Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Did you see some kids up on the road?’ said Oxley.

  Cooper nodded. ‘There were a bunch near the bus stop.’

  ‘Was Jake among them? Little lad, younger than the others. He has a bad leg.’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with any of them,’ said Oxley. ‘They’re all good lads.’

  ‘I’m sure they are, sir.’

  ‘And I’ll tan the hides off them, if they’re not. Now, you’ve been asked to leave, and you’re trespassing.’

  Cooper took a last look at the yard as he turned to leave. He took particular note of the vehicles he could see parked in among the pallets and old tyres. There was a light blue Transit van and a small flat-bed lorry, but they were at the wrong angle for him to make out the registration numbers.

  Tracy Udall made a helpless gesture at him as they walked back up the track past Waterloo Terrace.

  ‘Where does Lucas Oxley work, Tracy?’ said Cooper. ‘What’s his job?’

  ‘I think you’re asking the question wrong,’ said Udall. ‘I don’t think he has a job exactly.’

  ‘He isn’t registered for unemployment benefit. I checked.’

  ‘No. I suppose you might say he’s self-employed. And he works wherever work is to be had.’

  ‘Mmm. That sounds like a definition of “criminal” to me.’

  ‘Did you notice all the stuff round the back of the houses in Waterloo Terrace? Stacks of pallets? Roof tiles? Tyres? Fence posts? He’s trading, that’s what he’s doing. I imagine he’ll pick up anything that he can get cheap – maybe just for the cost of a bit of effort by his lads to collect the stuff and bring it back to Withens. Then, if anyone around here wants some fence posts or roof tiles, they know where to come. I’m betting he sells some of the stuff out of the back of a van at car boot sales and cattle markets, too.’

  ‘Legally?’

  ‘It’s mostly legal, I should think.’

  ‘Tell me about the bit that isn’t.’

  ‘Well, let me put it this way – I wouldn’t take the tiles off my roof and leave them by the roadside overnight. And I wouldn’t park a lorry with empty pallets on it anywhere accessible.’

  ‘But who’s going to know one pallet from another?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Some of the sons work, though, don’t they?’

  ‘You mean, do they have jobs?’

  ‘Yes. Jobs where they go off to work and earn an honest living, like you and me.’

  ‘They do bits of casual labouring, I think. There’s still some farm work to be had at certain times of the year, and beating for the shoots. But, mostly, they’ll be hiring themselves out as labour with the van or the flat-bed lorry.’

  ‘They don’t sound like they’re your antique thieves, anyway.’

  ‘No, I never really thought they were.’

  ‘Are we no nearer getting a lead on the thefts?’

  ‘The people we’ve interviewed so far are small-scale. We don’t think they’re responsible for the majority of thefts. It’s going to take a lot more work.’

  As they headed back towards Udall’s car, Cooper saw the bus coming down the hill. A woman got off at the stop in the car park and began to walk across the road towards Waterloo Terrace.

  ‘I’ll catch you up, Tracy,’ said Cooper. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  The woman was wearing jeans and a dark coat and carrying a shoulder bag. Cooper watched her approach the terrace. She went straight up the path of number 5 and used a key to enter the house.

  ‘Fran Oxley,’ Cooper said to himself. ‘So you’re home, then. And you can’t pretend that you’re not.’

  By the time he got to the house, Fran Oxley had already gone inside and shut the door. Cooper waited a couple of minutes to let her see his card and read it, then he walked up the path and knocked.

  She must have been standing right behind the door, because she opened it with his card still in her hand. She looked at him blankly, then at the card, and he could see her putting two and two together without any trouble. The Oxleys had no trouble recognizing a police officer when they saw one. He might as well be carrying a neon sign around on his head.

  ‘Is this you?’ she said, tapping the card.

  ‘Yes. Are you Frances Oxley?’

  ‘I don’t have anything to say.’

  ‘If I could just ask you a few questions.’

  ‘I don’t have to answer any questions.’

  ‘I was talking to your father earlier on –’

  ‘You’ve been talking to Dad?’ she said incredulously.

  ‘Yes, Mr Lucas Oxley.’

  ‘Then you’ll have found out everything you’re going to hear from this family.’

  Cooper tried to look past her into the house. He had been concentrating on his body language as much as his words. He was hoping Fran would be the one member of the Oxley family to recognize that he wasn’t a threat. He was hoping that she might even invite him into the house. But she hadn’t quite gone for it yet.

  ‘It’s about Neil Granger,’ said Cooper. ‘Your cousin Neil.’

  Fran Oxley hesitated, looked at his card as if to give it back to him, but hung on to it instead. She looked up the terrace along the row of doors.

  ‘I’d like you to leave now,’ she said.

  Ben Cooper had rarely felt so impotent as he stood in the track watching the houses. He could hear children running up the passage behind the terrace, whispering to each other and brushing against the fencing. Smoke began to rise from one of the chimneys, and the smell of cooking was coming from somewhere, maybe from the open window at number 1. If he wasn’t mistaken, the children were going to be served microwaved pizza for tea. He couldn’t quite name the flavour, but it was something with onions, and the smell was making him salivate. Even worse was the feeling of isolation when Cooper heard a back door slam and the voices of the children were cut off as they entered one of the houses. That eerie Withens silence fell again, broken only by a clap of wings from pigeons taking off from the roof.

  He began to feel foolish and lonely standing there trying to picture the scene indoors. He was frustrated not to know for sure which of the houses the children had gone into, or which adult was in charge of the microwave. Or was it an adult? Any one of the older Oxley children would be perfectly capable of taking a couple of pizzas out of the freezer and opening a family-sized tin of baked beans. Or maybe even one of the younger kids. Some children learned to look after themselves from a very early age, out of sheer necessity. And the Oxleys were nothing if not independent.

  ‘Damn and blast.’

  Cooper began to walk back to the car, feeling like the single person at Christmas, shut out of all the family fun just when everybody was supposed to be enjoying themselves most. He felt exposed, too, as if the whole population of Withens was watching him from behind its curtains, laughing at his powerlessness.

  ‘Diane, you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s time you came down here and saw for yourself.’

  But not all the Oxley children were home for their tea. There were three boys standing in the road in front of the bus shelter. They had been playing with a football, but now one of them was holding it under his arm. As Cooper watched, the youngest one, Jake, began to make his way across the road towards the other two boys. He walked with a noticeable limp, as if one leg were shorter than the other. But it didn’t seem to hinder him too much. When one of the others threw the ball down again, he ran for it nimbly enough, and kicked it with his good leg towards the car park.

  It was the stationary car standing in the middle of the road that drew Cooper’s attention from the boys. The vehicle was a Mitsubishi pick-up, with its engine still running as if it had come to a sudden halt. But it stood in the centre of the carriageway, where it would cause an obstruction if anyone wanted to get past.

  Then Cooper recognized the driver. It was Michael Dearden, frozen behind his steering w
heel, staring at the Oxley boys like a rabbit caught in headlights. Cooper had rarely seen a grown man look so frightened.

  23

  Wednesday

  Randy had spilled soil out of a plant pot in the conservatory. Ben Cooper brushed it up, rearranged the pots more neatly on their shelves, pushed the cat’s basket back into its corner and straightened the plaid blanket it was using as a bed.

  He looked for other things to tidy, decided that the back door needed painting some time soon, brushed some cobwebs off a pane of glass. He stared through the glass, where he could make out the shapes of the trees against the lights of the houses in Meadow Road. The branches were just starting to come into leaf, and their outlines against the light were fuzzier and less stark than they had been all winter. Growth was progressing here, too.

  He went back into the kitchen and shut out the sight of the garden. In the porch, there were some letters behind the front door. One advantage of living in town was that his mail came early in the morning, before he left for work if he was on a day shift. At Bridge End Farm, out there beyond even the smell of the town, the mail was delivered about lunchtime.

  ‘What have we got today then, Randy? Would you like a new credit card? A loan to help you pay for a foreign holiday, perhaps? Want to join a book club?’

  Randy looked at him contemptuously and licked his lips.

  ‘Yes, I know what you want. I was only kidding. Hello, what’s this? A postcard.’

  The postcard had a picture of Chatsworth House on it. He always liked to try to figure out who a postcard was from before he turned it over to look at the message, but he couldn’t think who would bother to send him a card from Chatsworth, when it was only a few miles away.

  When he finally looked and saw who the card was from, his first uncharitable thought was that she must have stolen it from the souvenir shop. But that didn’t make sense, really. She would have had to pay to get into Chatsworth House in the first place.

  The message said: ‘Sorry about the other day. You were great, so thanks. I know you’ll make the right decision.’ It was signed: ‘Love, A’.

  ‘It’s from Angie,’ said Cooper.

  Randy made a noise like a bird chirruping, then began to cough, as though trying to clear a hair ball from his throat.

  ‘Give over,’ said Cooper. ‘You’re not dying of starvation just yet.’

  The cat got up and stalked off towards the kitchen with its tail twitching.

  ‘Angie,’ said Cooper, reading the postcard again. ‘What does she mean by “I know you’ll make the right decision?” What right decision?’

  This time, the cat didn’t answer. It was in the kitchen and pretending it couldn’t hear him. Cooper turned the postcard back over and frowned at the picture of Chatsworth House, as if it could have some hidden significance he was supposed to figure out. Chatsworth? Was there a connection? Was she trying to tell him something?

  ‘It’s too subtle for me,’ he said.

  He dropped the mail on the table and headed towards the kitchen. ‘Randy,’ he said, ‘why the hell have I started talking to myself?’

  Copies of the Social Services report on the Oxleys had arrived on Cooper’s desk at West Street. The visits to Waterloo Terrace were summarized, along with meetings at the Social Services offices. It took several sheets. Cooper knew he was unlikely to have time to read the older stuff. The visits had started in 1986, and the most recent was four weeks ago, at the beginning of April.

  Taken together with visits by their landlords, Peak Water, by officials from other council departments such as environmental health and education, and from the police, it would make a pretty intimidating list. No wonder his own appearances day after day had failed to impress the Oxleys. He must have seemed the latest of a long line of official busybodies, anxious to interfere in their lives, poking their noses in, demanding information about their private affairs. And all, obviously, with the purpose of finding an excuse to get them out of their homes. The fact that any of the Oxleys had spoken to him at all ought to be taken as a compliment. Even ‘bugger off’ was more than some of the council representatives had achieved.

  Cooper took a call while he was reading the reports on the Oxleys boys again. It was Fran Oxley.

  ‘Do you still want to talk?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I thought you might have given up by now.’

  ‘I won’t be giving up.’

  ‘Can you come to see me tonight? It’ll have to be latish, about nine? I’ll be home from work then.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be there. What do you want to talk about?’

  Fran hesitated a moment, but seemed to make up her mind. ‘If you come tonight,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you about Neil.’

  Cooper was smiling when he put the phone down. The fact of somebody actually speaking to him gave him a surge of satisfaction. For a moment, it crossed his mind that it might be a con, a practical joke by the Oxleys. But Fran had sounded sincere, if a little hesitant.

  Humming quietly to himself, he went back to the reports. It was then that he noticed the Oxleys had an Anti-Social Behaviour Order in force against them.

  ‘For goodness’ sake. No wonder Lucas Oxley made such a point of saying he wouldn’t tolerate his lads getting in trouble.’

  Cooper looked up guiltily, hoping no one in the office had heard him. He didn’t even have the cat for an excuse.

  An ASBO made a difference. Persistent juvenile offenders were a thorny problem for the police. Experienced defendants knew to plead ‘not guilty’ to charges every single time. They had learned that it meant their case would have to go to a crown court trial and a jury verdict. Well, you have to try your luck, they would say. Then they would make up a story to explain their actions – any story at all, it didn’t really matter. Often, they put up no defence at all, but left it to their defence lawyer to pick holes in the prosecution case and expose any procedural flaws that could be found.

  Some defenders had become expert at getting an acquittal on a technicality, picking at the threads of the procedural detail, so that even the most damning evidence of guilt might never be considered by the court. Police officers had learned that the most important thing in their lives was to follow correct procedure, if they were ever going to get a conviction. The fully documented chain of evidence, the properly executed search warrant, the interview conducted to the letter of the rule book – those were the only real strengths they could call on, under the scrutiny of a court. Justice, truth, and the suffering of victims were insignificant side issues.

  And even time could be against them. The defence might find ways of delaying a case so long that witnesses forgot what they had seen, or changed their minds, or decided it might be more sensible, after all, not to appear in court.

  But an Anti-Social Behaviour Order could be taken out in civil proceedings, which meant the same burden of proof wasn’t needed. Just the number of complaints from neighbours could be enough for the council to obtain an ASBO, which obliged the family involved to refrain from anti-social behaviour for a specific period – in this case, five years. But the sting in the tail was that, although an ASBO was a civil action, breaking one was a criminal offence and could mean a jail sentence.

  Of course, the threat posed by an ASBO might also mean that people would go to greater lengths to conceal offences.

  Cooper thought about Lucas Oxley. He seemed like a man genuinely passionate about keeping his family in line, but also obsessive about preserving their privacy. What lengths would Lucas go to if he thought one of his family had stepped over that line?

  Also in the heap of paper on his desk, Cooper found copies of the conviction records for the Oxleys and began to thumb through them. He saw that three years previously, Scott Oxley had been convicted of criminal damage, and given probation. No surprise there. But he had been charged jointly with Craig Alan Oxley, aged sixteen.

  ‘Who’s Craig?’ said Cooper.

  Then there was anoth
er conviction. Two years ago, for taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent, Scott had been sentenced to fifty hours community service. He was charged jointly with Craig Alan Oxley, aged seventeen.

  ‘Craig? There isn’t a Craig.’

  Cooper scanned the rest of the records. He wondered if that was how most of the Oxleys spent their time – doing community service instead of working for a living.

  ‘But the point is, who’s Craig?’

  Was he a middle brother? A cousin? Cooper searched for a separate record for Craig Alan Oxley. His address was given as 5 Waterloo Terrace, Withens. That was Fran Oxley’s house.

  If only the Oxleys were on the electoral roll, it would help a lot. But the Oxleys probably believed that if they were on the electoral roll, all sorts of people would come looking for them, to make them pay Council Tax and income tax.

  And Fran’s husband – what was his name? Barry Cully, that was it. But he wasn’t her husband. Fran had told him that Barry was an electrician and was away working in Saudi Arabia at the moment. So Craig could be living at Fran’s house.

  But then Cooper turned to the last page of Craig Oxley’s court records. No, he wasn’t living in Fran’s house. He was in Lancashire. For his last offence he had been sent to the Young Offenders’ Institution at Hindley.

  Cooper thought about trying to obtain school records for the Oxleys. Of course, he wasn’t even certain that they were all Lucas’s children. But one thing he felt sure of – for the Oxley boys, school would mean social isolation. Only at home in Withens were they among their own kind.

  DI Hitchens put his head round the door of the CID room and called Cooper away from his reports. Cooper had already stopped humming after reading about the ASBO and Craig Oxley. But this wasn’t a good sign, either.

  ‘We’ve pulled in one of Neil Granger’s associates, by the name of David Senior,’ said Hitchens. ‘He seems to have the closest links to Granger, and he was actually seen near his house on Friday night, a few hours before Granger was killed.’

  ‘Are we interviewing him, sir?’

  ‘No, he’s stewing in his own juices at the moment, waiting for the duty solicitor. But interestingly, we had a call from Granger’s brother, who wants to talk to us.’