The Corpse Bridge

29

When Poppy Mellor had gone, Cooper thought back to his conversation with Rob Beresford that early morning near the Corpse Bridge. After Halloween night he’d been dog-tired or he might not have missed so much.

While he sat waiting in the police car at the Corpse Bridge, Rob Beresford must have had plenty of time to think things through and consider his position. It would have been obvious to him the victim would soon be identified. The fact that she was known to him would emerge during the investigation. If he hadn’t mentioned straight away that he recognised her, it would have looked bad for him when the facts came out. It would certainly have put him under suspicion. Only the guilty made a secret of something like that.

So Beresford had definitely made the sensible decision, coming straight out with it. He must have been worried when Cooper failed to ask him the right question. It was easy in those circumstances to start thinking the police knew more than they actually did. Perhaps Rob Beresford had given Cooper more credit than he deserved. When Beresford blurted out that he knew the victim, it had been one of those moments when you grasped your courage in both hands and took an irrevocable step, when you made a decision there was no going back from. It had almost worked for him, too.

Cooper wondered if it was a sign of another weakness in his own attitude that he’d accepted the likelihood of Rob Beresford and Sandra Blair knowing each other. It was the way things were around here. If you’d lived in one of these villages for a while, you did know everyone. Cooper grew up that way, thinking nothing odd at all in the fact that if you saw a face you didn’t know, it would certainly belong to a tourist, someone who would be gone back to their own part of the country next week. Those who belonged to the area were all people he knew, or at least recognised.

So perhaps it should have struck him as too much of a coincidence that Rob Beresford knew Sandra Blair, but it didn’t at the time. That was a situation where another officer might have taken a different attitude and made a better decision. Diane Fry, for example. Her city girl scepticism would have been a great advantage.

Cooper shook his head. It wasn’t often he found himself thinking that. Or perhaps he’d let the thought cross his mind a few times, but dismissed it too easily.

He went slowly back into the CID room, where he stopped by Luke Irvine’s desk.

‘Well, Luke,’ he said, ‘now I know who the weak link is.’

‘Sorry?’

Cooper called Gavin Murfin over and explained Poppy Mellor’s story to them.

‘We’re going to need background checks on everyone involved,’ said Cooper when he’d finished. ‘You can share the tasks out between you.’

‘Who was in this group, then?’ asked Irvine.

‘All of them, I think,’ said Cooper. ‘Rob Beresford, Jason Shaw, the Nadens — and Sandra Blair herself. But there might be more we don’t know about. The Nadens and Shaw only came forward after the appeals because they thought someone else had been there at the bridge that night who might have seen them and been able to describe them to us.’

‘Someone who wasn’t a member of the group, you mean.’

‘Exactly. Either innocent members of the public or individuals who were involved in some activity of their own. Whichever it was, they knew it would look bad if they didn’t admit straight away to their presence. Just as Rob Beresford figured he should admit that he knew Sandra Blair. They would have looked guilty if we found out from another source.’

‘They weren’t just opportunists, were they?’ said Irvine.

‘Not at all. They’d thought about this and planned it. When it went wrong they did the sensible thing. It might have worked out too, but for Poppy Mellor. She thinks she’s defending the innocent. But perhaps not.’

‘And the target of their bizarre scheme is the Manby family.’

‘It seems so. They’re protesting against development plans for the graveyard at Bowden.’

‘Everyone keeps saying “the Manby family”. But who is there living at the abbey, apart from the earl himself?’

‘I can tell you that,’ said Murfin, flicking through the pages of his notebook. ‘I’ve got it here. There’s the earl’s wife, Countess Caroline. And three grown-up children. The eldest is Lord Peter Manby. Then there’s the Honourable Richard, and Lady Imogen. Peter is the heir. He’ll be the next earl in due course. That’s why he gets to be called Lord, when his younger brother is just Honourable.’

‘You’ve done a bit of research, then, Gavin.’

‘I thought if we were going to be mingling with the aristocracy…’

‘Well, we’re not.’

Murfin sighed. ‘It’s probably for the best. You’d only embarrass us with your uncouth ways.’

‘I’m not sure the younger Manbys spend much time at the abbey,’ said Cooper. ‘No more than they have to, anyway.’

‘Well, would you? It must be like living in a fish tank, with people gawping at you all day long.’

‘Doesn’t Peter Manby have some other claim to fame?’ said Irvine. ‘His name rings a bell vaguely.’

‘He worked in the media for a while, then ran his own production company making strange little indie films. It was never a success. Then he stood as a parliamentary candidate for the High Peak a couple of general elections ago.’

‘He wanted to be an MP?’

‘I don’t know whether he seriously hoped to get elected. He stood as an Independent candidate. They never get in, do they? Not around here.’

‘He must be in his mid-to-late thirties now.’

‘The last I could see, he was working for an advertising agency in London.’

‘Well,’ said Irvine, ‘it sounds as though he’s doing anything he can to get away from Knowle Abbey.’

‘I imagine he’s just trying out a few things while he has the freedom to,’ said Cooper. ‘Once he succeeds his father, he’ll be tied to Knowle. All the responsibilities will be his then. Personally, I don’t really envy him.’

Ben Cooper had a lot of notes to write out before the morning briefing. When he reported his interview with Poppy Mellor, he found himself stumbling a bit over his own scrawl, trying to cast light on the motives and identity of the group of which both Sandra Blair and Rob Beresford had been members.

‘What’s your next move, DS Cooper?’ asked Superintendent Branagh.

Cooper thought he detected a dwindling of her interest in the tone of the question.

‘I’ll despatch a team to pick up Rob Beresford. And we’ll need to talk to the Nadens and Jason Shaw again. We should try to get some more names from them.’

‘Are we considering charges?’

‘If we can establish which of the group was responsible for the threatening letter, the graffiti…’

‘Yes, of course.’

Then Branagh turned away.

‘And what about George Redfearn?’ she said.

‘We’re still awaiting the post-mortem results,’ said DI Walker. ‘But we’ve had reports that at least two people went up to Pilsbury Castle that night in separate cars, and they didn’t all come back down. His wife is due to arrive from France today. We’ve managed to contact her to inform her of her husband’s death, so at least she’ll be prepared when she arrives.’

Cooper was unable to concentrate fully on what was being said next, until he heard his own name mentioned.

‘Oh, and DS Cooper asked us to establish whether there were any traces of petrol at the scene,’ Wayne Abbott was saying.

Branagh switched her attention back to him suddenly and he sat up straight.

‘Why would you do that, DS Cooper?’ she asked.

‘A smell, ma’am.’

‘Got a nose for these things, have you?’

Cooper grimaced. ‘Yes, ma’am. Well, I just thought it was quite noticeable.’

‘And was there any petrol?’

‘No,’ said Abbott, leaving a dramatic pause. ‘In fact, it was diesel fuel. We found evidence of diesel, as well as traces of ammonium nitrate.’

‘Near the body?’

‘It was on the victim’s clothing.’

Superintendent Branagh called Cooper into her office after the briefing.

‘DS Cooper, you seemed to be distracted. What’s on your mind?’

But Cooper didn’t answer directly.

‘There will be another victim, you know,’ he said. ‘Possibly two.’

She looked annoyed. ‘Ben, people in that part of Derbyshire are getting very jumpy,’ she said. ‘They’re already frightened in those small villages. We must not let the idea get out that we expect more killings.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘If your idea about a corpse on each of the coffin roads starts to be spread around-’

‘No one outside this building will hear it from me,’ said Cooper. ‘But ma’am…’

‘What?’

‘I think some of those people will be putting two and two together themselves before very long.’

They’d brought Geoff and Sally Naden in for a second interview. When Poppy Mellor’s version of events was put to them, they confirmed it almost willingly. Their admission seemed to come as quite a relief.

‘It was a group thing,’ said Geoff. ‘We were all going to be there together, in unity. A joint effort.’

Cooper blinked. That was quite a verbal achievement. Naden had made five attempts to spread responsibility within a few sentences.

‘But you say you didn’t get as far as the bridge in the end?’

‘Well, we thought we had the wrong night,’ said Geoff.

‘He thought we had the wrong night,’ said his wife. ‘But planning was never one of his strong points. I had a different opinion.’

‘You were right on this occasion, Mrs Naden,’ said Cooper.

‘Of course I was.’

‘But it was lucky that you listened to your husband. It might have kept you out of danger.’

Naden grimaced at the thought. ‘We never intended any harm,’ he said.

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

‘It was just a protest. A statement. People do a lot worse things when they feel strongly about a cause.’

‘I was never convinced,’ said Sally. ‘I still didn’t think it was the wrong night. I told him as much when we got home.’

‘Several times,’ said Geoff.

‘And the other people in the group?’

‘Beresford,’ said Naden.

‘Yes.’

‘And Jason Shaw,’ he added.

‘Right.’

‘And Sandra, of course,’ said his wife. ‘And there was some girl, though I don’t think we ever saw her.’

‘Beresford’s girlfriend,’ said Naden.

‘Anyone else?’

They both shook their heads.

‘There were some others, in the beginning,’ said Sally. ‘But they just talked and grumbled, and never actually did anything. You know the sort.’

‘That’s right,’ said Geoff. ‘I suppose you might say we were the stalwarts.’

‘But some of us were worse than others,’ said Sally suddenly.

Then she put her hand to her mouth, as if she’d spoken too much. But for once her husband seemed to agree.

‘Sandra was crazy, you know,’ he said. ‘All that weird stuff about magic. It made no sense. And she was always dosing herself with herbal medicines. At least, that’s what she called them.’

Sally’s mouth had drawn into a tight, disapproving line. When Cooper looked at her closely now, he could see the shadows in her face, the tension round her eyes. He wondered what was wrong with her. She looked like a woman who knew about pain.

‘Goodness knows what she was doing to herself,’ said Sally. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Were you aware that Mrs Blair was taking drugs?’ asked Cooper.

They glanced at each other.

‘We guessed,’ said Sally. ‘And she was drinking too, of course. But then, we all know people who drink a bit too much, don’t we?’

Geoff Naden cleared his throat loudly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it might interest you to know that Sandra was by far the most extreme member of the group.’

‘Was she, sir? Extreme in what way?’

Naden could see that he had Cooper’s interest. He leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone.

‘She was most in favour of what they call direct action. She wanted to go further. You understand?’ Naden paused. ‘We were afraid that she might go too far in the end. We thought she might be driven to violence.’

‘Really?’ Cooper couldn’t keep the tone of scepticism from his voice. ‘Was Mrs Blair particularly close to any of the other members of the group?’

‘Ah now,’ said Naden, ‘you’ll have to ask someone else about that.’