Blind to the Bones

31

Friday

Ben Cooper wasn’t really asleep when his alarm went off next morning. He hadn’t slept properly at all, but had spent the night turning restlessly in his bed, worried that he’d miss the alarm. When the high-pitched beeping came, it penetrated a foggy limbo he had been suspended in, a world halfway between waking and sleep. His mind had been groggily circling and circling around the same thoughts, hovering over a deep well of anxiety without being able to see clearly what the cause of his uneasiness was.

Cooper pressed the button to stop the noise, and opened his eyes to stare into the darkness. It was totally black in his room. Black, and silent. There was no traffic on the road outside and no birds singing, no one moving around the house, not even any water hissing through the old plumbing of 8 Welbeck Street. The silence made him feel cold. But perhaps that was only anticipation. He knew how cold it would be outside, once he had left the house. It was six o’clock in the morning, and it was April.

Cooper swung his feet from under the duvet, sat up and pulled back the curtain. It was also raining.

‘Oh, great.’

For a moment, he thought about lying down and pulling the bedclothes back over himself, and staying there until it got light, as normal people did. But then he sighed, switched on the bedside light, and headed for the bathroom. He had no time to waste — he was on an early shift today, and a briefing meeting had been scheduled for 8 a.m.

He skirted the pile of ironing that had been waiting for him to get to it for days, and stumbled in bare feet on the pine floorboards in the passage between his bedroom and the bathroom. It was warmer at this end of the flat, but that only made the thought of going out worse.

He had managed to have a shower and a shave and was trying to drink a coffee when his mobile phone rang on the kitchen table.

‘No, I haven’t set off yet,’ he said to his coffee mug, even before he picked up the phone.

A large black cat walked sleepily into the kitchen and looked at him in a puzzled manner. If Cooper was up and moving around, it must be breakfast time. But it knew something wasn’t quite right.

Cooper transferred his coffee to the other hand and picked up the phone.

‘Ben Cooper.’ He listened for a moment. ‘No, I haven’t set off yet, Diane. Yes, I know there’s work to do before the morning briefing. What makes you think I’ll be late? I’ll be there on time.’

He pushed the phone into the pocket of his leather jacket, where he had thrown it over a chair the night before. He picked up the shirt, sweater and jeans that he’d put ready. The sitting room was dark, and only a thin sliver of light entered through the curtains from the streetlamp across the road. It glinted off the framed picture over his mantelpiece, as if his father were winking at him from his seat on the second row of the Edendale police line-up. Then Cooper noticed the cat.

‘Here, Randy — do you want this coffee? I haven’t time to drink it.’

The cat fixed him with its yellow eyes, puzzlement turning to disdain.

‘No? Never mind.’

With the cat marching in front of him, its tail in the air, Cooper pulled his clothes on as he headed back to the kitchen. He put two bowls of cat food out and placed them on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. The noise of the rain was loud on the glass roof. Here in the centre of town there was always light, and he could make out the roofs of the houses that backed on to the Welbeck Street gardens from Meadow Road. The rest of the world out there was asleep. He would have to be careful that he was quiet as he left, so as not to disturb his new neighbour.

Cooper looked at his watch. If he didn’t hurry, he actually was going to be late.

The Eden Valley hadn’t yet experienced the full impact of its annual influx of tourists, but the May Day bank holiday would make up for that. Everything was geared up for the season — the craft shops were open and full of the aromas of freshly painted and varnished stock produced during the winter, the tourist attractions were spring cleaned and ready, the cafés and pubs were holding their breath, praying for a good summer.

The bank holiday weekend would be particularly busy this year, because Edendale was hosting a day of dance. It was what the morris dancers called an ‘ale’, though they said the name had nothing to do with the amount of beer that was drunk. Sides from all over the North and Midlands would be converging on the town to perform in the streets and in front of the pubs. With the help of a bit of good weather, the town would be packed.

Recently a television crew had been filming around Edendale, too. Their vehicles and equipment regularly blocked the narrow streets off the market square, irritating the shopkeepers and residents, who had to step over yards of cable snaking across the pavements and cobbles.

TV had a lot to answer for in the Peak District. In Buxton, a new golf driving range had recently opened under the name ‘Peak Practice’, in reference to a popular medical soap opera.

This morning, the pathologist would have begun to examine the skeletalized remains found in Withens. No doubt officers from other divisions would be phoning the CID room all day with jokes about E Division being so desperate for bodies that they had started to dig up the graveyards.

The morning briefing was a downbeat affair. Many of the officers knew of Emma Renshaw’s disappearance two years previously, and they weren’t immune from the assumptions being made about the skeleton unearthed in the Withens churchyard. It hardly seemed necessary to wait for the postmortem results. Nobody doubted Howard Renshaw.

For Diane Fry, the fact that the body had turned up in Withens was not what she had expected. But she found it had the result of forcing her to look at the enquiry from a completely different direction. That wasn’t a bad thing at all. It was too easy to fall into assumptions.

Now her focus had to be on Withens, and her list of potential suspects had narrowed dramatically, from the entire population of two of the largest cities in Britain to a handful of familiar names, each of whom had a relationship of some kind with Emma. For the Renshaws, the discovery of the skeleton was devastating. But for Fry, it made an impossible task look suddenly like a breeze. Some forensic evidence from the remains and from the scene, a whiff of an opportunity and a motive, and the case could be wrapped up in no time, after all.

Best of all, there were more resources becoming available with the latest development. She wouldn’t have to rely on Gavin Murfin alone any more.

As for the Neil Granger enquiry, nearly twenty lorry drivers had been traced who had passed along the A628 in the early hours of the previous Saturday morning, between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. At that time of the morning, lorry drivers noticed things. Almost all of those spoken to had noticed the VW Beetle left in the lay-by near Withens that morning. Not one of them had seen another vehicle parked near it — not in the same lay-by or in the next one, a few hundred yards up the road.

The associates of Granger’s who had been questioned had left the detectives frustrated by the absence of direct evidence, and the convenience of their alibis. The homes of two of them had been searched, without result.

David Senior was one of those who had been questioned most closely. Though a former colleague of Neil’s at the chemicals factory in Glossop, he denied that the two of them had been in a relationship recently. ‘We were just friends,’ he had said, apparently sincerely. No one could demonstrate otherwise, despite what Neil’s brother had been anxious to claim.

But when pressed, Senior agreed that Neil Granger was gay. Fry was disappointed when she heard the news. Without even a sniff of a motive for the killing of Emma Renshaw, she was completely in the dark. And surely no one committed murder to conceal the fact that they were gay any more? Neil Granger might have been the person with the best opportunity — in fact, the only opportunity she knew of — but what would his motive have been?

‘So, even after the postmortem, we’re going to have to wait for a forensic anthropologist to give us an estimate of how long the skeleton had been in the churchyard?’ said Ben Cooper.

‘Fat chance,’ said Diane Fry. ‘I bet he won’t commit himself to within a year or two.’

‘Really?’

‘You’ll see. We expect too much of these people, and they always disappoint us.’

‘But we can’t assume the body was buried during the gap between the old vicar leaving and the new one coming.’

‘It has to have been since the last time that part of the graveyard was cleared. Otherwise some poor soul would have had the same experience that the Reverend Alton did.’

‘I suppose so.’

Cooper was getting ready to go out. He had an appointment in Glossop to see someone at the offices of the Oxleys’ landlords, Peak Water.

‘What I’d like to know,’ said Fry, ‘is when exactly the Oxleys lost interest in maintaining the churchyard.’

‘Diane, does this mean you want me to have another go at talking to them?’

‘Yes, Ben. And try a bit harder this time, could you?’

Cooper sighed. ‘You think they’re hiding something?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I’m not sure. But I know they feel threatened in some way.’

‘Well, what about this: if the place to hide a body is the graveyard, maybe the best place to hide a murderer is among criminals.’

‘You mean one of the Oxleys? You think they’re protecting one of their own?’

‘Well, the Oxleys may well all be criminals, Ben. But I was thinking of somewhere we put the criminals we’ve caught. Prison, in fact.’

‘But there isn’t anyone in prison—’ said Cooper, then stopped.

‘Not any more.’

Cooper thought of a boy who had hanged himself in his cell because he couldn’t stand life in a young offenders’ institution.

‘Craig Oxley.’

‘If what his sister told you is true...’

‘But if the Oxleys know who killed Emma Renshaw, would they shop one of their own? I doubt it, don’t you?’

‘Even in those circumstances?’

‘My feeling is that the Oxleys wouldn’t even have to think about it,’ said Cooper. ‘They would know instinctively what was best for the family.’

Fry thought about it. ‘Absolute loyalty to family members, no matter what they’ve done?’

‘That’s the way it works,’ said Cooper. Then he added: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Fry stared at him. ‘Sorry for what?’

‘I don’t know why I said that.’

‘I do understand family loyalty, Ben.’

‘Of course. I didn’t mean—’

‘I don’t want to know what you didn’t mean. Even less do I want to know what you did mean.’

‘Fine.’

‘Anyway, there’s a line between a family bond and hatred,’ said Fry thoughtfully. ‘There’s no hatred stronger than the one for someone you’re supposed to love. So many people cross that line.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘Have you ever felt that line was crossed in your family, Ben? What about between you and your brother?’

‘I can’t imagine it.’

Fry was quiet for a while. He could see she was still thinking about it. She was turning over in her mind all those possible circumstances that might arise between members of a family, between people forced together by the circumstances of being related. She had asked him about his relationship with Matt. But it seemed to Cooper that she had to be thinking about her own relationship with her sister, Angie. It would be unnatural if she weren’t.

‘It’s great to be part of a family,’ said Cooper. ‘We all feel the need to belong to a family, a tribe, a team or whatever. But the problem with belonging is that, if you get rejected by your family or your team, it really, really hurts. Rejection is the end of the world then, because you’re getting rejection from the very people you expected support from. A lot of people can’t deal with that.’

‘It can be a pretty harsh form of rejection, I suppose.’

‘When wild packs of dogs reject one of their own members, they drive it away from food sources and leave it to die.’

‘Well, thanks, David Attenborough.’

‘A pleasure.’

Fry changed the subject. ‘And what do you think the Reverend Alton is keeping to himself?’

‘You think he is?’

‘Are you losing your instincts, Ben? It’s obvious he knows something, or suspects something. But he’s the kind who keeps confidences.’ She looked hard at Cooper. ‘He’s the kind who’ll keep a secret until it’s too late.’

Peak Water was a small operation, which surely couldn’t survive much longer without being swallowed up by one of the larger companies that had come to dominate water supply since privatization. Its offices in Glossop occupied the upper floors of a timber-framed building near the town’s market square. There was a building society on the ground floor.

Ben Cooper had made an appointment with someone called J. P. Venables. The medieval appearance of the building’s black-and-white timbers must have given him false expectations. To his surprise, Venables turned out to be a man in his thirties, not much older than Cooper himself, but rather overweight, as if he had done a sedentary job all his life. He had shed his suit jacket to reveal a waistcoat with fancy coloured panels, and he wore glasses with tiny rectangular frames.

‘Waterloo Terrace,’ he said, ‘is not the most prestigious property in our portfolio.’

‘They were originally railway workers’ houses, weren’t they?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes. But of course they weren’t required after the stations closed, and they were taken over by Peak Water, which also owns most of the land up there.’

‘I’m interested in your tenants at Waterloo Terrace. Particularly members of the Oxley family.’

Venables smiled. ‘Now, there’s a surprise. I must be psychic.’

‘Sir?’

He pointed to a stack of manila files that lay ready on his desk. ‘As soon as I heard the words “Waterloo Terrace” and “police”, I found my hand moving of its own accord towards the “O” section of my filing cabinet. I wonder how that happened? It’s uncanny.’

‘You’ve had a lot of dealings with the Oxleys?’

‘Hasn’t everybody?’

‘Did you know some of their neighbours in Withens have made complaints about them?’ said Cooper.

Venables hesitated. ‘Yes, we’ve had a few complaints, which we’ve spoken to Mr Oxley about.’

‘Some of the boys have been in court several times.’

‘If there was substantial evidence that they were causing a nuisance to their neighbours, then we might have to take action under their tenancy agreement.’

‘You could evict them then?’

‘In certain circumstances, yes.’

‘I think that’s what some of their neighbours would like.’

‘We keep the situation under review. We have to, if we keep getting complaints. But it’s only the immediate neighbours that are our concern. Other tenants of ours.’

‘But all the Oxleys live next door to each other. They only have one immediate neighbour in Waterloo Terrace.’

‘Well, of course, that’s quite convenient for everyone,’ said Venables.

‘Convenient?’

‘Mmm.’

Venables leaned back in his chair. He looked too relaxed. The water company man had shiny nostrils. When he tilted his head up towards Cooper, he felt as though he was caught in the glare.

‘Every time you get a complaint, does someone speak to Lucas Oxley about it?’ asked Cooper.

‘We try to. There’s quite a dossier of reports now. I suppose I could get permission for you to see them if you wanted to. But from what I recall, the interviews with Mr Oxley aren’t terribly enlightening.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. But I think I can imagine the sort of responses you got.’

‘There’s Oxley and his wife, and the old man, and all those other members of his family. They seem to form a sort of barrier around themselves, and no amount of argument or appeals to common sense will get through.’

‘Has Lucas Oxley ever accused Peak Water of being part of some conspiracy against him and his family?’

‘I believe that accusation appears in the reports a few times,’ said Venables.

‘It’s understandable, don’t you think?’

‘No. What do you mean? There’s no conspiracy.’

‘I mean, it’s understandable that it should seem that way to the Oxleys. To them, it must look as though everyone is against them, and no one is on their side.’

Venables shrugged. ‘I can’t help that. They’ve only themselves to blame, after all.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Cooper. ‘Hasn’t anyone tried explaining this to the Oxleys?’

‘We’ve written to them several times,’ said Venables.

‘And?’

‘We’ve never had a reply.’

‘But did nobody call on Lucas Oxley to talk to him personally?’

‘Well, you’ve seen yourself what he’s like. He sent our man away with a flea in his ear and threatened to set the dog on him.’

‘He probably didn’t understand what it was you wanted.’

‘His behaviour was extremely unreasonable. We would have been within our rights to involve the police at that stage. People can’t go around being abusive and threatening to our staff. The company has a responsibility to its employees.’

‘And did you involve the police?’

‘No. We gave Mr Oxley another chance.’

‘Which means?’

‘We wrote to him again.’

‘Great.’

‘We warned him about his behaviour in the clearest terms and told him that he was in breach of his tenancy agreement. We gave him ten days to contact us to arrange a meeting at which the situation could be discussed. We told him we hoped it could be settled amicably on both sides.’

‘To which I suppose you got no reply?’

‘No. So then we sent him a final warning. Same result. So, regretfully, we began court proceedings.’

‘I see.’

‘You have to realize that this thing has gone on for months and months. We do try to be patient, but we really haven’t the time to be dealing with people like the Oxleys, who refuse to see sense. Whatever the consequences are for the family from here on, they will have brought it on themselves, I’m afraid.’

‘So you said.’

Venables shrugged again. ‘We’ve followed the proper procedures, every step of the way. We’ve bent over backwards to accommodate the Oxleys and come to some mutually acceptable arrangement with them. They can have no grounds for complaint about the way the company has dealt with them. Court proceedings were a last resort.’

‘What about the question of the water catchment area? Is Waterloo Terrace a problem? I understand there was a farm that had to be moved recently.’

‘Withens is quite different from Crowden,’ said Venables. ‘The farm had a flock of over a thousand sheep. Besides, it was right by the A628, and there were safety concerns about slow-moving tractors and agricultural machinery having to use a busy road like that, with heavy traffic on it all the time. There’s no comparison to the situation at Withens.’

‘Has the situation been explained properly to the Oxleys?’

‘Mmm. Well, I have to admit that communication might not have been as good as it should be. The fact is, there’s been a bit of a problem over jurisdiction.’

‘Sorry?’

‘We’ve been experiencing a difference of opinion with South Yorkshire over where responsibilities lie. We don’t seem to be able to resolve the situation very easily, I’m afraid. It’s causing rather a delay.’

‘So the Oxleys slip through the cracks while you argue among yourselves.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

‘I would.’

‘As you like. But there are procedures to be followed, and rules to be observed. We can’t just go trampling on someone else’s territory without being confident of our position. There could be legal repercussions. We have to be very careful, otherwise the company’s interests could be compromised.’

‘There’s another terrace of houses down there, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, Trafalgar Terrace. They’re void properties.’

‘Void? That’s a good word for it. I’d call them derelict. They look like a health hazard to me.’

‘They’re earmarked for action in the near future,’ said Venables stiffly.

‘So neither the Oxleys nor anyone else has tenancy of the empty houses?’

‘No. I told you, they’re void. Why?’

‘We may wish to search Trafalgar Terrace. Do we have your permission for that, sir?’

‘Of course. But you’ll have to be quick.’

‘Why? Is there something you’re not telling me, sir?’

‘Our contractors will be moving in very soon to start work.’

‘You’re repairing the houses?’

‘Demolishing them,’ said Venables.

Cooper stared at him. It was an obvious thing to do, really. In fact, it should have been done a long time ago. But it seemed like another sign of that impermanence that Tracy Udall had put her finger on. It was another bit of Withens about to disappear.

‘How did you come to rent all the houses in Waterloo Terrace to members of the Oxley family?’ said Cooper.

‘I know it looks a little unusual. If the properties were to fall vacant now, I don’t think it would happen again. The company would be looking to increase the rents substantially, for a start. But at the time it was thought there was no demand for rented properties in Withens. So the company decided to leave the old policy in place — the policy that tenancies could be passed on to members of the same family. It’s a very old principle, designed to ensure a worker’s family wasn’t turned out on to the street if the man himself was killed during his employment. The early proprietors were concerned about their employees’ welfare. They were almost philanthropists.’

‘Compared to the present owners, you mean?’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’

‘Property values have changed in Withens in recent years, I suppose?’

‘There’s still a shortage of demand for rental properties. But the company has been approached by a private developer interested in purchasing the entire row of houses.’

‘You mean the company is going to sell Waterloo Terrace?’

‘It makes sound commercial sense.’

‘But new owners would have to take on the sitting tenants, wouldn’t they?’

‘Of course. The tenants have rights that are protected by law.’

Cooper studied Venables. So often he found himself trying to hear the words that people weren’t saying, because that’s where the true meaning lay. But there was more than one communication gap involved in the Withens case. In fact, there were as many communication gaps as there were combinations of people trying to communicate with each other. The result was a Babel in his head.

‘New landlords would mean big changes for the Oxleys, wouldn’t they, Mr Venables?’ he said.

‘Well, undoubtedly,’ said Venables, with a smile. ‘Undoubtedly.’

‘And do you know what the new owners plan for Waterloo Terrace?’

‘Oh yes, I know.’

‘Demolition?’

‘I imagine that would be the preferred option.’

‘But they can’t demolish the houses with sitting tenants, can they?’

‘Of course not. As I said, they’re protected.’

‘So the Oxleys would need to be got out of Waterloo Terrace in some way.’

‘To make it worthwhile for the developers, yes. But I’m not suggesting there’s any kind of conspiracy to intimidate them and get them out. That would be unethical.’

‘Not to mention illegal.’

‘Quite.’

‘It seems to me that no one is making much effort to keep the Oxleys in their homes, either.’

Venables shrugged again. Cooper was starting to get irritated by the shrug. Of all the complacent gestures that people were capable of, the shrug was the second most annoying, after the smirk.

‘We believe they’ve done some unauthorized structural alterations. That will probably be the clincher,’ said Venables. ‘They’re their own worst enemies, I’m afraid.’

‘I know. But that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to have any friends.’

‘Oh? And are you intending to fill that role? A friend of the Oxleys? I know that police work is different these days from what it used to be. But is that really your job?’

Cooper gritted his teeth. Of course it wasn’t his job. He didn’t need Venables to tell him that. He had Diane Fry to do it for him.

‘If I were you, I’d choose my friends more carefully,’ said Venables.

And then he smirked.