Already Dead

12

That afternoon, Ben Cooper was standing on the wall of the Iron Age hill fort at Carl Wark, waiting for his brother. His lungs were sore, and a wheeze escaped from his burning airways with every breath. But his muscles tingled from the steep climb, and that felt good. The clean air on his face was like a refreshing shower.

The entire Hope Valley stretched out in front of him, closed in by the rocky ridge of Stanage Edge and a line of southern moors. He could see over the villages as far as Castleton, with Mam Tor blocking the head of the valley and the grey bulk of Kinder Scout lurking in the distance, its outline obscured by low-lying clouds.

Southwards over Millstone Edge and the hump of Eyam Moor was the town of Edendale. But right now Cooper couldn’t see it, and he didn’t want to. From here, he could try to pretend it didn’t exist, that the town and everything it contained was a figment of his imagination, a feature of some parallel universe where his life might have taken a different direction. The windows of E Division police headquarters on West Street might seem familiar in his memories, but at this moment they were part of a half-forgotten dream. The ground-floor flat in Welbeck Street was no more his home than was this hill fort.

In his heart, he didn’t feel he belonged anywhere, except to the air over the valley and the rain that fell continually on the Peak District. This feeling of dislocation ought to be frightening or unsettling, since he’d valued a sense of belonging so highly all his years. He should be disturbed by the loss of connection with his previous life. Yet he’d never felt so free.

All the time he’d spent in hospital, this was what he’d longed for. There had been windows in the ward, but the view was over the town, grey stone and wet roofs and the occasional curl of smoke. The tiny hint of distant views, the shape of a hill glimpsed in a bank of cloud on the horizon — that only made it worse. It was the taunting detail that made his captivity intolerable.

His brother puffed up the hill behind him. Matt was carrying too much weight these days. He spent so many hours sitting in the cab of his John Deere, letting the tractor do the physical work. He didn’t even walk around his fields at Bridge End Farm any more, but used his latest toy, a quad bike.

‘My God, why would people have lived all the way up here?’ said Matt when he’d got his breath back.

‘I don’t think they did,’ said Ben.

‘What? They put all the effort into building this thing, then didn’t live in it?’

‘As far as they can tell from the evidence. It’s a question of interpretation what it was used for. There are theories.’

‘I don’t like theories. You can’t eat them, or put them in your fuel tank.’

This hill fort was one of Ben’s favourite places in the Peak District. The views from the top were as spectacular as you might expect, and well worth the slog up the steep slope among the debris of scattered stones. But wonderful views were everywhere in this area. Carl Wark was special because there was nowhere more steeped in history in the whole region. The fort might have been constructed between eight hundred and five hundred BC, but archaeologists said the use of the promontory dated back much earlier, to Neolithic times.

‘This might have been a hill fort, or it could have been a ceremonial site of some kind,’ he said. ‘There are people who say it was a sort of court, a place that tribes could come to for the administration of justice.’

‘Really?’

Ben shrugged. ‘Like I say, it’s another theory.’

‘I prefer facts myself.’

‘I know you do, Matt.’

‘You make it sound as if that’s a bad thing.’

Of course, one glance showed that Carl Wark was a natural defensive site, with steep cliffs on three sides and a stone rampart constructed on the fourth. They stood on the edge looking over the ramparts towards Hathersage Moor. It was amazing to think people had built this without tools, with only their time and sweat and determination, hauling materials up the hillside stone by stone until they’d built a wall to protect themselves against the world. Yet people hadn’t lived at Carl Wark, but had used it as a refuge and perhaps for religious or ceremonial purposes. In other words, it was a sanctuary.

‘Thanks for coming, Matt,’ Ben said. ‘I know it’s difficult taking time away from the farm.’

‘Oh, well. The weather’s buggered everything up as usual,’ his brother said grumpily.

‘I know you can always find some jobs to do.’

‘Which reminds me,’ said Matt. ‘Let me have those fencing spikes back. I’m going to need them.’

‘I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.’

‘Your memory is worse than mine.’

The landscape towards Eyam in the south was a deep, damp green, washed by the constant rain. Ben had never seen such a vibrant green, nor such a range of shades. It was like looking into an emerald sea, with patches of mist hanging in the cloughs like smoke. They reminded him of the moorland fires, making the scorched skin on his hands sting, the back of his throat choke as if his lungs had suddenly filled again with smoke.

They’d parked on the back road leading into Hathersage Booths and crossed a stile to take the steep climb up Higger Tor. Within fifty yards of the road, it felt as though you’d stepped back in time. The dramatic view across to Carl Wark always made Ben pause for a while before scrambling over the rocks to find the path. Between the tor and Carl Wark, gigantic boulders were piled among the heather, as if a giant had started to build a castle but had got tired and given up. As they approached the fort, he’d been awed as ever by the wall rising above him, almost perfectly preserved as it had first been built all those centuries ago.

Carl Wark used steep natural cliffs as part of its defences. The wall of gritstone blocks at the western end of the fort was about ten feet high with an earth and rubble bank piled against its inside. Sheer cliffs rose to about eighty feet, surrounded by a steep bank. Across the neck of the plateau an L-shaped rampart had been constructed to form an entrance. This two-acre enclosure had been occupied by Roman troops during a Celtic uprising in the first century. And before the Celts? Even the name suggested that the origins of the fort were mysterious or unknown. Carl was a synonym for T’owd Mon, the Old Man. Otherwise known as the Devil.

‘Are you okay, Ben?’ asked Matt.

‘Yes. Well — you know.’

Ben realised that the rock behind him felt cold. Far too cold. It was summer, after all. These stones should be warmed by the sun, the ground between them dry and dusty, not trampled with mud. There was definitely something wrong with the seasons. Nature had begun to feel out of order, the natural cycle disrupted by an unnatural event.

But then, there was something wrong with the rest of the world, too.

Next week should have been his wedding but his fiancée, Liz Petty, had died in a fire at the abandoned Light House pub. No, not just a fire, but arson. A deliberate attempt to harm, to kill, to destroy evidence of an earlier murder. That was what it should always be called. Just like the blazes which had destroyed large swathes of the Peak District National Park, the fire at the Light House had been no accident. Whether through recklessness or malice, there was always someone to blame.

If he couldn’t see Edendale from here, he was certainly in no danger of catching a glimpse of Oxlow Moor. The blackened remains of the pub still stood on a stretch of that moor, in the west beyond the Eden Valley. It was difficult now for him to drive that way out of town, except in the dark. The Light House itself had been extinguished, so it no longer lit up the skyline as it had done for so many years.

‘Time,’ said Matt. He hesitated, then stopped speaking, as if he’d lost track of his thoughts … Or, more likely, he’d realised the utter futility of completing the sentence.

‘I hope you weren’t going to say that time heals everything,’ said Ben, ‘that things might look bleak now, but everything will be marvellous again in a few months? That I just need some time to get over it?’

‘Something like that, I suppose. I’ll not bother, then?’

‘We’ll take it as read, shall we?’

Ben wished people would just stop saying these things. It made Liz’s death sound so inevitable. As if it was part of some great pattern, a universal plan. Just time passing from one month to the next. The cycle of the seasons. The leaves on the trees growing, dying, falling.

But this wasn’t inevitable. It was a person’s death, and it should never have happened. It might not be the end of the world for everyone. But it could still feel like it for him.

‘So what’s the news on a trial?’ asked Matt. ‘You know — the son. The crazy youth.’

‘Eliot Wharton. He’s been remanded by the magistrates again. He’ll appear in Crown court, but probably not until next year.’

‘Oh God. Why does it seem to take forever?’

Ben shrugged. ‘It’s the way things work. The accused has to be given a chance to prepare his defence.’

‘I think it’s bollocks. What about the barman?’

‘Josh Lane? You know about him.’

‘He’s still out, wandering around scot-free?’

Ben found he couldn’t reply. His throat had constricted and the words were jammed in his larynx, immovable and painful, like a sharp splinter of bone from something indigestible.

During the past few weeks, Matt seemed to have grown used to getting no reply from his brother. They’d never spoken all that much before, had never really needed endless conversation to understand each other. But now Matt simply accepted a silence, without questioning whether it was the result of physical incapacity, or a more emotional form of pain.

‘At least that bastard who ran the Light House didn’t survive,’ he said. ‘Good riddance, I say.’

Ben nodded. The former landlord of the Light House, Maurice Wharton, had died not long after the fire at his empty pub. Known universally as ‘Mad Maurice’, he had been suffering from inoperable pancreatic cancer, and he’d passed away in St Luke’s Hospice right there in Edendale. His signed confession was on file at West Street, but it was useless without forensic evidence or some corroboration from witnesses. Maurice had already been dying back then, with only a few weeks of pain-filled existence left to him. He would never have been dragged into court, even if he’d lived long enough.

Of course, there was his son. The crazy youth, as Matt called him. Though according to the psychiatric reports he wasn’t really mad at all, any more than his father had been. Young Eliot Wharton was now on remand in Risley awaiting trial. He’d been granted an escorted visit to Edendale for his father’s funeral a little while ago. The Coopers had stayed away from that. It had been too recent and too raw, the whole show too public.

But it had been impossible to escape completely. Ben had read in the papers that the church had been full. Many of the mourners had been former customers of the Light House, who wanted to remember the old Mad Maurice they’d known and treasured for his famous irascibility. Others in church were merely curious, or ghoulish. Some were anxious to get a glimpse of the widow, or of Eliot himself and his prison escort — hoping to see him in shackles perhaps, like a Death Row inmate on the chain gang. A few just wanted to be present at an event they regarded as a piece of history — no different in essence from attending the London Olympics, or taking part in a Diamond Jubilee street party. It was in the papers and on the news. The TV cameras were outside. They might get interviewed by the BBC. And that was enough of a draw. Maurice Wharton had attracted attention, even in death.

The Crown Prosecution Service had yet to decide how many charges they would finally proceed with against Eliot Wharton. There might be two allegations of murder, and one of attempted murder. If a guilty plea was agreed with the defence, one of the charges might be reduced to manslaughter. That would suggest Liz’s death had just been an unfortunate outcome, the unintended consequence of arson and criminal damage.

Well, at least the young Wharton would end up in prison, somewhere like Dovegate or Gartree. That much was pretty certain. Risley wasn’t a pleasant place to spend your time on remand, but it was nothing compared to some of the Category B prisons that a lifer could be sent to. In the final reckoning, the system would have enacted its flawed version of justice.

‘You don’t still believe in the justice system, do you?’ said Matt. ‘You can’t now, not after everything that’s happened.’

He picked up a lump of rock and squeezed it tightly. It filled his huge fist and Ben expected to see it shatter into fragments at any moment. Instead, his brother drew back an arm and hurled the rock as far as he could. It bounced off the top of the massive wall and flew out into space. Ben heard it a few seconds later, rattling down the slope, the sound getting fainter and fainter until it finally stopped.

‘I mean,’ said Matt. ‘That barman. How can he not be locked up? It’s a travesty.’

Yes, there was the barman. Josh Lane. That was a different case entirely. The CPS had concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to make a charge of murder stand. No one involved in the incident at the Light House could be persuaded to testify that the barman had taken part in the fatal assault on two tourists, David and Trisha Pearson, who had died at the Light House more than two years ago.

He had certainly been present at some stage in Room One, the Bakewell Room, where the Pearsons had been staying. But the tiny quantity of his blood recovered from the crime scene was too little to prove that he’d been involved in a fight. Lane had confessed to helping to deal with the aftermath. The DNA profile obtained from the blood trace by forensics put him at the scene, so he had little choice. But the blood was only from a scratch, he said.

After the amount of time that had passed, and as a result of the clean-up carried out by the Whartons in Room One, nothing else could be proved. There were too many evidential weaknesses. No realistic prospect of a conviction. It was in the nature of the criminal justice system that the outcome of a case depended on the way a story was told. The prosecution presented a narrative which depicted the defendant as guilty. But the defence would tell a very different story, an alternative version of the same real-life events. They would dwell on the possibilities, highlight the ambiguities that the prosecution had tried to ignore. A change in emphasis was all that was needed to cast new light on a situation, to suggest a defendant’s innocence, to put that all-important reasonable doubt into a juror’s mind.

So the more serious charges had failed the Full Code Test at the evidential stage, and the CPS had no choice but to refuse to charge. A case which didn’t pass that stage couldn’t proceed, no matter how serious or sensitive it might be.

Instead, Lane had been charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice, once after the death of the Pearsons, and once for the assistance he’d given to Eliot Wharton in the arson case. And now he was out on bail. Cooper had details of the address specified in the bail conditions, and knew that Josh Lane was currently living in a park home near Cromford.

‘Perhaps we should do something about it,’ said Ben. ‘Don’t you think?’

Matt froze. After a moment, his chin sank and his shoulders hunched up towards his ears. Ben hardly dared to look at him. He knew the expression that he’d find on his brother’s face. A pig-headed stubbornness. He’d been like that all his life, but became more and more stubborn when he knew he was in the wrong. If pushed, he’d dig himself in and become impossible to shift. He was like an old tree stump that needed explosives to root it out of a field to make way for the plough.

It was only what he’d expected. People had become so predictable, and there seemed to be no exceptions. He walked a few paces away, letting the wind blow in his face. He could see the clouds moving over the valley from Mam Tor, growing darker and darker as they came. It would rain again soon.