Bookshelves lined the walls of the sitting room and there seemed to be a lot of antique lamps. Victorian, Regency, art deco. They were being used to light the room instead of the normal ceiling lighting. They cast a dimmer light, and their positions threw shadows everywhere.
Cooper was cautious about stumbling over some item on the floor, or a corner of a tasselled rug. In this sort of light you could imagine ghosts and shapes that weren’t really there at all. Perhaps that was why Mr Slaney liked it. Sometimes the harsh light of reality could be much too painful.
‘It’s been a long time now,’ said Slaney when he let Cooper and Murfin in. ‘A very long time.’
‘Since your daughter’s disappearance, sir? It’s been ten years.’
‘As I say. A long time.’
Evan Slaney was a tall man in his sixties with a permanently disdainful expression. His hair looked a slightly unnatural shade of brown, which probably came from a bottle. Cooper found it hard to imagine him handling these antiques with any gentleness.
‘We’re not reopening your daughter’s case as such,’ said Cooper.
Slaney gave him a thin smile. ‘Not “as such”. I see. Then it’s to do with my son-in-law. Or my ex son-in-law. I don’t know which it is — do you?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean, sir.’
‘Well, it depends whether my daughter is alive or not, doesn’t it?’
‘And what do you think now, sir?’ asked Cooper.
‘Now? If you’ve read the reports, you know what I think.’
‘From the reports, I only know what you thought ten years ago. I’m asking you what you believe now.’
Slaney clenched his jaw. As if to calm himself, he stroked the shade of a Chinese porcelain lamp made in the shape of a dragon.
‘I still believe I saw Annette,’ he said. ‘I’ve never lost that belief, Inspector.’
‘I’d like to go over your sighting of her again, if you don’t mind.’
‘Again? After all these years? Why?’
‘It may be relevant.’
‘Relevant? What a mealy-mouthed expression.’
Cooper didn’t react. Slaney paced a free patch of rug and stopped suddenly. He glared at Murfin, then back to Cooper.
‘I’m sure you know this already,’ he said. ‘But one day I was doing some shopping at Waitrose in Buxton. When I came out of the store there were a lot of people around. As I reached my car, for some reason my attention was drawn to a woman on the other side of the car park. I recognised her immediately. It was like a thunderbolt.’
‘How exactly did you recognise her?’
‘Don’t you recognise a person you know well from the way they stand or move, from a little gesture, or how they hold their head? Besides, she was wearing a coat she’d had for some time. I was so certain that I shouted her name across the car park. People stared at me — I must have seemed like an idiot. But of course she didn’t hear me. And she’d loaded her shopping and driven off by the time I could get to her.’
‘The car...?’ said Cooper.
‘It was a white Ford Focus. That was the same make and model she drove when she was with Reece. They always had two cars, and she preferred it to the Vauxhall. It may sound ridiculous to you, but that small detail was the one that convinced me completely. I knew it was Annette. I thought she must have changed her name, started a new life, and was living somewhere locally.’
‘But you’ve never heard from her, sir?’
‘No.’
‘Not in ten years. Don’t you think—’
‘No, Inspector, I don’t think what you’re going to say. Call it faith, if you will. But I believe Annette is alive and living somewhere. Oh, not in Buxton any more. I think she’s gone far away from all of us.’
That last phrase could be interpreted in different ways. It sounded to Cooper like a euphemism for someone who’d died. That’s what people did these days. They talked about a person having ‘passed’, about a pet having ‘gone over the rainbow bridge’, as if they’d just gone to a better place. It seemed as though they used anything to avoid the word ‘dead’ and having to acknowledge their loved one no longer existed.
And he could understand that. He’d found himself doing it sometimes, not long after his fiancée Liz had been killed. That act of faith could be comforting. But, at the end of the day, she was still dead.
Slaney was watching Gavin Murfin moving around the room, wincing occasionally as he came too close to an antique lamp. He looked like a man who’d just let an unruly child into his collection and was regretting it.
‘Did Reece Bower did seem different after that, sir?’ asked Cooper.
‘After Annette’s disappearance?’ said Slaney. ‘Of course. We were all different. Not only had we been through a difficult experience, but we’d suffered a great loss. It was inevitable that we would be changed by it. You can’t just get over something like that. I never have. I’ve found it difficult to feel really happy. I’ll never be content with life again.’
‘But Mr Bower? How did he change?’
Slaney pursed his lips in thought. ‘He became more morose, perhaps. He always rather serious, but whenever I saw him after that he seemed to be brooding about something. Not that I saw him often, you understand. We weren’t very close, Reece and I. But I did think, in view of what happened, he might have showed some, well... appreciation.’
‘Appreciation? Oh, you mean gratitude for the fact that you saved him from standing trial? Because you helped him avoid conviction for murder?’
Slaney flushed angrily. ‘That was never the way I saw it.’
Cooper was interested to see the way Slaney reacted to a provocation. If he could make Annette’s father lose his temper, he might get something more from him. But he had no justification for doing that. Mr Slaney was a witness, after all. Cooper just couldn’t be certain in his own mind which side of the case he was on. A witness for the defence, or for the prosecution?
‘Morose and brooding,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s how you described Mr Bower.’
‘I suppose it was to be expected, after the ordeal he went through.’
‘Certainly sir.’
That was possible, of course. But killing someone changed you too, no matter how much you thought they deserved it, no matter whether you believed you’d got away with it. Killing made you a different person. It changed you for ever.
Could Reece Bower have become such a different person that he was consumed with remorse for what he’d done years earlier? It was an impossible question to answer. Perhaps only Bower himself could know.
‘And do you have any suggestion of what’s happened to Reece, Mr Slaney?’ asked Cooper. ‘What does your faith tell you about his whereabouts?’
Slaney shrugged. ‘I haven’t any idea. Do you believe his disappearance is connected with the previous case?’
‘We think he might have been scared off by the possibility of some new information coming to light.’
‘Oh. You mean he’d been tipped the black spot, then.’
‘The black spot?’ said Murfin. ‘Some local Derbyshire custom I’m not aware of?’
‘No, it’s from Robert Louis Stevenson,’ said Slaney. ‘Treasure Island.’
‘Of course.’
Cooper saw Evan Slaney smirk at his visitor’s ignorance. Murfin responded by bumping into the dragon-shaped porcelain lamp. Slaney let out a pained cry, but Murfin caught it and steadied the shade before the base tipped over.
‘Oops,’ he said. ‘No harm done.’
Cooper waited a beat of a second. Slaney was off his guard now.
‘Are you aware of your daughter and her husband having a particular connection to Lathkill Dale, Mr Slaney?’ he asked.
‘What?’ Slaney seemed startled.