The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery Read online

  The lorry was a typical cab-over-engine design, with a driver’s position above the front axle and access to the cab via a couple of steps. That flat-nosed look had become almost universal since HGV lengths were strictly regulated. Its extra turning ability made it better suited to delivery conditions in areas like this with narrow, winding roads. The only problem was getting access to the engine, which required the whole cab being tilted forward.

  He knew Carol Villiers was already at the scene and he could see Luke Irvine had just arrived too. Irvine followed him along the side of the truck.

  Cooper wondered how he was going break the bad news to Villiers. She would be disappointed, though not perhaps as much as he was himself. He’d been through the same experience a few years ago, when someone else got the promotion he’d been hoping for – had been depending on too much, in fact. But things came right in the end, didn’t they?

  It wasn’t too late for Villiers, though her previous career in the RAF Police meant she was already of an age when promotion came, if it was ever going to. For some it never did, of course. But it was hard to imagine Carol Villiers becoming another Gavin Murfin. It just didn’t add up.

  Villiers looked remarkably alert considering how long she’d already been here. She never seemed to mind early mornings. Even when she wasn’t on an early shift she was usually out for a run at the crack of dawn. Perhaps it was a leftover habit from the military routine she’d lived with for eight years. It seemed to suit her anyway. She still had that fit, sporty look that he’d always associated her with. Villiers was brisk and businesslike at work, but able to relax outside the job. He liked that ability.

  ‘The missing driver’s name is Malcolm Kelsey,’ said Villiers, flipping open her notebook. ‘And the lorry is a DAF twenty-six-ton curtainsider with a tail-mounted forklift,’

  Cooper was immediately impressed. ‘That’s good, Carol.’

  ‘I phoned the company,’ she admitted.

  ‘Windmill Feed Solutions.’

  ‘That’s them. The body of the truck seems to be about a quarter full with bags of animal feed stacked on pallets. There are quite a few empty pallets.’

  ‘He’d already done most of his deliveries for the day,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Looks like it. We don’t know exactly when the lorry got stuck under the bridge. It wasn’t reported until six o’clock in the evening, when a local resident couldn’t get past it on her way home.’

  ‘That’s late to be doing deliveries. Not impossible, I suppose, if it was an emergency. But we’ll need to interview everyone who uses the road regularly, and try to pin down a time.’

  Cooper stood back and looked at the jammed lorry. The curtain-sided body was about forty feet long and green overall, apart from the company’s name and windmill logo picked out in gold. The driving position was high above the engine and there looked to be a sleeping compartment for overnight journeys.

  ‘He hadn’t driven long distance, had he?’ said Cooper.

  ‘No, the company is based near Stockport. He picked up the truck from their depot early this morning. I checked his dockets. All his addresses for today are within a thirty-mile radius.’

  ‘All local deliveries, then.’

  ‘Yes. But apparently, this wasn’t his usual patch,’ said Villiers. ‘He didn’t normally deliver here. Not in Derbyshire at all, in fact. He was a complete stranger to the area.’

  ‘Do we have a description of Mr Kelsey?’

  ‘Better than that. I got them to send a photo to my phone.’

  The image on Villiers’ phone showed two men in brown fleeces and matching baseball caps standing in front of a pair of lorries similar to the one jammed under the bridge. One of them might have been the identical lorry, but the registration numbers were obscured.

  ‘He’s the one on the right,’ said Villiers.

  She increased the size of the picture to show his face. Mac Kelsey was looking directly at the camera with dark, rather brooding eyes. A curl of black hair showed under his cap and his mouth fell naturally into a confident smile. He was heavy shouldered, with the first signs of middle age in the softening contours of his face. He was aged in his late thirties, forty at the most.

  ‘Send it to the rest of the team,’ Cooper said, ‘so we can use it for identification.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Cooper turned his attention to the bridge. A warning sign attached to the stonework at its apex gave its height as eleven feet three inches. On top of the cab was a roof air deflector, which seemed to rear like an animal’s crest. It looked high, but presumably wasn’t as high as the body of the truck, since it had made it through the first arch of the bridge.

  And that was the most unusual aspect. There were two arches, almost as if there were two separate bridges joined together. It wasn’t obvious when he’d entered, but Cooper had been surprised to find himself standing in daylight in the middle.

  ‘Have you ever seen a bridge like this before, Carol?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not me. It’s strange the way there’s a gap in the middle, where the cab is.’

  ‘Yes, two separate arches. Between them it’s open to the sky. The driver himself wasn’t under the bridge when the truck jammed. He was probably concentrating on the next arch he was about to go under, when—’

  ‘Bang,’ said Villiers.

  ‘Well, something like that.’

  ‘Would it have made a difference?’

  ‘From his position, the driver would have been in daylight, but looking into the darkness of the bridge.’

  Cooper pulled on a pair of latex gloves before opening the door of the cab, which was unlocked. He could see the keys still in the ignition.

  ‘We should also ask if anyone heard bleeping noises,’ he said.

  ‘Bleeping?’

  ‘There’s a reverse bleeper on the truck. If anyone heard it, that would indicate whether the driver tried to reverse out from under the bridge, or just stayed where he was when he got stuck.’

  ‘I see.’

  Cooper clambered onto the first step and pulled himself up to the level of the passenger seat, careful to avoid actually stepping into the cab. He could see the blood drying on the floor. It had run backwards in runnels on the rubber matting and pooled behind the seats. Some of it had splattered onto the clipboard lying on the passenger seat and he could see a clear thumb print in the blood on a docket. A bottle of Buxton spring water had fallen onto the floor, but lay just clear of the blood.

  ‘When the Traffic officers arrived at the scene, they reported that there had been some kind of altercation with the driver,’ said Villiers, peering up at him from road level.

  ‘That’s an understatement, Carol, judging by the amount of blood. But who would be that angry with him?’

  ‘Everyone, if the residents I’ve met are anything to go by.’

  With a stretch, Cooper reached over to the ignition and turned the key. The engine started instantly. The radio burst into life too: 102 Capital FM. The driver had been listening to a commercial music station based in Stockport. Drivetime traffic news was always useful when you were on the road all day.

  Cooper shut off the engine and climbed back down. He felt his shoes sticking to the road surface. When he looked down, he found squashed sheep droppings. Most of them had been trampled into the tarmac by all the boots passing over them, police officers and members of the public alike. But some of them were still intact – small black pellets that glittered in the drizzle.

  Amanda Hibbert was trying to work. She had a new client to develop a website for and all the graphic design concepts to work on from scratch. She was trying to get an idea of the company she was working with. Their ethos had to be reflected in the designs she came up with. Did they want wild and contemporary, with bright colours and fun graphics? Or were they classic and stylish, preferring navy blue and black? Discovering a client’s needs was the crucial start to a fruitful long-term relationship.

  But she was finding she
could hardly concentrate. For once she wasn’t worrying about one of the children, or even about Ian. Lord knew, there were enough drawbacks to working from home. They all expected her to be at their beck and call, just because she was there.

  No, today she was worrying about what was going on down at the bridge. She felt quite stupid now that she hadn’t realised how serious the situation was right away. When she found there was no driver in the cab of the trapped lorry, she’d made the emergency call sound less urgent than it should have been, whingeing on about not being able to get her car past an obstruction in the road. The first police officers who arrived had treated her as if she was a batty old woman.

  ‘Didn’t you notice the blood, luv?’ one of them had said. And the other had laughed. She felt like making a complaint about it, but she was too embarrassed.

  And of course she had noticed the blood. Amanda shuddered now as she remembered it, the thin trickle spilling off the delivery docket she’d picked up. But for some reason she’d tried to pretend it wasn’t there, or it didn’t mean anything, or it wasn’t blood at all. She’d just imagined it, and the police would ridicule her if she mentioned it.

  But they’d ridiculed her anyway. Well, that was the way it went in her life. She was wrong whatever she did.

  When Ian arrived at the bridge last night, he’d bombarded her with questions. He’d been really angry, though she had no idea what about. Probably nothing. More likely, it was just the whisky she could smell on his breath. There was no mistaking what he’d been doing while she was out at the theatre in New Mills. The drinking didn’t do his temper any good. She hardly dared to suggest to him that drinking on your own was a sign you had a problem.

  But he’d made it sound as though it was all her fault, as he usually did. If she didn’t get this proposal right for the new client, that would be her fault too.

  Sighing with exasperation, Amanda got up from the computer, where she’d left a piece of artwork half finished on the screen.

  Her little home office looked out onto the back garden. Beyond that was the small turnout paddock and the stable block they’d built. Not that she got much chance to ride any more. Zoe spent most time with the horse when she was home.

  With an expanse of hills beyond, the view from the office was usually quite peaceful. She could watch the trees swaying in the wind and the clouds moving across the sky, and the birds clustering round the feeder she stocked up every morning. It looked a bit bleak at this time of year. It was too cold and there was too much damp in the air. The ground was muddy and the branches were bare, still waiting for the first signs of spring. But she didn’t mind that. It made her feel momentarily at peace, being unable to see anyone or hear any intrusive voices.

  But today it was wrong. Her window was facing in the wrong direction.

  Amanda left her shoes on the floor of the office and walked through the hallway into the kitchen. A large asparagus and goats’ cheese flan stood ready to go in the roasting oven of the Aga for tonight’s supper. The Golden Retriever had been fed and was sleeping in his basket. She walked to the sink and peered out into the road. She could barely see past the end of Top Barn from here.

  A movement caught her eye and she ducked back quickly as she saw Donna Schofield pass a first-floor window. Shouldn’t it be one of her days teaching? Perhaps she’d taken a day off, told them she couldn’t get out because of the blocked road.

  But that was the answer, of course. Amanda went back through the hall and crept quietly upstairs. Ian was in the sitting room, still holding a long phone conversation with a disgruntled customer he was supposed to be working with today. It had been going on for some time now and Ian’s voice was beginning to rise with impatience. Soon he would be shouting. When he lost it completely and started swearing, he would lose another account for his company. That would be her fault too.

  But at least it meant he couldn’t hear her as she padded up the stairs. Zoe’s bedroom was the only one that faced the right way. She would never know her mother had been in her room. In fact, she wouldn’t have left anything she didn’t want her parents to see when she went off to university, and she would assume that her mother would want to keep it clean. So Amanda wasn’t really intruding.

  Now, if she stood on tiptoe, she could see down Cloughpit Lane to the bridge. The police were still there and the lorry was still stuck under the bridge. She could see men in uniform searching in the undergrowth along the edge of the road and clambering over the walls. No doubt they were still trying to find some trace of the missing driver.

  How long was all this going to continue? Ian had threatened to go down and instruct them to move the lorry if the road wasn’t clear by the afternoon. Well, he knew how that would end – with him losing his temper again. She almost hoped he would do it, then perhaps he would get arrested and spend a night in the cells. It would teach him a lesson.

  Amanda watched for a few minutes, saw a tall, dark-haired man arrive – another detective, she presumed, since he was in plain clothes. The others seemed to cluster round him as he emerged from the bridge. A more senior police officer? Perhaps now something would get done.

  She bit her lip sharply at the thought. That also meant they would find out what had happened to the driver of the lorry, why there were blood stains in his cab. And as sure as night followed day, they would work out who had attacked him.

  Her heart stopped for a moment when she looked back at the bridge again. A female detective was pointing this way and the tall man had turned to look. She had the impression that he was looking right at her and reading her thoughts. There were some things in her mind that she didn’t want anyone to know about.

  6

  ‘Apparently, the rather random collection of buildings you can see up the road there is a place called Shawhead,’ Carol Villiers was saying as Ben Cooper peeled off his gloves. ‘There isn’t very much to it. Just a couple of farms and a few houses.’

  ‘Shawhead,’ said Cooper. ‘Just one road in and one road out.’

  ‘You know it?’

  He wasn’t sure whether he’d actually been here before or he’d just heard someone use that phrase about Shawhead. It certainly looked familiar, but there were dozens of similar hamlets scattered around the Peak District in forgotten corners, so far off the beaten track that they barely appeared on the map.

  And to reach Shawhead you had to pass under this bridge. An arched railway bridge with just over eleven feet of headroom. You’d have to judge it precisely to the inch – and not just the height, but the width of the truck. The arch was eleven feet only at its apex. At the sides it was a good deal less. Well, that was the nature of an arch.

  ‘Network Rail are sending a team of engineers,’ said Villiers. ‘They have to check the safety of the structure after a bridge bash.’

  ‘There have already been half a dozen trains over the bridge since I’ve been here,’ said Irvine. ‘Most of them didn’t even slow down.’

  There was a sign on the bridge with instructions what do in the case of a collision. A number to call and the number of the bridge to identify it.

  ‘Who called it in to Network Rail?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘One of the FOAs.’

  The first officers to arrive. Two yellow jackets from a Traffic unit. Understandably, a call handler in the control room had allocated it as a road policing issue.

  ‘And Kelsey, the driver?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Malcolm Kelsey, known as “Mac”. We’ve got all his details from his employers, including a mobile phone number. We’ve tried calling the number several times, but it’s just going to voicemail.’

  ‘Do we think he’s got his phone with him?’

  ‘All we know is that it’s not in the cab and it’s not lying around near the scene.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘The lady who called it in – a Mrs Hibbert, who lives nearby at Shawhead Cottages. Oh, and there’s another gentleman around somewhere. A farmer. He’s being a bit, well . . .�
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  ‘Awkward?’ said Cooper.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him.’

  ‘You’ll soon get the chance,’ said Villiers quietly, swivelling her eyes to the side of the road.

  Cooper could hear him before he saw. He was breathing heavily and grunting with effort as he clambered over a gate. He was red-faced and overweight, his face swollen under his tweed cap like a cartoon image of a farmer. He wore a padded jacket over a checked shirt and carried a stout stick as if he was out herding a flock of sheep on the mountainside. His boots crushed the stems of nettles as he covered the last few yards towards them, and Cooper could hear him clearing his throat ready to launch into a verbal assault.

  ‘Well, this is a proper mess,’ said the farmer, emerging from the undergrowth near the front wing of the lorry as Cooper scrambled back down the banking and turned to face him.

  ‘Ah. Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Swindells. Higher Fold Farm. Our place is just along the road a bit. I’ve told everyone that information so far, but I don’t suppose anyone has bothered to write it down.’

  ‘Are these your fields, sir?’

  ‘Yes, along this side of the road, but only as far as the railway. Are you in charge?’

  ‘For now, sir.’

  ‘You’re not in uniform. Are you a proper policeman?’

  Cooper showed his ID. ‘Detective Inspector Cooper, Edendale CID.’

  Swindells looked at the ID sourly and pulled down his cap. ‘Well, anyway. You take your time, you lot.’

  ‘We have to do things properly, Mr Swindells. There’s a protocol.’

  The farmer snorted. ‘Protocol. Why should protocol stop honest people from going about their business?’

  ‘What business have you got that’s so urgent?’

  ‘I’ve got to get these fields ploughed before the weather changes.’