Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

38

From Knowle Abbey, Cooper took a detour via the Corpse Bridge. He was able to bounce the Toyota halfway down the track, with the steering wheel lurching violently in his hands.

Off-roaders had been blamed for destroying many of the stone setts and churning up the ground into muddy ruts on either side. Although this had been designated as a byway open to all traffic for many years, the national park authority had imposed a traffic regulation order to exclude trail bikes and four-wheel drives.

But Cooper had heard off-roaders say they had as much right as anyone to enjoy the landscape. They pointed out that all kinds of recreation caused damage. If local authorities were too cash-strapped to maintain rights of way properly, that was a problem for everyone. As usual there were two sides to every story.

The police presence had gone from the scene of Sandra Blair’s death. The tape had been removed but for a few scraps still fluttering from a tree, where an officer had cut it instead of trying to untie a tight, wet knot. The forensic examination had been complete, the search had reached its outer perimeter, and the scene had been released for public access.

Not that there were many members of the public around. Unlike some more accessible murder scenes, the Corpse Bridge hadn’t attracted ghoulish spectators.

He walked towards the bridge and stopped at the parapet. Though it was daylight now, he was taken back to the moment he saw Sandra Blair’s body lying in the water just down there under the arch, tangled in the roots of a sycamore. Those dark, wet boulders and the roaring of the water. Cries of pain and a victim’s last, dying breath.

He relived that light-headed feeling, the result of a lack of sleep, and felt himself almost slipping again in the mud on the bank of the river. There had been so little blood. No more than a few drops on the stone.

Cooper didn’t need to spend any more time thinking about it. He was sure that his original impression had been perfectly correct when he stood here early on that morning after Halloween. Sandra Blair wasn’t alone when she died.

That afternoon Cooper took a call from Brendan Kilner. He sounded nervous and he was practically gabbling down the phone, like a man afraid of being overheard if he didn’t finish the call quickly.

‘Okay, so,’ said Kilner. ‘First of all, promise me my name doesn’t get mentioned in any way, shape or form.’

‘As long as you weren’t involved in a murder, Brendan,’ said Cooper. ‘Then all bets would be off.’

‘We both know I wasn’t. It was one of those people at the bridge.’

Cooper didn’t need to ask what bridge. ‘Which of those people exactly?’

‘I don’t know. Honest, I don’t. It could have been any of them or all of them, as far as I’m concerned. They’re all as mad as each other.’

‘Can you arrange a meeting?’

‘I suppose I could. But I wouldn’t do it. It would be too dangerous for me.’

‘I’m not expecting you to go to the meeting,’ said Cooper. ‘I will.’

The line was silent for a moment and Cooper thought Kilner had gone. But he must have been covering the phone with his hand, because his breathing suddenly came back on the line.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘But I don’t need to arrange anything. There’s a place you’ll find the person you want. At least, you will if you go there tonight.’

‘Excellent. Where is this place? Not the Grandfather Oak, preferably.’

‘No, that was just a one-off. But there’s a spot they’ve used before for meetings, where no one ever goes now. That’s where they’ll be. But they’re all canny, though, so don’t scare anyone off. No lights or sirens, you know what I mean?’

‘Yes, Brendan,’ said Cooper. ‘But where is this place?’

‘You might know it. The old cheese factory.’

Cooper put the phone down and sat at his desk for a few minutes, turning the situation over in his mind. It was a challenge, of course. But he had to prove that he was up to it.

He had a decision to take. There was one phone call he ought to make. Though it might put everything he hoped for at risk.

By late evening the air was cold, with a bright moon high in the sky behind a haze of fog, casting a pale-green sheen over the landscape. The streets of Hartington were very quiet. A smell of woodsmoke hung in the air, with a faint roar of central heating systems venting steam.

Ben Cooper couldn’t explain the feeling of unease this corner of the village gave him. He knew he’d been to the old cheese factory before, years ago when he was a uniformed PC. The factory had been working then, a thriving enterprise. The bays had been busy with vans and lorries. Men in blue boiler suits and yellow high-vis jackets walking around outside, the hum of machinery from inside the buildings. There was none of that now. The factory was dead.

Standing empty and abandoned, there was nothing attractive about the old stone buildings, or the newer sheds of green steel sheeting. They belonged firmly to the utilitarian side of the village, not the tourist part. Yes, the factory was only a short stroll from the duck pond and the Old Cheese Shop, but it was a step back into Hartington’s past.

Cooper walked between an empty car park and a long shed with a corrugated-iron roof covered in dense clumps of brown-green mould. Where a tall chimney was attached to the building, an orange stain had spread across the wall and run down on to the ground, discolouring the base of the chimney itself as if the lifeblood of the factory had slowly been draining away since its closure.

Two tall grey tanks stood in their own pond of green water. What the tanks had held, he couldn’t imagine. A network of steel pipes ran along the back wall of the factory, with weeds growing in all the crevices. There were CCTV cameras here, but he doubted they were working.

There didn’t seem to be much to steal here, though perhaps people would find ways to break into the factory for other purposes. It was inevitable with any abandoned building, especially in a spot like this where you wouldn’t be overlooked.

Cooper saw a small door standing open at the back of the main building. It was half-hidden under the mass of pipes and a steel platform supporting the hoods of a massive cooling system. Above it metal steps ran up the wall to a set of doors on the first floor. He watched and listened, but saw no movement and heard no noise from within the factory.

Then there was a metallic reverberation, a boom like a heavy object dropped on one of the empty tanks. But it came from behind him, not from the factory.

His heart thumping, Cooper whirled round. On top of a tank he glimpsed a figure just disappearing as someone descended a ladder. Where the person had been standing was a perfect vantage point to observe Cooper’s arrival. If it hadn’t been for that stray boot against the side of the tank, he might never have known anyone was there.

He cursed himself for not taking a more wary approach. But what had he been expecting when he came to Hartington, if not someone hiding out here? It was almost as if he’d deliberately given them a warning. And allowed them to escape.

But whoever it was, they hadn’t gone. Somehow they’d slipped round the back of one of the smaller sheds and reached the door into the main building, which had now closed behind them.

Cooper shivered and looked up at the sky. The moon was so bright it had created a ring of colours through the prism effect of the fog, like a circular rainbow. Well, a rainbow was supposed to be a sign, a portent that something was about to happen, or a direction to a pot of gold. But a rainbow at night seemed all wrong. Was it an omen of something terrible about to happen?

Diane Fry was surprised to be handed a couple of forensics reports by an officer entering the CID room at West Street.

‘What are these?’ she said.

‘Results from some items that Detective Sergeant Cooper sent through for processing.’

‘Really?’

Fry became aware of Becky Hurst bobbing up like a child who always knew the right answer in class.

‘Those will be the items from Harpur Hill,’ said Hurst.

‘Yes, you’re right.’ Fry frowned at the first report. ‘A hat? And an LED torch?’

Hurst came over to her desk. ‘That’s it. We believe they were Sandra Blair’s possessions.’

‘We?’

Fry smiled. She knew that when Becky Hurst said ‘we’ she actually meant Ben Cooper.

Hurst didn’t flinch at her tone. ‘They were found concealed in a plastic bag and dumped in a drinking hole for cattle. Somebody must have taken them away from the scene of Sandra Blair’s death at the bridge to dispose of them. There’s got to be a reason for them doing that.’

‘I suppose there has,’ said Fry.

She was interested now. She opened the report and gazed at its results for a moment. Hurst began to get impatient.

‘Well, what does it say?’

‘They got a hit from a print on the casing of the torch,’ said Fry. ‘And from the inside of the plastic bag the items were in too.’

‘A hit? Seriously? So it was someone who’s already on the database.’

‘Yes.’

Fry had turned to the second report. ‘And what’s this? The lid of a marble tomb? These are prints recovered from the Lady Chapel at Knowle Abbey this morning. And the results match.’

‘They got a hit to the same person?’

‘Yes, the same.’

She put the report down and began to speak more briskly. ‘We need to assemble a team for an arrest. Request an armed response unit. We need to use all precautions. He’s known to possess two shotguns. And there’s a dog on the premises too.’

‘But who is it?’ insisted Hurst.

‘An individual with a conviction for poaching fourteen years ago. Jason Shaw.’

‘Great.’

Hurst began to make calls, but she stopped and turned back to Fry.

‘Diane, there’s one thing we’ve forgotten,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

‘What happened to the explosives stolen from Deeplow Quarry? Where are they now?’

The first explosion was shocking in its suddenness. It caught Cooper completely off-guard. He should have known it was coming, but the moment of expectant silence before the detonation made it all the more shocking when it happened.

The loud boom echoed across the village green and bounced off the walls of the limestone houses. It startled a flock of wood pigeons out of their evening roost in a sycamore tree on the edge of the churchyard. For a few moments the birds flapped in a panicked circle, passing overhead and silhouetting themselves against a cascade of light the explosion had hurled into the air.

Cooper looked round, embarrassed at his own reaction, ready to laugh it off if anyone had noticed. Tonight was a test. Fire, heat, explosions, the sight of blazing timbers. When he’d decided to come out on Bonfire Night, he had no idea how he would cope with these sights and sounds. But it was something he had to face. He couldn’t avoid it for ever. There was no future in trying to run away from the past.

A barrage of missiles shrieked across the sky like hunting demons. Cooper was deafened by the screeching and jumped in shock at a volley of bangs on the hillside behind it.

He stopped for a minute to pull himself together. Despite the cold air, he could feel sweat breaking out on his forehead and his hands trembled. The reaction was deep down inside him, impossible to deal with on a deliberate, conscious level. He would have to fight his way through it.

Cooper stood in the yard, his face lit by the coloured flashes, surrounded by crackling and the smell of charcoal and sulphur. He felt once again that he was standing in the middle of a raging inferno, caught up in the heart of that burning building, with flames leaping around him and smoking timbers crashing to the ground, his skin scorched by the heat of the fire.

But there was nothing else for it. He would have to go inside.

39

The lights of three police cars arriving in convoy created quite a stir, even in Bowden. They certainly attracted the attention of the residents who were at home that Tuesday evening, including Caroline Mellor, who appeared at her window across the green to observe the activity.

Two of the vehicles pulled up outside the home of Jason Shaw and officers piled out. The third car swerved across the road and blocked the access to the village. Two armed officers went to the front door, while another covered the back yard. Diane Fry waited at a safe distance with Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst, while uniformed officers were stationed to keep spectators away.

Fry had checked with the Knowle estate office whether Shaw would be working, but he wasn’t on the staff rota for this evening. And his blue Land Rover Discovery stood by the side of the house.

‘Don’t give him time to react,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget there are firearms kept on the premises.’

When there was no response to their hammering on the front door and shouts of ‘Police!’, the entry team produced a small battering ram and swung it at the lock. The door burst open after two strikes and they entered the house. Jason Shaw’s dog could be heard barking hysterically from the rear of the property.

After a few seconds one of the officers appeared in the doorway and signalled to Fry. The CID team moved into the house. But they were disappointed to find it empty.

‘All the rooms are clear, Sergeant.’

‘His Land Rover is here.’

‘Even so, there’s no one home.’

Fry went through the rooms herself and found the gun cabinet. It was securely locked, as it ought to be, so there was no way of telling whether both shotguns were still inside. Not without breaking it open, which would take time.

She looked round for Irvine and Hurst. ‘Get out there and start talking to the neighbours and find out if they know where he is. We don’t want him to get a warning, in case he decides to go to ground.’

‘We’d never find him in these woods, even in daylight.’

‘Exactly. We might need to request the air support unit.’

As Fry looked around the untidy sitting room, she wondered whether she’d made a mistake in trying to make the arrest after dusk. Perhaps she should have waited until morning and conducted the operation at first light. It was galling to think that Shaw had vanished into those dark woodlands. He would know the grounds of Knowle Abbey better than almost anyone. If she didn’t locate him quickly, she might never see Jason Shaw again.

While she waited she examined the items strewn across the surface of a small table. Shaw had gathered a lot of magazines about country sports. Shooting Times, The Field, Sporting Gun. Many of them had cover illustrations of men in ear defenders aiming shotguns at unidentified targets, or dogs with dead birds in their mouths. Fry recalled a failed attempt by an animal rights organisation to get this sort of magazine banished to the top shelf in newsagents, along with the soft porn.

She pushed some of the magazines aside. Underneath she found an object she couldn’t identify. It seemed to be a hoop of something like dried willow, wrapped with a thin band of leather. A web of white string filled the space inside the hoop, decorated with tiny beads, and someone had attached a couple of feathers to the bottom.

‘A dreamcatcher,’ said Luke Irvine, jolting Fry out of her distraction.

‘Is that what it is?’

‘They’re Native American originally. But they’re popular here now.’

Fry frowned. ‘Popular with who?’

Irvine shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, you know – people interested in spiritual things. There was one on the wall at Sandra Blair’s cottage. I think she probably made it herself. I bet she made this one for Mr Shaw.’

‘What is it supposed to do?’ asked Fry.

‘It stops you having bad dreams.’

Fry turned the dreamcatcher over and laid it back on the magazines. It looked incongruous lying against a picture of a slaughtered pheasant in the jaws of a Golden Retriever.

‘I wonder if that worked for Jason Shaw,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t look as though he ever used it.’

‘No.’

‘I came to tell you the dog unit has arrived,’ said Irvine. ‘They’ve brought the sniffer dog for the explosives.’

‘Oh, yes. Let’s get them in.’

An officer entered with a Springer Spaniel, which began to sniff its way enthusiastically around the house.

Fry checked the phone for messages, peered into the cupboards, walked out into the back yard, trying to ignore the barking dog. Becky Hurst appeared, with Mrs Mellor trailing behind her, looking alarmed but flushed with excitement.

‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw Fry, ‘isn’t Detective Sergeant Cooper here?’

‘No. But you remember me, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Mellor, though Fry suspected it wasn’t her memory she was dubious about.

‘You’re aware that we’re looking for Jason Shaw?’

‘Yes. I told your girl here. When I saw Jason half an hour ago, he said he was going down to the gift shop. They wanted him to help out with something.’

Inside the Hartington cheese factory Cooper found that the buildings hadn’t been entirely cleared of their contents. In a corridor he passed pairs of white wellies that looked as though they’d missed their last wash when the factory closed. A few ancient bits of broken equipment stood around, with a metal filing cabinet and a scatter of Stilton cheese leaflets still lying on the floor.

The modern part of the factory was quite different from the old stone buildings. He passed through large cheese storage areas with quarry-tiled floors, and one building like the lower level of a multi-storey car park, with a low ceiling, hefty pillars and shadowy alcoves.

‘Jason? Where are you?’ he called.

There was a muffled laugh somewhere in the darkness.

‘Come on. I know you’re there, Jason. We’re long past the time for playing the fool.’

Something metallic banged against a wall. Cooper wondered if there was a shotgun pointing at him from a dark corner of the building. He moved sideways, away from any residual light that might be creeping through the doorway behind him or from the skylights in the roof.

The fireworks display still showered the sky with cascades of colour and created a background din of bangs and crackles. The blast of a shotgun would hardly be noticed on Bonfire Night. It would be just one more distant explosion to frighten the pigeons. No one would bother to dial the emergency number or come to see what was happening in the old cheese factory.

Then he glimpsed something light-coloured, moving across an opening. The figure was ahead of him in one of the cavernous rooms, slipping through another doorway deeper into the abandoned factory.

The person moved with a lightness and agility that surprised him. He recalled Jason Shaw’s description of the woman he’d seen in the woods near the Corpse Bridge that Halloween night, the ghostly white flicker and swirl as a figure dodged through the trees. Was he seeing the same phantom that Shaw had described so convincingly? Could the same apparition be right here in the cheese factory? Even for the most impressionable mind, that didn’t make any sense.

But that pale shape reminded Cooper of something else. He could see an individual sitting across the table from him in Interview Room One at West Street.

40

After that it was easy. Even Jason Shaw wouldn’t have walked into the gift shop at Knowle Abbey with a shotgun.

Fry directed the police vehicles round to the back entrance, where their presence wouldn’t be noticed from the shop. With officers outside each entrance, she simply walked in with Irvine and Hurst, told Shaw he was being arrested and read him his rights while Irvine put the cuffs on.

‘You do not have to say anything,’ she recited. ‘However, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

It felt odd saying it surrounded by tea towels and bookmarks with pictures of Knowle Abbey, and shelves of mugs saying ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

‘What’s this all about?’ said Shaw.

‘I’m sure you know.’

‘Is it Sandra?’ said Shaw as he was led out to the car. ‘I think I was in love with her, in a way. It’s not often you meet a woman like that.’

‘Save it,’ said Fry.

‘She had so much life in her. I had to avenge her.’

‘Really?’ said Irvine as they put Shaw into the back of the car. ‘Weren’t you responsible for her death?’

‘No. It was Manby to blame for that.’

Hurst grasped Irvine’s arm. ‘We can’t question him now or take into account anything he says.’

‘I know.’

‘And if you mean the quarry man Redfearn,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

Fry stopped the car from driving away.

‘There’s one thing we have to ask him,’ she said.

‘But, Diane,’ protested Hurst.

‘If we believe there may be immediate danger to life.’

Hurst backed off then. ‘You’re right.’

Fry leaned into the car and stared hard at Shaw.

‘Where are the explosives, Jason?’ she said. ‘You took some explosives from Deeplow Quarry. Diesel and ammonium nitrate pellets.’

Shaw shook his head. ‘I took them. But I don’t have them now.’

Fry watched the car drive away across the parkland towards the gates of Knowle Abbey. She hadn’t taken much notice of the phone call she’d received from Ben Cooper. She knew that Jason Shaw would be under arrest long before Cooper was due to meet him at the cheese factory in Hartington.

Guiltily, she’d been imagining Cooper waiting at the derelict building for hours in the cold and the darkness, hoping for his coup, while she was busy doing the real work here at Bowden.

But if it was true that Shaw hadn’t killed George Redfearn, who had? And who was Cooper meeting in Hartington?

Though the tall, athletic figure was familiar to Cooper, she was no longer the young woman who’d sat nervously in Interview Room One staring at a cup of cold coffee. He couldn’t imagine this woman being intimidated by her surroundings. Her hands were steady now and the rings on her fingers glinted in the glare of a rocket as she stood in the darkness of the abandoned factory.

‘Poppy,’ said Cooper. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Cooper peered into the gloom, trying to make out her face. ‘What for?’

‘Everything, I suppose. It wasn’t meant to be like this. It all went wrong.’

There was no light in here, except for a few patches of greenish light from the fog-shrouded moon filtering through the skylights in the roof. Poppy Mellor stood on the edge of one of the rectangles of light, making the shadows around her seem so much darker.

‘Are the rest of the group here?’ asked Cooper.

He looked round, but could see nothing in the darkness. It was another of the large storage areas. The low ceiling and heavy pillars seemed to press in on him and made him feel claustrophobic, though he knew the room must be extensive.

Poppy didn’t answer him. It was as if she weren’t really listening, but just wanted the opportunity to talk.

‘The group have been like a family to me,’ she said. ‘Closer than my real parents or my brother. And just like a proper family, I didn’t really choose them.’

Was she armed with something? Her right arm was pressed too close to her side for him to be sure. Cooper realised he would have to let her talk. He needed her to stay calm and relaxed, and then he might find out what was going on. He also needed time for his back-up to arrive.

Cooper glanced nervously around again. If back-up was going to arrive.

‘Yes. We just came together for this one purpose. It was almost random. We talked to each other all the time on those walks. We talked like I’ve never been able to talk to my dad.’

‘They were loyal too,’ said Cooper.

‘You’re right. They were. None of them gave away the fact that I was there at the bridge, did they?’

‘No. We accepted your story completely.’

‘Thank you.’

She spoke as if it were a genuine compliment.

‘So what did happen at the bridge?’ asked Cooper.

‘It was bad luck. The fact is, Sandra was out of control that night. I don’t know what she was on exactly, but she was totally out of her head. She began to run around in the woods like a crazy woman. Then she came after me and chased me towards the bridge. She scared me. I thought she was going to do me some harm. God knows what she was thinking, but I’m sure she was hallucinating. The others had no idea what was going on, though. We were supposed to be quiet and not draw any attention to ourselves. When they heard all the commotion they didn’t know what to think.’

‘They imagined someone else must be there,’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘And that would have ruined the plan.’

Cooper felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He reached for it slowly, but Poppy backed away again and he lost sight of her in the shadows.

‘Sandra caught me near the bridge,’ said Poppy. ‘I seriously thought she was going to do something bad to me, she was so nuts. I think I must have screamed. Jason says he heard a scream anyway. I suppose that must have been me. Though Sandra was making plenty of noise too, crashing about in the trees. But then she seemed to start coughing or choking and she fell on the ground. I had no idea what to do. I thought she was still messing around.’

‘And no one came to help you?’

‘Yes, Jason did.’ Poppy moved her head sideways so that he couldn’t see her eyes. Was she looking towards someone who stood in the darkness? Or was the gesture merely theatrical?

Cooper moved too, trying to maintain eye contact. Perhaps he ought to arrest her right now. But what had she admitted to, really? Perverting the course of justice? Conspiracy? There wasn’t much of a case against her. He needed to know more.

‘It was lucky I wasn’t relying on Rob,’ said Poppy. ‘He’s not the bravest of people.’

‘What happened to Sandra?’ persisted Cooper.

Poppy sighed. ‘She should never have come out with us on something like that. We didn’t know she had a heart condition.’

‘I don’t think she knew either.’

‘If she had a family history of heart disease, she ought to have gone to her GP for a review. I bet she was a prime candidate for heart disease. A bad diet, smoking, too little exercise, a family history…’

‘So. At some point on this particular evening she simply dropped down dead in front of you,’ said Cooper.

‘Pretty much.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I’ve got to admit, I had no idea what to do. I was about ready to panic, to be honest. But Jason said he’d done a bit of first-aid training. He tried CPR. You know, pressing on her chest, mouth-to-mouth, and all that.’

‘But no one called an ambulance, did they?’

‘No. Well … no, we didn’t.’

Cooper was silent for a moment. ‘No matter how long Mr Shaw performed CPR, it was pretty useless without defibrillation, which is what actually restarts the heart.’

‘That’s what I said to Jason. I mean, we both knew that Sandra was dead. It was so obvious. There was no way she was going to be brought back to life. Right in those first few seconds, she was dead. She was already a ghost.’

Cooper shivered at her choice of phrase. The factory had made him feel uneasy as soon as he’d entered it. If your imagination ran in that direction, you might think there were phantom presences here, the spirits of the former occupants imprinted in the walls. But his senses were warning him of whispers and movements in the darkness. He couldn’t tell yet whether they were real or illusory.

‘We both panicked a bit, then,’ said Poppy. ‘Jason had touched her hat and her torch, so he took those away with him, in case of fingerprints. Then we rolled her body off the bridge. Her head hit the rocks, which was a bit nasty. But she wasn’t feeling any pain by then, was she?’

She was actually appealing to him for reassurance.

‘No, Poppy,’ he said.

‘It was funny, but it was only when I got home that I thought about her mobile phone. But it must have been in the river, I suppose. I dropped my phone in water once. It didn’t work too well after that.’

Cooper took a cautious step towards her, but she noticed and backed out of the light. That was worse. Now she was almost invisible and he was the one standing directly beneath the opening, bathed in the odd light. He could see the green tinge on the skin of his hands, like the discoloration of flesh after death.

‘Poor Jason was upset,’ said Poppy. ‘He was quite keen on Sandra. He likes them a bit weird, I think.’

Cooper could have kicked himself as he listened to her story. He’d noticed all those people coming forward and telling him part of the truth, as if they’d been told to do that. The Nadens, Jason Shaw, even Brendan Kilner. But he’d never thought to himself: And what about Poppy Mellor? She’d come forward voluntarily and appeared to be a willing witness. But she’d only told part of the truth too.

Yes, she’d been clever in some ways. Yet she was so young, so inexperienced about life. And about people too.

‘And George Redfearn?’ he said.

‘Unfortunate. But it was just like Sandra’s death.’

‘No.’ Cooper shook his head. ‘You can see a heart attack coming. It’s there in the tests. It’s in the blood. But this is different. You don’t see a murder coming.’

‘Sometimes you can.’

‘But it wasn’t you who killed George Redfearn, Poppy. That’s something I can’t believe.’

‘Can’t you, really? But it’s so easy, isn’t it? To get someone up on a high place like that and shove them off. You don’t need much strength.’

‘No, that’s true.’

And he had to admit it was true. A quick push, a momentary loss of balance. He’d imagined it himself on the sharp ridge of Parkhouse Hill just yesterday.

But Poppy was still backing away from him as he crossed the walkway.

‘You are right, though,’ she said.

‘Right?’

‘It wasn’t me. I was back home by then. You can check with my dad, if you want. He’ll be only too happy to talk to you.’

Cooper held his breath, listening for a sound, any sound, in the darkness. He was beginning to feel disorientated by the blackness all around him. His eyes couldn’t adjust because of the light he was standing in. He felt like a character on a stage, pinned by the spotlights, and about to perform his big scene in front of an audience he couldn’t see.

‘You’re a different person from the one I met before, Poppy,’ he said.

‘I was in character before.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I took a joint honours in drama studies at De Montfort,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t great. But good enough.’

Poppy was backing away steadily and Cooper had to follow to keep her in view.