Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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18

The briefing room wasn’t as full as it ought to have been. Cooper remembered it being packed out in the past, with standing room only for those at the back. Superintendent Branagh led the briefing herself, with Detective Inspector Dean Walker alongside her. Walker was relatively inexperienced, but Branagh had many years as a senior investigating officer.

Currently, the Sandra Blair inquiry was treated as a suspicious death. Results of the post-mortem examination were expected later today and would surely raise the classification to a murder case when the cause of death was established.

The details known about the victim were already familiar to Cooper. He and Luke Irvine had obtained most of them over the weekend. But forensic examination of the scene at the bridge had been continuing for the past forty-eight hours. So had the search of the woods on either side of the river, the search area gradually expanding to cover most of the hillside and the tracks leading down to the bridge. Witness statements had been taken from the young man who discovered the body, Rob Beresford, as well as from Geoff and Sally Naden, and Jason Shaw.

Now there would be an assessment of what lines of inquiry could be followed up and which would be most urgent.

‘According to the forensic medical examiner, the victim died somewhere between 6 p.m. and midnight on Friday,’ said Branagh. ‘That’s an estimate based on body temperature and the extent of rigor mortis and lividity. As usual we can’t get a more specific timeframe. No witnesses have come forward who had contact with the victim between those times. The body was found at around 1 a.m. by a young man called Robson Beresford, whose statement we have. The other witness statements are vague, but I think we can take them as indicating the presence of at least two people in the woods near the scene earlier that night. One of them may have been our victim. But we can’t be sure of that.’

Becky Hurst raised a hand to get attention.

‘Yes, DC Hurst?’

‘These statements suggest that someone was being chased,’ said Hurst. ‘Were there any signs on the victim that she’d been running?’

‘Such as?’

‘Scratches on her hands and face from the undergrowth, mud splashes on her clothing. She might have been sweating from the exertion.’

‘There was certainly mud on her shoes and some of her clothes. But that could simply have resulted from being on the riverbank. We’ll get an analysis of the spread of the mud splashes if we can. But bear in mind that the victim was lying in the river. Much of the mud will have dispersed.’

Cooper nodded across at Hurst. ‘It’s an important point, ma’am,’ he said. ‘If the victim had been running, that sort of physical exertion makes a difference to the rate of onset of rigor mortis.’

‘Yes, it would speed up the onset of rigor, particularly in the legs,’ agreed Branagh. ‘On the other hand, the weather was cold and she was partially submerged in water, both of which would slow the process down. So it’s a case of swings and roundabouts, I suppose. Rigor was certainly fairly well advanced by the time we attended the scene.’

She was right, of course. Cooper recalled the rigidity of the victim’s limbs as she was removed from the river. When her muscles relaxed at the moment of death, she’d fallen into an awkward, tangled position, then rigor mortis had begun to set in, first in the small muscles of the face and neck before spreading to the rest of the body. Even Rob Beresford had remarked on the flat, staring eyes that had so frightened him. The eyes were among the first parts of the body to be affected by rigor.

Branagh consulted her briefing notes. ‘As far as the victim’s movements are concerned, all we know is that she left her place of work between one and one-thirty on Thursday afternoon. That’s the Hartdale tea rooms in Hartington. She seems to have returned to her home in Crowdecote at some time during the afternoon, but went out again later on. Since her car was still parked outside her house when it was visited by DS Cooper and DC Irvine on Friday, we have to conclude that she either went with someone else or took a taxi, or possibly set out on foot.’

The superintendent paused and looked round the room, but no one commented. Perhaps she expected someone to cast doubt on the idea that Sandra Blair would have walked from Crowdecote to the bridge. It was the best part of two miles, even using the footpaths that skirted the hillsides in the Dove valley, and a good bit further by road. Diane Fry might have been the person to scoff at that possibility, but even she said nothing. Cooper glanced across at her and saw that she was holding herself tense and restrained, her lips pursed shut, as if making a determined effort not to interrupt.

Cooper waited for Branagh to continue. Personally, he had no doubt that the victim might have set off to walk from her home. He thought the idea of her calling for a taxi was by far the least likely.

‘So over the next few days,’ said Branagh, ‘we’ll be deploying all of our additional manpower…’

She paused again, but only very briefly to ride the automatic laughter from the officers present.

‘… in both Hartington and Crowdecote to conduct house-to-house enquiries. Here are the priorities for the house-to-house teams. We need to know if anyone saw the victim after she left the tea rooms and before she left home again that evening. Did she call at one of the shops in Hartington? Did anyone see Sandra Blair in her car between there and her home? And obviously, we’d very much like to hear from anyone who saw her, and a possible second person, between her home and Hollins Bridge that afternoon or evening. Somebody will have to check local taxi firms.’

Cooper restrained himself from shaking his head. Taxis were a waste of someone’s time, but the options had to be covered. As for her drive home, Sandra Blair was a local. He bet she wouldn’t even have thought of going via the main A515 up to Sparklow, but would have taken the back road from Hartington, which wound its way across the hill above the hamlet of Pilsbury. It was a much quieter route. He could think of only three or four farms set back from the road until you reached the junction at High Needham. Not much chance of anyone noticing a small red Ford Ka passing. Their best hope would be that someone saw Sandra later, after she’d left her house. Yes, that would definitely constitute an early break.

Branagh handed over to DI Walker, who had been at the scene. He was a young detective inspector, who’d risen quickly through the ranks, but who might yet be overtaken in his career by those fast-tracked graduates just starting their three-year programmes. Slim and blond-haired, Walker looked more like an actor auditioning for the role of a fictional aristocratic detective than a real police officer. It was said that he had public school and university education too – though surely that didn’t make any difference in today’s police service?

‘Our search of the scene is still ongoing,’ said Walker. ‘Given the statements from witnesses, we’ve extended the search area quite considerably.’

He indicated a large-scale map on the wall of the briefing room. Around the area of Hollins Bridge, the map was shaded in sectors to show the designated areas. As Walker said, the search teams were working their way steadily further from the bridge itself.

‘We’ve almost completed the area on our side of the river,’ the DI was saying. ‘We’re waiting for our colleagues in Staffordshire to do the same. They have some difficult terrain on their side, where it’s a bit steeper, so it’s taking longer. I’ll be liaising with them later today on that. Meanwhile, these are the items we’ve found so far.’

Photos were pinned up on a board next to the map, with indicators to show where each item had been found. The noose was there and so was the witch ball with its screwed-up bits of paper and the clay eagle’s head. Most distinctive of them was the effigy discovered lying on the coffin stone, which caused a lot of murmuring through the room.

‘It’s just a guy, isn’t it?’ said someone.

‘Yep, someone had it ready for Bonfire Night and lost it,’ added a second officer.

But a third shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen one like that. It’s too well made. Why would you go to all that trouble, just to burn it?’

DI Walker agreed. ‘That’s what we think, too. It may have been designed deliberately to look like someone. I think it would be fair to say that it isn’t our victim, anyway.’

There was a ripple of laughter again and Walker looked pleased. In that moment he seemed even more like a performer, gratified to get a reaction from his audience.

‘However, we have one suggestion put forward for the identity of the effigy,’ said Walker cheerfully. ‘DS Cooper has a theory.’

All eyes turned to Cooper and he stood up. Briefly, he explained his reasoning, from the eagle’s head to the emblem of the Manbys, then the situation at Knowle Abbey, with the anonymous letter, the mysterious intruder and the vandalism of the chapel.

‘So it’s possible this is part of a campaign by someone with a grudge against the Manby family,’ concluded Cooper.

‘And who’s the effigy of?’ asked a voice from behind him in the room. ‘Is it the earl? I have no idea what he looks like.’

Walker pinned a photograph on to the board next to the picture of the effigy. It was a blown-up detail from a formal occasion that had been featured in Derbyshire Life. The Right Honourable Walter, Earl Manby, was pictured in white tie and tails, beaming at the camera with his best air of bonhomie. He was clean shaven, with iron-grey hair neatly clipped and slicked down. His cheeks were full and his skin shone with a slightly florid glow, which might just have been a sign that he’d been enjoying a convivial evening. Apart from that, Cooper had to admit the photograph bore no similarity to the effigy at all.

‘The photo is a year or two old,’ said Becky Hurst, against a deafeningly dubious silence. ‘But it was all we could lay our hands on.’

‘Well, be that as it may,’ said DI Walker, ‘it’s something to bear in mind that there may be a connection with Knowle Abbey. The presence of the rope noose within a few yards of the effigy is worrying. It starts to look like a serious threat.’

Another murmur ran round the room. Walker waited for it to subside.

‘Although it also seems a possibility from the evidence at Sandra Blair’s house that the victim may have made the effigy herself,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting for confirmation of that.’

‘Why would she do that?’ asked someone.

‘We don’t know. In fact, a better question might be “Who did she make it for?”’

It was a good point, of course. Cooper had to admit that. He decided to sit back and listen to the rest of the briefing in dignified silence.

‘We’re still working our way through the diary and address book belonging to the victim, but the good news is that we’ve located Mrs Blair’s sister. Her name is Maureen Mackinnon and she’ll be arriving from Scotland in the morning.’

Cooper frowned. Why hadn’t he been able to locate a Dundee phone number in Sandra’s address book?

DI Walker might have seen his expression. He hesitated, looked down at his notes and said, ‘Mrs Mackinnon lives in Dunfermline, I believe.’

Oh, well. Dundee, Dunfermline. It was probably too easy to confuse them. It must have taken Luke Irvine a while to sort that one out.

‘There was the note in the diary about meeting “Grandfather”,’ said Cooper, forgetting his resolution to keep quiet.

‘According to Mrs Mackinnon, the victim doesn’t have a grandfather,’ said Walker with an air of finality. ‘Not a living one she could have been meeting.’

And Cooper wasn’t surprised to hear that.

‘Okay, thank you,’ said Superintendent Branagh. ‘Let me say at this point that we won’t be releasing any details to the public of what we found at the scene. Specifically, there will be no mention of the effigy or the noose. Understood? All right. What about forensics?’

The crime-scene manager, Wayne Abbott, took over the floor. He was a marked contrast to the DI, heavily built and shaven-headed like a football hooligan but totally on the ball when it came to the details of a crime scene.

‘Our scene is pretty messy,’ said Abbott. ‘Muddy, badly churned up, rained on and trampled. It couldn’t have been worse really. There’s no viable DNA to work with, for a start, and trace evidence is fragmentary. We’ve recovered some shoe marks close to where the body was found. They’ll be difficult to identify with any certainty, but we’re working on it.’

‘Fingerprints?’

‘We’ve retrieved a few partials from the victim’s clothing and from the effigy,’ said Abbott. ‘Many of them are the victim’s own, of course. The others we haven’t been able to identify. There’s no match from the database.’

‘That’s privatisation for you,’ said someone.

Cooper turned round to look, but couldn’t see who had spoken. It could have been Gavin Murfin, but he looked too innocent and his mouth was full anyway.

Creeping privatisation was a standing grievance among some officers. And fingerprint records had already been privatised during the past twelve months. There was no storage room left at the Regional Identification Bureau in Nottingham. So, like other East Midlands forces, Derbyshire had decided to digitise their records and move to an entirely electronic process. Half a million paper records were being destroyed after they were scanned and stored on a secure server.

‘That’s nothing to do with it,’ said Superintendent Branagh sharply. And no one seemed ready to argue with her.

Abbott looked across at where Cooper sat and met his eye.

‘The one thing we have established,’ he said, ‘is that the material used in making the effigy matches samples of fabric found in the victim’s home. There’s also a sketch that resembles the final design. So it seems we can confirm that the victim created the effigy herself.’

Cooper breathed a sigh of relief. At least he’d been right about something. He looked across the room and gasped in surprise. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d almost caught Diane Fry smiling.

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.