The corpse bridge, p.32
The Corpse Bridge, page 32
‘No, never. Never.’
Cooper threw a tired glance round the familiar walls of his flat. The dead who would never return – they were here, too. Their photographs were lurking in the darkness. His father, Sergeant Joe Cooper, killed in the execution of his duty. His mother, Isabel Cooper, dead of natural causes. And civilian scenes of crime officer Elizabeth Petty, who died…
Well, she’d died anyway. And that was an end to it.
Just outside, in Welbeck Street, he heard banging and laughter, followed by the shriek of a car alarm.
‘For heaven’s sake, go away,’ he said, more loudly.
Behind him, the cat made a small questioning noise. Cooper turned.
‘Not you, obviously. I was talking to … well, who was I talking to?’
The cat gave him a despairing look and went back to sleep.
‘No, I don’t know either,’ said Cooper.
He thought of putting the lights on, but there didn’t seem much point. At this time of the morning artificial light only made the flat look ghastly and unreal. He felt like a character in a film, hiding away in precarious isolation, fighting desperately for survival while the world outside disintegrated into chaos, as the dead walked and cities burned.
With a vague sense of surprise, Cooper looked down at the mug clutched in his hand. He’d forgotten that he’d been making himself a drink. Camomile tea, by the smell of it. His sister Claire had insisted he tried it to help him sleep. But it had gone almost cold in his hand as he stood here near the window, listening to the sounds of the night.
Life shouldn’t feel so cold and wasted. Not at his age. He was only in his thirties, after all. It was too young for everyone he cared about most to be dead and in the ground. He shouldn’t have to spend half his life visiting graveyards.
Cooper shuddered as a cold certainty ran through his limbs. There would be people out tonight who gravitated to cemeteries and graveyards. Halloween was their night. And cemeteries were their playground.
He sighed again. All Hallows’ Eve. That was where it all started. It was supposed to be dedicated to remembering dead saints and the faithful departed. Souls wandered the earth, looking for one last chance to gain vengeance on the living. People would wear masks or costumes to disguise their identities and avoid being recognised by vengeful souls.
People often complained that Halloween was an imported American tradition. But surely it was only because Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night had poached some of the customs of Halloween. For centuries English people had preferred burning effigies of Catholics, rather than remembering dead saints. Halloween had become a focus of superstitions about witches and ghosts.
Just last week the Eden Valley Times had published a letter written by a local vicar complaining that the newspaper was encouraging Satanism and witchcraft by reporting Halloween events and publishing pictures of children dressed as ghosts and vampires. He’d done it every year, for as long as Cooper could remember. Like everyone else, the clergyman had probably forgotten the origins of the festivities.
‘Not that anybody really believes in anything any more.’
He realised that he was mumbling a bit now. He wasn’t even sure what words were coming out of his mouth. The last sentence had sounded like a meaningless jumble, even to his own ears.
With a weary stretch of his limbs, Cooper went to lie back down on his bed, though he knew he wouldn’t sleep.
There must be so many people who’d lost loved ones during the past twelve months. Some of them must have been wishing that the dead really could return. How did they react to ghosts and corpses banging on their door all evening? What were you supposed to do, except offer a treat from a tub of miniature chocolate bars? A modern ritual to keep the spirits away.
But if he slept tonight at all, Cooper knew the dead would walk in his dreams.
Fifteen miles from Edendale, Rob Beresford cursed to himself in the darkness. It wouldn’t happen tonight. Something had gone wrong.
He pulled out his phone, tried to dial the number again, but could get no signal. Down here by the river, with dense trees around him and hills rising on either side, he was bound to be in a dead spot.
But they’d known this was likely to happen and they’d planned for it. That was why the timing had been so carefully worked out. So what had gone wrong? Why was he on his own out here?
Rob waited. He didn’t have much patience, but what else could he do? Turn round and go home? He didn’t want to be the one who did that. At least, when tomorrow came, he’d be able to blame the others for wrecking the plan. He wondered who had actually got cold feet. It could be any of them, of course. They were a bunch of wimps, mostly. And worse – they’d left him out here on his own, in the dark, with no idea what was going on.
He was beginning to get angry. Rob paced up and down, swinging his torch along the track, its bright LED beam flicking from stone wall to hanging branch, from a splash of water stirring a muddy pool to the flutter of a dead leaf in the breeze. He was oblivious now to their agreement not to make too much noise or show any more light than was necessary. It was obvious he was on his own. Abandoned, and made to look an idiot. And what a place to be in at this time of night. It was lucky he wasn’t a nervous bloke or he could start imagining things.
But where was he exactly? There had been no map. He only followed the directions he’d been given. Nowhere looked the same in the dark anyway. People who lived in towns didn’t realise how black it was out in the proper country at night. They never saw total darkness like this. So a map would have been useless.
A noise made Rob whirl round suddenly. It sounded like a voice – a garbled word spoken from the darkness, a liquid gabbling from a throat that surely wasn’t human. But then the noise came again and he saw the river. He could see the surges of water bubbling over the rocks, sucking and gurgling through gaps and crevices in the riverbed. He saw the muddy bank and the skeletal outline of a stunted tree growing on the water’s edge.
And something else.
Rob realised with a shock that he could see a pale face caught in the light. It was the mask of a ghoul, white and ghostly, with the unnatural gleam of cheap plastic. He had a glimpse of a profile pulled into a grotesque shape – a gaping mouth, a blank eye, a trickle of blood. It was surely a Halloween joke to scare the children. Just some bad taste prank.
The hairs on the back of Rob’s neck stirred, and he swung his torch wildly across the trees until its beam lit the glittering water rushing between the banks and highlighted the arch of the bridge. His trembling hand swept the light backwards and forwards along the parapet looming above him and probed into the gap between the stones to pick out the ancient trackway. It was half in shadow and half illuminated by his wavering torchlight. It looked like an empty stage, garishly lit, awaiting the next scene of a drama.
Rob had lived in this area all his life and he knew what this place was. Everyone called it the Corpse Bridge.
Friday 1 November
And yet there was so little blood.
Ben Cooper crouched and leaned forward to look more closely. For a moment he felt light-headed from tiredness and almost slipped in the mud on the bank of the river as his head swam. But he recovered himself in time, a hand poised in mid-air almost touching the body. He hoped no one had noticed.
There was certainly a lack of blood. Sometimes a corpse could surprise you like that. At first glance it didn’t seem possible that anyone could be dead, when they’d hardly bled at all. Here there were no more than a few drops on the corner of the stone, a narrow trickle that might just as easily have been a splash of muddy water or a leak from a damaged bottle. Not blood, but a spilled energy drink.
Cooper straightened up again, easing the discomfort in his back. Either way, the body had been drained of its vitality. The life force had departed hours ago.
An upper stretch of the River Dove was rushing under the bridge here. Though barely the width of a stream, the water was running fast as the earlier rain syphoned down off the hills on both sides. The body was trapped in the branches of a sycamore lying close to the surface. To Cooper’s weary eyes, those dark, wet boulders all around it could have been a dozen bodies lying half-submerged. The roaring of the water might have been their cries of pain, that gurgle under a rock a victim’s last, dying breath.
The north side of the bridge was green with mould and fungus. Uneven stone setts on the bridge were lined with dying brambles. Here the river had slippery edges, with no safe footing in the mud, and the body was only accessible on foot through the water. Divers had waded into the river and were now under the bridge attempting to recover the body. The victim had fallen into an awkward, tangled position, and the body was already partially rigid from the onset of rigor mortis.
The initial police response had accessed the bridge using four-wheel-drive vehicles from the Derbyshire side, right down to where a large lump of rock blocked the crossing. The water was shallow enough to have been a ford at one time, but the idea of driving across it had been effectively discouraged.
The bridge itself was much too narrow for vehicles. It was the type of structure generally described as a packhorse bridge, with low parapets and stone setts designed to provide a secure footing for horses. But this bridge had been known for a different function.
It was barely six in the morning when he’d arrived, and still dark by the river. Arc lights had been set up to illuminate the scene, but it might be a while before he got a proper look at the victim. Evidence would become more obvious in daylight. A story might start to emerge then. The story of how one more human being had encountered death.
One of his detective constables, Luke Irvine, had been here at the scene before him. That was the penalty of being on call-out. Irvine was a bit dishevelled and unshaven, which somehow made him seem even younger than he was.
Cooper tended to forget that the younger DCs had only a few years’ experience. They were impressively competent and self-confident – much more than he himself had been at the same age, he felt sure. The other youngster on his team, Becky Hurst, was destined for great things in his estimation. She had that air about her, a quiet determination and absolute focus on what she wanted. Luke was okay, but a little bit rebellious and unpredictable. Somebody would knock those edges off him one day. Or something.
‘Well, as you can see,’ said Irvine, ‘we’ve got a female, aged about thirty-five. Caucasian. She’s not been in the water very long, by the looks of it. There’s a clear head wound, but other than that—’
‘Found by?’
‘Finder’s name is Rob Beresford. Actually, his full name is Robson – as in Robson Green the actor, you know?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s fairly local. Lives in Earl Sterndale. Mr Beresford says he was walking down here and saw the woman in the water. He had to go back up the trackway a hundred yards or so before he could dial 999 on his mobile.’
‘He was on his own?’ asked Cooper.
‘It seems so. But—’
‘What, Luke?’
Irvine shrugged. ‘Well, you’ll see for yourself when you talk to him, Ben. I know you like to form your own impressions.’
‘Okay.’
‘We’ve got him up the road there. Will you talk to him now?’
‘In a second.’
The River Dove was the boundary not only between two counties, but between the East Midlands and West Midlands. It was the border between limestone country and sandstone too. In daylight the view across the valley made the contrast obvious, with the hills on the Staffordshire side looking so much more gentle and unimpressive compared to the rugged limestone at his back. As far as Cooper was concerned, there was no doubt about it, whatever some Staffordshire people said. Derbyshire had the best hills.
In between, on the flatter and more fertile land in a loop of the river, stood one of Derbyshire’s historic houses, Knowle Abbey – a huge country mansion where the Earls of Manby had lived for generations, surrounded by acres of landscaped parkland. It had always seemed to Cooper like a sort of no man’s land, sitting in its own little world halfway between the two counties, but having little connection with either of them.
There was a Staffordshire Police presence here too, Cooper saw. Their vehicles carried a badge with the Staffordshire knot instead of the Derbyshire coat of arms. It was a strange choice of logo, he’d always thought. The triple loop of the Staffordshire knot was supposed to represent the solution devised by a hangman to execute three felons simultaneously. It didn’t really fit with the current public image the police tried to present. Looking round, Cooper identified a couple of uniformed constables, an officer from Staffordshire’s Major Investigation Department, and a Forensics Investigation van from their station at Leek.
The body of the victim had been tangled in the roots of a tree close to the Derbyshire side. But the River Dove was very narrow here and the county boundary ran right down the middle. He supposed it was possible that part of the body had been lying or floating in Staffordshire’s jurisdiction.
But this wasn’t a case of territorial dispute. Not yet, anyway. The two forces were cooperating. It was obvious to everyone that the victim or her attacker were just as likely to have approached the scene from the Staffordshire side as from Derbyshire. Boundaries were irrelevant, especially while the scene was being examined for forensic evidence. Footwear marks, DNA or trace evidence were left with complete disregard to jurisdictions.
Dawn was breaking, and the sun would rise by seven. A bird was singing over some abandoned buildings on the eastern bank of the river.
The young man who’d found the body was sitting in the passenger seat of a police car with the door open and his long legs stretched out in front of him. His head was down and he seemed to be gazing at his feet as if they could explain everything. He was no older than twenty, and he was dressed in denim jeans and a grey hooded jacket. The feet he was staring at were encased in white trainers with thick soles. At least, they’d been white once. The mud covering them now left barely a glimpse of the original colour. Perhaps that was why the young man looked at them so morosely. They were probably the most expensive thing he was wearing.
‘Mr Beresford?’ said Cooper. ‘Detective Sergeant Cooper, from Edendale Police.’
‘I suppose you want me to go over it all again,’ said the man sullenly. ‘I’ve seen this bit on the telly. Over and over again with the self-same questions that the other lot have asked already.’
‘Perhaps. But quite a few new questions too, I imagine,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh, great.’
Cooper settled himself against the stone wall and found a comfortable position, trying to bring himself closer to the young man’s level. It was less intimidating than standing over him, and it allowed Cooper to get a closer look at Rob Beresford’s face.
‘I do need to ask you again whether you saw anyone else in this area tonight. Now that you’ve had a bit of time to think about it. You can appreciate it’s very important.’
‘I didn’t see anyone,’ said Beresford without hesitation.
The answer came so quickly that it heightened Cooper’s attention to the man’s choice of words. Did he detect slightly too much emphasis on the word ‘see’?
‘Perhaps you heard someone?’ he said.
Beresford shook his head, still not meeting Cooper’s eye. The answer was noticeably slower in coming this time. ‘No. There was no one around.’
‘That’s a shame.’
He didn’t bother to explain why it was a shame. He could let the young man interpret that for himself. If there really was no one else around, that left only one person known to have been at the crime scene, apart from the dead woman herself. Beresford must have realised that, surely. If he’d seen this sort of thing on the telly, he’d know who the first suspect would be. Yet he made no effort to point his questioners in another direction.
For a moment Cooper watched Rob Beresford’s expression, which seemed to be set into a look of stubborn resignation. Then he glanced round at the bridge. ‘You told my colleagues you were out for a walk, sir.’
‘That’s right.’
‘An early morning walk. Very early. Do you own a dog, Mr Beresford?’
‘We have a Jack Russell terrier.’
‘So where is it?’
‘At home,’ said Beresford.
Cooper smiled at his tone. ‘It’s just that most early morning walks are accompanied by a dog in my experience. When someone is out before dawn for a walk, it suggests they have to start work early. That, or the dog has a bladder problem.’
Beresford didn’t respond. But that was fair enough – Cooper hadn’t asked him a question. The young man sat forward on the seat and stared down at his feet. His trainers were soaked.
‘What do you do for a living, sir?’ asked Cooper.
‘I’m a student.’
‘Really? Where?’
‘University of Derby. I’m studying.’
‘Buxton campus? The Dome?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you don’t have far to go for lectures.’
‘My dad usually takes me into Buxton on his way to work.’
‘And what does he do?’
‘He’s a driver. He drives a van for a parcel delivery company.’
‘That can involve an early start, I imagine. He’ll have to get to the depot in plenty of time, so he can load up and get out on his route.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which company does your dad work for?’
‘ABC Despatch. They have a distribution centre just outside Buxton.’
‘I know it. On the industrial estate at Harpur Hill.’
‘That’s it.’
Cooper let a silence develop. Sometimes it was the best way to deal with someone like this. Beresford would be expecting the next question, the one he didn’t want to answer. But if he was left waiting long enough, he wouldn’t be able to stand the tension. Cooper was patient. Besides, he didn’t really have the energy at this time of the morning to try too hard.
