The Dead Place (47 page)

'What sort of things do you mean, Mrs Somerville?'

'Well, until then his research had been factual. It was a specialized branch of anthropology, nothing more than that. Dad studied cultural attitudes to death, the traditions and rituals of burial, and so on. A bit morbid, I suppose, but at least it was an academic interest. Once Mum died, he started drifting into areas that were more . . . esoteric. The internet made it easier. He found all kinds of things that I would never have suspected existed.'

Fry nodded. She could believe anything of the internet. All the most illegal and unpleasant things in life seemed to thrive there. 'Anything specific that you can remember?'

'Oh, I once saw a reference on his computer to something called "Corpse of the Week".'

'What on earth is that?'

Mrs Somerville shuddered a little at the memory. 'I didn't look. The name of it was enough to trouble me.'

'Do you think it was a website?'

'Yes.'

Fry made a note of the name. 'Anything else?'

'Well, Dad once talked to me about a kind of religion called Santeria. He said its practitioners gave themselves power by digging up a body to remove the head, and the fingers and

395

toes. I think there were other bones, too. I forget which. Another time he talked about necromancy. I thought that was just a way of predicting the future or something, like reading tea leaves. But Dad said it was a means of communicating with the dead. There was a ritual to perform. But it had to be within a year of the person's death, because that was how long the spirit hung around the body.'

'Did he go into any more detail than that?'

'No.' Mrs Somerville hunched her shoulders and folded her arms across her body, as if she suddenly felt cold. 'I gave him a piece of my mind then, told him to pull himself together. I said he was getting obsessed and should ask for professional help. He shut up, and didn't mention it again.'

'I don't suppose he ever did seek help?'

'I doubt it. He just shut himself up in his house, with his library and his computer.'

'Mrs Somerville, do you have any reason to believe that your father took his interests further than theoretical research?'

'How do you mean?'

'Do you think he ever tried to put some of those rituals into practice?'

She swallowed, but shook her head vigorously. 'No, no, he would never have gone that far. Dad isn't a practical man, you see. The details would be quite beyond him.'

'But if he used the internet a lot, he might have made contact with people who were more practical - individuals keen to exploit his interests. Did he ever mention anybody like that?'

'No, he didn't talk about anybody else. Do you mean, people who might. . . supply him?'

'There are individuals who'll provide any service, for the right money,' said Fry. 'I presume Professor Robertson is reasonably well off?'

'Yes, he has plenty of money put away.'

396

'Are you sure he never referred to anybody else? If you remember anything, even the smallest hint, please tell me.'

'No. I don't think he had direct contact with many people, after the courses finished.'

Fry had been about to get up and leave, but she stopped. 'Courses?'

'He had a little group of students at one time who came to him to learn about Thanatology. I think they were a sort of off-shoot from his university work. But they stopped coming when Mum was very ill. Dad didn't want anybody in the house then.'

'They used to come to the house?'

'Yes, he gave private tuition. I don't think there were more than half a dozen of them.'

'Do you know any names?'

'No, I never met any of them. But, please - I haven't explained yet why I wanted to come in and see you tonight. You see, I spoke to Dad earlier today, and he sounded odd, not himself at all. I thought he was ill, but he told me to stop worrying. I didn't believe him, so I arranged to go and visit him this evening in Totley. I wanted to see him for myself and assess his - well, his condition.'

'And what happened?'

Lucy Somerville sighed, and her head drooped. Fry saw now what had brought her into the station. She was feeling guilty. 'I didn't go, in the end. I had to do some shopping this afternoon, and when I got home there was a message from Dad on my answering machine. He said I was not to bother coming to see him, because he'd be out.'

'Did he say where he was going?' asked Fry.

'Yes. That's what worried me most of all. It was such an odd thing to say.'

'What, Mrs Somerville?'

'He said he was going to find "the dead place".'

397

Cooper had to drive back through Litton to reach the road in Tideswell Dale. A sculpture trail had been created in the woods here. Thinking about it, he realized it must be barely more than a mile across the hill from Ravensdale, with only a farm and the grounds of Alder Hall lying between the dales.

On an impulse, Cooper pulled into the parking area. There were a couple of visitors' cars under the trees, but no one in sight. The rain was keeping people at home. He collected his waterproof from the back seat and locked the Toyota.

At intervals along the trail were big, deeply-carved figures made from some reddish-brown wood - a sinister-looking owl, a reclining sheep. At the top of the slope, where an abandoned quarry had been converted into a picnic area, he came across a larger-than-life carving of a sleeping lead miner in his boots, muffler and flat cap. The miner's eyes were closed, his right arm rested on his hammer, and his hand clutched a beer mug.

The carving overlooked the road. But when he moved a little higher up the slope, Cooper could see across the fields to the east - a vista of enclosed pasture land with sheep scattered across the landscape like snow. Some of the stone walls looked much too close together. Like the land at Wardlow, these fields retained their medieval shapes, the long narrow strips that were so impractical for modern farming methods. Beyond the Litton road, Alder Hall itself wasn't visible. But its boundaries were clearly marked by the woods, those plantations created by generations of Saxtons.

Cooper remembered one chore he hadn't done yet, and he looked up Madeleine Chadwick's number on his mobile.

'Detective Constable Cooper, Mrs Chadwick. I visited you on Saturday to talk about '

'Yes, I remember you.'

'Oh, you do? Thank you. Well, I'm sorry to bother you, but there's just one thing I wanted to ask you, about the bones in the crypt. . .'

398

Yes?'

'I realize it was before your time, but I wonder if you know where exactly on the estate the bones were found?'

'Oh, it was some distance from the hall, beyond the parkland. I believe one of the tenant farms had become vacant, and it was decided to plant trees on the land. One of my ancestors wanted to take advantage of the demand for timber, I suppose.'

'Would that have been Corunna Wood?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Thank you, Mrs Chadwick. And I don't suppose you've remembered anything about the man who came asking about the crypt? No? Well, never mind. Thank you for your help.'

Cooper finished the call. The geography and the lack of direct roads in this area were very deceptive. Everything was so close together really, when you could see it - Ravensdale and Tom Jarvis's place at Litton Foot; Alder Hall and the dense woods on this side of the water; and the austere house where Vernon and Abraham Slack lived, down by the river in Miller's Dale. There was no distance between them at all.

On his way back to the parking area, he caught sight of a sign below the trail: Stream polluted, don't drink or paddle. Curious, he made his way down to the edge of the water. He found huge plants growing in the boggy ground, almost choking the stream. Some of them seemed to be a sort of giant rhubarb, but others were the same purple-stemmed monsters he'd seen growing at Litton Foot, the stuff like tenfoothigh cow parsley. He made a mental note to find out what they were some time.

Cooper got his OS map out of the car. It didn't have Fry's six-mile zone on it, but he could remember pretty much where it ran. Did the clues in the phone calls really mean anything? Why had the caller led them to Peter's Stone? Was he trying to mislead them, just having a joke at their expense? Or had they misunderstood his meaning completely?

399

Fry's interpretation of the second message suggested Wardlow as a starting point, moving west towards the Gibbet Rock and Litton Foot, where Audrey Steele's remains had been found. But the line about the flesh eater remained unexplained. Moving west? Cooper recalled his first visit to Freddy Robertson's house. The professor had described the traditional funeral procession entering a churchyard from the eastern gate and following the direction of the sun to the grave.

He dialled Fry's number, hoping she was there for once.

'Diane, that Beatrix Potter book,' he said when she answered. 'Did you have scenes of crime check it for fingerprints?'

'Yes, but there's nothing.'

'Shame.'

'One thing I found out, though, and quite by accident. One of the SOCOs speaks a bit of German.'

'German? Are they all doing Open University courses down there, or what?'

'I've no idea. But you know the Beatrix Potter book is called The Tale of Mr TodV

'Yes.'

'Our educated SOCO pointed out that "Tod" is the German word for death.'

Cooper stared at the carved owl at the entrance to the car park. 'Amazing,' he said. 'It fits, though.'

'Unfortunately, it doesn't get us anywhere. As a clue, it's a dead end. So to speak.'

'By the way, I ran into Maurice Goodwin,' said Cooper. 'Remember him, Diane? He's the man who was supposed to have been keeping an eye on Alder Hall until he fell out with John Casey. He turns out to be Tom Jarvis's brother-in-law. It makes sense - he lives nearby, so he was on hand if there were any problems.'

'And were there?'

'Well, Mr Goodwin knows about the lampers. He says he

400

spotted them on the estate a couple of times. He wanted to report it, but Casey wouldn't let him.'

'Is that what they fell out about?'

'I think it started from there. There used to be an ATV kept in one of the outbuildings up there for Mr Goodwin to use, so he could get round the whole estate. But Casey took it off him, so he was pretty much restricted to keeping an eye on the house after that.'

'Interesting.'

'I think Mr Goodwin had his suspicions about Casey,' said Cooper. 'And if he's anything like his brother-in-law, he won't have hesitated to express his opinion. I don't think Casey would have liked that.'

'The old personality clash.'

'Mmm. I wonder whether John Casey is involved in something more than just providing access to a gang of professional lampers.'

'Ben, where exactly are you?' asked Fry suddenly.

'Near Tideswell.'

'Isn't that close to where the Slacks live? What are you doing in that area?'

'I was thinking of visiting the Slacks again. Look, I think Vernon is very frightened. I think Hudson and McGowan have systematically terrorized him until he's terrified of talking to anybody. That suggests Vernon knows something, doesn't it? Something of interest to us.'

'I agree with the last part at least.'

'I wonder if he thinks they're going to kill him. It could have been Vernon who made the phone calls.'

'It doesn't work, does it? If he wanted us to know he was in danger, why not just come forward and tell us? What's the point of making a mystery of it? Besides, the caller seems to be suggesting he's the killer, not the victim.'

Cooper bit his lip in frustration. 'Vernon hasn't been in work today, you know. McGowan told me he called in sick.'

401

'Yes, I got your message.'

Then he caught the worried tone in her voice. 'Diane, do you think Vernon's at risk?'

'Yes, Ben. But I don't think the risk to him is from Hudson or McGowan. I think it's from your friend Professor Robertson.'

Cooper listened as Fry told him about Lucy Somerville. Then he finished the call and unlocked the car. He was thinking there were too many dead ends in this enquiry, and not just The Tale of Mr Tod. Too many dead people, too, for that matter. Audrey Steele, Sandra Birley, Richard Slack, a set of unidentified remains. Death from natural causes, death by accident. Dead and gone. Dead, and never called me mother.

It was only then that Cooper remembered the sparseness of the rooms in the Slacks' house, and the reason struck him. There wasn't a thing in the place that could have been identified as belonging to Vernon's parents. Someone had removed all traces of Richard Slack from his old home.

402

33

'You want a search warrant for Professor Robertson's house?' said DI Hitchens, squeaking his swivel chair anxiously. 'What are your grounds?'

Fry reported her interview with Lucy Somerville, while the DI listened with increasing concern, a frown creasing his forehead deeper and deeper. She'd brought Gavin Murfin in with her, too, but he listened without surprise as she related the worries expressed by the professor's daughter.

'And then I got one of the support officers to see if he could find these websites and any indication of Robertson's activities on them,' said Fry.

'What were you hoping for, Diane?'

'I wondered how far Professor Robertson's interest in death goes exactly. How close does he want to get to the real thing?'

Fry remembered Freddy Robertson standing in the churchyard at Darley Dale, admiring the memorials and telling Ben Cooper that body snatchers had never operated in Derbyshire. It had seemed to mean nothing at the time. But Fry knew the stories about body snatchers, just as everyone did. They'd existed only because they had customers willing to pay for illicitly obtained corpses.

'What are you saying?' asked Hitchens.

403

'It's incredible, the things you can find on the internet these days.' She looked down the list she'd been given. 'Death Online, The Death Clock, The Charnel House, oh, and something called Corpse of the Week.'