Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

25

Diane Fry had found herself in Taddington, without really knowing where she was. She’d followed Luke Irvine’s advice and taken the Flagg road. It was the sort of back road she would normally avoid, but it seemed to have worked.

Several officers were already in Taddington at the Redfearns’ house and knocking on doors. A family liaison officer was in the house with George Redfearn’s daughter, waiting for the wife to arrive. DC Becky Hurst and DC Gavin Murfin were both here too. They looked unsure what do when they saw Fry arrive.

‘Anything useful so far?’ she said.

Murfin shrugged and grunted. But Hurst seemed to make a different decision.

‘The daughter has no idea what her father might have been doing or who he was meeting,’ she said. ‘But there’s a lady across the road worth speaking to. The house with the blue door. She has an interesting bit of information. Gavin has spoken to her already.’

‘Thank you, Becky.’

Fry walked across the road. The neighbour was agog with curiosity at all the activity. Some people got impatient when they were asked to repeat a story they’d already told, but this lady was only too eager.

‘Yes, we had a man round here asking questions,’ she said. ‘He was a property enquiry agent.’

‘What’s one of those?’ asked Fry.

‘He said he was making enquiries on behalf of a prospective house purchaser. He wanted to know what the neighbourhood was like, whether it was quiet, how many children there were living in the area. That sort of thing.’

‘Did he ask questions about your neighbours?’

She looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Well, I’m not sure he asked questions about them exactly, but I suppose I might have ended up telling him a few things. There’s always a bit of gossip in a village like this.’

‘About the Redfearns, for example.’

‘I didn’t give away any secrets,’ she protested. ‘I only told him things that everyone around here knows.’

‘Of course. Did you happen to get a name for this man?’

‘I’m not daft. I asked him for his identity.’ She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, he left me a business card. I forgot to tell the other police officer that.’

‘Can I see it, please?’

‘Give me a minute and I’ll find it for you. It’s around here somewhere.’

‘Thank you.’

But she didn’t go straight away to look for the card.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked.

‘Not so far,’ said Fry. ‘But you might be more careful about who you talk to in future.’

When she’d seen the card, Fry called Ben Cooper. She guessed he would still be at Pilsbury trying to sniff out a lead of his own.

‘There’s a job I’d like you to do,’ she said. ‘I think you’d be the best person for it.’

It was one of the most remote farmsteads in the area. Even the narrow back road over the eastern slope of the moor seemed like the back of beyond. Cooper had reached a point on the road where he could see nothing in any direction except vast expanses of exposed moorland and lots more hills in the distance to the north.

And this was the spot where he had to turn off. He found a cattle grid and a muddy entrance to a track, which wandered away over the brow of the moor, apparently leading nowhere. He wouldn’t have known it was the right place, except for a small sign on the fence. Bagshaw Farm.

‘What was this man’s name?’ Cooper had asked Fry.

‘Daniel Grady. Do you know him?’

‘Why on earth should I?’

‘Well, you always seem to know everyone.’

‘Not this one.’

Cooper followed the potholed track between swathes of rough grazing land, where clumps of coarse grass battled with heather and whinberry for survival in a harsh environment. One patch of ground seemed to have been levelled and seeded for some purpose – possibly for use by hang-gliders, given the air currents funnelling in from Axe Edge.

As he crested the rise the track took a wide swing to the left and a view opened out into the valley and across to the Staffordshire hills. Suddenly, right in front of him, he saw the Dragon’s Back, appearing much closer than he’d expected. But still he seemed to be heading nowhere. A scatter of stones on a prominent mound could have been the remains of a wall, an old farm building, or something much more ancient and mysterious.

And there, below him on the western slope, was Bagshaw Farm itself. Two houses surrounded by a sprawling cluster of barns, sheds and outbuildings. The track took another couple of swings before it skirted along a wall past more fertile looking in-bye land and reached the farm entrance.

As Cooper turned in he was surprised by the number of vehicles parked in the yard and in front of one of the biggest sheds. They were mostly pick-up trucks and Land Rovers, but there were a few muddy saloon cars too, parked up between trailers and farm equipment.

He’d seen this sort of thing before – an unnatural amount of activity at an isolated farm like this was sometimes a warning sign. Who knew what kind of activities went on here, where no one would see them? It could be something perfectly innocent, of course. But it would be worthwhile keeping his eyes and ears open while he was at Bagshaw Farm.

He found Daniel Grady in an office in the newer of the two houses. He pretty much matched the description that Fry had obtained from the Redfearns’ neighbour in Taddington. There was nothing outstanding about him. He was average height, with medium brown hair cut short, but not too short. Aged in his mid-thirties, perhaps forty or so – it was difficult to tell. Dressed in an unremarkable suit, he was clean shaven, with a hint of a stoop and a very courteous manner. He could have been purpose-designed for the job of asking questions without attracting suspicion.

Cooper glanced around the office. It was lined with shelves full of colour-coded box files. Two filing cabinets stood behind the door, and Grady had squeezed in a desk with a laptop and printer. More equipment was in the corner. Cooper spotted a desktop scanner and a digital camera with a long lens.

‘You’re a property enquiry agent, sir?’ he said. ‘I’ve never heard of that profession.’

‘It’s a new idea,’ said Grady with a smug smile. ‘An entrepreneurial opportunity. We all know that one of the most important factors in living a peaceful and contented life in a new home is what sort of neighbours you have. Yet there’s no established way of finding anything out about your neighbours before you actually commit yourself to buying a house. That’s where I come in.’

He produced one of his cards and handed it to Cooper. It was headed by a logo showing a rose-covered cottage and the slogan ‘Who will you be living next door to?’

‘When you’re considering a new property, the estate agent won’t tell you anything about the neighbours in the sales details,’ said Grady. ‘They’ll list the local schools, the transport links, the nearest golf course. But they don’t mention what the people next door are like. Among all those checks and searches your solicitors do into planning permissions and rights of way and mining subsidence, there’s no background check on the local residents.’

‘But there’s a questionnaire,’ said Cooper.

Grady switched on a smile. ‘Oh, are you thinking of buying a house?’

‘Not at the moment. Well, not any more.’

For a moment Grady’s smile almost slipped. ‘Ah. Well, yes, you do have a questionnaire filled in by the vendor. “Have you had any disputes with neighbours during the past five years?” But what seller in their right mind would answer “yes” to that and jeopardise their own sale? By the time you’ve completed the purchase, exchanged contracts and moved in, it’s much too late. When you find out the horrible truth, you’re stuck with those neighbours that you knew nothing about.’

‘I see.’

Grady nodded eagerly as he got into the swing of his sales pitch. ‘We’re filling that gap in the market, providing an essential service for prospective house buyers. Come to us and we’ll tell you what your future neighbours are like. We’re totally independent and objective, too.’

Cooper waited until he’d wound down.

‘You’re just a snooper, aren’t you?’ he said.

Now Grady looked disappointed. ‘That’s rather harsh, Detective Sergeant Cooper. Background checks are perfectly common these days in other fields. You can’t get a job in teaching or childcare, or work as a volunteer for some charities, without having to go through a Criminal Records Bureau check.’

‘That’s true.’

‘The Church of England won’t let you do the flower arrangements in your local church without a pass from the CRB. Nobody objects to that. So why shouldn’t we gather some basic information about the people we’re going to be living next door to?’

‘But what sort of information are you collecting? You’re just an ordinary member of the public. You don’t have access to criminal records.’

‘Absolutely. That would be illegal.’

‘So?’

‘I’m sure you don’t expect me to reveal my methods, Detective Sergeant.’

‘Of course, if we should find during our enquiries that anything you’re doing is unlawful…’

Grady held up his hands. ‘My conscience is clear. Look, my hands are clear. Do your worst, Detective Sergeant.’

‘So who were you working for when you were asking questions in Taddington recently?’

Grady smiled again and Cooper knew what the answer would be before he spoke. He’d heard it almost as often as ‘no comment’ in an interview room.

‘Client confidentiality,’ said Grady. ‘I’m sure you understand. We could hardly be giving out that sort of information.’

‘You were specifically asking questions about Mr and Mrs Redfearn of Manor House, Taddington. Mr Redfearn is now the subject of a murder inquiry.’

‘No, I gathered intelligence about a number of residents in that area. If you check, you’ll soon be able to confirm that.’

Cooper had no doubt Grady had covered himself in that respect. Whatever else he was, he seemed to be a professional who knew his job. The team in Taddington would find that he’d visited several properties and made a point of asking about neighbours other than the Redfearns. Once he’d collected a snippet of information from one person, he could give the impression he was enquiring about someone else entirely.

Grady must have a special knack that enabled him to get people to talk freely. Cooper wished he knew what that knack was. It definitely wasn’t working for him. Perhaps being a police officer didn’t help. He ought to suggest to Superintendent Branagh that they might employ Daniel Grady to conduct a training course for detectives in E Division.

‘Will you tell us who your client is?’ he asked. It was a futile attempt, but he had to try. There was no way of forcing the information out of Grady.

‘I have lots of clients,’ said Grady. ‘Fortunately, business is doing very well, though it’s early days. Actually, I hadn’t considered working for the police as a consultant, but we could discuss terms if you’re interested. You do have my card.’

Cooper looked more closely at the small print at the bottom of the business card.

‘EVE,’ he said. ‘You’re working for Eden Valley Enquiries.’

‘I’m an associate,’ said Grady. ‘I’m establishing a separate division under the EVE corporate umbrella.’

Cooper looked out of the window at the activity in the yards around the farm.

‘Would property enquiries be your only business, sir?’ he asked.

‘It’s my most recent enterprise,’ said Grady cautiously. ‘I do have other interests.’

‘So is this a working farm?’

‘Of course.’

‘You seem to have a lot of employees.’

Grady followed his glance. ‘Not mine. I rent this house from the owner of the farm. I think there’s an engineer here to do some repairs on the machinery or something. And I’ve heard they have a rat problem in some of the fields. The farm manager has organised a few men for a vermin control exercise today. I believe that would explain the dogs and the shotguns.’

‘Yes.’

Cooper was used to seeing dogs and shotguns. He was wondering more about what was in the back of the vans. They had no names written on the sides and their rear windows had been painted over. But he had no justification for checking the vehicles and he couldn’t think of a pretext right now. Grady’s explanation was perfectly logical.

Outside, Cooper didn’t head straight back to the car. He was watching a man with a dark, bushy moustache which drooped in the traditional Mexican style. Cooper felt sure he recognised the moustache, if not the face of the owner. But it took him a few minutes before he was able to make the connection. And no wonder, when the context was so different. The last time he’d seen this man, he was a Confederate soldier.

Cooper had been to a country and western night one Saturday in the social club at Sterndale Moor, just a few miles from here. There had been a shoot-out with .22 air rifles, rebel flags round the dance floor and people dressed as cowboys and US marshals. On stage had been Hank T or Monty Montana, or someone like that. Members of the club performed the American Trilogy, folding the flag and singing ‘I Wish I Was in Dixie’ for the South and ‘Glory, Glory’ for the North.

Sterndale Moor was an odd place, nothing like Earl Sterndale or any of the other villages in the area. He wouldn’t be able to remember the name of the man with the Mexican moustache, but he might be able to find him in Sterndale Moor.

Cooper filed the idea away for future reference as he drove back up the track from Bagshaw Farm and on to Axe Edge Moor.

26

Later that day the Home Office forensic pathologist Doctor Juliana van Doon reported the results of her post-mortem examination on Sandra Blair. And the conclusion wasn’t what anyone had expected.

Ben Cooper drove across town to the mortuary as soon as he heard. Yet when he pulled into the car park he saw that Diane Fry’s black Audi was already there. She’d arrived before him.

‘Damn,’ he said to himself as he parked. ‘Is there no escaping her?’

He hurried into the mortuary. Fortunately, Fry had only just walked through the doors. He caught her up as she walked down the corridor. She turned without surprise at the sound of his footsteps.

‘Ben,’ she said.

‘We must stop meeting like this.’

She didn’t smile. ‘We might as well hear the results together.’

‘Well, since we’re both here…’

Cooper hadn’t seen the pathologist for a while. It struck him that she, too, might be getting close to retirement age. For years she’d hardly seemed to change in appearance, but suddenly she was looking older and more tired. The creases had deepened around her eyes and she’d allowed her hair to turn a natural grey. And of course Mrs van Doon barely took the trouble to hide her impatience with irritating police officers who infested her post-mortem room.

The room itself was all polished stainless steel and gleaming tiles, the smell of disinfectant hardly masking the odour of dead flesh and internal organs. The walls echoed strangely whenever someone spoke, as if the faint voices of the dead were answering them.

The pathologist tapped a scalpel thoughtfully against a stainless-steel dish, a familiar habit that seemed to help her focus her thoughts, or perhaps restrain her irritation. The metallic tone reverberated in the room, stilling the ghostly voices for a moment.

‘This individual died of natural causes,’ said Mrs van Doon. ‘She suffered a myocardial infarction, causing cardiac arrest. In other words she had a heart attack.’

‘She’s not a murder victim, then?’ said Fry.

Cooper couldn’t tell from her face whether she was disappointed or relieved. He would have given a lot to know which of the two reactions lay behind that controlled expression of hers.

‘It’s not for me to say. Well, it’s theoretically possible for someone to deliberately cause a heart attack in their victim. But personally I’ve never heard of such a case. And there’s certainly no evidence of it from my examination of this female. Perhaps at the crime scene?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Cooper.

‘Ah.’

‘The head injury?’

‘Well, it could have been due to an assault. But on the other hand it’s also consistent with a fall on to rocks, say.’

‘She was found lying on stones in the river, beneath the bridge.’

The pathologist nodded. ‘Yes, the level of impact would be about the same. There would have been quite a lot of blood. The scalp bleeds heavily, even from a minor laceration. But if she was in the river, I expect the water washed the blood away.’

‘And there was no blood on the bridge itself.’

‘We thought she might have been killed on the bank and pushed into the river,’ said Fry. ‘But this would explain why we never found a blood trail.’

‘There are some small lacerations on the hands,’ said the pathologist, ‘and one on the left temple. But they wouldn’t have bled very much.’

‘On her hands? Defensive injuries, possibly?’

‘Only if someone was attempting to beat her with a bunch of twigs.’

Cooper nodded reluctantly. ‘Scratches from the undergrowth, I suppose.’

‘That’s more likely.’

Mrs van Doon pushed back a stray hair from her face. She was still wearing a green apron and a medical mask, but she’d peeled off her gloves. The skin of her hands looked dry, with the faint suggestion of incipient liver spots.

‘So,’ she said, ‘otherwise we have a well-nourished Caucasian female. From her physical condition, I would estimate her age to be in the late thirties.’

‘She was thirty-five,’ said Fry.

The pathologist raised an eyebrow. ‘Some people do lie about that sort of thing, I believe. Though perhaps she just had a difficult life.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I’ve recorded a height of one hundred and sixty-eight centimetres and a weight of seventy-eight kilos. Rather overweight, according to the standard body mass index. But then, aren’t we all?’

Cooper thought Mrs van Doon wasn’t an ounce overweight – quite the opposite, in fact. And Diane Fry had never been a woman who looked as though she had a good appetite. But he knew better than to comment, or even move a muscle in his face.

‘This individual has never given birth to a child,’ said the pathologist. ‘Apart from the signs of coronary heart disease, which she ought really to have been aware of, she was in reasonable physical condition. She probably had a poor diet and an unhealthy lifestyle. It’s an old story. And that’s all I can tell you really, apart from…’

‘What?’

She looked from Cooper to Fry and back again, perhaps trying to work out which of them she ought to be reporting the information to. She compromised by looking away, her eyes resting instead on the still, sheeted form of Sandra Blair.

‘Well, when we did the toxicology tests,’ said the pathologist, ‘it transpired that this female had substantial amounts of cannabis and alcohol in her blood. It’s impossible to say for certain, of course – but in my opinion they might have contributed to her death.’

Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst looked as though they might have been having one of their disagreements. They knew better than to argue when their DS was in the office, but they got on each other’s nerves too much to hide it sometimes. Gavin Murfin was lurking in the background, pretending to hear nothing, wrapped up in his world, probably thinking about the next meal break.

‘That’s a shock. You don’t think of women in their thirties having heart attacks, do you?’ said Irvine, when Cooper delivered the post-mortem results on Sandra Blair.

‘It depends on what she had to put up with during her life,’ said Hurst with a sharp look.

Irvine shrugged. ‘Well, she didn’t have any children or anything.’

‘It wasn’t children I was thinking of.’

Cooper intervened. ‘If she had heart disease, it was probably hereditary,’ he said. ‘It seems academic now anyway.’

He looked round for Murfin, who seemed to have been spending a lot of time on the phone in the last couple of days. Cooper wasn’t even sure it was anything to do with his job. And it wasn’t like Gavin to be so shy and reticent.

‘Anything from you, Gavin?’ said Cooper.

Murfin reluctantly heaved himself out of his chair and came forward with his notebook.

‘Yes, house to house enquiries have picked up some sightings of Sandra Blair on the day she died,’ he said.

‘Really? Share them with us, then.’

Murfin flipped back a page or two. ‘After she left work at the Hartdale tea rooms, she was seen near the cheese factory in Hartington, though we can’t confirm whether she called in any of the shops in the village. Later that afternoon she was seen again, this time a few miles away in Longnor General Stores buying a copy of the Leek Post and Times.’ He looked up, with a ghost of a smile. ‘That snippet is thanks to our friends across the border in Staffordshire.’

‘Cross-border cooperation working then, Gavin?’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Longnor?’ said Irvine. ‘How would she get there?’

‘It isn’t far from her home in Crowdecote,’ said Cooper. ‘Less than a mile, I should think. She could easily have walked there and been picked up in Longnor.’

‘But by who?’

‘That’s something I’d like to know.’

Maureen Mackinnon had arrived from Dunfermline and confirmed the identity of her sister. Though she’d been interviewed, Mrs Mackinnon had been unable to offer any particularly useful information. She could only describe Sandra’s interest in a wide range of activities since the death of her husband Gary five years ago.

‘We all thought it was a good thing for her to have so many interests,’ she said. ‘Especially when she was on her own. It stops you brooding, doesn’t it? Sandra was into handicrafts and nature. She took a lot of walks. And, well … there were more esoteric things that personally I didn’t understand. She was a very spiritual girl.’

According to her sister, Sandra had occasionally complained of pains, but was under the impression she suffered from heartburn. She sometimes mentioned sweating excessively and feeling dizzy. But Sandra simply treated herself with a variety of herbal remedies. She never worried that they might be signs of heart problems, said Maureen. And then, a little guiltily, she remembered that their grandfather had died of a heart attack, and perhaps a cousin too. So there was a family history, after all.

When pressed, Mrs Mackinnon admitted that her sister might have used cannabis occasionally. So she knew about that. But she had no idea of the existence of a boyfriend, if there was one. And sisters normally told each other these things, didn’t they?

Diane Fry walked into the CID room. She seemed to have appropriated a spare desk as her own for a while. But it hardly mattered. There were always spare desks in every department at West Street these days. Cooper wondered where she’d been since they left the mortuary together.

‘So what about our second victim, Mr Redfearn?’ said Fry, when she’d brought herself up to date with the latest developments. ‘Mrs van Doon says we won’t have her post-mortem report until tomorrow. But there must be something to go on. Time of death, for a start.’

She looked expectantly around the room.

‘The FME says three days,’ said Becky Hurst at last.

‘What? Since he died?’

‘Yes.’

‘That makes it Thursday night,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s only an estimate, of course…’

‘I know.’

‘There hasn’t been a missing person report,’ added Irvine. ‘We’ve contacted Mr Redfearn’s company here in Edendale and they say they weren’t expecting him in the office today, so they weren’t concerned about his absence.’

‘What about his family?’

‘He has a wife, Molly, but she’s been away on a shopping trip with some friends in Paris. According to Mr Redfearn’s secretary, it was a regular pre-Christmas trip that Mrs Redfearn took every year. It seems the husband regarded it as a bit of a break for himself too.’

‘How long has she been away?’ asked Fry.

‘Since last Thursday. She’s due back in the country tomorrow.’

‘She must have tried to call him during that time, surely?’

‘Well…’

Fry stared at Irvine. ‘Don’t you think so, Luke?’

Irvine glanced at Cooper. ‘Well, perhaps not. It depends what sort of marriage they had, doesn’t it? If they’ve been together for a long time, I mean…’

‘What are you saying, Luke?’ put in Hurst in a challenging tone.

Immediately, Irvine became defensive. ‘You know – absence not only makes the heart grow fonder, it can be essential to keep a relationship going.’

‘So they were happier when they were apart?’

‘I’m just suggesting that some people are. A break from each other for a few days. She goes shopping with the girlfriends. He can go off and play golf, or whatever. It suits both parties. You must have heard about that sort of arrangement.’

Hurst frowned. ‘Well, I suppose so.’

Cooper didn’t want to believe it either, but he knew it was true. No one really understood what went on in other people’s relationships.

‘Besides, everyone knows the spouse is top of the suspect list in a murder inquiry,’ said Irvine, as if playing a trump card.

‘Not in this case – you’ve just told us she wasn’t even in the country at the time.’

‘Never heard of a contract killing? The Redfearns are well-off. She could afford someone good, instead of just some low-life off the street.’

Cooper nodded. It was a possibility they would have to cover, even if it seemed unlikely at this stage.

‘We’ll need to get Mrs Redfearn in as soon as she arrives,’ he said.

‘To confirm ID on the body?’ said Hurst. ‘It won’t be very pleasant for her. Couldn’t we do it from photographs?’

‘That might be better,’ agreed Cooper.

So the body of George Redfearn had lain at Pilsbury Castle for three days. Even in the best of circumstances a human body rapidly became difficult to identify. There was little point in expecting family members to make a visual identification of their loved one’s remains after they’d been lying out in the open for an extended period of time. Fire, explosion or long-term immersion in water worked even more quickly to destroy any recognisable features. Identification then came down to more scientific measures – DNA comparisons or forensic odontology to confirm identity from the teeth.

Cooper recalled that Mr Redfearn’s body had already started to look badly bloated when it was found. Even after twenty-four hours, when the remains had cooled to the temperature of the environment, the skin of the head and neck turned greenish-red and discolouration began to spread across the rest of the torso. The facial features could become quite unrecognisable.

Fortunately, the weather had been cold and this body was exposed to the air. But once bacteria started to dissolve the tissues, gases formed blisters on the skin, and the body swelled grossly and began to leak. In another day or two it would no longer have looked human.

Fry turned towards Cooper. ‘So what connection are we making between these individuals, if there is one?’ she said.

‘I don’t know, Diane. We haven’t found one yet.’

‘I presume you’re looking?’

‘Of course we’re looking. What do you think we’re doing – sitting around on our backsides with our thumbs in our mouths waiting for someone to come all the way from Nottingham and tell us how to do our jobs?’

She raised an eyebrow and Cooper’s anger subsided.

‘But you haven’t found anything,’ said Fry calmly.

He sighed deeply. ‘Not yet, no. It’s difficult to point to any significant similarities. Whether deliberately or accidentally, both victims seem to have fallen far enough for the impact to be fatal.’

‘It hardly constitutes a pattern.’

‘Not on its own, no,’ agreed Cooper. ‘Apart from that … well, the victims aren’t even the same age or gender. True, they’re both white and ethnically British, but—’

‘But the ethnic minority population in this area is – what? Two per cent?’ said Fry.

‘About that.’

‘It’s hardly a multicultural melting pot, is it? So your killer would have to try really, really hard if he wanted to find a black or Asian victim. As far as the evidence goes, these individuals could just have been chosen at random.’

‘Random,’ said Cooper. ‘I hate random.’

‘I know. Me too.’

Those were always the burning questions. Not how the murderer committed the crime, but what motivated him or her to take those specific, drastic measures.

‘But you still think the two incidents are linked?’ said Fry.

‘Yes, I do.’

When Cooper told her the story of the Bowden burial ground, Fry couldn’t help herself. Her reaction was accompanied by a cynical laugh.

‘Your friend Meredith Burns didn’t mention the graveyard, did she? Just general envy, she said.’

‘That was wrong of her,’ agreed Cooper.

‘Trying to avoid bad publicity for the earl, I imagine.’

‘But they reported the incidents – including the graffiti. They must have known questions would be asked.’

‘Wait a minute, though. Burns said the graffiti was discovered by one of the staff before the first visitors arrived on Friday.’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Well, what if that wasn’t the case? What if members of the public saw that graffiti before it was covered up? It would be too late to keep it quiet then. They would have been talking about it all over the area by the end of the day. Some of the visitors would have been taking photographs of it on their phones.’

Cooper nodded. Fry was probably right. He could hear the discussion that might have gone on in the estate office.

‘So they decided to make a pre-emptive call,’ he said. ‘Damage limitation.’

‘And I bet they thought it had worked. A visit from the Neighbourhood Policing Team, probably a PCSO making a few notes for her report and tutting sympathetically. Burns said they didn’t expect anything to come of the visit. She meant they were hoping nothing would come of it. She really didn’t want to see us turning up at the abbey. Though she put a good show on, I’ll give her credit for that. Ms Burns had you more interested in looking at the nursery than enquiring into any reason for the incidents.’

‘That’s not true,’ protested Cooper, aware that he was starting to flush, feeling the familiar discomfort that Diane Fry was so easily able to provoke in him.

‘And now the murder of Mr Redfearn,’ she said. ‘If there’s no evident connection between the two individuals, why do you insist on believing these two incidents are linked?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Cooper. ‘Because of the Corpse Bridge.’

On his desk Cooper found the leaflets that Meredith Burns had given him on Saturday. He put aside the one advertising the Halloween Night and opened the leaflet about the attractions of Knowle Abbey.