Part 38 (1/2)

Cooper went into the area where the filing cabinets had been stored, and looked at the desk covered in box files and magazines. The office, Lane had called it. A place to be alone? Well it was certainly quiet enough down here. But also a place to put things out of the way.

He found that the cabinets were unlocked. He slid the drawers out one by one, their runners squealing in protest. The noise seemed unnaturally loud in the cellar, reverberating painfully against the stone walls in the narrow s.p.a.ce.

He flipped through the tabs on a series of suspension files, discarding invoices for deliveries, electricity bills, insurance doc.u.ments, copies of VAT returns. He finally found an entire drawer marked 'Guest Records'. They went back to a time almost five years before the closure of the Light House, but fortunately they were arranged in date order.

Cooper wondered who had been responsible for keeping the records up to date. Was that Mad Maurice in his saner moments? Or had Nancy been the one with the organising brain?

Whoever he had to thank, it was easy enough to locate the record of the Pearsons' overnight stay in the Light House. Thank goodness the Whartons had been old-fas.h.i.+oned enough not to store all their records on computer. A copy of the entry from the register slid into his hand, dated that night in December.

Holding the page carefully by the edges, Cooper read the names of David and Patricia Pearson, their address in Dorking, their home phone number and nationality. The s.p.a.ce for their car registration was left blank. The Range Rover had been at the Old Dairy, of course. But, as Nancy had said, they were checked into Room One, the Bakewell Room.

His eyes scanned down to the bottom of the page, until he located the signature of the member of staff who'd checked them in and taken their payment. But surely that wasn't an 'M'? No, it was definitely an 'E'. The signature read 'E. Wharton'. The Pearsons had been signed in by Eliot.

'Do you know what?' said Cooper to himself, his voice echoing off the cellar walls. 'I think we might find it's Eliot's blood on David Pearson's clothes.'

30.

Henry Pearson held himself stiffly as he peered through the plate-gla.s.s window. In the tiled room on the other side of the gla.s.s, the body of his son lay on a stainless-steel table. Fry watched him as a mortuary attendant drew back the cover slowly, careful not to expose parts of the neck and shoulder that had suffered more advanced decomposition.

'Yes, of course it's David,' he said.

'Thank you.'

His eyes remained fixed on the pale face, barely acknowledging Fry's presence. According to Ben Cooper, David Pearson had once resembled a well-known actor, some old Hollywood heart-throb. Fry hadn't been able to see the resemblance from the photographs. She certainly couldn't see it now.

'What about Patricia?' said Pearson, still without moving.

'We can do the identification from DNA,' said Fry.

Henry Pearson turned to look at her then. 'But why ...?'

'I'm sorry, sir. Decomposition. They were wrapped differently. So her face ...'

Pearson swallowed, and rested a hand lightly on the gla.s.s to support himself.

'If I could get hold of the person who did this, I'd kill him and bury him myself. Then I'd dig him up and kill him again.'

The attendant drew the cover back over David's head. When they'd gone, the body would be returned to the drawer where it was being stored. David Pearson would go back into the freezer.

When Fry had escorted Pearson from the mortuary and seen him leave, she knew it was time to talk to Nancy Wharton again.

It was only a short drive from the hospital to West Street. Fry spent the time working out what she needed from Mrs Wharton. Names, of course. She had to break down any sense of loyalty and solidarity with her accomplices. Loyalty had no place in the interview room.

To help her think, Fry turned on the CD player. Annie Lennox was still there, waiting for her, the one person she could trust in an unreliable world. Lennox's voice came in over the first chords to an acoustic version of 'Dark Road'. She was singing about emotions she wasn't feeling, a meaning she wasn't listening to. Fry nodded her head to the song. She knew that particular dark road.

Between the two distractions, she managed not to notice much of Edendale until she was turning off Greaves Road into West Street. She reported to DCI Mackenzie, then called in to the CID room and collected Becky Hurst to sit in with her when she reopened the interview with Nancy Wharton.

'Poor Maurice,' said Nancy, her arms still wrapped tightly round her body. 'It was horrible. But he was out of control. He wasn't responsible for his actions. That's what I'll say, you know. That's what we'll all say.'

'But it isn't as simple as that,' said Fry. 'There was only one person who was capable of organising the clean-up. It needed a level head, clear thinking. Only one person was in any condition. And you don't drink, do you, Nancy?'

'I did that night,' she said. 'But not until much later.'

Nancy continued to tell the story. She no longer needed much prompting. Now that she was halfway there, she wasn't going to stop.

'Afterwards ... well, some of the lads rallied round, and we all agreed on a story.'

'The lads?'

Her jaw was set in a hard line. 'I wouldn't tell you their names. Not for anything.'

Fry recognised a dead end when she saw one. But there were ways round it. More routes than one to the truth.

'Go on, then,' she said.

'At one time, Maurice only really felt at home in one place. Where the heart of the Light House was a in the cellar. So that's where we chose. We knew we'd have to move them, but it was the best place for the time being. The mine shafts were searched at the time, but the pub wasn't.'

Nancy nodded slowly. 'Well, it was strange, but it was only when we saw the fires on the moor and started to worry about the pub getting damaged that it suddenly occurred to us that there would be new owners going in. They would be sorting everything out, looking through the records. We'd put the old filing cabinets down in the cellar and forgotten all about them. It was the place we always put things we didn't want.'

'And when the inquiry ground to a halt ...?'

'We thought it was all dead and buried.'

'Dead and buried? Not really. It must always have been in your mind.'

She shrugged hopelessly. 'Well, you're right. It was always in my mind. I was always wondering when something might happen, whether someone would talk. I knew it would only take a slip of the tongue, a careless remark.'

Fry couldn't imagine what it must be like to live with that sort of fear, the terror of a secret slipping out. No matter what Nancy Wharton said, it must fill every minute of your day, until you suffered from an unremitting paranoia about every little thing.

'Later on, we moved everything,' said Nancy. 'They buried the anoraks and stuff, but the bodies ... well, have you ever tried s.h.i.+fting a body? It took a couple of quad bikes to get them well away from the pub on to the moor. Then a few fires were started to draw attention away. That nearly went wrong. The wind changed direction, and the fires moved towards the pub instead of away. My G.o.d, watching that smoke coming nearer and nearer, we panicked. We had to get the freezers out of the cellar. We knew there'd be evidence a blood, and so on. We'd already cleaned up in the bedroom, scrubbed the floor with bleach, replaced the carpet and the bedding, even stripped off all the wallpaper and redecorated. It never came to an end, the clearing up and covering over. The blood always seemed to be there.'

'Talking to yourself again, Ben?'

Cooper turned and found Villiers watching him. He had been so absorbed that he hadn't heard her coming down the steps into the cellar.

'No one else will listen to me,' he said.

She laughed. 'Liz Petty is working in the Bakewell Room, where the Pearsons stayed. She says there's blood residue everywhere.'

'I'm not surprised.'

'It's going to keep her busy for a while. She ought to have some help, Ben.'

'I know. I'll call in and chase someone up. Well, I will when I can get a signal on my phone.'

'I'm off network too,' said Villiers.