Blind to the bones bcadf-4 Read online

  ‘Yes. Whatever.’

  The house was sparsely furnished, without much effort to make everything match perfectly - but it was no more than he would have expected from a man living on his own. There was a stereo with sizeable speakers in the sitting room, and a TV in the other corner, with a remote sitting on an arm of the settee.

  ‘Did you help Neil move in?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Yeah. The furniture is a bit of a mixture. Some of it he was given, some he bought second hand. There were some new things. The stereo is new.’

  Cooper walked over to the stereo and popped open the caddy of the CD. Nirvana. For some reason, he was surprised. But he didn’t really know much about Neil Granger yet. He turned back

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  to Philip, who was standing staring vaguely at the remote control on the settee.

  ‘Are you sure there’s no one you’d like to call, who can be with you? We could get a doctor, if you’re not feeling well.’

  ‘No, I’m OK.’ But Granger sat down suddenly in one of the armchairs, as if his legs had failed him. ‘Actually, I could do with a stiff drink.’

  ‘We’ll try not to keep you too long.’

  ‘It’s all right. You want a statement, you said?’

  ‘Tomorrow. A formal statement tomorrow. But anything you can tell us right now to help us catch your brother’s killer quickly would be very helpful.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Had your brother lived here long?’

  ‘He only moved in last summer. He’d been working away for a while to save up for a deposit.’

  ‘It can be hard getting on the property ladder these days. Did he have a good job?’

  ‘He worked at Lancashire Chemicals after he came back to this area. They thought a lot of him there. He was earning more than me, anyway.’

  ‘Do you know how much he paid for this house?’

  ‘No, I can’t remember. Is it important?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  It was something they could find out. Also what Neil Granger’s mortgage payments had been, in relation to his wages at the chemicals factory. Cooper wasn’t sure whether his curiosity on this was personally influenced. He knew all too well how difficult it was to get enough money together for a deposit on a house in Derbyshire and feel able to meet the mortgage commitment. It was taking him a long time on a detective constable’s salary, even after ten years in the force. But perhaps house prices in Tintwistle were lower than in desirable Edendale.

  Cooper looked into the kitchen. Surprisingly clean and neat. Carpeted stairs started near the back door. He wondered where he should go about finding a diary, letters or an address book.

  ‘How many bedrooms are there?’

  ‘Oh, two,’ said Philip. ‘Neil has his computer set up in the small one.’

  ‘I see.’

  It wasn’t a bad little house. It had been kept in good condition

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  inside. It would be ideal lor one or two people setting up lor the first time.

  Cooper went out into the back garden to look at the area where Philip said his brother had kept his car. There were distinct wheel marks in the ground, which the SOCOs could compare to the VW’s tyres, if it was thought useful. But there had been showers since Friday and the outline of the car had vanished.

  The stone cladding on the front of the terrace had been only a facade. The cladding ended suddenly, presumably because it hadn’t been worth the expense of covering the back of the houses. It had been all about outward appearance.

  Cooper went back into the house and found Philip Granger silling on a chair in the kitchen.

  And there’s no girlfriend around?’ he said.

  Philip had already been prompted for the names of anyone in a close relationship who might need to be contacted before news of his brother’s death began to leak out. But it was surprising what important details slipped the minds of bereaved relatives, only to be remembered at the second or third time of asking.

  ‘Neil had a lot of girlfriends, on and off,’ said Philip. ‘I don’t think there was anyone particular recently. I suppose I’ll have to do some phoning round.’

  ‘Please let us have any names and phone numbers, too. We’ll need to speak to them. Also to any other friends or associates.’

  ‘Associates?’

  ‘Work colleagues, perhaps. I don’t know. Anyone your brother had connections with. Particularly anyone he might have fallen out with.’

  Granger looked up from his feet and tried to focus on Cooper. ‘Who do you think did it, then?’

  ‘We don’t know at the moment, sir. That’s why we need any leads you can give us.’

  ‘You think it was someone Neil knew?’

  ‘Yes, it seems likely in the circumstances.’

  ‘Somehow, that makes it even worse/ said Granger.

  ‘Yes, it always does. Are you older than your brother?’

  ‘Yes, by three years. It isn’t much, but it always seemed a lot between us. He was always my little brother. I felt quite responsible for him after our mum died. She had cancer of the stomach, you know.’

  ‘What about your father?’

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  ‘He was sent down for burglary when we were teenagers, and we never saw him again. He was let out a lew years ago, but he didn’t bother coming home. Mum wasn’t too upset about that.’

  ‘Did he come to her funeral?’

  ‘No. We’ve never heard anything from him, and we haven’t tried to find him either.’

  ‘So you don’t even know whether he’s still alive?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘He ought to be told about Neil, if we can trace him.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help there.’

  Cooper caught sight of himself in a mirror on the wall near the front door. He looked more at home here than Philip Granger did. Briefly, the thought crossed his mind that the house would be coming on the market. He pushed it away guiltily.

  ‘When did you last speak to your brother, Mr Granger?’

  ‘A few days ago. I’m not sure exactly when.’

  ‘During the last week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The beginning of the week?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Granger was starting to flag a bit. He probably wouldn’t be able to provide any more useful information at the moment.

  ‘But you said earlier that Neil was in Withens on Friday evening, is that right?’

  ‘Yes/ said Philip. ‘He was at a rehearsal.’

  ‘You weren’t there yourself?’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  ‘And you didn’t speak to your brother at the rehearsal?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Not really. It was kind of busy. And, you know - noisy.’

  ‘This was a rehearsal for …?’

  The Border Rats.’

  Philip looked around the room with a puzzled frown, cocking his head as if listening for a voice that wasn’t there.

  ‘They’ll have a vacancy now/ he said.

  Ben Cooper was glad to get back to his flat in Welbeck Street that night. Withens and all the people connected with it had started to depress him, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was the air of distrust he had met from everyone he had spoken to. They had been suspicious either of the police, or of each other, or even

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  of the world in general. A police officer lived with suspicion, of course. But when it was unjustified, it was peculiarly depressing.

  Cooper knew he was due to get a new neighbour in the upstairs flat. The previous tenant had been there for years, but had started to get a bit frail and had taken the chance of sheltered housing when she received an offer. Cooper expected his landlady, Mrs Shelley, to advertise the vacancy, as she had done with the ground floor flat. ‘Reliable and trustworthy professional people only’. That’s what the advert had said in the bookshop that day, when he had seen it by sheer chance.

 
; But Mrs Shelley showed no signs of advertising the flat, or even getting any maintenance work or decorating done when the old tenant’s belongings had been moved out. Cooper was curious to know what was going on. He had heard almost no noise from the old lady, but if someone less quiet moved in upstairs, it could have an impact on his life.

  Funnily enough, Mrs Shelley had taken to him in a big way. He had thought she might have blamed him for the death of her nephew, who had died during the course of a murder enquiry three months earlier, with Cooper the only person present. But when everything had been explained to her, Mrs Shelley had decided that Cooper was a hero. In a way, he had actually taken the place of her nephew, and now she took a special interest in him. He thought he could probably have asked for anything and she would have said ‘yes’. But it was unfair to take advantage of her.

  Mostly, he wanted to establish the flat as his own private territory and he was nervous of encouraging her too much, in case she decided to pop in every few minutes to see how he was. The bolts helped there, of course. Though she had keys for the locks, there was no way she could just walk into the flat when he was there. That privacy felt very precious to him at the moment. It was a privacy he had never enjoyed before, since he had lived at Bridge End Farm with his family all his life. Finally, approaching his thirtieth birthday, he felt free for the first time. He could create his own world in this little flat. And he was surprised at how territorial he had immediately become.

  He forked some duck-and-turkey Whiskas into a bowl for Randy, who rubbed himself briefly against Cooper’s legs. Though they had met each other only a few months before, the cat was very much part of the scenery in Cooper’s new life - which went

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  to prove that you didn’t need to work at a relationship for years and years, didn’t it?

  ‘Where’s your friend, Randy?’

  He called the other cat Mrs Macavity, because she came and went so mysteriously. In fact, Cooper wasn’t sure where she really lived. Apart from the couple of months she had spent in his conservatory, caring for the five rather scruffy black-and-white kittens she’d produced in her basket one morning, her presence was unpredictable. He thought she might have an entire list of homes she called on when she felt like it. A meal here today, next door tomorrow.

  Once new homes had been found for all the kittens among his family, Mrs Macavity had returned to her old ways. She was much more of a free spirit than Randy, who didn’t wander far from his warm basket next to the boiler in the conservatory. He used the cat flap to do whatever he needed to do in the garden, weighed up the weather, and either lay for a while in the sun or came straight back in to his basket. He was an animal with a fixed routine and firm ideas about what was his territory and what wasn’t. Cooper liked that. He thought there was something in that attitude that enabled a person to establish a home.

  He’d asked Dorothy Shelley if he could be allowed access to the back garden. There was a door in to it from the conservatory, but the conservatory wasn’t part of his flat, according to the tenancy agreement, so he had no rights over it. In fact, it belonged more to the cats than to him.

  Of course, the cats didn’t seem to belong to anyone, either. But that was perfectly normal. He had cleaned the cat hairs from the floor of the conservatory and washed the black specks of mould off the raffia chair that stood under the side window. He’d have liked to throw the chair out, but it wasn’t his property. He’d have liked to have a bonfire in the garden, and put the chair on top of it. But the garden wasn’t his.

  The few possessions he had brought with him from Bridge End Farm were mostly in the sitting room - a Richard Martin print of Win Hill, a wooden cat on the window ledge. And, of course, the photograph over the fireplace - the one showing rows of solemn faced police officers lined up in their uniforms, with Sergeant Joe Cooper standing in the second row. That would be his inheritance for ever.

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  ‘I’m afraid I’ve let this garden go a bit since my husband died/ said Mrs Shelley that evening, gazing vaguely through the glass of the conservatory as if she had completely forgotten there was anything out there. ‘The one at number six is enough for me to manage on my own, so this has got a bit neglected.’

  1 could tidy it up for you,’ said Cooper. ‘You’ve got some mature trees out there, but the rest of it is a bit overgrown.’

  His landlady didn’t seem too sure why she had come next door, though Cooper had been asking her to for weeks, so they could talk about the garden.

  ‘I can’t actually see it from my own house,’ said Mrs Shelley, ‘so it hasn’t really bothered me.’

  ‘It’s a shame to let it deteriorate any more. Besides, the neighbours might start complaining.’

  ‘I suppose they might.’

  ‘Do you have a key for this door?’

  Cooper could have opened the door easily. The wood was rotten around the lock, which was only an old barrel lock anyway. At some time, a small piece of wood had been screwed into the jamb to hold the catch in place where the wood had crumbled completely. A few seconds with a screwdriver, and he could have been out in the garden to take a look round, then put the piece of wood back, and Mrs Shelley would have been none the wiser. But he was on her property, and he had to abide by the rules.

  There’s probably a key in a drawer somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘In your house? Or in here?’

  Mrs Shelley looked around. An old table stood at one end of the conservatory, underneath a shelf of dying geraniums in plastic pots. The paint flaking from the table revealed that it had been several different colours in its lifetime, but most recently daffodil yellow.

  ‘Try the table drawer.’

  Cooper had a rummage. 1 think we’re in luck,’ he said, pulling out an iron key.

  With a bang, Randy came through the cat flap. For the past weeks, it had been a source of increasing frustration for Cooper that the two cats had been free to come and go from the outside, while he was kept from it, able only to peer at the scenery sideways through panes of dusty glass. He put the feeling down to the arrival of spring. He could feel it in the air every time he went out of his front door on to the street or opened his kitchen window

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  to let out the smell of his cooking. Even here, in the middle of Edendale, he could catch the scent of the fresh grass growing and the new leaves opening on the trees. He had started to get desperate for contact with nature.

  Spring in Welbeck Street wasn’t like spring back at Bridge End Farm, where he had grown up and had lived until so recently. But the chance to touch something green and growing would help. Visiting his brother Matt and his family at the farm only made things worse. There were too many memories now.

  The cat rubbed its long black fur against his leg. Randy was already starting to change into his summer coat. His winter fur was gradually coarsening and falling out bit by bit each day, so that his outline became sleeker and darker. Since Cooper had taken over his feeding, Randy had become slimmer and much fitter. Occasionally, he returned the favour with a dead vole or shrew he’d brought into the flat from the garden. Often, by the time Cooper got home, they were already smelling and attracting flies. The distinctive smell of death seemed to follow him around these days. It even arrived, as a gift, on his kitchen floor.

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  14

  Monday

  DCI Kessen took up a position at the front of the room for the morning briefing. In front of him on the table were a series of exhibits relating to the Neil Granger enquiry.

  ‘He looks like a Greek god to me/ said Gavin Murfin, taking a chair next to Ben Cooper.

  ‘Well, I think he’s more like Neptune/ said Cooper.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s the beard. The way it’s sort of … forked.’

  ‘Yeah. Like the Devil.’

  Kessen was waiting impassively for everyone to settle down. Diane Fry came in and sat on the front row, where no one ever wanted to be.

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sp; ‘I bet he’s worth a lot, though/ said Murfin. ‘Thousands/

  ‘I’ve no idea/

  ‘How old would you say?’

  ‘A century or two, that’s all/ said Cooper.

  Kessen cleared his throat. The room gradually fell silent.

  ‘I know what you’re all wondering/ he said. ‘I’ve decided to call him Fred/

  The DCI smiled without showing his teeth. The expression lacked humour. In fact, it looked more like a challenge to anyone who might dare to laugh.

  ‘Oh, my good Lord/ said Murfin quietly.

  Using both hands because of its weight, Kessen held up one of the evidence bags. It was made of clear plastic, and everyone could see what was inside it. There was also a large colour photograph of the item pinned up on one of the notice boards.

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  ‘An antique bronze bust/ said the DCI. ‘This was found in a vehicle belonging to the victim, Neil Granger. The vehicle in question is a Volkswagen Beetle, which had been left parked in a layby on the A628, a few hundred yards down the hill from where Mr Granger’s body was found.’

  The bust was about nine inches high, with a dull green patina, and stood on a solid base. It represented the head of a man with a Roman nose, curly hair and a rather forked beard. Whoever he was, he gazed with blank eyes into the room. Cooper was reminded of a corpse he had once seen on the dissection table at the mortuary - a homeless Irishman who had been killed in a hit and-run incident and left in a ditch. The Irishman’s hair had been black, but his face had carried a similar green tinge.

  ‘We know that there have been a number of burglaries from homes in the Longdendale area during the last few months/ said Kessen. ‘During these burglaries, small antique items have been taken. This is a small antique item.’

  The bust was heavy, and it landed with a thump when he rested it back on the table.

  ‘Initial enquiries into Neil Granger’s circumstances and his asso. ciates suggest that he may not have come into possession of this item in the normal manner.’