Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

5

DC Luke Irvine was breathless by the time he reached the top of the trackway where his car was parked on a grass verge. He was driving a Vauxhall hatchback, and it was his current pride and joy. He hated the idea of scraping its paintwork on a dry stone wall in one of these narrow lanes, or having some uniformed bobby snapping his wing mirror off with a Transit van.

As he climbed into his car, he wondered if there was a reason he’d been tasked with finding out about the victim’s family. It might mean that he’d end up having to inform bereaved relatives of a death. It was the job everyone dreaded the most. Would Ben Cooper delegate that responsibility to him?

Irvine was conscious of certain subjects he mustn’t mention to his DS. It was murmured around the office that Ben Cooper might still be vulnerable to an ill-judged comment. No one knew how he might react to the wrong word. Some said he was on a knife edge, though so far he seemed to be hiding it well. Irvine was even nervous of mentioning the Scenes of Crime department, or crime-scene examiners, or even some forensic detail. It was the department Ben’s fiancée had worked in. Would it bring back intolerable memories?

But Irvine wondered whether he was being over-sensitive about this. Cooper was a professional. He could surely deal with these things; separate his job from whatever happened in his private life outside the office. Even the death of a fiancée.

With the car started, he checked his satnav for Earl Sterndale. Ben Cooper would have used a map, of course. He was an obsessive user of Ordnance Survey maps. No, scratch that. Ben would have known exactly which way to go without having to look at any map. Irvine had to accept that he wasn’t as familiar with these remoter areas as his DS was. He wasn’t a Derbyshire boy like Cooper. He’d grown up in West Yorkshire. Parts of that county were very similar to the Dark Peak, but it didn’t help when it came to navigating these back roads.

As he inched his way to the road and turned towards a hamlet called Glutton, Irvine shook his head in frustration. It seemed so difficult these days to know what was the right thing to do or say. Perhaps it was working so closely with Becky Hurst that had done this to him. She’d made him paranoid about blurting out something that might upset or offend anyone listening.

But Becky was right a lot of the time, of course. You had to be careful; what you said, especially when you were a police officer. It didn’t really matter what your personal opinions were, as long as you didn’t act on them or express them out loud. Not even in an email or a tweet. Someone was bound to report you for inappropriate behaviour. It was almost the worst offence you could commit now. No one allowed police officers to be human, not in the way they once had. No office banter or canteen culture pranks, none of that black humour or contempt for criminals the old school coppers had expressed on a daily basis.

You’d think it was unhealthy to keep all this stuff bottled up, though. All those old guys around the station always seemed so much more relaxed. Take Gavin Murfin. He was so laid back he was practically lying dead on the floor. He said what he thought and didn’t care about the consequences. He’d already put in his thirty years’ service and could pack his belongings at any moment with the certainty of collecting his full pension.

Irvine couldn’t imagine ending up like that. The job was so different now. You had to keep your lip buttoned if you wanted to survive long enough to call it a career. If he managed to make it to his thirty, Irvine suspected he’d be a screwed-up, paranoid mess. Probably a chief superintendent, in fact.

He drove the Vauxhall up out of the valley and through some of those curiously shaped hills that characterised this side of the county. Earl Sterndale was only a little way ahead. He was glad of the satnav’s instructions when it came time to make the turn. The crossroads were almost anonymous and unrecognisable.

The Beresfords’ house was a stone-built semi near the village church. He was able to park directly in front. But he waited for a few minutes, watching children leaving their homes and walking down to the bus stop to wait for the school bus. It made him feel like a lurking paedophile and he began to worry that a suspicious parent might take his registration number and report him.

Finally, he couldn’t waste any more time. He climbed out of the car and checked his pockets to make sure he had his notebook, his warrant card and his phone. It was as he was looking down that he noticed his shoes were caked in mud. So were the bottoms of his trousers. There must be mud on the carpet in his car too, damn it. Just as bad was the fact that he now had to present himself at someone’s front door in this state and expect to be taken seriously. There was no point in trying to brush the mud off until it dried. Anything he did now would only make it worse.

Irvine cursed under his breath. He heard laughter and turned to see a couple of girls about thirteen years old walking past. They were giggling and nudging each other like idiots. He felt himself beginning to flush. He was glad his DS couldn’t see him now.

He knew Ben Cooper had wanted children. Wanted them badly, in fact. Irvine had once run into Cooper on the street in town, when they were both off duty. It had been in Clappergate, near the entrance to the shopping precinct. He remembered the encounter well, because it had been one of the moments when details impressed themselves on his mind.

Cooper had been accompanied by his two nieces, the younger one holding his hand, the other a bit too old to do the same without embarrassment, but sticking close by his side. Irvine had tried to make polite small talk, the way you were supposed to. But he’d felt very awkward, and even a bit shocked, at this terribly domestic picture of his detective sergeant standing in the street like a proud dad.

Maybe it wouldn’t happen for Cooper now. He might never have his own children to take shopping. Irvine was sure it must be what Cooper was thinking.

Irvine didn’t like children much himself. He didn’t possess that urge to be a parent. He couldn’t help a horrified reaction to mothers sometimes. It was the way they seemed to regard motherhood as giving them not only special privileges, but some kind of superpower. Their sense of entitlement could be staggering and they instilled it in their children too. He’d never been brought up like that. Back home in Yorkshire he’d been taught a bit of humility and consideration for other people. It made him feel like some old fogey to be looking at these arrogant young kids and dreading what sort of society they’d create when they grew up.

At least he couldn’t picture Becky Hurst as a mother. It would be far too disruptive to her future plans.

He turned his back on the girls, surreptitiously wiped his shoes on a patch of grass and went to knock on the Beresfords’ door.

Once the search area was extended, it didn’t take long for the search teams to turn up their first find. When the shout went up from somewhere deep among the trees, Cooper felt all his senses prickle with anticipation. It was as if a shot of adrenalin had just gone through his veins. All the tiredness fell away like dead skin. There was an edge to the tone of the voices he could hear from the woods. It told him what he’d been waiting for. This was going to be something that would change the whole picture.

‘What have you found?’ he asked when he’d run up the slope to the point where the shout had come from.

‘Look for yourself, Sergeant.’

Cooper pushed through members of the search team and looked. There was another trackway here, descending the hill diagonally from the north-east. There was very little trace of the stone setts, if there had ever been any. But the track was marked by a low wall on the side where it overlooked the valley.

Just at the point where this route dipped to approach the Corpse Bridge, a large slab of stone was embedded in the ground. Its top was flat and smooth, and it must have been almost six feet in length. On its own it looked anomalous. It was obvious that it had been sited here deliberately, but a long time ago. Over the centuries it had weathered and become scarred and worn by use. Its mossy sides blended in with its surroundings, but it had clearly been important. It was functional, not decorative. And Cooper knew what it was.

‘A coffin stone,’ he said. ‘They would rest the coffin here before they crossed the bridge.’

The officers in the search team were looking at him expectantly now. That was the trouble with sounding as though you knew what you were talking about. Sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you were as baffled as everyone else.

‘But as for that,’ said Cooper. ‘I have no idea.’

Lying on the coffin stone was a makeshift dummy. It was an effigy stuffed with straw or cotton wool, stitched into an outfit of clothes that looked to have been made for it specially – brown corduroy trousers, a tweed jacket, a floppy hat.

‘It’s a guy,’ said someone. ‘That’s what it is.’

Cooper nodded. Yes, in some ways, it was a traditional Bonfire Night guy, the sort of thing that would be on bonfires all over the country in a few days’ time. But most of them would be much less carefully crafted than this one. There was something chilling about the amount of effort that had gone into creating the features of the face. He felt sure it was intended to resemble some real person, though it was no one he recognised. What message was it intended to convey?

The effigy lay sprawled on its back on the coffin stone, its limbs bent into unnatural shapes, its torso wet and beginning to cover over in dead leaves. The unnerving face was grinning up at him from amid the first stages of decomposition.

And that was the message, surely. It was a body, waiting here. Waiting for its time to cross the Corpse Bridge.

‘Staffordshire have made a find on their side too. Just a few yards up the track from the river.’

‘What is it?’

‘A piece of rope.’

‘Rope?’ said Cooper.

‘Well, to be exact – it’s a noose.’

Cooper gazed at the river crossing, with its two tracks coming down from the Derbyshire side and a third leading away into Staffordshire. Crossroads held a special place in folklore. In superstitious belief, places where tracks intersected were considered dangerous. They were protected by spirit guardians, because they were places where the world and the underworld met. Many people believed that the Devil could be made to manifest himself there.

Well, the Corpse Bridge wasn’t quite a crossroads, but it was a focal point where three routes met. It would probably have filled the requirements for believers in the old crossroads lore.

Cooper looked at the body, still lying on the bank. He tried to imagine what connection the victim might have had to the carefully constructed effigy on the coffin stone or to a rope noose. But his imagination failed him for once. Perhaps the link was something beyond his comprehension.

People scoffed at the old beliefs now, of course. But the Devil had manifested himself here, after all.

6

Luke Irvine came away from the Beresfords’ house in Earl Sterndale wondering whether his visit had been as useful as he’d hoped.

Yes, he’d obtained an address for Sandra Blair in Crowdecote and learned that she was widowed, her husband having died five years ago. No children either. The nearest thing to a next of kin was probably a sister in Scotland, who the Beresfords didn’t know. But that was about it.

Mrs Beresford didn’t know anything about the husband, Gary. She’d never met him, having only come into contact with Sandra at the tea rooms in Hartington, and later at WI meetings. Sandra had talked about her husband quite a bit, but only spoke of the small things, the personal stuff – a holiday in Tenerife, Gary’s favourite dog, their first house in Bowden, where they’d lived until her husband’s death. She seemed to have avoided the less personal topics.

Sandra Blair was local, though, and not an incomer. That ought to help. More people would know her than if she’d only moved into the area in the last few years.

Irvine had already phoned these details to his DS. But would they be enough? Cooper had sounded distracted and distant on the phone. Of course, he liked his DCs to give him more than just the basic facts. He liked to get their impressions of the people involved, an opinion or instinctive reaction. Becky Hurst was great at that. And DC Carol Villiers too, of course. Ben always trusted her opinion.

Privately, Irvine felt he might be lacking in this department. He couldn’t seem to form any subjective impressions of individuals while he was concentrating on asking the important questions and making notes. The temptation was to make something up, offer an opinion he didn’t really feel.

Oh, well. He’d soon find out whether it was enough, by what task DS Cooper sent him on next.

Ben Cooper was waiting at the top of the trackway leading down to the Corpse Bridge. He was studying the landscape, trying to achieve an overall view of the topography in a way that he couldn’t get from a map, or even from a satellite image on Google.

From here the bridge was invisible, standing way down among the trees at the foot of the slope. The only buildings within half a mile were those derelict field barns on the Derbyshire side. The ruins had been searched, but nothing else had turned up, no signs of recent activity or occupation. Not even a homeless person or lost hiker would have taken the trouble to fight their way into one of the roofless shells through the tangle of overgrown birch trees and dying brambles.

Each side of the valley, pathways snaked up the hillsides until they reached a narrow B-road and the occasional isolated farmstead. The nearest farms had been visited by uniformed officers, but no one could have seen or heard anything from there. Working farmers were in bed and fast asleep at the time Sandra Blair must have been killed. They’d awoken to the first signs of police activity.

With a frown, Cooper scanned the countryside around. To the south of the Corpse Bridge, the River Dove formed a loop and created that wide area of flat, fertile ground in the bottom of the valley. Lit by a shaft of sunlight in the distance was Knowle Abbey, sitting elegantly among its acres of parkland as if posing for photographers. Only the white scar of a disused limestone quarry immediately behind it created a slight flaw in the picture.

Cooper remembered a visit to this stately home when he was a teenager. His mother had loved these sorts of places. Chatsworth House, Haddon Hall – anywhere the aristocracy lived seemed to hold some strange kind of fascination for her. She enjoyed gawping at the antique furniture and endless family portraits, exclaiming at the size of the dining table and the four-poster beds, wandering round the immaculate gardens and choosing a souvenir from the gift shop. And she wasn’t alone, judging by the crowds of visitors who flocked to these historic houses. Like Isabel Cooper, most of them had far more in common with the servants who’d worked away in the kitchens and pantries than with the aristocrats in the portraits.

Knowle wasn’t quite in the Chatsworth House league, though. While Chatsworth’s façade was a familiar sight on postcards and in guides to popular Peak District attractions, Knowle Abbey rarely made an appearance. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire were much better known than the Earl and Countess Manby. The Manbys were a bit of a mystery. They never seemed to get their pictures in the papers supporting local charities or opening summer fêtes. Cooper knew the Devonshires by sight, but had no idea what Earl Manby looked like.

A little to the west, conveniently out of sight of the abbey, was the estate village of Bowden. Its quaint stone cottages were inhabited by workers on the earl’s estate. The village had been built for that purpose, so that all the gamekeepers and gardeners and domestic staff could live near their work, while paying rent to the earl as their landlord.

Bowden had its own little church, where for centuries a clergyman appointed by the earl would have preached to his little flock about duty and morality, and about knowing their place. There was a village hall too, and at one time a small schoolhouse for the estate workers’ children. The present children went to school in Hartington and the church saw only the occasional visit from an overworked vicar covering five parishes. But otherwise, Bowden hadn’t changed much.

To the north of the bridge the River Dove came down from its source on Axe Edge Moor. On the Derbyshire side a long string of limestone quarries ran southwards from the town of Buxton along the A515. As a result this narrow strip of the county was left almost isolated between the quarries and the river. There were only a few small communities here – Earl Sterndale and Crowdecote, Glutton and Pilsbury. They were tiny places, with nothing of any size until you reached Hartington to the south.

The hills were strange too, even for a county like Derbyshire. Their shapes looked unnatural, like animals or artificial constructions from the ancient past. This was certainly an area where myths and legends would thrive. You only needed one look at those hills to make you believe in anything.

‘What do you want me to do next, Ben?’ asked Irvine after he’d reported to Cooper.

‘You can come with me to Crowdecote. And then Hartington. The tea rooms should be open now.’

‘Crowdecote? Well, I got the address…’

Cooper held up an evidence bag from among the items retrieved from the body.

‘And we’ve got the key too,’ he said.

The roads in this area were slippery with mud and wet leaves. Farm vehicles had been busy working well into the autumn, trimming hedgerows and verges, scattering more debris on the already difficult surfaces. Cooper drove carefully, conscious of his tiredness, the risk of a momentary lapse of concentration on a treacherous bend.

Sandra Blair had lived in a stone cottage in a small row of them close to the edge of a narrow road that dipped and twisted its way through the hamlet of Crowdecote like a ski slope, dropping down to the Dove. A few yards away, set back from the road, was the village pub, the Pack Horse Inn. And almost directly opposite, a lane swung off towards Earl Sterndale.

The cottage was separated from the road by a short stretch of iron railings. Behind them there was no room for anything that could be called a garden, just a climbing rose against the front wall and a bird feeder with an empty feed tray positioned right in front of the sash window. The cottage hadn’t been decorated for a while, but a carriage lamp and a hand-painted ceramic name plate had been added by the front door in recent years. It had been given the name of Pilsbury Cottage.

‘What car does Sandra Blair drive?’ asked Cooper, hoping that Irvine had used a bit of initiative when he got her address.

‘A red Ford Ka,’ Irvine said promptly.

Cooper nodded. And there it was. A red Ford Ka, tucked into a tight parking area at the side of the cottage, where it was just clear of the road. Did Sandra get a lift from someone else last night to the place where she’d met her death? Or was she another bike owner, like Rob Beresford? Cooper’s money was on the first possibility – it would certainly be much more helpful to the investigation. The second option seemed like too much of a coincidence, at the very least.

‘When we’ve finished in the cottage, the neighbours will have to be spoken to,’ said Cooper.

‘We’ll be looking for anyone who witnessed Mrs Blair leaving home last night,’ said Irvine, looking over the Ka.

‘Or, failing that, someone who can help us to narrow down the time. If a neighbour can confirm when she was still at home, that would help a bit. And of course—’

‘Any sightings of a vehicle calling at Pilsbury Cottage,’ added Irvine. ‘Or the name of a boyfriend, anyone she might have been going out with last night?’

‘Very good, Luke.’

Irvine peered through the driver’s window of the Ford. ‘Are the car keys on the ring with those for the house?’

Cooper jingled the keys. ‘No. Let’s see if they’re inside.’

‘Shouldn’t we knock first?’ asked Irvine.

‘Why?’

‘Well, just in case … there might be someone at home.’

‘Go ahead, then.’

Irvine gave a loud rap on the front door, while Cooper waited, rattling the keys. He was conscious of faces appearing at windows nearby, wondering who they were and what they were up to. There might be a few calls to the local station shortly.

‘Happy now?’ said Cooper when there was no reply.

Diane Fry twisted uncomfortably at her desk in the Major Crime Unit at St Ann’s in Nottingham. She wasn’t happy.

Fry had just come back from a meeting with her DCI, Alistair Mackenzie.

‘We can’t just leave them to get on with it,’ he’d said.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s our job.’

It was frustrating being the new girl all over again and not feeling able to argue too much. But Fry felt there were some things that weren’t her job.

‘We’ve got so much else on,’ she said, though she was pointing out the obvious.

Mackenzie was unmoved. ‘It makes no difference, Diane. Besides—’

‘What?’ She could see him getting round to breaking some kind of bad news. He wasn’t sure how she was going to react. Fry knew herself well enough to realise it probably meant she was going to react badly. ‘Sir? What is it?’

‘We’ve had a request from Derbyshire. Specifically, E Division.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Fry. ‘I spent enough time there. I filled in at Divisional CID in Edendale for months while Ben Cooper was on extended sick leave. It was too much. I couldn’t stand going back and doing the same thing again.’

‘That’s not—’ began Mackenzie.

‘Besides, DS Cooper is back at work now. I know he is. I was there when he returned. There can’t be someone else…?’

Mackenzie was shaking his head patiently. ‘No, you’re getting completely the wrong end of the stick, Diane.’

‘Am I?’

Fry tried to restrain herself. But the sudden prospect that had risen in her mind was too scary. After Ben Cooper’s tragedy in the pub fire, she’d been unable to decline the temporary assignment back to E Division, a secondment to take charge of her old team in Divisional CID. A refusal would have been impossible, especially in those circumstances.

And then there had been the unexpected final task, the more personal one for which she was totally unsuited. Breaking bad news, adding another psychological burden to someone who was already down. She had no personal skills for doing that. Ben Cooper must be used to hearing only bad news from her by now. The thought caused an unexpected stab of pain in her abdomen.

‘Let me explain,’ said Mackenzie.

So Fry reluctantly sat and listened to his explanation of the request from Derbyshire. She fidgeted at the thought of the task she was being presented with. It opened up all kinds of possibilities in her mind, some of which were completely unprofessional. She suppressed the flight of imagination immediately. Totally inappropriate.

‘Why me?’ she said when Mackenzie had finished.

The DCI raised his hands. ‘You’re the obvious person. You’ve got to admit that, Diane.’

‘Perhaps.’

He looked at her more seriously. ‘This is a compliment, you know. It’s a sign of how highly you’re regarded. Don’t just throw that away.’

Fry bit her lip. She knew she was going to have to accept. In fact, her mind was already turning over the ways she might approach the task. Her relationship with Ben Cooper was complicated, but she had to put all that aside. Feelings couldn’t come into it. Definitely not.

She gazed back at Mackenzie for a moment, and finally she nodded. There was only one thing to do. She would just have to take the bull by the horns.