Dead And Buried

And he had no doubt that number eight Welbeck Street would be put up for sale then, another property added to the housing market. This one would sell quickly, though. It was a small stone-built semi, and would make an ideal first home for a young family. The conversion into two flats hadn’t been perfect, and the stud walls were a bit shoddy, if the truth were told. But it had always felt comfortable to Cooper. Cosy, even. It would never suit Liz.

He took off his jacket and walked through the flat into the decrepit conservatory at the back, overlooking the garden. And there was another problem.

The cat came running towards him, tail up, purr like a motorbike engine. Cooper bent to stroke the tabby fur and look into the bright green eyes.

‘And I really don’t know what’s going to happen to you,’ he said quietly.

When everyone had finally left the scene on Oxlow Moor, Diane Fry reversed her Audi down the track, turned and drove back over the moor towards the deserted pub.

She’d measured the distance at about a mile and a half from the scene on Oxlow Moor. Not an easy walking distance. But Fry was sure she’d seen it. A figure, running through the smoke. Impossible to tell whether it was male or female.

The building was dark and silent, in a way no pub should ever be. Fry walked round the outside in the gathering dusk, examining the windows. Even the first floor had been boarded up. High above her, just a single dormer window set into the roof had been left uncovered. A determined vandal had managed to reach it with a stone, and the glass had shattered outwards from a small hole, as if it had been hit by a gunshot.

She did a complete circuit, and ended up standing outside the back door, which had clearly been forced open.

Fry pulled her jacket closer around her shoulders as she stepped through the broken door frame. She took two paces into the darkened pub, and stopped, all her senses twitching. Something was wrong, and it was right here. Her instincts had drawn her to it unerringly.

Slowly, she backed up. She fetched her Maglite from the Audi, and went back into the pub. The electricity supply was turned off, of course, and she had no hope of finding the consumer unit to switch it back on.

Bit by bit she swept the light around the room she’d entered. Not a room exactly, but a passage that seemed to widen out to her left into a storage area where empty cardboard boxes had been stacked.

The light of her torch showed that the dust on the floor had been disturbed close to the doorway. Not just footprints, but distinct signs of a disturbance. Two sets of feet at least, she guessed. Two or three people involved in a recent scuffle.

And what was that? Dark spatters on the floor, a spray of droplets spreading towards her, stopping just short of her feet. She smelled a familiar metallic tang. Not overwhelming, but definitely fresh. The odour was so distinctive that she felt the hairs stirring on the nape of her neck.

Fry took a step back towards the door, made another sweep of the interior, focused her beam on a darker patch in the shadows across the other side of the room. A huddle of clothes and awkwardly sprawled limbs.

She sucked in a sharp breath, all her suspicions confirmed.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘How did anyone miss this?’

6

Cooper had a message waiting for him next morning. He had to see Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh, the head of E Division’s CID. That never boded well. But it was even worse when he had no idea what he was being summoned about.

Before he went up to the management floor, he took a couple of minutes to bring himself up to date on what had been happening overnight. His heart sank when he read about the discovery at the Light House. The incident report read like his worst nightmare. Especially when it began: Call received from DS Fry of East Midlands Major Crime Unit …

Damn, he said to himself when he’d digested the details. Better get it over with then.

The top floor at West Street was marginally more comfortable. A bit of carpet here and there, a recent paint job on the office doors. There was less of an air of desperation: no piles of evidence lying around waiting to be processed, no signs of the public intruding, let alone sweating suspects and drunks detained for a night in the cells.

Superintendent Branagh’s office was near the end of the corridor, where the quietness was itself intimidating. He knocked and was called straight in.

Whenever he looked at Branagh, Cooper couldn’t help remembering Gavin Murfin’s comment when he’d first set eyes on her: She’d look good in the front row of a scrum. It was the shoulders that did it.

‘Ah, DS Cooper,’ she said.

He knew it was serious then, just by the tone of her voice, the underlying hint of disapproval or disappointment. The super had always liked him, or so he thought. But things could change.

‘So. How did we miss a body in the pub?’ asked Branagh.