‘We’d better put out a stop request for his car.’
Half an hour later, Fry left the search still going on at the house in Totley and drove back to Edendale. She’d forgotten that she’d asked for Billy McGowan to be brought in for interview, and she was surprised to be told that he was waiting in an interview room. Waiting impatiently, too. But before she spoke to him, Fry had to spend a few minutes readjusting her mind, focusing on a different aspect of the enquiry.
Finally, she faced him across the interview-room table. ‘Mr McGowan, you were involved in the funeral of a lady called Audrey Steele, which took place eighteen months ago, in March last year.’
McGowan scratched his fingernails against the table, making a faint scrabbling sound that set Fry’s teeth on edge.
‘Was I?’
‘According to witnesses, you drove the hearse from the funeral service at St Mark’s Church to Eden Valley Crematorium. You were accompanied on this occasion by Vernon Slack. Do you remember?’
‘No. How would I? There are so many funerals.’
‘Oh, I think this one was quite special.’
McGowan shrugged and scraped his fingers again. Fry thought of the mice in the skulls at Alder Hall, scuttling through the eye sockets, curling up inside the cranium, their claws scratching the inner surface of the bone, where the brain had once sat.
416
‘Well, let’s see if this refreshes your memory,’ she said. ‘After this particular funeral, I believe you stopped on the way to the crematorium, and removed the body from the coffin.’
‘Wait a minute ‘
Fry held up a hand. ‘There’s no point denying it. What I most want to know, Mr McGowan, is whose body you replaced it with.’
McGowan laughed. ‘No one’s.’
‘It must have been someone’s. We have the computer records from the crematorium. They show that the cremation proceeded as normal - the right temperature during the burning, the right amount of residue left at the end. That means bone residue, Mr McGowan.’
‘It was no one.’
Fry stared at him hard. ‘You must see that we can’t accept that.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Let’s talk about the body of Audrey Steele, then. You won’t claim that was no one.’
McGowan dropped his hands from the table. He looked at Fry, then at the revolving tapes. ‘Look, it wasn’t really anything to do with me. I was doing as I was told, that’s all.’
‘Just obeying orders?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Whose orders?’
‘Mr Slack’s.’
‘Richard?’
‘Yes. He was quite a lad for a scheme, was Richard.’
‘And this was one of his schemes?’
McGowan licked his lips nervously. Despite his appearance, he wasn’t such a tough nut. He seemed glad to be able to get the story off his chest.
‘Richard said he’d found someone who’d pay a lot of money for a body, as long as it was in good condition.’
‘Who was this person?’
417
‘I don’t know. We were never told his name.’
‘And why did he want a body? For what purpose?’
McGowan smiled and shook his head, almost apologetically. ‘I don’t know, and I didn’t ask.’
‘You just took your share of the money, I suppose?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Mr McGowan, let’s get this straight. You’re telling us you did what you were told. And you never had any idea who was paying Richard Slack for this service? No clues at all?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that doesn’t really hold water, does it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Let’s face it - you must have delivered the body somewhere. I don’t suppose you just left it by the side of the road for collection, did you?’
‘No …’
‘So, Mr McGowan - where did you deliver Audrey Steele’s body?’
Following the motorcycle tracks, Cooper finally came across a building on the edge of a plantation. It was an old building, probably some kind of livestock shed originally. Deep blocks of limestone formed the walls, and the door was of solid oak. Rust was leaking from the nail holes in the timber. But Cooper could see straight away that there was something
