Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  Alton heaved on the mat of vegetation. It began to come away in a large lump, a long, tangled blanket of it. It had shallow roots that came away in thin, white tendrils ending in clumps of peaty soil that crumbled and trickled back on to the ground. Alton found he had exposed a wide area of ground that hadn’t seen the light for many months. There were lots of insects wriggling and scurrying to get out of the way, and small snails dropping from the brambles on to the ground.

  He hadn’t realized quite how shallow the peat was in the churchyard, but there seemed to be part of the bedrock showing below the surface. It was a wonder that anyone had ever found enough depth for burials. Maybe that was why the huge slabs had been laid horizontally, to conceal the fact that the graves themselves were shallow instead of the traditional six feet deep.

  But then Alton frowned. He knew perfectly well that the bedrock here was millstone grit, not limestone – that was further south in the White Peak. The rock beneath the peat should be dark, not light grey, as this lump was that protruded through the surface among the insects and snails.

  Finally, his eyes seemed to focus properly, and he saw the other grey shapes exposed on the surface. There was a series of curved strips like the bars of a cage. There was a flattened edge like a spatula. And there were dark holes in the object he had originally taken for a stone – holes full of shadows that seemed to stare back at him accusingly.

  ‘No!’

  Without thinking, he threw the mat of vegetation back, covering the bones he had exposed, as if putting them out of sight would make them cease to exist. Alton screwed up his face, wishing that he could reduce the bones to dust by the power of his thoughts.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Oh, God, why have you done this to me?’

  28

  ‘For heaven’s sake, get these people moved away,’ said DI Hitchens.

  A couple of uniformed officers moved into action. Ben Cooper hadn’t noticed the small crowd that had been gathering on the other side of the churchyard wall. He saw some of the Oxley boys among them, and their neighbour, Mrs Wallwin. And there was Fran Oxley, too, at the back of the crowd. Unlike the others, she wasn’t staring at the bones on the ground, but at Cooper himself. He met her eyes, wondering what it was she was trying to tell him. Of all the Oxleys, she was the one he felt he had come closest to communicating with. Yet even Fran wasn’t able to speak to him directly, to tell him anything of what she knew. Cooper was an outsider. And that was too much of a boundary for her to cross.

  ‘Where’s the vicar now?’ said Hitchens. ‘Mr Alton, is it?’

  ‘He’s inside, sir.’

  ‘See if he’s ready to make a statement yet.’

  Cooper noticed that the ivy covering the wall of the church had been cut back at some time. It had clambered over the guttering and spread right across the roof towards the ridge before a line had been drawn. If it had been left to itself, no doubt it would have crossed the ridge, too, and spread down the other side, until the entire church was covered. But the ivy stems had been brutally hacked off about three feet below the gutter and the suckers had been peeled from the stonework. You could still see the little white marks where the ivy had taken a grip.

  But whoever had cut back the ivy here hadn’t bothered to remove the tendrils that had been growing through the gaps between the roof tiles. Cut off from their parent stem, they had turned black and dry, some of them still sticking vertically into the air. Cooper supposed that trying to get them out would have pulled the tiles loose. But now there was a little petrified forest on the roof.

  Down on the wall, the ivy was re-growing, of course. Bright green shoots were creeping up the brickwork, inching their way back towards the gutter. He could see from the marks on the bricks that the plants had already grown about twelve inches since they were cut back. Well, that was the way of nature. It never stopped. It would always win in the end, if only out of sheer persistence.

  Derek Alton was sitting in one of the front pews of the church. As Cooper walked up the aisle, he could see only the back of the vicar’s bowed head, and he thought he must be praying. Alton looked up when he heard Cooper’s footsteps.

  ‘Has it gone yet?’ he said.

  ‘You mean the remains? No, sir. There are procedures to go through while they’re still in situ.’

  ‘Photographs, I suppose.’

  ‘That kind of thing, yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to see it again. I don’t want to come out until it’s gone.’

  ‘That’s not a problem, sir.’

  ‘I’m a Jonah, aren’t I?’ said Alton.

  ‘Jonah? I’m not as familiar with the Old Testament as you are, but wasn’t he the one who got involved with the wrong end of a whale?’

  Alton smiled. ‘Jonah had bad luck. He became the symbol of somebody who brings disaster down on others. When sailors had bad luck at sea, they believed it was because they had a Jonah on board.’

  ‘That’s sounds rather superstitious of you, sir.’

  ‘I’m afraid superstition is difficult to avoid in these parts. It seeps into the bones.’

  ‘And why should you think yourself a Jonah?’

  ‘Why? Neil Granger dies a horrible death shortly after leaving me. And now I find there’s some other poor soul lying dead in my churchyard, and has been there for years. I disturbed their bones with my interfering. I must have walked over them many times. Neil must have almost walked over them when he left here that night. He walked over those bones on his way to his death, and he didn’t even see them.’

  Alton shivered. Cooper wondered whether he should offer some reassuring words about the body being merely the vessel, and the spirit going on to better things. But he decided it wouldn’t be appropriate. A doctor to check the vicar over would be more the thing.

  ‘I have to ask you this … We’ve found human remains in your churchyard. Do you have any idea whose they might be?’

  ‘None at all,’ said Alton, raising shocked eyes to Cooper. ‘Surely they must have been in the ground long before I came here?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet. A body can be reduced to a skeleton quite quickly, depending on the conditions.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I want to know that,’ said Alton. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me.’

  ‘I’m sorry to distress you, sir. But, obviously, if there’s anything at all you can think of that would help us identify this person, it would be very helpful.’

  ‘Of course. But just at the moment, you know …’

  ‘I understand. We’ll need you to come in and make a statement some time. But in the meanwhile, someone has contacted your wife, and she’s on her way over.’

  ‘I’ll be all right in a little while. I’m not used to this kind of shock. Even in Withens. You want a statement from me? I don’t know what I can tell you, though.’

  ‘Was there anything that made you choose to clear that particular part of the churchyard today?’ said Cooper.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I just wondered … It’s one the oldest parts, isn’t it? The gravestones there all date from the nineteenth century. There are no recent burials, so it’s not as if they’re graves that living relatives are likely to want to visit. If there were a priority for these things, I’d have guessed you’d go for the most recent graves first. It must be distressing for relatives to find their loved ones’ graves overgrown and untidy. But not in that area.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Alton. ‘That would make sense. But I wasn’t thinking logically. It was those old gravestones that made me curious. The small ones, with only initials and a year. Did you notice those?’

  ‘Yes, though you can hardly see them.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Alton. ‘They’re already anonymous enough, and so small that I thought it was a shame to see them disappear altogether. I thought they were the ones that needed the light most of all.’

  ‘You wanted to bring light?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I wanted.’


  ‘Whoever buried a body there wouldn’t have expected that,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m sure they thought that corner was the most neglected and forgotten. They gambled on the body not being found for quite a while, maybe never.’

  ‘If I’d managed to get help, though,’ said Alton, ‘I would have cleared the whole churchyard.’

  ‘But no one would help you.’

  ‘No. Well, no one except Neil.’

  ‘Neil? Neil Granger?’

  ‘He was going to give me a hand. He was a good lad.’

  ‘But he never got the chance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Alton, did anybody know that Neil Granger was going to help you clear the churchyard?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Alton. ‘Think about it for a while.’

  ‘Well, my wife, Caroline. I mentioned it to her, because I was rather pleased that someone had volunteered.’

  ‘Neil did volunteer? You didn’t persuade him to do it? Or offer to pay him?’

  ‘Oh, no. If I could have afforded to pay someone, I would have done it. But Neil volunteered. He heard me complaining about it one day, and I told him how much I was struggling on my own. I think he took pity on me. But I was very grateful.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone else but your wife?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Of course, we don’t know who Neil himself might have mentioned it to,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I did tell the churchwardens,’ said Alton. ‘I’d been a bit cross with them for not supporting me more than they did, and I thought it might make them feel guilty. It was wrong of me, I suppose, to feel that way.’

  ‘Your churchwardens are Michael Dearden and Marion Oxley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So all the Oxleys might have known about Neil?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Alton. ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Cooper. ‘But, knowing the Oxleys, perhaps not.’

  ‘Who is it out there?’ said Alton. ‘In the churchyard?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir. We might not know for some time.’ Cooper stood up. ‘Your wife will be here in a moment.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry that someone should have chosen the churchyard for this. It’s consecrated ground.’

  ‘Consecrated? Yes, but consecrated only means that something has been set apart for a purpose.’

  ‘Well, it’s sacred, then.’

  ‘Everywhere is sacred,’ said Alton. ‘I don’t believe that God is in some places and not in others.’

  In the churchyard, the scene was chaotic. The crowd of people was getting too big for the uniformed officers to manage, and the perimeter of the churchyard was too large. Some of the children were gradually creeping nearer to see what was going on, dodging behind the graves and hiding in the undergrowth until a PC spotted them and chased them off.

  A clergyman had appeared in a black overcoat. He had wispy grey hair, gold-framed glasses and a worried frown.

  Diane Fry intercepted him. ‘Who are you, sir?’

  ‘I’m the Rural Dean. Derek Alton called me to tell me what had happened.’

  ‘You’re Mr Alton’s boss?’

  ‘Well, we’re all employed by God. But He permits me a supervisory role.’

  Fry blinked, as if to clear away an irritating speck that had drifted across her vision.

  ‘Can you tell us when Mr Alton arrived at St Asaph’s?’ she said.

  ‘About eighteen months ago.’

  ‘And did he take over directly from his predecessor?’

  ‘No, there was an inter-regnum.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A period of time between incumbents. It happens all too often these days, due to a shortage of clergy. It can take some time to find the right person for the parish.’

  ‘Particularly in Withens and Hey Bridge, perhaps?’

  ‘There are certain challenging elements to the post.’

  ‘How long was the parish vacant?’

  ‘I believe it was twelve months or so. The previous incumbent fell seriously ill and had to retire, poor man.’

  ‘We’re going to have to speak to him.’ ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘It’s going to be very important to establish when an opportunity might have occurred for a body to be buried in the churchyard. The previous vicar might be able to cast some light on that for us.’

  ‘Possibly. But I’m afraid poor Reverend Clater retired because he discovered he had advanced prostate cancer. There was nothing they could do for him. He died last year.’

  ‘Hell.’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ said the Dean with a sad smile. Fry stared at him, puzzled.

  ‘And no one looked after St Asaph’s during this inter-regnum?’

  ‘There were services here, but they were conducted by visiting clergy from other parishes. Sometimes by a retired priest who lives in Glossop. There was no continuity, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And the churchwardens don’t seem to have put too much effort into caring for the churchyard.’

  ‘Sadly not. But I’m afraid it’s difficult motivating people for that kind of thing.’

  ‘Mr Alton is in the church. I’m sure he’d be pleased to see you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Ben Cooper found his name called as soon as he got outside the church.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Dearden – nothing to concern you, sir.’

  ‘It is, if it’s something to do with the church. I’m a churchwarden. Is Derek all right?’

  ‘Mr Alton is a bit shaken, but he’s all right.’

  ‘What have they done now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Oxleys. Is it that little beggar, Jake? He’s the one who likes setting fires, you know, but nobody has been able touch him because he isn’t ten years old yet. So many times I’ve heard politicians say that no one is beyond the law. It’s repeated like a mantra, as if it’s supposed to reassure us, just in itself. But it isn’t true, is it? A child under ten can’t be considered guilty of any criminal offence, no matter what they’ve done. Children are beyond the law.’

  Cooper thought about Craig Oxley, who had hanged himself in a cell at Hindley young offenders’ institution. Where was the middle ground between those who thought young people should be locked up at whatever age they offended, and others who believed they should never be locked up at all? There were few other options. Youngsters below the age of criminal responsibility could be the subject of care proceedings, which would most likely result in them being taken away from their parents. But once they reached the age of ten, they became criminals. There was no longer even that grey area between ten and fourteen, when it had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the child understood what he was doing and knew that it was seriously wrong. The presumption in their favour had been abolished by new legislation nearly five years previously.

  Michael Dearden was watching him, and maybe he thought that he read a degree of sympathy in Cooper’s expression.

  ‘I read a while ago,’ said Dearden, ‘that the government was planning to lock up people like paedophiles before they did anything wrong, because they could tell from their profiles that they were likely to commit an offence.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that.’

  ‘And then I read the statistics that nearly 70 per cent of crimes in this country are committed by juveniles. And straight away I thought: “Well, there’s your answer to the rising crime rate.”’

  ‘What answer is that, Mr Dearden?’

  ‘It’s obvious. You lock up all the kids, before they do anything. That way, you’d reduce the crime rate by two thirds at a single stroke. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

  Cooper tried to marshal a logical argument. Then he decided it wasn’t worthwhile.

  ‘You can’t argue with the facts,’ said Dearden.

  ‘Mr Dearden, I don’t think it’s the Oxleys who have been targeting your property.’

 
‘Rubbish. Two of the Oxleys were caught and prosecuted. They had broken into one of my outbuildings and stolen gardening tools and weedkiller.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Ryan and Sean. But that was over a year ago.’

  ‘I’ve seen them hanging around here plenty of times.’

  ‘Since the court case?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. Not to actually see them. But I know it’s them, still. They’re just a bit more careful not to get caught now. They’ve learned to be cleverer criminals – that’s all the court system has done for them, and me. Since they were taken to court, all they want to do is get revenge on me.’

  ‘We think it’s more likely that you’ve been targeted by a gang of antiques thieves than that you’re still being troubled by the Oxleys, Mr Dearden. We think Mr Oxley has stopped all that now.’

  ‘But who else would it be?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s no evidence it’s the Oxleys.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be hard to find some evidence. I’ve told your people no end of times, you’d only have to raid those houses in Waterloo Terrace, and you’d come away with a rare stash of stolen goods. And I know you could do it, if you wanted to. You did at Hey Bridge the other morning.’

  ‘That operation was based on extensive intelligence.’

  ‘Intelligence?’ Dearden laughed. ‘Well, that counts me out, then. Obviously, I don’t have the intelligence to see what’s in front of my face. It’s no wonder you lot take no notice of me. I’m just a silly old bugger who’s imagining things, as far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not the case, sir.’

  ‘But I’m sure you’d soon sit up and take notice of me if I decided to do something about these breakins myself, wouldn’t you?’

  Cooper looked at him more closely, and noticed the challenging stare and the slightly wobbly smile.

  ‘Do what, exactly?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that would be telling. But I’ve got something in mind that would put the wind up the Oxleys once and for all.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be a sensible thing to do, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘I’d have to advise you against any unilateral action.’