Already Dead(111)

Fry sat down with Luke Irvine. The job wasn’t done yet. She reminded him about the interviews they’d done with Charlie Dean and Sheena Sullivan when Dean’s BMW was first traced. There was that frightening stranger in the red, hooded rain jacket.

‘Luke – in her statement, Sheena Sullivan said something about the stranger breathing heavily.’

‘He was helping to push their BMW out of the mud,’ said Irvine. ‘It’s a heavy vehicle. I think anyone would be a bit out of breath—’

‘No,’ said Fry. ‘Before that. When he first got out of his car. And she mentioned his voice. Where are those statements? Can you dig them out?’

‘Here.’

Irvine passed across the files, and Fry flicked through them until she found the page she was looking for. It was a small detail, so apparently unimportant that it might have been left out of Sheena’s written statement altogether by another interviewing officer. But Becky Hurst had recorded it word for word.

‘And there was something about his voice,’ she read.

Irvine shrugged. ‘What does that mean? Nothing.’

He was right, of course. Hurst had done the right thing, recording the comment on the statement form, but she should have followed it up. Perhaps she’d thought it was just a bit of imaginative over-dramatisation on Sheena Sullivan’s part, trying to make the stranger sound more menacing in hindsight. But still, Hurst ought to have asked the obvious question. What was it about his voice?

‘Has Ben Cooper left yet?’

‘Yes, I’ve just seen him driving out of the gate.’

Ben Cooper had barely been in his flat for five minutes, when there was a banging on the door. He opened it and was astonished to find Diane Fry standing on his doorstep again.

‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he said.

‘Right.’

‘Do you want to come in?’

‘Just for a few minutes.’

‘I was going to ask why you didn’t phone first this time,’ said Cooper. ‘But there doesn’t seem much point. It’s not twenty minutes since I saw you.’

‘No, that’s right.’

‘I suppose you forgot something? Is there…?’

Cooper hesitated. Fry was looking at him oddly, her head cocked slightly to one side as if she was listening hard, waiting for him to speak again. He’d never known her to be so intent on his words, so eager to hear what he had to say. Normally, she treated him like an idiot. She dismissed his ideas instantly and just went her own sweet way no matter what he said.

So what had changed? Was she humouring him because she thought of him as an invalid? He could almost work out her thought processes. Poor old Ben, still on extended sick leave. You’ve got to feel sorry for him. Shut up in here, he’s probably desperate for someone to talk to. I’d better pretend I’m interested in what he has to say.

‘Diane, was there something you wanted to ask me?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s just good to hear your voice.’

Cooper laughed. And, as so often happened, the laugh caught the rawness in his throat and turned into a cough. It was the dry, irksome hack that made him step into the kitchen for a drink of water to ease the irritation.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Fry when he returned.

‘Fine. It’s nothing.’

‘So,’ she said, ‘you’re still suffering a few after-effects, I suppose. From the smoke inhalation.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what causes the cough now and then.’

Fry tilted her head, waiting for him to speak again, listening for his voice. Sheena had said: There was something about his voice. It wasn’t right. It made me shudder.

‘But it will pass,’ he said.

Fry opened her mouth to speak again, but her phone rang. She answered it automatically. She always did during a major inquiry. Nothing reflected more badly on you than being out of touch when you were needed. It was Gavin Murfin.

‘I thought you’d want to know, Diane. We’ve got test results.’

‘I’m on my way,’ she said.

Fry looked out of the door of Cooper’s flat. His Toyota stood at the kerb. She’d seen his car often enough. So why had she forgotten that it was red?

‘Ben, did you say that you sometimes drive around the area at night?’ asked Fry.

‘Yes. So?’

‘Even in the rain? And you don’t really know where you are, or where you’ve been?’

‘When you put it like that, it makes me sound a bit crazy.’

‘Yes.’

Fry looked down at the cat as it walked into the room. It gave her a hard stare and turned its back on her. It was time to leave.