‘I’d like to ask you about an incident that Mr Elder says took place at Pity Wood Farm, between him and Derek Sutton.’
‘Incident?’
‘I’m sure you remember. You remember everything that happens in Rakedale, don’t you?’
Palfreyman gazed out of his window for a while. The grey mist hung in the woods half a mile away, but it hadn’t reached his property. Not yet.
‘Yes, I got the call to that,’ he said. ‘I had a young probationer with me, showing him the ropes. We responded to a 999, and we blue-lighted to the scene. Got there way ahead of the ambulance. We found Jack Elder bleeding all over the place, and you could see his jaw was broken. Derek had calmed down by then, but Raymond was in a right state. When we arrived, he was pacing up and down the yard, swearing violently. Honestly, he was like Ahab cursing Moby Dick. Sin and damnation, and I don’t know what else.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Cooper.
‘I did the right thing. I had a word with all three of them, then got on to the radio to Control and told them it was a farm accident. We loaded Jack into the ambulance when it came, and he got fixed up. It was the probationer who took the most sorting out, but he did what I told him.’
‘Did that really seem like the best way of dealing with it?’
‘Yes. The thing is, you don’t want a long enquiry and a court case hanging over you, when you’ve got other things to do. Think of all that blasted paperwork, the time you have to spend hanging around outside a courtroom. What’s the point? Is it any better now? No, I can see from your faces that it isn’t. Worse, maybe? I bet you know exactly what it’s like. Once your collar number is on a job, it’ll be round your neck for months, or years.’
‘Derek Sutton committed an assault. What about punishment for his crime? What about the concept of justice?’
‘That’s exactly what it was,’ said Palfreyman. ‘Jack Elder got the justice he deserved.’
‘Was it him who was responsible for the incident with Jo Brindley, too?’
‘Yes, of course. Nasty bugger, Jack. Derek Sutton did us all a favour.’
‘Are you sure Derek was responsible for the assault?’ asked Hitchens.
‘Yes, he admitted it.’
‘Did he have injuries? Scraped knuckles? Blood on his clothes?’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘I just like to get the details accurate, sir.’
‘Yes, we all have to deal with liars, don’t we?’
Hitchens looked up, surprised. ‘Sorry?’
‘You’re asking me all these details to try to catch me out in a lie. I know the technique. That female DS you sent the other day, she bragged about being trained these days. But don’t you find it difficult to have to go through life assuming that everyone is lying to you? Don’t you ever experience trust? Can’t you tell when someone knows what the right thing is to do?’
Neither Hitchens nor Cooper could answer the question. It was rhetorical, surely? Cooper couldn’t think how you would know that. Everyone’s ideas of ‘right’ were different, just as their concepts of justice varied.
Palfreyman sighed at their expressions.
‘God help us. Let me tell you something. There was an incident when I was a young bobby, only two years in, so I was just qualified. You know, nothing actually marked the passing of your two years’ service then. It was supposed to be such a milestone for a new copper, but all I got was a pep talk from the commander, and a quick handshake. The only celebration I can remember is having to buy cakes for the rest of the section. Then we got this misper report. You’ve been working through missing persons on this case, I dare say?’
‘Of course.’
‘Aye. Well, this was a small child that was missing. Three years old, she was, and the parents were screaming the place down. We were FOAs, me and my mate. While he talked to the parents, I made a floorboard check, like you’re supposed to do when you’re sent to a misper report. Especially as it was a child.’
‘In case a member of the family had killed her and hidden her body?’ said Cooper.
‘It happens,’ said Palfreyman. ‘A space under the floorboards, the bottom of a wardrobe, a cupboard below the stairs. Just somewhere to stash the body until the coppers have been and gone. It gives them time to decide how to dispose of her permanently.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘No. The bosses turned up — and your lot, CID. They decided she was a genuine case of suspicious circumstances. They pulled out all the stops for a while.’
Cooper looked at him. ‘You didn’t agree with that assessment?’
‘It didn’t matter what I thought. I was just a young response bobby, wet behind the ears.’ Palfreyman shrugged. ‘I had no evidence anyway, just a bit of an odd feeling about the parents. The way they reacted seemed off, somehow. They were bothered about the wrong things — asking where we were going to look, when we’d be coming back to talk to them again, that sort of thing. Do you know what I mean?’
‘You had a gut instinct,’ said Cooper.
‘Right.’
‘And what happened to the child?’
‘Oh, they found her, six months later. She was unrecognizable by then, though. The father thought he’d suffocated her in her sleep, and they both panicked. So they waited until we’d gone, and they buried her under the garden shed. I always wondered if she might still have been alive when we first arrived.’
‘There’s no way you could tell that.’
Palfreyman watched his visitors for some reaction, and seemed disappointed. ‘A gut instinct doesn’t count for much these days, does it? Some of the old school might have listened to me back then, but not the SIO who was put on the case. He was too full of himself. Done all the courses, got all the certificates. If I’d said anything to him, I’d just have made a fool of myself. I still had hopes of promotion then, you see.’
‘I understand,’ said Cooper.
Palfreyman laughed. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘Yes it is. Those are the decisions that come back to haunt you years later, you know. The ones where you chickened out, bottled it, or betrayed your own beliefs.’ He looked more closely at Cooper. ‘Has it happened to you yet, lad? Don’t let it, if it’s not too late already. Be true to yourself. Say what you think.’ He nodded at Hitchens. ‘Don’t play their game. You’ll regret it later, if you do.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ said Cooper.
But Palfreyman leaned across and gripped his arm. ‘It’s important. You know there are lots of coppers who feel like I do. They just daren’t say so.’
As they were leaving Hollowbrook Cottage, Palfreyman held Cooper back for a moment until he was out of earshot of his DI.
‘You know, back then, if you’d visited Rakedale, you could have depended on finding people with a bit of self- reliance — they were known across Derbyshire for a streak of independence. It was an independent spirit forged by hardship, all right. But that made them all the better as people, I reckon.’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ said Cooper.
‘Well, you’ve met some of the people who live in Rakedale now. Would you say that describes them?’
‘Perhaps not, sir.’
‘Don’t be so namby-pamby, lad. You can see perfectly well they’re not like that any more. They’re defeated. Their spirit has gone.’
Cooper wasn’t sure about Palfreyman’s verdict on the people of Rakedale. His contempt had sounded more like a judgement on himself.
There seemed to be building going on everywhere in Dublin — new offices, new housing estates, new roads. Fry saw signs claiming that some of the projects had been funded by the European Union. So that’s where her taxes had been going. She’d often wondered.
Detective Garda Tony Lenaghan had greeted her in the arrivals hall at the crowded airport. He was a cheerful-looking man in his thirties, relaxed and talkative. He gave Fry such a genuine smile of welcome that she almost hugged him on the spot. She hadn’t felt like doing that to anyone for years.
