‘No, I told you. She was out of sight. I took the shoe off her. I remembered this lass you lot were looking for, the Mount girl. It looked the sort of object she would wear, that lass. So I brought it back. And my granddaughter phoned.’
‘You knew Laura Vernon?’
‘I reckon I know everybody in the village,’ said Harry. ‘It isn’t exactly Buxton here, you know. I’ve seen her all right.’
‘When did you last see her, Mr Dickinson?’ asked Tailby.
‘Ah. Couldn’t say that.’
‘It might be very important.’
‘Mmm?’
‘If she was in the habit of going on to the Baulk, where you walk your dog regularly, Mr Dickinson, you may have seen her earlier.’
‘You may also have seen her killer,’ said Hitchens.
‘Doubt it,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t see anyone.’
‘Surely –’
‘I don’t see anyone.’
Harry glared at Hitchens, suddenly aggressive. The DI saw it and bridled immediately.
‘This is a murder enquiry, Harry. Don’t forget that. We expect full cooperation.’
The old man pursed his lips. The skin around his mouth puckered and wrinkled, but his eyes remained hard and cool. ‘I reckon I’ve done my bit. I’m getting a bit fed up of you lot now.’
‘Tough. We’re not messing about here, Harry. We’re not playing games, like you throwing sticks for your dog to fetch. This is a serious business, and we need all the answers you can give us.’
‘Have you seen anybody else on the Baulk, Mr Dickinson?’ said Tailby gently.
‘If I had,’ said Harry, ‘I’d remember, wouldn’t I?’
Hitchens snorted and stirred angrily in his chair. ‘Crap.’
‘Hold on, Paul,’ said Tailby automatically.
‘Right. I’ll not have that in my house,’ said Harry. ‘It’s high time you were off somewhere else, the lot of you, doing some good.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe towards Fry and her notebook. ‘And make sure you take the secretary lass with you. She’s making a mucky mark on my wall.’
‘Detective Constable Fry will have to stay to take your statement.’
‘She’ll have to wake me up first.’
Tailby and Hitchens stood up, straightening their backs from the hard chairs. The DCI looked too tall for the room. The house had been built at a time when very few people stood more than six foot. He must have had to stoop to get through the door, though Fry hadn’t noticed it.
‘We may want to speak to you again, Mr Dickinson,’ said Tailby.
‘You’d be better off sending that lad next time.’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with DI Hitchens and myself. Sorry and all that, but we expect you to cooperate fully with our enquiries, however long they may take. Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to say to me just now, Mr Dickinson?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Harry.
‘What’s that?’
‘Bugger off.’
No sooner had the police left than the little cottage was again full of people. Helen watched from the kitchen as her mother and father fussed into the back room, flapping round her grandparents as if they were naughty children who needed scolding and reassuring at the same time.
‘My goodness, you two, what’s been going on? All these police up here? What have you been doing, Harry?’
Andrew Milner was in a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a frivolous blue and green pattern, but he still had on the trousers of the dark-grey suit he wore for the office. He smelled faintly of soap and a suggestion of whisky fumes. Helen didn’t need to be told that her father had showered after arriving home from work and had already drunk his first Glenmorangie of the evening by the time she had phoned. He wore clip-on sun shades over his glasses, which he had to flip up as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the cottage. Now they stood out horizontally from his forehead like extravagant eyebrows.
Harry looked up at Andrew from his chair, no gesture of welcome breaking the rigidity of his expression.
‘I dare say young Helen’s told you what you need to know.’
Margaret Milner was fanning herself with a straw hat. She was a large woman and felt the heat badly. Her floral dress swirled and rustled around her knees and wafted powerful gusts of body spray throughout the room.
‘A dead body. How awful. You poor things.’
‘It was a shoe your dad found,’ said Gwen, who had not yet tired of the excitement. ‘One of those trainer things. They said there was a dead girl with it, but your dad didn’t see her. Did you, Harry?’
‘It was Jess,’ said Harry. ‘Jess that found it.’
‘But there was … Was there blood?’
‘So they reckon.’
‘The young policeman took it away,’ said Gwen. ‘The first one, the young one.’
‘The Cooper lad,’ said Harry.
‘Who?’
‘Sergeant Cooper’s son. The old copper. You remember all the fuss, surely?’
‘Oh, I know.’ Margaret turned to her daughter. ‘Didn’t you used to know him very well at school, Helen? Is that the one? I remember now. You liked him, didn’t you?’
Helen fidgeted, ready to escape back to the kitchen to make more tea. She loved her parents and her grandparents, but she was uncomfortable when they were all together. She could communicate with them one at a time, but when they were gathered in a family group there was a kind of blanket of incomprehension that descended between them.
‘Yes, Mum, Ben Cooper.’
‘You always seemed to get on well. But he never asked you out, did he? I always thought it was a shame.’
‘Mum –’
‘I know, I know – it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Forget it, Mum. This isn’t the time.’
‘We’ve had a body,’ said Gwen plaintively, appealing to the room, as if someone, somewhere could give her consolation, even tell her it hadn’t happened.
‘And it was the Vernons’ girl?’ said Andrew impatiently. Helen noticed her father’s faint Scottish accent creeping through in the ‘r’s, as it did when he was under stress. ‘Did they say it was definitely Laura Vernon?’
‘She had to be identified, they said.’ Gwen looked challengingly towards Harry, letting it be known that she had been listening at the door when the police had been interviewing him. Harry took no notice. He was feeling at his pocket, as if all he wanted to do was pull out his pipe and retire to the front room, to escape to his sanctuary.
‘They reckon it was her all right,’ said Harry.
‘Poor little thing,’ said Margaret. ‘She was only a kiddie. Who would do a thing like that, Helen?’
‘She was fifteen. Would you like some tea?’
‘Fifteen. Just a child. They gave her everything, her mother and father did.