Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  He walked over and looked at the door that led upstairs. There was a sign on the handle, and the door didn’t move when he turned the handle carefully.

  Cooper looked at his watch. He was due at Fran Oxley’s in five minutes, and he daren’t be late. He couldn’t risk losing the first chance he’d had to talk to one of the Oxleys. Pity. He would have liked to hang around a bit longer.

  He was halfway across the road to Waterloo Terrace when the noise hit him. Cooper stopped in amazement and turned to look at the pub. It was the first time he had heard the screaming.

  Neil Granger had been rehearsing for something the night before he’d been killed. And Emma Renshaw had been a member of the same group two years ago, according to her parents. But what was it all about?

  Cooper hesitated, remembering that Diane Fry was in the Black Country with Gavin Murfin. Then he rang her mobile number anyway.

  ‘Diane, what was the play that Neil Granger was supposed to be rehearsing for?’

  ‘Something called The Border Rats,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Why?’

  ‘I’m outside the pub in Withens now. The landlord’s a bit coy, but it sounds like they’re rehearsing again. And I’ve never heard anything so noisy in my life.’

  ‘What do you mean? Is it a musical?’

  ‘There seems to be music, but no singing. Just stamping and banging.’

  ‘Something modern and avant-garde, then.’

  ‘In Withens? Are you kidding?’

  ‘Call in and see what they’re doing.’

  ‘I’ve tried, but the door’s locked, and there’s a sign that says “private function”.’

  ‘Oh, well. I don’t see that it really matters.’

  ‘I’d like to hang on until they come out, and find out what it is. But I’m supposed to be at Fran Oxley’s in a few minutes. It could be my only chance ever to speak to an Oxley and get a reply.’

  ‘You can ask somebody another time.’

  ‘I suppose so. But won’t we be interviewing the other members of the cast and the stage crew? Maybe someone noticed something wrong, or Granger said something to them.’

  ‘We’ll get round to that, if necessary. But his brother was there, too, and he says Neil was fine when he left. I really don’t see that it matters.’

  ‘Maybe not. I’m just curious.’

  ‘Anyway, it isn’t a priority at the moment, if at all,’ said Fry. ‘We’re concentrating on the weapon, the forensic evidence at the scene, and the contents of the car. We’re working on a theory that Granger had an argument with one or more of his associates in the antiques gang. We think they had either had just done a job, or were making some arrangements for disposal of the stolen items.’

  ‘We?’ said Cooper. ‘This is DCI Kessen’s theory?’

  ‘He’s SIO. In Mr Kessen’s assessment, that’s likely to be the most fruitful line of enquiry and therefore the best uses of resources – which, as usual, are insufficient.’

  ‘Well, if he thinks he can justify his decision in the Murder Book,’ said Cooper, thinking of the log that the Senior Investigating Officer had to complete meticulously, in case he was ever challenged on a decision in court.

  ‘Well, your friends in the Rural Crime Team are sharing their leads on the antiques thefts, so no doubt we’ll be picking a few people up for questioning. With a bit of luck, they won’t have thought to dispose of the clothes they were wearing, and we’ll get a DNA match from Neil Granger’s blood. They’re bound to have got blood on them somewhere, if only their shoes. Those head wounds of his bled profusely.’

  ‘And there’s the bronze bust, of course.’

  ‘Absolutely. That has to have been their big mistake. Maybe they didn’t know Granger had it in his car. There are no fingerprints on it, but it’s distinctive, so we’ll almost certainly be able to trace it to an owner. If we locate other items from the same property in somebody’s possession, we’re laughing. Yes, this one could be over bar the shouting within forty-eight hours, just the way we like them. Then you can go back to rural crime, Ben.’

  ‘And you can go back to the Renshaws.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  ‘I suppose the possibility of a link to Emma Renshaw isn’t a high priority either?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Lowest of the low, I’d say. We don’t even want to think about going down that route. Apart from the fact that they knew each other, where’s the link anyway?’

  ‘Apart from her mobile phone having turned up just now?’

  ‘Coincidence. The best bet there is that somebody found the bag and grabbed it, thinking it might be something worth nicking. When they realized it wasn’t, they dumped it again. Originally, it could have been anywhere. The laboratory might be able to give us something more specific, but we’ll be lucky. If some thieving little sod with a record has left his prints on the phone, he’s in for a rough time, sure enough. But the most we’re going to get is the original dump site for the phone.’

  ‘Emma’s body could be in the same area,’ said Cooper.

  Fry was silent for a moment. He knew she hadn’t overlooked that fact, but was choosing not to consider it for now. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ she said. ‘Was there anything else, Ben? Only Gavin wants to get on with some interviews. You know what he’s like for dedication to the job.’

  ‘Diane, I have one more chance with the Oxleys tonight, when I’m seeing Fran. But if I’m still having difficulties tomorrow, would you help me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean, if I go up there much more often, they’re going to start complaining about harassment. My options are getting increasingly limited. We have no grounds for bringing any of them in for questioning.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll help.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘I said yes, didn’t I? Talk to me tomorrow. I’ll look forward to visiting the Oxleys.’

  Ben Cooper stood outside Waterloo Terrace and studied the black brick houses. So what was going on behind the doors of numbers 1 to 5? How many of the Oxleys were here, rather than in the upstairs room at the pub? Did they know he was out here, or were they oblivious, locked up in their own isolated little lives? It wasn’t only Mrs Wallwin who was isolated here in Waterloo Terrace. But what was the difference between the Oxleys standing against a world that wanted rid of them, and Mrs Wallwin, alone in a world that just didn’t care? The difference was that the Oxleys had each other.

  Cooper paused at the thought. He had taken the Oxleys’ closeness for granted. For years, he had been taught not to assume anything, but the Oxleys had pushed him into the wrong response. Did they really have each other? Or was that only a front they presented to the outside world? Who could know what was going on within the walls of Waterloo Terrace, except the family themselves?

  He didn’t think Mrs Wallwin was suspicious at all. She wasn’t creepy. And she wasn’t unfriendly. But also, she wasn’t an Oxley.

  Could the Oxley family really be afraid of her, feeling they had to keep her at bay and defend their territory from her? Mrs Wallwin was an unlikely invader. But, to the Oxleys, she was an alien, a stranger in their midst – and therefore as threatening as a full-scale siege might have been. Mrs Wallwin, the Trojan horse.

  Then Cooper remembered Mrs Wallwin mentioning her son, who worked for the water company. Was it possible that the company had put her into the house at Waterloo Terrace as a spy? Could the Oxleys be right to be suspicious of her?

  Remembering the silent Alsatian, Cooper hesitated before he went through the gate. Some body armour would have been nice, and gloves and a riot helmet. Maybe an entire set of flame-proof overalls, boots and shin protectors, like the public-order teams wore. But he had nothing at all to protect him. Finally, he shrugged and walked up the path to ring the bell at number 5 Waterloo Terrace. There was no barking or growling, no scratching of claws on the tiles in the hallway behind the door. There was just the sound of th
e bell itself, which in fact was more like a buzzer. He pressed it again, and waited. Nothing.

  Wearily, Cooper rang the bell again. Was it for the fifth time, or the sixth time in just a couple of days? He listened to the buzzing in the house, noting a slightly different tone to the noise. It was somehow clearer today. Maybe Fran Oxley had cleaned the cobwebs away from the box. Inevitably, he got no reply, so he knocked on the door, giving it a good double rap that anyone in the house ought to hear. He found the door moved under his fist, swinging inward slightly. It hadn’t even been on the latch, let alone locked.

  He pushed the door a bit more, until he had a view into the hallway, but without moving from the outside step.

  ‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Anybody home?’

  There was silence from the house. He could see right down the hallway to a set of stairs leading to the first floor, and at the end of the passage a door was open into a small kitchen. The silence here wasn’t threatening, but worrying in a different way.

  ‘Anybody home?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘It’s the police. Detective Constable Cooper, from Edendale.’

  Still no answer.

  ‘I called the other day. I was with PC Udall, from the Rural Crime Team. You asked me to come and see you. Hello?’

  Now he was in a quandary. He had to make a judgement on whether he was justified in entering the house. He had no grounds for suspicion that a crime was taking place. He had been invited to the house by the occupier, but not actually invited in. Indeed, all along this terrace it had been made clear to him that he wasn’t welcome in their houses by the Oxleys. If he entered, he would have to be able to justify it later. Worse, he might be giving the Oxleys an excuse to treat him as an intruder.

  But somewhere in Fran Oxley’s house he could hear a rustling. It was a surreptitious movement, perhaps the sole of a shoe moving cautiously across a bare floorboard, or a sleeve brushing against the wall. It seemed to be coming from the hallway, or from the bottom of the stairs. Cooper felt his way across the kitchen, conscious of his feet sticking to the vinyl flooring as he passed the cooker. Before he could reach the door, he trod in something particularly sticky, and his shoe left the floor with a tearing noise. He froze, with his foot in mid air. There was a moment of silence. Then he heard somebody scuttling back down the hallway and out of the side door of the house into the passage.

  ‘Damn.’

  Cooper tripped over a loose flap of vinyl as he ran through into the hallway. Despite the lack of light, he could see that the side door was open, but just beginning to swing shut. He reached it and paused, putting out his hand to stop the door closing fully. Slowly, he pushed the door open again, careful to make sure that no one was standing on the other side of it in the dark passage. The door met no resistance, but went back against the wall of the house with a small thump. He wished he’d brought a torch with him from the car – but who would have expected to need a torch inside a house?

  He had no need to let his eyes get accustomed to the darkness, as it was actually less dark out in the passageway than it had been indoors. He checked the passage was clear to the left, then walked carefully towards the back garden. He could no longer hear anyone running, which meant either that they had been too quick for him and had got well away from the scene already, or that they were hiding nearby in the darkness.

  In the Oxleys’ yard, the fusty smell of old timber was overpowering. There were a couple of old outhouses built of the same black brick as the terrace itself. They must have been outside toilets once. Privies. These things were tourist attractions in some places. There was even a book about them. But Cooper was sure that the Oxleys’ outhouses wouldn’t feature in any book. If a writer had ever dared to venture into the yard behind Waterloo Terrace to get a glimpse of them, he was probably even now lying dead and mouldering behind the sagging wooden door with a broken hinge on the end privy.

  A ragged black-and-white cat was patrolling the stacks of pallets. As Cooper watched, it slithered slowly into the darkness in the middle of one of the stacks, vanishing bit by bit until only the white tip of its tail could be seen, twitching slowly. Then even the tail disappeared. There must be at least mice living under there, maybe rats. But if there were rats, what the Oxleys needed was a good terrier.

  The thought made Cooper remember the dog. The one he had encountered four days previously had been a long-haired Alsatian, and it had been as silent a killer as the cat.

  He stopped at the corner of the pallets and listened, trying to orientate himself. He wasn’t sure how big the yard was, or even whether it ran parallel to the terrace, or at an angle. The dog had come down the passage between numbers 1 and 2, which must be towards the far end. But if he walked along the back wall of the yard, would he be getting further away from the houses, or nearer?

  At the moment, there was no sound that would suggest the presence of the dog – no click of claws on concrete or of a chain rattling. The fusty smell of wood and rusted iron was too strong for him to pick up a canine scent. But he would have to watch out for a kennel or a pen of some kind when he got closer to number 2. The dog had been taught not to bark or growl before it attacked, and that had two results. It would give him no warning of an attack, but it also meant the dog could listen more acutely without the noise of its own barking to hinder it. Cooper knew that it would hear him much sooner than he heard it. There would be no contest. If the dog came for him, his only hope might be to climb the pallets and hope the stacks were more stable than they looked.

  His foot nudged something heavy that made a metallic scraping sound as it moved. Cooper leaned down and felt what was on the ground. Something round and heavy, and made of steel. He moved his hand along, but had the sense of something that stretched several yards ahead of him. There were more lying next to it, too. Scaffolding pipes.

  It was becoming more difficult to move around here. The ground was littered with unidentifiable objects, and the path between them wasn’t clear. But up ahead, Cooper could see the outline of the flat-bed lorry the Oxleys used.

  He looked towards the houses. Apart from number 7, where Mrs Wallwin lived, none of them had their curtains drawn closed on their downstairs windows. Numbers 2 and 4 had lights showing, and Cooper could see into their kitchens. Presumably, the Oxleys weren’t concerned about people peering into their windows from the back. Who would be in the yard behind Waterloo Terrace at night, anyway? Nobody with any sense, thought Cooper.

  Mrs Wallwin, though, had different habits. Either she had good reason to expect someone to be peering in, or she had something to hide. Wendy Tagg would say the latter. But Cooper thought he’d be surprised if Mrs Wallwin didn’t get some level of harassment from the Oxley children, even if it was only banging on her windows and shouting insults. Even the youngest children would soon have picked up on the atmosphere of hostility towards her, and weren’t so restrained in expressing it.

  Cooper made the decision not to venture any further, but to go back down the passage or through the house to his car, where he could call in and fetch a torch. But before he could turn round, he became aware that he was seeing a movement just beyond the garden – the movement of a dark shape against the stacks of pallets in the yard and the slightly lighter tree cover on the hillside behind Withens. He watched the shape move along the fence, then stop and turn towards him.

  Cautiously, Cooper felt his way towards the fence and found he could see a gap where a gate must be open. He edged sideways, manoeuvring for a better angle from where he could see the figure against the sky.

  It was a person, certainly, but it seemed unnaturally tall. Scott Oxley was tall – but not that tall. There were other things wrong, too – the silhouette didn’t quite gel with what a human outline should look like. Cooper was squinting to try to make out details of the odd shape, when he realized there was another standing within a couple of feet of it. Then a third and a fourth became visible. There was a line of them along the inside of the fenc
e, standing among the pallets and scaffolding pipes and piles of old tyres.

  There was a scratching sound and a spark of flame from a match as one of the figures lit a cigarette. Cooper saw the heads and shoulders of four people. He saw four black faces, but no eyes. Where their eyes should have been, there were only a series of metallic flashes reflecting the flame of the match before it died.

  But it wasn’t the sight of the reflected flames that stirred the hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck. It wasn’t the whiff of sulphur from the match, or the acrid taste of the cigarette smoke on the air. His overwhelming memory of the moment would be the bittersweet mingling of sweat, leather and beer. And the faint jingling of tiny bells.

  26

  As soon as they turned off the motorway and headed back into Derbyshire, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin began passing through fields of oilseed rape that Fry had noticed on their way to the West Midlands. She had the window open, and the ammonia reek of the crop filled the car. She had surprised herself earlier by knowing that the yellow flowers were oilseed rape. Ben Cooper’s world must be rubbing off on her.

  ‘Well, that was a bit of a waste of time,’ said Murfin.

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘Eh? That Stark girl was a dead loss. She has a short-term memory problem, if you ask me.’

  ‘She certainly couldn’t remember anything that wasn’t in the West Midlands reports at the time.’

  ‘She remembered the Renshaws.’

  ‘Yes. In fact, you’d almost think she wanted to forget all about it.’

  ‘But Emma Renshaw was supposed to be her friend,’ protested Murfin.

  ‘Mmm. But people deal with these things in different ways, Gavin. Maybe Debbie Stark had it right. She said she was upset for a while, but then she managed to put it behind her. Like she said, she had to move on, and get on with her life.’