The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Not at this time of year you don’t,’ said Cooper. ‘Not if you call yourself a proper farmer.’

  Swindells glowered at him, then turned and glared at Villiers, as if suspecting she might be laughing. Cooper thought she probably was, but she was good at hiding it. It wasn’t appropriate for a police officer to let members of the public know you found them hilarious.

  ‘Do you have any idea why the lorry was in this area?’

  ‘It belongs to the feed company, doesn’t it?’ said Swindells. ‘I recognise the windmill. They’re based near Stockport somewhere.’

  ‘According to the delivery docket in his cab, the driver was heading for Bankside Farm,’ said Cooper.

  Swindells shook his head and sucked at his teeth. ‘That’s the Elliotts’ place,’ he said with a vague gesture at the surrounding fields. ‘Over yonder. It’s not even on this road.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He was in the wrong place then,’ said Swindells.

  ‘I think that’s a safe assumption.’

  ‘He ought to have known the bridge was too low in any case,’ pointed out Swindells.

  Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, he ought.’

  Gingerly, Cooper squeezed his way back along the side of the truck until he emerged on the far side of the bridge and walked back to where his car was parked. Then he turned and stood in the middle of the road, trying to put himself in the position of the lorry driver as he came round this bend. In a vehicle that size, and on a lane this tight, he would probably be looking out of his side window and watching his wing mirrors to check for clearance on either side.

  But when Cooper did look at the bridge, he realised something was wrong. From this direction the height warning was missing. There ought to be a triangular sign like the one on the east side, giving the exact height of the arch. When he came closer to the bridge, he could even make out the marks on the stonework where it had been attached. So where had it gone?

  For a few minutes Cooper hunted around on the verge on either side of the road until he found the sign thrown into a patch of brambles. Eleven feet three inches. If Mac Kelsey had seen that, he would never have come this far. But clearly, he had stood no chance of seeing it.

  Cooper noticed a young Asian man approaching the outer cordon. He was stopped by the uniformed officer on duty and showed some identification. He was allowed through the tape.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Cooper.

  Villiers threw a casual glance at the newcomer. ‘Ah. I heard he might want to show his face at the scene and introduce himself.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s our new DS.’

  Cooper nodded slowly. No more need to worry about how he was going to break the news to Carol Villiers then.

  The newcomer came forward, holding out his hand. He was a few inches shorter than Cooper, with brown eyes and an intense gaze.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Devdan Sharma. Were you expecting me?’

  ‘In a way,’ said Cooper.

  Sharma nodded unsmilingly, as if it was nothing he hadn’t heard before many times. ‘I’m sorry. I expected to be able to introduce myself properly, in your office at West Street. But it seems we’re at work already.’

  ‘That’s all right. We’ll catch up later,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I’m sorry if my arrival has been sprung on you,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the way I would have wanted it to happen.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ said Cooper.

  But Sharma just gazed at him, his dark brown eyes unblinking. ‘I believe it is, though. Somehow it causes a difficulty for you.’

  Cooper felt flustered by his gaze, as if he’d just been accused of something politically incorrect. The feeling made him fall back on phrases that seemed to come straight from a training manual and sounded artificial even as he spoke them. ‘It’s not a problem with you, DS Sharma. I’m sure you’re an excellent officer and I’m looking forward to working with you. You’re very welcome to the team.’

  ‘Something else, then.’

  Cooper couldn’t help but look away, throwing a glance towards Carol Villiers, who had started talking to one of the uniformed officers. He was conscious of Sharma following his gaze.

  ‘Ah. I see,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t imagine that you do.’

  But Sharma only smiled. ‘It helps to know the situation from the start. Now what would you like me to do?’

  Cooper turned to find the rest of the team watching him.

  ‘Well, first of all, what’s inside the lorry?’ he said. ‘What was Mac Kelsey carrying?’

  Villiers looked at Irvine now.

  ‘Animal feed, presumably,’ she said.

  ‘Have you checked?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Have you noticed the open section of the curtain side? Somebody could have got in or out of the trailer.’

  ‘I didn’t see that,’ said Villiers.

  ‘Better get on with it, then. It’s a big lorry. But luckily DS Sharma is here to assist us.’

  ‘We need to get a few more bodies together for a proper search, don’t we?’

  ‘There’s too much ground to cover in a short space of time. We have to find some way of focusing on a narrower search area,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Someone crashed their way through the undergrowth here,’ called Irvine. ‘There’s a drop of blood, I think.’

  ‘Mark it.’

  The crime scene examiners would follow on behind when the scene was sealed off. Cooper tried not to look at the crime scene team these days, at least not from a distance. Closer to, it was obvious who each of them was. The Crime Scene Manager, Wayne Abbott, couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, even in his scene suit, hood and mask. But from a distance those baggy white suits and face coverings made them all look the same. They could be anybody. That was what bothered Cooper. Each figure could be the person he most wanted to see, but knew he never could.

  ‘So where do you think the driver went?’ asked Irvine.

  ‘Where could he have gone?’ said Villiers. ‘There isn’t exactly a lot of choice, is there?’

  ‘I’ve got a list of the properties in Shawhead,’ said Villiers. ‘It’s from the electoral register, but it should be pretty well up to date. There are only five addresses. Ten adults in all. Here, I’ve made a couple of extra copies.’

  Cooper took a copy of the list. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Carol,’ he said.

  Villiers looked at him with sudden directness. ‘I think you’d manage, Ben. You’d manage perfectly well.’

  ‘I hope I won’t have to then,’ said Cooper, trying to lighten the tone.

  But Villiers bustled away. She was always busy, constantly with some other job to organise, something else to check on. He really did appreciate her efficiency. Carol had come into the job from a military background and yet she’d slotted right in, picked up the reins when things fell apart, supported him when he’d been out of action himself. What price could you put on that ability? Why did senior officers above him not appreciate it more?

  Cooper stood by the front of the lorry and looked around. Whatever had happened to Mac Kelsey in his cab, the first thought in his mind would surely have been to seek help. And from the driver’s seat up there, Kelsey would have focused on just one thing – the cluster of houses he could see up ahead. The signs of civilisation, a place to find help. He would have gone to Shawhead.

  Three miles away, in the town of New Mills, Scott Brooks was spending the last day of his life. Everything he saw and heard meant something important to Scott, because he knew it would be his last day. He’d made that decision himself.

  Scott had first come to New Mills when he caught a folk train on a Saturday morning one summer. He’d joined the crowds of folk music fans in the packed carriages when the train left Piccadilly Station in Manchester on one of its monthly runs. As he listened to the live band entertaining passengers, he’d gazed out of the window at each stop on the way to
the Derbyshire town for the carnival, noticing the change in the landscape with each new station.

  He couldn’t remember who the musicians were on that trip. Crimson Moon, the Galley Canters, Treebeard? It didn’t matter. There had been other folk trains since. But he remembered that they’d performed a set at the Pride of the Peaks in town before the return journey to Manchester. And it was in that pub that he’d first met Ashley and found out where she worked.

  In a sudden flood of memory, Scott was overwhelmed by the recollection of a sweet smell, a sugary fog through which he still seemed to see Ashley. It made him stumble to a halt, almost staggering to his knees on the pavement at the saccharine taste on his tongue.

  But he’d already made his preparations for the day and had everything he needed in a plastic carrier bag. It wasn’t heavy.

  On Union Road he passed the headquarters of the Plain English Campaign, housed in a brick building with a stone façade. There was probably something symbolic about that, but he couldn’t think what it was today. He approved of their attempts to improve the standards of English. He’d tried to do his bit as a teacher, when he still had a job. He hoped the Plain English Campaign would survive and weren’t a victim of cuts.

  Scott shifted his carrier bag from one hand to another, glancing around him at the faces of people passing, in case he saw anyone he knew. The last thing he wanted to do was stop and chat to some casual acquaintance today, making meaningless small talk for valuable minutes before he could make an excuse to escape. He had too many memories to get through and not enough time. His last few hours were on a schedule, the way things should be if they were done properly.

  He walked up to the top of Union Road and past the Pride of the Peaks. He’d already been inside the pub and said his silent goodbyes.

  There were a lot of pubs and takeaways in the town. People in New Mills ate plenty and drank even more. At night the place was full of knuckle-dragging muppets who thought they were hard men with their fake Manchester twang. They’d never been anywhere near Manchester and didn’t know what the city was like. They still thought you had to pay a toll to leave New Mills. Yet some of their expressions were stolen directly from Manchester dialect. They talked about ‘scran’ and ‘having a buzz’, about going to someone’s ‘gaff’ and being ‘safe’. Everything was ‘dead good’ unless it was ‘sound’.

  He heard the familiar sound of children in a group. At lunchtime school kids gathered below Torr Top car park with their fish and chips. All the teenagers spoke with that flat Manchester accent too, as if they’d been brought up on an inner city housing estate, instead of in a small Derbyshire mill town.

  But the main trouble with the town was that everybody knew your business. The rumour mill got going, the Chinese whispers started. The crowds got whipped up and were ready for a lynching, or a burning at the stake.

  The pubs in New Mills mostly stocked Robinsons, the beer made up the road in Stockport. Saturday night was for fighting in some of those pubs. Any customers who looked too respectable, or had too short a haircut, would be asked if they were police officers. Sometimes they were, of course.

  There were parts of the town he hadn’t been to for a long time. He hadn’t been up Dye House Lane since the Pineapple closed. He’d tried another pub in that area, but it had turned out to be karaoke night. The place was full of depressed alcoholics singing ‘All by Myself’. Scott couldn’t stand that.

  Tomorrow people would probably be saying that he was depressed himself. But it wasn’t true. He didn’t feel miserable or desperate, not any more. He’d made his plans and now he felt calm. That was the benefit of being properly organised. You knew exactly what was going to happen and when. You had nothing left to worry about. A lot of people couldn’t grasp that. Their lives were a chaotic mess. They certainly wouldn’t understand what he was about to do next.

  At the corner he turned into Market Street. The Simply Indian had been a pub too, years ago. There had been a raid on it once, heaps of cash stolen from the fruit machines. When the Millennium Walkway was opened in the Torrs, they found money scattered all the way down the slope. The thieves had tried to hide it somewhere safe, no doubt planning to return for their haul. But they’d never made it. What happened to them? Did they go to prison for something else in the meantime? Or was it just bad planning?

  The town continued to rise up Market Street to the town hall and an old Carnegie library on a steep street to the side of it. A few houses in New Mills were built on such steeply sloping ground that they rose to two storeys on one side but three or four storeys high on the other. Even today you might find one family living in the upper half while another occupied the ‘underliving’. There were some houses on Meal Street just like that.

  The old police station opposite the library had the one word ‘Constabulary’ still picked out in the stonework over the front door. A brown plaque on the wall commemorated the fact that six ramblers had been held here for trial after the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in April 1932, the protest that had brought about the national park.

  Below him was the football ground at Church Lane, the home of New Mills Football Club. They were doing well in the Northern Premier League Division One North, which wasn’t bad in a town of ten thousand people. Scott had seen the Millers play Accrington Stanley once in a pre-season friendly. He was glad of that memory.

  Scott turned uphill and entered High Lea Park, passing the human sundial near High Lea House and on into the community orchard. There were plans to organise group fruit-picking sessions in the orchard one day, when the fruit crops were ready. He wouldn’t see it, though – which was a pity. New Mills was being transformed, but not quickly enough for him.

  High Lea Park was one place that changed in character through the year. In June it was the venue for the One World Festival, when it was full of drummers in multicoloured costumes and stalls manned by Quakers and members of the Green Party. At other times it was where half the population of New Mills were conceived. Many local girls seemed to think it would be fun to lose their virginity in a bush.

  And that was part of the trouble. The locals seemed stuck in a continuous cycle of small town syndrome. The same families, the same bullshit, a different decade. Despite recent incomers on the new housing developments, it remained at heart an insular town, where everyone was related, or knew one another. It was a dangerous place to be a stranger. Scott hadn’t felt safe since he lost Ashley.

  But now he was experiencing negative thoughts and that wasn’t in the plan. Scott made the descent towards the central railway station. The view was extensive from here. At the bottom end he could see the huge Swizzels Matlow confectionery factory, one of New Mills’ biggest employers. The workers carried the smell of that factory around with them on their clothes all the time, completely unaware of the fact. If he stood too close to a Swizzels worker, the sweet aroma was enough to make him feel queasy.

  And there, nearly a hundred feet below the town, he could see the half-empty Torr Vale Mill, sitting in the Torrs gorge. He’d been to a concert at Torr Vale once. It was held on the events floor of the mill during the festival, just after the lantern parade. Mart Rodger’s Manchester Jazz. They were pretty good too. People had been coming into New Mills on the train from Manchester for the evening.

  But they’d all gone home after the concert was over. Most people did. It was Scott who had moved in the other direction. But that was because of Ashley. She was a New Mills girl. Marrying her and coming to live here had been very much part of his plan.

  For a moment Scott Brooks paused on the bridge overlooking the Torrs. He was almost at his final destination.

  There were lots of things he would miss. But there were others he’d be glad that he was finally free from. He could think of three straight away. The sense of loss since Ashley was killed – that was one of those things. Another was the alienation he’d felt while living on his own in New Mills. With Ashley gone and his job over, he’d begun to realise how little he be
longed, how little anyone here would care if he no longer existed.

  And a third? Yes, there was a third thing he would be very glad to be rid of. It was the sickly, overpowering smell of sweets from that blasted factory.

  7

  Higher Fold Farm was the first property in Shawhead. The walk up Cloughpit Lane from the bridge took Ben Cooper and his team past a cobbled entrance to the farm, with a stream running through a stone culvert and an ancient well set into the wall, with a muddy trickle of water escaping from a trough. A box of free range eggs sat by the gate, as if expecting passers-by to buy them.

  From here a track running down into the valley past a row of chestnut trees to another railway bridge. At the bottom a pony and a couple of pygmy goats grazed in a field near a horse box and an abandoned Range Rover.

  Beyond Higher Fold lay Shawhead Cottages. They had probably been farmworkers’ cottages originally. But, despite the name, they probably weren’t cottages any more. It looked as though two or three small homes had been converted into one larger property, internal walls demolished and doors blocked up.

  The same thing had happened all over the country. There were far fewer farmworkers than there used to be and most of these small hill farms were purely family-run enterprises now. So the old, unused cottages had become desirable residences for thousands of people seeking the rural idyll.

  ‘Is this it?’ asked Irvine.

  ‘There’s a bit more,’ pointed out Villiers. ‘Round the bend.’

  ‘The bend?’

  Villiers pointed ahead. ‘There, look. Can’t you see it?’

  Cooper himself had almost missed it. For some inexplicable reason the narrow lane took a sharp turn in the middle of Shawhead. It was a complete right angle, a blind bend that would be impossible to negotiate without slowing almost to a halt. Anything coming round that corner at speed would be a hazard to animals, pedestrians, vehicles and property alike.

  The situation wasn’t made any better by residents’ cars drawn up on the narrow strips in front of their houses and black wheelie bins protruding into the road at awkward angles. It was as if they didn’t expect any traffic at all here, except for the occasional horse rider or hiker. A driver lost in this area might well want to turn back and try a different road if he wandered this far.