‘Eh?’
‘You’ve fallen out with your other daughter?’
‘We just don’t see as much of each other, not since she remarried. I don’t trust that new husband of hers. A leopard doesn’t change its spots so easily - no matter what she says.’
Cooper just had time to call in at West Street before he was due to meet Professor Robertson. But the moment he walked into the office and sat down, the phone rang on his desk. It was Tom Jarvis.
‘The old girl’s dead,’ said Jarvis. ‘Somebody shot her.’
Cooper sat bolt upright.
124
Dead? Have you called 999, Mr Jarvis?’
‘Nay. But I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Where - ? I mean, where’s the body?’
‘I laid her out on the porch. But I’ll bury her by and by. I thought I’d put her in the orchard. She always liked it there.’
‘No, Mr Jarvis, don’t touch her. Just wait until someone gets there. I’ll send the paramedics, and a doctor. We need to get scenes of crime there. And she was shot, you say? My God, we need the armed response unit as well. You really should have called 999 straight away.’
Jarvis breathed down the phone at him for a few moments in puzzled silence.
‘Well, I didn’t think you’d be all that bothered,’ he said. ‘Not for a dog.’
125
11
Professor Freddy Robertson’s home stood on rising ground in a cluster of newer houses on the outskirts of Totley. It had a flat, brick face broken by bay windows and an oak front door. Its gardens were reached from a broad gravelled driveway that ran past a detached garage with a dark blue BMW drawn up outside.
Cooper had been given the impression that the professor had retired to Derbyshire, but this wasn’t strictly true. Totley was an outer suburb of Sheffield, and it lay in South Yorkshire. But the county boundary was only a stone’s throw away across the fields, and the national park a few hundred yards further on. The rural setting was one of the attractions for those who could afford to live here.
Cooper had spent the drive to Totley listening to a Runrig CD. ‘The Edge of the World’ didn’t quite describe his journey across Froggatt Edge and the eastern moors, but it came close.
‘This is an Edwardian gentleman’s residence,’ said Robertson, meeting Cooper at his car. ‘As you can see, we had it refurbished in a manner sympathetic to the Arts and Crafts movement. Four bedrooms on a galleried landing, original beams, a wine cellar. And look at these gardens ‘
The professor was a big man in his early sixties, his hair
126
greying and rather too long at the sides to compensate for the bald patch at the front. He wore a rather baggy pinstripe suit like a lawyer’s, and moved a little stiffly, as if suffering from the first symptoms of arthritis.
They entered an L-shaped reception hall with mosaic tiles on the floor and a staircase with mahogany balustrades. On the wall was the ugliest coat rack Cooper had ever seen. It was covered in imitation deer hide, and had four real hooves turned upside down to act as hooks.
Robertson took him through into a study lined with books, the floor space almost filled by an oak desk and a set of deep leather armchairs. The professor sat at his desk, with his back to a window looking out on to the garden. He offered Cooper a drink, which he refused, but poured himself a whisky from a bottle of Glenfiddich he took from a cupboard. Then he linked his fingers, like a headmaster with an errant pupil on the carpet.
‘I’m sorry to have messed you around, sir,’ said Cooper. T hope I haven’t disrupted your afternoon too much.’
‘Oh, I’m glad you could make it. I was worried that you’d decided you didn’t need to call on my services after all. But I suppose you were detained on urgent police business?’
‘You might say I had to speak to a man about a dog.’
‘Oh, dogs,’ said Robertson. He sniffed suspiciously, as if Cooper might have smuggled one into the house, or at least brought in the smell and a few stray hairs. ‘Now I’m really wounded, Detective Constable. I’d have been happy to come in second to anybody or anything, except a dog.’
Cooper smiled hesitantly, not sure whether the professor was joking.
‘You don’t like dogs, sir?’
‘I find their form of domestication offensive, on an ethical basis.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, dogs are basically animal slaves, aren’t they? People
127
find them useful for certain menial tasks, or for massaging their egos. Dogs fawn on their owners shamelessly. Don’t you find it so? No, I expect you disagree with me.’
‘Many people would value dogs for their loyalty,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh, you’re thinking of the dog that will dive into the river to save its master when he’s drowning? Well, the fact is that nine dogs out of ten would sit on the bank and watch you drown. And then they’d go off to see where their next meal was coming from. Loyalty is skin deep, you know.’
Cooper shifted uneasily under the professor’s gaze, but didn’t argue.
Robertson smiled. ‘Now, I presume there was something you wanted to ask me about. Which case is it, now? Somebody mentioned skeletonized remains …?’
‘That’s correct, sir.’
Briefly, Cooper explained the background to his enquiry and showed Robertson photographs of the scene at
