Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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‘Perhaps they do.’

Cooper thought it sounded like a touch of exaggeration, a bit of added propaganda to make the plans sound even worse and cause that extra edge of outrage. Concreting over a graveyard? Who wouldn’t object to that?

‘When the group first got together they just talked about things,’ said Poppy. ‘Letting off steam, I suppose. But then they decided to walk all the old coffin roads, as a symbolic gesture. It was on one of the walks they had the idea of a bigger protest. Something more dramatic.’

‘Who actually suggested it?’

‘Rob says he can’t remember.’

‘We’ll ask him again, of course.’

‘He doesn’t trust the cops. But he might talk to you.’

Cooper smiled. Well, that was a compliment, he supposed, to be considered not truly a cop.

‘Anyway,’ said Poppy. ‘I couldn’t do it. I was supposed to be there that night, according to the plan. But I got scared. I sat in my car for a few minutes and then I drove away and went home.’

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Poppy.’

‘I bottled out. That’s what Rob would say.’

‘But you’ve talked to Rob since?’

‘Oh, yes. He texted me after it all happened and we met up the next day to talk about it.’

‘On Friday.’

‘Yes. I tried to persuade him to come in and talk to you, but he wouldn’t do it.’

‘He won’t be happy about you telling me this, then,’ said Cooper.

‘No, he won’t. But it’s for the best. I’ve thought and thought about this, and I’m concerned for him. He didn’t do anything wrong, you see. But I’m frightened there are other people in that group who are much worse. From what Rob says, they might be violent.’

‘Do you know who the other group members are? Do you have any names?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I wasn’t that closely involved. I just knew Rob.’

‘I see.’

‘He’s a good guy,’ insisted Poppy. ‘Really he is. Rob isn’t guilty of anything, except trying to protect other people.’

29

When Poppy Mellor had gone, Cooper thought back to his conversation with Rob Beresford that early morning near the Corpse Bridge. After Halloween night he’d been dog-tired or he might not have missed so much.

While he sat waiting in the police car at the Corpse Bridge, Rob Beresford must have had plenty of time to think things through and consider his position. It would have been obvious to him the victim would soon be identified. The fact that she was known to him would emerge during the investigation. If he hadn’t mentioned straight away that he recognised her, it would have looked bad for him when the facts came out. It would certainly have put him under suspicion. Only the guilty made a secret of something like that.

So Beresford had definitely made the sensible decision, coming straight out with it. He must have been worried when Cooper failed to ask him the right question. It was easy in those circumstances to start thinking the police knew more than they actually did. Perhaps Rob Beresford had given Cooper more credit than he deserved. When Beresford blurted out that he knew the victim, it had been one of those moments when you grasped your courage in both hands and took an irrevocable step, when you made a decision there was no going back from. It had almost worked for him, too.

Cooper wondered if it was a sign of another weakness in his own attitude that he’d accepted the likelihood of Rob Beresford and Sandra Blair knowing each other. It was the way things were around here. If you’d lived in one of these villages for a while, you did know everyone. Cooper grew up that way, thinking nothing odd at all in the fact that if you saw a face you didn’t know, it would certainly belong to a tourist, someone who would be gone back to their own part of the country next week. Those who belonged to the area were all people he knew, or at least recognised.

So perhaps it should have struck him as too much of a coincidence that Rob Beresford knew Sandra Blair, but it didn’t at the time. That was a situation where another officer might have taken a different attitude and made a better decision. Diane Fry, for example. Her city girl scepticism would have been a great advantage.

Cooper shook his head. It wasn’t often he found himself thinking that. Or perhaps he’d let the thought cross his mind a few times, but dismissed it too easily.

He went slowly back into the CID room, where he stopped by Luke Irvine’s desk.

‘Well, Luke,’ he said, ‘now I know who the weak link is.’

‘Sorry?’

Cooper called Gavin Murfin over and explained Poppy Mellor’s story to them.

‘We’re going to need background checks on everyone involved,’ said Cooper when he’d finished. ‘You can share the tasks out between you.’

‘Who was in this group, then?’ asked Irvine.

‘All of them, I think,’ said Cooper. ‘Rob Beresford, Jason Shaw, the Nadens – and Sandra Blair herself. But there might be more we don’t know about. The Nadens and Shaw only came forward after the appeals because they thought someone else had been there at the bridge that night who might have seen them and been able to describe them to us.’

‘Someone who wasn’t a member of the group, you mean.’

‘Exactly. Either innocent members of the public or individuals who were involved in some activity of their own. Whichever it was, they knew it would look bad if they didn’t admit straight away to their presence. Just as Rob Beresford figured he should admit that he knew Sandra Blair. They would have looked guilty if we found out from another source.’

‘They weren’t just opportunists, were they?’ said Irvine.

‘Not at all. They’d thought about this and planned it. When it went wrong they did the sensible thing. It might have worked out too, but for Poppy Mellor. She thinks she’s defending the innocent. But perhaps not.’

‘And the target of their bizarre scheme is the Manby family.’

‘It seems so. They’re protesting against development plans for the graveyard at Bowden.’

‘Everyone keeps saying “the Manby family”. But who is there living at the abbey, apart from the earl himself?’

‘I can tell you that,’ said Murfin, flicking through the pages of his notebook. ‘I’ve got it here. There’s the earl’s wife, Countess Caroline. And three grown-up children. The eldest is Lord Peter Manby. Then there’s the Honourable Richard, and Lady Imogen. Peter is the heir. He’ll be the next earl in due course. That’s why he gets to be called Lord, when his younger brother is just Honourable.’

‘You’ve done a bit of research, then, Gavin.’

‘I thought if we were going to be mingling with the aristocracy…’

‘Well, we’re not.’

Murfin sighed. ‘It’s probably for the best. You’d only embarrass us with your uncouth ways.’

‘I’m not sure the younger Manbys spend much time at the abbey,’ said Cooper. ‘No more than they have to, anyway.’

‘Well, would you? It must be like living in a fish tank, with people gawping at you all day long.’

‘Doesn’t Peter Manby have some other claim to fame?’ said Irvine. ‘His name rings a bell vaguely.’

‘He worked in the media for a while, then ran his own production company making strange little indie films. It was never a success. Then he stood as a parliamentary candidate for the High Peak a couple of general elections ago.’

‘He wanted to be an MP?’

‘I don’t know whether he seriously hoped to get elected. He stood as an Independent candidate. They never get in, do they? Not around here.’

‘He must be in his mid-to-late thirties now.’

‘The last I could see, he was working for an advertising agency in London.’

‘Well,’ said Irvine, ‘it sounds as though he’s doing anything he can to get away from Knowle Abbey.’

‘I imagine he’s just trying out a few things while he has the freedom to,’ said Cooper. ‘Once he succeeds his father, he’ll be tied to Knowle. All the responsibilities will be his then. Personally, I don’t really envy him.’

Ben Cooper had a lot of notes to write out before the morning briefing. When he reported his interview with Poppy Mellor, he found himself stumbling a bit over his own scrawl, trying to cast light on the motives and identity of the group of which both Sandra Blair and Rob Beresford had been members.

‘What’s your next move, DS Cooper?’ asked Superintendent Branagh.

Cooper thought he detected a dwindling of her interest in the tone of the question.

‘I’ll despatch a team to pick up Rob Beresford. And we’ll need to talk to the Nadens and Jason Shaw again. We should try to get some more names from them.’

‘Are we considering charges?’

‘If we can establish which of the group was responsible for the threatening letter, the graffiti…’

‘Yes, of course.’

Then Branagh turned away.

‘And what about George Redfearn?’ she said.

‘We’re still awaiting the post-mortem results,’ said DI Walker. ‘But we’ve had reports that at least two people went up to Pilsbury Castle that night in separate cars, and they didn’t all come back down. His wife is due to arrive from France today. We’ve managed to contact her to inform her of her husband’s death, so at least she’ll be prepared when she arrives.’

Cooper was unable to concentrate fully on what was being said next, until he heard his own name mentioned.

‘Oh, and DS Cooper asked us to establish whether there were any traces of petrol at the scene,’ Wayne Abbott was saying.

Branagh switched her attention back to him suddenly and he sat up straight.

‘Why would you do that, DS Cooper?’ she asked.

‘A smell, ma’am.’

‘Got a nose for these things, have you?’

Cooper grimaced. ‘Yes, ma’am. Well, I just thought it was quite noticeable.’

‘And was there any petrol?’

‘No,’ said Abbott, leaving a dramatic pause. ‘In fact, it was diesel fuel. We found evidence of diesel, as well as traces of ammonium nitrate.’

‘Near the body?’

‘It was on the victim’s clothing.’

Superintendent Branagh called Cooper into her office after the briefing.

‘DS Cooper, you seemed to be distracted. What’s on your mind?’

But Cooper didn’t answer directly.

‘There will be another victim, you know,’ he said. ‘Possibly two.’

She looked annoyed. ‘Ben, people in that part of Derbyshire are getting very jumpy,’ she said. ‘They’re already frightened in those small villages. We must not let the idea get out that we expect more killings.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘If your idea about a corpse on each of the coffin roads starts to be spread around—’

‘No one outside this building will hear it from me,’ said Cooper. ‘But ma’am…’

‘What?’

‘I think some of those people will be putting two and two together themselves before very long.’

They’d brought Geoff and Sally Naden in for a second interview. When Poppy Mellor’s version of events was put to them, they confirmed it almost willingly. Their admission seemed to come as quite a relief.

‘It was a group thing,’ said Geoff. ‘We were all going to be there together, in unity. A joint effort.’

Cooper blinked. That was quite a verbal achievement. Naden had made five attempts to spread responsibility within a few sentences.

‘But you say you didn’t get as far as the bridge in the end?’

‘Well, we thought we had the wrong night,’ said Geoff.

‘He thought we had the wrong night,’ said his wife. ‘But planning was never one of his strong points. I had a different opinion.’

‘You were right on this occasion, Mrs Naden,’ said Cooper.

‘Of course I was.’

‘But it was lucky that you listened to your husband. It might have kept you out of danger.’

Naden grimaced at the thought. ‘We never intended any harm,’ he said.

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

‘It was just a protest. A statement. People do a lot worse things when they feel strongly about a cause.’

‘I was never convinced,’ said Sally. ‘I still didn’t think it was the wrong night. I told him as much when we got home.’

‘Several times,’ said Geoff.

‘And the other people in the group?’

‘Beresford,’ said Naden.

‘Yes.’

‘And Jason Shaw,’ he added.

‘Right.’

‘And Sandra, of course,’ said his wife. ‘And there was some girl, though I don’t think we ever saw her.’

‘Beresford’s girlfriend,’ said Naden.

‘Anyone else?’

They both shook their heads.

‘There were some others, in the beginning,’ said Sally. ‘But they just talked and grumbled, and never actually did anything. You know the sort.’

‘That’s right,’ said Geoff. ‘I suppose you might say we were the stalwarts.’

‘But some of us were worse than others,’ said Sally suddenly.

Then she put her hand to her mouth, as if she’d spoken too much. But for once her husband seemed to agree.

‘Sandra was crazy, you know,’ he said. ‘All that weird stuff about magic. It made no sense. And she was always dosing herself with herbal medicines. At least, that’s what she called them.’

Sally’s mouth had drawn into a tight, disapproving line. When Cooper looked at her closely now, he could see the shadows in her face, the tension round her eyes. He wondered what was wrong with her. She looked like a woman who knew about pain.

‘Goodness knows what she was doing to herself,’ said Sally. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Were you aware that Mrs Blair was taking drugs?’ asked Cooper.

They glanced at each other.

‘We guessed,’ said Sally. ‘And she was drinking too, of course. But then, we all know people who drink a bit too much, don’t we?’

Geoff Naden cleared his throat loudly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it might interest you to know that Sandra was by far the most extreme member of the group.’

‘Was she, sir? Extreme in what way?’

Naden could see that he had Cooper’s interest. He leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone.

‘She was most in favour of what they call direct action. She wanted to go further. You understand?’ Naden paused. ‘We were afraid that she might go too far in the end. We thought she might be driven to violence.’

‘Really?’ Cooper couldn’t keep the tone of scepticism from his voice. ‘Was Mrs Blair particularly close to any of the other members of the group?’

‘Ah now,’ said Naden, ‘you’ll have to ask someone else about that.’

30

Cooper returned to his desk and pulled out his map again, with the routes of the coffin roads marked on it.

But as soon as he sat down Becky Hurst looked up from a call.

‘Ben? Ben?’ she said, an unmistakable note of urgency in her voice.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Cooper, still gazing at the map. ‘We’ve got another dead body.’

The conclusion seemed inevitable, a logical fit to the network of coffin ways converging on the bridge. Where there were two bodies, there must be a third.

‘No,’ said Hurst. ‘No dead body. Well, not yet. But the officers we sent to Earl Sterndale. They can’t locate Rob Beresford and his parents are reporting him missing.’

‘Put out an alert for him. He won’t have gone far.’

‘Okay.’

‘What about Jason Shaw?’

‘Carol and Luke are tracing him now.’

Cooper ran a hand through his hair, envisaging disaster. His initial witness, the person who found Sandra Blair’s body, had slipped through his fingers. Worse, Rob Beresford might end up as the next of those bodies.

He heard a cough and found Wayne Abbott standing at his shoulder.

‘I thought you’d like to know straight away,’ said Abbott. ‘Digital forensics have managed to retrieve some interesting images off Sandra Blair’s computer. It looks as though she took them on her smartphone, then emailed them to herself.’

‘Great. Let’s have a look.’

Abbott placed a laptop on his desk and flipped open the screen. A familiar image appeared, caught in a glare of sun.

‘As you can see, first we have some shots of the bridge,’ said Abbott. ‘Taken in daylight, of course.’

‘The Corpse Bridge, taken from west and east banks of the river. It must have been a planning visit. They were well organised.’

‘Right. And here are some of the dummy, but taken indoors.’

‘That’s Mrs Blair’s sitting room,’ said Cooper.

He was looking at a badly lit picture of the effigy of Earl Manby. It was sitting in one of the chintzy armchairs at Pilsbury Cottage with the African rug on the wall behind it.

‘Why would she take a photograph of it, do you think?’

‘She was very proud of her handiwork,’ said Cooper.

Abbott nodded. ‘This will interest you most. Digital forensics managed to retrieve an image from a few months earlier. The quality isn’t very good, but they’ve done their best to enhance this one. It might be important. It was taken in London, I think. Some kind of railway depot. Perhaps a repair yard or a sidings for old rolling stock.’

Cooper leaned forward eagerly. There they were in the photograph, all of them. Geoff Naden stood slightly in front, as if leading a guided walk, with Sally at his elbow. They were flanked by Rob Beresford, Jason Shaw and, lurking to one side, Sandra Blair herself.

The group were standing on a path with trees behind them. The background was fairly unremarkable and undistinguished, except for one thing. The most striking detail in the picture was a London Underground train on a track in a dip between the group and the belt of trees. The last carriage of another train could just be made out past Sandra Blair’s head. It looked as if the train were drawn up in a sidings.

There was one more photo. It was of Sandra herself, standing on her own. The shot was taken by flash at night, so her skin was washed out and pale, her eyes flared red, her figure stood out in unnatural detail from her surroundings as if she were an illusion or phantom. In that instant of the flash going off, Sandra Blair already looked like a ghost.

‘What’s the date stamp on this?’ asked Cooper.

‘October thirty-first.’

‘The night she died.’

Cooper peered more closely. Though the colours weren’t accurate, he could see Sandra was wearing the same clothes that her body had been found in, including the blue waterproof jacket and the walking boots. And he’d been right about the hat. It was woollen, with ear flaps and decorated in some kind of Scandinavian design. Sandra’s dark hair peeped out of it over her forehead. She was holding something in her hand, close to her body. Cooper couldn’t see what it was, but his bet was on a torch. That was missing from the scene too.

‘Can we zoom in a bit?’ he said.

‘Sure.’

In the background he could make out the distinctive arched outline, only just visible but recognisable, even in the darkness. Its wet, moss-covered stones glittered eerily in the light of the flash. Sandra Blair was standing right in front of the Corpse Bridge, no more than a few feet from where she died.

Cooper asked Abbott to go back to the group shot again.

‘Yes, strange, isn’t it?’ said Abbott. ‘A couple of Tube trains. It must be in the London area somewhere. There are no Tube trains in Derbyshire.’

‘Where do you live, Wayne?’ asked Cooper.

‘Me? In Sheffield.’

‘That explains it.’

Abbott stared at him in puzzlement. But Cooper was remembering what Poppy Mellor had said. They walked all the old coffin roads. Of course they did. And this was one of them.

‘No Tube trains in Derbyshire?’ he said. ‘Actually, I think you’ll find there are. Or at least, there were when this photograph was taken.’

DC Luke Irvine had been sent to Bowden with Carol Villiers. They parked near the church and walked across to Jason Shaw’s address.

Villiers had seen Shaw before, but it was the first time Irvine had set eyes on him. He was recorded as being in his early thirties. Irvine noted the dark stubble. He envied the silver ear stud – he would have one himself, if he could.

They’d found Shaw in a small backyard behind his cottage. It was paved and only large enough to contain a couple of wheelie bins and a dog run. A blue Land Rover Discovery was drawn up by the side wall.

The dog began barking before they went round the corner of the house, so Shaw knew someone was coming. He’d put down a bowl of dog food and some water in the run and was just closing the door. The dog was a collie cross of some kind. Irvine couldn’t have been more accurate, though he was sure Ben Cooper would have known.

Shaw knew who they were straight away. He didn’t seem at all surprised.

‘I thought you lot would be here before long,’ he said.

They showed him their IDs anyway. The dog began barking again, but Shaw yelled at it and it cowered away from the fence.

‘You know why we’ve come, then,’ said Villiers. ‘You didn’t tell us the truth when you came in to make a statement in Edendale on Saturday morning.’

‘I didn’t lie,’ said Shaw. ‘I told you some of the truth. The part that mattered.’

‘Well, we don’t agree with that attitude, sir. It all matters to us.’

Shaw wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘I don’t see that it’s relevant. I came forward like a good citizen when I heard the appeals. That’s the end of it.’

‘Obviously we have to ask you about the protest group you’re a member of. We need to know what was going on last Thursday night at the bridge.’

‘I honestly don’t know what I can tell you about the group,’ said Shaw.

‘You didn’t tell us anything before.’

‘Okay, but – you’ve talked to some of the others already, haven’t you? So you’ll know all about it by now. More than I could tell you, anyway. I’m just a humble foot soldier. The others are the ones with the brains. They did all the talking and I just trailed along behind, if you get my meaning.’

‘So who sent the threatening letter to the Manbys and wrote graffiti on the wall of the chapel at Knowle Abbey?’

Shaw shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that was ever part of the plan. Somebody taking a bit of individual action, by the sound of it. Graffiti? Ask Rob Beresford, that would be my suggestion. It sounds like his sort of trick.’

‘And what about Sandra Blair?’

He stalled for the first time and looked genuinely upset for a few moments. But the expression passed. ‘That was a real shame. She was okay, Sandra. I bet the others told you she was a nutcase. Well, she was a bit wacky in some ways, I suppose. But she meant well.’

‘You were with her that night at the bridge, weren’t you?’

‘Only up to a point,’ said Shaw.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I had her stuff in my Land Rover – you know, the effigy thing and the other bits and pieces.’

‘A noose? A witch ball?’

‘I think that was it. I’d collected the stuff from her earlier in the week. Then that afternoon, when she finished work, she walked across from Crowdecote and I met her in Longnor, in front of the general stores. She wouldn’t have got her own car anywhere near the bridge, you see. But with the Land Rover, I got right down to the last few yards, until the track was too broken up. I mean, she wouldn’t have wanted to walk down to the bridge with those things. If anybody had seen her, that would definitely have looked weird.’

‘Then what did you do?’

‘I left her to it,’ said Shaw.

‘You left her there on her own?’

‘Yes. Well, she was on her own when I drove back up the track. I had to get the Land Rover clear. If anybody saw it going down, they would just think I was another off-roader. But if it was parked by the bridge for a couple of hours, well – that looks suspicious.’

‘Who worked all this out?’ asked Irvine.

Shaw laughed. ‘Not me, anyway. I just did what I was told.’

‘So why were you there on the track again later?’

‘Once I shifted the Land Rover, I was supposed to go back. That was the plan. We were going to get photos when it was all set up. The group standing round the noose. We’d have our faces covered by hoods and scarves. It was going to be like a terrorist video – you know, when they kidnap some tourist and put pictures on the internet standing round him with their Kalashnikovs. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes. But it didn’t happen, did it?’

‘No,’ said Shaw. ‘Well, I told you the rest, when I came in the first time. I don’t know any more than that.’

‘You’re saying you have no idea what happened to Sandra Blair at the bridge?’

‘Not a clue. Did … did someone do that to her? They killed her?’

‘Who do you think might have done that, Mr Shaw?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘One of the group?’

‘Like who?’

‘You tell me.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘I honestly can’t imagine. I mean, they didn’t always see eye to eye. They argued sometimes. Particularly…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, Sally Naden. She didn’t think much of Sandra. I heard her say once that Sandra was a liability. But it wasn’t serious. She would never kill her. Why would she do that? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It was your suggestion.’

‘I’m just trying to help.’

‘As it happens,’ said Villiers, ‘the post-mortem examination suggests that Mrs Blair wasn’t deliberately killed. She may just have had an accident.’

Shaw looked faintly relieved. ‘Well, even so – it’s still a real shame.’

Irvine cast around for any questions that Villiers hadn’t asked. As usual he found himself wondering what Ben Cooper would do or say. Something a bit unexpected, which might catch their interviewee.

‘You work here at Knowle Abbey, don’t you, sir?’ he said.

Shaw looked at him. ‘I’m on the estate staff. Gamekeeping mostly.’

‘Have you always worked on the estate?’

‘No. I used to have a job in Hartington. It was good work too. But that went belly up.’

Villiers frowned. But Irvine had picked up a thing or two while he was with Cooper.

‘Did you have a job at the cheese factory?’ he said.

Shaw’s entire attention was on him now and it made Irvine smile.

‘Yes, I was in the warehouse,’ said Shaw. ‘I did a bit of forklift work too. You know what happened to the factory, then?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Irvine, feeling smug. ‘It was sold and you were all made redundant.’

Shaw scowled. ‘That’s the truth. And it’s the same story everywhere you go.’