Part 13 (2/2)

'Well, he was a regular at the Light House. He knew a lot of people. You know what it's like when you're in your local.'

Irvine looked at Diane Fry, seemed to decide that she might not know what it was like at all.

'Look, we interviewed a number of customers who spoke to Merritt during the evening. He chatted for a while to some old biddy called Betty Wheatcroft. She remembered discussing how badly behaved young people were these days.'

'Old biddy?'

'Yes. Every pub has one.'

'All right.'

'So ... he chatted to Mrs Wheatcroft. At one point Merritt was asked to make up a foursome for a game of pool. They might not have called him a friend, and he certainly seems to have gone there by himself. But he had a lot of acquaintances. He was among people he knew. Some of them he'd known since childhood. That's not the same as being on your own.'

The expression on Fry's face suggested that it might be possible to be alone among any number of acquaintances, but she let it pa.s.s.

'It still seems odd,' she said. 'I mean, no matter how many casual acquaintances he had, it's a bit odd for a man to go the pub on his own just before Christmas and sit at a table by himself, surrounded by crowds of people celebrating, having parties, getting drunk.'

She glanced at Cooper briefly as she made the last remark. It was a very quick gesture, but everyone noticed it, he was sure. Fry didn't always need to say anything to make her point.

'We talked to his wife,' pointed out Hurst. 'She doesn't like going to pubs. She does drink, but says she prefers to stay at home and get a bottle of wine, watch a DVD or something. But she accepted that Aidan liked the company in the bar. He didn't drink heavily, she says. So it was perfectly normal, for him.'

'He didn't drink heavily?'

'No.'

'So he must have been relatively sober on that night. And from his seat near the games room, he would have had a clear view down the bar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely he would have been able to watch David and Trisha Pearson from there all evening, without any trouble.'

'You're wrong,' said Irvine.

Fry raised a cool eyebrow at him. 'Oh?'

'Well, you're forgetting something.'

'What?'

'The bar was absolutely packed. It was heaving. There must have been dozens of people between Merritt and the Pearsons, and most of them standing up too. He would have had trouble fighting his way to the bar to get served, let alone continually observing someone at the other end of the room, especially if he was sitting down. It's just not feasible.'

'That's not to say ...'

'All right,' admitted Irvine. 'That's not to say he didn't see something. Like you said, we can't prove a negative.

'Not in that way,' said Fry. 'Not at all.'

'The only thing we can do is make a start on interviewing everyone we know to have been in the bar, and try to cross-match from their accounts.'

'There must have been people coming and going all night. It's hopeless.'

'We need to cover all the ground again,' said Fry. 'But we should also be looking for things that weren't done at the time. If Aidan Merritt had some connection with the Pearsons, we need to find out what it was.'

'How do we do that?'

'Talk to people who knew him. There must have been some at the Light House.'

'We've got the name of a full-time barman, Josh Lane,' said Irvine. 'And a few of the kitchen staff. Then there are the customers Merritt spent time with. It's a short list, though. Vince Naylor, Ian Gullick ... and that's about it. The person Mr Merritt seems to have talked to most is Betty Wheatcroft.'

'The old biddy?'

'That's the one. From her statement, she sounds to be as odd as Merritt. But I suspect as well educated.'

'Kindred spirits, then.'

Cooper surveyed his mental image of the bar at the Light House, managed to locate someone like Betty Wheatcroft sitting in a corner with a gla.s.s of Guinness and a plastic carrier bag. As Irvine had said, every pub had one. He might just be filling in the details from a hundred other old biddies sitting in the corner of a bar, but the image seemed real enough.

'What are you thinking?' asked Villiers.

'I'm thinking that I can see her already.'

'Ben, there's no need to start imagining things. Just stick to the facts. That was always your weakness, you know a you're much too imaginative for a police officer.'

'Thanks for the advice, DC Villiers. I'll bear it in mind.'

Fry pulled on her jacket and turned to leave. Cooper caught up with her and stopped her with a touch on her arm.

'Diane ...'

'Yes?'

'Our tasks are overlapping now,' pointed out Cooper. 'There's no way round it.'

'I suppose so.'

'I realise your DCI has other irons in the fire on the Merritt inquiry a forensic evidence must be producing some leads?'

'Yes.'

'But we could be turning up some equally useful information from our end.'

'Just keep feeding it into the inquiry through me,' said Fry. 'And we'll a.s.sess its value.'

Cooper knew he'd have to accept that. He'd tried his best to get further into the inquiry, but he'd failed. Fry was a brick wall. He'd have to find another way, that was all.

'There's one more thing,' he said.

'Spit it out, then. I've got plenty of things to do.'

'I think you're coming down too hard on Luke and Becky. They're my team. You don't have any right to talk to them the way you do.'

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