Blind to the Bones

14

Monday

DCI Kessen took up a position at the front of the room for the morning briefing. In front of him on the table were a series of exhibits relating to the Neil Granger enquiry.

‘He looks like a Greek god to me,’ said Gavin Murfin, taking a chair next to Ben Cooper.

‘Well, I think he’s more like Neptune,’ said Cooper.

‘Why?’

‘It’s the beard. The way it’s sort of... forked.’

‘Yeah. Like the Devil.’

Kessen was waiting impassively for everyone to settle down. Diane Fry came in and sat on the front row, where no one ever wanted to be.

‘I bet he’s worth a lot, though,’ said Murfin. ‘Thousands.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘How old would you say?’

‘A century or two, that’s all,’ said Cooper.

Kessen cleared his throat. The room gradually fell silent.

‘I know what you’re all wondering,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided to call him Fred.’

The DCI smiled without showing his teeth. The expression lacked humour. In fact, it looked more like a challenge to anyone who might dare to laugh.

‘Oh, my good Lord,’ said Murfin quietly.

Using both hands because of its weight, Kessen held up one of the evidence bags. It was made of clear plastic, and everyone could see what was inside it. There was also a large colour photograph of the item pinned up on one of the notice boards.

‘An antique bronze bust,’ said the DCI. ‘This was found in a vehicle belonging to the victim, Neil Granger. The vehicle in question is a Volkswagen Beetle, which had been left parked in a lay-by on the A628, a few hundred yards down the hill from where Mr Granger’s body was found.’

The bust was about nine inches high, with a dull green patina, and stood on a solid base. It represented the head of a man with a Roman nose, curly hair and a rather forked beard. Whoever he was, he gazed with blank eyes into the room. Cooper was reminded of a corpse he had once seen on the dissection table at the mortuary — a homeless Irishman who had been killed in a hit-and-run incident and left in a ditch. The Irishman’s hair had been black, but his face had carried a similar green tinge.

‘We know that there have been a number of burglaries from homes in the Longdendale area during the last few months,’ said Kessen. ‘During these burglaries, small antique items have been taken. This is a small antique item.’

The bust was heavy, and it landed with a thump when he rested it back on the table.

‘Initial enquiries into Neil Granger’s circumstances and his associates suggest that he may not have come into possession of this item in the normal manner.’

Kessen hesitated, and looked at the faces of some of the officers in the back row with an expression of disappointment.

‘We think it may have been stolen,’ he said.

‘Are we going to put photos of the bust in the media, sir?’ asked one officer.

‘Not just yet.’

‘We could get a quick identification that way, if the legitimate owner comes forward. Someone would be sure to recognize it if they saw it on TV or in the papers. It’s very distinctive.’

‘But we would also tip off the thieves that we have it,’ said Kessen. ‘I don’t want to do that yet. That’s a fact we’re going to keep to ourselves. Understood, everybody?’

There were nods, and a few shifty looks from officers who might already have mentioned the bronze bust to their wives or husbands.

‘We do have a bit of information about this item,’ said Kessen. ‘DI Hitchens will fill us in.’

‘Well, we e-mailed pictures of the bust to a couple of experts yesterday and asked them to give it the once-over,’ said Hitchens. ‘Apparently, it’s a copy of an original in marble that can be found in a museum in Florence. The character with the curly hair and beard is Lucius Verrus, an obscure Roman emperor. Closer to home, though, there’s a larger copy of this in Chatsworth House. That’s the Duke of Devonshire’s stately home, a few miles east of here.’

‘I think we know what Chatsworth House is,’ said Kessen.

Gavin Murfin put his hand up. ‘Have Chatsworth had any antiques lifted recently?’ he said. ‘I mean, I went in there once with the wife and kids, and the bloody place was stuffed with them. You could hardly move for antiques. God knows what the old Duke’s insurance premiums must be like.’

‘Thank you, Murfin,’ said Hitchens, with an uneasy glance at the DCI.

‘In fact, while we were there, I said to the wife that if I ever got kicked off the force I thought I’d go into the antiques trade. I could train the kids to sneak a few bits of china and silver out of Chatsworth now and then, and they’d never be missed. The place is massive. In fact, can you believe there was no one even living in the part of the house that we went in? So how would they know what they’ve got, and what they haven’t? Someone could make a mint that way, I reckon.’

‘Gavin...’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘We’re investigating a suspicious death,’ said Hitchens. ‘Not planning The Italian Job.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Are there prints on the bust, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘Yes, the victim’s. Neil Granger’s.’

‘He left his fingerprints on it? That’s a bit amateurish, if he’s involved in an organized gang.’

‘Well, they always make a mistake.’

‘Everybody knows not to leave fingerprints these days. It doesn’t feel right.’

‘It’s evidence,’ said Kessen. ‘Let’s see how it all adds up.’

Murfin leaned towards Cooper. ‘’Course it’s evidence,’ he said. ‘Why does he have to state the bleedin’ obvious all the time?’

‘What were the victim’s movements after he left the church at Withens?’ asked Cooper, trying to pretend he hadn’t heard Murfin.

The DCI looked at Hitchens, as if to suggest it was time he did something to earn his pay.

‘It seems he drove straight home,’ said Hitchens. ‘His next-door neighbours noticed Granger’s Volkswagen arrive. That was about twenty minutes after the Reverend Alton says he left the church.’

‘The neighbours saw him?’ said Cooper, who would like to have been able to speak to the neighbours himself, but hadn’t been given the task.

‘No, but the VW has a distinctive engine noise, they say. They also heard Granger’s front door close, and then some music later on, for about three-quarters of an hour.’

‘What music?’

‘Does it matter, Ben?’

‘I’m just wondering how thick the walls are. If the neighbours could tell what the music was, it might mean the walls are thin, and they would hear more of what went on next door.’

‘His neighbours are a different generation to Neil Granger,’ said Hitchens. ‘I don’t suppose they would have recognized the music if they’d been sitting with it blasting down their own headphones.’

‘Anyway, I think it was Nirvana,’ said Cooper.

‘How do you know that?’

‘The CD was still in the player when we visited the house with Granger’s brother. I checked. And it lasts about three-quarters of an hour.’

‘Brilliant.’

Cooper was conscious of a few heads turning towards him around the room.

‘But the thing is, the neighbours never heard Granger go out again,’ said Hitchens. ‘They seemed confident of it, too. They say they usually recognize the sound of his door closing and his car engine. I think they’re right — they would have noticed the same noises later at night, when it was quieter. But they sleep in a bedroom at the front of the house, and Granger keeps his car on some spare ground at the back.’

‘So Granger went out again after the neighbours had gone to bed.’

‘And now you’re going to ask what time that was,’ said Hitchens. ‘You might think they were early to bed, because they’re middle-aged. But in fact, the neighbours stayed up watching a late-night film on ITV.’

‘Schindler’s List,’ said Cooper.

‘Now, how the hell did you know that, Ben?’

‘I watched it myself. It finished at 1.30 a.m.’

There was a strange silence from the officers immediately around him. Even Gavin Murfin seemed to be trying to use his body language to pretend that he was sitting next to someone else entirely. Cooper realized he would probably get ribbed mercilessly in the CID room afterwards. His fellow DCs would be calling him Sherlock for weeks. But he never had quite learned when to keep his mouth shut.

DI Hitchens was staring at him with something like pity. Mr Kessen had gone all glassy-eyed, not unlike poor old Lucius Verrus on the table in front of him.

‘Damn right, Cooper,’ said Hitchens. ‘So the chances are that Neil Granger went out of the house some time between 1.30 a.m. and the time he was killed on Withens Moor later that morning. Unfortunately, we can’t be exact about the time he was killed. Or Mrs Van Doon can’t.’

Another officer across the room took up the challenge. ‘Granger’s VW was parked in a lay-by on the A628, so somebody might have noticed it.’

‘We’ve got teams tracking down lorry drivers who were on that route in the early hours,’ said Hitchens. ‘There’s an all-night roadside café a couple of miles down the road, and we’re hoping the owner might be able to put us on to some of his regulars who were on the road at that time. That might narrow the time down for us. If we’re really lucky, they might have seen another car in the same lay-by. Or even a car and occupants.’

‘Why did Granger park on the road when he could have driven up the track right to the air shaft? Wasn’t there a car that came down the track over the hill? It was seen by the first officers at the scene.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Hitchens. ‘DC Cooper?’

‘The driver’s name is Michael Dearden,’ said Cooper. ‘I went to see him yesterday. He lives just outside Withens at a house called Shepley Head Lodge, and he says he uses the track for a short cut. It’s an old quarry road, but it isn’t suitable for anything apart from a four wheel drive. Granger’s old Volkswagen wouldn’t have made it up the hill.’

‘Whoever met him might have had a four-wheel drive,’ said Hitchens. ‘So we have to bear in mind that they might not even have approached the scene from the A628. If this Dearden came over from the Withens direction, someone else could, too. There’s no restriction on the access at Dearden’s end, Cooper?’

‘No, sir. There’s an open gateway. Withens Moor is access land.’

‘We mustn’t neglect the possibilities. We’ll get someone to check out the lie of the land there.’

‘We’re going to take our time at the scene, too,’ said DCI Kessen. ‘We need to exploit every forensic opportunity.’

‘Unfortunately, sir, the SOCOs say the ground had been trampled thoroughly before the scene was secured.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘Well, the firefighters do tend to have rather large boots. On the other hand, we’ve had more luck from the lay-by where Granger’s car was parked. One of the SOCOs scraped up quite a wide range of samples from the ground there. If we can match the right combination to a suspect’s footwear, it would help us enormously.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kessen. ‘I want to make it clear that we’re going to limit the amount of information we release — particularly what we allow Neil Granger’s associates access to. So we should be circumspect.’

‘Yes, sir.’

DC Murfin leaned towards Cooper again. ‘What does that mean?’ he said. ‘I thought it was when you were Jewish, like.’

‘He means watch what you say.’

‘Ah. As if I’d do anything else.’

Cooper saw Diane Fry turn slightly to look at them over her shoulder, frowning as if she had caught a couple of pupils misbehaving in class.

‘Miss isn’t pleased,’ said Murfin.

‘Shhh.’

‘I can’t emphasize enough that we must be meticulous in preserving evidence,’ said Kessen. ‘This is going to be a real team effort, so we must work together and communicate fully. And remember, everybody — there’s no “i” in “team”.’

Cooper heard Gavin Murfin muttering under his breath.

‘There’s a “u” in bullshit, though,’ he said.

Before the briefing broke up, everyone seemed to need to take another look at the photographs of the victim from the scene. The colours looked so unreal, as if something had gone wrong with the film in the photographer’s camera. Granger’s face was streaked with blood from his head wounds, but it had dried blacker than normal where it lay against his skin. That was because it had streaked and mingled with the black make-up he wore everywhere but around his eyes.

‘If we can find out why and when Neil Granger had blackened his face with theatrical make-up, that might give us the lead we need,’ said DCI Kessen. ‘But at the moment, we keep this fact to ourselves, too.’

Gavin Murfin had arrived at the office armed with an enormous Peak pasty and a slab of dark, moist parkin. He’d left the parkin in its cellophane wrapper, but the gingery smell drifting across the office made Ben Cooper’s mouth water as soon as he walked in.

DI Hitchens approached them with Diane Fry. Hitchens sniffed at Murfin’s pasty with interest, while Fry tried not to look at it.

‘Cooper, what are you currently working on?’ said Hitchens. ‘The Oxley family, isn’t it? Excellent. We need to pin down Neil Granger’s closest associates, who he spent his time with. Maybe he was close to some of his cousins among the Oxleys.’

‘He moved out of Withens some time ago, sir, but we know he’s been back there. One of the residents saw him on Friday night, and he helped the vicar to clear up after his church was broken into and vandalized.’

‘Exactly. Keep on it.’

DI Hitchens drifted off to speak to Kessen. Cooper waited until he’d gone, and then he looked at Fry curiously.

‘You never mentioned the possibility of a connection with Emma Renshaw, Diane,’ he said. ‘I thought you would do.’

‘I’ve already talked to Mr Hitchens about it. It isn’t the main line of enquiry at the moment.’

‘It can’t be overlooked.’

‘No, it won’t be overlooked, Ben.’

‘I do remember the case. Granger was one of her housemates, too, and he’d known Emma all his life.’

‘He was also one of the last people to see her alive, as far as we know. But most of the activity was in the Black Country, where she was last seen. The mobile phone is the first indication we’ve had that she made it anywhere near home. Of course, there was no direct evidence at the time that any crime had been committed. Emma Renshaw simply disappeared. No body, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And no evidence.’

‘Until now. Now we have her phone.’

‘I suppose it’s still possible that she might have wanted to disappear. That was the conclusion at the time. But who knows what might have happened to her since then.’

Cooper hesitated. ‘There’s another reason I remember the Emma Renshaw case.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘We’ve been reminded of it fairly regularly during the last two years. There have been several minor incidents that officers have had to deal with. Advice has been given. An informal warning once, I think.’

Fry looked up from the file. ‘You mean the parents? Yes, I know about that. But thanks for telling me.’

‘And Neil Granger lived in Withens. So he was a near neighbour of the Renshaws, too.’

‘Like you say, he and Emma were old schoolfriends.’

‘Childhood sweethearts maybe?’

‘If they were, it sounds as though they’d cooled off. By all appearances, they were no more than acquaintances in Bearwood.’

‘But sharing a house.’

‘The general agreement is that it was a matter of convenience, splitting the cost.’

‘Childhood relationships never survive adolescence anyway,’ said Cooper. ‘Girls mature earlier, so boys of the same age suddenly look like children. And the girls develop an interest in the bigger boys.’

‘Possibly. We weren’t able to prove that they were more than just friends, anyway. But they’d known each other for a long time, so it was quite natural they should share a house.’

‘What sort of state are the Renshaws in these days?’

‘The state of Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ said Fry.

‘Right.’

‘Don’t forget our meeting, Ben.’

‘What?’

‘We’re supposed to be arranging a meeting. I take it you’ve forgotten?’

‘Well, in the circumstances...’

Fry nodded. ‘OK. But let’s not forget about it altogether, eh? I think we have some talking to do.’

A couple of hours later, Ben Cooper was watching PC Tracy Udall check her duty belt. She was painstaking in her routine, even as she continued talking to him. But a patrol officer’s safety could depend on carrying out this routine properly at the start of every shift. Udall shook her head and tutted when Cooper told her about Lucas Oxley and his dog.

‘It was my own fault,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I identified myself clearly enough. He seemed to be a bit deaf or something. A uniform will make a difference, I’m sure.’

‘Perhaps it was rather rash, going on your own,’ said Udall. ‘But you hadn’t got the full picture about Waterloo Terrace.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But you’ll be all right with me. I can subdue any savage dog with a single glance. My kids take no notice of me, but other than that, I’m mustard.’

Udall unfastened the four keepers on her uniform belt and clipped her duty belt over it. Cooper could see that she was right-handed — she positioned her rigid handcuffs on her right hip and her baton on the left, her weak side. She drew the handcuffs out of their holster, pushing the single bar through the double bar and pulling it back to the pre-load position before re-holstering them carefully.

‘Is your son behaving no better?’ said Cooper.

‘He had another tantrum this morning about me going to work.’ Udall sighed. ‘These duty rosters don’t help. He doesn’t understand the shift system.’

‘Does anybody?’

Udall laughed. ‘He needs a routine at that age. He needs to know exactly when his mum is going to be at home and when she isn’t. A regular routine provides a bit of security in itself. But that’s what I can’t give him at the moment. Quite honestly, I could do without going through a major guilt trip every time I set off for work.’

‘You’re not thinking of leaving the force, Tracy?’

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘But it’s difficult sometimes.’

After a hastily called briefing at Glossop section station to gather resources, Cooper was about to find himself on his way back to Withens. It was almost as if the body of Neil Granger hadn’t been found at the air shaft in the interval since his last visit. Or that he had been in the right place yesterday, but not asking the right questions. Granger was related to the Oxleys, and the Reverend Derek Alton had been expecting to see him the day he died. Cooper had cornered his own line of enquiry, and it centred on Waterloo Terrace.

‘By the way, I asked the community constable about the Oxley kids,’ said Udall. ‘He’s only been on the patch about eighteen months, but he’s had a few dealings with them already.’

‘Any of them in particular?’

‘There have been several complaints about the younger ones. The usual sort of stuff — hanging around outside people’s houses, making a lot of noise, swearing, running across gardens. You get the picture.’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary there.’

‘No. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not where there’s a group of youngsters gathering together. And of course that means they get blamed for anything that goes off in the village — minor thefts and damage to property. Also any vandalism, graffiti, litter — you name it.’

‘Did the community bobby ever get any proof the Oxley kids were involved?’

‘Proof’s a different matter. But he’s spoken to them many a time. Also to their parents. Or he’s tried to.’

‘I know what he means,’ said Cooper, with a sigh.

Udall laughed at him as she tested the security of her baton in its ring on her left hip and switched her torch on and off. She flipped open her medical protection pouch, which contained a face mask, latex gloves, antiseptic wipes and a contaminated-waste bag. The most immediate threat to a police officer often came from an encounter with body fluids rather than with a lethal weapon. Hepatitis B and HIV were on the streets, even in Edendale. But just in case she did need to subdue a violent suspect, Udall had also been issued with a CS spray.

‘He says the Oxley adults co-operated to the minimum amount they could get away with. They never became aggressive or argued with him. They always promised to talk to their kids and keep a closer eye on them. They never gave him justification for taking further action.’

‘But have the complaints stopped?’ said Cooper.

‘No. And the Oxleys had quite colourful careers, by all accounts. All the boys have court records. There were even some arson charges at one time. Ryan and Jake are the ones giving most cause for most concern at the moment. Actually, the Social Services case officer is quite optimistic about Ryan — she says he’s a sensible lad at heart and will probably settle down.’

‘Really?’

‘There’s no need to sound quite so cynical, Ben. Many of our young offenders settle down and become perfectly respectable citizens.’

‘OK,’ said Cooper. ‘And Jake?’

‘He’s causing some problems at the moment.’

‘Is there nothing that can be done with him?’

‘Basically, there are two options. Either we take him away from his parents and put him into local authority care. Or we leave him where he is, until he’s old enough to earn himself a spell in a detention centre.’

‘And that would be the start of a long cycle of court appearances, and eventually prison.’

‘Exactly. But we operate on the principle that the best place for a child is at home, with his family. So, with this kind of case, we’re in a cleft stick.’

‘What about the older ones?’

Udall hesitated. ‘Scott and his cousins, you mean? They’re not the concern of Social Services any more, and I only asked about the children. But there’ll be court records we can look up.’

‘And the girls aren’t a problem? Lorraine and Stacey?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Well, if they’re clean, let’s hope they stay that way.’

‘Amen.’

Finally, Udall checked her personal radio and chose a battery. Cooper waited patiently while she made sure the radio was on the right channel and placed it in its holster. She adjusted the lead to the handset, so that it wouldn’t be in the way if she had to draw her baton. Then she gave her duty belt a final tug, and was ready. She lifted an eyebrow at the way Cooper was watching her.

‘How do I look?’ she said.

‘Terrifying.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘But only if I were a criminal,’ said Cooper. ‘Or an Alsatian dog.’

PC Udall’s liveried Vauxhall Astra was white, with an orange flash and black-and-white checkerboard patterns down each side, and a blue beacon on the roof. It had those yellow and red diagonal stripes on the tailgate which had been dubbed a ‘baboon’s bum’, after something very similar had been spotted on a BBC wildlife programme. The code number of the vehicle was painted on the roof in large black letters for identification by the air support unit. A bottle of mineral water had been thrown on the back seat.

Ben Cooper had never felt entirely comfortable being driven by someone else. He much preferred being at the wheel than being a passenger. He had always supposed it was something to do with a need to be in control. But maybe today it was also the result of Tracy Udall’s tendency to wave her hands breezily as she talked. The B6105 Woodhead Road out of Glossop was narrow and winding, and at one point, as it descended into Longdendale, there was a sharp kink in the road called The Devil’s Elbow, which had been a notorious accident black spot for years.

There was a long string of five reservoirs filling the valley bottom. One of them, Valehouse, came into sight as they approached the Devil’s Elbow, then they descended the hill towards its neighbour, Rhodeswood. They drove alongside Torside Reservoir for a while, past the national park information point. Although it was Monday, there were small sailing boats on Torside Reservoir. The track of the former railway line ran right by the road here, converted into the Longdendale Trail.

Finally, they crossed the dam between Torside and Woodhead and eased cautiously out into the traffic on the A628.

‘This end of the valley has always had a few problem areas for us,’ said Udall. ‘Hadfield and Hollingworth, particularly. The closer you get to the outskirts of Manchester, the bigger the problems. The motorway makes it so much easier for people to get to Longdendale now.’

‘What about the upper end of the valley?’

‘Well, not so much. The crime rate tends to decline when the population disappears.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at your map. See those names along the road? Then look around you here. Where’s the village of Crowden? Where’s Woodhead? Where’s Saltersbrook?’

Cooper looked. ‘Judging from this map, we must have driven through all of them in the last half-hour, but I missed them. Did I fall asleep, or what?’

‘No. It’s because they’re not there any more.’

‘They just died?’

‘They were removed,’ said Udall. ‘Flattened, cleared, eliminated. Apart from their names, they were wiped off the map.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Nope. I’m told there used to be at least five inns along this stretch of road, between Crowden and Saltersbrook. Crowden alone had a school with forty pupils in it. And there was a seventeenth-century Stuart mansion called Crowden Hall. They’ve all gone.’

‘We’re not talking about villages that disappeared under the water when the reservoirs were built, Tracy?’

‘No, these villages were well above the water line. They were right here, on the road. You can still see where the houses were, in some cases. But a few foundations are all that’s left. In fact, take a look at Saltersbrook, and you’ll find the ruins of the village inn on the old packhorse road. At Woodhead, there was one house that stood right over the entrances to the railway tunnels. It’s just a few square yards of concrete now.’

‘But why?’

‘Well, this is a water catchment area, Ben — the hillsides gather the water that feeds the reservoirs down in the valley.’

‘Of course.’

‘The water companies decided that the presence of people in Longdendale might pollute the water supply for the customers in Manchester and the Lancashire cotton towns. So they moved them all out and demolished their villages.’

‘Including a Stuart mansion,’ said Cooper. ‘But I suppose they didn’t care quite so much about those things in the nineteenth century.’

Udall laughed. ‘Nineteenth century, nothing. My dad remembers Crowden Hall. In fact, he has a photograph of it in a drawer somewhere. The hall was demolished in 1937 by Manchester Corporation.’

‘Damn.’

‘One of the pubs survived right into the 1960s. But that went, too. And only a couple of years ago, the water company spent £300,000 moving an entire farming operation a mile further up the hill at Crowden, to get it away from the road. They said it was to safeguard water quality from grazing sheep. They had to build a new house for the farmer in that case. But he was one of the lucky ones, I think. Entire communities have just disappeared from this area.’

Cooper looked back at the boats on Torside Reservoir. Presumably, sailing was an activity that could be trusted not to pollute the water.

‘And what about Withens?’ he said.

Udall shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But it doesn’t look like a place that will last, does it?’