Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

For a few minutes he read about its claim to historic associations and the generations of Manbys who’d lived there. He skipped through the stuff about antique furniture and fascinating collections of curiosities, turned the page on details of the restaurant and the craft centre, and the walled nursery. Then he reached a few paragraphs about the extensive parkland on the Knowle estate.

Finally, he dropped the leaflet back on his desk with an exasperated groan.

‘How could I have been so stupid?’ he said.

‘What is it, Ben?’ asked Irvine in surprise.

‘Grandfather,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘Meet Grandfather, 1am. It’s not a person. It’s a place.’

27

‘The family tend to refer to him as the Old Man of Knowle,’ said Meredith Burns as she led the way from the estate office at the abbey. ‘It’s a traditional Manby joke, I think. A reference to the previous earl. The “old man”, you know?’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said.

As he and Diane Fry followed Burns along the signposted trail into the parkland, Cooper reflected that the old Derbyshire lead miners had often talked about ‘t’owd man’ too. But they’d meant something quite different. They’d usually been referring to the Devil.

But who knew what went on in a family like the Manbys? In any family, in fact. Perhaps there was more than a coincidence in the similarity between the miners’ superstition and the way the Manbys referred to the old earl. That portrait of the seventh Lord Manby in the Great Hall made him look a real tyrant. And when had Knowle Abbey begun to deteriorate so much? Had a previous owner neglected its maintenance, while spending his fortune on something else entirely? That would be enough to cause some degree of resentment among his descendants when they inherited a crumbling estate up to its chimneys in debt.

They’d entered the edge of the trees, and as the trail took a sharp bend they lost sight of the buildings they’d just come from.

‘I don’t like forests,’ said Fry. ‘You ought to know that by now.’

‘This is hardly a forest,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s landscaped parkland. Some previous earl obviously planted a few trees to create a view from the east wing.’

‘But you said there are wild animals.’

‘Roe deer. They’re far more frightened of you than you are of them, Diane.’

Fry didn’t look convinced. But he knew no animals would come near her, if they could help it. She was hardly Snow White, attracting wild creatures to feed trustingly from her hand. She was more the kind of person who would introduce a badger cull, then willingly extend it to include anything that moved in the dark.

‘One of the great things about these big trees is that they make such wonderful landmarks,’ Burns was saying. ‘You might not be able to find your way through a wood where all the trees are the same age and look identical. But anyone can find this grand old chap.’

‘And lots of people do, I suppose?’ said Cooper.

‘Oh, he’s a tourist attraction in his own right. We have signs on all the trails to point the way to him. Visitors love to come and stand underneath his branches and have their photos taken, or see how many of them it takes to reach all the way round his trunk. British people have a very affectionate relationship with this particular species.’

‘Do they?’ said Fry.

Cooper laughed. Her horrified expression suggested she was imagining a much more intimate relationship than anything Burns had meant.

‘There he is,’ said Burns. ‘The Grandfather Oak.’

The Old Man of Knowle, or the Grandfather Oak, was a thousand-year-old oak tree. Its status as a unique tourist attraction was the reason it was mentioned in the leaflets about Knowle Abbey.

Cooper paced round the tree. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, but he could find none of the things that he might have expected from examining the scene at the Corpse Bridge. No effigy, no noose, no witch ball filled with curses. Not even any graffiti or obscene messages carved into the ancient bark. There were no signs that anyone had been here with malicious intent. And it would be useless to do a forensic search of the woods. Far too many people came through here, leaving signs of their presence.

He looked up into the branches. It would make a great vantage point, he supposed. But these branches were old and brittle. A couple of the larger boughs were propped up by lengths of timber to prevent them from snapping under their own weight. He wouldn’t want to try climbing this tree without proper safety equipment.

Cooper turned to look at the abbey. It was barely visible from here. Just a small tower on the south corner in the distance could be glimpsed through the trees.

As they made their way back along the trail, the abbey came into sight again. Cooper spotted a small, slightly overweight figure moving towards the back of the house. He was dressed in wellingtons, mud-spattered jeans, a tweed jacket and a felt hat.

He pointed at the figure.

‘Is that…’ he began.

‘Yes, that was the earl,’ said Burns. ‘I think Her Ladyship has sent him to do some mucking out in the stables.’

‘Who’s “Her Ladyship”?’ asked Fry.

‘The Countess. Lord Manby’s wife.’

‘Countess? I thought her husband was an earl, not a count?’

‘Well, we don’t have counts in England any more. They replaced the title with a more Anglo-Saxon version centuries ago.’

‘And they never bothered introducing a female form of the new title,’ added Cooper.

‘Typical.’

Fry dropped back and leaned closer to Cooper when Burns was out of earshot. She waited to be sure that Burns wasn’t listening.

‘With all the staff he employs,’ said Fry, ‘don’t you think Lord Manby would have someone to do the mucking out for him?’

‘I think Meredith was joking,’ said Cooper.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. You missed that?’

‘I must have done.’

‘It was a reference to the way the earl was dressed. Actually, I think she felt a bit embarrassed about us seeing him.’

‘Ah. Perhaps he was presenting the wrong image.’

‘I believe that was exactly it,’ said Cooper.

But as they returned to the estate office, Cooper was wondering why Fry hadn’t noticed the significance of the earl’s very different appearance, once he was at home and relaxing among his own rolling acres instead of in white tie and tails at a formal occasion. Now Lord Manby looked exactly like the effigy on the Coffin Stone.

In her office Meredith Burns became defensive when Cooper asked about the earl’s plans for the church and graveyard at Bowden.

‘As I told you, we have to do everything we can to bring in revenue for the maintenance and repair of the abbey,’ she said. ‘I explained that to you last time you came. The monthly wage bill alone is staggering. The staff is enormous – you’d be surprised how many people there are working here.’

‘About three hundred?’ said Fry.

Burns was clearly taken aback. ‘Yes, around that figure.’

‘But you didn’t mention the graveyard at Bowden,’ said Cooper.

‘It’s just one of a range of projects,’ protested Burns. ‘Some of the old staff properties will become holiday lets. We’re also hoping to get planning permission to build some new chalet-style units on the western side of the burial ground, within the walls of the park itself. Those units will have a very desirable setting.’

‘And there’s the church, of course.’

‘Yes, and the church will be sold. We’ve had several expressions of interest, but unfortunately we don’t have a confirmed buyer yet.’

‘Does it surprise you that many of the people whose family members are buried at Bowden have strong objections to these plans?’

Burns shrugged. ‘It was bound to happen. Some of these decisions are painful, but they have to be made. Otherwise what would happen to Knowle?’

She sat down at her desk and stared at a large plan of the Knowle Abbey estate on the wall in front of her.

‘You know, at one time, this estate consisted of more than fifty properties and about three thousand acres of parkland and farms,’ she said. ‘Inheritance tax and divorce settlements have taken their toll over the centuries. But it has to be admitted that much of the decline was due to bad management by successive earls who were more interested in hunting and shooting, or in hosting lavish dinner parties for the local gentry.’

Cooper was satisfied to hear his speculation confirmed. But it was Fry who voiced what he was thinking. She had always been more prone to blurting out her opinions – probably more than was good for her.

‘I don’t think anyone would be surprised by that,’ said Fry.

‘I realise it’s an image still common among the more ill-informed members of the public,’ said Burns.

Fry opened her mouth to object and Cooper thought for a moment he was going to have to intervene in a peacekeeping role. But Burns didn’t seem to notice Fry’s reaction. She pointed at the map of the estate in front of her.

‘When the present earl took over the estate, he launched himself into a whole series of projects,’ she said. ‘As Walter himself would tell you, he inherited a great many wasted assets and he wanted to make them work for their living. His first idea was the conversion of the old coach house into a restaurant. Then the kitchen gardens were turned into a plant nursery, and a craft shop was created in the joinery workshop. We’ve recently applied to the county council for a licence to use part of the abbey as a wedding venue. But none of these activities brings in enough money – and as revenue streams they’re unpredictable, because they rely on the general public. An extended spell of bad weather could ruin us.’

‘Or negative publicity?’ asked Cooper.

‘Well … quite.’

Cooper recalled the picture postcard view of Knowle Abbey he’d admired from across the river, above the Corpse Bridge.

‘What about using the abbey as a location for filming?’ he said. ‘I’ve heard that’s a thriving business.’

‘We’ve tried, but we’re competing with Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall, and a dozen other places in the county. Yes, we benefited a little from the Downton Abbey phenomenon. But the last TV crew to visit Knowle were from Bargain Hunt. Do you know it?’

‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘Daytime television, I believe.’ She looked at Fry. ‘Someone called Tim Wonnacott?’

Fry shook her head too. ‘No.’

Burns sighed and gazed at Cooper seriously.

‘There’s a grand plan to save the Knowle estate,’ she said. ‘But it needs a massive long-term injection of cash. Somehow we have to find millions and millions of pounds of revenue – and from a consistent source.’

‘Downton Abbey,’ said Fry as they drove out through the parkland in the gathering dusk. ‘I’ve actually seen that one. Is Homeland like that?’

‘Not exactly like that,’ said Cooper. ‘Why?’

Fry turned to him. ‘Well, just a thought. I was wondering if you remembered that you still have my TV in the boot of your car?’

When Cooper’s phone rang a moment later he answered it automatically. But it was bad news.

‘Has it just happened?’ he said. ‘Last night? Why didn’t you call me? Well, okay. Yes, I suppose so. Thank you. And, well … I’m really sorry to hear of your loss.’

Cooper ended the call with a curse. ‘Damn.’

‘What is it?’

‘Mrs Shelley,’ he said.

‘Oh … she’s your landlady.’

‘She was,’ said Cooper. ‘But she’s dead.’

When he got back to Welbeck Street that evening and let himself into his flat, Cooper was immediately struck by how different it felt.

It made no sense, of course – especially as Dorothy Shelley had been in hospital since Friday. And even when she was living next door, he’d hardly been aware of her presence most of the time. But now that he knew she was dead, it made all the difference. Logic didn’t come into it.

As he walked through the rooms he found it quite unnerving how much number eight no longer seemed the same. Deep down he knew the reason for the feeling. Death had crept a little bit too close to his walls, reminding him once again that there was no escape. As if he could forget.

Cooper checked his messages and fed the cat. He dug a chicken and sweetcorn pasta bake from the freezer compartment of his fridge, pierced the foil and slid it into the microwave. Six minutes at full power before it needed stirring. Then he switched on the TV for the news.

As he watched stories about bad weather and a firemen’s strike, his mind began to drift. He thought it was odd that Diane Fry should remind him he had her television in the boot of his Toyota, then not ask for it back. She hadn’t even arranged a time for him to deliver it to her new apartment in Nottingham, though surely she must be living there now – the old flat in Grosvenor Avenue would be empty and not fit to live in, even for someone with Fry’s spartan needs. It was almost as if she’d wanted her TV to stay where it was. Well, he couldn’t blame her. There wasn’t much worth watching. It wasn’t as if she were missing any episodes of Homeland. Or even Bargain Hunt.

A few minutes later Cooper sat down at the kitchen table with his pasta bake, watched by the cat and trying very hard not to stare at the empty chair opposite him. Liz had planned a big kitchen in their new home, with oak units and marble worktops. Even then her dream had seemed a million miles away from number eight Welbeck Street. And now it was just a half-forgotten fantasy. The reality was this cramped space at the back of a terraced house in an Edendale side street, with a microwave oven and a place set for one.

And this wouldn’t last either, not once the new owner of the properties arrived. Cooper considered his options. Perhaps he should start house-hunting again. But the prospect filled him with dread. Every estate agent’s window would have too many painful associations. Every set of property details would feel pointless.

When he first moved into this flat from Bridge End Farm, Cooper had never known a silent house in his life. He remembered a foreboding of how depressing, how desperate, and even how frightening it might be to come home every night to a dark and empty house. The post would still be lying on the mat where it had fallen in the morning, a single unwashed coffee mug would be in the sink where he’d left it after breakfast. And the house would have that feel of having got along all day without him, that his existence was unnecessary, maybe even unwelcome.

He recalled that first taste of loneliness now – sour and unexpected, a burst of metallic bitterness at the back of his mouth, like a spurt of blood on his tongue.

As he ate his pasta Cooper gradually tried to nudge his thoughts on to a different track, the way he’d been taught months ago by the grief counsellor. He ran his mind back over the events of the day, seeking some useful insight.

Each of the visits he’d made to Knowle Abbey reminded him that the Manbys’ historic mansion was as much out of his comfort zone as it was for Diane Fry, a woman who never seemed truly at home anywhere. There were so many things he didn’t understand about the way that place was run. The Right Honourable Walter, Lord Manby of Knowle, was an enigma to him and would probably stay that way. Even if he got a chance to interview the earl, which seemed unlikely, he wouldn’t expect to learn anything helpful. Someone like his lordship would undoubtedly be as well practised at putting up a façade as any career criminal protesting his innocence in a court-room. It was all about public perception, letting people see whatever they wanted to see.

Cooper couldn’t get the ideas of the coffin roads out of his head. Sandra Blair and the Corpse Bridge were at the centre of everything, he was sure. The discovery of George Redfearn’s body had distracted most of the attention today, including his. The post-mortem result on Mrs Blair hadn’t helped.

As a consequence his time had been taken up interviewing a middle-class cocaine user and a dodgy enquiry agent, not to mention a giant oak tree. Instead, he should have been trying to find a way of breaking open the group of people Sandra Blair had been involved with. He should have been seeking the weak link he’d mentioned to Luke Irvine.

Cooper could feel his position weakening hour by hour, though. Without more evidence, his justification for concentrating on Sandra Blair and Knowle Abbey was being eroded away and soon his stance would become untenable. And there would be no shortage of people willing to point it out.

As Cooper finished his pasta, Diane Fry was driving through the gates of a modern executive development on the outskirts of Nottingham and drawing up outside her new home. She’d rented a double-bedroom, top-floor apartment with an open-plan lounge and kitchen area, a master bedroom with fitted wardrobes and juliet balcony, and a secure door entry system. The rent was about six hundred pounds a month, but it did have its own parking space. And it was only a stone’s throw from the A52 for her commute into the city.

She sat in the car for a few moments and looked at the other properties, with their neat grass verges and the little access roads between them. There was barely a sign of human occupation, but for lights behind curtained windows and a car parked in front of a garage door.

It was amazingly quiet here – much more peaceful than the house in Edendale, with its constant comings and goings, the endless flow of noisy students and migrant workers, the neighbours who wanted to stop and chat in the street, the friendly family in the corner shop who always smiled and asked after her health.

It didn’t seem right, really. The city ought to be noisier and livelier than a small country town. But she was in the suburbs here, twenty minutes from the city centre with its pubs and shops and theatres. Suburban life had its own rhythm.

Fry let herself into the apartment, remembering to clear the burglar alarm. It was something she’d never had to do in Edendale. But then, she didn’t have anything worth stealing. She’d never felt the urge to surround herself with material possessions. But she lived here now. Perhaps she would feel obliged to go shopping.

She walked to the windows and looked outside. She found herself worrying about where she should put her wheelie bins without making the development look untidy. And she realised with a shock that she must have become middle class.

Fry took off her jacket and dropped her keys on the table. She had to admit that the rooms sounded empty and strange. She turned and looked at the corner of the lounge, where a table stood waiting for her TV set to arrive.

Well, that was one thing that kept her connected to Edendale. There was one small part of her that still hadn’t left.

28

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.’