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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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Cochrane's eyes narrowed till they vanished under the shaggy brows. “One of the boys did some work for me. I had some local lads up picking a field of beets. Paid them fifteen quid each, I did. Then one of them gets himself killed and the police are all over me. Did I make advances to him? I did not, I said, in farming you get paid when the job's done and not before.”
“That was it? That was all?”
Cochrane watched him. “What did you think – I left my Farmers Union card at the scene of the crime? They were clutching at straws. Some of the stuff they can do now, the science stuff, they couldn't do then. They had to do it the old-fashioned way: find a suspect and hammer a confession out of him.”
Daniel caught his breath. “They beat you up?”
“No; but they tried to make me think they were going to. I told them, you can do what you like, it won't alter a thing. I don't have to prove I didn't kill that boy, you have to prove I did. They didn't have a case and I knew it as well as they did. In the end they let me go.
“But that bastard Ennis made damn sure everyone in Dimmock knew who he suspected. That town's treated me like dirt ever since. It don't bother me – I didn't have any friends there before. But I don't reckon to owe them much either.”
“Ennis retired. Inspector Deacon's in charge. But you know that – he paid you a visit after Chris Berry was killed.”
“Oh yeah,” growled Cochrane. “Seemed to think he'd catch me washing blood off my wheel-brace. Damned fool. How did he think I had my wicked way with an eighteen-year-old
fell runner who was damn near as big as me and twice as fast?”
It had always been the biggest obstacle to belief. But it applied whoever killed the athlete. “Somebody did. Took him by surprise, I suppose, overpowered him before he could put up a fight.”
The farmer snorted disparagingly. “It don't make no sense. If he was overpowered, how come he got free again? None of the others did.”
“The others were younger. Smaller.”
“It ain't a question of size when you've got a chain padlocked round your ankle!”
This was the first Daniel had heard of a chain. Of course, Cochrane was here ten years ago, had every reason to remember the details. Daniel shuddered. “Is that how … ?”
“So I heard,” grunted the farmer.
“I read the article in
The Sentinel.
It said one of the victims had cuts on his leg, but …” His voice petered out as the picture resolved from the mental static. “Oh dear God.”
“Animal in a trap'll do that,” said Cochrane. “Gnaw its own foot off. It reckons it's better to live on three legs than to die.”
“They were
children
!” whined Daniel. “And one of them was desperate enough to try to amputate his own foot? What with, for heaven's sake? Whoever kidnapped him was hardly likely to leave a knife handy!”
Cochrane shrugged. “Maybe he found a bit of glass or something.”
“I doubt he'd have left him a beer-bottle either!”
“I don't know what it was. Something with a sharp edge, just. There's all sorts of garbage lying round on a –”
He stopped dead, and for a moment thought he'd stopped in time. Daniel Hood was still preoccupied with the image behind his eyes, of a terrified youth trying to saw through his leg because the alternative was worse. He wasn't an interrogator, trained to pick up every slip and nuance. Cochrane
had survived hours of interviews with trained interrogators because he knew how careful he had to be. This young teacher with the troubled eyes behind his bottle-bottom glasses had tempted him into an indiscretion precisely because he seemed harmless.
But maybe the error was of no consequence. He'd strangled it at birth: he hadn't actually said anything. Hood would have to know what he was about to say in order to recognise it as a slip, and he didn't seem to be paying that much attention.
But Cochrane needed to be sure, even if the process of making sure planted the very suspicion he had to erase. He said nothing more but went on looking at Daniel until Daniel felt his gaze. “What?”
“Nothing. You looked a bit shaky there.”
Daniel had never been robust. He'd grown from a small, pale child to a small pale youth and finally a small pale adult. He was used to people asking if he'd been ill, and it wasn't twelve months since he was offered a half-price admission to a museum. Until he was sixteen he'd entertained faint hopes that a late spurt of growth would leave him towering over classmates, shaving twice a day and fighting off selectors for the county rugby squad. Then he'd accepted what nature had been trying to tell him, that his genes didn't code for substantial and he'd better find other ways of being happy.
These days his lack of stature didn't concern him, but he still wished he was tougher. His eyes would fill, his stomach turn and his knees buckle faster than anyone he knew, including women. He didn't know if it was a physical thing, entirely outside his control, or if he just thought too much and empathised too much in which case it was a self-inflicted injury. He found it a damned inconvenience.
He smiled thinly. “I'm all right. I just – For a moment it got to me. I'm not very good at detachment. I let things haunt me even when there's nothing I can do about them.”
He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.
“Sorry, what were you saying? That there's all sorts of garbage lying around on a farm?”
And that was it. He'd heard what Cochrane hadn't said, and any second now he'd recognise its significance. When he did he'd understand his own error. He knew Cochrane was innocent of Chris Berry's murder. He'd thought that meant the farmer had no secrets to guard.
Cochrane sighed too and leaned back against the Land Rover. His gaze crossed the mossy yard to the barn. “I never told you about this place, did I, or why I brought you here?”
“Not really.”
“My father bought it forty years back. He wanted the land and the house came with it. There was a tenant once but it's been empty for years. The barn's useful for storage – gear I only use a couple of times a year can be left here out of the way. Nobody comes. I don't think anyone remembers it's here.”
“So – why are we here?”
“So we won't be disturbed.”
Before he had time to react to that, Neil Cochrane's fist came from nowhere and smashed across his face, spilling him onto the cobbles, his wits cartwheeling in one direction, his glasses in another.
The yard was bathed in spring sunshine, but for Daniel it vanished in a mist the colour of ox-blood shot through by fireworks. He didn't exactly lose consciousness. But the force of the blow left him floundering, physically and mentally. He didn't feel himself hit the ground. For a minute he was quite literally unsure which way was up.
Trying to catch his breath he choked on bubbling blood. He tried to get up, because whatever was going on he'd be better on his feet than face down in the dirt, but his balance was shot. He pushed himself as far as his knees before the wheeling stars unbalanced him and he felt himself slide sideways towards the ground.
Strong hands gripped him. He shook his head numbly,
trying to clear his vision, but the other man's face remained out of focus, indistinct. He tried to ask what happened but though his broken lips formed the question-mark he couldn't formulate the question. He had the idea it had been some kind of accident.
The farmer peered into the white and bloody face before him and saw the pale eyes roll with concussion. “And the answer to your next question,” said Neil Cochrane softly, “is no. The police never found this place before, and I doubt they'll find it now.”
Charlie Voss drove. Jack Deacon spent much of the journey talking to Constable Huxley on his mobile.
A mobile phone was a bit wasted on Constable Huxley. Deacon held the instrument at arm's length. He'd have got much the same result by switching it off and opening the car window.
“What times did you do the drive-bys at Manor Farm?” he asked, and immediately removed his ear from the fall-out zone.
“Eight-fifteen and eleven-ten this morning,” boomed the response, “and again at two-fifty this afternoon. I came off duty at four, and Constable Vickers was out there again shortly before five.”
“Any sign of activity?” Again the rapid switch of phone from head to wing-mirror.
“I observed him for seven or eight minutes on the first occasion,” reported Constable Huxley. “From the nearest public road, about two hundred yards from the farmyard. He appeared to be feeding his animals.”
“Did he see you?”
“I think so, sir,” said Huxley stolidly. “Either that or he was celebrating some kind of victory.”
“Did you see him again mid-morning?”
“Yes, sir. He was putting tools in the back of the Land Rover.”
Deacon's tone hardened. “Tools like a wheel-brace?”
“No, sir. Tools like a bill-hook, a sledge-hammer and some wooden stakes – that kind of tools. Hedging tools.”
Deacon, a city-dweller to his boot-soles, was impressed. But none of the victims had suffered injuries which could be attributed to a hedging kit. No slashes, no stakes pounded through their hearts, and the head injuries that were consistent with an iron bar could not have been inflicted with a
sledge-hammer. It sounded more like farm maintenance than murder. “Did you follow him?”
“No, sir. I waited ten minutes, but he still wasn't ready to leave so I continued with my rounds.”
“And at two-fifty?”
“At two-fifty I observed him returning to the house. He parked in the farmyard, gave me a wave and went inside.”
“Would you say he was in a panic, at all?”
“No, sir. Sir?”
“Constable?”
“Has something else happened?”
“Hood's missing,” Deacon explained briefly. “He was last seen mid-morning, heading for Manor Farm. But you saw no sign of him?”
“No, sir.”
“But Cochrane left the farm in the middle of the morning.”
“Yes, sir. But he was back there by early afternoon.”
“How long does it take to … ?” He let the sentence unfinished, cleared his throat. “Constable Vickers, you said.” He rang off, called the station and got patched through to the area car. “Vickers, have you been round by Manor Farm recently?”
“About five o'clock. There was no one about. I thought I'd go back about ten.”
“Meet us there now.”
Voss waited until he'd rung off. Then, keeping his eyes on the road, he said quietly, “Even if Hood found him, that doesn't mean Cochrane hurt him. He had no reason to. Daniel's the one who keeps insisting Cochrane didn't do this.”
“Unless he changed his mind when they met face to face.”
“In which case we were wrong. We should have held an identity parade on Monday morning.”
It wasn't meant as a criticism, Voss really did mean “we” as in CID, but Deacon knew the call had been his. If Hood was dead, the responsibility was his too. He gritted his teeth and said nothing.
Charlie Voss, glancing at him sidelong, saw the anger and also the fear behind it. He said quietly, “We don't know what happened. It may not be what we're thinking. Daniel may be safe.”
Deacon was least able to accept kindness when he needed it most. “Nobody's seen him for ten hours, sergeant! Wherever he is, I don't think he's safe!”
“Then what do you think? That Cochrane kidnapped the one man in Dimmock who
didn't
think he was a murderer, and raped him and bludgeoned him to death, and drove off with the body in the back of his Land Rover on a day when he knows we're watching him? It makes no sense, sir. If he was that reckless you'd have caught him ten years ago.”
Deacon stared at him. “So what are
you
saying? It's a coincidence? Daniel convinced himself the only way he'd know the truth was by confronting Cochrane. So he came up here and vanished, but it's still just a coincidence? He's fine, he's just keeping out of sight and not telling anyone. Last night he wouldn't sleep in Hastings because it might look he was running away. But today he's crawled into a hole in the ground and pulled the grass over the top of him – and he knows what we're going to think, what his friends are going to think, and he doesn't care?
That's
what I'm supposed to believe?”
Voss gave up looking for a silver lining. “No, I don't believe that either. We're going to find him dead, aren't we?”
Manor Farm appeared in the headlights; as Voss braked the lights of the area car appeared in his mirror. This was neither a discreet surveillance nor a card-marking exercise: it was a murder inquiry, and both cars sped up the concrete lane as if there was just the chance they could prevent another tragedy.
But the farmyard was as Constable Vickers had left it four hours before: empty and quiet. There were no lights showing in the house or buildings, and no response to Deacon's fist hammering on the door. He tried it and found it locked. He tried it again, with his shoulder this time, and found it open.
“Charlie, with me. You men, check the outbuildings. Watch your backs. If you see or hear anything, call me.”
“Sir?” It was Constable Vickers. “What are we looking for?”
“We're looking for whatever's here,” said Deacon tersely. “It might Hood, it might be his body. It might be signs of a struggle. Just – don't miss anything.” He stalked into the house with Sergeant Voss on his heels.
They found nothing. They quickly checked every room in the house, and then went back to do a more thorough search. There were no signs of a struggle, or the clean-up that would have been necessary to conceal one. Deacon glowered at Voss as if it was his fault.
Constable Vickers was calling in the farmyard. “Sir? Down here, sir. We've found something.”
A moment before, when they had nothing, Deacon had been angry and frustrated. Now he felt his heart sink through his belly. “Damn.” He went downstairs and headed for Willis's torch.
They caught up with the constable just inside the barn. “What is it?” asked Deacon. “A body?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Willis.
“Either it is or it isn't!” snapped Deacon.
“It is,” said Willis. He shone the torch. “But it isn't Daniel Hood's body. It's a dog.”
They stood together looking down at the shaggy black and white fur, clotted with blood, flat as an empty glove, and at first there was a sense of anticlimax. Then the significance of their discovery dawned on them: what it means when a shepherd shoots his dog.
Voss put it into words. “He isn't coming back.”
 
 
The mist in his head came between Daniel and any kind of action. He couldn't have fought off Neil Cochrane, but he
might have given him the slip except for the mist. It infiltrated the connections between his brain and limbs so he couldn't rely on them. He could think, at a fairly basic level, but he couldn't initiate the simplest actions.
Cochrane's face loomed level with his own. Daniel wasn't sure if he was kneeling in the dirt too or if he'd lifted Daniel to his feet. He was getting no feedback from his body.
He could just about put a simple thought into words. His swollen lip got in the way but he concentrated on making himself understood. “Mistake,” he mumbled. “You're making a mistake.”
“You reckon?”
Daniel could hear the words but he couldn't make sense of them. He felt his wits failing. He knew he was in deep trouble but he didn't know why. He said roughly, “Let go of me,” and tried to shake himself free.
There was that in Neil Cochrane's gaze which might, in other circumstances, have seemed like compassion. “All right.” He released his grip on Daniel's arms.
Daniel knew he had to put some distance between them, his life depended on it. He tried to back away from the farmer. But the sky cartwheeled around him, so did the buildings, then his knees turned to string and the last thing he saw was the mossy yard rushing towards him. He didn't feel his cheek collide with the cobbles. He didn't know anything more.
 
 
Time passed. He wasn't sure how much. Sometimes Cochrane was there, sometimes he wasn't. Daniel hardly cared which. He was sick and disorientated, and his face ached.
At first he hovered on the borders of consciousness, his senses washing in and out like a tide. But after a time he started to feel steadier and, finding himself alone, thought this was a good time to leave. He hauled himself to his feet and
set off doggedly for the barn door. But something stopped him before he'd gone two metres. When he'd worked out what he crawled back to the bed of straw he'd started from and hunched around his misery, defeated and afraid.
The chain muttered as the links slid together. It was padlocked around his ankle. Even if Cochrane had been careless enough to leave something sharp lying around a second time, even if Daniel had been able to find it, he knew he hadn't the courage to save himself that way. He thought he was going to die here. And he still didn't understand why.
He must have slept. The fear and nausea were not enough to deny his body the respite it needed. When he woke his head was clearer. His immediate surroundings were an island of light in the deep shadow, and Neil Cochrane was standing over him with something in his hand.
Daniel yelped in panic and scrambled crab-wise in the straw, retreating as far as the chain would allow. Cochrane followed. But it wasn't a wheel-brace he had. He dropped Daniel's glasses onto his heaving chest.
After a second, moistening his lips, he put them on. The inside of the barn sprang into focus. The light was coming from a hurricane lamp hung on a beam. Beyond the barn door dusk was gathering in the yard.
All he could think to say was, “I
know
what I saw. It wasn't you.”
Cochrane nodded. “That's right.”
“Then … ?”
“I didn't kill Chris Berry. I didn't kill the boy at the brewery. I
did
kill three boys ten years ago.”
There was no ambiguity in that. It was either a lie or a statement of fact, and Daniel didn't think Cochrane was lying. Fear knotted up his stomach.
Cochrane moved closer. He lowered himself into the straw at Daniel's side. “I want to tell you about it. Then we'll decide what happens next. At least” – he flickered a graveyard grin – “I will.”

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