‘Besides, DS Cooper is back at work now. I know he is. I was there when he returned. There can’t be someone else…?’
Mackenzie was shaking his head patiently. ‘No, you’re getting completely the wrong end of the stick, Diane.’
‘Am I?’
Fry tried to restrain herself. But the sudden prospect that had risen in her mind was too scary. After Ben Cooper’s tragedy in the pub fire, she’d been unable to decline the temporary assignment back to E Division, a secondment to take charge of her old team in Divisional CID. A refusal would have been impossible, especially in those circumstances.
And then there had been the unexpected final task, the more personal one for which she was totally unsuited. Breaking bad news, adding another psychological burden to someone who was already down. She had no personal skills for doing that. Ben Cooper must be used to hearing only bad news from her by now. The thought caused an unexpected stab of pain in her abdomen.
‘Let me explain,’ said Mackenzie.
So Fry reluctantly sat and listened to his explanation of the request from Derbyshire. She fidgeted at the thought of the task she was being presented with. It opened up all kinds of possibilities in her mind, some of which were completely unprofessional. She suppressed the flight of imagination immediately. Totally inappropriate.
‘Why me?’ she said when Mackenzie had finished.
The DCI raised his hands. ‘You’re the obvious person. You’ve got to admit that, Diane.’
‘Perhaps.’
He looked at her more seriously. ‘This is a compliment, you know. It’s a sign of how highly you’re regarded. Don’t just throw that away.’
Fry bit her lip. She knew she was going to have to accept. In fact, her mind was already turning over the ways she might approach the task. Her relationship with Ben Cooper was complicated, but she had to put all that aside. Feelings couldn’t come into it. Definitely not.
She gazed back at Mackenzie for a moment, and finally she nodded. There was only one thing to do. She would just have to take the bull by the horns.
7
The interior of Pilsbury Cottage was cramped and dark. The windows in these old cottages were always too small and the ceilings too low. It reminded Cooper that his ancestors must have been people of short stature who spent their time crouched in candlelight huddled against the cold.
‘We need the lights on,’ he said.
‘Here.’
Irvine found the switches and the sitting room sprang into focus. It was still cramped, but the furniture and wallpaper were decorated in a series of bright chintzy patterns that made the light suddenly painful on his tired eyes.
‘Check upstairs for any signs that anyone else has been here,’ said Cooper. ‘Then see if you can find a diary and an address book.’
‘Anyone else? Oh, you mean like a boyfriend?’ said Irvine. ‘Shaver in the bathroom, slippers under the bed?’
‘Possibly.’
While Irvine disappeared upstairs, Cooper stood in the middle of the sitting room and turned through three hundred and sixty degrees to perform a quick survey. The objects scattered around were a little out of the ordinary. They reminded him of the sort of thing his sister Claire collected. Abstract pottery, ethnic art, bowls full of crystals and stacks of scented candles. A Native American dreamcatcher hung from the ceiling and a pack of Tarot cards stood on a bookshelf. One wall was covered with a rug woven in vibrant colours with tribal African figures.
He noticed a large wicker basket next to one of the armchairs by the fireplace. When he lifted the lid, he found balls of wool, scraps of material, knitting needles, a case full of pins and cotton thread, another of buttons and small glass beads.
Cooper saw a phone on a table by the window. He pressed the answering machine button to play back the messages. But a recorded voice told him there weren’t any. Even the old messages had been deleted. There was a calls list function too, but the only recent numbers it showed were listed as unavailable.
That was odd. It was almost like someone was trying to hide their contact history. It certainly wasn’t a normal thing for the victim of a crime to do. People didn’t expect to meet their death when they left the house.
Cooper walked through into the tiny kitchen and found a laptop computer sitting on the table. He looked out of the back door, where there was only a tiny square of garden tucked under the hillside. He could see over a stone wall into a few acres of sheep pasture.
‘Can you see an address book or anything with phone numbers in?’ he called, when he heard Irvine come back downstairs.
Irvine had begun opening and closing drawers in a pine dresser in the sitting room. ‘Not yet. But come and have a look — I’ve found a diary.’
‘Is it a big one?’
‘No, tiny. A little pocket diary.’
‘She didn’t record every detail of her life, then.’
‘No such luck.’
Irvine passed him the diary. The cover was plastic, but textured to make it look like leather, and it had little brass corners to protect it from getting dog-eared from use by the end of the year. Cooper riffled through and saw the information it provided would be sparse. There were four days to a page and Sandra Blair had used the space mostly to record dates when she was working, the times of WI meetings, dental appointments, an eye test.
He turned to Thursday 31 October. But the section was blank. To Cooper’s eye, it looked suspiciously blank. After the absence of messages on the answering machine, it looked as though Sandra had deliberately failed to mention where she was going last night. Not even to her own diary.
But what about tonight? Well, here was an entry at last. So Sandra hadn’t planned to die last night. For Friday 1 November, she’d written: ‘Meet Grandfather, 1am.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Irvine.
‘“Meet Grandfather, 1am.” What do you think that means?’
‘Well, someone was meeting their grandfather, I guess.’
‘Grandfather?’ said Cooper. ‘How old was Sandra Blair, Luke?’
‘We think she was around thirty-five. But that’s an estimate from Mrs Beresford.’
Cooper did a quick mental calculation. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. But her grandfather would be approaching eighty, at least.’
‘My grandfather wouldn’t be out meeting anyone at one o’clock in the morning,’ said Irvine. ‘He’s in bed with his hot chocolate by ten at the latest.’
‘There are grandfathers and grandfathers, though.’
Cooper was remembering his Granddad Frank, his mother’s father. He’d been a tough old bird, who’d spent most of his life working on the roads as a foreman in the county council’s highways department. That was in the days before health and safety, when Frank and his colleagues worked on all kinds of jobs and in all conditions wearing their overalls and flat caps. As foreman, Granddad Frank had insisted on wearing a tie too. He could have walked twenty miles when he was aged nearly eighty, and he never seemed to get more than three or four hours’ sleep.
‘Whose grandfather, then?’ asked Irvine.
‘I have no idea.’
Irvine frowned. ‘That’s a shame, Ben. She was supposed to be meeting him tonight, whoever he is.’
‘Tonight?’ said Cooper. ‘Or last night?’
‘It’s an entry for today, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but at one in the morning,’
‘Oh, I see what you mean.’
‘If you were going somewhere at one o’clock in the morning, would you enter it in your diary for that day or the day before?’
‘Where would I be going at 1 a.m.?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not familiar with your social life. An all-night party? A rave?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ Irvine thought about it for a moment. ‘Probably the day before. Because that’s when I’d need to remember it. The next day would be no good. If I was the sort of person who might forget something like that.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Cooper. ‘I haven’t seen any car keys yet. You?’