Blind to the Bones (23 page)

‘He left his fingerprints on it? That's a bit amateurish, if he's involved in an organized gang.'

‘Well, they always make a mistake.'

‘Everybody knows not to leave fingerprints these days. It doesn't feel right.'

‘It's evidence,' said Kessen. ‘Let's see how it all adds up.'

Murfin leaned towards Cooper. ‘'Course it's evidence,' he said. ‘Why does he have to state the bleedin' obvious all the time?'

‘What were the victim's movements after he left the church at Withens?' asked Cooper, trying to pretend he hadn't heard Murfin.

The DCI looked at Hitchens, as if to suggest it was time he did something to earn his pay.

‘It seems he drove straight home,' said Hitchens. ‘His next-door neighbours noticed Granger's Volkswagen arrive. That was about twenty minutes after the Reverend Alton says he left the church.'

‘The neighbours saw him?' said Cooper, who would like to have been able to speak to the neighbours himself, but hadn't been given the task.

‘No, but the VW has a distinctive engine noise, they say. They also heard Granger's front door close, and then some music later on, for about three-quarters of an hour.'

‘What music?'

‘Does it matter, Ben?'

‘I'm just wondering how thick the walls are. If the neighbours could tell what the music was, it might mean the walls are thin, and they would hear more of what went on next door.'

‘His neighbours are a different generation to Neil Granger,' said Hitchens. ‘I don't suppose they would have recognized the music if they'd been sitting with it blasting down their own headphones.'

‘Anyway, I think it was Nirvana,' said Cooper.

‘How do you know that?'

‘The CD was still in the player when we visited the house with Granger's brother. I checked. And it lasts about three-quarters of an hour.'

‘Brilliant.'

Cooper was conscious of a few heads turning towards him around the room.

‘But the thing is, the neighbours never heard Granger go out again,' said Hitchens. ‘They seemed confident of it, too. They say they usually recognize the sound of his door closing and his car engine. I think they're right – they would have noticed the same noises later at night, when it was quieter. But they sleep in a bedroom at the front of the house, and Granger keeps his car on some spare ground at the back.'

‘So Granger went out again after the neighbours had gone to bed.'

‘And now you're going to ask what time that was,' said Hitchens. ‘You might think they were early to bed, because they're middle-aged. But in fact, the neighbours stayed up watching a late-night film on ITV.'

‘
Schindler's List
,' said Cooper.

‘Now, how the hell did you know that, Ben?'

‘I watched it myself. It finished at 1.30 a.m.'

There was a strange silence from the officers immediately around him. Even Gavin Murfin seemed to be trying to use his body language to pretend that he was sitting next to someone else entirely. Cooper realized he would probably get ribbed mercilessly in the CID room afterwards. His fellow DCs would be calling him Sherlock for weeks. But he never had quite learned when to keep his mouth shut.

DI Hitchens was staring at him with something like pity. Mr Kessen had gone all glassy-eyed, not unlike poor old Lucius Verrus on the table in front of him.

‘Damn right, Cooper,' said Hitchens. ‘So the chances are that Neil Granger went out of the house some time between 1.30 a.m. and the time he was killed on Withens Moor later that morning. Unfortunately, we can't be exact about the time he was killed. Or Mrs Van Doon can't.'

Another officer across the room took up the challenge. ‘Granger's VW was parked in a lay-by on the A628, so somebody might have noticed it.'

‘We've got teams tracking down lorry drivers who were on that route in the early hours,' said Hitchens. ‘There's an all-night roadside café a couple of miles down the road, and we're hoping the owner might be able to put us on to some of his regulars who were on the road at that time. That might narrow the time down for us. If we're really lucky, they might have seen another car in the same lay-by. Or even a car and occupants.'

‘Why did Granger park on the road when he could have driven up the track right to the air shaft? Wasn't there a car that came down the track over the hill? It was seen by the first officers at the scene.'

‘Ah, yes,' said Hitchens. ‘DC Cooper?'

‘The driver's name is Michael Dearden,' said Cooper. ‘I went to see him yesterday. He lives just outside Withens at a house called Shepley Head Lodge, and he says he uses the track for a short cut. It's an old quarry road, but it isn't suitable for anything apart from a four wheel drive. Granger's old Volkswagen wouldn't have made it up the hill.'

‘Whoever met him might have had a four-wheel drive,' said Hitchens. ‘So we have to bear in mind that they might not even have approached the scene from the A628. If this Dearden came over from the Withens direction, someone else could, too. There's no restriction on the access at Dearden's end, Cooper?'

‘No, sir. There's an open gateway. Withens Moor is access land.'

‘We mustn't neglect the possibilities. We'll get someone to check out the lie of the land there.'

‘We're going to take our time at the scene, too,' said DCI Kessen. ‘We need to exploit every forensic opportunity.'

‘Unfortunately, sir, the SOCOs say the ground had been trampled thoroughly before the scene was secured.'

‘How did that happen?'

‘Well, the firefighters do tend to have rather large boots. On the other hand, we've had more luck from the lay-by where Granger's car was parked. One of the SOCOs scraped up quite a wide range of samples from the ground there. If we can match the right combination to a suspect's footwear, it would help us enormously.'

‘Thank you,' said Kessen. ‘I want to make it clear that we're going to limit the amount of information we release – particularly what we allow Neil Granger's associates access to. So we should be circumspect.'

‘Yes, sir.'

DC Murfin leaned towards Cooper again. ‘What does that mean?' he said. ‘I thought it was when you were Jewish, like.'

‘He means watch what you say.'

‘Ah. As if I'd do anything else.'

Cooper saw Diane Fry turn slightly to look at them over her shoulder, frowning as if she had caught a couple of pupils misbehaving in class.

‘Miss isn't pleased,' said Murfin.

‘Shhh.'

‘I can't emphasize enough that we must be meticulous in preserving evidence,' said Kessen. ‘This is going to be a real team effort, so we must work together and communicate fully. And remember, everybody – there's no “i” in “team”.'

Cooper heard Gavin Murfin muttering under his breath.

‘There's a “u” in bullshit, though,' he said.

Before the briefing broke up, everyone seemed to need to take another look at the photographs of the victim from the scene. The colours looked so unreal, as if something had gone wrong with the film in the photographer's camera. Granger's face was streaked with blood from his head wounds, but it had dried blacker than normal where it lay against his skin. That was because it had streaked and mingled with the black make-up he wore everywhere but around his eyes.

‘If we can find out why and when Neil Granger had blackened his face with theatrical make-up, that might give us the lead we need,' said DCI Kessen. ‘But at the moment, we keep this fact to ourselves, too.'

G
avin Murfin had arrived at the office armed with an enormous Peak pasty and a slab of dark, moist parkin. He'd left the parkin in its cellophane wrapper, but the gingery smell drifting across the office made Ben Cooper's mouth water as soon as he walked in.

DI Hitchens approached them with Diane Fry. Hitchens sniffed at Murfin's pasty with interest, while Fry tried not to look at it.

‘Cooper, what are you currently working on?' said Hitchens. ‘The Oxley family, isn't it? Excellent. We need to pin down Neil Granger's closest associates, who he spent his time with. Maybe he was close to some of his cousins among the Oxleys.'

‘He moved out of Withens some time ago, sir, but we know he's been back there. One of the residents saw him on Friday night, and he helped the vicar to clear up after his church was broken into and vandalized.'

‘Exactly. Keep on it.'

DI Hitchens drifted off to speak to Kessen. Cooper waited until he'd gone, and then he looked at Fry curiously.

‘You never mentioned the possibility of a connection with Emma Renshaw, Diane,' he said. ‘I thought you would do.'

‘I've already talked to Mr Hitchens about it. It isn't the main line of enquiry at the moment.'

‘It can't be overlooked.'

‘No, it won't be overlooked, Ben.'

‘I do remember the case. Granger was one of her housemates, too, and he'd known Emma all his life.'

‘He was also one of the last people to see her alive, as far as we know. But most of the activity was in the Black Country, where she was last seen. The mobile phone is the first indication we've had that she made it anywhere near home. Of course, there was no direct evidence at the time that any crime had been committed. Emma Renshaw simply disappeared. No body, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And no evidence.'

‘Until now. Now we have her phone.'

‘I suppose it's still possible that she might have wanted to disappear. That was the conclusion at the time. But who knows what might have happened to her since then.'

Cooper hesitated. ‘There's another reason I remember the Emma Renshaw case.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘We've been reminded of it fairly regularly during the last two years. There have been several minor incidents that officers have had to deal with. Advice has been given. An informal warning once, I think.'

Fry looked up from the file. ‘You mean the parents? Yes, I know about that. But thanks for telling me.'

‘And Neil Granger lived in Withens. So he was a near neighbour of the Renshaws, too.'

‘Like you say, he and Emma were old schoolfriends.'

‘Childhood sweethearts maybe?'

‘If they were, it sounds as though they'd cooled off. By all appearances, they were no more than acquaintances in Bearwood.'

‘But sharing a house.'

‘The general agreement is that it was a matter of convenience, splitting the cost.'

‘Childhood relationships never survive adolescence anyway,' said Cooper. ‘Girls mature earlier, so boys of the same age suddenly look like children. And the girls develop an interest in the bigger boys.'

‘Possibly. We weren't able to prove that they were more than just friends, anyway. But they'd known each other for a long time, so it was quite natural they should share a house.'

‘What sort of state are the Renshaws in these days?'

‘The state of Cloud Cuckoo Land,' said Fry.

‘Right.'

‘Don't forget our meeting, Ben.'

‘What?'

‘We're supposed to be arranging a meeting. I take it you've forgotten?'

‘Well, in the circumstances …'

Fry nodded. ‘OK. But let's not forget about it altogether, eh? I think we have some talking to do.'

A
couple of hours later, Ben Cooper was watching PC Tracy Udall check her duty belt. She was painstaking in her routine, even as she continued talking to him. But a patrol officer's safety could depend on carrying out this routine properly at the start of every shift. Udall shook her head and tutted when Cooper told her about Lucas Oxley and his dog.

‘It was my own fault,' he said. ‘I don't think I identified myself clearly enough. He seemed to be a bit deaf or something. A uniform will make a difference, I'm sure.'

‘Perhaps it was rather rash, going on your own,' said Udall. ‘But you hadn't got the full picture about Waterloo Terrace.'

‘Exactly.'

‘But you'll be all right with me. I can subdue any savage dog with a single glance. My kids take no notice of me, but other than that, I'm mustard.'

Udall unfastened the four keepers on her uniform belt and clipped her duty belt over it. Cooper could see that she was right-handed – she positioned her rigid handcuffs on her right hip and her baton on the left, her weak side. She drew the handcuffs out of their holster, pushing the single bar through the double bar and pulling it back to the pre-load position before re-holstering them carefully.

‘Is your son behaving no better?' said Cooper.

‘He had another tantrum this morning about me going to work.' Udall sighed. ‘These duty rosters don't help. He doesn't understand the shift system.'