Part 36 (1/2)

'It seems you were wrong after all, Gavin,' said Cooper.

'There's a first time for everything,' said Murfin casually.

'So Maurice Wharton killed the Pearsons, is that right?' said Hurst. 'But he must have had some help afterwards.'

'Some of his regulars, we think.'

'They helped to cover up for him?'

'So it seems.'

'I don't understand it,' said Hurst. 'How did Wharton inspire such loyalty? I mean, by all accounts he was a complete pain in the backside, who liked nothing better than insulting and abusing his customers.'

'True. And anyone who didn't know him took offence and never came back. But those others, the regulars a they must have seen through all that nonsense and recognised a different Maurice.'

'If you ask me, they just didn't want to see the pub closed down,' said Murfin. 'One thing you have to say about Mad Maurice a he kept a very good cellar. His beer was always top-notch. You can't say that about any of these keg places you see all over the shop now. Besides, he wasn't averse to a good lock-in when he was in the mood.'

'Not that you ever went to one, Gavin, considering it's illegal.'

'Course not. I just heard.'

'Well, it's right that his regulars were the people who kept him in business all those years,' said Cooper. 'They were the ones who kept coming back month after month, who spread his reputation far and wide. He owed a lot to those customers. Without them, he was nothing. And I don't suppose he wanted to let them down by closing the pub.'

'Is this all a question of loyalty, then?' asked Hurst, still puzzled. 'Maurice Wharton being loyal to his customers, and his regulars being loyal to him?'

'Yes, but loyalty is where it went wrong,' said Cooper. 'It's always a mistake involving someone else in an act like that. Most people can't even rely on themselves to keep a secret. But the suspicion that you can't trust a person who shares your guilty knowledge will really eat away at you over time. These people had more than two years of it. Frankly, it's a wonder they didn't try to kill each other long before now.'

DI Hitchens strolled into the room and put his arm on Cooper's shoulder as he listened to the end of the conversation.

'And the fires?' he said. 'The same people are responsible for those, I gather.'

'There's been a coordinated campaign going on,' said Cooper. 'The fires on Kinder were started deliberately and the temporary reservoir was sabotaged, but only as part of a diversion a to draw away firefighting resources. The real target was always on Oxlow Moor. Specifically, the Light House.'

'The chief fire officer is happy anyway,' said Hitchens. 'They like to identify people who start wildfires on the moors. Normally it's far too difficult for them to prove a fire was started deliberately, even when there's no doubt in their own minds. Even if there's no prosecution, they're glad to get a confirmed arson.'

Cooper nodded. He wondered if he should mention the irony that it was the chief fire officer himself who'd given the Whartons the idea of starting the fires. His comments in that TV interview had been well intentioned, but had fallen on the wrong ears. He might have thought he was doing good PR for the fire service, but mentioning the threat to isolated buildings had been a fatal suggestion to insert into the minds of desperate people.

He rattled his car keys as he was about to leave the office with Villiers, but turned back for a moment.

'Gavin ...' he said.

'What?'

'Why is it that you never mentioned the word ”cellar” until now? It could have saved a lot of trouble.'

Murfin shook his head. 'It's funny how that goes, like. It only came into my memory just now, when I started thinking about beer. I mean, you don't have any other reason to think about the cellar in a pub, do you? Not when you're just a customer. It's there under your feet, but you don't need to know about it.'

'A wonderful thing, the memory,' said Villiers. 'It can trawl up the most unexpected things. Details you were convinced you'd forgotten just pop into your mind from somewhere. And no one really understands how it works.'

'Don't they?'

'Nope. It's one of the great mysteries of the human mind.'

'I can't even remember what I had for dinner last night,' said Murfin.

'That's old age, Gavin,' put in Hurst. 'I bet you remember every day of the Blitz, though.'

Still Cooper hesitated. He'd known Murfin for quite a few years now, and he thought he could read below the surface of his words.

'Gavin, you didn't really believe that the Pearsons had skipped the country, did you? Not as much as you made Diane Fry think you did.'

Murfin smiled. 'You can't let someone like that have it all her own way, Ben. She needs someone to take the opposite view. It focuses her mind, see. After I'd said all that, she was dead set on proving me wrong and showing everyone that the Pearsons were victims of a violent crime. And so she did.'

'I told her I thought you might be right,' said Cooper. 'I was standing up for you, Gavin.'

With his smile developing into a satisfied smirk, Murfin leaned back in his chair. 'Well, like I said before, we've all learned something, then.'

'So a Mad Maurice,' said Villiers a little while later, as Cooper's Toyota headed out of Edendale. 'It seems he wasn't a lovable eccentric after all. He actually was a psychopath.'

'I'm not sure,' said Cooper.

'You're not sure? But he killed two perfectly innocent tourists.'

'It's a bit too convenient, Carol.'

'What is?'

'The fact that he's dying. It's too convenient that Maurice Wharton will soon be dead and buried himself. It seems to me that that's what everyone has wanted all along a to be able to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and forget about it. And it's not going to happen.'

Villiers gave him a quizzical look. 'What's made you take this att.i.tude?'

'I was thinking about Maurice Wharton, when he talked about how painful it was watching his pub closed down for the last time. Seeing the windows go dark one by one.'

'Yes?'

'Well, it's no wonder he found it painful, knowing what he did, and what had been hidden there. He must have realised the truth would be uncovered eventually. And there was nothing he could do about it by then, when he was sitting in that car in the dusk. It must have been like watching his own future being slowly snuffed out.'

'I see. And is that all?'

Villiers knew him too well. But Cooper didn't want to share all his thoughts. As so often was the case, they didn't come anywhere near to amounting to evidence.

In fact, he'd also been thinking about what Fry had told him of Henry Pearson's reaction to the discovery of the two bodies. The collapse of the pretence, the crumbling facade. Everyone had their public face, the image they presented to the world. Even Gavin Murfin had cultivated a persona, a role that he played up to, so that everyone would remember him, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. It didn't reflect the real Murfin, the one behind the facade. And wasn't that the same with Maurice Wharton? It was all about image.

In the CID room today, the comments had been all about the Wharton of legend. The notorious Mad Maurice, the man who was known for his short temper and angry outbursts. He had a reputation for miles around as being irascible and unpredictable. Anyone with that idea in mind would have no difficulty picturing Wharton losing control, flying into a rage, and killing two people.

A reputation, yes. But reputations were built up over time. And surely it had been mostly an act in Wharton's case? He'd known perfectly well the appeal his eccentricity had for visitors to his pub. Many of them were drawn in to watch his performance. Of course, he had played up to the nickname. And so had everyone else. Even now, the whole of Edendale still called him Mad Maurice. Yet it was the way he wanted to be remembered. He'd said so himself, right there in the hospice.

In a way, it was almost like the story of the Light House itself. A brightly lit exterior, distracting attention from the darker corners within.

Yes, a reputation was very useful. A nickname created expectations in the people who heard it. Cooper wondered about his own response to that name. Had he been guilty of forming preconceptions about the way Mad Maurice Wharton would have behaved? Was he, like everyone else, being manipulated through his prejudices?