‘Yes.’ She looked towards Henry Pearson, to make sure he was out of earshot. ‘The trouble is, Ben — the blood isn’t David Pearson’s, or even Trisha’s.’
Before he could digest the information, Cooper’s phone rang. He looked at the display, but it was a mobile number he didn’t recognise.
‘Who is this?’ he said.
‘It’s Nancy Wharton. I wanted to let you know that Maurice has agreed to talk to you.’
‘When?’
‘Now,’ she said. ‘It has to be this afternoon. Today is one of his good days.’
Maurice Wharton was a shadow of the man Cooper remembered. The meaty elbows that he used to rest on the bar at the Light House were bony now, and hung with pale, shrivelled flesh. There was a curious yellow tinge to his skin and in the whites of his eyes. His hands jerked spasmodically on the cover of his bed in the hospice room, and he lay back on the pillow as if already exhausted before the visit had even begun.
‘Mr Wharton? Detective Sergeant Cooper, Edendale Police. Your wife said you’d agreed to talk to me.’
Cooper wondered if he was speaking too loudly. It was always a tendency when talking to the old and sick.
Wharton seemed to wink at him, one eye closing involuntarily.
‘I know you, don’t I?’
Cooper sighed. ‘Probably.’
‘You’ve been in the pub at some time. I remember faces. Even now, I still have my memory for faces.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘I don’t get many visitors here. I don’t want to, really. But Nancy says you’re all right.’
‘I hate to trouble you,’ said Cooper. ‘But we’re conducting a murder investigation. Aidan Merritt. I expect you heard.’
‘Yes, even in here.’ Wharton nodded at the TV screen across the room. ‘I keep up to date. I wouldn’t want to die without knowing how Derby County were getting on.’
Cooper smiled, glad that Maurice Wharton still had his wits about him. Pancreatic cancer might not affect the brain, but he bet the drugs did. The chemotherapy, the increasingly powerful painkillers. What did that combination really do to the memory?
‘I do get confused now and then,’ said Wharton, as if reading his mind. ‘There are bad dreams, and I’m not always sure when I wake up whether they’re real or not.’
‘Mr Merritt’s murder is real. He was clubbed to death at the Light House earlier this week.’
‘The pub is closed up,’ said Wharton.
‘Someone broke in.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘We have no idea,’ said Cooper. ‘We don’t know what Mr Merritt’s reason was for being there. We don’t know why the person who attacked him was there either. We’re looking for any possibilities. So if you can help us at all …’
Wharton was quiet for a moment, breathing very shallowly, as if it used up a lot of his energy just to keep air moving in and out of his lungs.
‘Aidan Merritt. He was one of my regulars. Funny, that.’
‘What is?’
‘That my regulars should die off before me. I didn’t think it would be that way.’
‘But Aidan in particular …?’
‘The last person I would have expected to be getting himself into bother. He wasn’t my type — too quiet, a bit studious. Not a big spender. But trouble? No, he was as quiet as a mouse. What was he doing at the pub?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ said Cooper.
‘Beats me.’
Wharton began to cough, and Cooper waited while he cleared his chest and spat into a tissue. He wondered if he should offer to do anything, fetch a drink of water or whatever. It was always difficult knowing how to behave when visiting the sickbed.
‘You were asking Nancy about an incident with that couple, the Pearsons,’ said Wharton when he’d recovered.
‘Yes. It doesn’t seem to have been followed up by the original inquiry when the Pearsons went missing.’
‘Because it was all settled,’ said Wharton.
‘How was it settled?’
‘I sweet-talked the visitors, made a fuss of them, did a bit of PR. Then I sorted the lads out. All over and done with, see?’
‘The lads? Ian Gullick and Vince Naylor?’
‘Ian and Vince. They’re good lads really, you know. There’s no harm in them.’
Cooper tried not to appear sceptical, but Wharton twisted his head on his pillow to look at him.
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘I’d need more information,’ said Cooper cautiously.
‘Yes, that’s right. Make your own mind up. Take people as you find them. But you don’t know them like I do. I saw the best and worst of people from behind a bar. You’re on the wrong track with Gullick and Naylor. I might not get the chance to tell you anything else, so make a note of that.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Wharton wheezed. ‘I knew a lot of people at one time. Thousands. Now there’s just the family. Family is very important, isn’t it? Don’t you agree?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s the kids I worry about most. Eliot and Kirsten. It’s very bad for them. Their lives have been so disrupted, just when they’re at an age when they should have some stability. And it’s all my fault. I lost their home, brought them here into town, which they hate. And now I’m going to leave them in the lurch, thanks to this damn cancer. Even the life insurance won’t pay out much. I’ll be no more use to them dead than I have been while I was alive.’