Blind to the Bones

24

It turned out that the search of Neil Granger’s house had recovered the box. It had been logged by the exhibits officer, but its existence was buried in a mass of paperwork. It was even smaller than Neil’s brother had recollected — about four inches long and three inches wide, and it was made of brass, not bronze.

‘It looks Indian,’ said Ben Cooper.

‘Expert, are you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You won’t mind if we get a second opinion then?’

Cooper could see that the DI was irritated to have had to wait for a member of the public to point out the box. It was the only item that resembled an antique in Neil Granger’s house, and now he would have to explain to Mr Kessen why it had only just turned up.

‘Fingerprints?’ said Cooper.

Hitchens sighed. ‘Two recent sets. Neil Granger’s and his brother’s. We took the brother’s prints for elimination when we knew he’d been in the house.’

‘He must have touched it when he noticed it on Saturday.’

‘Check with him anyway.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, sir?’

‘Not a thing,’ said Hitchens. ‘It would have been nice, wouldn’t it?’

He passed the bag containing the box to Cooper. ‘See what you can do with it, then. Origin, value — ownership, if you can.’

‘OK.’

‘That’ll take you a while, I expect. What else were you supposed to be working on?’

‘Withens,’ said Cooper. ‘The Oxleys.’

‘Ah well, you’ll probably get round to them later this afternoon. I don’t suppose they’ll miss you.’

‘I think I’m the highlight of their day, sir,’ said Cooper.

After several fruitless phone calls trying to establish the ownership of a brass box that everyone agreed might or might not be Indian, Ben Cooper finally tracked down a dealer in Crookes who offered to take a closer look at the box. Crookes was on the western outskirts of Sheffield, and could be reached via the A628. It was too tempting to resist. He made an appointment that allowed him plenty of time to take another quick look at Withens on the way.

It was nearly four o’clock by the time Cooper reached the village. He saw straight away that the postman came late in Withens. It was probably the last place he reached on his delivery round from Sheffield, or wherever the nearest sorting office was. A distinctive red van was parked outside the Quiet Shepherd, and Cooper walked over to wait for the postman to come out. The postie was in his thirties, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and wearing a navy blue Royal Mail body-warmer. He agreed he was nearing the end of his round, and seemed quite happy to spend a couple of minutes talking about his customers in Withens.

‘They’re a mixed bunch here,’ he said. ‘Take the folk at Waterloo Terrace, the Oxleys. They don’t seem to want their letters at all. At number 1, they nailed the letter box up once. I had to report it, back at the office, and the manager spoke to them. But you’d be surprised at the attitude some people have. I mean, it’s not my fault if they don’t like the mail they get, is it?’

‘No.’

But there’s the lady at the opposite end. Mrs Wallwin, number 7. She hardly gets anything. Sometimes, I collect together a few bits of junk mail and stuff that’s been sent to other people, and I put it through her door, just so that she’s got something to open now and then.’

‘You do?’

Cooper remembered the envelopes he had seen on Mrs Wallwin’s table. ‘You’re a winner!’ ‘Open now for some wonderful news!’ He had assumed Mrs Wallwin used them for lighting her fire, like everybody else. But perhaps she kept them as a sign that somebody out there was thinking about her. Did she realize it was only the postman?

The postman seemed to misread Cooper’s expression as disapproval. ‘Of course, I know I shouldn’t do that, really. I’d probably get the sack if some busybody shopped me for it. But it’s doing no harm. It’s only stuff nobody else wants, isn’t it?’

‘You’re not kidding. I’d pay you not to deliver my junk mail,’ said Cooper.

Since he’d moved into his flat three months before, he’d been gathering mail addressed to every previous tenant. Some of them had been dead for years, according to Mrs Shelley. And some of them had strange tastes in mail-order items, too.

The postman was reassured. ‘The other lot who can be a bit of a nuisance are the Old Rectory folk. Name of Renshaw.’

‘Oh?’

‘They hang around at the gate waiting for me to get there. I think they must be at the upstairs window watching for me coming down the hill, because by the time I get to them they’re jumping up and down with impatience and snapping at me for being late. Which I never am, I might say. I get up here pretty much on time, no matter what the weather’s like in the winter. They don’t seem to appreciate that.’

‘So the Renshaws are eager for their mail?’

‘Aye.’ The postman sniffed. ‘Trouble is, by the way they react, I don’t think I’ve ever brought them what they’re hoping for. I suppose that’s my fault, too.’

‘The Oxleys,’ said Cooper, ‘do you ever have any problems with a dog there? A long-haired Alsatian?’

‘No, I never have a problem,’ said the postman. ‘I know it’s there, all right, but they keep it shut up in the yard. They never let the dog out at the front of the house. Well, not unless they really don’t like the look of you.’

Cooper was surprised to find a Peak Park Ranger in the car park. Of course, the village was within the national park, though it was difficult to remember sometimes. He supposed the area was valued more for its surrounding habitat of peat bogs than for the village itself.

Cooper introduced himself and asked about the moorland fire that had been burning since Friday night.

‘There are still a few patches smouldering under the surface,’ said the Ranger. ‘They might persist for another week or so. Some fires last for months in the peat, you know. We’re lucky it wasn’t a summer one. But that’s another few acres we’ve lost up there. With fires and erosion, we’ll lose the whole bloody landscape in a few years.’

‘Is it that bad?’

‘Have you seen the erosion recently? The moor is eroding, the sphagnum moss is dying, the peat is disappearing down to the bedrock.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Many thousands of pairs of feet were wearing tracks across the plateaux of the Dark Peak every year, and water running through hundreds of groughs and channels was washing away yet more peat. In places it had been scoured away down to depths of twenty feet, creating deep valleys in the black crust and washing the peat away year by year. It ran down into the water catchment area and into the reservoirs, where the water was brown and tasted peaty.

‘Acid rain is the real problem though,’ said the ranger. ‘Long term.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s been falling on us for decades — for centuries. It’s been falling on us ever since the factories in Manchester began to belch out their pollution over there. The prevailing wind blows all the pollution in this direction, and it falls in the rain when it reaches high ground. It’s the acid rain that’s killed the moss. And it was the moss that bound the surface. Now the moss is gone and the peat is exposed, so it gets washed away year by year, inch by inch. Eventually, the hills will be nothing but bare rock. No more banks of purple heather in the summer, no sheep, no grouse, no songbirds. No wildlife of any kind. That’s what acid rain means to us.’

‘The moors are a sitting target, I suppose?’

‘Absolutely. It’s only a matter of time before they’re gone. And fires like this one don’t help. Some fourteen-year-old kid on a school outing from Manchester started it. We don’t know whether he was smoking a fag and dropped it, or whether he lit a fire deliberately, which is just as likely, in my view. But a fire takes days to put out and longer to damp down, and this one has already destroyed thirty acres of moor. Another thirty acres gone. Maybe the acid rain isn’t quick enough. Now Manchester is sending its kids out here to destroy the moors faster.’

‘Long-term damage, I suppose?’

‘I said “destroyed”, didn’t I? How long do you think it takes peat to form?’

Cooper shook his head.

‘Two hundred thousand years. Even presuming we’re still around after all that time, would we see new peat? Well, the fact is that peat forms from the undecomposed remains of — guess what? — sphagnum moss. No, when this peat is gone, there won’t be any more.’

‘Do you know Withens? There’s a family down there at Waterloo Terrace I’m interested in — the Oxleys.’

‘Don’t tell me about the Oxleys. Their kids like to set fires, just so they can hear the sirens and see the flashing lights as the fire appliances arrive. It breaks the boredom a bit. When we turn up, there’s always a little crowd of excited youngsters. The ones that started the fire are probably among the spectators. But we’re never going to be able to prove it.’

‘There’s a burnt-out house at the top of the road,’ said Cooper.

‘I remember that. It was empty for years and getting derelict. It had got so bad that nobody wanted to spend money on repairing it, I suppose. The local kids broke in and were using it. Then it started getting fires. We were called out there several times. Each time, there was a bit less of the building left. The roof fell in quite early on, and it wasn’t really considered dangerous any more after that. But it still got set on fire regularly. I reckon the kids were dragging bits of wood up there to burn, once all the beams and doors and window frames had gone up in smoke.’

‘Whatever happened to saving up the wood for bonfire night?’ said Cooper.

‘You’re joking. What century are you living in?’

‘It’s what we did when I was kid. And that’s only—’

‘Last century, I expect.’

‘Kids never did that where I lived,’ said Cooper. ‘They used to let other folk collect wood and pile up their bonfires, then they’d sneak in and set fire to them a few days before the fifth. They thought that was much more fun than collecting their own.’

The Ranger looked at him. ‘Do you have any children of your own?’

‘No.’

‘Let me know in a few years’ time, when you’ve managed it, and I’ll come and give them a talk about fire safety.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

The Ranger looked over Cooper’s shoulder and gestured at something behind him. ‘Well, look at him.’

Cooper turned and looked. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing. A small boy was walking past him, leaning forward to pull on a rope that was attached to a makeshift trolley. Its wheels rattled on the pavement as he passed. The trolley was full of sticks, perhaps a dozen of them, all a yard long and solid-looking.

‘Hold on, son,’ said Cooper.

But the boy was already a few yards past him and heading down the hill towards the Quiet Shepherd. He showed no intention of stopping.

Cooper began to walk behind him in the same direction. He noticed the limp in his left leg, and felt sure this was Jake Oxley.

‘Where are you going with those sticks?’

‘To the pub,’ said the boy.

‘What for?’

‘You’re a copper, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. What are you doing with those sticks?’

‘That’s my business. It’s not copper’s business.’

‘It might be. Tell me, and we’ll see. Where did you get the sticks from?’

The boy began to speed up as he approached the pub car park. The sticks bumped together and clattered as the trolley went over a kerb. Cooper lengthened his pace, aware of the ranger watching him.

‘Stop a minute, son. I want to ask you something else.’

‘You can’t talk to me,’ said the boy. ‘I’m only nine.’

‘So?’

‘It means you have to talk to my dad.’

‘And who’s your dad?’

‘I don’t have to tell you that. I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m only nine.’

Cooper noticed that the boy’s limp didn’t seem to hinder him.

‘Is your name Oxley, by any chance?’ he said.

‘I’ll report you to the Social Services. Then you’ll get in trouble. You’re not allowed to talk to me, because I’m vulnerable.’

‘And you’re only nine,’ said Cooper.

‘Yeah.’

The boy broke into a run across the car park and vanished into a side door of the pub. Cooper wasn’t going to run. He didn’t want to appear to be pursuing a nine-year-old child. It never looked good.

‘With any luck, you won’t make it to ten,’ he said to the closed door.

Then he looked at the hill he would have to walk back up. With a sigh, Cooper sat down on the low wall around the pub car park. The parking area consisted of a wide patch of crushed stone, and large boulders had been left in position near the entrance and exit. There was even an outcrop of rock right in the middle. He couldn’t figure out whether the rocks had been too big to bother moving when the car park had been created, or had been left there for picturesque effect.

Cooper noticed a building at the back of the pub. It was some kind of storage shed or garage, with wide doors that stood open at the moment. The interior looked intriguing.

He got up and strolled over towards the door, hoping no one was watching him from the windows of the pub. Inside the doors, trestles had been set up. At the moment, they supported wooden boards, much like the ones he had seen being fished out of the river a few days ago. If these were the same ones, they had been washed clean of slime and duckweed. They’d also had hundreds of nails hammered through them, so that the points protruded above the surface of the wood by a centimetre or so. Each board might have been a bed of nails for an Indian fakir, except that a layer of clay had been spread over the nails and smoothed out. A skin was starting to form on the clay.

Cooper shrugged, imagining some garden feature. Perhaps the landlord of the pub had been watching one of those gardening makeover programmes on TV.

He looked at the pub again. There was no sign of the boy with the sticks. But Cooper was sure he had been speaking to the Tiny Terror.

‘Well, we all need a moment’s rest from our labours.’

Cooper turned to find the Reverend Derek Alton watching him. Either he had moved very quietly, or Cooper hadn’t been paying attention.

‘I wasn’t actually thinking of going into the pub. Not when I’m on duty.’

‘Well, I’m off duty. Besides, I have a special dispensation.’

‘Mr Alton, there was a young boy here a minute ago. Nine years old, with a slight limp.’

Alton nodded. ‘That would be little Jake Oxley. Lucas’s youngest boy.’

‘I thought so. What happened to him? Did he have an accident?’

‘You mean his leg? Yes, he was knocked down in the road, right in front of Waterloo Terrace there.’

‘He was? By somebody passing through? No. I don’t suppose so...’

‘It would perhaps have been better that way,’ said Alton. ‘But not many people pass through here. Only those going to Shepley Head Lodge.’

‘Did one of the Deardens knock him down?’

‘Yes, it was Michael, in his four-wheel drive. It wasn’t his fault, by all accounts. Jake seems to have run out of the entrance to Waterloo Terrace, right in front of him. Michael wasn’t even speeding, but he couldn’t stop in time. In fact, Jake was lucky — the car only caught him a glancing blow, but his leg was shattered. Because his bones are growing, they haven’t healed properly, I think.’

‘The Oxleys must have been very upset.’

‘Oh, yes. But so was Michael. He was never charged with any offence, but guilt can be a terrible thing, all the same.’

Cooper looked up the road towards Shepley Head Lodge. ‘Is that why Mr Dearden tries to avoid driving through Withens?’

‘Well, wouldn’t you? He has to drive past the same spot every time. And the Oxley children are always out playing by the side of the road, including Jake. Michael would rather go out of his way to avoid seeing Jake every day.’

‘Thank you, Mr Alton.’

‘Have I been of some help?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘I’ll leave you to your work, then.’

Alton walked across the car park and went into the pub through the same side door that Jake Oxley had used. He was carrying a long bag over his shoulder, like a cricket bag or a soft case for a musical instrument of some kind.

Cooper watched him go. Maybe it was time to pay a visit to the pub. If he was lucky, he might be able fit it in after his drive into Sheffield.

‘Well? Did you find out anything from the boy?’ asked the Ranger, as Cooper struggled back to the car.

‘Oh yes,’ said Cooper. ‘I found out he’s only nine.’

The house in Darlaston Road was occupied by another group of students now, of course. As far as they were concerned, Neil Granger, Alex Dearden and Debbie Stark might as well never have existed, let alone Emma Renshaw.

But Diane Fry found it helped her just to stand outside the house and look up the road towards Birmingham, to note that the nearest bus stop was only about fifty yards away and to imagine Emma walking along the pavement towards the stop.

Emma could easily have walked that distance with her luggage. But did she? Or had Neil Granger or someone else given her a lift? How could she ever know? No witnesses to Emma’s last journey had been found at the time, let alone more than two years later.

Nevertheless, Fry had to make the attempt. She and Gavin Murfin took a side of the road each and tried desperately to jog people’s memories, with the help of the photographs of Emma.

‘Most of them weren’t even living around here then,’ said Murfin, crossing the street to speak to Fry in between houses. ‘Even those who were in the area two years ago look at me as though I’m round the twist.’

‘I know.’

Fry looked at the fifty yards of pavement between 360B Darlaston Road and the bus stop, as if it might tell her something. She found it as difficult picturing Emma here as she had in the area where the mobile phone was discovered.

‘I think Emma was picked up by someone,’ she said. ‘But it had to be someone she knew. So why didn’t she tell any of the others that’s what she was doing, Gavin?’

Murfin shrugged. ‘Maybe the person picking her up was somebody she didn’t want them to know about.’

As Fry watched, a cream-and-blue double-decker bus slowed down and stopped, blocking her view of the house completely.

‘But who?’ she said.