Dead in the Dark Read online

  He saw Villiers glance across and wondered what she’d caught of their conversation, and what she knew already.

  ‘There’s been another armed robbery reported,’ said Dev Sharma when he saw Cooper had returned. ‘This one was at a corner shop and off-licence.’

  ‘Here in Edendale?’

  ‘Yes, on Buxton Road. At Singh’s Stores.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Cooper. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘No, but Mrs Singh was a bit shaken up. Two men entered the shop at about ten forty-five this morning and threatened her with a baseball bat and a knife. She gave them all the cash from the till.’

  ‘Sensible. From what I’ve seen of her husband, Mr Singh might have acted differently. He would probably have tried to resist, or even fought them.’

  ‘That could have ended badly,’ said Sharma.

  The Singhs’ shop was close to where Cooper had lived until a few months ago, just across the other side of Buxton Road from his old flat in Welbeck Street. He’d visited the shop many times and remembered both the Singhs, as well as their daughter, Jatinder, who’d attended Eden Valley High School a couple of years below him. Mr Singh had once beckoned Cooper into the back of the shop and showed him his kirpan, the ceremonial knife that he wore under his clothes. It was only a few inches long, but Cooper had been unsure at the time of its possible illegality as an offensive weapon. Mr Singh had assured him that a kirpan was kept sheathed except when it was withdrawn for an occasion such as a religious ceremonies.

  ‘It is not a weapon, Mr Cooper. Not even a symbolic weapon, any more than a Christian cross is a symbolic torture instrument. Do you understand?’

  Mr Singh had shown him the kirpan because he knew Cooper was a police officer. It made Cooper smile even now when he thought of all those individuals whose arrests he’d been involved in, who’d gone to great trouble to conceal their blades from the police.

  ‘Gavin has been down to the shop to take Mrs Singh’s statement and make initial inquiries,’ said Sharma. ‘He brought back some CCTV footage.’

  ‘Excellent. Have we got the suspects on camera?’

  ‘Very much so. Take a look.’

  The CCTV images from the shop were excellent. Good resolution and in colour – and pretty accurate colours by the look of the background. One of the robbers was wearing a blue top and a black baseball cap, with a blue scarf covering his face. The other was dressed in a grey top, blue tracksuit bottoms, and was wearing a motorcycle crash helmet. He had a scarf over his face too. Cooper looked a bit closer. The crash helmet was red and covered with a distinctive pattern of white stripes and black stars.

  ‘That gives you a reasonable chance of making an identification,’ said Cooper, ‘if you can find some possible suspects.’

  ‘I’m sending Gavin back out to canvass the neighbouring properties. Initial reports suggest the two men left on a motorbike, possibly a Kawasaki, heading away from town. I’ve asked for CCTV from the cameras at the junction of Buxton Road with High Street, in case they came from that direction.’

  ‘More likely they came in and went out the same way,’ said Cooper, ‘rather than risking the area where there are most cameras.’

  ‘I thought it was worth a try.’

  ‘Of course, Dev.’

  Cooper looked at the map of Edendale on the wall of the CID room. What was further up the Buxton Road?

  ‘The convent,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

  ‘The convent. Sisters of Our Lady. The nuns are very security conscious. They have a comprehensive CCTV system covering the gates. They might have caught a motorcycle passing with the two suspects.’

  Sharma looked doubtful. ‘Who should I send to a convent of nuns?’ he said.

  Hurst and Irvine both looked up as if their names had been mentioned.

  Cooper smiled. ‘You could go yourself, Dev. Consider it part of your acclimatisation to the local community.’

  ‘There have been a spate of robberies over the past few weeks,’ said Sharma. ‘Not just in Edendale, but all across North Division. Some have been raids on businesses like the Singhs’ shop, some have been street robberies. They’re all opportunistic offences. They see a chance, and they go for it. They seem to be travelling around the area after dark looking for a target. The only common factor is the use of a motorbike.’

  ‘A red crash helmet?’ asked Irvine.

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘There may be more than two suspects, then. More than one motorbike.’

  ‘It looks like it. The descriptions from witnesses differ in some details. The height and build of the suspects, the colour of their leathers and helmets. Oh, and there was some variation in the accents they spoke with. Some witnesses say they were local, others couldn’t identify the accent. One victim said in her statement that they had Manchester accents. She’s from the area herself, so she recognised it.’

  ‘Manchester isn’t the best known of accents, not like Liverpool or Birmingham.’

  ‘I can’t think what it sounds like at all,’ said Hurst.

  ‘Think of Oasis,’ said Irvine.

  ‘The Gallagher brothers?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Oh, did they call people scrotes and muppets?’

  ‘No,’ said Villiers, ‘but before they left one of them did tell the other it was “sound”.’

  ‘Which means “okay”.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Cooper. ‘If we have two or more pairs of suspects carrying out these attacks, it suggests some level of organisation.’

  ‘We’ll keep on it,’ said Sharma.

  ‘What about the boy who was killed in the arson attack at Castle Farm? Have we spoken to his family?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve interviewed Shane Curtis’s mother,’ said Sharma. ‘Martina Curtis. There doesn’t seem to be a father. She’s distraught obviously. But she’s got friends and relatives there with her now. A support network.’

  ‘Are there any other children?’

  ‘A daughter about sixteen, three more boys of fourteen, twelve and nine.’

  ‘And no father?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘It would probably more accurate to say “no fathers”. I don’t think there was just one.’

  ‘Five children. She already has it pretty tough, then. And now this …’

  ‘They’re all on benefits, of course,’ put in Irvine. ‘Mrs Curtis spends a fair part of her allowances on fags and booze. And she told us she buys National Lottery tickets every week, scratch cards and all.’

  ‘Waiting for the moment that will change her life, I suppose. A moment that will never come.’

  ‘It doesn’t do any harm to keep your hopes alive,’ said Hurst.

  ‘Oh, fine. But she’s doing it on taxpayers’ money.’

  ‘What did she tell you about Shane?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Well, she says Shane was no angel,’ said Sharma.

  ‘But then, they always do, don’t they?’ added Irvine.

  ‘Does she have any idea what he was doing in the barn at Castle Farm?’

  Sharma shook his head. ‘No, not a clue. But I got the impression she never knew where he was anyway. “He does his own thing” was the way she put it. He was unemployed, though he seems to have had a bit of money to spend, over and above his jobseeker’s allowance. I’m sure he didn’t get it off his mother. She says he liked to go out on his own for hours on end. She doesn’t seem to have any idea what he was doing all that time.’

  ‘Well, from the forensic evidence,’ said Irvine, ‘he was clearly drinking lager and smoking pot. And considering his criminal record …’

  ‘… he was probably getting up to other things too,’ put in Hurst. ‘The logic of prior conviction.’

  ‘He does have a record,’ said Irvine. ‘So he was almost certainly involved in drugs or petty crime.’

  ‘A record?’

  ‘Well, it’s true Shane was no angel. He spent eighteen months
in juvenile detention at Werrington Youth Offenders Institution.’

  ‘In Staffordshire, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, near Stoke on Trent.’

  ‘You’ve got to wonder who he met in there,’ said Irvine. ‘It often leads kids into worse things when they get out.’

  ‘What were his offences?’

  ‘Taking a vehicle without consent, driving without a licence or insurance, theft, shoplifting, possession of drugs. The usual sort of list, really.’

  ‘No mention of previous arson offences?’

  ‘No. But that doesn’t mean—’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything, Luke. Keep an open mind.’

  Irvine scowled. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Cooper was starting to get worried about Luke Irvine. He’d started off so promisingly when he first transferred from uniform into CID. He’d been a bit naïve, but keen. He’d reminded Cooper of himself when he was at the same stage of his career. But now he was beginning to get awkward and opinionated. His mind wasn’t as open as it should be. Cooper didn’t know what was having this effect on him – perhaps it was something going on in his private life. He would have to make a point of sitting down and talking to Irvine seriously about it when they both had time.

  ‘What about his friends?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘A loose association of youths of a similar age around the Woodlands and Cavendish estates,’ said Sharma.

  ‘A gang?’

  ‘Mrs Curtis would never have used that term.’

  ‘And I suppose she doesn’t know the names of any of them?’

  ‘Shane didn’t exactly bring them home for tea,’ scowled Irvine.

  ‘So we’re no closer to knowing who he might have been planning to meet there at the barn. Or if he was planning to meet anyone at all. He might have been the victim of a rival gang who took the opportunity of trapping him inside.’

  ‘You mean a rival loose association of youths,’ said Irvine.

  Cooper shook his head. ‘Whatever the circumstances, I don’t think Shane intended it to end up that way.’

  Then he looked around the CID room.

  ‘DC Villiers,’ he said, ‘are you free at the moment? I’d like you to come with me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Cooper waited until they were out of the room before he answered.

  ‘To Bakewell. We’re going to talk to Naomi Heath.’

  ‘Reece Bower’s partner?’ said Villiers. ‘I thought you’d be interested.’

  ‘You know me so well. I could use your opinion on this one.’

  Cooper decided not to mention his call to Superintendent Branagh. He would wait until after his meeting this afternoon. Things might have changed by then. He didn’t want to involve Carol Villiers too deeply if he could avoid it.

  So he was very quiet as they left the building and walked to the car park. The words of Detective Superintendent Branagh were echoing in his mind. The Bower case was a miscarriage of justice.

  Cooper knew there were many ways for a miscarriage of justice to happen. Derbyshire had experienced its fair share of cases. But as he got into his car he was thinking of a much older one – the story of the notorious Dr Hawley Crippen, who was hanged at Pentonville Prison in 1910 for the murder of his wife. It was a case that he’d studied as a police cadet when the history of criminal justice was one of his obsessions.

  In that instance, Cora Crippen had disappeared from the family home after a party. Her husband told everyone that she’d returned to the United States and that she’d later died and been cremated. Crippen had immediately moved in his lover, Ethel Neave. Under questioning, he admitted that he’d made up the story to avoid having to explain that Cora had left him for a music hall actor. The Crippen house was searched, but nothing was found and the police had no option but to conclude he was innocent. Yet Crippen panicked and fled to Canada with Neave.

  It was only their disappearance that led Scotland Yard to carry out three more searches of the house. On the final search they found a human torso buried under the basement. A mark on the skin of the abdomen was said to match a scar Cora had. Otherwise, the evidence against Dr Crippen was entirely circumstantial. And still he had been hanged.

  ‘Ben, the barrier’s open.’

  Cooper realised he’d been distracted and his car was sitting motionless in the entrance to the car park. He was aware that Villiers was staring at him.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  He drove out on to West Street, back into the modern world of policing. He reminded himself that many years after Crippen had been hanged for the murder of his wife, DNA techniques were used to establish that the remains from the basement were not those of Cora – and weren’t even female. Some said the police had planted the body parts to use as evidence, after becoming convinced of Crippen’s guilt by his attempt to escape.

  That wouldn’t happen these days. But when a suspect attempted to escape, it usually pointed quite clearly at their guilt. Reece Bower had evaded justice once. Was he trying to do the same thing again?

  11

  The road twisted and turned constantly on the way from Baslow into Bakewell. They called this stretch Thirteen Bends. Cooper thought there might actually be fewer than thirteen, but he’d never managed to count them, being too busy steering his car round one sharp curve after another.

  He drove down the hill past the Peak District National Park headquarters and arrived in the centre of the town near the visitor centre and the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, with the Rutland Arms hotel looking out over a little square.

  Bakewell was only a small town. Its permanent population was about four thousand, but in the summer it was full of visitors. It was also the market town for the surrounding area. On cattle market days the streets were thronged, the car parks packed. Busiest of all were the two days of the Bakewell Show early in August. The police station here no longer had a front counter and wasn’t open to the public, though some officers were still based here.

  A few miles down the A6 from here was the wonderful Haddon Hall, one of his favourite places to visit, when he had time.

  The Bowers’ home was on Aldern Way, a curving cul-de-sac on the edge of Bakewell, with views across to Chatsworth estate in one direction, and down over the town in the other. The spire of All Saints Church stood out clearly on the skyline.

  The house was a stone-built three-bedroom detached with two short driveways down from the road and an attached garage. The driveway Cooper and Villiers used was short, but steep. An iron rail had been placed to assist in icy conditions.

  Naomi Heath was aged in her thirties, so must have been ten or twelve years younger than her partner. She had short blonde hair and wide cheekbones, and she’d used make-up to disguise dark shadows under her eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and was clutching a mobile phone in her hand.

  ‘The postman slipped on the ice once and bruised his arm,’ she said when she saw Carol Villiers holding on to the rail. ‘Reece got worried about being sued in some personal injury claim. So he installed the rails and we buy bags of grit in the winter. “Better safe than sorry”, he always says.’

  Cooper showed his warrant card.

  ‘Naomi Heath? Detective Inspector Cooper from Edendale CID. This is Detective Constable Villiers. We’d like to speak to you about Mr Bower.’

  ‘Oh, are you taking an interest after all? I got the impression no one really cared. Because Reece is who he is, I suppose.’

  Cooper didn’t respond to the taunt.

  ‘Miss Heath, do you have any idea where Mr Bower is now?’

  ‘None at all.’

  A small porch led to an inner PVC door with obscured windows. A combined lounge and dining room had windows to the front and rear to take advantage of the spectacular views. From the dining area, a hatchway opened from the kitchen. Cooper glimpsed oak units, a gas range, and another window with a westerly view.

>   They had gas-fired central heating here, which he couldn’t get at his cottage in Foolow. They probably needed it in the winter too.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we’re all very concerned about Reece,’ said Naomi. ‘Something must have happened. He wouldn’t just have run off like this.’

  ‘When was the last time you were in contact with Mr Bower?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Before he left, of course. It was on Sunday, the day before yesterday. During the morning he packed an overnight bag, and he went off with it at about eleven o’clock.’

  ‘What did he say to you when he left?’

  ‘He said he was going away and I might not see him for some time.’

  ‘Have you noticed any change in his behaviour recently?’

  ‘He was a bit more moody than usual, perhaps,’ she said.

  ‘Had you been arguing before he left?’

  ‘Reece had got angry the previous night. He’d knocked back quite a few drinks – he likes his malt whisky a bit too much, you know. He said a lot of things, but I’m used to it. I usually just let it go, and he forgets about it next morning.’

  ‘What was the argument about?’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t an argument, exactly. He gets upset about things. And because I’m here, it’s as if I’m to blame for it all. Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘He’d been having problems at work. A lot of it I couldn’t even grasp. I think he was under pressure from his manager on one hand, and getting hassle from some of the employees on the other.’

  ‘What sort of hassle?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I just think it was something that someone said to him at work.’

  ‘What did they say to him?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. He can be reticent like that at times.’

  ‘Mr Bower is secretive?’

  Naomi shook her head. ‘No, just a bit uncommunicative. When things are really bothering him, he tends to keep them to himself.’

  ‘So you think Mr Bower had enough of it and decided to get away for a while?’

  ‘That was the impression I had. He wouldn’t tell me any more. It was as if he’d made some decision and wasn’t going to talk about it.’