The cover showed a classic Beatrix Potter illustration - a fox wearing a long scarf and a poacher’s jacket, climbing a stile over a stone wall.
411
‘Wait until I tell Diane in the morning.’
In the absence of anyone else, Cooper looked round for the cat to share his revelation with. ‘The German for death, indeed. Of course, it wouldn’t mean anything. But this …’
He stopped, looked at the screen again, and remembered the call he’d tried to make to Freddy Robertson. The professor wasn’t at home tonight.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Cooper. ‘He’s gone there now.’
Freddy Robertson’s BMW was missing from the drive in front of his house, and there was no answer to the door.
‘OK, let’s get it open,’ said Hitchens. ‘Not too much damage, if you can help it.’
Fry watched the oak door being forced. She didn’t really mind if it was damaged. In fact, she rather hoped that the mosaic tiles in the hall might get cracked and the mahogany balustrades chipped. Accidentally, of course.
She followed the team into the house as they checked the rooms to make sure no one was inside. She was looking for a cellar, which she felt sure must exist. An image of the crypt at Alder Hall was strong in her mind - the innocuous door off the hallway, the stone steps down into darkness, the smell of damp and earth.
At first she could see nothing, and she began to think she was mistaken. But finally Fry realized she was looking for the wrong thing. She put Alder Hall out of her mind, walked into the kitchen and lifted the edge of a rug laid over the tiles. And there was the trap door.
She called for assistance to roll back the rug, then unfolded the brass ring set into the wood. The hinges worked smoothly, though the door was solid and heavy. When it was fully open, wooden stairs were visible below floor level. She couldn’t quite identify the smell that rose from the opening. Not damp and earthy, as she’d been imagining, but something sweet. Sweet and slightly sickly.
412
Fry looked around. But this time she didn’t need to ask. Lights were already being brought. Plenty of lights.
This time, Cooper found no one watching him from the doorway of Greenshaw Lodge. The place was in darkness, and when he drew up near the steps, his headlights showed that the back door stood open.
Taking his torch from the glove compartment, he banged on the front door and rang the bell. Then he followed the path to the back door and knocked on the glass panel. He could see the gleam of white shapes in the kitchen - fridge, cooker, washing machine. But no glimmer of light any further into the house.
‘Hello? It’s Detective Constable Cooper. Anybody home? Mr Slack?’
There was no response. The Slacks didn’t have a dog, so there wasn’t any barking, as there might have been at Tom Jarvis’s place.
The open door was invitation enough for him to enter the house. Night time, an unsecured property and absent occupiers would justify investigation. But still Cooper hesitated. He groped at the wall inside the door and found two light switches. One of them brought on an outside light fixed to the stonework above his head. He turned quickly, convinced he’d seen a sudden movement behind him. But it was only the light chasing the shadows back into the trees.
For a moment, he studied the garden and neighbouring field. He noticed motorcycle tracks passing through a gate and heading across the field towards the woods.
Cooper turned back to the doorway and tried the other switch again, but nothing happened. The light didn’t work in the kitchen. He flicked his torch quickly round the room and caught the glitter of glass on the floor. When he pointed the beam at the ceiling, he saw that the light bulb had burst like a large, pale blister. The remains of its aluminium base were
413
still screwed into the fitting, but fragments of glass littered the tiles underneath. He couldn’t tell when it had happened, but surely no one had been in the house since. If the Slacks were here, they would have swept it up. No one left broken glass on the floor, did they?
He still felt he was missing something. He swept his torch over the room again more slowly. And this time he saw it a rash of black marks on the ceiling and extending two feet down the wall in the corner nearest to the door. It was as if the kitchen had suddenly developed chicken pox. Beneath the marks, a shower of white plaster lay on the work surface and on the top of the fridge.
Cooper pulled out his mobile phone and requested backup. While he gave the address, he let his torch beam move back across the kitchen. He traced an arc from the scatter of marks on the plaster, past the broken light bulb, and as far as the door leading into the hallway, where it touched the lower banister of the stairs. He let the beam rest there for a moment, imagining the jerky, panicked aim, the deafening roar inside the house, the stink of the powder charge. The foot of the stairs was just about where someone was standing when the shotgun had been fired.
414
34
It was the smell of wine and whisky. Sweet, sickly and pungent, like the scent of vinegar and stagnant water. Slippery pools of alcohol lay on the flagged floor of the cellar, a dark viscous red spreading to meet a trickle of gold. They were touching but not quite mingling, ruby globules gleaming in the lights. Three bottles of Bordeaux had shattered on the flags, and a fifteen- year-old Glenfiddich lay on its side, a film of whisky trembling on the lip of the neck, ready to spill.
Fry saw that someone had trodden in the liquid before they found the light switch, and his boot had left two sticky red prints. Wine racks stood against one of the walls, but she was disappointed to realize that there wasn’t much room for anything else. Freddy Robertson’s cellar was tiny.
She took out the photos printed from the Corpse of the Week website. No, they couldn’t have been taken in here. The wall in the background didn’t match, and the scale of the room was wrong.
Hitchens came down the steps behind her. ‘What a mess.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He looked over her shoulder at the photos. ‘No luck?’
‘There could be another cellar somewhere, or an attic room. The garage, maybe.’
415
‘Possibly. We’ll find it, if there is.’
He touched the Glenfiddich bottle with the toe of his shoe. It spun slightly in the pool of liquid. The neck turned to point towards Fry, and another drop of golden fluid ran on to the floor.
‘What do you think has been going on down here?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I suppose he was fuelling himself with liquid courage for some reason.’
