Dead And Buried

Villiers gave him a hand up out of the hatch. The space behind the bar counter was awkward and narrow. It couldn’t have been easy for a man of Maurice Wharton’s size to get through.

‘If it is the Pearsons,’ said Villiers, ‘they should be able to ID them pretty quickly. There are DNA profiles on record. And of course there’s a family member on hand. It depends what condition the bodies are in, I suppose.’

‘It would be very useful to know that. I mean, what stage the decomposition is at. I wonder when anyone will bother to tell us.’

‘Briefing tomorrow, at a guess?’

‘That’s no good.’

Villiers looked thoughtful as they walked out of the pub, past the rattling tape.

‘Ben, what was that stuff you were saying earlier about the circles of hell?’

‘The ninth circle, to be exact.’

‘Isn’t that what Aidan Merritt was rambling about when he called his wife, just before he was killed?’

‘That’s right. Everyone thought it was to do with the fires on the moor. He must have gone right through the smoke to get to the Light House. But there was something Betty Wheatcroft said to me. She pointed out that it was from Dante’s Inferno.’

‘The old biddy’s not as daft as she looks, then?’

‘No, not at all. I don’t know where she gets her information from, but she knows more than she lets on. She’s stubborn, though. Likes to play her own game. There was some detail she would have given me, if I’d asked the right question. I just didn’t know what the question was.’

‘Perhaps she just needs you to show a bit more interest,’ said Villiers.

Cooper stopped by his car. ‘You think so, Carol?’

‘A lonely old lady, isn’t she? I bet she really took to you, and enjoyed having a chat. So instead of telling you everything, she thought of a way of making you come back to see her again.’

He stared at her, astonished by the clarity of the insight. To him, it seemed a devious way of thinking. But in Mrs Wheatcroft’s case, it rang so true.

They got in the car, and Cooper started the engine. He had Betty Wheatcroft’s phone number in his notebook, but he had to wait until they were well down the road and on to Batham Gate before he could get a signal. The old lady’s phone rang and rang, without even an answering machine or call minder cutting in.

‘No answer,’ he said. ‘She must be out.’

‘Where does Mrs Wheatcroft go now?’ asked Villiers, as they approached the sharp bend on Batham Gate.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What pub does she go to? She can’t have stopped going for a drink just because the Light House closed.’

‘Well, as I said before, she went to the Light House for the company, because she knew people there.’

‘Okay, so where did the people that she knew start going when it closed?’

‘I don’t know.’ But then Cooper stopped, and corrected himself. ‘Yes I do. Ian Gullick told me. He said they drink at the Badger, near Bradwell.’

‘Could Mrs Wheatcroft get there easily?’

‘It’s on the same bus route as the Light House, and a good bit closer to where she lives.’

‘It’s worth a try, if we have time.’

‘We’re almost there,’ said Cooper. ‘Another two minutes, and we’ll pass it.’

Betty Wheatcroft had found a corner for herself in the bar of the Badger, and was sitting with her glass and her plastic carrier bag, trying to ignore the loud background music and the beeps and buzzes of the fruit machines. This was a different kind of place, not what she’d been used to at the Light House.

Cooper saw her as soon as he came through the door. He noticed that her glass was almost empty, so he went first to the bar and bought her a half-pint of Guinness. She smiled when she spotted him, losing for a moment that slightly mad, desperate look. There was no surprise on her face. She gave the impression that she’d been expecting him, that he could even be slightly late. She might be putting a black mark next to his name in an imaginary attendance register.

‘How nice,’ she said. ‘And what a good idea not to come to my house. People would start to talk.’

‘I’m very glad I caught you, Mrs Wheatcroft,’ said Cooper. ‘There’s something I need to ask you.’

She looked anxiously round the bar, then buried her face in her glass. She seemed somehow reassured by the slosh of the black liquid.

‘What is it?’

‘Last time I visited you, I mentioned the ninth circle of hell, and you said it was-’

‘The Inferno. It’s by the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The first part of his Divine Comedy. All about the medieval concept of hell. Lovely, isn’t it?’

Cooper wasn’t quite sure what she was referring to. At first he thought it might be the Guinness, or the music now playing in the background. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Free Bird’, if he wasn’t mistaken. Not really Mrs Wheatcroft’s cup of tea, he imagined. So she must be referring to Dante’s vision of hell.

‘There’s something particular about the ninth circle,’ he said.

‘Judas, Brutus and Cassius.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Judas, Brutus and Cassius,’ she repeated more slowly, as if remembering that he was one of her slower pupils. ‘The ninth circle of hell. It’s all about treachery.’