and useless. So he gets cross and bad-tempered about it whenever anyone mentions it. I bet you found him like that.’
‘To be honest, yes.’
‘Also, he always says the modern police have no idea how to do the job that he did. Proper policing, he calls it. I don’t know what he means, exactly, but he’s very disrespectful.’
‘Ye-es.’
Mel laughed at his expression. ‘In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to solve your case for you by now. Or, at least, told you how to do it.’
‘Well, I don’t think Mr Palfreyman has done that,’ said Cooper.
To be fair, he had no idea what the former PC had got up to after he and Fry left his house. If, by some miracle, Palfreyman actually did solve the case of the two dead women at Pity Wood Farm, he wouldn’t be complaining. But he bet Diane Fry would be.
‘Mel, I still don’t really understand why you thought it was so important to come into Edendale and tell us this.’
Mel Palfreyman pushed back her hair and stroked the tattoo on her neck. Black-painted fingernails followed the shape of a Celtic knot etched in blue ink.
‘My granddad thinks you’re trying to set him up as a suspect for these murders at Pity Wood. Are you?’
Cooper couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘And why would we do that?’
Mel began to laugh again. ‘You know, Granddad gave me a lecture once, all about how you can tell if a person is lying. He thought it would be useful to me when I started going out with boys. He said one sign to look for is when someone answers a question with another question. It’s an attempt to divert your attention, instead of giving a direct answer. I think that was the gist of what he said.’
‘That was pretty good advice,’ admitted Cooper, trying hard to hide the expression in his eyes. He supposed that would show, too. He hoped he wouldn’t blush, or start stammering.
‘Yes, I thought so.’
‘We don’t set people up, anyway. It’s just not something we would get away with. Not these days.’
She studied him closely, and seemed to accept what she saw. ‘I don’t know. It’s what Granddad thinks, though. To be honest, I reckon it’s because it was the way things were done in his day. The way he saw things being done.’
‘I can promise you it’s not like that any more,’ said Cooper, tempted to cross his fingers behind his back as he said it.
‘So you haven’t been digging out people who’ll say things against him? You haven’t been gathering circumstantial evidence that would make a case against him, just because he’s a convenient suspect?’
‘No, of course not. Though there are certain circumstances that …’
‘That what?’
‘Well, that might need a bit of explaining.’
‘So Granddad will be questioned again?’
‘Almost certainly, I should think.’
‘I see.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he has anything to worry about. He won’t necessarily be arrested.’
‘Necessarily?’
‘I don’t make these decisions,’ said Cooper apologetically. ‘It’ll be decided at a higher level, by a senior officer in discussion with the CPS.’
‘Will you be there when it happens, at least?’
‘I can’t say. I’m sorry.’
Cooper knew that he’d failed to reassure her. But there was nothing else he could say, without going into details of the evidence, which was against all the rules. Of course, he didn’t feel confident enough in the outcome himself, and he couldn’t tell her things he didn’t believe in, could he?
He showed her back to reception and watched her leave the station, pulling up the collar of her jacket when she got outside. Thankfully, there was one thing that Mel Palfreyman hadn’t asked him at all — whether she was likely to be questioned herself.
DI Hitchens caught Cooper as he arrived back upstairs. Cooper could sense that something was up, from the DI’s manner.
‘Oh, Ben, you’ll want to know this. I realize you’ve been involved quite heavily with this aspect of the enquiry.’
‘Sir?’
‘We’ve decided to stop pussy-footing around, and we’ve brought Raymond Sutton in for questioning.’
‘Here? You’ve put that old man in a cell?’
‘No, he’s not under arrest. We’ve put him in an interview room,’ said Hitchens defensively.
Cooper didn’t need to ask, he could guess whose decision this had been. Superintendent Branagh was making her presence felt.
‘Are you sure he’s well enough to be interviewed?’ said Cooper. ‘Sir?’
‘We’ve had him checked over by a doctor, of course. But he’s been passed fit, so we’re about to start questioning.’
‘I’m not happy about it.’
‘Tell you what, Ben,’ said Hitchens, with a placatory gesture. ‘You can sit in, and make sure you’re comfortable with it.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
But as soon as he’d said it, Cooper wondered whether he should really be thanking Hitchens. Who was going to take the blame if this all went wrong?
Raymond Sutton looked at the two detectives with resignation as they sat down at the table in the interview room.
‘You’re going to be asking me about the woman,’ he said directly.
‘The woman?’ said Cooper. ‘Do you mean Nadezda Halak, sir?’
‘I had no connection with her at all,’ said Sutton. ‘Except that I witnessed her death.’
31
Martin Rourke was one of the least attractive men Fry had ever seen, and that was saying something. His head was badly shaved, leaving a short, patchy fuzz all over his skull, like an old tennis ball that had been chewed by the dog.
‘But I know nothing about those women,’ he said.
‘We have evidence that you knew them, Mr Rourke. You can’t deny it.’
‘I don’t mean that. I’m not trying to deny that I knew them. Of course, they were around a lot. But I don’t know what happened to them. I had nothing to do with that. As far as I was concerned, they just disappeared.’
‘We’ll see what the Crown Prosecution Service has to say. If they think there’s enough evidence, you’ll be charged with two murders.’
‘That won’t happen. It can’t.’
Rourke stared at her, his face suggesting that he might have said the wrong thing already.
‘What was the involvement of the Sutton brothers in your operation?’
‘The two old guys? We kept them out of the way as much as possible. Tom Farnham had them under his influence well enough. He could twist them round his little finger, could Farnham. He’d got himself well in there, all neat and tidy.’
‘Were you laundering red diesel at any point during this time?’
‘No. That was what we told the old guys,’ said Rourke. ‘They never questioned it, the idiots. Well, why should they? They were already implicated, because they’d used it themselves as a way of saving money. They were guilty
