Dead And Buried

Because of his job, Josh Lane might have known most about the Pearsons. And without being asked, Lane had volunteered the information that he wasn’t here at the Light House on the day the Pearsons disappeared. That was almost certainly true. But he must have been here later, helping to cover up what had happened, and moving the bodies.

Josh Lane. Just like one of the family. Who had said that? The chef, Maclennan. Had Maclennan been closer to the truth than he thought?

And maybe Lane had helped to remove those freezers he’d been reluctant to acknowledge the existence of. If that was his Mitsubishi pickup, it would have been the perfect vehicle for the task. It also answered the description from the firefighters.

So Gullick and Naylor might have been part of a smoke-screen after all. Their names had cropped up several times. But they had most cleverly been floated by Josh Lane, with that pretence of loyalty to customers that now, in hindsight, seemed artificial and coy. Cooper couldn’t believe that he’d fallen for it. He’d turned into a sucker over a cup of espresso and steamed milk.

In retrospect, it should have been clear the exact moment when Lane changed from a friendly, helpful member of the public to the more cautious former employee who couldn’t quite remember what had stood against the wall. It had surely been when Cooper brought him down to the cellar and mentioned the Pearsons. The combination of the two must have made him feel as though he’d been led into a trap. If only, Cooper thought, he’d been so clever.

‘Damn it,’ said Cooper. ‘Why have I been so stupid?’

Then he sniffed. His sense of smell had been on the alert for days. Now his nostrils were sending an urgent message.

‘Can you smell that?’ he said.

Villiers looked up. ‘Yes, it’s smoke. You must have smelled it before, Ben. It’s been burning all week out there.’

‘No, this isn’t burning heather. It’s something different.’

Cooper went to the hatch and tried to push it open. It didn’t budge.

‘Stuck?’

‘I don’t know.’

He rattled the handle without success, tried putting his shoulder against the trapdoor, thumped it hard in growing frustration.

‘I can’t believe this.’

‘What’s the matter, Ben?’

Villiers came across the room to join him. She didn’t sound worried yet, and he tried to keep his voice calm to hide his steadily increasing anxiety.

‘Okay, it does seem to be jammed. Just a bit rusted up probably. I don’t suppose it’s been used much for a long while.’

‘We had no trouble with it coming in,’ said Villiers doubtfully.

Despite her apparent calm, he could hear the beginnings of anxiety in her voice. She tried so hard not to let it show when she was at work, but he knew her too well to be fooled. It was his job now to keep her calm and give her the reassurance that he didn’t actually feel.

‘It’ll just take me a moment.’

‘That smoke, Ben …’

‘What?’

‘It’s coming through the trapdoor.’

Cooper looked up. She was right, of course. No wonder the smell was so strong. The fire was close. Very close. But there was no way the smoke from the blazing moorland could have reached this far and come right into the building, not through locked doors and boarded-up windows.

There was only one possibility. The pub itself was on fire.

31

Fry remained silent — the best approach when someone like Mrs Wharton had decided to talk. All she needed was someone to listen. Let her thoughts run, and see where they took her. ‘So then we decided on a fire further off, to get the firemen out of the way,’ she said. ‘And we chose Kinder. To be honest, I can’t understand now how everything happened. When I think about it, I feel as though it was part of a nightmare. It all just got out of hand.’

Again Fry waited. But Nancy seemed to have dried up. She rocked slowly in her chair, suddenly resembling someone much younger. She was no longer the pub landlady with blonde streaks in her hair and a hard look in her eyes, but a young girl troubled by the terrible dreams she was trying to explain.

‘After the pub was closed,’ said Fry, ‘someone broke into the Light House to get at the records of the Pearsons’ stay.’

‘Yes.’

‘But Aidan Merritt had gone to do the same thing.’

‘Had he? That can’t be true, can it?’

‘Yes, we think so.’

‘No, you’re wrong. Aidan was eaten up with guilt and was going to betray us. He’d said something to his wife, Sam, which she passed on to us. She said he was rambling on the phone about betrayal and guilt.’

‘You might have misunderstood.’

Nancy went white, and sat down, trembling. ‘No, surely not.’

Fry leaned closer. ‘Who killed Aidan Merritt, Nancy?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

Well, that would come later. There was plenty of time. When Nancy Wharton realised she wasn’t going to be leaving here for another twenty-four hours at least, she might change her mind. Fry decided to backtrack a bit.

‘You said earlier that you told the children everything,’ she said. ‘Did you mean everything?’