Стивен Бут - Dead in the Dark

‘No. I can’t imagine ever living in a city now.’

Young studied him as he ate his pork.

‘You know I have a brother?’ she said.

‘Yes, you’ve mentioned him. Martin?’

‘That’s right. He works near here, at the Nestlé bottling plant.’

‘Oh, the one at Waterswallows, where Buxton Mineral Water is bottled?’

She nodded. ‘They claim that the whole process from rainfall to bottle takes five thousand years. The water fell on Derbyshire at the end of the last Ice Age, slowly filtered down through about a mile of limestone, then was naturally pumped up again.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Martin thinks it is.’

‘Five thousand years,’ said Cooper. ‘I thought the last Ice Age was longer ago than that.’

‘Me too. Though actually the scientists say we’re still in an Ice Age now.’

‘It feels like it sometimes.’

‘Well, that’s the way I think of Derbyshire,’ said Young. ‘A long, slow process of absorption, until you think what you’re looking for has long since vanished. Then up it comes again, out of the landscape.’

‘Ah, like my missing body. It might just pop up again, after ten years.’

She smiled. ‘You never know.’

‘It would be nice. But I’m not depending on help from the Peak District landscape. It doesn’t always yield up what it’s absorbed.’

They ordered dessert. Warm chocolate and vanilla ice cream, glazed lemon tart, coffee and chocolate truffles.

‘Nestlé relocated the Buxton Spring Water bottling plant a few years ago,’ he said. ‘It was right here in the centre of Buxton before that, on Station Road. It had been there for a hundred years or so.’

‘Yes, that’s right. The new factory is on the edge of the national park, so Martin says they clad it in recycled stone and gave it a wavy roof to fit in with the setting.’

‘But the water comes from right here, at St Ann’s Well,’ said Cooper. ‘Didn’t they have to build a pipeline from the old site to supply the new plant?’

‘Yes, more than two miles of it.’

Cooper paused over his coffee, imagining water flowing two miles underground below Buxton. Then he pictured the water being pumped out of the flooded mine workings in Lathkill Dale. Miles of underground tunnels and soughs. Would they yield up what they had taken? Would they even give him a clue exactly where to look?

He realised that Young was still gazing at him. In fact, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him.

‘I think you need to relax more,’ she said with a lift of an eyebrow.

‘How do you suggest I do that?’

‘I’m sure we could think of a few ways.’

Cooper felt a warm glow that had nothing to do with the heat from his coffee.

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Your eyes look lovely when you smile.’

Evan Slaney sat uncomfortably in Interview Room One at West Street. In the harsh lights, without the shadows of his lamps, Slaney looked pale and vulnerable.

Sitting across the table from him, Ben Cooper produced two photographs from the evidence log.

‘Do you recognise this, sir?’ he said, sliding the first one across.

Slaney barely glanced at it. ‘Well, I can say with confidence it’s a mobile phone.’

‘Yes, it’s an Apple iPhone 7.’

‘Who does it belong to?’

‘It belonged to Reece Bower,’ said Cooper. ‘As does this wallet.’

Now Slaney leaned across the table, touching the edges of the photograph with his large right hand.

‘Those marks. Is that... blood?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s blood. In fact, it’s Mr Bower’s blood.’

He withdrew his hand quickly with a frown of distaste.

‘That’s horrible.’

‘You might be interested to know that we’ve checked all the calls and messages on Mr Bower’s phone. Do you know who his last message was sent to?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘To you, Mr Slaney.’

Slaney sat back in his chair. ‘To me? His last message was to me?’

‘It seems so. He texted you asking you to visit his house on Sunday morning.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Slaney. ‘I was rather taken aback. We hadn’t spoken for a long time.’

‘He doesn’t say in the text what he wanted to see you about.’

‘And I have no idea what it was either.’

‘Did you go?’

‘Yes. Well, I nearly didn’t. I thought long and hard about it, but in the end I decided it might be something important. As I say, it was so unusual for him to contact me.’

‘Did it occur to you it might be about Annette?’

‘To be honest, yes. Only because it was pretty much the last thing we talked about. I couldn’t think of anything else that he would have to say to me.’

‘What time did you arrive at Aldern Way, sir?’

‘About ten a.m. It was Naomi who let me in. Reece was out in the garden at the back, mowing the lawn and burning some rubbish.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘I thought he was very stressed about something, really vague and absent-minded. He looked surprised to see me, even seemed to have forgotten that he’d invited me.’

‘So what did he want to tell you?’

‘Nothing, so far as I could tell. It was all very mysterious. I came away none the wiser. In fact, I wondered if there was something he was anxious to talk about, but he didn’t want to mention it while Naomi was there.’

‘You think Naomi shouldn’t have been there? He wanted to see you on your own?’

‘And it went wrong for some reason, yes. It was very odd. And of course that was the last time I saw him.’

‘He went missing later that same day,’ said Cooper.

‘That’s shocking. Awful.’

‘I need you to tell me the truth, Mr Slaney.’

Slaney laid his hands on the table, as if to draw attention to them. Cooper couldn’t help looking, and noticed something odd straightaway. He could see that Slaney’s right hand was distinctly larger than his left. The knuckles were thicker, the fingers longer, the palm spread more widely on the surface of the table.

He supposed some occupations might cause the development of one hand so much more than the other. He doubted accountancy was one of them, though. No matter how many years you spent tapping an electronic calculator, it wouldn’t give you a hand like that. It looked as though it could crush a rock.

‘Well, you’re right,’ said Slaney. ‘I haven’t been completely honest with you.’

‘I’m sorry if I don’t look completely surprised.’

‘You guessed?’

‘I can usually tell when a person is hiding something, though I may not always be able to tell what it is.’

‘Does that come from experience, Inspector?’

‘Yes, but often with the wrong sort of people.’

‘This may not be exactly what you want to hear, though.’

‘Try me.’

‘He made a fool of me, you know. He convinced me I’d seen Annette.’

‘Who did? Reece Bower.’

‘He’s a very clever man. Was a clever man, perhaps I should say. He fooled Annette for a long time too. She thought his affair with Madeleine Betts was over.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘She thought that was his only affair. Oh, yes. He was a charmer. Very persuasive. But they say that about psychopaths, don’t they? They can be charming. That’s what makes them such successful manipulators.’

‘How did he convince you that you’d seen Annette, sir?’

‘He was on at me about it constantly,’ said Slaney. ‘Showing me photographs of her, telling me over and over that we had to keep our eyes open, that one of us would see her walking down the street one day. We’d get a glimpse of her going into a shop or disappearing round a corner. And we’d know it was her from that momentary flash of recognition. Looking back now, he practically brainwashed me into expecting to see her at any moment. To be perfectly honest — and I didn’t say this to the officers who interviewed me at the time — but I thought I saw Annette twice before that last occasion.’