Dead in the Dark

14

Ben Cooper felt himself growing calmer on the way to Bridge End Farm. The landscape always helped him to do that.

The Peak District moors had turned purple in late August, the swatches of heather coming magnificently into flower over acres of apparently empty moorland. Now, down in the valleys, the trees were starting to change colour too. They were still heavily laden with foliage, and they lumbered clumsily over the road in the strong winds. In a few weeks’ time their leaves would be yellow and bronze. Autumn would strip them and scatter the dead leaves across the tarmac surface in golden tides.

The skeletal bareness of winter would be here soon, thought Cooper. Much too soon. The months when the ground was sodden, paths were churned into muddy quagmires, and the air felt chill and damp. For Cooper, every season had its moods and its appeal. But there was a period after Christmas and the New Year when even the Peak District felt miserable. He wondered if there was some event from his past that made him feel so down when late January and February arrived. Or did everyone feel that way?

The fields around Bridge End Farm looked different this year. Ben’s sister-in-law Kate had persuaded his brother Matt to make a change from the traditional black silage bags. Reluctantly, he’d ordered a roll of pink silotite bale wrap and joined the trend for pink bags in support of breast cancer research. The field where the bales were stacked looked much brighter, the pink wrap gleaming in the sun next to the black bags. A couple of tourists had stopped their car up on the road to take photographs.

The swallows that nested every year in the barns at Bridge End were getting ready to leave. The house martins would stay for a while longer, but the swallows would be heading off on their journey back to Africa. It was hard to imagine something so tiny and fragile making an incredible journey like that, and returning next spring to the exact same spot. What resilience and determination it must take.

Cooper couldn’t think of many people who had that sort of single-minded determination. You had to need something very badly, didn’t you? What was it the swallows needed? To come back to their home surely. That was something everyone wanted. Had Annette Bower needed it badly enough?

At the end of dinner at Bridge End Farm that evening, Matt Cooper put down his knife and fork with a clatter on his plate.

‘You’re going to what?’ he said.

‘The opera,’ repeated Ben.

‘The chuffin’ opera? What’s happened to you, brother?’

Kate frowned at her husband. ‘Watch your language, Matt.’

The two girls giggled. They weren’t shocked any more. They were teenagers, and they thought their parents were ridiculous.

‘Besides,’ said Kate, ‘there’s nothing wrong with the opera. A lot of people enjoy it.’

‘We’ve never gone to the opera,’ said Matt.

‘Well, perhaps I’d like to some time. Have you ever thought of that?’

Matt scowled. ‘No, I haven’t.’

Ben studied his brother for a moment. Matt was never the sunniest of characters, but he’d been in a particularly bad mood all evening. He’d been curt when Ben arrived at the farm, then monosyllabic over dinner, and finally short-tempered over trivialities. Something was definitely wrong.

‘I’m sure it will be wonderful.’ Kate began to clear plates off the table. ‘I hope you enjoy yourself, Ben.’

Ben stood up. ‘I’ll help you with the washing-up.’

The girls disappeared to their rooms and, as he walked across the passage to the kitchen, he heard Matt switch on the TV. Kate handed him a tea towel, but didn’t seem to want to meet his eye.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t expect that to cause a family disagreement,’ said Ben, though inside he felt as much like laughing as Amy and Josie. ‘What does my brother have against opera?’

‘It’s nothing to do with the opera,’ said Kate.

‘Oh.’

They worked together silently for a while. Through the kitchen window, Ben could see the outlines of the farm buildings in the darkness, standing out against a clear, starlit sky. Beyond them he could make out the shape of the hill that he’d become so familiar with growing up at Bridge End. He couldn’t even remember the name of that hill now. It was probably something ‘low’, he supposed. But as a family, they’d always just called it ‘the hill’. It was so much a part of their lives that it didn’t need a name. It was their hill.

Out in the yard, he heard the dog bark. Not a warning of intruders, but a welcoming bark. He guessed that Matt had gone out of the house. He’d left the TV on and disappeared to where he felt most comfortable — out there in the open, with his tractor and his dog.

Kate looked up. ‘Matt is very worried,’ she said eventually.

Ben realised she’d been waiting for her husband to go out, so that there was no chance of him overhearing their conversation. She knew Matt so well. Probably better than Ben did himself now.

‘Matt always worries,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t be happy unless he had something to worry about.’

She smiled sadly. ‘This is different, Ben.’

‘So what is he worried about this time? Something to do with the farm, I suppose? Are the yields down this year? Has the price of feed gone through the roof? He hasn’t mentioned anything.’

‘No, it’s nothing like that.’

‘Nothing to do with the farm?’

‘No.’

Now Ben was getting concerned himself. Matt hardly thought of anything, apart from the farm. Well, except his family, of course. His heart sank, and he put down the tea towel.

‘Is it one of the girls?’ he said. ‘Is something wrong with Amy or Josie? Because you know I’d do anything—’

She shook her head. ‘Not that either.’

‘Well, it can’t be Matt,’ he said.

Kate laughed. ‘Why not?’

‘Well, he’s as strong as an ox. He never has anything wrong with him. Not physically anyway. He just needs fuelling occasionally and he keeps going on for ever, like his old Massey Ferguson.’

Now she looked shocked. ‘What do you mean “not physically”? Are you suggesting your brother is psychologically unstable?’

‘No, he’s just a thick-headed bumpkin, like he always was.’

Kate laid her hand on his arm and gazed out into the darkness. A light was on in the machinery shed, and a figure could just be made out moving around inside, its shadow thrown fitfully against the walls and out into the yard. Ben glimpsed the dog, Bess, wagging her tail at the unseen figure.

‘It’s me,’ said Kate. ‘I found a lump. The doctors say it’s possibly a malignant tumour so I’ve had a biopsy done and now I’m waiting on the results.’

‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’

‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘That’s an excellent prognosis if you catch this sort of thing early enough. I’m not worried. Well...’ She hesitated. ‘I am quite nervous, but I’m sure it will work out okay. Matt isn’t taking it so well.’

‘That’s why he’s like a bear with a sore head,’ said Ben. ‘He has no idea how to deal with these things. He never did have. Matt had no idea how to deal with Dad’s death, or Mum’s illness. It’s not his forte.’

‘You were right about him being physically strong. But his feelings are a lot more complicated, much more difficult to understand.’

‘He definitely has them, though. He just has difficulty finding a way to express them.’

‘You know him better than anyone, Ben,’ said Kate.

‘Do I? I was just thinking the same about you. Matt and I have grown apart over the years, especially since I moved to Edendale.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Kate, ‘I think you’re still the only one he can talk to about some things.’

‘Are you sure, Kate?’

‘Certain.’

She took the tea towel off him. Ben nodded, and left the kitchen. He went down the passage and out of the back door into the yard. It was dark on this side of the house, but he knew every inch of the place. He’d often wandered around these buildings in the dark as a child, and even right out into the fields among the animals. He’d loved the sense of solitude and openness to the sky. It was like stepping into a different world where all the cares of the day fell away from him. He wondered if it was the same for Matt, whether he still did that now to get away from his troubles, if that was what he was doing when he went out to the machinery shed to talk to the dog.

Ben found his brother sitting on an upturned oil drum, with the dog at his feet. Matt looked up without surprise when he came in.

‘I suppose Kate told you,’ he said.

‘Of course she did. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Matt shook his head. ‘It seemed too... personal.’

‘Well, what a surprise. But I am your brother.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just the thought of losing Kate. I can’t stand it.’

‘Lose her? It’s not like one of your cows getting sick, Matt. They’re not going to put her down with a humane killer. They can do wonders these days. If it is malignant, Kate herself says the outcome is generally pretty good for an early diagnosis like hers.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘Besides,’ said Ben, ‘she needs your support right now. Not having you stomping around in a bad temper all the time.’

Matt said nothing, but stroked the dog’s head thoughtfully. Ben could see it was an action that calmed him down.

‘You’re right, obviously,’ he said.

‘I know I am.’

Ben found another oil drum and rolled it over. They sat next to each for a few minutes in silence. This was the way it had often been between them, even when they were teenagers. It was in these long silences that they felt closest to each other.

‘Talk to me about something else,’ said Matt in the end.

‘Like what?’

‘You usually have some interesting case going on. A murder inquiry, something like that.’

‘You want to hear about a murder? Really?’

Ben mentally ran through his recent cases. He ruled out the death of Shane Curtis. An arson attack on a farmer’s barn would only send Matt off on another angry rant.

‘Do you remember the Annette Bower case?’ he said. ‘It was about ten years ago.’

That made Matt think. His memory was pretty good for scandalous events in the area. Farmers gossiped about things like that down at the market, or in the village pub.

‘Was that the woman whose body was never found?’

‘You got it.’

‘Was that actually a murder? I seem to remember—’

‘Her husband was charged, but it never got to court.’

‘That’s it. Somebody claimed to have seen her alive, so there couldn’t have been a murder.’

‘Well, perhaps not,’ said Ben. ‘On the other hand, perhaps there was.’

Matt snorted. ‘That’s what I like. It could be one thing, or it could be the other. No one really knows. It makes my life seem a lot more simple.’

Ben slapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’m glad about that.’

His brother blinked. ‘There was a lot of talk about that case. The woman’s disappearance.’

‘Annette Bower?’

‘Yes. Bakewell, wasn’t it? Everyone thought the husband was guilty.’

Ben sighed. ‘Yes, but there was too much reasonable doubt after the sighting of her.’

‘There was a lot of bad feeling going about. I remember it well, now. When he was let off, there were blokes who wanted to sort him out themselves, take justice into their own hands, so to speak.’

‘Vigilantes?’

‘If you want to call them that,’ said Matt. ‘Sometimes the system lets people down, you know. There was a feeling it had happened in that case. People thought that woman had been killed and no one would be punished for it. That’s wrong, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘It is wrong.’

He saw a light go out in the kitchen of the house. Kate still stood there in the darkness, staring out towards the shed, no doubt wondering what was going on, what the two brothers might be talking about. She’d be amazed if she knew.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Matt, ‘if that Bower bloke went missing himself one day.’

Ben turned and stared at his brother. His face was half hidden in the shadows of the shed, his head tilted down towards the dog, which gazed back at him with adoring eyes. Ben couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. It was so rare for his brother to come up with anything he could have called an insight.

A strong wind was blowing across the fields, bending the trees and sending the sheep scurrying to find shelter behind a stone wall. Both the trees and the sheep were used to this kind of wind up here. Even when the weather was calm, the trees stayed bent in a southerly direction, like mime artists pretending it was windy.

Instead of heading home to his cottage in Foolow, Ben Cooper had driven up the hill from Bridge End Farm and had kept driving until he found himself on the moors, right on the edge of the gritstone area known as the Dark Peak.

Although he’d been born and raised in the farming country of the White Peak, he’d always been drawn to the Dark Peak landscapes. The Dark Peak might look empty and desolate to some eyes, but it seemed to Cooper that it was just waiting for you to put something into it. It was a landscape for the imagination. His ancestors had peopled it with all kinds of mythical creatures and supernatural events; every rock had a story attached to it, every pool of water had its own legend. Everyone who’d lost their life out there was remembered, every incident had its place in the folk memory.

The changing colours of the season, the transformation of light as it passed across the hills, the shadows moving under the twisted rocky outcrops — everything spoke of a land that was alive and breathing. The Dark Peak was only empty for those who had no imagination. Cooper had sometimes been told that he had too much.

The sky was a deep black and you could see the stars clearly here. Thousands and thousands of them — some glittering brightly, some no more than a milky haze across the galaxy. That was something he would surely miss, if he ever had to live in a city. So much light pollution prevented you from seeing the stars and a few minutes standing gazing at the night sky really helped to put things into perspective. He felt so tiny in the face of that infinite universe.

Cooper shivered. In the summer, it might still have been light at this time, or at least illuminated by that peculiar half-light that came with dusk.

But the nights were drawing in. That’s what his mother would have said. She’d said it every year, about this time. You could have filled the date in on your calendar in advance. The leaves were turning brown, and Christmas cards were in the shops. It was already September, and the nights were drawing in.

People thought the weather was the most important part of the seasons. But day length was the crucial factor for nature. Though there were still thirteen hours of daylight at this time of year, the hours were getting shorter by four minutes a day. Cooper had hated that knowledge as a child. It had always felt like his life was slipping away from him, slowly and certainly, an inch at a time.

He shook himself and realised that he’d been sitting here for a long time. He looked at his watch. Dawn would come at about six twenty a.m. He hoped it would bring a bit more light into his world.