Blind to the Bones (34 page)

T
he cats had been hunting during the night. One of them had been eating its catch in the back garden of 8 Welbeck Street. There wasn't much left of the victim now – only the stomach and intestines, and some other internal organs. They lay on the stone flags, still glistening, dark green and red. And there was something else left, as well – two tiny feet, long and pale, and tipped by white claws. One of the feet was curled into a sort of fist, but the other was stretched out on the ground as it would have been in life. They were the remains of a rat.

Ben Cooper looked around the area for signs of a scaly tail, to get an idea of the size of the dead rodent. Cats didn't normally eat the tail either. They would consume the head and the front feet, but not the back feet, or the stomach, or the tail. If he could find it, the size and thickness of it would give him an indication of whether Randy or Mrs Macavity had caught an adult rat, or a young one freshly out of its nest. Were rats breeding nearby? If so, there would be more remains to come, now that the cats had located their nest.

But there was no sign of a tail on the flags. Cooper shrugged. It was possible some bird had flown away with it, thinking it was a worm. There were magpies in this area – they were frequently mobbed by the smaller birds when they landed in the trees. Magpies were carrion eaters. They also took young songbirds, and even the eggs from other birds' nests. They were ideal for clearing up the leftovers from other predators.

‘One of you isn't going to want any breakfast this morning, then?' he said, as the cats came fussing around his legs.

But he put their bowls down anyway, and they ate as eagerly as always.

C
ooper straightened up, and found Angie Fry watching him from the door of the conservatory, with that smile on her face. He felt a surge of unreasonable anger that a private moment was being observed by this unwelcome stranger. Somehow, it seemed to make it worse that this was the first morning he had been able to establish the back yard as his territory. He hadn't even had time to explore the overgrown garden.

‘You have to leave now,' he said.

‘OK, OK. You said by eight o'clock, and I'm on my way. I just wanted to say thanks before I went.'

Cooper felt himself begin to flush. It was amazing that Angie Fry should have the same casual ability to sway his emotions that her sister did. His annoyance had turned immediately to remorse for being rude.

‘That's all right.'

‘I hope you'll remember, though, what I said last night.'

‘I'll remember.'

‘That's good, Ben.'

He accompanied her to the door of the flat, but she paused on the doorstep.

‘I may see you again,' she said.

‘I don't think so.'

Then the door of the other flat opened, and suddenly a dark-haired woman stood in the hallway, swaying forward slightly as if she'd been forced to stop suddenly, to avoid bumping into him. Another complete stranger to Cooper, she looked to be in her late thirties, and was wearing a black jacket and blue jeans.

‘Oh,' she said.

Cooper could see an expression of alarm cross her face. He could forgive her if she took him to be a mugger.

‘Hi, I'm your neighbour,' he said. ‘Ben Cooper.'

‘Oh, right.'

She visibly relaxed, and held out a hand. ‘Peggy Check. So you're the young man downstairs. That's what Dorothy Shelley calls you.'

Cooper shook her hand. He looked around for Angie, but she'd vanished into the street without a word. He found Peggy smiling broadly at him, as if at some huge joke. She had a smile that transformed her face and brought out a depth of humour in her eyes, and Cooper suddenly felt at ease with her. It made him realize how on edge he'd been for the last few hours, ever since Angie Fry had arrived on his doorstep.

‘Yes, that's me,' he said. ‘The young man downstairs.'

‘You're a policeman, right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Dorothy says I'll be perfectly safe with you around. But it isn't too dangerous around Edendale, is it?'

Cooper could feel himself relaxing more and more by the second. All the instincts he'd been repressing while talking to Angie were coming to the fore again. He detected a natural warmth that had been uncomfortably missing from his earlier visitor.

‘No, you'll be fine,' he said. ‘Watch out for the cats, though. They're killers.'

Peggy looked as though she wanted to close her door and leave, but she couldn't do it with Cooper blocking the way in the little porch. He stepped back over the threshold into his own flat.

She smiled again. ‘See you around, I guess, Ben.'

‘You must come in and have a coffee some time.'

‘Love to. Just let me know. Catch you later.'

Cooper watched her head off down the street towards the market square, walking with a brisk confidence. She might be a stranger here, but she would be all right in Edendale. There was no doubt about that.

And he felt sure of one other thing. If she did take up his invitation to come in for a coffee one day, Peggy Check wouldn't sit in his flat and tell him lies all evening.

B
en Cooper found Diane Fry standing in front of his desk when he arrived at West Street. She had an armful of files and something that looked like a photo album. She seemed a bit subdued, but that wasn't what Cooper noticed most when he looked up at her. He found himself automatically looking for the similarities to her sister. The slim shoulders and straight fair hair were recognizable. But there was something else, too – something about the look in the eyes that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Fry brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Another familiar gesture.

‘Is there something wrong?' she said. ‘What are you staring at me for?'

‘Oh … nothing.'

‘If you say so. Ben, I want you to take a look at this. Tell me what you think.'

‘What is it?'

‘It's Sarah Renshaw's cuttings album. She let me borrow it because she's just started a new one.'

Mrs Renshaw had collected a thick album of cuttings from newspapers. They were mostly reports of missing children who had been reunited with their families, some of them after several years. There were also stories about young people living rough on the streets of various cities, or in squats, or even in the temporary camps of New Age travellers and environmental protesters.

There were scores of them, and Cooper was astonished at the range of newspapers represented. All of the nationals were there, both tabloid and broadsheet. There were Scottish papers, and local weeklies from Yorkshire and the Midlands, in fact from all over Britain. Some of the stories, he realized, were printouts of pages from the websites of foreign newspapers, mostly American. Cooper turned to one from the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
, featuring a girl injured in a car accident on Highway 54 and left unconscious in hospital. The police in a place called Oneida were trying to identify the victim, and were appealing for help from the public. The phone number had been circled in blue ink. He guessed the Oneida cops would have had a call from Sarah Renshaw. He hoped they had dealt with her sympathetically.

Cooper checked the dates of the cuttings. The earlier ones began almost immediately after Emma's disappearance, but were mainly local stories, and they were weeks apart. But as the album filled up, the dates got closer together, their sources more far-flung and international, until the most recent pages were packed with stories culled from the internet day after day.

It gave Cooper a dizzying glimpse of the world as seen by Sarah Renshaw. In this world, it was as if Emma had started off as just a single missing person in North Derbyshire two years ago, but had steadily multiplied herself over the months. In her various incarnations, she had spread out and scattered all over the globe, invading the world like an army of clones, or a virus proliferating at an unmanageable rate.

These multiple Emmas had ended up in all kinds of places, some of them lost and anonymous, some hungry or injured, alone or finally reunited. And Sarah Renshaw had spent hours at the computer tracking them down. Perhaps she had become increasingly desperate in her efforts as she realized the numbers involved, and discovered the speed of the virus that she was trying to keep up with. There were more young people going missing every day than anyone could imagine.

Cooper closed the album with a sigh. They were far from being clones, but the young women featured in these cuttings did have a few things in common, and one big difference from Emma Renshaw. Each of them was someone's daughter, of course. Many of them would have parents worrying about them at home.

But most of all, every one of them was still alive.

‘It's sad,' said Cooper.

Fry nodded. ‘The most worrying thing is the guilt factor.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Sarah Renshaw keeps talking about this “belief” business. I think if Emma turns up dead, she's going to interpret that to mean she didn't believe hard enough. She'll think Emma is dead because
she
failed her.'

‘That isn't rational at all.'

‘There's nothing rational about guilt. There's nothing rational about the Renshaws at the moment.'

‘That bad, eh? I've heard a lot about them, but never actually met them.'

‘It would be interesting to see what you think of them, Ben.'

‘Yes.'

Cooper wondered if Fry had actually told the Renshaws that anyone who had been missing for years was unlikely to turn up again some day. He didn't feel like supporting her in that opinion just now. He knew only too well that it could really happen.

Fry straightened her shoulders and her manner changed.

‘And how are you getting on with the Oxleys, Ben?' she said. ‘Are you one of the family yet?'

‘Oh, yeah. An in-law that nobody speaks to.'

‘Well, you'll have to keep trying,' said Fry. ‘Use a different approach or something.'

‘A different approach. Right.'

D
CI Kessen didn't have to wait as long for the room to settle down this morning. His silent, patient style was unsettling some of the officers. They didn't quite know what to make of him. What was he thinking behind that thin smile? Even DI Hitchens seemed unsure of how to behave.

Ben Cooper saw that Tracy Udall was here this morning with some of the Rural Crime Team, including Sergeant Jimmy Boyce. He waved to Udall, then hesitated, realizing he should be careful who he sat with, in case it was taken as signifying something. Then he sat on a chair at the back of the room, perching on it as if suggesting that he had to make a quick getaway on urgent business.

‘All right, thank you,' said Hitchens as he opened the briefing. ‘Those of you who've been working on leads connected to the bronze bust we found in Neil Granger's car will know that we've had some results. The bust turns out to have been stolen right here in Edendale, from a house called Southwoods Grange, which was burgled two weeks ago. The property is owned by the National Trust, so all the items were recorded and photographed for security. There's no doubt it's the same one.'

‘How much is it worth?' asked someone.

‘Difficult to say, but I'm told it's insured for five thousand pounds.'

‘Nice. And have we detected this theft, sir?'

‘Er, no. But the bust was part of a haul of small items worth considerably more, I'm told. By the time a unit responded to an alarm at Southwoods Grange, the perpetrators had got well clear. There were no solid lines of enquiry to follow, and no sign of any of the stolen property turning up anywhere. Until now.'

‘Sir, do you think it might have been the Gavin Murfin Gang practising for the Chatsworth House job?'

From his seat at the front of the room, Kessen turned his head slowly to look at the DC who had spoken. Very few people laughed, except Murfin, who chortled loudly and winked at his colleague. DI Hitchens smiled, but managed to keep his face turned away from his boss and his voice steady.

‘Well, facetiousness aside, we do have some similar MOs on a series of other incidents in the past few months, including some in Longdendale, near where Neil Granger lived.'

Hitchens looked around the room and found Ben Cooper. ‘As some of you know, the Rural Crime Team have been working on these burglaries in Longdendale for a while. Their intelligence has proved very useful. Also, we have some ongoing checks on a number of Granger's associates, which will take some time. But a few of them are already looking very promising. Very promising indeed. There are a couple of Neil Granger's friends who have a string of theft convictions between them.'

‘Where are these associates, sir?' said Cooper. ‘In Tintwistle? Or back in Withens?'

‘No, not in Withens. I'm thinking particularly of two former colleagues of Granger's at Lancashire Chemicals in Glossop, who were recently sacked because they were suspected of pilfering. They've both spent time inside on unrelated matters, and Granger has been associating with them. They drink together occasionally at a pub in Mottram. There was some good work done there, establishing that fact so quickly.'