‘It must have been about midnight, and it were siling down.’
‘Not a good time for someone to be taking a midnight stroll, then.’
Jarvis gave him a sour look, but didn’t bother to reply.
‘When you went outside, did you see anybody?’ asked Cooper.
‘No. There was just a bag on the ground near the porch. A game bag - like shooters and poachers use sometimes, you know what I mean? So I picked it up. I thought maybe somebody had left me a bit of a present.’
‘Has that happened before?’
‘I know a few lads who go shooting,’ said Jarvis evasively.
‘OK. So what was in the bag?’
‘Cack. It were full of cack.’
For a moment, Cooper didn’t understand. ‘You mean dung? It was full of animal excreta?’
Jarvis shook his head and screwed up his face, as if remembering all too clearly the distinctive smell as he opened the bag.
‘Human,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’
Jarvis gave him a derisive look, but didn’t answer. Some questions were too stupid to waste breath on.
‘Do you have any idea who might have a reason to do that?’
‘Somebody I’ve pissed off, I suppose. That doesn’t take much working out.’
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‘And have you pissed off many people? Have you had a dispute with someone recently?’
‘Ramblers, now and then. They’re a bloody nuisance, some of them.’
‘Have you still got the bag?’
‘I burned it.’
Cooper sighed. ‘I don’t suppose Mrs Jarvis saw anything?’
‘She was fast asleep. She sleeps through anything.’
The three dogs sprawled on the porch steps now, their huge heads hanging over the edge as they watched the men walk towards the gate. Cooper recalled the motorbike he’d seen outside the house the first time he’d visited. It wasn’t here now, and he wondered who rode it. Probably one of Mr Jarvis’s sons. Or maybe even the mysterious Mrs Jarvis herself. Perhaps he should have taken more notice of the bike at the time, but he’d been too intrigued by the abandoned hulks in the paddock, and too keen to get out of the rain.
‘Oh, the bag of cack,’ said Jarvis.
‘Yes.’
‘She doesn’t know anything about it. The wife, I mean.’
‘I see.’
‘She gets upset about stuff. No point in telling her.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem, sir.’
Cooper coasted to the corner of the track and stopped the car. He turned towards the driver’s window, as if having difficulty adjusting his seat belt. From here, the roof and upper storey of the Jarvis house were still visible through the trees. But the movement he’d seen in an upstairs window failed to resolve itself into more than a pale blur. It was the face of a person standing too far back from the window to be recognizable in the shadows. Was it Mrs Jarvis? Or just her husband, anxious to see whether Cooper had left the premises? Of course, it could be someone else entirely. There was no way of telling. Cooper closed the window, pressed the accelerator and bumped the Toyota back up the track from Litton Foot. When
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he was fifty yards from the house, he pushed a CD into the player and filled the car with the sound of Runrig’s ‘Hearthammer’.
As a result, he just missed hearing the grumble of a motorcycle engine as it moved hesitantly through the damp woods of Ravensdale.
When Cooper walked back into the CID room, Fry was listening to the tapes again, with her headphones over her ears and an expression of concentrated loathing on her face.
‘What’s that, Diane?’ Cooper asked as he took off his coat, shaking a few drops of water on to the carpet.
She paused the tape and slipped off her headphones. ‘Our talkative psycho. These clues he’s given us in his second call have got to be his big mistake.’
‘Is he a man who makes mistakes, do you think?’
‘No,’ said Fry. ‘Bastard.’
She began to put the headphones back on, but Cooper stopped her.
‘Hold on. Can I listen? I haven’t had a chance to hear it yet.’
Fry nodded. She unplugged the headphones and started the tape again. Cooper listened to it for a few moments, trying to filter out the words from the distortion that robbed them of any recognizable humanity. Then he remembered Audrey Steele’s dental records. If they hadn’t arrived, he’d have to make another call to Moorhouse’s. He checked the fax machine, and gave a murmur of satisfaction.
‘Diane, I’ve got the dental records for Audrey Steele.’
