The corpse bridge, p.15
The Corpse Bridge, page 15
After Liz’s funeral he’d come away with the conviction that people who did the job must be sociopaths. Only a serious personality disorder would enable you to look so solemn while you carried a coffin, then take off your tie, go home and eat dinner, watch the TV, and tell the wife you’d had a good day at work.
In fact, he’d envied those people. For a long time, he wished he could be like them. But he knew he would fail.
That idea, though, had made him look at Diane Fry differently. If it was true about funeral directors, then what about a police officer? Someone who dealt with nothing but murder cases and rapes, and serious violent crimes? Were they also sociopaths who just happened to have found themselves a profession where their personality disorder was an advantage? No one wanted a cop who empathised too much. It made them less professional, not so good at their jobs.
Cooper shivered with cold and knew it was time to go home. He stood up suddenly, startling the ducks and making them rattle their wings in the darkness.
No, he had never been able to achieve that level of detachment himself. No amount of trying got him to a position where he could create that protective façade. He’d become convinced this was what might prevent him from moving up the promotion ladder in the police service. It was the Diane Frys they wanted these days.
But then he recalled the new version of Diane he’d encountered in her flat on Friday night. The softer, more relaxed Fry. The one who actually asked him for a favour. Was this the same person? Could it be the woman he’d always suspected might exist behind the brittle exterior?
If so, this new Diane Fry was like a glimpse of some illusory oasis, glittering in the distance but defying the most determined traveller to reach it. The nearer he got, the further away she would seem. It felt inevitable, the story of his life. It was certainly the story of his relationship with Fry.
The ducks quacked quietly in agreement as he walked away from the peace of the river and headed back towards the town.
While Ben Cooper sat by the riverside in Edendale, Luke Irvine was in the pub. His date hadn’t gone too well the night before. No matter how often he checked his phone, there were no text messages. So he couldn’t imagine she was expecting to hear from him again tonight. But that seemed to be the story of his life at the moment. Opportunities came along, but were allowed to escape.
As he watched the other customers in the bar of the Angler’s Rest, Irvine knew that Ben Cooper would still be out asking questions about the woman whose body had been found at Hollins Bridge. Overtime meant nothing to his DS. Though he admired Cooper in lots of ways, Irvine hoped he never ended up like that himself. Dedication to the job was great, but it was so much better to have a life away from the office.
Irvine lived in the village of Bamford, between the Hope Valley and the Upper Derwent. It was a short drive over the hill to Edendale, but quiet enough to give him the village life he’d grown up with in West Yorkshire.
A man he knew vaguely from a few houses down the road came and sat down on a vacant seat nearby. He nodded and said, ‘Hi’. Irvine acknowledged him cautiously. Conversations in the pub could be difficult, he’d discovered.
‘Good to see the place so busy,’ said the man.
‘Yeah, great.’
‘It just goes to show.’
‘You’re right, it does.’
Irvine took a swig of his beer, holding the bottle to his mouth a bit longer than was strictly necessary. He knew what the man was talking about, without any telling.
People in his community had spent months raising the money to buy their village pub. They formed a cooperative society to take ownership of the building, with hundreds of residents buying shares. They successfully applied to get the pub registered as an ‘asset of community value’ under the government’s new Localism Act. They drew up a business plan, outlining a scheme for a community hub with a café and shop, and accommodation for visitors. Their village post office was due to close too and they negotiated to move counter services into the pub. They appeared in the local media, manned stalls at shows and fêtes, and enough money came in to make the dream possible.
For a while it had all seemed to be going well. With the financial targets hit, solicitors were instructed to begin the conveyancing process. But on the same day the company that owned the pub announced it was exchanging contracts with a third party – a developer who would make the deal pay by building houses on the car park.
Irvine remembered calling into the pub one night for a drink when the news had just broken. The mood was disturbing. Everyone he spoke to was frustrated and angry, convinced they had been betrayed by big business and exploited for a quick profit.
One of his neighbours, who’d had a couple of drinks too many, buttonholed him at the bar while he was ordering a bottle of Thornbridge Sour Brown. Like a doctor, Irvine found he could never escape the fact that he was a police officer, even when he was off duty. In fact, it had been worse since he joined CID and became a detective. Everyone wanted to hear gory details of cases, tell him their theories, or ask him for clandestine forms of assistance that would undoubtedly lose him his job.
That night, though, there was only one topic of conversation. The last-minute betrayal over the sale of the pub had turned people’s minds to committing crime rather than solving it.
‘This could definitely be a motive for murder,’ this same neighbour had said, leaning close to him at the bar. ‘With a hundred and eighty-five potential suspects at the last count. They might all commit the crime together, like the plot of an Agatha Christie story.’
‘By far the least believable Christie plot,’ said Irvine, who had watched Poirot on TV.
The man tapped the side of his nose and almost winked. ‘Where there’s a motive, people will find a means.’
But a week or two later the public outcry against the decision had changed the minds of both the pub’s owners and the potential buyer. The project went ahead and Bamford owned its community hub. When he went into the Angler’s Rest now for a Sour Brown, people again asked for gory details or the kind of assistance that would lose him his job.
‘I suppose you’re involved in that case over near Buxton,’ said the man now, with an inquisitive lift of the eyebrows.
‘Maybe so.’
But as Irvine looked at his neighbour, he recalled that earlier conversation. An Agatha Christie plot? He wondered if he should phone Ben Cooper right now with the interesting idea that had just come into his head.
But of course not. Unlike Cooper, he had a life after all.
‘Do you fancy another drink, mate?’ he said.
21
Sunday 3 November
Carol Villiers had produced a list of names and it was waiting for Cooper on his desk when he arrived in the CID room on Sunday morning. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty, but there was nothing for him to do at home. It was a choice between being here and painting shelves in the shop. No contest. He loved his brother, but the thought of spending all day working with Matt filled him with dread.
The list Villiers had drawn up contained the names of all the residents of Bowden, plus Sandra Blair and her husband Gary, who were former residents, and those of Jason Shaw and the Nadens.
After a moment’s thought, Cooper added Rob Beresford and his parents to the list. Was there anyone else he should consider? No, that seemed to be about it.
Cooper glanced through the list again. There were quite a few familiar surnames on it. That was inevitable, after all his years in E Division making arrests, interviewing suspects, reading intelligence files on known criminal associates. Certain family names cropped up time and time again. Others he remembered particularly after just one meeting – an individual could make such a deep impression on him he would never forget them for as long as he lived. There were even one or two who’d been helpful to him in the past and who might not run a mile when they saw him coming.
One of those individuals was suggested by a name on this list. The Kilners were a widespread family in this part of Derbyshire. But one particular member of the family, Brendan, was well known to Cooper.
Brendan Kilner had been the owner of a garage that was targeted during a proactive operation tackling an increase in the number of expensive, top-of-the-range cars being stolen in North Derbyshire, most of which were never recovered. The suspicion was that they were being processed locally and shipped abroad through a third party. There was always a market for stolen BMWs and Mercedes in parts of the world where fewer questions were asked.
But Kilner himself had never been convicted of anything. Two of his mechanics had gone down for a few years after the police operation located a couple of lock-ups in Edendale where the two employees had been working on stolen vehicles in their spare time. The inquiry had focused on tracking down the dealers who organised the shipping – they were the really serious players, part of an organised crime gang. Once their stage of the enterprise was disrupted, the market disappeared. They also made most of the profit, of course, so they were a much juicier target for an action under the Proceeds of Crime Act, which extracted large amounts of money from convicted criminals. Some of the proceeds even went towards maintaining levels of policing in the county.
It had never been entirely clear whether Kilner was squeaky clean in relation to the stolen car scam, but he’d been remarkably helpful at the time. He opened up his records to the police investigation and shared everything he knew about the activities of his two mechanics, who were by then safely in custody.
During the interviews Cooper was unable to escape a niggling doubt about the garage owner and whether there might be some hidden paperwork somewhere, a possibility the leading officer in the case decided not to pursue. Since then Brendan Kilner had nothing recorded against him, either in Criminal Records or in the intelligence databases. Going straight, then. The garage was still there, BK Motors – now in a double unit on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Edendale.
Cooper looked up a number and grabbed the phone. Kilner was surprised to hear from him, that much was obvious. A bit suspicious too. Maybe there was still a trace of guilty conscience in his reaction to an unexpected contact with the police. But that was a good thing, in the circumstances.
After a bit of cautious small talk, some polite enquiries about the family and how well business was doing, Cooper got round to telling Kilner that he wanted to talk to him.
‘Where can I meet you?’
‘What, today?’ said Kilner, still reluctant.
‘Yes, this afternoon.’
‘Well, I’ll be at Axe Edge. There’s a race meeting.’
‘Buxton Raceway? I know it.’
Kilner didn’t hang up straight away. Cooper could hear him breathing, a slight wheeze as if he were about to start coughing. A nervous cough, or was Kilner a smoker? He couldn’t remember that detail.
‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’ asked Kilner.
‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’
‘Okay, then. I’ll get you a hot dog, shall I?’
Buxton Raceway. Though Cooper had often passed it, he’d never actually visited the races. It wasn’t the sort of place Liz would ever have wanted to go with him for a Sunday afternoon outing.
The site stood in a bleak spot off the Buxton to Leek road, at a point where it crossed Axe Edge Moor. This was the highest stretch of moorland close to the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Many of the Peak District’s major rivers rose on Axe Edge Moor and the source of the River Dove itself was only a few hundred yards away in a patch of marshy ground near Dovehead Farm, just on the Staffordshire side of the border.
After he’d parked the car Cooper found Brendan Kilner at the end of a small stand for spectators. He was clutching a hot dog in a paper napkin from the stall behind him. The scent of fried onions mingled with a powerful smell of exhaust fumes, despite a strong breeze blowing across the moor.
Kilner gestured with the hot dog.
‘Do you want one?’ he asked by way of greeting.
‘Not at the moment, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself.’
He hardly looked at Cooper, but kept his eyes fixed on the circuit, where nothing much seemed to be happening. He’d put on weight since Cooper saw him last. Too many hot dogs and burgers, perhaps. But then, he’d always been a man whose idea of exercise was leaning into an engine compartment with a spanner.
‘Sorry to drag you here,’ said Kilner. ‘This is almost the last meeting of the season. I couldn’t miss it.’
‘There’s no racing in the winter?’
‘No. It gets a bit wild up here, like.’
‘I can imagine.’
Now he was standing still, that wind blowing across the landscape from Axe Edge Moor certainly felt a bit icy. Cooper looked around at the groups of people standing nearby.
‘Can we walk round the other side of the track for a while?’
Kilner wiped his fingers as he swallowed the last piece of hot dog.
‘If you like.’
The circuit consisted of a tarmac oval around a central refuge where a few official vehicles were parked, including a tractor and a paramedic’s car. There were already some disabled racing cars lined up awaiting retrieval after the meeting was over. The circuit ran in front of the stand and past spectators who were parked at the trackside, protected by a black-and-white barrier and a high mesh safety fence. The landscape behind the raceway looked even more bare and rugged. In the background Cooper could see the distinctive jut of a rock face. He recognised it as a feature standing between the site of the Health and Safety Executive’s laboratories at Harpur Hill and a flooded quarry once known by local people as the Blue Lagoon.
As they strolled away from the stand Cooper began to see cars and their drivers. The drivers wore racing overalls, crash helmets and fire-retardant gloves, just like the stars of Formula One. But their vehicles were a bunch of beaten-up hatchbacks. Datsun Sunnys, Ford Fiestas, Vauxhall Novas. Although really all that was left of each car was the chassis. They had been stripped down and armoured. In addition to heavy front and rear bumpers, iron cages had been welded along the sides. They were all painted in bright colour schemes.
‘These are 1300cc saloon stocks,’ said Kilner as a series of cars began to move out on to the track.
A man wearing goggles and ear protectors stood on a white breeze-block podium with a set of flags. About fifteen cars began to move round the circuit, slowly at first as if they were merely in a procession. Then there must have been a signal that Cooper didn’t see, because engines roared simultaneously as drivers accelerated towards the starting flag, jostling for position in the first straight.
‘I heard you were in the fire up at the old Light House,’ said Kilner. ‘It was in all the papers and everything. That was a bad business.’
‘Yes.’
Cooper would have been amazed if Kilner didn’t know all about it. Everyone else in the area did.
Kilner was watching the cars thoughtfully. ‘I suppose you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Not to you, Brendan, anyway.’
‘Fair comment. I can’t blame you for that. Put things behind you, get on with life. That’s the motto, like.’
On the track a car spun three hundred and sixty degrees, but the driver recovered and kept going, trying to regain ground. Ahead of him another collided with the barrier, bounced and came to a halt. A blue-and-yellow car seemed to be in the lead all the way, so far as Cooper could tell.
‘There’s not the sort of excitement you get in some types of racing,’ said Kilner. ‘Super bangers or hot rods. You can pretty much predict who’s going to come in first. But it’s the spectacle, you know. The noise, the smell, the whole thing. It’s like a drug, I suppose.’
Cooper had never been much of a petrol head himself. But his brother Matt would probably have enjoyed himself here. He was forever tinkering with one of his tractors back at Bridge End Farm. For years Matt’s pride and joy had been a vintage Massey Ferguson that never did any work around the farm, but turned out a couple of times a year for a tractor rally and trundled around the roads with scores of others. The Massey had soaked up too much cash, though, which the farm couldn’t afford, and it had been sold off.
With a glance around to make sure no one was near them, Cooper showed Kilner an edited version of the list that Villiers had produced for him.
‘Recognise some of these names, Brendan?’ he said.
Kilner fiddled in his pockets until he found a pair of reading glasses. Old age was creeping up on him too.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘All of them, I think. You probably guessed that or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Apart from Bowden, can you suggest anything they all have in common?’
As the stock cars came past their position again, the noise of the engines was deafening. Cooper missed something that Brendan Kilner was saying.
‘What?’
‘I said, “They’ve all got an axe to grind.” But then, haven’t we all these days? Even the cops, I bet.’
Kilner laughed and Cooper got the whiff of fried onions again, but at second hand.
‘So what axes do the Nadens and Jason Shaw have to grind?’ he asked.
Kilner shrugged. ‘It’s all about family. Ancient history if you ask me. But that stuff means a lot to some people, doesn’t it? Me, I can never bring myself to visit the place where my mum and dad were buried. Come to think of it, we didn’t actually bury my dad – we burned him, then scattered him.’
‘What are you talking about, Brendan?’ asked Cooper.
‘The graveyard, of course.’
