Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) (24 page)

The two shafts had been fenced off at some time with a few posts and a bit of barbed wire. But the posts were gone, and the wire that had hung between them lay on the ground.

‘Haven’t you
looked inside?’ asked Cooper.

‘No,’ said Abbott.

‘But there might be traces of the Pearsons down there.’

‘No, no. That’s not possible. These shafts haven’t been opened for decades. Possibly for a hundred years or more.’

‘I see.’

Abbott looked at him, as if sensing that he was disappointed.

‘However,’ he said, ‘these old lead mines rarely had just one shaft. If there was a vein of ore running across this area, they would have dug several shafts to get access to it.’

‘We’ll find some more, then?’ asked Cooper.

‘If we look. Yes, I’m sure we will.’

When he lifted the plate, Cooper found he could look straight down into the hole, though without a torch he could see only a few feet into its depths. The shaft was simply hacked out of the rock and was barely wide enough to accommodate a fully grown man. The sides had been worn smooth in places by the shoulders of miners passing up and down. A single iron bolt had been hammered in as a makeshift foothold, but otherwise there seemed to be nothing to prevent a direct plunge into darkness.

Those old lead miners must have been small men. Poor people had been small anyway in those days, thanks to the general lack of nutrition. But perhaps miners had been chosen for their size, like jockeys. It would certainly be much easier to get access through the shafts if you were no more than five foot six and built on the skinny side.

There had been incidents recorded in the past of small children falling into mine shafts and being killed. But as Cooper looked at the width of the shaft in front of him, he found it difficult to imagine any adult being unable to prevent themselves from falling all the way in.

At
least, he corrected himself, any conscious, living adult.

During their years at the Light House, the Whartons had tried to fight off the inevitable. Long ago, they’d moved away from the traditional hunting prints and picturesque Peak District scenes. The horse brasses and decorative plates had gone.

For a while, Cooper recalled, they’d opted for a cultural look – shelves of ancient hardback books bought in a job lot, modern abstract artworks, an occasional musical instrument hung near the ceiling. Then one day it had all vanished again, the pub closed for refurbishment, consultants swarming through the rooms, distressing the decor, jamming decrepit furniture into every corner – wooden benches and oak dressers, a reproduction writing desk. An antique look, he supposed. Nostalgic chic. It was an attempt to recapture some past that had never existed. Because the Light House as it appeared now had been a Victorian re-creation. Still a stop-off for travellers, yes. But it had been the height of modernity in its day. The facade hinted of aspirations to grandeur.

Well, the antiques were gone again, sold off to raise a bit of cash against the Whartons’ debts perhaps. The main bar was left with a range of standard pub furniture, glass-topped tables and wooden chairs, scattered haphazardly, as if the clientele had abandoned the pub in a hurry.

‘I want to take a look at the function room upstairs,’ he said.

‘Oh, the party?’ said Villiers. ‘Right, I see. Reliving the memories.’

They climbed the stairs to the first floor, where Cooper opened the door and examined the dusty floor and the little
bar in the corner. The YFC party had taken place in this room, he was fairly sure. Even in his inebriated state, he remembered coming up and down those stairs. There seemed to have been a lot of people in the pub that night, though. Had someone else been holding a party here? Or was the function room spilling out revellers into the public bar from time to time?

Given the lack of records, it would require someone with a better memory than his to recall the facts. He could get Hurst or Irvine to trawl through the witness statements again, looking for someone who’d been attending a different party. Two days before Christmas, though? Whose memory wasn’t hazy, especially if you were the kind to get caught up in the social whirl?

‘Why not ask your brother?’ suggested Villiers, as he was about to close the door again.

‘Matt?’

‘That’s the only brother you’ve got, as far as I recall.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘He was there too, wasn’t he? I mean, he was in the Light House that night. You came here with him. That’s what you told us, Ben.’

Cooper said nothing, and found he was gripping the door handle a little too tightly. Villiers nodded, reading his silence as clearly as if he’d spoken everything that was in his mind.

‘But you can’t believe that your brother might be involved in a violent incident,’ she said. And she paused. ‘Oh, wait …’

He turned to look at her then, and watched the realisation dawn on her face, the memory of an incident, all too recent, when Matt Cooper had shot and injured an intruder at Bridge End Farm. Matt had been lucky to escape prosecution, a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service that had
reflected the public mood of the time. But despite the relief among the family at the outcome, everyone knew now. Everyone was aware that Matt Cooper had the potential for violence.

That knowledge, and that knowledge alone, changed everything.

Henry Pearson had been brought to the scene as a gesture towards good relations with the family. but who had tipped off the media, no one seemed to know. Photographers from two local newspapers snapped Mr Pearson as he got out of his car and spoke to DCI Mackenzie. A crew from a regional TV station had set up near the outer cordon, and a reporter was doing a piece to camera, with the moor and the crime-scene tent in the background.

Mackenzie didn’t look happy about it, but he had to appear concerned and cooperative in front of the cameras. Possibly Mr Pearson had orchestrated all this himself. During the past two and a half years, he must have learned the best ways of handling the media. This was an opportunity for him to revitalise the interest in his campaign.

‘No one has mentioned what forensic evidence you’ve obtained from the items that were dug out of the peat,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

Pearson looked at Mackenzie directly. ‘For example, was there blood?’

It was impossible to refuse such a straightforward request for information from a member of the family.

‘Yes, sir. There was.’

‘And?’

Mackenzie held out his hands apologetically. ‘I can’t tell you any more at the moment.’

Diane
Fry was waiting to speak to the DCI, holding back until he was free from the attention of the cameras.

‘We’ve got some preliminary results back from forensics,’ she told Cooper.

‘Finally,’ he said. ‘And?’

‘Those stains on David’s anorak. Well, they’re confirmed as human blood.’

‘Pretty much as expected.’

‘Yes.’ She looked towards Henry Pearson, to make sure he was out of earshot. ‘The trouble is, Ben – the blood isn’t David Pearson’s, or even Trisha’s.’

Before he could digest the information, Cooper’s phone rang. He looked at the display, but it was a mobile number he didn’t recognise.

‘Who is this?’ he said.

‘It’s Nancy Wharton. I wanted to let you know that Maurice has agreed to talk to you.’

‘When?’

‘Now,’ she said. ‘It has to be this afternoon. Today is one of his good days.’

Maurice Wharton was a shadow of the man Cooper remembered. The meaty elbows that he used to rest on the bar at the Light House were bony now, and hung with pale, shrivelled flesh. There was a curious yellow tinge to his skin and in the whites of his eyes. His hands jerked spasmodically on the cover of his bed in the hospice room, and he lay back on the pillow as if already exhausted before the visit had even begun.

‘Mr Wharton? Detective Sergeant Cooper, Edendale Police. Your wife said you’d agreed to talk to me.’

Cooper wondered if he was speaking too loudly. It was always a tendency when talking to the old and sick.

Wharton
seemed to wink at him, one eye closing involuntarily.

‘I know you, don’t I?’

Cooper sighed. ‘Probably.’

‘You’ve been in the pub at some time. I remember faces. Even now, I still have my memory for faces.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘I don’t get many visitors here. I don’t want to, really. But Nancy says you’re all right.’

‘I hate to trouble you,’ said Cooper. ‘But we’re conducting a murder investigation. Aidan Merritt. I expect you heard.’

‘Yes, even in here.’ Wharton nodded at the TV screen across the room. ‘I keep up to date. I wouldn’t want to die without knowing how Derby County were getting on.’

Cooper smiled, glad that Maurice Wharton still had his wits about him. Pancreatic cancer might not affect the brain, but he bet the drugs did. The chemotherapy, the increasingly powerful painkillers. What did that combination really do to the memory?

‘I do get confused now and then,’ said Wharton, as if reading his mind. ‘There are bad dreams, and I’m not always sure when I wake up whether they’re real or not.’

‘Mr Merritt’s murder is real. He was clubbed to death at the Light House earlier this week.’

‘The pub is closed up,’ said Wharton.

‘Someone broke in.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘We have no idea,’ said Cooper. ‘We don’t know what Mr Merritt’s reason was for being there. We don’t know why the person who attacked him was there either. We’re looking for any possibilities. So if you can help us at all …’

Wharton was quiet for a moment, breathing very shallowly, as if it used up a lot of his energy just to keep air moving in and out of his lungs.

‘Aidan
Merritt. He was one of my regulars. Funny, that.’

‘What is?’

‘That my regulars should die off before me. I didn’t think it would be that way.’

‘But Aidan in particular …?’

‘The last person I would have expected to be getting himself into bother. He wasn’t my type – too quiet, a bit studious. Not a big spender. But trouble? No, he was as quiet as a mouse. What was he doing at the pub?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ said Cooper.

‘Beats me.’

Wharton began to cough, and Cooper waited while he cleared his chest and spat into a tissue. He wondered if he should offer to do anything, fetch a drink of water or whatever. It was always difficult knowing how to behave when visiting the sickbed.

‘You were asking Nancy about an incident with that couple, the Pearsons,’ said Wharton when he’d recovered.

‘Yes. It doesn’t seem to have been followed up by the original inquiry when the Pearsons went missing.’

‘Because it was all settled,’ said Wharton.

‘How was it settled?’

‘I sweet-talked the visitors, made a fuss of them, did a bit of PR. Then I sorted the lads out. All over and done with, see?’

‘The lads? Ian Gullick and Vince Naylor?’

‘Ian and Vince. They’re good lads really, you know. There’s no harm in them.’

Cooper tried not to appear sceptical, but Wharton twisted his head on his pillow to look at him.

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘I’d need more information,’ said Cooper cautiously.

‘Yes, that’s right. Make your own mind up. Take people as you find them. But you don’t know them like I do. I
saw the best and worst of people from behind a bar. You’re on the wrong track with Gullick and Naylor. I might not get the chance to tell you anything else, so make a note of that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Wharton wheezed. ‘I knew a lot of people at one time. Thousands. Now there’s just the family. Family is very important, isn’t it? Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s the kids I worry about most. Eliot and Kirsten. It’s very bad for them. Their lives have been so disrupted, just when they’re at an age when they should have some stability. And it’s all my fault. I lost their home, brought them here into town, which they hate. And now I’m going to leave them in the lurch, thanks to this damn cancer. Even the life insurance won’t pay out much. I’ll be no more use to them dead than I have been while I was alive.’

‘It’s not your fault you got cancer,’ said Cooper.

‘It feels like it. It looks as though I did it to avoid having to put things right for my family, to avoid paying back what I owe them. And I owe them a lot.’

Wharton gazed out of the window again. A pair of gold-finches were fluttering around a bird feeder hung just outside his room.

‘You know – the night they closed up the pub, I couldn’t face being there,’ he said. ‘Not right
there,
on the premises. I ought to have been present, as the licensee. But I just couldn’t do it.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you? It was more than a pub to me, you know. It was my life, and my home.’

Cooper nodded. He thought he did understand, but if Mr Wharton preferred to think it was a unique feeling, it might be best to let him talk.

‘So
I sat in my car,’ said Wharton. ‘I parked up by the side of the road on Oxlow Moor, where I could see the pub in the distance, on the skyline. Do you know the spot I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I sat there for a long time, waiting for something to happen. And in the end, I saw the lights going out. It was dusk by then. I was sitting in my car, and I watched the windows of my pub going dark one by one, until … well, until the Light House ceased to exist.’

‘It must have been very painful,’ said Cooper.

Wharton smiled weakly. ‘I thought so at the time. But the fact is, I didn’t really know anything about pain until now.’

Wharton hardly ever met Cooper’s eye during his visit. Occasionally he would glance quickly around the room, as if checking it was still there. But mostly, all he wanted to do was stare out of the window – not looking at the garden or the fish pond, but at something much further away, beyond the range of ordinary, physical vision.

To Cooper’s mind, it looked like a long stare into the past. Wharton was a man drawn against his will to gaze at a vision of unhappy memories, a distant kaleidoscope of sadness and regrets. He hoped he would never see such a vision himself when he gazed out of the window in his old age.