The Corpse Bridge

36

Tuesday 5 November

That morning Cooper was due to give evidence in a trial at Derby Crown Court. Luckily, he didn’t have to go all the way to Derby any more and waste an entire day sitting around waiting for his few minutes in court. The new video-link technology allowed him to give his evidence from a desk right there at the divisional headquarters in Edendale.

Other officers had been busy working on the George Redfearn murder inquiry. As he arrived at West Street, Cooper had seen Diane Fry’s boss DCI Alistair Mackenzie there from the Major Crime Unit. Mackenzie would no doubt be acting as senior investigating officer.

For a moment Cooper wondered if the MCU had considered the Sandra Blair case to be too unimportant to merit their full attention from the start, even before doubt was cast on its status as a murder inquiry by the post-mortem results. He would have to make the best of that. While everyone else’s attention was on the murder, he had the chance to resolve the situation at Knowle Abbey.

But when he came out of the video-link room later in the morning, Cooper began to hear people talking about Knowle Abbey in urgent tones. He had no idea what was going on. He felt as though he’d been locked into suspended animation for the past hour or so and emerged to find the world had moved on without him.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked Luke Irvine, who was the only occupant of the CID room. ‘What’s all this about Knowle Abbey?’

‘It’s the earl.’

Cooper detected the air of disaster. ‘Is he dead?’

‘He died last night. He was fatally wounded with a shotgun while everyone’s attention was distracted by the fire at the estate village.’

‘And I don’t suppose it was an accident, or suicide.’

‘No chance.’

Cooper slowly gathered his team together from their various assignments. It seemed more important than ever that they concentrated on making connections that could explain the whole story, and not just a small part of it.

He’d asked for background enquiries on all the people involved in the protest group and there ought to be some results by now.

‘Talk to us about the quarry plan for Alderhill first, Luke,’ he said.

Irvine explained the position of Eden Valley Mineral Products and their plans for Alderhill Quarry.

‘George Redfearn was Development Director at the company,’ he said. ‘Mr Redfearn was responsible for winning the contract to bring the quarry back into operation. His name is signed on the dotted line. Along with the earl’s of course.’

‘So, the protest group,’ said Cooper. ‘The people we’re interested in include Jason Shaw, aged thirty-two, with an address in Bowden on the Knowle estate, where we’re told he works as a gamekeeper.’

‘Here’s an interesting thing, though,’ said Irvine. ‘At the end of last year Jason Shaw’s hours at Knowle Abbey were cut back. So he managed to find some part-time work at Deeplow Quarry. He’s been there a few months now.’

‘So he may have been the one who learned how to put an explosive charge together?’ asked Irvine.

‘With diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate, you mean?’

‘Exactly.’

‘He wasn’t actually given any training in the use of explosives,’ said Irvine. ‘They were pretty clear on that. He had no authorisation or experience. But I suppose you can pick up a few things just by observing and asking questions.’

‘A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing,’ said Cooper. ‘Especially when it comes to making explosives. Anything else?’

‘Well, before he got a job at the abbey, do you know Shaw worked at the cheese factory in Hartington?’

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘He was a warehouseman and forklift truck driver.’

‘A real jack of all trades.’

‘From some of the hints I’ve been given when I followed up on Shaw, gamekeeping is the job that’s most up his street, though.’

‘What do you mean, Luke?’

Irvine smiled. ‘It seems Jason Shaw is known for producing the occasional rabbit or pheasant in return for a favour. No questions asked about where they came from. You get the picture?’

‘He’s a poacher.’

‘And so was his father before him. They say that’s where his skill came from — he learned the tricks of the trade from his dad. In fact, Shaw has a conviction on file for an offence fourteen years ago, when he was a teenager. He was caught out with his father taking a deer. So whoever gave him the job as a gamekeeper probably made a smart move.’

‘The tricks of the trade,’ said Cooper. ‘He’ll have learned how to use a shotgun at an early age too.’

‘We don’t have any real evidence against Jason Shaw,’ pointed out Hurst. ‘It’s only speculation. All circumstantial.’

‘What do we know of his whereabouts now?’

‘He’s not due at the quarry today, but he has a late shift at the abbey. Apparently, they’re drafting in some of the estate staff to provide a bit of extra security at night-time.’

‘Wait a minute — who interviewed Shaw? Wasn’t it you, Luke?’

Irvine shifted uneasily. ‘Me — and Carol Villiers. When we came back, we reported to DS Fry.’

‘I see.’

‘You weren’t here, Ben.’

‘Right.’

Cooper found he couldn’t fault Irvine. Though the excuse he’d just relied on was the same one he’d used at the scene of George Redfearn’s murder, when it was the other way round and Fry had been absent. It sounded like a shift in loyalties. But he was probably imagining things.

‘It seems to me that Shaw developed a relationship with Sandra Blair after they met in the protest group,’ said Carol Villiers. ‘We know it was Jason Shaw she met up with in Longnor on the evening she died.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Well, he does have a link with the Nadens,’ said Becky Hurst.

‘Does he?’

‘Yes.’ Hurst consulted her notes. ‘Geoff and Sally Naden were both made redundant from the cheese factory in Hartington. Mr Naden had been a cheese-maker for twenty-five years and his wife worked in the offices. When they lost their jobs he became a parking attendant at Knowle Abbey and she went to work in the kitchen making sandwiches for the café.’

‘Interesting.’

Cooper imagined those jobs weren’t as well paid as the Nadens had been used to, but they had probably felt they were secure working for the earl. With so many visitors, their services would always be needed. But then they must have found out that Lord Manby was planning to get rid of them — and the visitors too. He had no interest in the welfare of his staff, only in the money he could make from the estate’s assets.

‘We know about Rob Beresford,’ said Hurst. ‘He appears to be an open book. A bit hot-headed maybe, but he doesn’t seem the type to be violent.’

‘And Sandra Blair we know too,’ added Irvine.

‘There was the note in her diary about a meeting at the Grandfather Oak. What was that meeting all about?’

‘I’m not sure it ever took place,’ said Cooper.

It seemed to Cooper that the graveyard protest campaign had drawn attention away from the real issue. Among the protest group there must have been a more extreme faction, one or two individuals who wanted direct action. Well, more than direct action — they intended violence. They were very angry.

‘I think there were two factions, who had a disagreement,’ said Cooper. ‘And it all fell apart that Halloween night. Somebody wasn’t where they were supposed to be according to the plan. That person was out killing George Redfearn at Pilsbury Castle. Mr Redfearn’s murder was a message the earl couldn’t ignore.’

‘But who was that?’ asked Villiers.

‘Whoever Sandra Blair was supposed to meet at the bridge that night.’

‘We’ve talked to the members of the group we can identify. They all insist there were only five in the core group — the Nadens, Jason Shaw, Rob Beresford and Sandra Blair herself.’

‘It’s not true, though,’ said Cooper.

‘Why, Ben?’ said Villiers.

He indicated the group photo on his screen, the one taken at Harpur Hill with the Nadens, Shaw, Beresford and Sandra Blair.

‘Well, think about it,’ he said. ‘This photo was taken on Sandra’s phone. But she’s in the shot herself. So who took the picture?’

Ben Cooper was anxious to get an opportunity to see inside Jason Shaw’s house. But at the moment he didn’t have enough justification for a search warrant. As Irvine had said, it was all speculation and suspicion. It was a shame, though. A person’s home told you more about them than any amount of background checks you could do. No matter how many friends, colleagues and neighbours you talked to, you wouldn’t ever get a true picture of the person. Everyone created a public façade for themselves, sometimes several. You could be one person at work, a different one with the family, and another when you were down the pub with your friends. But inside the home was where the façade broke down. You could see the aspects of a person’s life that they didn’t want anyone to know about.

It was only inside Sandra Blair’s home that he’d got a proper feeling for the sort of person she was. And, though she had some unusual interests, he didn’t feel she was the fanatical type who would be willing to take violent direct action, as she’d been described by the Nadens.

And of course he’d seen inside Knowle Abbey too. That was an eye-opener. Yet he’d learned almost nothing about its present owner, while learning perhaps too much about some of his eccentric ancestors. Earl Manby remained an enigmatic figure, a sort of figurehead for the estate, like the eagle’s head emblem of the Manby family, representing something more than just itself.

Cooper would have liked to be able to see behind the façade being presented at Knowle on behalf of his lordship, if only for the sake of his own curiosity. But it probably wouldn’t happen now. He wondered if Detective Superintendent Branagh had ever managed to get a few words with the earl, as he’d suggested. That was a conversation he would love to have overheard. They were two people accustomed to exercising power.

In a way coffin roads represented the worst aspects of the hierarchical structures so many people had lived with. They weren’t legacies from an ancient past, but were deliberately brought into being during medieval times. They were an unintended side-effect of an old canon law on the rights of parishioners. As Bill Latham had said himself, they were just one more exercise in power and privilege.

Cooper put on his jacket and set off to visit Knowle Abbey for the final time.

Staff interviews were under way at Knowle. The Major Crime Unit had taken over the estate office, ousting Meredith Burns from her desk.

Cooper thought of that message they’d found: ‘Meet Grandfather, 1am’. But that must have been a different meeting, surely? It had been marked in Sandra Blair’s diary for 31 October. And this killing had happened earlier than one o’clock. It had been planned for the period when the bonfire was blazing away in Bowden, a time when many of the staff from the abbey were either at home themselves or distracted from their duties.

‘A shotgun,’ he said when he met Fry at the outer cordon. ‘That’s a totally different situation altogether from the other deaths, Diane.’

‘Absolutely.’

Of course, there were many legally held shotguns in the possession of ordinary individuals in an area like this. Farmers always had them. Cooper owned one himself, though he kept it in the gun cabinet at Bridge End Farm with Matt’s.

But right now he was thinking of the men he’d seen at that remote farmstead on Axe Edge Moor. Bagshaw Farm, the home of Daniel Grady. Had one of those men been sent on a different kind of rat hunt?

He hadn’t liked Grady and felt sure a bit of digging would turn up all kinds of dubious activities. But was Grady so closely involved with the protest group? Or did somebody simply have enough money to pay him for this kind of service?

Cooper told Fry about the plans for Alderhill Quarry and the link to George Redfearn’s company. Her mouth fell open when he mentioned the sum of two hundred million pounds.

‘Do you remember what Meredith Burns said that first time we visited Knowle Abbey?’ said Cooper. ‘When I offended her by asking for a photograph of the earl?’

‘Yes, she said he wasn’t a rock star. I thought that was stating the obvious myself.’

‘No, not that. She said he would much rather find some other way of paying for the upkeep of the abbey, instead of letting all these visitors in. Because it was his home.’

‘Oh, yes. I do remember,’ said Fry.

‘Well, this is it, isn’t it?’

‘This is what?’

‘The quarry scheme is his alternative way of funding the repair and maintenance of Knowle Abbey.’ Cooper waved a hand at the visitors being turned away at the gate, at the car parking area, and the buildings converted for use as a restaurant, a craft centre, a gift shop. ‘The revenue from the quarry would have enabled him to put a stop to all this. No more crowds of visitors coming in to gawp at his home.’

‘Well, it would be a shame, I suppose,’ said Fry, ‘if you’re interested in that sort of thing. But there are plenty of other historic houses in Derbyshire. Chatsworth is much grander, they tell me. And Haddon Hall is supposed to be better preserved.’

‘No, no, you’re missing the point,’ said Cooper. ‘Think about it for a minute. No paying visitors means no restaurant, no craft centre, no gift shop and no plant nursery. And without those there would be no guides, no car park attendants, no catering staff or shop assistants. A lot of people would lose their jobs.’

‘You’re right.’

Cooper sighed. He didn’t want to be right. Not all the time. Not when the truth seemed so tragic and so inevitable.

‘At the moment Knowle Abbey is putting a lot of money back into local communities through the wages paid to all these staff. That would stop if the quarry goes ahead. Eden Valley Mineral Products would have no interest in employing local people.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘It’s just like the cheese factory all over again.’

‘What?’ said Fry, puzzled.

‘Never mind.’

‘You know, that’s not what I expected you to say.’

‘What did you expect me to say, Diane?’

‘“I told you so.”’