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Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth
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The silence grew in the interview room. Somewhere in the station someone started whistling. A telephone rang half a dozen times before it was answered. Tailby dared not move in his seat for fear of breaking the moment.
‘But that wasn’t the worst,’ said Daniel. ‘The most sickening thing of all was my father. When I came into the room and he turned away from the window, I noticed two things straightaway. The first was the binoculars round his neck. The second was his erection.’
The young man was staring at the desk, as if interested in the ballpoint pens and a scatter of paperclips. Tailby remembered Graham Vernon’s desk in his study. There had been a framed print propped against a table lamp, a photograph of a wedding couple, taken in the 1970s by the look of the bridegroom’s hairstyle and the lapels of his suit. Graham Vernon was recognizable by his salesman’s smile, and the sincerity of his direct gaze at the camera. But allowing for the changes in fashion, in his youth Graham Vernon had looked very much like this young man in front of them now.
‘It was sticking out at the front of his trousers like a monstrous growth,’ said Daniel. ‘It was unreal. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was, you know. I thought he had something in his pocket. But he never carries anything in his pockets because it spoils the cut of his suit. Then I realized. The fact is, it turned him on to watch my mother having sex with the gardener. That’s my father, Chief Inspector.’ His voice cracked. ‘That’s the bastard I call my father.’
Tailby nodded slowly. He had spent too long in the police service to be shocked by other people’s sexual activities. They were merely facts to be noted now, data to be filed away as possible motives, to be assessed for their relevance to other details in the mass of information that was pouring into the incident room. The life and background of Laura Vernon were being pieced together, bit by bit, like a badly designed jigsaw. Everything that cast light on her circumstances was important. But how much could be trusted of what was said by an angry, bitter young man who hated his father and had just had his sister murdered?
The blue police tape still fluttered from the trees. A PC still stood guard further up the path. But the Scenes of Crime officers and forensic scientists had gone. They had other things to do now – the scene of a suspected arson to attend in Matlock, a serious assault case at Glossop, a linked series of aggravated burglaries in Edendale.
‘It’s too hot. It affects my brain. I can’t think straight out here.’
Ben Cooper found himself back on the baking hillside again, standing with DCI Tailby at the murder scene.
‘So what was the weapon?’ asked Tailby. ‘A bough of a tree, a lump of wood? But there are no traces of bark in the head wounds, and Mrs Van Doon says there would be. Besides, the injuries were made by something hard and smooth, not rough. So. A stone? Quite possibly. But no sign of it. You wouldn’t take a thing like that away with you, would you, Cooper?’
Cooper was not too surprised to be asked his opinion by the DCI. He had worked under him before and had seen the contrast between the ease with which Tailby talked to individual officers, even a humble DC, and the awful stilted pomposity which seemed to overwhelm him when he had to deal with members of the public. The standard police jargon flowed unthinkingly from his lips when he had to address someone who was neither suspect nor fellow detective. There was no room in his vocabulary for normal conversation with ordinary, innocent citizens. It was as if they had to be held at arm’s-length, kept behind a barrier of meaningless formality.
Despite his experience in criminal investigations, Tailby’s career was seriously handicapped by his lack of public relations ability. In time, he would probably be shunted to an administrative post, where he could compile reports and write memos in as pompous a style as he liked. Cooper thought it would be a loss. But everyone had their fatal flaws – sometimes they were just less obvious.
‘If it was a rock, and you had your wits about you, sir, all you’d have to do would be to toss it into the stream.’
They walked a few yards to look down into the gulley where the Eden Valley Trail footpath ran. The bed of the shallow stream was littered with handy-sized stones. There were hundreds of them. Thousands of them. And all of them constantly being washed clean in front of their eyes by the cool, rushing water.
‘Let’s see if the Vernons are in,’ said Tailby wearily.
Graham Vernon looked flushed, and his face was puffy, even before he started to get angry. Looking at the drinks cabinet, Cooper guessed that the man had been turning to the alcohol too much to help him cope with the situation.
‘I can’t imagine why you’re giving any credibility to this lurid picture of my daughter, Chief Inspector. You can’t seriously be taking notice of what the boy Lee Sherratt has been telling you?’
Predictably, Tailby was responding to Vernon’s indignation by retreating into aloofness. They were like two well-groomed cats gradually throwing their veneer of civilization aside as they raised their fur and puffed their bodies up to make themselves look bigger than they really were.
‘Both Mr Sherratt and Mr Holmes have made statements, Mr Vernon. And naturally we are taking the information which has emerged from those statements into account in our enquiries.’
‘Who the hell is Mr Holmes?’
‘Simeon Holmes was Laura’s boyfriend.’
Vernon began to splutter. ‘Her what?’
‘Does it surprise you that Laura had a boyfriend?’
‘Surprise me? You’re talking rubbish, man. Laura had no time for boyfriends. She spent her time studying during the week. She worked hard. At weekends she had her music lessons. She practised the piano for hours. On Sundays she would go riding – we kept her horse at the stables on Buxton Road. She was always either out hacking or we’d take her to a gymkhana somewhere. When she wasn’t doing those, she was at the stables anyway. She was like a lot of fifteen-year-old girls, Chief Inspector – she was more interested in horses than boys. And thank God for that. Fifteen is too young to be having boyfriends.’
‘Nevertheless –’
‘Who is this Holmes, anyway? Someone she knew at school, I suppose. I would have preferred to send her to a single-sex school, but it would have meant her boarding somewhere. My wife wanted to have Laura living at home. A mistake, it seems now.’
Tailby ignored the turning down of Vernon’s mouth, pressing on to prevent the man slipping into grief or self-pity.
‘According to Mr Holmes, Laura hated school. She used to play truant to meet him in Edendale. Or indeed to meet other young men, it would seem. Were you aware of that, sir?’
‘No, I was not.’
‘Perhaps your wife would know more about that side of your daughter’s life, sir.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t ask my wife questions like that,’ said Vernon. ‘She is just starting to come to terms with all this, Chief Inspector. Don’t knock her back, please.’
‘Mrs Vernon seemed to cope very well in front of the television cameras this morning. I thought that went very well, sir.’
‘Clutching at straws.’
Ben Cooper stood in the background, watching Vernon carefully. The man had a square, heavy jaw and a face like an unfit boxer’s. It suited his aggressive manner, but went oddly with the atmosphere of the study. It was a large, high-ceilinged room with heavy pieces of furniture and a vast oak desk. A Turkish rug was thrown over a fitted oatmeal Berber in front of an arched brick fireplace and a cast-iron log basket on the hearth.
‘I