The Corpse Bridge

43

It was so difficult to know what to talk about in the car with Diane Fry. She had so little in the way of small talk. But Cooper knew he had to make conversation, because he was getting a lift, was on the receiving end of a favour. So he asked her about the outcome of her interviews with Jason Shaw.

‘For some reason Shaw became more extreme in his intentions after Sandra Blair’s death,’ said Fry, when she’d outlined the results.

‘Well, don’t you think he was in love with her?’ said Cooper.

Fry looked at him. ‘That’s what he said. I didn’t believe it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, he’s not that sort of person.’

‘Are you kidding? Anybody is capable of love, no matter what else they do in their lives. Yes, even people who commit murder can be in love. You understand that, don’t you, Diane?’

She didn’t answer directly, but gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter. ‘That still doesn’t explain his reaction,’ she said.

‘It was jealousy, I think,’ said Cooper.

‘Who of?’

‘Poppy Mellor perhaps. Oh, not in that way. But Sandra and Poppy were enjoying themselves too much. It was as simple as that. Jason didn’t see it as fun. With Sandra gone, he only had two options — to give up or take it to the extreme. And he wasn’t a man who would just give up.’

Fry looked as though she were struggling to understand the emotional complexities of ordinary human beings. She concentrated on the traffic as they headed out of the town centre and over the bridge towards Welbeck Street.

‘I dare say you’re right,’ she said in the end.

‘So in a way, you see,’ continued Cooper, ‘the earl paid the price for Sandra Blair’s death, not for his development plans at Bowden, or even for the quarry scheme. He became the target for one individual’s thwarted passion, an unfocused rage.’

He watched Fry trying to digest the interpretation. He knew it wouldn’t fit with any of her logical constructs. In fact, in Diane Fry’s world, motive could be pretty much dispensed with, once you’d collected enough evidence to prove your case. Guilt was important in the criminal justice system, not reasons. The system represented by Fry didn’t want to know why people did things. It was much too hard to understand, impossible to write down on a report form. It was too human.

Cooper wished he could tell her that one day, when he thought she would understand.

They turned into Welbeck Street and Fry drew up outside his flat.

‘That was a big help,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot, Diane.’

Fry waited while he got out of the Audi. Cooper turned and stood on the pavement, expecting her to accelerate away. He was planning to give her a little parting wave as she disappeared from his life round the corner of the street. But she didn’t do that. And his instinct for politeness kicked in again.

‘Do you want to come in for a bit?’ he said.

‘Sure.’

He could hardly believe that he’d asked her in. Even more alarming was the fact that she’d accepted. Cooper couldn’t get to grips with what was happening to him today. The world had taken a strange turn.

Inside the flat the cat padded forward to greet Cooper, then paused suspiciously before sitting down and staring at Fry.

‘I suppose you’ll have another funeral to go to soon,’ said Fry. ‘Your landlady.’

‘Mrs Shelley, yes. It’s next Monday.’

‘What’s going to happen to this house?’ asked Fry.

‘I think the nephew will sell them. He doesn’t want to be bothered dealing with pesky tenants. He’ll do them up and get a good price for them when he puts them on the market.’

‘But as a sitting tenant you have legal rights.’

‘I know, but…’

‘It won’t be the same?’

Cooper had thought it would sound odd to her if he’d said that himself. But she’d hit on what he was thinking exactly. He’d almost forgotten Fry’s ability to read his mind so well. It had never seemed like a positive asset before. But now her insight made it easier to explain his feelings. For once he felt she might actually understand what he meant.

‘No, it won’t be the same at all. In fact, it doesn’t feel the same now. Number six is empty already. They took Mrs Shelley’s dog away. I imagine he’s gone in a sanctuary or more likely he’s been taken to the vet’s to be put down. Well, he was quite old, I suppose.’

Cooper found Gavin Murfin drifting into his mind, remembered the impression he’d been given in Superintendent Branagh’s office that Murfin was regarded as an old dog past his day, a useless mutt who lay around sleeping and eating and was no good to anyone. At least there was a sanctuary for an aged copper.

He was still acting on instinct, following the accepted practices of hospitality, despite the unlikely presence of Diane Fry in his flat.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he said.

‘That would be good. What have you got?’

‘Oh. Well, there are some beers in the fridge. And I’ve got a bottle of cheap Australian white somewhere. That’s all, I’m afraid. I don’t entertain very often.’

‘It’s lucky I brought this, then,’ said Fry.

She opened her bag. Where Cooper had thought she was carrying reports back to Nottingham, the bag was heavy because it contained a bottle.

‘Champagne? Are you kidding?’ he said.

Fry held the bottle up and peered at the label. ‘Isn’t it a good one? I have no idea really.’

‘I’m sure it’s fine.’

‘Good.’

Cooper opened the bottle, poured them each a drink and put the bottle down on the coffee table. Fry had settled on his sofa and he sat down opposite her in the old armchair, with the cat rubbing anxiously against his legs.

‘Cheers,’ he said.

He watched Fry take a long gulp and cradle her glass, and found himself copying her. It was good champagne too, so far as he was any judge. There hadn’t been many occasions in his life to celebrate recently.

‘So what did you make of your little protest group in the end?’ asked Fry. ‘Poppy Mellor and her crew of armchair anarchists.’

‘They were a strange bunch,’ admitted Cooper. ‘But I think Poppy Mellor was right in something she said to me. They were like a family. They didn’t choose each other, but they were thrown together, almost against their will or their better instincts.’

‘Is that the way it happened?’

‘Of course,’ said Cooper. ‘Think of all the things that happen in people’s lives. Coincidence, fate, circumstances beyond their control. It’s all just the nature of events. They bring individuals close together and they pull them apart again.’

‘That’s very true. Very true.’

Fry got up and poured him a second glass. He seemed to have finished the first one very quickly. He always drank too fast when he was nervous.

He watched Diane Fry drifting around the room with her glass. It reminded him of the first time he’d ever set eyes on her, as she walked into the CID room at West Street. He’d just returned from leave and she was the new girl on a transfer from the West Midlands.

But then she stopped and reached out to straighten a picture on the wall. Cooper’s heart lurched. She’d effortlessly replaced that first memory with another one. The day he moved into this flat in Welbeck Street, Fry had turned up unexpectedly, the way she had last Friday. She’d even brought him a gift to welcome him into his new home. A small, decorative clock. It was standing on the mantelpiece now.

The rarity of that occasion made it all the more memorable for him. He’d witnessed a strange transformation that day, suddenly seeing a side of Fry that was usually hidden, the vulnerability behind the cynical façade. It was the Diane he’d been looking for, ever since she walked into West Street that first time, all those years ago.

‘So — you’ve been offered an inspector’s job?’ she said. ‘I hope I’m right. It’s the reason I brought the champagne, after all.’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper, with a guilty surge of triumph. ‘I’m sorry, and all that.’

She raised an eyebrow and put down her glass. ‘Sorry? Why?’

‘Well, I can’t imagine it’s what you wanted. You’ve been watching me so closely for the past few days, hoping I’d slip up. And then, in the end, I did what I never wanted to do. I had to ask you for help. It must have been satisfying for you.’

‘Is that what you think?’ said Fry. ‘Don’t you realise that I was asked to make an assessment? It was my input that helped you to get the job.’

‘Seriously?’

‘I’m always serious.’

Fry laughed then, as if she’d made a joke. That was twice Cooper had witnessed it. Something was definitely happening.

‘Well, I don’t know what to say. Except thank you, Diane.’

‘That’s okay.’

She took another drink and looked thoughtful. Cooper waited on tenterhooks for the next direction the conversation might be about to take.

‘I visited my sister in Birmingham the other night,’ she said. ‘You remember my sister, I’m sure.’

‘Angie?’

‘I only have the one.’

‘Is she well?’ said Cooper.

‘Amazingly well. Ridiculously well. You’d hardly recognise her. I certainly didn’t.’

‘That’s … good, I suppose.’

‘Yes. She’s deliriously happy in a new relationship. And now she’s pregnant.’

‘Pregnant? Really?’

‘That’s what I said. My big sis is having a baby.’

‘Good for her.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Fry. ‘Good for her. I hope she’s very happy.’ She tilted her head on one side and gave him a quizzical look. ‘But here we are, you and me, talking about murder. I suppose it’s whatever turns you on.’

Cooper was beginning to feel exactly the way he had with Poppy Mellor in the old cheese factory, trying to talk calmly to a woman whose behaviour had become unpredictable, who might do something completely unexpected at any moment.

‘We don’t have to talk about murder, if you don’t want to,’ he said.

‘No, we don’t. We could talk about something else. Any ideas, Ben?’

‘Er…’

‘No? That’s not like you.’

Fry seemed to be slightly tipsy. He’d never seen her this relaxed before. She was even saying things that didn’t make any sense.

‘But it’s strange, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Strange that a corpse could turn out to be a bridge.’

‘You’re mad.’

But Cooper smiled. Wasn’t that exactly what had happened? A new sort of connection had formed between them with that first body lying in the shallow water of the River Dove. He hadn’t understood what it was until now. But it was true — a corpse might provide a bridge in a way. And more than that. Three corpses could be enough to carry you across a void, transporting you from one place to another. They could take you away from a world you didn’t want to be in to a different universe altogether. A place where … well, where anything could happen.

But something was wrong here. Fry wasn’t going to be around after today. She had a whole new career of her own to look forward to.

‘So that’s your parting gift,’ he said. ‘When you finally leave Edendale, you want to make sure that you leave me feeling in your debt.’

Fry dropped her gaze to the floor. ‘Something like that, I suppose. Yes, something like that.’

Cooper was feeling very strange. Perhaps it was the alcohol. The first real drink he’d had for months. Well, the first time he’d felt relaxed enough to enjoy it. It was odd that he’d spent days working out how he could get away from Fry and now he discovered he didn’t want her to leave.

‘Are you really going, Diane?’ he said.

‘I’m already gone.’

‘You can’t be quite gone,’ said Cooper, putting down his glass.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve still got your TV in the boot of my car.’

‘So you have.’

‘You’ll need it for the new apartment in Nottingham. You’ve moved everything else. That old place at Grosvenor Avenue must be empty now.’

‘Pretty much. But we can’t move it tonight,’ said Fry. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

‘So have you.’

‘True.’

Fry gazed at him. And it felt as if everything that had ever passed between them over the years dissolved in that moment, in that one look. Cooper’s doubts about Fry fell away. For the first time he found himself looking past the brittle façade and seeing the real person underneath, vulnerable and lonely. Fry was like a 3D picture, baffling at first. But if you stared at it for long enough, your eyes slipped through the surface to a different focus and found something surprising that took your breath away.

‘So, Diane…’

‘So let’s leave the TV where it is,’ she said. ‘We’re not going anywhere tonight.’

Cooper was awake early next morning. Quietly, he opened the back door into the garden behind Welbeck Street.

A strong wind had been blowing from the north all night. He walked out of his flat into a world of bare branches and swathes of dead leaves covering the ground. So that was it, he thought. Autumn was truly over. Nothing could stop the winter now.

For a while he sat on a garden chair and watched the sun rise. Fry had been right that a death could provide a bridge to the future. It meant a new start in so many ways. But nothing was quite so simple, was it? It was all very well trying to look ahead, to think about what might still be to come. But it was all daydreams, a lot of wishful thinking. Whatever you did, there was no escaping your fate. No one had any idea what the future would bring.

Cooper gazed up at the hills around Edendale, the ever-changing landscape of the Peak District, the countryside he’d grown up in. The colours of those hills altered season by season, month by month. They might look bare and bleak now, but new life was just below the surface, waiting to burst through again, if it was only given half a chance.

Yes, winter always ended. And, if you could look far enough into the future, spring was just around the corner.