Blind to the Bones

11

In Withens, a few elderly people were arriving at the church as Ben Cooper drove past. Perhaps the vicar held an afternoon service for them. Cooper looked for the Reverend Alton in the churchyard, but couldn’t see him.

At Waterloo Terrace, some children watched him pass. Their bikes lay on the ground in a tangle, the spokes of their wheels lying on top of each other in complex patterns. There were two boys around the age of fifteen, one with short-cropped hair and the other with gelled spikes. There was a girl of about the same age, and a smaller boy who couldn’t be more than ten, who leered aggressively at the car. Behind them, Cooper glimpsed a taller figure, a well-built young man in his twenties. Could that be Scott Oxley, the eldest son?

Cooper barely had time to think about it before he found himself driving out of the village to the east, where he passed an old man standing in the road. In fact, he had to slow right down to avoid running him over. The man was wearing a tight tweed jacket and a pair of baggy trousers that had been made for a younger, bulkier man — a man who had worn them until the seat shone and the edges of the pockets were frayed like lace.

Cooper wound down the window of the Toyota.

‘I’m looking for Shepley Head Lodge,’ he said. ‘Am I on the right road?’

‘There isn’t any other road.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘It’s just over the next hill. But I wouldn’t go up there, if I were you.’

Cooper laughed at his ominous tone. It sounded like a line from an old black-and-white horror film, but it ought to have been delivered by a Transylvanian coach driver, or some other superstitious yokel.

‘Especially not at this time of night?’ said Cooper.

‘Eh?’ The old man looked at him as if he were stupid.

‘No, I meant — the name of the people is Dearden, not Dracula. It isn’t even an anagram.’

‘You can laugh, if you want.’

‘Sorry. And have you heard of a place called Far Clough?’

‘Over there.’ The old man pointed across the road to the south. ‘Do you see a series of little valleys in the hillside? We call ’em cloughs in these parts. There are three of them over there, and they’re called Near Clough, Middle Clough and Far Clough.’

‘OK.’

‘Near Clough is the closest to the village, you see — that’s why it’s called Near Clough. It’s a shorter walk from here. The other two are further away.’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘Unless you drive there. In that case, Near Clough is the furthest, and Far Clough is the nearest.’

‘How do I get there by car?’ said Cooper, squinting up at the moor.

‘You can’t, there’s no road.’

‘But you just said—’

‘If you had a good tractor,’ he said, with a pitying look, ‘or maybe one of those ATV things, you could drive there. But not in that car you’ve got.’

‘It has four-wheel drive,’ said Cooper, feeling defensive about his Toyota.

‘Ah, well. Try it if you want to. You don’t have to listen to me. I’m only a daft old bugger who doesn’t know any better. But think on — there won’t be anybody around to rescue you, when you get stuck. Nobody goes up to the cloughs from one month to the next.’

‘OK,’ said Cooper. ‘I think I’ll walk.’

‘Do you good, I reckon, instead of sitting in a car all day.’

‘Do you live in Withens, sir?’ said Cooper.

‘Aye. What about it?’

‘It’s a bit out of the way, isn’t it?’

‘That has its advantages, I reckon.’

‘What advantages?’ said Cooper as he studied the view over Withens. ‘I mean, where’s the nearest shop, for example?’

‘Shop? Shop? Do you think there’s a supermarket round the corner here somewhere?’

‘Well, I just wondered...’

‘Oh, aye. There’s probably a whole bloody Meadowhall shopping centre behind the bus shelter. Not to mention the cinema and the drive-in chuffin’ McDonald’s.’

‘I was just wondering where the nearest shop is,’ said Cooper.

‘Glossop that way. Or Holmfirth that way. And bloody great hills in between, whichever way you go.’

‘Thanks.’

The man began to walk off, his shoulders stiff with affront.

‘Thanks a lot, anyway!’ called Cooper.

He shrugged as he watched the old man leave.

‘I’d better go and face the undead on my own, then.’

A hundred yards further up the road, Cooper crested a rise, and a house came into view on his left. It stood on an elbow of land nudging into the valley and had been hacked out of the hillside, with high stone walls behind it and a small copse of trees beyond a range of outbuildings. The copse was unusual in this landscape. It must have been deliberately planted and nurtured many years ago, probably when the lodge was built. The front windows of the house had a terrific view over the valley. And the road stopped at the gateway, where a gravel drive swung up towards the house. Beyond that, there was a field gate leading on to the moor.

Shepley Head Lodge was actually over the border in South Yorkshire. There was no sign at the county boundary, only a stone that someone had erected on the grass verge. On the hill above the house, Cooper could see a line of grouse butts near the western edge of Winscar Reservoir. Streams ran out of the cloughs towards the reservoir. On the steeper slopes, they formed tiny waterfalls, white and glittering, cutting into the rock like diamonds.

Why would anyone build a house way out here? It would have to be someone who loved the view, because it would send most people scurrying back down to the shelter of the valleys or the streets of a town.

The clouds were heavy and grey, and there was more rain on the way. There was no sign of castle battlements or bats circling overhead, and no sound of wolves howling in the trees, but Cooper did feel the first hint of doubt. Once he had turned the corner and come over the hill, he had left traffic noise behind him, even what there was of it in Withens. Shepley Head Lodge was rather a lonely spot.

He shook the feeling off, blaming the old man for his ridiculous warning. And he began to walk the last few yards to Shepley Head Lodge.

Michael Dearden turned out to be a lean, awkward man with a cold air. When Cooper showed him his ID on the doorstep, Dearden put on a poor pretence of incredulity and amazement.

‘So somebody has actually come to see us?’ he said. ‘Gail! Somebody from the police has come to see us!’

‘Were you expecting someone to call?’ said Cooper.

‘Expecting, no. Hoping, yes. But hoping doesn’t get us anywhere. We’ve phoned the police station so often that it’s on our “Friends and Family” list for discount calls.’

‘Actually,’ said Cooper, ‘I think you’ve probably been contacting South Yorkshire Police, haven’t you?’

‘Yes?’ said Dearden.

‘Well, I’m Derbyshire CID. You’re a bit out of my patch here, Mr Dearden. You’re over the county boundary. If you’ve been having problems of some kind, South Yorkshire will deal with them for you.’

‘Oh, will they?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Well, think again. And think differently this time.’

A pale woman had appeared from upstairs and was staring at Cooper from the bottom step.

‘Gail, can you believe this?’ said Dearden. ‘Someone from the police finally comes to see us, and he turns out to be from the wrong force.’

‘I’m Derbyshire, not South Yorkshire,’ Cooper explained again. But the woman said nothing.

‘Ah, but,’ said Dearden, wagging a finger at him, ‘Withens is in Derbyshire, isn’t it? Withens is on your patch.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So you can talk to us about the Oxleys.’

‘If you’d like to, Mr Dearden, I’d be happy to listen.’

‘This was the old gamekeeper’s lodge, which the estate sold off,’ explained Dearden as he led Cooper through the house.

‘It was certainly built to last.’

‘Built to stand the climate, you see.’

There were thick internal stone walls and solid floors that absorbed the sound of their footsteps. There was a stuffed fox’s head mounted on an oak shield in the hallway, but it seemed to have been left purely as a reminder of what the house had once been. The rooms had been filled with furniture covered in bright covers and white tablecloths, cabinets of blue-and-white pottery, and stands of smaller items — a collection of snuff boxes here, a display of gleaming brass there.

‘Now, the Oxleys are a problem to everyone,’ said Dearden. ‘What I can’t understand is why the authorities don’t introduce one of those local child-curfew schemes. The power to do it is there. They can ban children from being in a public place after nine o’clock in the evening, and the police can take them off the streets. But they won’t do it. It would be too politically incorrect, I suppose.’

‘And perhaps impossible to put into practice.’

‘Ah. Because there are no police officers around to enforce it. That’s right,’ said Dearden with exaggerated glee.

‘Besides, those curfew orders only apply to children under ten, sir.’

‘The ones beyond the criminal law. Well, there are some of those around here, too, believe me.’

‘What sort of problems have you had?’

‘Thefts, damage. For about eighteen months that’s been going on. Then they set fire to our old garage. Burned it out completely.’

‘Can I see?’

Dearden took him through a side door, past some outbuildings and into a yard, where he showed him a garage made of timber and corrugated iron. Though the structure still stood, its interior was blackened and charred, and the door had been destroyed by the fire.

‘The trouble is, we can’t see from the house when they come into the yard here. They’ve broken into the garage before, and into the other buildings. Nothing seems to stop them. We’ve got fed up of phoning the police. We’ve phoned so often that it’s on our “Friends and Family” list—’

‘Yes, you said.’

‘Then we started using the internet.’

‘You did?’

‘Online Police.’

Cooper had never before come across anyone who used the Online Police website. It had been set up to allow people to report non-urgent minor crime, with the aim of freeing up telephone systems, particularly the 999 service. The site did make the point that it shouldn’t be used for crimes that were happening right then, or where the offender was still nearby, or where there was a witness, or evidence left at the scene.

He wondered if that warning was necessary. Did anybody think people would actually do that? Would a member of the public see a crime being committed, sit down at the computer, log on to www.online.police.uk and spend ten minutes filling in forms with details of their name and address, date, time and place of the crime? Maybe they would, these days.

‘They did all these break-ins, and then they burned my garage down.’

‘Who did?’

‘The bloody Oxleys, of course. You did say you were listening?’

‘Yes, sir. But how—’

‘The bloody Oxleys from bloody Waterloo Terrace. Those kids burned my garage down. They came from Withens, on your patch, and they crossed into Yorkshire, my patch, and they burned my garage down. It’s only a mile from here to Withens, but you’d think we had to call the FBI to do something about it, all because there’s a boundary stone in between.’

‘When your garage was set on fire, did nobody come from your local police?’

‘Some woman came and looked for fingerprints and stuff,’ said Dearden grudgingly. ‘But she wasn’t a proper policewoman. She said she was a civilian.’

‘A scenes of crime officer.’

‘Yes. Well, she didn’t seem to hold out much hope, anyway.’

‘You’re a bit vulnerable out here, aren’t you?’ said Cooper.

‘Ah. You’ve noticed. Vulnerable is the word — and there’s nobody interested in protecting us.’

Mrs Dearden had brought some tea. She hadn’t spoken to Cooper yet. He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Her lips were tightly pressed together.

‘Do you have any evidence to blame these incidents on the Oxley children?’

‘Oh, you think I’m just making it up, don’t you? Well, check their records. You’ll find that two of them were convicted for a burglary at this property eighteen months ago. It didn’t stop them. But that was the only one they were ever caught for. And that’s because they tried to sell an electric drill they stole, and it was traced.’

‘Which two were they, Mr Dearden?’

‘Ryan and Sean. A right couple of teenage tearaways.’

‘But since then?’

‘We’ve never managed to catch them.’

‘Mmm.’

Dearden started to go red when he detected Cooper’s tone of scepticism.

‘Have you been into Withens? Have you seen Waterloo Terrace?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, you’ll have an idea what they’re like,’ said Dearden. ‘I mean, look at the mess they leave. There’s mud and rubbish all over the place. They’re always dropping bits of broken pallet right the way along the road into Withens. One day I nearly hit a pile of roof tiles that had fallen off their lorry. They’ve even churned up the edge of the road by their houses, because they had a JCB parked there for a while. I never saw them actually do anything with it, either. It was just in the way for a week or two, then it was gone again. But it left the damage to the road, and all the water collects there now when it rains. You can bet the council won’t make the Oxleys pay for the repairs, though. It’ll come out of our Council Tax.’

‘Is that why you started driving out of Withens via the old quarry track?’ said Cooper. ‘Because of the state of the road?’

Dearden hesitated. ‘It’s quicker sometimes.’

‘You have a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi pick-up?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But even so, I would have thought it was pretty tough on your tyres and suspension.’

‘Perhaps that’s cheaper than ripping up my chassis on a pile of roof slates.’

‘Perhaps. But you’re taking a big risk of getting stuck.’

Dearden shrugged.

‘Do you know Neil Granger, Mr Dearden?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, I do. He’s one of the Oxleys. Related, anyway. One day, somebody ought to look into just how closely some of those Oxleys are related. They’re a bit too reluctant to share their gene pool, if you ask me.’

‘Did you ever see Neil Granger on the old quarry track when you drove over that way, Mr Dearden?’

‘I don’t believe so. Well, no, I’m sure I didn’t.’

‘Anybody hanging around the air shaft?’

‘I saw a couple of the Oxley lads trying to climb it once,’ said Dearden.

‘Oh? When was this?’

‘A few weeks ago. God knows what they were up to. It’s not as if they could steal anything. Even if they got down into the tunnel, they wouldn’t be able to get out again.’

‘No. Did you say anything to them?’

‘Not likely. I’d only have got a mouthful of abuse.’

‘Which of the Oxleys did you see?’

‘That I’m not sure about. They’re much of a muchness, unless you actually see them standing next to each other. And every one of them should be in jail, in my opinion. Not that you want my opinion. The police have made that clear enough. The laws of the outside world will never come near the Oxleys.’

In the lay-by on the A628, Ben Cooper could see that a cordon had been taped off around a light blue Volkswagen Beetle. He recognized Liz Petty pulling on her white suit, getting ready to approach the vehicle.

‘They’ve asked me to do the car, to avoid cross-contamination,’ said Petty. ‘So let’s hope that Locard’s Principle is working in our favour today. Every contact leaves a trace. If the perpetrator travelled in this vehicle with the victim, he’ll have left traces of himself for us to find, and carried others away with him. It’s quite an old vehicle, which is good, because there are more likely to be distinctive traces on the seats and the floor.’

‘It’s been standing here overnight at least,’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, I noticed the spider’s web. It’s been spun from the hawthorn shrub to the wing mirror.’

‘The doctor says the body’s been lying up there over twenty-four hours.’

‘Don’t come any closer,’ said Petty, reminding Cooper of Lucas Oxley and his dog.

‘Why?’

‘Be really careful of where you tread. There look to be some interesting traces on the ground here. Anyone getting into or out of this vehicle will most likely have got something on the soles of their shoes. Or anyone using another vehicle, for that matter.’

Cooper studied the surface of the lay-by. ‘All I can see are chocolate wrappers, sweet papers and the remains of a burger and fries.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Why don’t people use the litter bins?’ said Cooper.

‘In this case,’ said Petty, ‘we might be grateful that they didn’t.’

‘I see.’

‘The interior of the car could be what matters most, though. By the way, there’s a box of some kind in the footwell at the back,’ she said, peering through the car window.

‘You realize the perpetrator probably didn’t arrive in this car, Liz?’

‘We can hope, can’t we, Ben?’

‘He might not even have come this way. Apparently, there’s a track to the air shaft from the other side of the hill, from a place called Withens.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said Petty.

‘You will.’

‘Tourist hot spot, is it?’

‘Hardly.’

Cooper couldn’t recall seeing anything picturesque about the village where the Oxleys lived. No wonder there were never any tourists passing through, as there were in other Peak District villages.

But at least there was one good thing about Withens. It was a long way from Diane Fry.

With a slam of the door, DC Gavin Murfin started the car and turned out of the West Street car park towards Edendale.

‘So how the hell do we get to this Withens place?’ said Fry. ‘Have you any idea, Gavin?’

‘Why don’t you find it on the map?’ said DC Murfin. ‘I put a couple in the glove compartment.’

Fry found two thick, badly folded Ordnance Survey maps from the Outdoor Leisure series, covering the whole of the Peak District at two and a half inches to the mile.

‘We want Dark Peak, right?’ she said.

‘Hey, you’re learning the lingo.’

‘I just try to remember that it gets dark if you go north and lighter if you go south. Can’t go wrong then.’

‘I suppose so.’

Before she had unfolded the map even halfway, Fry realized that it was huge. It was so big that it was almost the size of the Peak District itself. There was no way she could open it fully inside the car, not without covering the windscreen and blocking Murfin’s vision. Then she discovered that the map was printed on both sides, too.

‘All right — Dark Peak West or Dark Peak East?’ she said.

‘West, I think,’ said Murfin.

‘You think?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘You don’t sound certain enough for me. You do know this place we’re heading? It is in Derbyshire, isn’t it?’

‘Just about. But it isn’t the kind of area you really know unless you live there, like.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Fry suspiciously.

‘You’ll see.’

‘Oh, I can hardly wait.’

‘Dark Peak West,’ said Murfin. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Stop the car for a minute, then.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s on the other side of the map, that’s why. I need some space.’

Murfin pulled into a gateway. Fry got out and began to unfold the map on the car roof so that she could turn it over. When it was opened up, the map almost covered the roof of the Peugeot completely. She cursed steadily as the wind blowing down the valley snatched at the corners of the map and pulled sections of it from her hands, slapping them against the roof and tearing the folded edges.

‘Right, I’ve got Dark Peak West,’ she called to Murfin. ‘I’m looking at the top right-hand corner, and I can see a place called Holmfirth. Anywhere near there?’

‘Not far off. Holmfirth is a few miles over the border into West Yorkshire. Come south a bit, and you’ll be about right. It’s just this side of the national park boundary, in an area called Longdendale.’

‘South a bit? But there’s nothing there.’

‘Well, not quite nothing.’

‘Gavin, I can see the national park boundary, and I’m telling you that there’s nothing anywhere near it on this side.’

‘We’ll find it,’ said Murfin.

Fry ducked her head and got in the car. She pulled down the visor to look at herself in the little mirror. Her hair had been pushed up on end by the wind in old-fashioned spiky punk style. Murfin was also going to have to apply a bit of Sellotape to his map to hold it together, or buy a new one.

‘Drive then,’ she said. ‘But as far as I can see, we’re heading towards — what do they call it around here? — the moon’s backside.’

‘The Back of the Moon,’ said Murfin.

‘All right. But I think I prefer my version.’

A few minutes later, they were out of Edendale and heading north into the Hope Valley, approaching the village of Bamford.

‘Are you planning to go over the Snake Pass?’ said Fry, trying to follow their route on the map.

‘Yes.’

‘Is that the best way, Gavin?’

‘Definitely.’

Fry looked for the area called Longdendale. This was where a body had been found early that morning, but it was a long valley, which ran right across the map. She studied the adjacent terrain in growing disbelief. Apart from the thin red ribbon of the A628 trunk road snaking its way from east to west through the valley, and the blue of the reservoirs in the valley bottom, the map had no features at all. No, that wasn’t quite true. There were masses of thin brown lines that swirled everywhere, clustering tightly together here and there. They were contour lines. The closer together the lines were, the steeper the slope of the land — she knew that from some distant geography lesson. But crossing these brown lines were almost as many pale blue ones — little snaky things that ran down from all the summits, branching and trickling away in every direction. They looked like the worst case of varicose veins she had ever seen.

Many of these pale blue lines were labelled ‘cloughs’, ‘slacks’ or ‘groughs’. They were streams and rivulets feeding down into the valleys. She could imagine how boggy the ground between them would be, because this was certainly peat moor.

Sure enough, there were lots of little clusters of black dots on the map, too. Fry checked the key for the meaning of the symbol. Rough grassland. In some places, those flecks turned blue. That meant marsh — a polite name for boggy ground that was like wet Christmas pudding to walk through, the sort of ground that the Dark Peak seemed to specialize in. She sighed. If anyone tried to persuade her to walk across one yard of those barren acres of peat moor, she would refuse. There had to be a tarmacked street somewhere in this place.

Fry looked closer, searching the map for features she could recognize. Some of the moors had their own names — she saw Dead Edge Flat, Bleakmires and Withens Moss. She could make out the line of a disused railway tunnel running under the hills. But the moors themselves were empty.

Then she laughed. Not quite empty. There were actually some features to be found marked among the brown contour lines and the tangled systems of cloughs and slacks. The features were labelled on the map as ‘mound’ and ‘pile of stones’.

‘Unbelievable,’ she said.

But Murfin just smiled.