Blind to the Bones (66 page)

‘His dad?'

Cooper was rewarded with something that was almost a smile. Oxley's mouth slipped out of shape, but he sniffed and managed to correct himself.

‘Our Ryan's not a bad lad,' he said. ‘But he's not like the others. He does have this stubborn streak.'

‘I understand.'

Oxley peered at Cooper a bit more closely. ‘None of my sons are bad lads, you know. There are some kids you see who spend their whole lives indoors with their computer games and the internet. They grow up as fat as slugs and as pale as tripe. But these here are good lads. Despite what folks round here might have told you.'

Cooper kept silent. Also what the police and court records might tell him, he thought. Not to mention the schools and social services. But no kids were ever bad, as far as their parents were concerned. They were all little misunderstood angels. Their parents shouted their love for them in court, even as they were taken down from the dock on a life sentence for murdering an old lady and cutting out her heart to eat it and drink her blood.

But the Oxleys weren't exactly vampire killers. They were just kids who didn't fit in.

Cooper was vaguely aware that a voice on his radio was muttering about a major incident, but it seemed to involve the neighbouring South Yorkshire force, and he filtered it out.

‘Where would you like to do this, Mr Oxley?' he said.

Oxley thought about it for a few moments. Cooper could see that an inner struggle was taking place. It had cost the man quite an effort to walk over the road and approach Cooper's car. But this was crossing a boundary. It was a big decision for him to make.

‘I suppose,' he said, ‘you'd better come into the house.'

B
en Cooper had followed Lucas Oxley as far as the entrance to Waterloo Terrace before he began to have doubts. The noise of heavy machinery hadn't been coming from the farm, but had gradually grown louder as they approached the terraces. Above the rumble of diesel engines, he could hear the whine of chainsaws. But they seemed to be operating in the sycamores and chestnuts nearer the road.

‘What's going on?' said Cooper.

Lucas stopped. ‘They came,' he said. ‘That's all.'

‘Who?'

Cooper peered downhill through the tree screen. Now he could make out bright yellow machinery – a bulldozer and a JCB excavator with huge steel jaws. There were other vehicles, too, gathering in the field adjacent to Trafalgar Terrace – the same field he and Fry had walked through the previous day.

‘Our landlords are moving in to start demolition,' said Lucas. ‘Don't tell me you're surprised.'

‘Surprised? I can't believe it.'

Cooper pulled out his mobile phone and dialled the number for Peak Water in Glossop, then remembered it was a Sunday. There was no way J. P. Venables would be working on his day off. But he had Mr Venables' home number, too.

‘Mr Venables, why didn't you tell me it was today you were moving into Withens to start demolishing the empty houses?'

‘Ah, well, we have to be circumspect about these things,' said Venables.

‘Damn circumspect,' said Cooper.

‘Really. It wouldn't have helped the situation if the residents of Waterloo Terrace had been given too much prior warning. We couldn't predict what attitude they might take.'

‘You could have told
me
. We might have had time to organize a proper search.'

‘You?' said Venables, with an audible smirk. ‘The friend of the Oxleys?'

L
ucas Oxley had been waiting patiently while Cooper made the call. His expression was sardonic, a tilt of an eyebrow that said a lot.

‘Search?' he said.

‘Routine,' said Cooper. ‘But, well … It's too late now.'

Lucas walked slowly towards the gateway. The houses of Waterloo Terrace looked blacker than ever beyond the trees. For now, the sound of the chainsaws had stopped. He tried to make out the figures that he knew must be somewhere in the undergrowth around the trees. But all he could see was little Jake, lurking behind the wall of one of the outside privies.

For a moment, Cooper considered the possibility that the Oxleys might take the opportunity to hold him hostage. He had no idea what they might be planning, or how they would behave when they were driven into a corner.

‘Are you coming, or not?' said Lucas.

‘Yes.'

As he came nearer, Cooper could smell the wet leaves of the sycamores and the sharp scent of the sap leaking from their flesh where the chainsaws had ripped into them. Beyond that, from the houses, he could smell cooking. Onions were frying, despite the time of day. But even that was obscured by the stronger, more incongruous aroma of sun-dried tomatoes. Cooper guessed the Oxleys must be burning some of the old car tyres in their yard. Smouldering tyres released similar sulphur-containing chemicals, which produced that distinctive smell.

For many weeks afterwards, whenever he thought of Withens, Cooper would still smell the wet sycamores and the sun-dried tomatoes, and still hear the roar of the chainsaws.

He took the last few steps towards the terrace of houses, passing under the trees. Then a petrol motor roared, and a branch cracked. There was a shout from somewhere above him, in the branches. And a fine rain fell on his face, warm as blood.

G
ail Dearden stared at her husband, trembling at the sight of the shotgun still in his hands. He was dirty and dishevelled, and had a distracted look in his eyes. Michael was frightened. And she knew frightened men were dangerous.

‘Who did I shoot?' said Dearden.

‘You don't
know
?'

‘One of the Oxleys. Which one was it? They were coming to see what else they could find. Did I injure one of them?'

‘The police are out there,' said Gail.

‘Who called the police? The Oxleys?'

‘No, Michael. I did.'

Dearden finally put the shotgun down. He laughed quietly, but seemed to be on the verge of tears, too, when he looked at his wife.

‘They came, then?' he said. ‘For once, they actually came.'

L
ucas Oxley stood throughout Cooper's visit. In fact, he stood near the door, which Cooper wasn't terribly comfortable with. It meant he had already broken the first rule and lost control of his immediate environment, if a threat to his safety should develop. But Lucas didn't look threatening, not at the moment. He had his back to the door, but more as if to stop anyone else entering than to prevent Cooper leaving. His manner was defensive, not aggressive.

‘Is Scott all right?' said Cooper.

‘He'll be fine. Daft bugger. I've told him to be more careful with that thing.'

‘No harm done.'

Cooper wiped a hand across his face and looked at the streaks of oil on his palm. The spray had hit his face from the spinning blade of the chainsaw just before it fell towards him from the tree. Scott Oxley's face had stared down at him, shocked and white, as the branch he'd been working on snapped unexpectedly, loosening his grip on the handles. A few feet in front of Cooper, the chainsaw had dug itself into the dirt track in a spurt of mud.

‘He'd just oiled it,' said Lucas. ‘He got oil all over the handles and didn't bother wiping it off. He's lucky he didn't break his silly neck or chop his hand off.'

‘Or someone else's,' said Cooper.

The interior of 1 Waterloo Terrace came as a surprise. It was remarkably clean and neat, with two Laura Ashley-patterned sofas crammed into the little sitting room, matching curtains, and even a mock goatskin rug in front of the fireplace. It had a distinctly feminine feel, and suddenly both Lucas and Eric Oxley looked awkward and out of place. Eric was wearing worn brown slippers, while Lucas had removed his boots on the doorstep to reveal woollen socks bunched uncomfortably at the toes.

‘You've been all along this terrace asking questions,' said Lucas. It was a plain statement of fact, a preliminary laying out of the ground.

‘Yes, I've made no secret of it,' said Cooper. ‘I'm conducting enquiries in connection with a murder investigation, as I'm sure you know, Mr Oxley. The murder of your own nephew, Neil Granger.'

‘He was my wife's brother's lad.'

‘I know.'

‘But nobody here knows anything about that. You've been asking your questions in the wrong place, if that's really what you're up to.'

‘Why should I be up to anything else?'

‘I don't know,' said Oxley. ‘That's for you to tell us.'

‘I've just explained it.'

There were no handshakes at Waterloo Terrace. And there were very few rural Derbyshire homes where Cooper would not have been offered at least a cup of tea by now, unless he had actually come to arrest a suspect. But the Oxleys seemed to think that they were automatic suspects, and they were behaving accordingly. Perhaps, Cooper thought, he
should
be regarding them as automatic suspects. But he'd always had a contrary instinct. If everyone else thought the Oxleys must be guilty of something, he'd find himself looking for their good side. With the Oxleys, though, he might have to look very hard.

The old man, Eric Oxley, wore striped braces beneath a knitted cardigan, but over his shirt. They weren't the brightly coloured braces once favoured by city whizzkids of the 1980s. These braces dated from an earlier fashion, and their colours had faded with age. Besides, they weren't for show at all – their function was to support the baggy trousers.

Eric's body was almost swallowed by the worn armchair he sat in. The chair didn't match the rest of the furniture in the Oxleys' sitting room. It was much older, and wasn't at all the right colour to match the Laura Ashley patterns or even the mock goatskin. Eric and his armchair looked like an island surrounded by a sea of encroaching modern frippery.

Cooper wondered how many battles there had been over the armchair when the new furniture had arrived, and whether the old man had clung to its arms with his thick fingernails as his family tried to prise him loose. There was a space two or three feet further towards the centre of the room where the armchair would have fit more neatly with the arrangement of the furniture. He could picture Marion Oxley moving the armchair into that spot every night after the old man had gone to bed, perhaps pushing it on its casters with the toe of her carpet slipper, rather than touch its grease-darkened upholstery. Equally clearly, he could see Eric sucking his false teeth as he heaved his chair back to its place by the fireside every morning. Territory was important, even if it consisted of an old armchair by a fire.

‘You know they want us out?' said Lucas.

‘I understand it's the empty houses they're demolishing,' said Cooper. ‘They must be dangerous. A health hazard, at least.'

Lucas curled his lip. ‘It's the first step. It's us they want out, so they can sell this place and make a nice bit of money. They think we're dirty. Our homes are unsightly.
We
are unsightly. We don't fit into this world today.'

‘Aye, they want to get shut of us,' said Eric. ‘I just hope I pop my clogs first.'

Lucas nodded. ‘They think we're mucking up the water for folks in Manchester – all the water that comes off these hills and goes through the aqueduct down the valley. It seems funny, doesn't it, when it was our folk who were killed by the cholera that came from the filthy water they were given to drink? We might as well run over the hill and throw ourselves in the reservoir, like a lot of lemmings. That would solve everybody's problems.'

‘I was assured by Mr Venables at Peak Water that these houses aren't a problem for the catchment area.'

Lucas Oxley's expression said merely that it was Cooper's own fault if he allowed himself to be fooled by people like J. P. Venables.

‘When they come to try to move us out, I suppose it'll be your lot behind 'em putting the boot in, making sure us little folk don't get in the way of progress. I don't suppose our homes look much to you, do they? Got a nice, modern detached house back in Edendale, have you?'

‘Well, not exactly.'

‘If we didn't have our homes in Withens, where would we go? People like us can't afford to buy anywhere. And what chance is there of finding somewhere we can all live close together? They'd split us up and put us on council estates. It would be the end of this family.'

Through a doorway, Cooper watched Marion Oxley fussing around in the kitchen, slamming cupboards, peeping under the lids of saucepans as if some secret lurked inside that she could never share with anyone, and glaring suspiciously at the windows. Her disapproval filled the moments of silence like a bad smell.

The glimpses of her reminded him of his own mother, as she had been in her best days at Bridge End Farm. Though she seemed to be busy, she was watching. Always watching.

The picture of family life he was gathering from the Oxleys was completely unlike what he had been used to, yet they were as close as the Cooper family, in their own way. The comparisons he saw all around him made Cooper uneasy. He was trying to concentrate on the job in hand, but his memory kept unpacking old recollections of his childhood at Bridge End Farm. Time and again, he had pushed the remembered images back into their boxes. But as soon as his mind was distracted by a phrase or a gesture, the memories came tumbling out again, unfolding their carefully packed shapes, falling open like the petals of pale flowers, too long untouched by the sun.