Read Online Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) by Stephen Booth - Free Book Online Page A

was right here. Her instincts had drawn her to it unerringly.
    Slowly, she backed up. She fetched her Maglite from the Audi, and went back into the pub. The electricity supplywas turned off, of course, and she had no hope of finding the consumer unit to switch it back on.
    Bit by bit she swept the light around the room she’d entered. Not a room exactly, but a passage that seemed to widen out to her left into a storage area where empty cardboard boxes had been stacked.
    The light of her torch showed that the dust on the floor had been disturbed close to the doorway. Not just footprints, but distinct signs of a disturbance. Two sets of feet at least, she guessed. Two or three people involved in a recent scuffle.
    And what was that? Dark spatters on the floor, a spray of droplets spreading towards her, stopping just short of her feet. She smelled a familiar metallic tang. Not overwhelming, but definitely fresh. The odour was so distinctive that she felt the hairs stirring on the nape of her neck.
    Fry took a step back towards the door, made another sweep of the interior, focused her beam on a darker patch in the shadows across the other side of the room. A huddle of clothes and awkwardly sprawled limbs.
    She sucked in a sharp breath, all her suspicions confirmed.
    ‘My God,’ she said. ‘How did anyone miss this?’

6

    Cooperhad a message waiting for him next morning. He had to see Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh, the head of E Division’s CID. That never boded well. But it was even worse when he had no idea what he was being summoned about.
    Before he went up to the management floor, he took a couple of minutes to bring himself up to date on what had been happening overnight. His heart sank when he read about the discovery at the Light House. The incident report read like his worst nightmare. Especially when it began:
Call received from DS Fry of East Midlands Major Crime
Unit …
    Damn, he said to himself when he’d digested the details. Better get it over with then.
    The top floor at West Street was marginally more comfortable. A bit of carpet here and there, a recent paint job on the office doors. There was less of an air of desperation: no piles of evidence lying around waiting to be processed, no signs of the public intruding, let alone sweating suspects and drunks detained for a night in the cells.
    Superintendent Branagh’s office was near the end of the corridor, where the quietness was itself intimidating. He knocked and was called straight in.
    Whenever he looked at Branagh, Cooper couldn’t helpremembering Gavin Murfin’s comment when he’d first set eyes on her:
She’d look good in the front row of a scrum.
It was the shoulders that did it.
    ‘Ah, DS Cooper,’ she said.
    He knew it was serious then, just by the tone of her voice, the underlying hint of disapproval or disappointment. The super had always liked him, or so he thought. But things could change.
    ‘So. How did we miss a body in the pub?’ asked Branagh.
    ‘It was just bad luck.’
    ‘Worse luck that Detective Sergeant Fry made the discovery instead. One up for the Major Crime Unit. It makes us look incapable.’
    ‘I know,’ said Cooper. ‘Believe me, I know.’
    He could have wished it was anyone else except Diane Fry. Even Gavin Murfin would have been acceptable, stumbling across the body while looking for a cup of tea. Murfin would have gloated, but it might have been bearable.
    He knew Diane Fry. He anticipated that she would say nothing about it. But she would definitely look smug. Boy, would she look smug.
    Branagh spread her hands on her desk, and looked at Cooper thoughtfully. They were strong hands, probably the strongest he’d ever seen on a woman. They inspired confidence in him, a feeling that he could rely on her leadership.
    ‘The death of the man found in the abandoned pub should be our first priority,’ she said. ‘It’s a fresh case, and we’re still in the first twenty-four hours. We’re far more