The Corpse Bridge

13

Cooper had barely managed to get back to his desk in the CID room after the Nadens left, when Carol Villiers took a phone call.

‘Ben, someone else is coming in,’ she said. ‘Name of Jason Shaw.’

‘Another one in response to the appeals?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Amazing.’

Cooper had to admit he’d been wrong about the use of the official name by the press office for the location of the crime scene. At least three local people had recognised the name of Hollins Bridge, after all. And their response had been very prompt.

But it felt too good to be true. The Nadens’ account seemed unreliable at best. Their story wasn’t very convincing. He wondered if Mr Shaw would be the sort of person who put two and two together and got five.

But, in fact, Jason Shaw was very matter of fact about it. There was no messing around with imaginative leaps or hesitation about what he might or might not have seen near the Corpse Bridge that Thursday night.

‘There was somebody running through the trees in white. Somebody else chasing her. One of them, I don’t know which, shouted something, but I couldn’t make out any words. And that was it.’

Shaw looked at Villiers as she wrote it down. When she’d finished the last word, he seemed to be about to get up and leave the interview room.

‘Her?’ said Cooper.

‘You what?’

‘You said “her”. This figure in white was a woman, then?’

Shaw licked his lips as he considered how to answer. He was a different type to the Nadens certainly. He was one of those members of the public who thought they just had to make a statement, say what they wanted to say, and they would never be asked any questions.

‘Er … it could have been.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘I’m not totally sure,’ he said. ‘It was just…’

‘An impression?’

‘Yes.’

Jason Shaw was about thirty years old, with a complexion darkened not by sunbathing but by a lot of time spent outdoors. He had a few days’ growth of dark stubble and a silver stud in his left ear. His eyes were a bright blue, which was always a striking combination in someone so dark-haired. Shaw was dressed in blue jeans and a well-worn Harrington jacket, which smelled of something earthy that Cooper couldn’t quite identify. Smells like that were always amplified in an interview room at West Street. It resulted from the fact that there was no air conditioning or ventilation, and no windows to open.

Over the years Cooper had experienced some interesting aromas from suspects during interviews. Often the individual himself didn’t seem to be aware of the odour, until it was bounced back at him from these claustrophobic walls. It could work as a perfectly good interview technique. It made a suspect feel uncomfortable about himself, without resorting to tactics that might breach the procedures of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

‘But you’re quite confident there were people in the trees,’ said Cooper.

‘Right. That’s it.’

‘What vehicle do you drive, sir?’

‘Why does that matter?’

‘In case someone saw it near the scene, then we can identify it as yours.’

Shaw nodded. ‘It’s a Land Rover Defender. Blue.’

‘Thank you. And you say that at the time you were walking your dog on the trackway.’

‘It’s a Border Collie,’ said Shaw. ‘His name is Patch.’

Cooper exchanged glances with Villiers. Unlike Diane Fry, Carol knew what he was thinking. She was always on the same wavelength.

‘Mr Shaw, did you see anyone else on the track? Any other walkers?’ asked Villiers.

‘Not a living soul.’

Cooper gazed into Shaw’s blue eyes while he answered Villiers, but he saw not a flicker of amusement or deceit.

‘Do you know some people called Naden?’ asked Villiers.

Cooper held his breath. That was a good question. He watched Shaw pause for a moment.

‘Naden? Naden … no, I don’t think so. Should I?’

‘Perhaps not.’

There had been a slight hesitation there, though it might mean nothing. A lot of people had trouble remembering names. If they saw each other, it might be different. Maybe Cooper should have arranged an accidental face-to-face encounter before the Nadens left the station, and observed the reactions. But it was too late now.

‘Well, thank you for coming forward, Mr Shaw,’ he said.

Shaw nodded. ‘I hope it was a help.’

Cooper saw him pause, as if he wanted to say more.

‘Is there any other detail you’d like to add, sir?’

‘No, but … I was wondering, has anyone else come in? After the appeals, I mean.’

‘We’ve had some other response,’ said Cooper.

‘Good.’

Shaw stood and Villiers got up to show him out.

‘By the way, sir,’ said Cooper before he reached the door. ‘Where do you work?’

‘Me?’ said Shaw. ‘I work at Knowle Abbey.’

The scene at the Corpse Bridge was much quieter today. There was a marked police car blocking the entrance to the trackway and a scene guard further down, with a crime-scene examiner still working in a tent erected over the stretch of riverbank where Sandra Blair had been found.

But Cooper didn’t want to go all the way down to the scene and nor did the Reverend Latham. The elderly clergyman was content to stop and rest on a bench halfway down the track, where they could see the river and the arch of the stone bridge below them, as well as the hills on the Staffordshire side of the Dove, and even a corner of Knowle Abbey behind a plantation of trees.

‘I think something was going on here,’ said Cooper. ‘More than just a simple murder, if there is such a thing.’

Latham murmured to himself, but said nothing. The old man was thinner than Cooper remembered him, his hands bony and shaking slightly. He supported himself on a stick, but his posture was still upright and his eyes were bright and inquisitive. His voice had lost some of its power — he would struggle to make himself heard in the pews at the back without the help of a microphone. And before he left his house near Edendale, he’d taken the time to wrap himself up warmly in an overcoat and a long scarf, with an incongruous red woollen hat that he said had been knitted by a parishioner.

‘This was what they call the coffin road,’ said Cooper. ‘It leads to the Corpse Bridge.’

‘Indeed,’ said Latham.

‘But am I right in thinking there was more than one coffin way?’

‘Yes, you’re right. There were several old coffin roads from these small settlements along the eastern banks of the Dove. They all converged on this bridge.’

‘Why, though?’

Latham shook his head sadly. ‘For many years coffin roads were the only practical means of transporting corpses from these communities to the graveyards that had burial rights. You see, when populations increased, more churches were built to serve new communities. But that encroached on the territory of existing parish churches and their clergy. It threatened their authority — and, of course, their revenue. They insisted that only a mother church could hold burials.’

‘Just burials?’

‘They were the most lucrative of the triple rites of birth, marriage and death,’ said Latham.

‘So it was all about money?’

‘Money and power,’ said the old clergyman sadly. ‘I’m afraid the established church was to blame for a lot of injustices in those days.’

‘Only in those days?’ said Cooper.

Latham looked at him sharply, but couldn’t resist a twinkle coming into his eyes.

‘No comment, officer.’

‘So where were they taking their dead?’ asked Cooper.

Latham pointed with his stick. ‘Over yonder.’

Cooper followed his gesture. ‘To Knowle Abbey?’

‘Almost. To the burial ground at Bowden. It’s within the abbey estate now, of course. In fact, it always belonged to the Manbys — or to the Vaudreys before them. It housed their workers, just as it does today. The church belonged to them as well. The earl appointed the minister and insisted that everyone attended church on a Sunday, on penalty of dismissal. In those days if they lost their jobs, they lost their homes as well. So people had to do what they were told. And that sort of control spread to other villages.’

‘People even had to bring him their dead.’

‘Indeed. For people living in these villages, bodies had to be transported long distances to reach the burial ground at Bowden, often over difficult terrain like this. And the corpse had to be carried, of course, unless the departed was a particularly wealthy individual. There weren’t many of those in this area.’

They were both silent for a while. Carol Villiers, who had walked down to the crime scene, looked up and began to climb slowly back towards them.

‘Where were the other coffin roads?’ asked Cooper after a few moments.

Latham waved his stick vaguely across the hillside on the Derbyshire side. ‘Oh, I believe there was one from the north, near Harpur Hill. Another came from a village that has long since disappeared under the quarrying operations. And the third was a little to the south, from the direction of Pilsbury. You’ll find only small sections of them now.’

‘Of course.’

‘You mentioned the coffin stone?’ said Latham, raising his head from a contemplation of his bony hands.

‘Yes, someone left an effigy on it. Laid out like a body.’

Latham nodded. ‘Coffin stones weren’t just there to let the bearers take a rest. They were designed to prevent the ground from becoming tainted by death or allowing the spirit of the deceased an opportunity to escape and haunt its place of death.’

Cooper turned and looked at him. ‘You know the stories too, then?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? People still told them in my day.’

‘And even now,’ said Cooper.

‘Really? Perhaps they’re a bit more circumspect when they’re talking to me, then.’ Latham laughed quietly. ‘But with coffin ways — well, what would you expect? I suppose it was inevitable that each one gathered a mass of folklore about phantoms and spirits. Wherever there are corpses, there must be ghosts.’

Cooper spread out his Ordnance Survey map. Many of the coffin roads must have long since disappeared, while the original purposes of those that had survived as footpaths were largely forgotten too.

But here there were two reminders. At the bottom of the hill on the eastern side of the river was the coffin stone, a flat lump of limestone on which the coffin had been placed while the bearers rested. And then there was the name of the bridge itself, still known locally as the Corpse Bridge, though it was clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map with another name. When they heard it mentioned, many visitors to the area probably thought it was a quaint local corruption of some entirely different word. Glutton Bridge wasn’t named for its gluttons, or Chrome Hill because it was made of chrome.

On the brow of the hill, he could see that the path crossed Church Way Field. He supposed it might have been possible once to plot the course of a lost coffin road by the sequence of old field names, and perhaps from local legends and vanished features of the landscape marked on antiquated maps.

But all of those things were gradually disappearing themselves. Even farmers forgot the names of their own fields as traditions were lost from generation to generation. Now they were more likely to refer to a field by its size in acres or its position in relation to the farm. In time Church Way Field would become the Upper Forty. Its associated legends would vanish under the plough and a layer of chemical fertiliser.

‘That’s the way it always was,’ the Reverend Latham was saying. ‘The bearers and the funeral party making their way down the hill, resting the coffin, dividing and coming together again across the water.’

‘Yes, Bill,’ said Cooper.

But he wasn’t really listening to the old man now. The map had engaged his imagination. The coffin road to the graveyard at Bowden must have covered a distance of more than four miles and crossed two streams as well as the River Dove. It was so difficult to conceive of the hardship willingly undertaken by those mourners, struggling over the hills with their burden. And resting the coffin for a few minutes on the stone down there, in constant fear of the taint of death or a fugitive spirit.

Cooper was thinking of mentioning to the Reverend Latham his thought about the Devil manifesting himself at crossroads. Just to see what the clergyman said. Did the old man believe in the Devil? Or was that too Old Testament a concept for him?

But before he could speak Latham turned his head and looked up the trackway. He must have sharper hearing than he let on, because he’d noticed someone approaching before Cooper had himself.

‘Is this a colleague of yours?’ he said.

Cooper opened his mouth in astonishment. ‘In a way,’ he said.