The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery

by Stephen Booth

  ‘You could always walk across the fields and get a taxi to pick you up.’

  That was the old lady, Doris Swindells, leaning on her gate with an old coat around her shoulder against the drizzle. Her son gave her a surprised glance, but said nothing.

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Hibbert, a bit too loudly to sound natural. ‘I couldn’t walk all that way through all that wet grass and mud, and . . . well, cow pats and heavens knows what. Think of the state my clothes and shoes would be in. How could I go into the office like that?’

  ‘Yes, it’s ridiculous,’ said Amanda, glaring at Mrs Swindells. ‘I had some appointments scheduled for today, but I’ve cancelled them. We all have to make the best of it, in the circumstances.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Hibbert. ‘I’ve missed the train into Manchester.’ He looked back at Cooper. ‘I have a season ticket for the Newtown to Piccadilly service. So that’s paid for in advance, you see. I can’t get that money back.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Cooper.

  It was all he could say. He couldn’t blurt out what he was actually thinking. He was wondering whether some of these people had actually met each other before. They were behaving like a bunch of complete strangers who’d been thrown together just a few minutes ago as a result of a crisis, like a cast of ill-mixed characters in a disaster movie, who immediately set about arguing with each other while the world fell apart around them. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t have the knack of infuriating the others.

  But then his eyes were drawn to the back of the group. Over the heads of Amanda Hibbert and Mrs Swindells, he saw the Durkins. Vinnie and Tania.

  Mr Lawson had referred to them as ‘a bit hippy for us’. But Cooper had met proper hippies. They flocked to ancient sites like the Nine Ladies stone circle on Stanton Moor every year in June to celebrate the midsummer solstice. The Durkins didn’t look like hippies. Yes, they were quiet and inoffensive. They kept hens and goats, and they seemed to be trying to revive the old self-sufficiency ethos that had once been called ‘the good life’. But they didn’t dress like hippies, or talk like them. They didn’t seem to have any belief system they lived by. His impression was that they were entirely practical and down to earth. Much like small-scale farmers, in fact.

  But the Durkins kept themselves to themselves, which wasn’t necessarily a sign that they were harmless. Now they were observing their neighbours with a kind of impatient contempt, faintly mocking expressions on their faces below the hoods of their jackets, fidgeting as if they couldn’t wait to get away from these awful people and back to their goats. And probably they would have a good laugh at their fellow residents of Shawhead when they got back to Cloughpit House.

  ‘It’s wheelie bin day today,’ said Ian Hibbert.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We have our bin collection on Tuesday. It’s black general waste bins this week. They only collect them once a fortnight, so we can’t miss it.’

  ‘I’m afraid we turned the refuse collection vehicle back at the bottom of Cloughpit Lane,’ said Cooper.

  The news was met with a chorus of groans and protests. Cooper knew that reaction. Not having your bin collected on wheelie bin day was one of the worst things that could happen to a law-abiding household. And deliberately turning the binmen away? Now that was a crime. Much worse than a bloody murder on your doorstep.

  ‘And no post allowed through?’ said Hibbert. ‘We’re running a business, you know.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, sir. It will only be a short inconvenience.’

  ‘Inconvenience?’ repeated Hibbert, the pitch of his voice rising as if he was going to throw a tantrum.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Grant Swindells.

  He said it casually through the side of his mouth, as if he was speaking to an awkward beast. It hardly sounded like a threat. Yet Hibbert went quiet.

  In a way Cooper would have liked to stand here all day listening to these people. In a group they told him far more about themselves than they did when they were being interviewed individually or in couples. Most interesting were the relationships between them, or the lack of relationships. You would think a community so small would develop a neighbourly spirit. But that was probably an idealistic fantasy too. Cooper had seen far more small communities where living cheek by jowl engendered not neighbourliness, but enmity.

  9

  Finally, some support had arrived, a minibus full of officers wearing overalls and baseball caps, their trousers tucked into their boots for a tramp through the countryside. The air support unit had reported a negative result from their sweep of the area. That meant no warm bodies out there, except livestock. There was no option left but a long slog across the ground on foot.

  But it would be getting dark soon and it was already too late to mount a full-scale search tonight. They would only be able to touch the edges of the scene – the verges, the undergrowth and a few yards of field beyond the stone walls.

  As the light began to change in the late afternoon, the area beyond the immediate environs of the bridge was becoming a grey emptiness, an indistinct jumble of walls and hedges, rough grazing and clumps of trees, slopes and ditches. If Mac Kelsey wasn’t at Shawhead, he must be out there somewhere.

  Cooper was concerned that it had taken much too long to get the search started. But it was always a question of available resources and priorities. No doubt his request had been competing with other demands.

  But he’d taken all the initial actions he could at the scene. He would have to wait to deal with any forensic issues Scenes of Crime came up with.

  ‘I think it’s fair to say the residents aren’t happy,’ said Villiers.

  ‘Yes, you were right about that,’ said Cooper.

  ‘We’ve just had to turn the postman away too. He’s been up Cloughpit Lane in his van. He didn’t get as far as the bridge, though. One of the uniforms turned him back.’

  Dev Sharma looked puzzled.

  ‘The postman?’ he said. ‘At this time of day? It’s nearly dark.’

  ‘Lots of rural areas don’t get their post delivered until this time of day. In December it may always be after dark.’

  Luke Irvine worked his way back along the edge of the road from liaising with the officer in charge of the search team.

  ‘It’s funny that the residents of Shawhead haven’t been flocking to volunteer their help with a search,’ he said.

  Villiers nodded. ‘Yes, it’s gone very quiet up there suddenly.’

  ‘Actually, I think it’s probably always this quiet,’ said Cooper. ‘Even when the road’s open.’

  ‘As Mrs Hibbert said – no other way in or out.’

  ‘It’s not true, though, is it?’ said Cooper.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘That there’s no other way out of Shawhead. We’re all focusing too much on the road. Cars aren’t the only means of transport. You could walk across the fields, for a start.’

  ‘You’re right. And I bet some of these people have quad bikes. Or what about a tractor? It’s the ultimate off-road vehicle.’

  ‘Fine, but you could only get so far on a tractor or quad bike,’ said Cooper.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you need access from one field to the next. You need a gate to get through. There are only gates between fields belonging to the same farm. Once you reach someone else’s property, there’s no gate. Just stone walls.’

  ‘A footpath, then. A bridleway?’

  ‘There’s another possibility. One of these farms could have a field entrance from another road.’

  ‘Of course, but what other road is there?’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the map.’

  Villiers laughed. ‘Always the map.’

  ‘It tells you a lot you can’t see on the ground.’

  ‘I know. Just joking.’

  DS Sharma leaned in to look as Cooper extracted an Ordnance Survey Explorer map for the Dark Peak area from his glove compartment. At two and a ha
lf inches to the mile, it was an extraordinarily detailed map and so big that it almost filled his car when it was completely opened up. It covered both sides too, so required turning over and a lot of folding to get it to the right area.

  Someone like Luke Irvine would probably opt automatically for an iPhone app to show Google Maps. The satellite image might be useful, but the screen of a smartphone couldn’t show anything like the detail and the context. From his OS map, Cooper could judge the height of the surrounding hills, the steepness of the contours, the relationship of one place to another in the landscape, all the things that weren’t obvious on the ground.

  Higher Fold Farm was an extensive holding. It looked to have fields bordering a lane that meandered through the Low Leighton area of New Mills, struck out into the countryside, then petered out on the lower slopes of Chinley Churn.

  But the map showed a network of tracks or bridleways branching out from the point where it ended.

  Cooper tapped the map. ‘There’s certainly a public right of way going in the right direction. It starts near Higher Fold Farm and comes out on the road further down, about a hundred yards before the turning into Cloughpit Lane. There’s also a branch heading off towards the canal.’

  ‘It must go under the railway line.’

  ‘Yes, it looks as though there’s another bridge there. It’s difficult to tell whether the path would take a horse, or even a trail bike.’

  ‘If it’s a bridleway, they’re often wide enough for an off-road vehicle to use.’

  ‘Let’s take a look later.’

  ‘Here’s someone who could help,’ said Villiers.

  Before he looked round, Cooper could guess who it was. Grant Swindells loomed over a gate with a Border collie panting at his heels. Mr Swindells’ face was a picture of placid curiosity.

  ‘Mr Swindells,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Can I help?’ said the farmer.

  ‘We were wondering about the footpath that runs across the fields from your farm. A public right of way?’

  ‘Aye, there’s a path right enough. It’s a bit muddy until you get down to the bottom where it goes under the railway.’

  ‘Could you get a vehicle down it?’

  Swindells shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no. I wouldn’t even want to try it in a tractor. It’s too steep and slippery on the slope. You’d turn over before you got a few yards down.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Cooper. ‘Thank you.’

  Not a road, then. But what about a waterway? Or of course a railway?

  ‘Why is this a double bridge?’ he said, almost to himself.

  ‘No idea,’ said Villiers. ‘Two railway lines, I suppose?’

  Cooper nodded doubtfully. It was true that New Mills was served by two railway stations. Here the Sheffield to Manchester express trains and a local service into New Mills Central shared the same track until they separated at a junction further to the north. The other line was way over to the west of the Peak Forest Canal. It ran alongside the A6 as it headed up from Whaley Bridge, and served Newtown station. What other line could there be?

  He looked over the landscape. Rolling fields, stretches of woodland, a scattering of farms. This wasn’t mining or quarrying country, surely?

  ‘Well, you’re going back a bit,’ said Grant Swindells when Cooper tentatively asked him the question.

  ‘Back how far?’

  ‘More than a hundred years, I reckon. In my grandfather or great-grandfather’s day. It’s hard to believe now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well, there were lots of coal mines in this area. The biggest pits were at Ladypit and Pingot. But there were more. Maybe a dozen or so. The coal was poor quality and in the end they couldn’t compete with cheaper stuff from Lancashire and Yorkshire. They’d all pretty much closed by the First World War, so my dad told me.’

  ‘And there were railway lines to carry the coal away?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But they’re long gone too.’

  ‘Perhaps not entirely,’ said Cooper.

  Swindells looked puzzled. But Cooper didn’t try to explain. It was strange how you could live in a place all your life and see only the things that were relevant to you on a day-to-day basis, without seeing the whole picture. For Grant Swindells this was just a railway embankment dividing his fields from someone else’s. He only ever saw the bridge from underneath as he was driving through it.

  ‘They say there used to be a tunnel leading from the pit to the loading wharf on the river,’ said Swindells. ‘I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve never seen any signs of it.’

  A road, a railway line, a river, a canal. And perhaps even a tunnel somewhere. That was getting too complicated.

  Cooper turned. ‘Luke, can you scramble up that banking? Then tell us what you can see at the top.’

  Irvine went to a locked gate in the wall below the bridge. It provided access to the banking, which was covered with a mass of bracken, a dense patch of brambles and a few elder saplings near the top. There was a warning sign on the gate, which Irvine stopped to read first.

  ‘There are forensic traps in use,’ he said. ‘Deployed by British Transport Police to deter thefts of equipment and materials from the trackside.’

  The warning sign was illustrated by a ‘green man’ picture, a photo of a suspect whose face was splattered with fluorescent green, the tell-tale signs of Smart Water. The Transport Police claimed a 100 per cent conviction rate for thefts from sites like this. Derbyshire Constabulary should be so lucky. Their detection rate for crime in the county barely touched 35 per cent.

  ‘It’s only Smart Water,’ said Cooper. ‘Just don’t touch anything. Above all, don’t try to remove any sleepers or copper cable and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Irvine climbed the gate, carefully avoided the barbed wire.

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ he said.

  ‘What have you found?’

  ‘Only this. It looks like a scythe or something.’

  The implement had been left propped against the inside of the gate. And Irvine was right – the steel blade looked freshly sharpened. Perhaps it was waiting for someone to find the time to cut down the bracken. But it might be here for another purpose altogether.

  ‘It’s a long-handled slasher,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Whatever. The blade is sharp enough to do some damage.’

  ‘It looks clean, but we’ll bag it anyway.’

  A moment later Irvine had disappeared into the undergrowth. All that could be heard of his progress was a faint rustling.

  ‘What do you see?’ called Cooper. ‘Is there a railway line on this side of the bridge?’

  ‘No, the tracks have gone and the line is overgrown,’ came Irvine’s reply. ‘It looks as though it hasn’t been used for decades. There are tracks on the other side of the bridge, though.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Anything else?’

  ‘Just horses.’

  ‘Horses?’

  ‘Three of them grazing near the lines, just this side of a fence.’

  ‘I’m coming up,’ said Cooper.

  The opening between the bridges was protected by a wall of blackened stone, spotted with lichen. The parapet was no more than four feet high. Cooper leaned over and gazed down at the road. Yes, a reasonably fit person could drop down onto the roof of a stationary lorry if it was trapped between the bridges. It was a bit of a jump, though, and you might risk serious injury if the roof was slippery. It would have taken someone pretty determined. Or desperate.

  But there, growing out of the brickwork, was a handy sapling, sturdy enough to provide a foothold. He could see that the leaves had been torn and a couple of branches were snapped, the breaks on them fresh.

  ‘We need forensics on the roof of the lorry,’ he said. ‘Though God knows how they’re going to get to it, until the recovery vehicle pulls it free from the bridge.’

  Cooper hadn’t stood quite so close to railway lines for a long time. The
sight of the shiny rails, the massive sleepers, the heaps of stone ballast, took him back to his childhood, when he and his friends would take the chance to sneak up to the track and listen for that singing in the lines that told you a train was coming long before it appeared in the distance.

  ‘If a train went past at the time of the incident, the driver or passengers might have seen something,’ said Cooper.

  ‘If it went past at exactly the right moment.’

  ‘There are both express trains and local services using this part of the line. They must come through every few minutes. We’ll get someone to check.’

  The old mineral line ran between avenues of brambles and birch, easily wide enough to drive a vehicle along. The ground was firm, probably still lying on a bed of stone chippings laid as ballast for the tracks. In fact, there had been vehicles using route this from time to time. It was obvious from the two channels worn on either side of a central grassy strip. But not recently. There seemed to be no fresh tyre marks, even on the muddier sections.

  In any case, how would you get access to the old line?

  The answer lay five hundred yards along at the next bridge. It was a single bridge at the bottom of an unsurfaced track reached from the footpath across Mr Swindells’ fields by a worn set of steps. Here the route of the old railway track didn’t go over a bridge but stopped at a padlocked gate.

  And there, in a field just off Cloughpit Lane, was the only surviving remnant of the mining industry that had once thrived in this area – a small stone shaft sitting in isolation, dwarfed by an electricity pylon. It was held together by iron mesh and cement, crowned by a rim of barbed wire, in case you felt like climbing into it. And no doubt someone had done exactly that at some time.

  ‘Could someone have come this way?’ asked Irvine.

  Cooper took hold of his shoulder to hold him back from walking any further.

  ‘Yes, look at the tyre marks on the ground here,’ he said. ‘They’re quite fresh. Made since the last heavy rainfall, anyway. We had quite a downpour on Saturday, which would have washed these away. But they’ve hardened in the mud.’