Стивен Бут: Dead in the Dark

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘Oh, on the surface it doesn’t look too bad. Visitors to the area don’t see it. But I know there’s a waiting list for appointments at the Citizens’ Advice Bureau to get debt counselling or advice about eviction. The number of food banks has been expanding — there are three in Edendale alone now. Some households can’t afford to get a broken refrigerator or a cooker repaired.’

Cooper took a long drink of his beer.

‘I met an outsourced care worker recently,’ he said. ‘She was driving from one fifteen-minute appointment to another, going from door to door trying to deal with people who need full-time care. Out here, in some of these villages, the social institutions are being eroded. Churches are becoming redundant and closing and clergy are thin on the ground and stretched across six or seven parishes. Where are people supposed to go for support?’

‘I don’t know the answer to that.’

‘No, of course you don’t, Chloe. No one does.’

‘I do see the results of this,’ she said. ‘Right at the end of the process, I suppose. We’re very rarely aware of what’s gone on before. But you see it all at the blunt end, don’t you?’

Cooper nodded. ‘Do you know, there was a case recently where we went to the house of an old couple. The wife was disabled and her husband had cancer. She told us she lived in fear of her disability living allowance being stopped and losing the car she uses to ferry her husband to hospital for treatment. They both dread the postman delivering a brown envelope from the Department for Work and Pensions, containing bad news.’

‘That’s sad.’

‘It makes them feel worthless, Chloe. That’s something that shouldn’t happen to anyone. And we’re right in the middle, ill-equipped and untrained to help.’

‘Is this the police service you came into as a teenager?’ asked Young.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Cooper. ‘It isn’t even the same world.’

Cooper stopped, aware that he’d been talking more in the last few minutes than he’d talked to anyone for months and months. How did Chloe Young get all that out of him, things he’d been feeling but hadn’t ever expressed before, even to himself?

He smiled. No, he didn’t know how she did it. But it certainly made him feel better getting it out of his system. It felt almost as good as sitting across the table from her here in the Barrel Inn.

‘Change of subject,’ said Young.

She placed an envelope on the table in front of him and tipped something out.

‘What are those?’ said Cooper.

‘Tickets.’

‘I don’t recognise them.’ He picked one up. ‘Oh, Buxton Opera House. I’ve never been there.’

‘What, never?’ said Young.

‘Well no, that’s not right. I think I went to some Gilbert and Sullivan thing once. It was years ago, though, when I was a teenager.’

‘That long ago?’ laughed Young. ‘Good grief.’

‘I went with my parents. They dragged me along against my will, because some relative was in the chorus. One of my cousins, I think. Not that we could have recognised them under the make-up.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I think it was The Pirates of Penzance .’

‘Ah.’

‘What do you mean “Ah”?’

‘“ A Policeman’s Lot is Not a Happy One ”,’ she sang.

‘Of course. I remember it now.’ He smiled at the recollection. ‘My mother sang along, but my father wouldn’t join in. It was beneath his dignity, I suppose.’

Young looked more serious. ‘Yes, he was in the police too, wasn’t he?’

‘A sergeant,’ said Cooper, then hesitated. ‘Did you hear about it? What happened to him, I mean.’

He knew the answer, of course. Everyone knew about the way Sergeant Joe Cooper had died. If Chloe Young didn’t know when she came back to Edendale, she would have been told by Dr van Doon when she began working at the hospital, or by Carol Villiers. It wasn’t something he could keep private, even if he’d wanted to do so. Over the years he’d become accustomed to the idea that everyone knew. But he could never be sure whether the knowledge made people look at him differently. Was Chloe Young looking at him differently now?

‘Yes, I did hear,’ she said after a moment’s pause. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ said Cooper.

‘Not long enough for you to have forgotten it.’

‘No.’

Cooper was forced to look away for a few seconds. There was another tragedy in his much more recent past, one he could never forget. And he was certain Chloe Young would have heard about that one too. He began to feel uncomfortable in her presence, as he questioned what might be going through her mind. She wasn’t a suspect in an interview room, so he couldn’t interrogate her. He had to accept that her thoughts were her own, unless she decided to share them with him.

‘Anyway,’ she said, more brightly, ‘back to the tickets.’

Cooper looked down at the table. He’d forgotten the tickets. They’d slipped from his mind in that flood of memories, a chain reaction of recollections sparked by the mere mention of Buxton Opera House and The Pirates of Penzance .

‘Oh, the tickets,’ he said, knowing he must sound stupid.

‘You’ll notice I have two,’ said Young.

‘What are they for?’

‘ Tosca . The English Touring Opera production. Are you a fan of Puccini?’

‘Of course.’

She looked at him more closely. ‘It isn’t Gilbert and Sullivan, you know.’

‘Now you’re being patronising.’

‘I apologise.’

‘Accepted.’

‘So — are you free on that day? I hope you are. No urgent cases to investigate?’

‘Hopefully,’ said Cooper. ‘And no dead bodies waiting for you to cut up?’

‘None that won’t keep in the freezer for a few hours.’

‘Thank you. It’s a date then.’

Young smiled. ‘So it is,’ she said.

Diane Fry felt exhausted as she drove back into Nottingham that night. Shirebrook had tired her out.

The act with Geoffrey Pollitt had been difficult to maintain. Fry knew far more about him than she could have admitted. Yet, in the Zalewski case, he was supposed to be a secondary witness who might have some information about the victim. She had to treat him as an innocent bystander. And Pollitt had to believe that’s what he was.

On the way back towards Wilford, Fry drove over Clifton Bridge and pulled into the forecourt of the BP filling station on Clifton Lane. She withdrew some cash from the ATM, filled up the tank of her Audi, and bought a couple of bottles of water in the shop. She didn’t need the cash — she hardly ever used it. But it had become a habit. Cash, petrol, water. A steady routine that kept her grounded and reminded her that she had a private life, such as it was, out of the office.

She crossed to the bank of InPost lockers in a corner of the forecourt next to the air pump. She had a medium-sized locker for items she’d bought online. She scanned the QR code from her phone to open the locker, conscious of the CCTV camera focused on the lockers. Today there was another yellow box waiting for her to collect. She slid it out and clicked the locker shut.

When she reached her apartment, she remembered she had no food in. She’d been used to that at the old flat in Edendale, of course, but somehow she’d imagined it would be different in Wilford, as if the apartment would resupply itself. It had every other modern convenience, so why was the fridge always empty? Something wrong there, surely.

Fry sighed. So it was a takeaway. Domino’s Pizza or Oriental Express? They were both near the Tesco store at Compton Acres. It was a Monday, so the Oriental Express would be open. Tomorrow, the choice would be more limited. After a second’s hesitation, she dialled and ordered a Yuk Sung Chicken with mini vegetarian spring rolls.