Blind to the Bones (72 page)

‘Angie, I take it you know what happened to Diane there before she transferred to Derbyshire?' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘In fact, you're remarkably well informed for someone who hasn't been in touch with her sister for so long.'

Angie hesitated. ‘There are ways of finding these things out.'

‘I'm sure there are. Especially with the help of your friend who drives the dark blue BMW with a blocked registration.'

‘Blocked registration?' she repeated, dumbly seizing on the part of his sentence she didn't understand.

‘What is he? National Crime Squad? Special Branch? Who are you working with who doesn't want some long-lost sister blundering on to his pitch?'

‘Ben, you don't understand the situation.'

‘No, I don't,' said Cooper.

And for the first time he began to feel angry about the way he had been treated. He had known from the start that he was being lied to. There was no way that Angie Fry could have obtained the information that she had without inside help, without someone with exactly the right contacts and the means of asking. Being lied to was bad enough. But it was the underlying contempt that really angered him, the assumption that he was just some stupid bumpkin copper who would go along with anything he was asked to do.

Cooper had no idea what bigger cause he was expected to become a minor sacrifice for. Probably an undercover operation against major drug dealers, or some other large-scale organized crime. For himself, he didn't really care. But Diane was expected to be an unwitting sacrifice, too.

And worst of all was the fact that the whole plan seemed to have been put together with such casual arrogance. He was appalled and infuriated by the utter cynicism of the idea that he would willingly be the means of destroying someone's hope – someone who apparently considered him a friend.

‘Angie, you should tell your friend that he ought to have trained you to lie better,' he said, and put his foot down to drive a little faster as he hit the A628.

Angie slumped back against the headrest of her seat. ‘I'm sure there's a way out of this situation,' she said.

‘Yes, there is.'

She rolled her head wearily and looked at him sideways.

‘What do you suggest?'

‘There's always a way out of situations like this,' said Cooper. ‘It takes a bit of courage, but it's the only way.'

‘I've a feeling it might be something I don't want to hear about.'

As the white turbines of the wind farm appeared to the north and the air shaft for the railway tunnels came into view on the face of the opposite hill, Cooper began to feel more and more in control of the situation. It was the first time he'd felt in control since he'd visited Withens.

‘This way involves telling the truth,' he said.

Angie sighed. ‘That's what I was afraid you'd say.'

M
ost of the visitors to Withens were carrying umbrellas or wearing nylon cagoules with hoods turned up against the gentle rain. At least Eric Oxley wouldn't have to water the well dressing much today.

Ben Cooper had taken up a position on the edge of the small crowd surrounding the well dressing. The sight of the tourists had just reminded him that he'd made another date with Peggy Check for this afternoon, and he had let her down again. He hoped she would understand. There was already too much in his life that was going to be hard to explain.

Cooper didn't have to wait long before Diane Fry came to stand at his side.

‘So how were the Renshaws?' he said.

Fry hunched her shoulders in a characteristically tense gesture. ‘Sarah Renshaw forced me to watch a video of Emma. A selection of memories, specially edited. One sequence showed Emma in black make-up, playing the recorder for the Border Rats.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Funnily enough, Neil Granger was in it, too.'

Cooper hadn't brought an umbrella, or a waterproof. He could feel drops of the Withens rain starting to trickle down his collar.

‘What's the progress on Philip Granger?' he said.

‘We think he's pretty well tied down for the killing of his brother. It'll be up to the lawyers whether they go for a murder charge or manslaughter. We can't prove his intention.'

‘Did any of the Oxleys know that it was Philip who killed his brother?'

‘They say not. And do you know, Ben, I think I actually believe them.'

‘Maybe it just wouldn't occur to them – he was a member of the family, after all.'

‘We can all be wrong about our family.'

‘Yes.'

‘But there isn't enough evidence to charge Philip Granger with the murder of Emma Renshaw. Not unless Emma's body turns up. We did trace the phone thief through his prints – they were all over it, but they were left in the blood after it had dried. He was picked up at Matlock, and he's told us where he found the phone.'

‘It
was
Emma's blood?'

‘They matched the DNA.'

‘So he picked up the phone, found it didn't work, and dumped it. Or noticed the blood and panicked.'

‘Yes.'

Cooper began to move away, but Fry held him back by putting her hand on his arm. He wished she wouldn't touch him. The way it made him feel didn't help him to be sure in his own mind that he was doing the right thing. He could only hope that she wasn't going to ruin it completely and be nice to him.

‘And while we're on the subject, Ben, asking the National Grid maintenance man to check the tunnel under the air shaft was a very good thought.'

‘Thanks.'

‘It's a pity you completely forgot to mention it to me.'

‘Right. Sorry.'

They began to walk across the road together towards their cars. Gradually, the crowd of people began to thin out in front of them.

‘Anyway, I'm sure we'll find Emma's body soon,' said Fry. ‘Granger says he hid it behind a wall, but he was in such a panic that he can't remember where it was, or even what road he was on. He was genuinely lost. But the search teams are working their way through all the likely areas.'

‘I suppose it's only a matter of time.'

‘Let's hope to God it's soon. The Renshaws can't stand this much longer. It will overturn their lives completely. But nobody can go for ever without knowing the truth.'

‘That's what I think,' said Cooper.

Fry stopped suddenly in the middle of the road, oblivious to the mud that splashed on to her shoes from a puddle. Cooper walked on, bending his head into the rain. He was moving towards the sound of the water that streamed through Withens, washing away the ash and eroding the surfaces down to the bedrock.

For a moment, he had seen two figures that were so alike they could have been mirror images distorted by the rain. They both looked lonely and isolated, and both stood with their shoulders stiff with tension and readiness for a fight. From twenty feet apart, they stared at each other. But the moment couldn't last.

Cooper couldn't bear to wait to see what would happen; he knew it was something he shouldn't be observing. It wasn't his business. All he wanted to do was reach his car and get out of the rain. Get out of Withens.

But while he was still within earshot, he heard someone speak. He wasn't sure whose voice he heard, and it was only one short word.

‘Sis?'

T
he tough black plastic that Ivan Matley's silage bales were wrapped in was practically indestructible. No biodegradable rubbish. It could be pierced by the steel spike on his tractor, but not by much else. So Matley was puzzled by the holes in the bag he had just lifted from the stack that afternoon. Rats? Foxes? Vandals? But the bag didn't really look as though it had been bitten or ripped. It looked more as if acid had eaten through the plastic, rotting it into small, ragged holes and causing discoloured streaks in the shiny black surface.

Matley climbed down from the cab of his tractor to take a closer look, in case the inner bag had been punctured and the silage inside had rotted. It had been standing here for years, and he wouldn't ever have expected to use it if the weather hadn't been so bad earlier on.

You could always tell good silage by the smell. But when he sniffed, he thought there was something about this bag that wasn't right. Perhaps air had got in through the holes and ruined it. Ivan Matley had smelled silage that had gone off before, and this was certainly foul enough.

The rest of the bales were lined up against the drystone wall, stacked three high. From this side, they looked in perfectly good condition – their outer bags nice and shiny, and tight. That was why he had never noticed anything wrong, though he had driven past them in the field many times. But the damage on the bale he had lifted seemed to have been at the back.

‘Damn fly-tippers,' he said.

Matley felt sure that people using the track on the other side of the wall must have thrown something into his field. And to have damaged the plastic like that, it would have to have been something pretty toxic. Battery acid was his guess. If he looked down the back of the silage stack, between the bales and the wall, he reckoned he would find at least one old car battery that somebody had dumped because they couldn't be bothered to dispose of it properly. It wouldn't have mattered a bit to them if there had been livestock in the field, either. Cows were inquisitive – they might have licked at an abandoned battery and burned themselves on the spilled acid.

Matley walked round the end of the stack and tried to see behind it, but found the gap between the bales and the wall was too narrow for him to squeeze into. Now that he had passed fifty, he wasn't quite as slim as he used to be – as his wife kept reminding him.

But he could see more small, ragged holes in the black plastic near the centre of the bottom row. Yes, he was sure it was battery acid. What else would be corrosive enough to eat through his silage bags like that? And what else would smell quite so bad?

Puffing a bit, Matley climbed on to the top of the wall and balanced precariously on the toppings. It was the sort of trick he would have played hell about, if he had caught anyone else doing it. Once the toppings had been dislodged by people climbing over them, the rest of the wall would lose its stability and soon fall down. Then motorists would be complaining to the police because his cows were out on the lane again. He couldn't win.

‘Why do I waste my bloody time?' he said.

But there was no one on the track this morning to hear him. He could see wheel ruts on the verge the other side of the wall, where someone had backed a car or van in from the lane. He wondered what else they might have fly-tipped. But he couldn't see anything in the grass or in the deep banks of whinberry between the wall and the track. Why should they bother dumping stuff on the track when they could chuck it over his wall? Out of sight, out of mind. And leave the poor old farmer to clear up the mess, as usual.

Matley edged gingerly along the wall, supporting himself on the stack of bales. The smooth surface of the bags felt cold and slightly damp to the touch. But beneath the plastic, the silage itself gave a little under the pressure of his hands and released a surge of warmth. His fingers left indentations in the plastic as he pushed himself along to a position where he could see what had been thrown over his wall. Rank grass was growing in the narrow space, but it didn't get much sun behind the silage stack, and it looked pale and sickly.

‘And what the bloody hell's
that
?' he said.

I
n the Old Rectory, the Renshaws' phone rang. Sarah Renshaw looked up at the clock in her sitting room. It was 3.45 p.m. precisely.

STEPHEN BOOTH
was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He is well known as a breeder of Toggenburg goats and includes among his other interests folkore, the Internet, and walking in the hills of the Peak District, in which his crime novels are set. He lives with his wife, Lesley, in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire.

www.stephen-booth.com

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Fiction

Black Dog

Dancing With the Virgins

Blood on the Tongue

One Last Breath

The Dead Place

Scared to Live

Dying to Sin

The Kill Call

Lost River

The Devil's Edge

Dead and Buried

Already Dead

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.