Blind to the bones bcadf-4 Read online

  He was holding a death certificate. It recorded the death in Chapeltown, Sheffield, of Angela Jane Fry, aged thirty. It was dated just over a year ago.

  ‘And presumably this isn’t your real address,’ said Cooper.

  Angle laughed. ‘That isn’t even my name now. I changed it some time ago.’

  ‘Diane would go straight to this address and make enquiries.’

  She shrugged. ‘Good luck to her. The house was used as a squat, but the owners evicted everyone months ago.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this.’

  ‘From what I hear of Diane, she’s persistent. She needs something like this to stop her. She needs convincing.’

  ‘Where have you been hearing things about Diane?’

  ‘She’s been pretty active in Sheffield, believe me. She’s been making a big nuisance of herself, and there are a lot of people who don’t like it.’

  Cooper nodded. For once, he did believe her.

  ‘It’s making life difficult for me,’ said Angie. ‘And for some of my friends. I need her to stop.’

  ‘What friends? Anyone I know?’

  ‘Not very likely, is it?’

  ‘Well, someone told you about me and how to find me.’

  ‘Like I said, everyone knows you, Ben. You’re just going to have to live with it.’

  ‘Do you think I won’t be able to find out who it was?’

  ‘Is it that important?’ said Angie.

  ‘Well, yes, actually.’

  She shrugged, took a drink of her tonic water and pulled a face. Then she pretended to take an interest in the football on TV.

  ‘Who’s playing?’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Cooper.

  Unfortunately, Angie was right, There were too many possible sources where she could have obtained information about him. On both sides of the law. That didn’t stop him itching to find out,

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  though. He would love lo give somebody hassle lor leaking his address.

  Cooper looked at the death certificate. It was a very good forgery, and he would certainly have been convinced by it. Angle must have some interesting contacts. But the odd thing was that, though she said she wanted Diane to stop trying to trace her, she was asking an awful lot of questions about her sister. Cooper was starting to feel that she really wanted to know all about Diane, but at second hand. Despite her facade, she was frightened of having to face her little sister.

  ‘I know I’m taking a big gamble trusting you/ said Angie. ‘But I know you’re her friend. Do you realize how rare that is? I couldn’t find any others. But I do trust you. If you don’t do this, you won’t just be letting me down. You’ll be letting Diane down. She needs to get over all this and put it behind her, for her own sake. I think you know that, Ben.’

  Cooper met her eyes. They were disconcertingly familiar - the same eyes that he had to look at when Diane was angry with him. But they were too familiar - they should have looked more different from Diane’s. He had seen plenty of smackheads in Edendale, and they were blank-faced and skinny, with discoloured teeth. There was a place on the Cavendish Estate where the kids went to inject themselves every night, and the council came round every morning to pick up the needles. Those smackheads had dead eyes, not like these.

  Till think about it,’ he said. That’s all I’m going to say.’

  ‘Cool. Thanks for the drink, anyway.’

  Cooper waited until Angie had left the Hanging Gate. He watched her walk past the window of the pub, heading towards the Market Square. Then he slipped his book into his pocket, nodded at the landlord and stepped out of the door. He paused on the step with his hand to his head as if to brush his hair into place, and was able to see the figure of Angie Fry as she disappeared into the High Street. He could tell by the way she was walking that she had no idea that she might be followed. She had trusted him too much, in the end.

  He found a cap in his pocket and put it on as he crossed the street and walked in the direction Angie was following. He turned the corner of the High Street, and stopped.

  A couple of hundred yards further on, there was a line of cars

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  parked on the side oi the street, close under the front wall oi the old technical institute, which had been converted into offices. The lights came on in one of the cars as Angle reached it, and she opened the passenger door. Cooper stopped behind the last car in the line and bent his head, pretending to be fastening his shoelace on the rear bumper. He had a clear view as the car ahead manoeuvred to leave its parking space. He could see it was a dark blue BMW and, as it pulled out in the traffic, he saw its registration number.

  Cooper patted his pockets until he found a notebook and pen, and wrote the number down by the light of a street lamp before he forgot it. Then he pulled out his mobile phone and called the comms room at West Street to request a PNC check.

  ‘Sorry, DC Cooper,’ said the operator. ‘I can’t give you any information. That’s a blocked number.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  A blocked number? Cooper had never come across one before, not in ten years of police service.

  ‘Thanks anyway.’

  Well, one thing was for sure. Criminals and drug addicts didn’t own dark blue BMWs with blocked numbers. The privilege was only extended to vehicles whose ownership was officially protected. Investigators in vulnerable positions, like the DSS. But mostly police officers involved in sensitive operations. What exactly had Diane Fry been sticking her nose into?

  Ben Cooper walked back to his flat, but didn’t go in. He unlocked his own car and drove out of town on Castleton Road until he found the street where Diane Fry lived. A few minutes later, he was looking up at the window of Fry’s flat. This was a student area, and the houses had been converted into as many flats and bedsits as possible, so they would be pretty basic. But Fry was on a sergeant’s pay now. Surely she could afford something better than this? There was nothing special about the Peugeot car she ran. She didn’t take exotic holidays that he was aware of. But where else would her salary go? Was there something he didn’t know about her life?

  Well, of course, there were lots of things he didn’t know. Would it do Diane any good to find her? Was that where Diane’s salary went - on her efforts to find Angie? And then he thought about

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  a heroin addiction. It was an expensive habit to feed.

  Cooper had been intending to ring the bell, but for some reason he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He had been in Fry’s flat only once, and that was an occasion he had very vague memories of. All he really knew was that he hadn’t been welcome. He had no conviction that he would be any more welcome now.

  He thought of Ruby Wallwin. When you live alone for a long time, you become a hermit and the outside world becomes a threat. You hear someone’s footsteps in the corridor, and hope that they will pass by. And when they do, you take it as another sign that the world has rejected you, that you’re not wanted. In that way, you paint yourself into a corner, building a barrier that the world can never cross. And you hole up for the siege.

  Surely this was what she needed? This was the great frustration that caused the chip on her shoulder? But if he got the two of them together, would she move away? She once told him that it was the reason she’d come to Derbyshire.

  Besides, why make life any more difficult for himself? Surely he could just go home and forget all about it.

  Cooper turned his car, switched on the radio and headed back into Edendale. If the curtains at the window of one of the first floor flats had twitched as he left, he wouldn’t have noticed.

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  31

  Friday

  Ben Cooper wasn’t really asleep when his alarm went off next morning. He hadn’t slept properly at all, but had spent the night turning restlessly in his bed, worried that he’d miss the alarm. When the high-pitched beeping came, it penetrated a foggy limbo he had
been suspended in, a world halfway between waking and sleep. His mind had been groggily circling and circling around the same thoughts, hovering over a deep well of anxiety without being able to see clearly what the cause of his uneasiness was.

  Cooper pressed the button to stop the noise, and opened his eyes to stare into the darkness. It was totally black in his room. Black, and silent. There was no traffic on the road outside and no birds singing, no one moving around the house, not even any water hissing through the old plumbing of 8 Welbeck Street. The silence made him feel cold. But perhaps that was only anticipation. He knew how cold it would be outside, once he had left the house. It was six o’clock in the morning, and it was April.

  Cooper swung his feet from under the duvet, sat up and pulled back the curtain. It was also raining.

  ‘Oh, great.’

  For a moment, he thought about lying down and pulling the bedclothes back over himself, and staying there until it got light, as normal people did. But then he sighed, switched on the bedside light, and headed for the bathroom. He had no time to waste he was on an early shift today, and a briefing meeting had been scheduled for 8 a.m.

  He skirted the pile of ironing that had been waiting for him to get to it for days, and stumbled in bare feet on the pine floorboards

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  in the passage between his bedroom and the bathroom. It was warmer at this end of the flat, but that only made the thought of going out worse.

  He had managed to have a shower and a shave and was trying to drink a coffee when his mobile phone rang on the kitchen table.

  ‘No, I haven’t set off yet/ he said to his coffee mug, even before he picked up the phone.

  A large black cat walked sleepily into the kitchen and looked at him in a puzzled manner. If Cooper was up and moving around, it must be breakfast time. But it knew something wasn’t quite right.

  Cooper transferred his coffee to the other hand and picked up the phone.

  ‘Ben Cooper.’ He listened for a moment. ‘No, I haven’t set off yet, Diane. Yes, I know there’s work to do before the morning briefing. What makes you think I’ll be late? I’ll be there on time.’

  He pushed the phone into the pocket of his leather jacket, where he had thrown it over a chair the night before. He picked up the shirt, sweater and jeans that he’d put ready. The sitting room was dark, and only a thin sliver of light entered through the curtains from the street lamp across the road. It glinted off the framed picture over his mantelpiece, as if his father were winking at him from his seat on the second row of the Edendale police lineup. Then Cooper noticed the cat.

  ‘Here, Randy - do you want this coffee? I haven’t time to drink it.’

  The cat fixed him with its yellow eyes, puzzlement turning to disdain.

  ‘No? Never mind.’

  With the cat marching in front of him, its tail in the air, Cooper pulled his clothes on as he headed back to the kitchen. He put two bowls of cat food out and placed them on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. The noise of the rain was loud on the glass roof. Here in the centre of town there was always light, and he could make out the roofs of the houses that backed on to the Welbeck Street gardens from Meadow Road. The rest of the world out there was asleep. He would have to be careful that he was quiet as he left, so as not to disturb his new neighbour.

  Cooper looked at his watch. If he didn’t hurry, he actually was going to be late.

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  The Eden Valley hadn’t yet experienced the full impact of its annual influx of tourists, but the May Day bank holiday would make up for that. Everything was geared up for the season - the craft shops were open and full of the aromas of freshly painted and varnished stock produced during the winter, the tourist attractions were spring cleaned and ready, the cafes and pubs were holding their breath, praying for a good summer.

  The bank holiday weekend would be particularly busy this year, because Edendale was hosting a day of dance. It was what the morris dancers called an ‘ale’, though they said the name had nothing to do with the amount of beer that was drunk. Sides from all over the North and Midlands would be converging on the town to perform in the streets and in front of the pubs. With the help of a bit of good weather, the town would be packed.

  Recently a television crew had been filming around Edendale, too. Their vehicles and equipment regularly blocked the narrow streets off the market square, irritating the shopkeepers and residents, who had to step over yards of cable snaking across the pavements and cobbles.

  TV had a lot to answer for in the Peak District. In Buxton, a new golf driving range had recently opened under the name Teak Practice’, in reference to a popular medical soap opera.

  This morning, the pathologist would have begun to examine the skeletalized remains found in Withens. No doubt officers from other divisions would be phoning the CID room all day with jokes about E Division being so desperate for bodies that they had started to dig up the graveyards.

  The morning briefing was a downbeat affair. Many of the officers knew of Emma Renshaw’s disappearance two years previously, and they weren’t immune from the assumptions being made about the skeleton unearthed in the Withens churchyard. It hardly seemed necessary to wait for the postmortem results. Nobody doubted Howard Renshaw.

  For Diane Fry, the fact that the body had turned up in Withens was not what she had expected. But she found it had the result of forcing her to look at the enquiry from a completely different direction. That wasn’t a bad thing at all. It was too easy to fall into assumptions.

  Now her focus had to be on Withens, and her list of potential suspects had narrowed dramatically, from the entire population of

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  two of the largest cities in Britain to a handful of familiar names, each of whom had a relationship of some kind with Emma. For the Renshaws, the discovery of the skeleton was devastating. But for Fry, it made an impossible task look suddenly like a breeze. Some forensic evidence from the remains and from the scene, a whiff of an opportunity and a motive, and the case could be wrapped up in no time, after all.

  Best of all, there were more resources becoming available with the latest development. She wouldn’t have to rely on Gavin Murfin alone any more.

  As for the Neil Granger enquiry, nearly twenty lorry drivers had been traced who had passed along the A628 in the early hours of the previous Saturday morning, between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. At that time of the morning, lorry drivers noticed things. Almost all of those spoken to had noticed the VW Beetle left in the lay-by near Withens that morning. Not one of them had seen another vehicle parked near it - not in the same lay-by or in the next one, a few hundred yards up the road.

  The associates of Granger’s who had been questioned had left the detectives frustrated by the absence of direct evidence, and the convenience of their alibis. The homes of two of them had been searched, without result.

  David Senior was one of those who had been questioned most closely. Though a former colleague of Neil’s at the chemicals factory in Glossop, he denied that the two of them had been in a relationship recently. ‘We were just friends,’ he had said, apparently sincerely. No one could demonstrate otherwise, despite what Neil’s brother had been anxious to claim.

  But when pressed. Senior agreed that Neil Granger was gay. Fry was disappointed when she heard the news. Without even a sniff of a motive for the killing of Emma Renshaw, she was completely in the dark. And surely no one committed murder to conceal the fact that they were gay any more? Neil Granger might have been the person with the best opportunity - in fact, the only opportunity she knew of - but what would his motive have been?

  ‘So, even after the postmortem, we’re going to have to wait for a forensic anthropologist to give us an estimate of how long the skeleton had been in the churchyard?’ said Ben Cooper.

  Tat chance,’ said Diane Fry. 1 bet he won’t commit himself to within a year or two.’

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  ‘Really?’

  ‘You’ll
see. We expect too much of these people, and they always disappoint us.’

  ‘But we can’t assume the body was buried during the gap between the old vicar leaving and the new one coming.’

  ‘It has to have been since the last time that part of the graveyard was cleared. Otherwise some poor soul would have had the same experience that the Reverend Alton did/

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Cooper was getting ready to go out. He had an appointment in Glossop to see someone at the offices of the Oxleys’ landlords, Peak Water.

  ‘What I’d like to know/ said Fry, ‘is when exactly the Oxleys lost interest in maintaining the churchyard/

  ‘Diane, does this mean you want me to have another go at talking to them?’

  ‘Yes, Ben. And try a bit harder this time, could you?’

  Cooper sighed. ‘You think they’re hiding something?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But I know they feel threatened in some way/

  ‘Well, what about this: if the place to hide a body is the graveyard, maybe the best place to hide a murderer is among criminals/

  ‘You mean one of the Oxleys? You think they’re protecting one of their own?’

  ‘Well, the Oxleys may well all be criminals, Ben. But I was thinking of somewhere we put the criminals we’ve caught. Prison, in fact/

  ‘But there isn’t anyone in prison -‘ said Cooper, then stopped.

  ‘Not any more/

  Cooper thought of a boy who had hanged himself in his cell because he couldn’t stand life in a young offenders’ institution.

  ‘Craig Oxley/

  ‘If what his sister told you is true . . p>

  ‘But if the Oxleys know who killed Emma Renshaw, would they shop one of their own? I doubt it, don’t you?’

  ‘Even in those circumstances?’

  ‘My feeling is that the Oxleys wouldn’t even have to think about it,’ said Cooper. ‘They would know instinctively what was best for the family/