‘Fair enough. You’ll no doubt find me without any trouble.’
‘Thanks for your time then.’
Cooper reached the door and looked out at the village, struck by the contrast between the bright sunlight hitting the street and the cool, shady corners and heavy furniture of the room behind him. Passing through the door of Dial Cottage was like stepping out of the entrance to a deep cave. In ancestral memory, caves must have represented security. But there was always danger too. There was always the possibility that a dangerous wild beast might be lurking in that cave. Cooper turned to say goodbye to the old man and found the sharp blue eyes fixed mockingly on his face.
‘No. And you’re not even Miss Marple,’ said Harry.
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17
IJCI Tailbv’s office was one of the few rooms in the Edcndalc
J
Divisional HQ with air conditioning. In the past couple of weeks, there had hecn a lot of excuses for meetings that had to take place in the DCI’s office and nowhere else. Ben Cooper, though, was sure his visit that afternoon was justified by something besides the unbearable temperature.
‘Very interesting,’ said Tailby when he had finished summarizing his interviews at Dial Cottage. ‘But do you feel you pressed him hard enough, Cooper?’
Cooper remembered what he had said during the morning meeting, and wondered if the DCI was making fun of him. He was glad he had decided not to mention any of what had taken place at Thorpe Farm before he had managed to get Harry into the car.
‘He’s a bit of an awkward character, sir.’
‘I know. Perhaps we’ll have to bring him in and interview him under caution. That would upset his apple cart, eh?’
‘Possibly.’
‘So what do you make of it, Cooper? Do you believe him?’
‘Well, yes, sir, funnily enough.’
‘Mmm?’
‘Well, I believe what he said, because of the things that he didn’t say, if you follow me.’
‘I don’t think I do, Cooper.’
‘Well, it seems to me that he neatly avoided telling a lie. Where there were things he didn’t want to tell me, he just avoided it. Because of that, I think everything he said was true. 1 think it’s probably against his principles to he.’
‘Are there still people around like that? I may be a cynical old detective chief inspector, but I thought that idea went out with George Washington.’
‘It’s old-fashioned, I know, but there are still people round here who were brought up like that. My feeling is that Harry
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Dickinson is one of them. That’s a good reason why he savs no more than necessary. The less you say, the less temptation there is to lie.’
‘Tell the truth or say nowt.’
‘That’s it, sir. Exactly.”
‘That’s what my old shift sergeant told me many years ago when I was a new recruit,’ said Tailbv. ‘But it was a long time
1 J O
ago. Things change, Cooper.’
‘Not everything changes, sir. With respect.’
Tailby ran a hand vigorously through his hair, as if trying to mix the grey at the front with the darker hair at the back to create something that looked less like a session with the Grecian 2000 that had gone badly wrong. His face was even gaunter than usual, and he looked tired.
‘All right. So has the bird-watcher got his times wrong? Was it
o o o
earlier than he thought when he saw Dickinson and his dog?’
O o
‘It’s possible. You can lose track of time when you’re up on the hills. It can be very deceptive.’
‘We’ll have to check with him.’ Tailby shuffled a file of reports. ‘Damn it, there’s no mention of whether he had a watch on, or whether it was usually accurate. A bit of a sketchy interview altogether, in fact. Who did that?’ He grimaced. ‘Oh yes, DS Rennie.’
Unconsciously copying the DCI’s gesture, Cooper raised a hand to push a lock of hair back from his forehead and found some of the strands stuck to his skin by sweat.
‘I can’t reconcile the idea of all those people we’re interested in being on the Baulk at the same time,’ he said. ‘Laura, Harry Dickinson, Graham Vernon. And a fourth person — the killer? It seems like too much of a coincidence.’
‘We can’t let Dickinson get away with refusing to say why he wanted to talk to Graham Vernon,’ said Tailby.
‘Can we show that his reasons are relevant to the enquiry?’
