Stephen Booth - Already Dead

‘Did he crave a bit of excitement?’

‘Of course.’

‘I suppose Carol Villiers told you all about this sort of thing,’ said Fry. ‘The effect on individuals who’ve left the forces?’

Fry’s tone of voice was one Cooper was familiar with, a tone that he felt could lead to unpredictable results.

‘She understands,’ he said cautiously.

‘Mmm.’

‘So Josh Lane. He met Ralph Edge through the Gibson brothers. They had this little scheme going between them. Well, quite a big scheme, I imagine. Edge identified fraud cases, and the Gibsons put the squeeze on the parties involved, blackmailed them for a share of the money. Insurance fraud attracts big penalties these days. And who’s going to admit they’re being blackmailed for the proceeds of a crime? The Gibsons thought they’d hit lucky. They had the best inside information they could get. They had Ralph Edge.’

‘Until Glen Turner threatened to put a spoke in it.’

‘That’s it,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s the whole thing. By the way…’

‘What?’

‘Are you looking for anyone in connection with a drugs inquiry at the moment?’

‘As it happens, yes.’

‘You could try talking to Sean Gibson about it. There’s a good reason he was lying low and getting his brother to lie about him.’

Cooper broke off and went into his kitchen to take a long drink of water. His throat was getting sore. He could sense the approaching spasms of pain and dizziness that he always experienced when he was forced to relive his memories.

‘What you call my obsession,’ he said, when he sat back down again. ‘It was all about the fire. The fire that Liz died in-’

‘I know,’ said Fry.

Cooper nodded, grateful to her for not making him spell it out.

‘Well, it always seemed too convenient to me, the arson,’ he said. ‘I mean, when you think about all those moorland fires they started beforehand. It was obviously part of a bigger plan. I think it was always part of their plan to burn down the Light House.’

‘For the insurance money?’

‘Yes, Diane. The Whartons were desperate for money. You remember them living in that grotty little council house on the Devonshire Estate? And Maurice Wharton, dying in his hospice bed?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Maurice was tormented by the fact that he’d left his wife and children with nothing. But they had that last resort. Stage a fire that would burn down the Light House for the insurance money. It had to be done before the auction or the building would have passed to new owners, and the bank were waiting to take the proceeds from the sale. They had one chance to do it. And we just got in the way, Liz and I. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eliot Wharton was too hot-headed to consider a change of plan. He did it because he was angry. But Josh Lane…’

Cooper stopped talking. He was fighting to control a surge of anger that burned through him so fiercely that his voice was reduced to a charred croak. It seemed to be a long time before he found the ability to speak again. Then the words were spat out like hot coals from the fire.

‘Josh Lane,’ he said. ‘ He did it for the money.’

For a moment, he thought he was going to break down in front of Fry. He covered his face with a hand to hide his eyes. But she seemed as stressed as he was, shifting uneasily in her seat, clearing her throat anxiously, finally getting to her feet and pacing the short distance to the window.

‘They’ve brought Ralph Edge in,’ she said. ‘He’s obviously no hardened criminal. He knows what will be found when they start looking into his computer files and emails. The Gibson brothers are already under arrest.’

‘So they will be the focus of the MCU’s case But not…’

‘Not Josh Lane,’ said Cooper.

Fry shook her head. ‘There’s no evidence, Ben. The CPS won’t even consider amending the charges against him.’

‘So he stays out on bail.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. Really sorry.’

‘So am I,’ he said.

There was another long silence. Thoughts were going through Cooper’s head that he didn’t want Diane Fry to know about, that he didn’t want to share with anyone. They were too awful. He didn’t want these thoughts in his own head, but he knew he’d never get them out now. Securely entrenched, they were dug in like an army of barbarians, wild eyed and with blood in their hearts.

But with an unerring instinct, Fry put her finger right on those innermost thoughts.

‘So what are you going to do next?’ she said, turning back to him.

‘Is that any of your concern?’ snapped Cooper.

Fry flushed angrily. She strode into the little kitchen and in a sudden burst of rage ripped a handful of cuttings off the wall and threw them to the floor.

‘Whatever you do next, it’s got to be better than this!’

Cooper looked at the torn paper on the carpet. He leaned forward and picked up a drawing pin, placing it safely on the table, out of the way of the cat. As she watched him, Fry’s spasm of rage drained away as suddenly as it had come.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘It won’t help Liz if you do something stupid.’

‘No,’ said Ben quietly. ‘But it might help me.’

All through Monday, the river levels continued to rise. The rainfall intensity had risen from heavy to violent, meaning a precipitation rate of more than two inches per hour.

At Bridge End Farm, the mud was almost knee deep in places where the drainage was poor and tractors and machinery had been turning. In the fields, the sheep had the benefit of their water-resistant coats, but some of the cattle were starting to look miserable as the mire oozed over their hooves and spattered their legs.

As Ben Cooper splashed down the potholed lane to the farm, he could see that the ground around one of the cattle feeders had become so churned up and waterlogged that it was almost impossible for the cattle to reach it without swimming.

Earlier in the year, arable farmers had been worrying about frosty conditions affecting their early crops. The cold weather had meant a slow start to the season, but crops were now growing on time and would benefit from the rain, but ideally it needed to be a bit warmer. Crops like rapeseed, which grew in the fields to the south and east of the county, were resilient to the wet. It was different for livestock farmers on the higher ground, though. Hill farmers who were lambing sheep would have preferred the weather to be drier. Newborn lambs could get chilled in the rain, sometimes with fatal results.

Farmers complained about the weather all the time, of course. But what they wanted was stability, a predictable weather pattern that would allow them to plan their growing seasons. If they planted winter wheat, they needed to know they’d be able to harvest it at the end of the summer, rather than watching it rot in the field. If they kept livestock, they needed to mow the hay when it was ready and let it dry before bringing it into the barn. Damp, mouldy bales were no good to anyone.

When he’d left hospital, Ben’s sister-in-law Kate had tentatively suggested that he might want to move back to the farm again, at least for a while. But it wouldn’t have worked. Yes, he’d grown up here, and had remained living at Bridge End well into his twenties, until his mother died. But he’d stayed too long. Much too long. In the end, the urge to get away had been too strong for him just to forget it and go back.

The farm was his brother’s territory now anyway. It was where Matt’s family were growing up. That made it a different place, where the memories would be someone else’s, not his. In that world, he would be an intruder.