know who must have told you.’

‘No, really — ’

‘Well, maybe you’re right,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

Fry watched the scenes of crime team carrying out the last boxes to one of the vans. There was still a lot of activity around the nearest tent, where Freddy Robertson’s body hadn’t been removed to the mortuary yet.

‘But Robertson could still have told us what he knew,’ she said. ‘He could have saved his own life, he could have saved Vernon’s. What was wrong with the bloody man?’

‘Do you want my expert opinion?’ said Cooper.

‘Go on, then.’

‘He was just weird.’

Fry caught the look in his eye and saw the joke.

‘Oh, that’s your view as an expert? You haven’t just borrowed that opinion from someone else and used it as your own, I suppose?’

‘I’m very experienced in my field,’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, as long as it’s a field of sheep.’

Cooper struggled to keep pace with her as she walked out of the house and headed towards the lane, past the crime scene vans. ‘By the way, Diane, what sort of fees can expert consultants claim? Do I send my invoice to you, or to the DI?’

And then Fry laughed. It was the first time he’d seen her laugh for months. It altered her whole face, the way the sun could change the landscape after rain. She looked at him and opened her mouth to speak, and Cooper felt his heart lift, as if she were about to tell him something he’d waited years to hear.

But he would never know what Fry was going to say. Her first words were interrupted by the ringing of his mobile. With an instinctive expectation of the worst, Cooper looked at the number showing on the caller display.

‘It’s Matt,’ he said. ‘And there’s only one thing he’ll be calling me about.’

If life were really a book, it ought to be possible to turn the last page without pain. The way a life ended shouldn’t make anyone forget the way it was lived. But Ben Cooper had a deeper fear. It was one that he hardly knew how to acknowledge. While his sister Claire sat with Matt watching over their mother, Ben waited outside in the trees, reluctant to miss the last shreds of light as the day came to an end. The dusk deepened so gradually that it was only when the air began to chill his skin that he realized he’d been standing in the dark for the last half-hour.

After the past few days, he was afraid that he wouldn’t know how to accept death. He wasn’t sure that he’d understand how he was supposed to react, what other people would expect of him. When the reality of dying came close enough to touch him personally, he was terrified that his mind would go into denial. How could he face the physical truth of what he had talked about with Freddy Robertson? The slow process of decomposition that began with the final breath, the stages of decay and the mould of fermentation, the swarming bacteria and digestive enzymes that would return the body to the earth.

Surely, when the moment came, it would be too much to cope with. He’d be frozen with fear, terrified to express a thought or emotion, in case it burst a barrier that held back the worms and the demons of the grave. Everyone would think he was heartless and cold, that he was showing no grief. He might not be able to face his family, feeling as he did.

Ben wondered if there was anybody he could explain it to. He thought about talking to Matt or Claire, but he knew they wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t fair to inflict it on them anyway. Nobody wanted to think about death. Not really think about it. He was afraid he might shock them by referring to his mother’s body as ‘it’. But his perception of dying had changed. He no longer believed that what remained after death would still be the person he’d known and loved.

For a moment, he watched the lights on the relief road. One after another, they flickered and died on the parapet of the footbridge, though the vehicles themselves weren’t visible behind the fencing. The hum of traffic reminded him of the garden of remembrance at the crematorium. He shivered, and went back to the ward and let the others take a break.

Ben Cooper held his mother’s hand for a long time, until he finally fell asleep in the chair by her bed. He must have dozed for only a short while. Yet he woke feeling as if a long time had passed and the world had changed while he slept. He’d been dreaming about being lost in great, echoing caves where water ran all around him. But the dream slipped rapidly away as he opened his eyes and remembered where he was.

He was still holding his mother’s hand, but her fingers felt limp and cold.