Already Dead(93)

‘Is there anyone we can call to be with you?’ asked the officer instead. ‘A friend or relative? It’s best not to be on your own.’

So that was how she was supposed to behave. She should seek a shoulder to cry on, turn to her best friend for support or run to her mother for comfort. She didn’t feel like doing any of those things. So what was wrong with her?

‘I was cooking supper,’ she said. ‘He should have been home by now.’

Both officers nodded sympathetically. To Barbara, it looked like approval. So perhaps, after all, she was behaving exactly the way they expected.

‘You shouldn’t be alone.’

‘But I want to be alone.’

‘You might want to talk to someone.’ The female officer pulled a leaflet out of her pocket. A list of grief counsellors and their phone numbers. In case she wanted to talk to a stranger.

‘Thank you.’

She made no effort to take the leaflet, so the officer placed it on the table, then added her card. ‘You can reach us here.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again.

She wondered how she was doing, whether she was repeating meaningless phrases too much. How would these police officers be judging her? Too cold, too unemotional? She knew enough about the police to realise they were always judging the way people acted, how they responded to questions, whether they looked guilty or furtive, or ashamed.

‘Will you be all right?’ The younger officer sounded genuinely concerned. But it was probably just an act. They did it all the time. But for Barbara, it was a first.

And Barbara Dean had no idea why she’d reacted in this way to the news. It was the last thing she would have expected of herself. If she’d ever thought about it, she would have imagined feeling a huge sense of relief at the news of Charlie’s death, the knowledge of a burden lifted from her life, the end of ten years of torment.

But now she was thinking that those ten years could have been worse. After all, he’d never shouted at her, and she had never screamed at him. They’d hated each other, but only in whispers.

At least it was an opportunity to stay away from the office. With news spreading that the team from the Major Crimes Unit were arriving at West Street, Diane Fry was keeping clear. In fact, it was a miracle the MCU had been able to find Edendale so quickly. Normally, officers based in St Ann’s were like lost sheep without a sheepdog when they had to venture over the M1 into Derbyshire. The Eden Valley probably wasn’t even on their satnavs.

So here she was in Wirksworth, following up the death of the estate agent, Charlie Dean, and feeling like a version of Ben Cooper, chasing some mystery that she couldn’t explain, but which was challenging all her instincts.

And that was another thing she had to do. She had to corner Ben Cooper … If it took her the whole of the next week, she would have to pin him down and force him to explain how he knew the name of Sean Gibson, the man whose fingerprint was found on the phone lying in the mud of the stream bed at Sparrow Wood, the same man who was now being sought by the MCU from their incident room in Edendale. Cooper couldn’t be allowed to get away with being so enigmatic, even if she had forced him into it herself.

Fry turned up The Dale, passing the exact spot where Charlie Dean’s BMW had been flattened by the number 6.1 bus from Belper. Parking was difficult enough everywhere in Wirksworth, and there was certainly nowhere to park at the Deans’ house – not without completely blocking the road. It was far too narrow to risk her car.

Fry could see the family liaison officer’s Vauxhall on the gravel. There might have been enough room for two vehicles, if it wasn’t for a heap of sand and a pile of breeze blocks and other building materials occupying the space next to the Vauxhall.

She had to carry on all the way up The Dale and turn round at the top, where the road curved back into Green Hill. She came down again slowly, and had gone past Magnolia Cottage again before she reached some residents’ parking spaces under a high retaining wall, where she was able to park the Audi between a flowering cherry tree and a pink Citroën 2CV. It was a fifty-yard walk back up to the house. Much too far, especially in the rain.

‘How do people manage for parking here?’ she asked the FLO.

‘Mrs Dean has a resident’s permit to park in Rydes Yard, the council car park a few hundred yards down.’

Fry examined Barbara Dean critically. She was one of those women worn down by life, so drained of energy and emotion that she looked like a washed-out shadow. Mrs Dean seemed slow to respond to anything, reluctant to express an emotion in case it squeezed out the last drops of her spirit and left her empty and crumpled, like an old plastic bag. Her eyes were withdrawn, her face devoid of expression.