Blind to the Bones Read online

  ‘The Black Country, though,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is. You know that.’

  ‘It’s where you were living when you were stationed … When you decided you had to leave.’

  ‘Yes. This has nothing to do with you, Ben.’

  ‘Is Bearwood near where you lived as a child?’

  ‘Ben –’

  ‘You were living with foster parents there when your sister Angie left home.’

  ‘I could really regret ever having told you any of this. It isn’t some kind of soap opera that I expect you to keep track of. It’s just my life, that’s all. And it’s in the past now.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve barely even seen my foster parents since I moved from the West Midlands. I had a Christmas card from them last year, and they write occasionally. Apart from that, the rest of it is history. It’s over. I’ve forgotten all about it.’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘You haven’t forgotten Angie.’

  The windows of the car were starting to steam up. Maybe it had turned a bit colder outside since the shower started. Or maybe it was the fact that Cooper was starting to sweat. He felt like Daniel entering the lion’s den.

  ‘You know, I definitely think I could regret ever telling you anything about my life.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t give up on trying to find Angie, would you?’

  ‘Have you never noticed,’ said Fry, ‘that the world is full of people who’ve given up trying, in one way or another?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t noticed that.’

  ‘Well, take a look around. You can’t miss them.’

  ‘It’s only because I’m concerned about you, Diane.’

  ‘I don’t need anybody to be concerned about me.’

  ‘I just –’

  ‘Ben, drop it.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I don’t ever want to hear you mention my sister again. Got it?’

  Cooper stared out of the windscreen. He couldn’t see much outside because of the condensation. But he knew that Withens was out there, waiting for him to have another go at getting into Waterloo Terrace.

  ‘Got it,’ he said.

  ‘Now go and try the Oxleys again.’

  ‘Diane, you don’t know what they’re like.’

  ‘I’m sure you can get something out of them. Use your charm, Ben. Talk their language.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Diane, you try – see how you get on!’

  Fry leaned a little closer to him.

  ‘I don’t have the charm,’ she said. ‘Or so they tell me. And I certainly don’t have the language. Not like you do, Ben.’

  ‘It doesn’t work in this case,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t get near enough to use the charm. They don’t listen to me long enough for me to start speaking their language. So maybe I should start doing it your way.’

  ‘That would be a first.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we might need to try someone else with the Oxleys. Amazing as the idea seems, it’s possible they just don’t like you, Ben.’

  ‘Really? I thought you were in a minority of one there.’

  Fry looked at him coldly, but didn’t reply. Cooper could see the tired edges of her eyes and the tense lines around her mouth. He sighed.

  ‘I mean it, Diane. Trying to talk to the Oxleys is like drawing teeth. And I never had any ambitions to be a dentist.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Fry. ‘I couldn’t imagine that job. All those people with decaying teeth. Some people should just keep their mouths firmly shut.’

  Fry gathered the files together as Cooper got out of the car and walked across the road. He was glad of the cool air, and let out a deep breath that he had been holding.

  Something odd and surprising had struck Cooper while Fry had been tearing him off a strip. While the Renshaws were convinced that their missing daughter was alive and well, and would be found very soon, Diane Fry might be living in the opposite fantasy. Despite the effort she was putting in to track down her sister, Cooper was beginning to get the feeling that deep down she actually believed that Angie was dead.

  22

  Ben Cooper met PC Tracy Udall outside St Asaph’s church. Withens was starting to get him down, but he wasn’t in a position to complain. Diane Fry had to enter the fantasy world of the Renshaws, and he didn’t envy her. Yet his own role wasn’t going to be simple, either. To pull apart the Oxley family, he had to get a chance of speaking to each member of the family separately. And that was easier said than done. The Oxleys seemed to cling together, and hardly wanted to let each other out of sight. It was an admirable closeness in a family. Or was it something else?

  Perhaps it was time for a change of strategy. He’d tried to be friendly and polite, and it hadn’t worked. It had been too much to hope that it would, with the Oxleys. A bit of subtlety was called for. An oblique approach, so that they didn’t see him coming quite so easily.

  Udall looked a bit tired today, too. Cooper wondered if her son had been causing her problems. For a moment, he was on the point of asking her, but it occurred to him that he didn’t know whether Udall welcomed his interest in her private life any more than Diane Fry did.

  A group of boys were hanging around near the bus stop again. Two of the lads were the fourteen-or fifteen-year-olds he had seen before, but now with Sheffield Wednesday football shorts over their jeans. The third was the smaller boy with close-cropped hair, but a distinct family resemblance.

  Cooper thought he was at least starting to get an angle on the names now – the two teenagers he reckoned were Ryan and Sean, of which at least one was Lucas Oxley’s son. The smaller one was undoubtedly Jake, the Tiny Terror.

  Each of them seemed to be wearing a personal stereo, with the wires of their earpieces trailing into the pockets of their jackets. No doubt they were enjoying their personal choice of pop, which seemed to dominate everyone’s life as a teenager. Ben Cooper’s father had called it ‘puberty set to music’.

  But there was something a little strange about the Oxley boys. They were each plugged in to their own world of sound, yet they seemed to be able to communicate with each other by using their eyes and their body language. They turned to watch Cooper drive down the road. The Oxleys seemed the sort of family who were close enough to be able to send their thoughts to each other in some mysterious fashion. Perhaps Lucas Oxley had already been alerted by some psychic means to his approach. Cooper wondered if a telepathic communication from the Oxley boys would be accompanied by a hip-hop backing track.

  At Waterloo Terrace itself, the children had been building a sort of fort on the waste ground in front of the gardens. They had dragged lumps of wood from the yard behind the terrace to make the walls, with sections of drainage pipe standing on end at each corner like little towers. The wood had been stacked only three feet high or so, but it looked pretty unstable. It certainly wouldn’t meet with the approval of the council if it had been an official play area.

  ‘I understand the landlords sent some of their workmen to dismantle this once,’ said Udall. ‘But the kids just built another one.’

  ‘It looks almost as though they’re expecting a siege,’ said Cooper.

  The sound of chainsaws seemed to provide a constant background accompaniment whenever he visited Waterloo Terrace. He pictured the muscular Scott and his cousin, Glen, cutting up the heavy railway sleepers he’d glimpsed in the yard. But what would they use them for? Building an even bigger fort?

  ‘You know, it reminds me a bit of the place up at Townhead,’ said Udall. ‘I don’t suppose you know it? It’s a kind of commune, I think. They converted a couple of terraces of railwaymen’s houses.’

  ‘A commune? But this is different. These are all members of the same family.’

  ‘I know. You wouldn’t think they’d all want to live together, given the choice. I know I wouldn’t want to
live with my family. We usually try to keep as far away from each other as we possibly can.’

  Cooper knocked at number 5, Fran Oxley’s house, but got no reply. He listened at the door, thinking he heard voices. But he wasn’t quite sure where the sound was coming from. He tried a bit harder, in case the knocker wasn’t loud enough, or the occupier was at the back of the house. But there was no response. It felt almost as if the house itself were ignoring him.

  ‘I wonder why no one has ever fitted door bells,’ he said.

  ‘Probably not worth their while.’

  ‘I’m going to put my card through the letter box,’ said Cooper. ‘Then at least we’ll have made contact, of a kind.’

  He scribbled a note on the back of the card and pushed it through the door. At number 3 he did the same thing, after he got no reply to his knock. But then he looked at Tracy Udall.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ he said. ‘There’s definitely someone at home somewhere. It sounds like children.’

  ‘I think you’re right. It’s coming from that direction.’

  Cooper walked along the row of houses towards the sound of laughter. He followed the muddy track past the front gates to the end of the terrace. Here, the track made a sharp turn at the last house and vanished behind it. He kept walking, skirting the deep puddles that had gathered in ruts underneath the shadow of the blank gable end. A skim of oil had formed on the surface of the water in the puddles.

  Ahead of him, the track continued for another fifty yards, towards more trees. But on his right must be the yard that the brick passages ran into.

  Then Cooper stopped. He was amazed to find that there was another row of houses facing the back of Waterloo Terrace. There were eight of them again, all of the same construction – black brick, with an arched passageway between each pair. But all of these homes were unoccupied, and had long since been abandoned. Their windows were broken and their doors stood open, or had been removed altogether. Some of the slates were missing from the roofs, and grass was growing in the guttering. One of the downspouts had collapsed, and water was dripping from the end of the amputated section of pipe. The wall of the house clearly showed the path of the water, where it had discoloured the brick as it trickled towards the ground. In the middle of the row was its name, marked out in a decorative brick panel a couple of feet below the roof. Trafalgar Terrace.

  Cooper looked at the yard. On this side, it was protected by a six-foot wire-mesh fence. Inside, he glimpsed stacks of railway sleepers, roof tiles and old tyres. Just on the other side of the fence, two girls were standing barefoot in an old tin bath of the kind that miners once used to wash themselves in front of the fire. The girls were each holding the hand of a woman who stood outside the bath, and they were paddling excitedly in a thick, viscous substance like heavy brown mud. It had splashed up their legs and on to their clothes, but they didn’t seem to care. They were having a wonderful time.

  It was the first time Cooper had seen anybody in or near Waterloo Terrace enjoying themselves, and it was like a breath of fresh air. He laughed.

  ‘That looks fun!’ he called.

  But their laughter stopped immediately, and their smiles faded when they saw him.

  ‘I hope your mum doesn’t mind you getting mud on your clothes. My mother always did when I played in the mud.’

  All three of them stared at him silently. Cooper felt irrationally disappointed and hurt. He recognized a tinge of guilt, too – guilt that he had been responsible for destroying that moment of innocent enjoyment.

  The mud they were trampling was almost red, and he could smell the earthy aroma from here. But there was no clay soil in this area. The Dark Peak was on acid, peaty soil that formed a different kind of mud altogether – the black, slimy stuff that hikers sank up to their knees in on the summit of Black Hill and Bleaklow. The clay must have been brought in specially. But for what purpose? Was it just for the girls to play in? Or had they borrowed it from some other job their parents were using it for?

  ‘I don’t want to stop you,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  But the girls continued to stare at him until he walked past them and on to the back lane. Cooper thought of his nieces, who weren’t far from the ages of the two Oxley girls. He thought about how devastated he would be if Amy and Josie began to regard him with the same fear and suspicion that he had seen on the faces of the Oxley girls, the same dislike and refusal to communicate. But Amy and Josie weren’t Oxleys, they were his nieces. He was their uncle Ben, and they had known him all their lives. They were family to each other, and it made a difference.

  At least, it made a difference in the Cooper family.

  He looked again at the ruins of Trafalgar Terrace. This was obviously where most of the pigeons lived. They sat in fidgeting rows along the roof ridge, and they were nesting on the window ledges on the upper floors, where a few bits of straw lay among shreds of rotten wood and broken glass from the windows.

  ‘You’ve no right to be down here.’

  Lucas Oxley was standing in front of a gate in the wire fence of his yard. He had a hammer in one hand, and a dozen rusty nails clutched in his other fist. Cooper looked around for something that Lucas might have been nailing, but could see nothing new among the debris on the grass.

  Cooper could hear a sort of scurrying and rustling sound behind Oxley. It was coming from among the railway sleepers and tyres stacked in the yard, or perhaps from one of the passages that ran between the houses. Somebody was busy back there. Cooper pictured some of the other Oxleys going about their business, whispering to each other cautiously – knowing, without being told, that there was a stranger nearby. He was becoming convinced that the Oxleys could smell him coming. Maybe if he chose a different aftershave and deodorant next time he made his Sunday-morning trip to Somerfield’s, it would confuse the scent, let him get closer to the nest before they recognized him.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Oxley,’ he said.

  Oxley put the handful of nails into a pocket of his jacket, leaving one hand free. He shifted his grip on the shaft of the hammer. Then he looked at Cooper for a while.

  There was a smothered laugh from the yard. It was a male laugh – one of the older Oxley sons. Whoever was back there, they sounded to be dragging something heavy across the ground, something that scraped on the concrete and landed with a thud when it was dropped.

  Tracy Udall came to stand at Cooper’s side, but sensibly said nothing. Lucas Oxley ignored her.

  ‘Weather’s not too good this morning,’ said Cooper. ‘A bit wetter than it has been lately.’

  Oxley nodded cautiously.

  ‘But you’re still managing to get a few jobs done outdoors, I see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re getting a few jobs done. Mending a fence, are you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing. And you’re keeping your lads busy round the back there, by the sound of it?’

  ‘They’re good lads.’

  ‘I’m sure they are.’

  ‘Lads always get into a bit of bother now and then. It means nothing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re good lads.’

  ‘We only wanted a few words, sir.’

  ‘About anything particular? Or were you just wanting to pass the time of day? Because if you have, you’ve come to the wrong place.’

  ‘It’s about Neil Granger, sir.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘We’re trying to find out how he died.’

  ‘We have to bury him. It’s your job to find out how he died. If you’ve a mind to.’

  ‘Of course we’ve a mind to. But we need help.’

  ‘Aye. You come asking for help now, but you’re never around when other folks need help.’

  ‘Do you remember Emma Renshaw, Mr Oxley?’ said Cooper desperately.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Neil knew her very well, didn’t he?’

  ‘Everybody knew her. Now, if I ask
you to leave my property, you have to – I know that. Unless you’re here to arrest somebody. Are you going to do that?’

  ‘Not today, Mr Oxley.’

  Cooper turned away, and looked up towards where the road should be. He couldn’t make it out because of the thick screen of trees in the way. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Udall raise her shoulders, as if adjusting her belt. It was a discreet shrug, and a question: Are we wasting our time here?

  ‘You really can’t see much from down here, can you?’ said Cooper.

  ‘They built the houses like this so nobody had to look at them,’ said Oxley sourly.

  Was that almost a bit of conversation?

  ‘So what were they originally?’

  ‘Railwaymen’s cottages. You’d think they’d have built them in stone, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But the railway company said they had a policy to build their workers’ houses all the same. Well, if you ask me, they had a big contract with a brick company, and got their bricks dirt cheap, like everything else.’

  Cooper felt they were making contact, even striking up a conversation. He took a step forward towards the fence, so that he didn’t have to raise his voice quite so much. The Alsatian stood up. Cooper stopped.

  ‘What about members of your family, Mr Oxley?’ said Udall, recognizing the moment to divide attention. ‘Might some of them have been around at that time and seen something?’

  ‘Scott was probably at the pub Friday night. You could ask him. But he isn’t home.’

  ‘No, we’ve tried.’

  ‘The young ones would be home at that time,’ said Oxley.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure. They’re good lads.’

  ‘What about Frances?’ said Cooper. ‘Or is it Fran? At number 5 – she doesn’t seem to be home either.’

  ‘Fran has a job.’

  Oxley said it as if he expected them to be surprised. Cooper found that he actually was, and mentally chided himself for forming pre-conceptions. Lucas might have a job as well, for all he knew. And Scott, too.

  ‘Is Fran working today, Mr Oxley?’

  ‘She works in a café, over in Holmfirth. She won’t be back until later. She has to use the bus.’