Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

21

Sunday 3 November

Carol Villiers had produced a list of names and it was waiting for Cooper on his desk when he arrived in the CID room on Sunday morning. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty, but there was nothing for him to do at home. It was a choice between being here and painting shelves in the shop. No contest. He loved his brother, but the thought of spending all day working with Matt filled him with dread.

The list Villiers had drawn up contained the names of all the residents of Bowden, plus Sandra Blair and her husband Gary, who were former residents, and those of Jason Shaw and the Nadens.

After a moment’s thought, Cooper added Rob Beresford and his parents to the list. Was there anyone else he should consider? No, that seemed to be about it.

Cooper glanced through the list again. There were quite a few familiar surnames on it. That was inevitable, after all his years in E Division making arrests, interviewing suspects, reading intelligence files on known criminal associates. Certain family names cropped up time and time again. Others he remembered particularly after just one meeting – an individual could make such a deep impression on him he would never forget them for as long as he lived. There were even one or two who’d been helpful to him in the past and who might not run a mile when they saw him coming.

One of those individuals was suggested by a name on this list. The Kilners were a widespread family in this part of Derbyshire. But one particular member of the family, Brendan, was well known to Cooper.

Brendan Kilner had been the owner of a garage that was targeted during a proactive operation tackling an increase in the number of expensive, top-of-the-range cars being stolen in North Derbyshire, most of which were never recovered. The suspicion was that they were being processed locally and shipped abroad through a third party. There was always a market for stolen BMWs and Mercedes in parts of the world where fewer questions were asked.

But Kilner himself had never been convicted of anything. Two of his mechanics had gone down for a few years after the police operation located a couple of lock-ups in Edendale where the two employees had been working on stolen vehicles in their spare time. The inquiry had focused on tracking down the dealers who organised the shipping – they were the really serious players, part of an organised crime gang. Once their stage of the enterprise was disrupted, the market disappeared. They also made most of the profit, of course, so they were a much juicier target for an action under the Proceeds of Crime Act, which extracted large amounts of money from convicted criminals. Some of the proceeds even went towards maintaining levels of policing in the county.

It had never been entirely clear whether Kilner was squeaky clean in relation to the stolen car scam, but he’d been remarkably helpful at the time. He opened up his records to the police investigation and shared everything he knew about the activities of his two mechanics, who were by then safely in custody.

During the interviews Cooper was unable to escape a niggling doubt about the garage owner and whether there might be some hidden paperwork somewhere, a possibility the leading officer in the case decided not to pursue. Since then Brendan Kilner had nothing recorded against him, either in Criminal Records or in the intelligence databases. Going straight, then. The garage was still there, BK Motors – now in a double unit on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Edendale.

Cooper looked up a number and grabbed the phone. Kilner was surprised to hear from him, that much was obvious. A bit suspicious too. Maybe there was still a trace of guilty conscience in his reaction to an unexpected contact with the police. But that was a good thing, in the circumstances.

After a bit of cautious small talk, some polite enquiries about the family and how well business was doing, Cooper got round to telling Kilner that he wanted to talk to him.

‘Where can I meet you?’

‘What, today?’ said Kilner, still reluctant.

‘Yes, this afternoon.’

‘Well, I’ll be at Axe Edge. There’s a race meeting.’

‘Buxton Raceway? I know it.’

Kilner didn’t hang up straight away. Cooper could hear him breathing, a slight wheeze as if he were about to start coughing. A nervous cough, or was Kilner a smoker? He couldn’t remember that detail.

‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’ asked Kilner.

‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

‘Okay, then. I’ll get you a hot dog, shall I?’

Buxton Raceway. Though Cooper had often passed it, he’d never actually visited the races. It wasn’t the sort of place Liz would ever have wanted to go with him for a Sunday afternoon outing.

The site stood in a bleak spot off the Buxton to Leek road, at a point where it crossed Axe Edge Moor. This was the highest stretch of moorland close to the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Many of the Peak District’s major rivers rose on Axe Edge Moor and the source of the River Dove itself was only a few hundred yards away in a patch of marshy ground near Dovehead Farm, just on the Staffordshire side of the border.

After he’d parked the car Cooper found Brendan Kilner at the end of a small stand for spectators. He was clutching a hot dog in a paper napkin from the stall behind him. The scent of fried onions mingled with a powerful smell of exhaust fumes, despite a strong breeze blowing across the moor.

Kilner gestured with the hot dog.

‘Do you want one?’ he asked by way of greeting.

‘Not at the moment, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself.’

He hardly looked at Cooper, but kept his eyes fixed on the circuit, where nothing much seemed to be happening. He’d put on weight since Cooper saw him last. Too many hot dogs and burgers, perhaps. But then, he’d always been a man whose idea of exercise was leaning into an engine compartment with a spanner.

‘Sorry to drag you here,’ said Kilner. ‘This is almost the last meeting of the season. I couldn’t miss it.’

‘There’s no racing in the winter?’

‘No. It gets a bit wild up here, like.’

‘I can imagine.’

Now he was standing still, that wind blowing across the landscape from Axe Edge Moor certainly felt a bit icy. Cooper looked around at the groups of people standing nearby.

‘Can we walk round the other side of the track for a while?’

Kilner wiped his fingers as he swallowed the last piece of hot dog.

‘If you like.’

The circuit consisted of a tarmac oval around a central refuge where a few official vehicles were parked, including a tractor and a paramedic’s car. There were already some disabled racing cars lined up awaiting retrieval after the meeting was over. The circuit ran in front of the stand and past spectators who were parked at the trackside, protected by a black-and-white barrier and a high mesh safety fence. The landscape behind the raceway looked even more bare and rugged. In the background Cooper could see the distinctive jut of a rock face. He recognised it as a feature standing between the site of the Health and Safety Executive’s laboratories at Harpur Hill and a flooded quarry once known by local people as the Blue Lagoon.

As they strolled away from the stand Cooper began to see cars and their drivers. The drivers wore racing overalls, crash helmets and fire-retardant gloves, just like the stars of Formula One. But their vehicles were a bunch of beaten-up hatchbacks. Datsun Sunnys, Ford Fiestas, Vauxhall Novas. Although really all that was left of each car was the chassis. They had been stripped down and armoured. In addition to heavy front and rear bumpers, iron cages had been welded along the sides. They were all painted in bright colour schemes.

‘These are 1300cc saloon stocks,’ said Kilner as a series of cars began to move out on to the track.

A man wearing goggles and ear protectors stood on a white breeze-block podium with a set of flags. About fifteen cars began to move round the circuit, slowly at first as if they were merely in a procession. Then there must have been a signal that Cooper didn’t see, because engines roared simultaneously as drivers accelerated towards the starting flag, jostling for position in the first straight.

‘I heard you were in the fire up at the old Light House,’ said Kilner. ‘It was in all the papers and everything. That was a bad business.’

‘Yes.’

Cooper would have been amazed if Kilner didn’t know all about it. Everyone else in the area did.

Kilner was watching the cars thoughtfully. ‘I suppose you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Not to you, Brendan, anyway.’

‘Fair comment. I can’t blame you for that. Put things behind you, get on with life. That’s the motto, like.’

On the track a car spun three hundred and sixty degrees, but the driver recovered and kept going, trying to regain ground. Ahead of him another collided with the barrier, bounced and came to a halt. A blue-and-yellow car seemed to be in the lead all the way, so far as Cooper could tell.

‘There’s not the sort of excitement you get in some types of racing,’ said Kilner. ‘Super bangers or hot rods. You can pretty much predict who’s going to come in first. But it’s the spectacle, you know. The noise, the smell, the whole thing. It’s like a drug, I suppose.’

Cooper had never been much of a petrol head himself. But his brother Matt would probably have enjoyed himself here. He was forever tinkering with one of his tractors back at Bridge End Farm. For years Matt’s pride and joy had been a vintage Massey Ferguson that never did any work around the farm, but turned out a couple of times a year for a tractor rally and trundled around the roads with scores of others. The Massey had soaked up too much cash, though, which the farm couldn’t afford, and it had been sold off.

With a glance around to make sure no one was near them, Cooper showed Kilner an edited version of the list that Villiers had produced for him.

‘Recognise some of these names, Brendan?’ he said.

Kilner fiddled in his pockets until he found a pair of reading glasses. Old age was creeping up on him too.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘All of them, I think. You probably guessed that or you wouldn’t be here.’

‘Apart from Bowden, can you suggest anything they all have in common?’

As the stock cars came past their position again, the noise of the engines was deafening. Cooper missed something that Brendan Kilner was saying.

‘What?’

‘I said, “They’ve all got an axe to grind.” But then, haven’t we all these days? Even the cops, I bet.’

Kilner laughed and Cooper got the whiff of fried onions again, but at second hand.

‘So what axes do the Nadens and Jason Shaw have to grind?’ he asked.

Kilner shrugged. ‘It’s all about family. Ancient history if you ask me. But that stuff means a lot to some people, doesn’t it? Me, I can never bring myself to visit the place where my mum and dad were buried. Come to think of it, we didn’t actually bury my dad – we burned him, then scattered him.’

‘What are you talking about, Brendan?’ asked Cooper.

‘The graveyard, of course.’

‘Graveyard?’

Kilner turned to look at him. ‘What, you don’t know about the graveyard? Where have you been these past few months?’

A stock car was nudged and went into a spin, stopping against the fence. It was unable to get back on the circuit, and the others came round and passed it again before track officials stopped them with a series of orange flags. The drivers waited patiently on the circuit while a tractor dragged the damaged car clear. It seemed a surprisingly civilised process – not really what he’d expected from the battered condition of most of the vehicles. They were like battle-scarred chariots under their heavy armour.

‘Can you be more specific?’ asked Cooper.

Kilner put a hand on his arm without taking his eyes off the circuit. ‘I shouldn’t say any more. You just go and look at the graveyard. You’ll see for yourself easily enough.’

The flag man was counting down the remaining laps now as cars approached his podium. Then suddenly they were into the last lap and the blue-and-yellow car was still out in front. A car kicked up a cloud of dirt as it hit the edge of the central refuge and stalled.

Then the chequered flag came down and there was just time for the winner to do a victory lap in the back of an official car before preparations got under way for the next race. Brendan Kilner cheered and clapped with the rest of the crowd.

‘Who won?’ asked Cooper.

Kilner laughed. ‘The same guy who always wins,’ he said.

Scott Heywood swung his bike off a bend in the road above Pilsbury and coasted along the path towards the site of the castle.

It was a fine morning now – cold, but not raining for once. November was so unpredictable for weather. But then, every month was unpredictable in the Peak District.

He went through the gate and wheeled his bike as far as the information board, where he removed his helmet, pulled his Boardman water bottle from its cage and took a drink. In front of him was a sharp limestone outcrop with a tree growing from its furthest slope. Scott knew this wasn’t part of the castle. It had probably been incorporated into the site as a natural defensive feature.

When he’d finished his drink, he shooed a couple of grazing sheep out of the way and walked up the grassy slope until he reached the edge of the outcrop. From here he had a fantastic view over the strange mounds where the castle had been and across the valley of the Dove. He could see as far as the even stranger shapes of the hills to the north. The air was bracing and he could feel himself cooling off quickly as the sweat dried on his skin.

Then Scott looked down.

‘What the heck is that?’ he said.

One of the sheep answered him and it made him jump. A plaintive croak, like the sound of a broken gate. It echoed mournfully around the crag.

‘I think … No, it can’t be,’ said Scott.

After a moment’s hesitation he began to slither his way down the far side of the slope, clinging to a branch of the tree to prevent himself sliding all the way down on his backside. By the time he got to the bottom he could see that he wasn’t imagining things.

‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Are you okay?’

He felt embarrassed by the sound of his own voice. He knew it was futile. The person was lying much too still at the foot of the slope, folded over into an unnatural shape. He could see that it was a man. He could distinguish a broad back and a large backside, with one arm twisted on the grass and ending with a pudgy hand turned palm upwards. A sheen of moisture gleamed on the clothes and on a patch of bald scalp in a fringe of dark hair.

Scott had never seen a dead body before. But he was surprised to find that there was no mistaking one when he saw it.

22

The Reverend William Latham lived in a small bungalow on one of the newer estates on the edge of Edendale. This wasn’t quite sheltered housing for the elderly, but most of the people Cooper saw were past retirement age. They’d reached the time in their lives when they couldn’t manage a big garden and didn’t want to be coping with stairs.

He supposed it was a pleasant enough location. You could see the hills from here, and there was a bus route into town at the corner of the road. But it felt like the last stop on a journey, the sort of place you would never leave.

The Reverend Latham was cautious about visitors. When Cooper rang the bell he shuffled down the hall and called through the door to ask who it was.

‘Bill? I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s Ben Cooper again.’

Latham opened the door and peered out before lifting the security chain.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said.

‘Quite right.’

‘So what can I do for you? More questions about coffin roads?’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘A burial ground.’

‘Ah. Interesting.’

Latham invited him in, though he left Cooper to close and lock the front door, which rather undermined his caution about visitors. The old man led him down the hall into an untidy sitting room. As Cooper looked around he realised that untidy would be a kind word for this room. It looked like benevolent chaos.

Cooper was used to seeing homes occupied by drug addicts and low-end criminals. They were invariably chaotic, a mess of used needles, empty alcohol bottles, rotting food and dirty clothes. That wasn’t the case here. The disorder consisted of books and newspapers, pens and paper clips, cardboard boxes and piles of typed A4 sheets. There was a table under there somewhere and several chairs. An ancient leather sofa was occupied by two grey long-haired cats, sitting happily among the scattered papers and the remains of chewed cardboard.

‘This is Peter and Paul,’ said Latham, gesturing at the cats. ‘Say hello.’

Cooper wasn’t sure whether the old man was speaking to him or to the cats. But he said hello anyway. The cats glared at him and showed no signs of moving from the sofa to let him sit down.

‘There’s a chair here,’ said Latham, picking up a pile of multicoloured folders which slipped out of his grasp and cascaded on to the carpet. Cooper bent to pick them up, but the old man stopped him. ‘No, no, it’s all right. They’re as well filed on the floor as anywhere else, I suppose.’

Cooper removed a pair of glasses from the chair and placed them on the table. ‘Are you writing a book or something?’ he said.

‘How did you guess?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It just looks like a writer’s room. What is the book about?’

‘It’s just a little memoir,’ said Latham, waving a hand in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘The difficulty I have is that my memory isn’t as good as it used to be. It’s requiring rather a lot of research to get the facts right. Dates and names and so on. I suppose it’s my age.’

Latham perched himself on another chair and gazed vaguely at Cooper.

‘Are you hoping to get it published?’ asked Cooper, failing to keep a faint note of incredulity from his voice.

‘I’m told it’s very easy to publish a book yourself these days,’ said Latham. ‘Modern technology has opened up all kinds of doors. There are things called ebooks now.’

‘Yes.’ Cooper eyed the piles of paper. ‘Where’s your computer?’

‘My what?’

‘You have a laptop, at least?’

Latham shook his head. ‘I do have a typewriter somewhere. I haven’t used it for a while. There was a problem getting new ribbons.’

Cooper didn’t know what else to say. If he went any further into the subject, he might end up volunteering to do the work himself. And that was beyond the call of duty.

‘I was at Bowden yesterday,’ said Cooper. ‘You know, the estate village for Knowle Abbey?’

‘Oh, the Bowden burial ground?’ said Latham. ‘Surely you know all about that?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Cooper.

Latham raised an eyebrow at him and Cooper realised his tone had been a bit too sharp.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about the burial ground.’

One of the cats stirred uneasily and dragged itself off the sofa. As it strolled out of the room, Cooper could see that it was beautifully groomed, but obese.

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do about it,’ Latham was saying. ‘It’s all perfectly within the rules and regulations.’

‘What is?’

But now he’d set Latham off on a train of thought, the old man wasn’t going to be steered by someone else’s questions. ‘When a church or burial ground has been consecrated, it comes under the jurisdiction of the bishop,’ he said. ‘In the case of a churchyard, the legal effects of consecration can only be removed by an Act of Parliament or the General Synod. But if the land or building isn’t vested in an ecclesiastical body, then the bishop has the power of deconsecration.’

‘So?’

Latham nodded at him. ‘That’s the case at Bowden, you see. The church was built by a previous Earl Manby and it belongs to the estate. So the bishop of this diocese has agreed to deconsecrate. There was no reason for him to refuse. The church itself isn’t used any more, you know. It’s the burial ground that has been most at issue.’

‘Are you telling me the present Earl Manby is planning to sell off the church and burial ground at Bowden?’

‘Well, of course.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘That I can’t tell you.’

‘He must have some scheme in mind for the land. But can he really do that to a graveyard?’

‘By law, any graves more than seventy-five years old can be removed, though the removal and destruction of gravestones is subject to controls under the Cemeteries Act.’ Latham looked at his chaotic table. ‘I could quote you the specific section, if I can find the reference.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Then there would be the Disused Burial Grounds Act,’ said Latham. ‘That dates from the 1880s, but I’m sure it still applies. The prohibition against building on a churchyard can be overridden if the church is declared redundant. Then the land can be deconsecrated and disposed of for any type of development, I think. Remains can be relocated but, if not, you’re obliged to allow access to relatives.’

‘There must have been objections from families with relatives buried there,’ said Cooper.

‘Indeed. But there are no plans to build on the actual burial ground, as I understand it. You’d have to consult the plans for more information, I suppose.’

Cooper watched the cat return, casually stalking past his legs as if he were just another pile of discarded paper.

‘I wonder what the earl has in mind,’ he said. ‘It’s bound to be something he can make money from. A residential development, perhaps.’

The Reverend Latham gazed at the returning cat and his expression became dreamy. He reached for a pen and an exercise book from the table and began to scribble in it.

‘That reminds me,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Ben. It will make an interesting chapter for my ebook.’

‘What?’

‘Well, we had another example in this diocese,’ said Latham. ‘St Martin’s Church. It was deconsecrated back in the 1980s. But it stood derelict for almost twenty years before a young couple bought it. I heard that they invested nearly three times the purchase price and it was very interesting what they did. They kept the stained glass and many of the fixtures intact, added skylights in the roof, installed under-floor heating and constructed a rather dramatic staircase up to a galleried library. They even used the wood from the pews to build kitchen counters and a dining room table. The project took them six years to complete, as I recall.’

‘I remember that too,’ said Cooper. ‘When they finished the conversion, they listed the property for sale for about six hundred thousand pounds.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Latham wrote down the figure. ‘Six hundred thousand pounds. It sounded like an awful lot of money to me. But it was a very unusual property. They let me see inside it once. It had an enormous living area. It incorporated the chancel and nave, and the ceiling must have been about thirty-five feet high. Just imagine what you could do with that.’

Cooper was imagining a vast cathedral-like space filled with stacks of paper and cardboard boxes, but Latham hadn’t finished.

‘Well, the really interesting thing,’ he said, ‘is that St Martin’s had a small graveyard. Over the years graves had been dug deep and coffins stacked on top of each other to make maximum use of the available space. When the church was deconsecrated, the coffins were exhumed and moved to other graveyards. Rumour has it that some of them were never located and might still be buried under the grounds today.’

‘Really?’

Latham laughed gently. ‘Well, if it’s true, there’s a jacuzzi and a barbecue patio over the top of them now. Fortunately, those deepest graves would be very old burials. The forgotten ones.’

Cooper thought of Bowden village and Knowle Abbey, and some of the people he’d spoken to during the last few days.

‘I don’t think there are any forgotten ones in this case,’ he said.

Half an hour later Cooper was walking along the ragged lines of headstones in the burial ground at Bowden and looking at the names inscribed on them. Several familiar surnames appeared. Shaw, Beresford, Kilner, Mellor, Blair.

The church was still locked, even though it was Sunday. But then, it wasn’t just closed. It had been declared redundant. It would never be opened again, not as a place of worship at least. The bulldozer waiting behind the church took on a new meaning now. He could see it had nothing to do with the bonfire.

Mrs Mellor must have seen him from the window of the cottage and recognised him. She came across the green and walked through the graveyard to see what he was looking at.

‘Yes, some of my family are here too,’ she said, touching one of the gravestones.

‘So I see.’

‘I take it you know what’s going to happen to this? To the church and the graveyard?’

‘Yes, I know. But there have been objections from the families, haven’t there?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But there are no plans to build over the burial ground itself. The church will be converted, probably for residential use. Then the burials that can be found will be removed and the graveyard will be landscaped. That’s what the plans say.’

‘Residential use, you think?’

‘Well, we’ve heard there’s a local artist who wants to turn the church into an art gallery. But it will probably be a holiday home for someone with plenty of money. Like the cottages.’

Cooper looked up. ‘Cottages?’

Mrs Mellor pointed. ‘There are a couple of cottages a bit further into the park. They used to be workers’ homes, but the tenants were given notice. They’re going to be converted into holiday rentals for tourists. Another money-spinner, no doubt.’

‘Was one of those the Blairs’ home?’

‘That’s right.’

She looked quite pleased with him, now that he had figured something out for himself, without being told.

‘It’s terrible about Sandra,’ she said. ‘I heard they confirmed that the body found at the bridge was hers.’

‘Yes.’

‘That family seem to have been fated.’

Mrs Mellor began to drift slowly away as Cooper stood for a few moments by the graves. For generations workers from the estate had been buried in this graveyard. They’d lived in tied cottages on the estate, paid their rent at the estate office, and owed their livelihoods to the earl. When they died, they were buried on the earl’s land. Where else would they go?

The Manbys themselves had their memorials at the Lady Chapel attached to the hall, instead of down here with the workers on the edge of the park. Now some of the workers’ cottages had to be vacated. They were going to be converted into holiday rentals for tourists. The burial ground would be deconsecrated by the bishop, the burials probably transferred to the cemetery at Buxton. The church would be advertised as a potential residential conversion. It would suit a couple looking for rural seclusion and wonderful views, as long as they had enough money to spend.

‘Mrs Mellor,’ called Cooper before the woman had left the graveyard. ‘Do you know Jason Shaw? Does he still have family here in Bowden?’

‘Jason? He has no family and no friends. Nobody has much to do with him. Why?’

‘We know he was in the area near the bridge when Sandra died.’

‘I can’t tell you much about him. He works at night. In fact, he’s a bit strange like that. He hardly ever goes out in the daylight.’

‘Well, it’s true it was dark at the time,’ said Cooper. ‘Mr Shaw said he was walking his dog that night.’

Mrs Mellor scowled. ‘He never walks that dog. It lives in a run in his yard. I call it cruel myself.’