Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

19

In Edendale that evening the streets were wet with more rain. The Christmas lights hadn’t gone up in the town yet. But it wouldn’t be long, now that it was November. Most of the shops just couldn’t wait to get the Halloween costumes and Guy Fawkes masks off their shelves and fill the space with Christmas gift wrap and tinsel.

Ben Cooper had almost forgotten that he was expected somewhere that evening. He was supposed to be helping his sister Claire get her new shop ready for opening.

Well, his family expected him to forget things, or to be too busy to turn up, or to get called away. And sometimes, lately, they’d expected him just not to be up to it. But that had changed now, hadn’t it?

Claire had closed the old shop months ago. To be fair, it had been a bit of a niche venture, even when times were good. He could have told her that at the time, but he knew she wouldn’t be willing to hear it. If you wanted to do something badly enough, you needed encouragement and support from your family and friends, not discouraging words and predictions of disaster.

Still, it was certainly true that the market for healing crystals and scented candles had fallen through the floor when the economic downturn came along. Edendale people didn’t really go for that sort of thing. The older residents were happy with their goose fat and paraffin lamps. The younger ones thought you could get it all on the internet.

And visitors to the area were spending less money than ever in the town. Even those with a bit of spare cash preferred to spend it in the farm shops or the outdoor clothing stores, or perhaps to visit one of those historic attractions like Knowle Abbey. Small local businesses were struggling against the competition, whatever area of retail they were in.

Cooper thought of the dreamcatcher and the Tarot cards in Sandra Blair’s cottage at Crowdecote. It was ironic to think that Sandra might have been a customer of Claire’s at one time, in the old shop. But Sandra Blair was dead and Claire Cooper had moved on.

The new shop was just off the market square in Edendale. It stood in the steep, cobbled alley called Nick i’th Tor. There had been a half-hearted campaign recently to change the name of the street on the argument that visitors couldn’t pronounce it so were too embarrassed to ask for directions to it. But the idea never stood a chance. Edendale was too proud of its history and too fond of its traditions – even if no one knew what they meant.

He could see through the front window that his brother Matt was in the shop, putting up some shelves for one of the displays. Claire wouldn’t lash out money on professional shopfitters when she could persuade members of her family to do the job for her. But then all the Coopers were like that. It seemed to be an inherited trait.

‘Hi, Matt,’ he said as he entered.

As soon as he opened the door, he was hit by the powerful smells of fresh paint and plaster, and newly sawn timber.

Matt turned. His broad shoulders and increasing girth had been crammed into an old set of blue overalls that hadn’t really fitted him for a couple of years now. Only the lower buttons were fastened on the front, exposing an ancient woolly sweater full of holes. He looked like a grizzly bear struggling to get out of a duvet cover. His face was red and there was a smudge of grease on his cheek. In fact, he looked pretty much as he always did back at the farm.

‘Oh, you made it,’ he said. ‘I thought I was going to be on my own again tonight.’

‘Where’s the boss?’

‘Who?’

‘The owner of the shop. Shouldn’t she be here supervising?’

‘Oh, Claire’s not going to be here tonight. She’s been down in Birmingham for some trade exhibition or something. Networking and looking at new product lines.’

‘Looking at new product lines?’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘Oh, I can just hear her saying it.’

‘Well, her train from Birmingham doesn’t get in until later. She has to change in Sheffield, you know.’

‘Of course. So what needs doing?’

‘You can finish off the paintwork behind the counter.’

‘No problem.’

Ben found a brush and opened a half-used tin of gloss white. A dust sheet was already spread on the floor to catch drips, and the panels on the wall behind the counter were primed and ready for painting.

The place was already completely unrecognisable. This used to be a second-hand bookshop, which had been empty for a while since the death of its owner. Ben could remember all too clearly the dusty upstairs rooms above the shop, where only certain clients were invited to browse. But Claire was only converting the ground floor, so far at least.

It was a smart choice of location, he had to admit. He’d always liked these narrow lanes in the oldest part of Edendale, between Eyre Street and the market square. Claire’s new shop was only a couple of doors down from Larkin’s, a traditional bakery whose window was always full of pastries and cheeses – apricot white stilton, homity pies and enormous high-baked pork pies. And a few yards away in the market square itself was a celebrated butcher’s and game dealers called Ferris’s. Between them these two establishments were among Edendale’s most popular businesses, with locals and visitors alike. They were such a draw that this corner of the market square could qualify as a retail destination, as far as Edendale had one.

So Claire had wisely gone for a complementary business, an outlet for local farmers’ produce. Most of it was organic, of course. Rare breed meats, gluten-free products, dry cured bacon and home-made cakes. A sign already in the window advertised her venture into a more upmarket range. Uncle Roy’s Comestible Concoctions – fudge sauces and wholegrain mustards, seaweed salt and country bramble jelly.

Ben noticed a large sign propped against the wall near where Matt was working. It was probably ready to go in the window display when the stock began to arrive.

‘What does that sign say?’ he asked.

‘Totally Locally,’ said Matt.

‘And that is?’

‘It’s the Totally Locally campaign. You must have heard of it.’

‘No, Matt.’

‘Look, it says here. If every adult in the area spends five pounds a week in their local independent shops instead of online or in the big supermarkets, it would mean an extra one million pounds a year going into the local economy. More jobs, better facilities, a nicer place to live.’

Matt nodded vigorously at the sign. Claire had certainly found an enthusiastic supporter for that one.

‘Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?’ said Matt.

‘Yes, it does. Will it work?’

‘Have faith.’

They both worked in silence for a while, apart from the occasional curse from Matt. After a few minutes he seemed to remember his brother was there.

‘Are you okay with that, Ben?’

‘Of course. I’ve got the easy job.’

‘Yes, you have.’

‘It makes a change, though.’

‘Oh, yeah. Right.’

There was another pause. Ben finished one panel and shifted position to start the next.

‘So how’s it going, then?’ said Matt. ‘Have you been assigned your own police tractor yet?’

Matt laughed uproariously at his own joke. It wasn’t one of his most appealing characteristics. It had been a regular jest of Matt’s ever since June, when a tractor liveried in police colours had been used to encourage members of the public to sign up for the Farm Watch scheme. Matt had come across the tractor on display at the cattle market in Bakewell, where it had been loaned by the manufacturer, New Holland. Of course, the tractor had then continued to turn up at markets and shows right through the summer, prompting another burst of hilarity from Matt every time he saw it.

It was a bit frustrating. Thieves had been targeting farms across the county and making off with a huge range of items, from livestock to fuel. They’d taken numerous quad bikes, muck spreaders and generators, and six incidents of sheep rustling had been recorded. Many farmers had signed up for Farm Watch, including Matt. But it didn’t stop him making jokes about the police tractor. Well, at least it kept the scheme in his mind.

Ben didn’t bother to answer. It hardly seemed worth it. But Matt tried again.

‘So where have you been today? Anywhere interesting?’

‘I’ve been over at Knowle Abbey and Bowden village.’

‘Oh,’ said Matt, immediately losing interest. ‘Staffordshire people.’

‘No, actually.’

It was odd how Matt’s interest in the affairs of his neighbours ended at the border. No one who lived west of the River Dove was of any concern to him.

‘Not Staffordshire?’ he said.

‘Don’t you know where your own county ends?’

‘Not really. Why would it matter to me? As long as my ewes don’t wander that far.’

‘Talk about parochialism,’ said Ben. ‘You’re the living, breathing embodiment of it.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Well, it’s true. If it doesn’t happen on your patch, it doesn’t exist.’

Matt was right, though. Why should it matter to him? He hardly needed a passport to get in and out of Derbyshire, so he would never notice where the border was. The dry stone walls around his farm were the only boundaries he cared about.

Ben watched his brother line up the shelves on one of the walls. He was frowning in concentration, with a couple of screws sticking out of his mouth. He would do a good job of it. His unrelenting practicality made Ben feel almost useless.

Sensing his brother watching him, Matt looked round.

‘I suppose it’s this woman who was killed at the bridge,’ he said, speaking indistinctly round his mouthful of screws.

‘That’s right.’

‘They call it the Corpse Bridge, don’t they?’

‘You’ve heard of it, then? And the coffin roads?’

‘Yes, I remember all that stuff vaguely. Old stories.’

‘I had the Reverend Latham out there this morning,’ said Ben.

‘Old Bill Latham? Is he still alive?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Good for him. He must be as old as I feel.’

Matt used a spirit level to check that his shelf was exactly at the right angle. Nothing would be falling off this display.

‘And there’s a connection to Knowle Abbey, is there?’ he said.

‘There may be.’

‘That’s another old story.’

‘What is?’

‘You don’t remember the tale?’

‘Which one, Matt?’

‘The Revenge of the Poacher’s Widow.’

Ben laughed. ‘Oh, that story. Yes, Granddad Cooper told it to us when we were children. In fact, I think he probably told it several times over the years.’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘And he got all his folk tales from some book he was given by his parents. Though he embellished the details a bit more every time he told them, of course.’

‘We loved them as kids,’ said Matt. ‘The more gruesome the better, too.’

‘Right.’ Ben shook his head. ‘I don’t quite remember, though.’

‘You don’t?’ Matt stopped working for a moment and crinkled his forehead in an effort of memory. ‘There was some old duke at Knowle Abbey…’

‘An earl,’ said Ben.

‘Whatever. Well, he caught a poacher on his land, nicking his deer or something. And instead of just handing him over to the cops, he turned the poacher loose in the woods and let his aristocratic mates hunt him down like an animal. He reckoned he could get away with doing things like that, because he was so rich and important.’

‘When was this exactly?’

‘Oh, a couple of months ago.’

‘Right.’

Matt laughed again. Ben found it a bit unsettling to hear his brother being so jolly.

‘Anyway,’ said Matt, ‘the poacher got shot and killed. And nobody did anything about it, of course. So the poacher’s widow vowed revenge and put a curse on the duke.’

‘The earl.’

This time Matt ignored his interruption. He finished driving a screw in with his electric screwdriver and brushed some wood shavings off the finished shelf. Then he stood back to admire his handiwork with a smile of satisfaction. Ben found himself beginning to get impatient.

‘So what happened to the duke?’ he said. ‘I mean, the earl.’

‘Oh, he died,’ said Matt airily.

‘Everyone dies eventually.’

‘Ah, but he died a horrible death. I can’t remember exactly how. But I know it was horrible.’

Ben sighed. ‘You’re not a born storyteller, are you?’

‘Not like Granddad Cooper,’ admitted Matt.

Outside, the centre of town was getting noisy again as the pubs filled up.

‘It’s time to knock off here, I think,’ said Matt, ‘before they let the animals loose from the zoo.’

They put out the lights and Matt set the alarm and locked the door. He turned to Ben.

‘Do you want to come back to the farm for a bit?’ he said. ‘Have you had something to eat? I dare say Kate can—’

Ben shook his head. ‘No, I’m okay. Thanks anyway.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Matt couldn’t resist casting another sideways glance at him from the corner of his eye as they turned towards the market square.

‘I’m fine, Matt, really.’

‘Good. But if ever…’

‘I know.’

‘Well. Think on, then.’

When Matt had gone, Ben felt oddly reassured by the conversation they’d just had, standing here on the corner of Edendale market square. There had hardly been any words involved, but what had been said meant a lot. That was exactly the way he and his brother had always communicated with one another when they were boys at Bridge End Farm. Their mother would have said they just grunted at each other. But they’d been so close that they had an understanding beyond words.

Ben smiled. It had felt so good to have that back again, just for a few minutes. At least some things stayed re– assuringly the same in this world. And his brother was one of them.

20

With a heave, Diane Fry dragged her overnight bag off the back seat of her car and slammed the door. The Audi was streaked with mud and its windscreen was filthy. Its black paintwork always showed the dirt at the best of times. But right now the wheel arches seemed to have accumulated half the topsoil of the Peak District. If she had that mud analysed, no doubt she would find a high percentage of sheep muck too.

She sighed and turned towards the lit-up entrance. The A38 Aston Expressway was only a hundred yards away and the buzz of evening traffic was loud and continuous. It was a noise she had grown up with, but which she rarely heard in Derbyshire. Its presence was like the return of the cuckoo in spring. Tuneless, but reassuring.

Fry checked in and found her room. It was like any other budget hotel, anonymous and without character. There were few staff to be seen and her fellow guests took no notice of her as she passed, some of them even turning their heads away as if they didn’t want to be recognised. It suited her down to the ground.

In her room the first thing she did was turn off the TV. She hung her clothes in the tiny wardrobe, though she was only staying overnight. She checked her phone, saw the text she’d been expecting. Just enough time to shower and get changed.

They’d arranged to meet in a pub near Aston University. Fry set off to walk along the canal towpath from the back of the hotel, passing under Dartmouth Middleway, with its set of lock gates beneath a grim concrete bridge. From the edge of the Corporation Street dual carriageway, she turned down Holt Street towards the campus.

It was an old pub with leaded windows and wooden floors, and pictures on the walls depicting the history of Birmingham. Naturally, it was full of students, but they seemed to be drinking rather than eating. Fry crossed the bar to a far corner and found her sister already there.

‘Hi, sis,’ she said.

Angie stood up to give her an uncomfortable hug. ‘Di. How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine.’

Diane sat down and looked at her older sister. Every time she saw her it was like meeting a new person. Angie had run away from their foster home in the Black Country when they were both teenagers. They didn’t see each other until one memorable day in the Peak District, when the two of them had been brought together by Ben Cooper, of all people.

That day Angie had seemed like a complete stranger. But Diane had been setting eyes on her for the first time since she was fourteen. Her teenage illusions were easily shattered.

They’d spent a lot of time together since then and Angie had even stayed with her for a while in her flat in Edendale. Yet it was odd to look at her now and notice that she was starting to look middle-aged. Her eyes were tired and the lines around her temples, formed by years of pain, seemed more deeply etched.

And surely Angie had put on weight too? It was something Diane herself had never been able to do. Food just didn’t hold the same attraction for her that it did for other people. It was necessary fuel, but not a subject for lengthy conversation, let alone something to write stacks of books or produce endless TV shows about. So she eyed Angie’s outline with interest and examined her arms, no longer so thin that they looked as though they would snap. Her sister had always been slim. Since Diane had tried to emulate her in every way when they were teenagers, it seemed wrong that Angie could now so easily abandon her function as a role model.

They ordered straight away, because Angie was keen to eat. Diane chose a pasta pomodoro, a penne pasta with tomato sauce, sun-dried tomatoes and basil.

‘I suppose that’s the lowest calorie dish on the menu,’ said Angie.

‘It might be,’ said Diane, though she knew perfectly well it was.

Angie laughed. She seemed much more relaxed than her sister had ever seen her before. It was odd and she didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Their food came quickly. Diane watched her sister eating skewered chicken breast pieces with peppers and barbecue sauce.

‘Things are going well, then?’ she said.

‘Great.’ Angie looked up from her chicken skewers. ‘I told you I’ve got a new bloke, didn’t I?’

‘I believe you mentioned it in your texts. Several times.’

‘We’ve been an item for a few months now.’

‘I’m happy for you.’

Angie smiled. It was a curiously smug expression, more like a smirk. Diane immediately became suspicious.

‘What’s going on?’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come off it. I know you too well.’

But Angie shrugged. ‘Stop being a copper.’

‘Mmm.’

They ate silently for a moment, allowing the background noise of the students to wash over them.

‘Speaking of which,’ said Angie, ‘how’s the lovely Ben?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know who I mean.’

‘Ben Cooper?’

‘Of course.’

‘He’s all right, I suppose.’

Angie nodded. ‘He’s got over all that business with the fire and his fiancée being killed? I mean, it’s a while ago now, isn’t it? People do get over these things and move on with their lives.’

‘Obviously.’

Diane didn’t like the way the conversation was going. Angie had always shown an inexplicable interest in Ben Cooper. But she had her own bloke now. They’d been an item for months and it sounded serious. Why was she still talking about Cooper?

‘So,’ said Angie, ‘he’s, you know … available again.’

‘Well, I guess so. But I thought you were happy with your new bloke.’

Angie gaped at her and dropped her fork on to her plate with a clatter. She threw her head back and laughed. She had a peculiar, hiccuping laugh that always made heads turn in astonishment. Diane cringed with embarrassment and tried to turn away from the gawping faces in the bar.

‘Diane, you idiot,’ said Angie, when she’d taken a drink to stop herself choking.

‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ said Diane.

‘Never mind. How’s the pasta?’

‘Fine.’

When they’d finished their meal, they sat for a long time over their drinks. Finally, Angie put down her glass with a decisive air.

‘So,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I have something to tell you.’

Diane’s heart sank. She’d only ever heard bad news from her sister. Or so it seemed when she looked back over the years.

‘What is it, sis?’

‘You know I was saying about this bloke? His name’s Craig, by the way.’

‘I think I remember.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Well…’

‘It doesn’t matter. Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you is this. We’ve been together for a while and we decided that … well, the fact is, Di – I’m pregnant.’

Ben Cooper had decided not to go straight back to his car after he left the shop, but headed away from the market square. Though it was right in the centre of Edendale, this stretch of the River Eden was a peaceful spot, particularly at night. It was only a few yards from the shopping centre, but it always felt to Cooper as though he’d stepped out of the town into a different world once he turned the corner and stepped down on to the riverbank.

In the darkness he could see only a few flickers of light off the water as it foamed over the weir. But he could hear the sounds. The soothing whisper and murmur of the river was enough to calm him down and let him think quietly to himself.

He was aware of the mallard ducks who lived on the river here. They were floating out there somewhere on the water near the weir, apparently asleep, with their beaks tucked under their wings. But he knew their feet must still be paddling like mad below the surface to keep them in position, or they would be swept downstream by the current.

Cooper sat on a bench for a while, enjoying the quiet and the chance to think. It wasn’t the Sandra Blair inquiry that was bothering him. The solution to that would surely turn out to be something perfectly ordinary and sordid. Almost predictable, in fact.

It wasn’t even Dorothy Shelley he was worried about. He’d phoned the hospital earlier in the evening to check on her condition and had been told she was ‘comfortable’. He knew from experience that it was what they said when there was no hope of recovery. But her family were at her side and it wasn’t his place to intrude. There was nothing more he could do.

No, it was Diane Fry’s behaviour that baffled him. He’d tried to make friends with her when she’d first come to Derbyshire, but he’d failed. He’d tried to understand her, hoping she would relax a little and open up. But in the past she’d hardly noticed his attempts at empathy. She’d simply passed him by, as if he were no more than a piece of furniture. But then, she behaved the same way with everyone else, didn’t she?

Yes, Fry’s lack of empathy was legendary. He’d been reminded of it by one moment during Liz’s funeral. In fact, he’d seen it at almost every funeral he’d ever been to. If you looked behind the church or crematorium, you’d sometimes see the drivers of the hearse and the funeral cars laughing and smoking among themselves during the service.

Well, the undertakers didn’t really care that your fiancée had died. They attended two or three funerals every day and they couldn’t be prostrated by grief every time, especially for people they didn’t know. But for a while Cooper found it hard to understand how people could do the job at all. How did you spend time with a crowd of people who were grief stricken and not share their emotions? How could you go to funeral after funeral, every day of the week, all the year round, and not be affected by it? It needed a particular type of person to spend their life dealing with death, thinking about death, and meeting those who’d just been bereaved, and yet be able to chat and joke with their friends as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

After Liz’s funeral he’d come away with the conviction that people who did the job must be sociopaths. Only a serious personality disorder would enable you to look so solemn while you carried a coffin, then take off your tie, go home and eat dinner, watch the TV, and tell the wife you’d had a good day at work.

In fact, he’d envied those people. For a long time, he wished he could be like them. But he knew he would fail.

That idea, though, had made him look at Diane Fry differently. If it was true about funeral directors, then what about a police officer? Someone who dealt with nothing but murder cases and rapes, and serious violent crimes? Were they also sociopaths who just happened to have found themselves a profession where their personality disorder was an advantage? No one wanted a cop who empathised too much. It made them less professional, not so good at their jobs.

Cooper shivered with cold and knew it was time to go home. He stood up suddenly, startling the ducks and making them rattle their wings in the darkness.

No, he had never been able to achieve that level of detachment himself. No amount of trying got him to a position where he could create that protective façade. He’d become convinced this was what might prevent him from moving up the promotion ladder in the police service. It was the Diane Frys they wanted these days.

But then he recalled the new version of Diane he’d encountered in her flat on Friday night. The softer, more relaxed Fry. The one who actually asked him for a favour. Was this the same person? Could it be the woman he’d always suspected might exist behind the brittle exterior?

If so, this new Diane Fry was like a glimpse of some illusory oasis, glittering in the distance but defying the most determined traveller to reach it. The nearer he got, the further away she would seem. It felt inevitable, the story of his life. It was certainly the story of his relationship with Fry.

The ducks quacked quietly in agreement as he walked away from the peace of the river and headed back towards the town.

While Ben Cooper sat by the riverside in Edendale, Luke Irvine was in the pub. His date hadn’t gone too well the night before. No matter how often he checked his phone, there were no text messages. So he couldn’t imagine she was expecting to hear from him again tonight. But that seemed to be the story of his life at the moment. Opportunities came along, but were allowed to escape.

As he watched the other customers in the bar of the Angler’s Rest, Irvine knew that Ben Cooper would still be out asking questions about the woman whose body had been found at Hollins Bridge. Overtime meant nothing to his DS. Though he admired Cooper in lots of ways, Irvine hoped he never ended up like that himself. Dedication to the job was great, but it was so much better to have a life away from the office.

Irvine lived in the village of Bamford, between the Hope Valley and the Upper Derwent. It was a short drive over the hill to Edendale, but quiet enough to give him the village life he’d grown up with in West Yorkshire.

A man he knew vaguely from a few houses down the road came and sat down on a vacant seat nearby. He nodded and said, ‘Hi’. Irvine acknowledged him cautiously. Conversations in the pub could be difficult, he’d discovered.

‘Good to see the place so busy,’ said the man.

‘Yeah, great.’

‘It just goes to show.’

‘You’re right, it does.’

Irvine took a swig of his beer, holding the bottle to his mouth a bit longer than was strictly necessary. He knew what the man was talking about, without any telling.

People in his community had spent months raising the money to buy their village pub. They formed a cooperative society to take ownership of the building, with hundreds of residents buying shares. They successfully applied to get the pub registered as an ‘asset of community value’ under the government’s new Localism Act. They drew up a business plan, outlining a scheme for a community hub with a café and shop, and accommodation for visitors. Their village post office was due to close too and they negotiated to move counter services into the pub. They appeared in the local media, manned stalls at shows and fêtes, and enough money came in to make the dream possible.

For a while it had all seemed to be going well. With the financial targets hit, solicitors were instructed to begin the conveyancing process. But on the same day the company that owned the pub announced it was exchanging contracts with a third party – a developer who would make the deal pay by building houses on the car park.

Irvine remembered calling into the pub one night for a drink when the news had just broken. The mood was disturbing. Everyone he spoke to was frustrated and angry, convinced they had been betrayed by big business and exploited for a quick profit.

One of his neighbours, who’d had a couple of drinks too many, buttonholed him at the bar while he was ordering a bottle of Thornbridge Sour Brown. Like a doctor, Irvine found he could never escape the fact that he was a police officer, even when he was off duty. In fact, it had been worse since he joined CID and became a detective. Everyone wanted to hear gory details of cases, tell him their theories, or ask him for clandestine forms of assistance that would undoubtedly lose him his job.

That night, though, there was only one topic of conversation. The last-minute betrayal over the sale of the pub had turned people’s minds to committing crime rather than solving it.

‘This could definitely be a motive for murder,’ this same neighbour had said, leaning close to him at the bar. ‘With a hundred and eighty-five potential suspects at the last count. They might all commit the crime together, like the plot of an Agatha Christie story.’

‘By far the least believable Christie plot,’ said Irvine, who had watched Poirot on TV.

The man tapped the side of his nose and almost winked. ‘Where there’s a motive, people will find a means.’

But a week or two later the public outcry against the decision had changed the minds of both the pub’s owners and the potential buyer. The project went ahead and Bamford owned its community hub. When he went into the Angler’s Rest now for a Sour Brown, people again asked for gory details or the kind of assistance that would lose him his job.

‘I suppose you’re involved in that case over near Buxton,’ said the man now, with an inquisitive lift of the eyebrows.

‘Maybe so.’

But as Irvine looked at his neighbour, he recalled that earlier conversation. An Agatha Christie plot? He wondered if he should phone Ben Cooper right now with the interesting idea that had just come into his head.

But of course not. Unlike Cooper, he had a life after all.

‘Do you fancy another drink, mate?’ he said.