Blind to the Bones

20

Tuesday

For the past three nights, Diane Fry had dreamed that she found Emma Renshaw’s body. Emma had been dead for two years, and the skin had shrunk to pale tatters on her skull, so that it had become a rubber mask that could be twisted and rearranged into any shape you wanted. For Fry, it transformed into the face of a sixteen-year-old girl — a face as familiar to her as her own, and yet alien. A face that left her sweating, and thrashing her limbs in tangled bedclothes.

Fry knew this fear. This kind of fear was insidious. You could go to bed at night feeling free of it. Yet when you woke in the morning, you found it had descended from the darkest corners of your room and clung to you like cobwebs.

So the smell, the sound or the movement that she knew ought to be innocent, suggesting safety, now brought with it not a specific fear, nor a memory of the event that had scarred her in the first place. Instead, it created a sort of general dread, a vague, shapeless terror of something she couldn’t picture or name. In everything now she saw something to fear. The blood in the poppies, the mould in the grass. The bones under the skin of the girl.

That morning, something finally occurred to Fry that she should have known for a long time. She might well be living in a fantasy world of her own making, just as much as the Renshaws were. Angie Fry was no more likely to come home now than Emma Renshaw was. After all, Angie had been gone for fifteen years. A decade and a half. Fry had to repeat it to herself, but it still didn’t mean what it should. Hardly any time at all had passed in her own mind — not in that corner where Angie was still a teenager full of life, setting off for a rave somewhere, leaving the house with a laugh and a brief kiss for her younger sister, vanishing into the night in a whiff of scent and the smell of dope.

Fry knew she wasn’t immune to the tricks that the mind played. Why should she be free of the need to cling to a desperate, mistaken belief in the face of reality? Was she, too, blind to the bones?

Angie had already been using heroin by the time she disappeared, and the life of an addict was brutish and short. Fry had seen enough of other people’s brothers and sisters to know what happened to them. Fifteen years was a long time in an addict’s life. And if Angie had still been alive, she would have found her by now.

Fry found herself facing a decision that had slipped through the gap in her curtains like the dawn replacing the yellow glare of the streetlights outside her window. She had to accept that Angie was dead. Otherwise there was nowhere for her to go, except into the dark alleyways of obsession.

For the first time in months, Fry spent some time doing her exercises, emptying her mind, searching for the energy that she needed to get her through. She positioned herself on the rug in her bedroom and went through the movements, gradually losing sight of the faded wallpaper and the floor as her eyes looked beyond them and into herself. Finally, she began to feel the first whispers of the physical intensity that would provide her with the strength that she had lost.

It was a start, but not enough. She needed to put all thoughts of Angie out of her mind, and let the knowledge of her sister’s death steal up on her quietly without her noticing. And, perhaps most of all, she needed support in dealing with the Renshaws — the kind of support the presence of Gavin Murfin couldn’t give her.

The cats had been hunting during the night. One of them had been eating its catch in the back garden of 8 Welbeck Street. There wasn’t much left of the victim now — only the stomach and intestines, and some other internal organs. They lay on the stone flags, still glistening, dark green and red. And there was something else left, as well — two tiny feet, long and pale, and tipped by white claws. One of the feet was curled into a sort of fist, but the other was stretched out on the ground as it would have been in life. They were the remains of a rat.

Ben Cooper looked around the area for signs of a scaly tail, to get an idea of the size of the dead rodent. Cats didn’t normally eat the tail either. They would consume the head and the front feet, but not the back feet, or the stomach, or the tail. If he could find it, the size and thickness of it would give him an indication of whether Randy or Mrs Macavity had caught an adult rat, or a young one freshly out of its nest. Were rats breeding nearby? If so, there would be more remains to come, now that the cats had located their nest.

But there was no sign of a tail on the flags. Cooper shrugged. It was possible some bird had flown away with it, thinking it was a worm. There were magpies in this area — they were frequently mobbed by the smaller birds when they landed in the trees. Magpies were carrion eaters. They also took young songbirds, and even the eggs from other birds’ nests. They were ideal for clearing up the leftovers from other predators.

‘One of you isn’t going to want any breakfast this morning, then?’ he said, as the cats came fussing around his legs.

But he put their bowls down anyway, and they ate as eagerly as always.

Cooper straightened up, and found Angie Fry watching him from the door of the conservatory, with that smile on her face. He felt a surge of unreasonable anger that a private moment was being observed by this unwelcome stranger. Somehow, it seemed to make it worse that this was the first morning he had been able to establish the back yard as his territory. He hadn’t even had time to explore the overgrown garden.

‘You have to leave now,’ he said.

‘OK, OK. You said by eight o’clock, and I’m on my way. I just wanted to say thanks before I went.’

Cooper felt himself begin to flush. It was amazing that Angie Fry should have the same casual ability to sway his emotions that her sister did. His annoyance had turned immediately to remorse for being rude.

‘That’s all right.’

‘I hope you’ll remember, though, what I said last night.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘That’s good, Ben.’

He accompanied her to the door of the flat, but she paused on the doorstep.

‘I may see you again,’ she said.

‘I don’t think so.’

Then the door of the other flat opened, and suddenly a dark-haired woman stood in the hallway, swaying forward slightly as if she’d been forced to stop suddenly, to avoid bumping into him. Another complete stranger to Cooper, she looked to be in her late thirties, and was wearing a black jacket and blue jeans.

‘Oh,’ she said.

Cooper could see an expression of alarm cross her face. He could forgive her if she took him to be a mugger.

‘Hi, I’m your neighbour,’ he said. ‘Ben Cooper.’

‘Oh, right.’

She visibly relaxed, and held out a hand. ‘Peggy Check. So you’re the young man downstairs. That’s what Dorothy Shelley calls you.’

Cooper shook her hand. He looked around for Angie, but she’d vanished into the street without a word. He found Peggy smiling broadly at him, as if at some huge joke. She had a smile that transformed her face and brought out a depth of humour in her eyes, and Cooper suddenly felt at ease with her. It made him realize how on edge he’d been for the last few hours, ever since Angie Fry had arrived on his doorstep.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ he said. ‘The young man downstairs.’

‘You’re a policeman, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dorothy says I’ll be perfectly safe with you around. But it isn’t too dangerous around Edendale, is it?’

Cooper could feel himself relaxing more and more by the second. All the instincts he’d been repressing while talking to Angie were coming to the fore again. He detected a natural warmth that had been uncomfortably missing from his earlier visitor.

‘No, you’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Watch out for the cats, though. They’re killers.’

Peggy looked as though she wanted to close her door and leave, but she couldn’t do it with Cooper blocking the way in the little porch. He stepped back over the threshold into his own flat.

She smiled again. ‘See you around, I guess, Ben.’

‘You must come in and have a coffee some time.’

‘Love to. Just let me know. Catch you later.’

Cooper watched her head off down the street towards the market square, walking with a brisk confidence. She might be a stranger here, but she would be all right in Edendale. There was no doubt about that.

And he felt sure of one other thing. If she did take up his invitation to come in for a coffee one day, Peggy Check wouldn’t sit in his flat and tell him lies all evening.

Ben Cooper found Diane Fry standing in front of his desk when he arrived at West Street. She had an armful of files and something that looked like a photo album. She seemed a bit subdued, but that wasn’t what Cooper noticed most when he looked up at her. He found himself automatically looking for the similarities to her sister. The slim shoulders and straight fair hair were recognizable. But there was something else, too — something about the look in the eyes that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Fry brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Another familiar gesture.

‘Is there something wrong?’ she said. ‘What are you staring at me for?’

‘Oh... nothing.’

‘If you say so. Ben, I want you to take a look at this. Tell me what you think.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Sarah Renshaw’s cuttings album. She let me borrow it because she’s just started a new one.’

Mrs Renshaw had collected a thick album of cuttings from newspapers. They were mostly reports of missing children who had been reunited with their families, some of them after several years. There were also stories about young people living rough on the streets of various cities, or in squats, or even in the temporary camps of New Age travellers and environmental protesters.

There were scores of them, and Cooper was astonished at the range of newspapers represented. All of the nationals were there, both tabloid and broadsheet. There were Scottish papers, and local weeklies from Yorkshire and the Midlands, in fact from all over Britain. Some of the stories, he realized, were printouts of pages from the websites of foreign newspapers, mostly American. Cooper turned to one from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, featuring a girl injured in a car accident on Highway 54 and left unconscious in hospital. The police in a place called Oneida were trying to identify the victim, and were appealing for help from the public. The phone number had been circled in blue ink. He guessed the Oneida cops would have had a call from Sarah Renshaw. He hoped they had dealt with her sympathetically.

Cooper checked the dates of the cuttings. The earlier ones began almost immediately after Emma’s disappearance, but were mainly local stories, and they were weeks apart. But as the album filled up, the dates got closer together, their sources more far-flung and international, until the most recent pages were packed with stories culled from the internet day after day.

It gave Cooper a dizzying glimpse of the world as seen by Sarah Renshaw. In this world, it was as if Emma had started off as just a single missing person in North Derbyshire two years ago, but had steadily multiplied herself over the months. In her various incarnations, she had spread out and scattered all over the globe, invading the world like an army of clones, or a virus proliferating at an unmanageable rate.

These multiple Emmas had ended up in all kinds of places, some of them lost and anonymous, some hungry or injured, alone or finally reunited. And Sarah Renshaw had spent hours at the computer tracking them down. Perhaps she had become increasingly desperate in her efforts as she realized the numbers involved, and discovered the speed of the virus that she was trying to keep up with. There were more young people going missing every day than anyone could imagine.

Cooper closed the album with a sigh. They were far from being clones, but the young women featured in these cuttings did have a few things in common, and one big difference from Emma Renshaw. Each of them was someone’s daughter, of course. Many of them would have parents worrying about them at home.

But most of all, every one of them was still alive.

‘It’s sad,’ said Cooper.

Fry nodded. ‘The most worrying thing is the guilt factor.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sarah Renshaw keeps talking about this “belief” business. I think if Emma turns up dead, she’s going to interpret that to mean she didn’t believe hard enough. She’ll think Emma is dead because she failed her.’

‘That isn’t rational at all.’

‘There’s nothing rational about guilt. There’s nothing rational about the Renshaws at the moment.’

‘That bad, eh? I’ve heard a lot about them, but never actually met them.’

‘It would be interesting to see what you think of them, Ben.’

‘Yes.’

Cooper wondered if Fry had actually told the Renshaws that anyone who had been missing for years was unlikely to turn up again some day. He didn’t feel like supporting her in that opinion just now. He knew only too well that it could really happen.

Fry straightened her shoulders and her manner changed.

‘And how are you getting on with the Oxleys, Ben?’ she said. ‘Are you one of the family yet?’

‘Oh, yeah. An in-law that nobody speaks to.’

‘Well, you’ll have to keep trying,’ said Fry. ‘Use a different approach or something.’

‘A different approach. Right.’

DCI Kessen didn’t have to wait as long for the room to settle down this morning. His silent, patient style was unsettling some of the officers. They didn’t quite know what to make of him. What was he thinking behind that thin smile? Even DI Hitchens seemed unsure of how to behave.

Ben Cooper saw that Tracy Udall was here this morning with some of the Rural Crime Team, including Sergeant Jimmy Boyce. He waved to Udall, then hesitated, realizing he should be careful who he sat with, in case it was taken as signifying something. Then he sat on a chair at the back of the room, perching on it as if suggesting that he had to make a quick getaway on urgent business.

‘All right, thank you,’ said Hitchens as he opened the briefing. ‘Those of you who’ve been working on leads connected to the bronze bust we found in Neil Granger’s car will know that we’ve had some results. The bust turns out to have been stolen right here in Edendale, from a house called Southwoods Grange, which was burgled two weeks ago. The property is owned by the National Trust, so all the items were recorded and photographed for security. There’s no doubt it’s the same one.’

‘How much is it worth?’ asked someone.

‘Difficult to say, but I’m told it’s insured for five thousand pounds.’

‘Nice. And have we detected this theft, sir?’

‘Er, no. But the bust was part of a haul of small items worth considerably more, I’m told. By the time a unit responded to an alarm at Southwoods Grange, the perpetrators had got well clear. There were no solid lines of enquiry to follow, and no sign of any of the stolen property turning up anywhere. Until now.’

‘Sir, do you think it might have been the Gavin Murfin Gang practising for the Chatsworth House job?’

From his seat at the front of the room, Kessen turned his head slowly to look at the DC who had spoken. Very few people laughed, except Murfin, who chortled loudly and winked at his colleague. DI Hitchens smiled, but managed to keep his face turned away from his boss and his voice steady.

‘Well, facetiousness aside, we do have some similar MOs on a series of other incidents in the past few months, including some in Longdendale, near where Neil Granger lived.’

Hitchens looked around the room and found Ben Cooper. ‘As some of you know, the Rural Crime Team have been working on these burglaries in Longdendale for a while. Their intelligence has proved very useful. Also, we have some ongoing checks on a number of Granger’s associates, which will take some time. But a few of them are already looking very promising. Very promising indeed. There are a couple of Neil Granger’s friends who have a string of theft convictions between them.’

‘Where are these associates, sir?’ said Cooper. ‘In Tintwistle? Or back in Withens?’

‘No, not in Withens. I’m thinking particularly of two former colleagues of Granger’s at Lancashire Chemicals in Glossop, who were recently sacked because they were suspected of pilfering. They’ve both spent time inside on unrelated matters, and Granger has been associating with them. They drink together occasionally at a pub in Mottram. There was some good work done there, establishing that fact so quickly.’

Hitchens turned to look at Kessen, who nodded and gave everyone his smile. It actually felt as though he had offered effusive congratulations.

‘That’s not to say there isn’t a lot more work to be done on Granger’s associates,’ said the DI. ‘Including those in Withens, Cooper. Granger has some relatives there who might be a bit dubious, I gather.’

‘They’re mostly kids,’ said Cooper. ‘Nuisance and vandalism, yes; maybe nicking from cars. But I don’t think there’s any suggestion they’re into antiques.’

‘Well, we’ll see. We need more information yet before we close down that possibility, so keep on it. The RCT are going to help with that aspect of the enquiry, so we’re lucky to have some help. Neil Granger seems to have known quite a lot of people.’

‘The family in Withens, the Oxleys, aren’t terribly co-operative,’ said Cooper.

‘Well, stick at it. Try a different approach.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Cooper could feel DCI Kessen’s eyes on him, and decided to keep quiet. A transfer to the Rural Crime Team might come quicker than he expected, if he wasn’t careful.

‘Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for any useful forensic results from the scene. The lab has promised us something shortly.’

There were a few muffled groans. That probably meant that evidence taken from the crime scene had gone to the Forensic Science Service at the cheap rate, so it would take longer to be worked on by the lab. The police had to pay for the services of the FSS per item, so there were budget considerations to take into account. Promises, on the other hand, didn’t cost anything.

‘However, if we can line up a few prime suspects, we’re hopeful there will be some contact traces we can use to tie them in to the scene, both the air shaft and the lay-by where Granger’s car was parked. The enquiry team tracing lorry drivers who used the A628 that night is having some success.’

‘So what’s the theory?’ said Cooper, forgetting that he had decided to keep quiet. ‘That Neil Granger was a member of a gang of antiques thieves operating in the area?’

‘It seems the likeliest explanation for the presence of the bronze bust in his car. It was part of the haul from Southwoods Grange. It’s possible the members of the gang fell out over the proceeds. It happens all the time. Maybe Granger had been trying to keep some items for himself, and the others found out.’

‘Why do you think they would meet at that particular spot?’

‘It’s quiet enough. And the access is reasonably easy, especially if the rest of the team had a four-wheel-drive vehicle and drove up to the air shaft.’

‘It wasn’t particularly convenient for Neil Granger. He left his car in the lay-by, and walked up.’

‘We don’t know that he walked up. He may have been in someone else’s vehicle.’

‘True.’

‘At the scene, we’re intending to do a search of the surrounding area, but it’s mostly heather and bare peat — not much scope for hiding anything.’

‘And what about the air shaft?’ said Cooper.

‘What about it?’

‘There may be no scope for hiding anything in the heather, but what about inside the shaft?’

‘It’s too high to reach,’ said Hitchens doubtfully.

‘If there was a vehicle here, they might have had a ladder. An aluminium stepladder in the back of an estate car or something. You could do it easily. In fact, if you piled some of these loose stones on top of each other, I reckon one person could give another a leg up, and they could get over the edge.’

‘I’ll make a note,’ said Hitchens. ‘And we’ll let the task force do it. They have ladders.’

‘Was there anything in Neil Granger’s house?’

‘Nothing that has been recognized as an antique, anyway. Not unless you count a set of plaster ducks on the wall in the spare bedroom.’

‘Hey, those fetch quite a bit now,’ said Murfin. ‘I saw some at an antiques fair the other day. I couldn’t believe the price. But the guy on the stall said they were kitsch, and most people had chucked them away when they went out of fashion. So they have a rarity value, if they’re genuine.’

‘But would you think of nicking them if you broke into somewhere full of proper antiques, Murfin?’

‘Probably not.’

‘And would you then hang them on the wall in your spare bedroom, with the grottiest wallpaper you could find?’

‘No.’

‘All right. So there were no other items that looked like stolen antiques. A team is going through all the addresses and phone numbers they could find in the property, but Granger wasn’t very organized, I’m afraid. And none of the names match any of the suspects on the Rural Crime Team’s list of possibles.’

‘He’d have to be more than disorganized to leave a list of his criminal associates lying around for us to find,’ said Cooper.

‘Stranger things happen. Stupider criminals have been known.’

‘This one wasn’t stupid, sir. He hasn’t been making many mistakes.’

‘Apart from the one that got him killed.’

‘What about this black make-up business?’ said Murfin.

‘OK, it’s an unusual form of disguise, but the make-up seems to have been conveniently at hand because of some theatrical group he was involved in rehearsals for.’ Hitchens looked around the room. ‘Anything else we haven’t covered?’

Diane Fry began to stir slightly on her chair near the front.

‘Oh, yes, we haven’t forgotten the possibility of a link to the disappearance of Emma Renshaw, who still hasn’t been found,’ said Hitchens.

It didn’t sound convincing to Cooper, and Fry didn’t look happy about it. There was a definite air of after-thought. But to his surprise, DCI Kessen seemed to latch on to the subject.

‘DS Fry, did you want to explore that a bit?’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Fry took a moment to gather her thoughts. Maybe she was equally surprised at being asked for her opinion. ‘I do think we should bear in mind that Neil Granger was supposed to have been the last person to see Emma Renshaw before she disappeared. But we only ever had his word for that.’

Hitchens slipped naturally into the role of devil’s advocate.

‘Yes. But bear in mind that he didn’t have time between leaving the house and arriving at work to do anything much more than drop Emma off somewhere,’ he said. ‘If he didn’t drop her at the railway station, where did he take her? And why should he lie about it?’

‘It’s also true that we only have Neil Granger’s word for the time he left the house.’

‘But again, there was only a few minutes’ margin there. Alex Dearden left no more than ten minutes before Granger says he did. So the most we could allow him would be, say, twenty minutes.’

‘That’s time to do quite a lot,’ said Fry stubbornly.

‘To kill Emma and dispose of her body? I don’t think so.’

‘If he killed her in the house, her body could have been in the boot of his car while he was at work.’

‘Was his car forensically examined at the time?’ asked Kessen.

‘No, sir.’

‘That’s a pity. A wasted opportunity. It would at least have eliminated that possibility. Did he have the same car as the one we have in our possession now?’

‘I’m not sure, sir. I think so.’

‘If Emma Renshaw’s body was ever in the boot of his car, Forensics may still be able to get some traces. Bloodstains perhaps, or fibres. You could get that checked out at least, Fry.’

‘What about Alex Dearden?’ said Hitchens.

Fry shook her head. ‘I don’t see how he had time to do anything. Neil Granger saw him leave. And Granger admitted to being the last to see Emma.’

‘There’s always the possibility that they were in this together.’

Kessen looked at Fry apologetically. ‘I’d be more open to that kind of suggestion if you could offer me a motive. One of the boys, yes — an attempted rape, a rejected sexual advance, or something of the kind. We’ve seen it often enough. But two of them conspiring together? Were they particularly friendly?’

‘No, sir.’

‘So why should Dearden help out Granger, or vice versa?’

Even Diane Fry was silent at that.

‘Of course, Emma Renshaw might have decided she couldn’t afford a taxi,’ said Hitchens. ‘She might have set off to walk to the station, or to catch a bus, or hitch a lift.’

‘No one along the route to the station reported seeing her,’ said Fry. ‘In any case, it’s over four miles and she was carrying a bag. Bus drivers didn’t remember her, and no motorist ever came forward to report giving her a lift, or seeing her hitching.’

‘That’s not to say it didn’t happen, of course. It’s still open as an option.’

When the meeting broke up, Cooper watched Diane Fry walk over to speak to DI Hitchens. Perhaps she was pressing her case for Emma Renshaw not to be forgotten. Or maybe she just wanted to be seen to be with the senior officers, and not part of the crowd now squeezing their way towards the door. He waited, and after a few minutes, Fry came towards him.

‘OK, I’ve fixed it, Ben,’ said Fry.

‘Fixed what?’

‘I’ve fixed it for you to come to see the Renshaws with me. I want to get your view on them. Then you can go on to the Oxleys later.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘Have you thought of a new approach?’

‘Yes, I’d thought I’d just take a pile of interview forms and fill in the answers myself right now.’