The Corpse Bridge

42

Wednesday 6 November

Ben Cooper’s Toyota was booked in for a service on Wednesday morning. There was some problem with the suspension, which was making the steering feel unpredictable. He must have been neglecting it recently. That made him feel guilty, as if it were a person close to him that he’d been mistreating. Cooper knew you had to work at relationships. He supposed it was as true with cars as it was with people.

So today he’d walked to the office in West Street. It wasn’t far from the flat, and the brisk November air helped to clear his head and wake him up.

It was funny how the offices at E Division headquarters seemed busier today than during the whole of the inquiry that had followed Sandra Blair’s death and the subsequent killings. Officers and civilian staff who Cooper had never seen before had turned up and were working on the case, now that it was all over.

Of course, there had been a lot of people involved in the incident at the old cheese factory. That meant statement after statement to be taken, including Cooper’s own. Yet his account might be the least useful to the prosecution, in some ways. He didn’t see the moment of Geoff Naden’s death. It happened in the darkness as far as he was concerned, another life snuffed out in the shadows.

So it was lucky that Diane Fry, Luke Irvine and the other officers present were able to give coherent and consistent witness statements, confirming that Poppy Mellor gave Naden that fatal push, just as he was about to strike with the steel pipe. There had been no plan for that. In Poppy’s case, things had gone badly wrong now.

It was still unclear what the group had intended to do with the explosives stolen from the quarry by Jason Shaw. The dog unit had located them in the factory, hidden in a disused office. But the experts said they were in no condition to be used. So perhaps Knowle Abbey had been safe, though not Earl Manby himself.

Cooper thought back to that first morning at the Corpse Bridge and the way he’d been caught up in the legends around it, the stories of the coffin roads and their associated ghosts and spirits. It had seemed to him then that the Devil had manifested at the bridge. But now he wasn’t sure who the Devil was in this case.

Gavin Murfin had some news of his own to break that morning. He took Cooper aside for a quiet word. His manner was surreptitious, almost furtive, as if he feared some of the civilians around today were spies of the management and might overhear.

‘I’m telling you first, Ben,’ he said. ‘I thought you should know.’

‘What is it, Gavin?’

‘I’m calling it a day, Ben. This is the end.’

‘So you’re finally going?’ said Cooper. ‘You’ve resigned?’

‘It’s by mutual agreement, like.’

‘You’re starting to sound like a politician, Gavin. So you’re going to spend more time with the family.’

‘Not exactly. I’ve been offered another job.’

‘Really? What about the grandchildren? Weren’t you looking forward to spending more time with them?’

‘We tried it this week,’ said Murfin glumly. ‘Have you seen the amount of baby stuff you have to carry around with you these days? It’s like taking Pink Floyd on tour.’

‘I’m sorry that you felt like this.’

‘It’s all the fault of that woman,’ said Murfin.

‘Gavin, you know what happens when a police officer uses that term. You get dragged in front of a parliamentary committee to apologise for being disrespectful.’

Murfin laughed. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘Except I wasn’t referring to the Home Secretary.’

‘I suppose this means you won’t be a police officer much longer. It’s hard to grasp, Gavin. You’ve been in the job such a long time.’

‘It feels like about three centuries. I ought to be handing in my top hat and cutlass.’

‘So — a new job offer? What are you going to do?’

Murfin looked round as if about to confide a secret. ‘You’ve heard of Eden Valley Enquiries?’ he said.

From somewhere in the past, Cooper heard an echo of his own voice asking that same question. Have you heard of Eden Valley Enquiries? And a scornful answer coming back to him: A firm of second-rate enquiry agents? Divorces and process-serving, that sort of thing.

But Cooper didn’t repeat the answer that Diane Fry had once given him. He sensed it would be the wrong thing to say just at this moment, with the expression on Gavin’s face suggesting he was screwing himself up to some kind of embarrassing confession.

‘Of course,’ Cooper said instead. ‘They have an office in one of those small business centres on Meadow Road, don’t they?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Discreet confidential enquiries. No questions asked.’

Murfin looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Mmm,’ he mumbled.

Eden Valley Enquiries. Daniel Grady was only his latest contact with that outfit. Cooper recalled that one of their operatives had actually been given the task of following Diane Fry one night, as a result of her connection with a murder case. The man tailed her into Sheffield by car, then followed her on foot as far as some railway arches, only for his assignment to end in a painful confrontation when Fry realised she was being followed. Cooper himself had been obliged to tell Diane who her stalker was, after following up the name ‘Eve’. Not a friend of the victim’s, as they’d thought — but an acronym. Eden Valley Enquiries.

‘Looking for a new job, are you?’ Fry had said when he mentioned the name. ‘Thinking of joining the private detective business?’ And Cooper had made some facetious remark in response.

Now, as he looked at Gavin Murfin, Cooper hardly needed to ask the same question. But he asked it anyway. He knew it was expected of him.

‘Thinking of joining the private detective business, Gavin?’

‘Well, actually…’

‘No, seriously? I can hardly believe it.’

‘It’s good money,’ said Murfin defensively. The words came out automatically, as if he’d been rehearsing his justifications all week. Perhaps for longer than that. ‘They say I’ve got valuable experience. I’ll be a big asset to the firm. And, you know … it’ll keep me occupied.’

‘But it might not keep you out of trouble,’ said Cooper.

‘You know me, Ben. I’m Mr Squeaky Clean. It’s because I always avoid trouble.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Cooper was thinking of Diane Fry’s violent reaction to EVE’s role in that murder inquiry. They’d gathered information that had helped to locate a victim. And even after the news broke that she’d been killed, they didn’t come forward.

‘Discreet and confidential,’ said Cooper. ‘No questions asked.’

‘That’s the motto,’ said Murfin.

‘I wish you luck in your new career, then, Gavin.’

‘Thanks.’

But Fry’s voice still echoed in Cooper’s head. I’d string them up and break every bone in their bodies.

Maybe the doom-mongers were going to be proved right. Gavin Murfin wasn’t the first copper to go into the private sector. Perhaps one day they would all be privatised, willingly or not.

Jason Shaw had been interviewed repeatedly that day. His defiant attitude was either part of the overall plan or it might be due to a realisation that his case was hopeless, whatever his duty solicitor had said to him in their consultation.

For a start Shaw hadn’t taken the trouble to clean the shotgun he used before putting it back in its cabinet at Bowden. His instinct to put the weapon safely out of sight had outweighed the more logical calculation that a forensic examination would show that the gun had recently been fired and would be able to match the shot removed from the earl’s body and traces of wadding found at the crime scene to the cartridges in Shaw’s possession.

Worse, he’d even left cartridge cases at the scene with his prints on them. That was the disadvantage of doing your shooting in the woods at night. Once you’d dropped your cartridge cases, it took much too long to find them again, especially if you were anxious to get clear of the area.

There was even a shoe mark in the grass, preserved by the soft ground and the morning dew, with a spatter of the earl’s blood lying in the impression. The forensic evidence was piling up and Fry felt confident there was more to come yet. The case against Shaw was going to be watertight.

‘Well,’ he said, when he was pressed on his motivation, ‘it was purely a family matter.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Fry.

Shaw glared at his questioners across the interview-room table.

‘You know the way it is. Generation after generation, the Manbys spent hundreds of years exploiting the people of this area. One death makes up for a thousand sins.’

In the CID room at E Division headquarters they’d spent the day on paperwork. There were mountains of it. Reports to write, statements to take, interviews to conclude with Poppy Mellor and Jason Shaw, and with Rob Beresford and Sally Naden too. Reviews of the evidence, discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service. It could all go on for a while yet.

At the end of the day Ben Cooper had been called to Detective Superintendent Branagh’s office. She looked tired. But then, they were all tired.

‘You know we’re losing DC Murfin?’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am, he’s told me.’

‘It was expected, of course.’

She didn’t sound as though she was too disappointed either. Within a short space of time Gavin’s existence would be wiped from the memory of E Division. But Cooper had a feeling he hadn’t heard the last of Murfin yet.

‘But it may not be your problem,’ said Branagh.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘There’s always some good news,’ she said.

At the end of the day, still feeling dazed, Cooper pulled on his jacket and felt in his pocket for his car keys.

‘Damn,’ he said.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I forgot my car was in for a service.’

He checked his watch. It was much too late to collect it from the garage now. They would have closed over an hour ago.

‘Oh, well, it can wait until tomorrow,’ said Cooper. ‘I can walk home. It’s not far.’

‘Have you seen the weather?’

When it was dark and the lights were on in the CID room, he could see nothing outside. Even without the blinds drawn, the windows only threw back their own exhausted reflections. The weather could be doing anything and he would have no idea until he left the building.

‘Is it raining?’ he said.

‘Chucking it down, mate. And blowing a gale with it. It’s shocking out there.’

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Fry. ‘I pass that way.’

The offer came out of the blue. Gavin Murfin’s mouth fell open like a cudding sheep. Cooper was shocked and he hesitated before replying, searching his mind for an ulterior motive. He couldn’t think of one and realised he was hesitating too long for politeness. So he had no option but to accept her offer.

‘Thanks, Diane, that would be great,’ he said.

‘No problem.’

She picked up her car keys and they left the office together to drive through the streets of Edendale.