Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

‘Sorry.’

‘We’ll make it some other time, then. Oh, and Ben? I’d take your lady friend up on that offer, if I were you.’

Cooper put his phone away and looked over his shoulder. The woman with the trolley winked at him.

The car park in front of the supermarket was full of the sound of smashing glass as couples in estate cars queued up to unload a week’s worth of wine and beer bottles into the recycling bins. Cooper wondered if this routine had replaced Sunday-morning church worship — a few minutes spent in Somerfield’s car park helping to save the planet instead of sitting in a draughty church trying to save their own souls.

The man with the stick had been lurking, ready to take up his conversation where it had left off. Unfortunately, Cooper had completely forgotten what he had been talking about.

‘I’ve got their numbers you know.’

‘Sorry?’ said Cooper.

‘The burglars. The thieves. I’ve taken their car registration numbers.’

‘I’m sure the officers investigating have found that very useful.’

‘No. They won’t even look at them.’

‘Oh.’

Cooper was starting to come to the conclusion that he had inadvertently become attached to a DOB — a Daft Old Bloke.

‘There was even a burglary the other side of the estate — at the big property, Southwoods Grange. It belongs to the National Trust, that does. The burglars got away with antiques worth a fortune. And they must have come right past my house to get there. But you can’t tell the police anything. They haven’t time to listen to the likes of me.’

‘I’m sure they’ve taken note,’ he said. ‘They probably have a lot of other lines of enquiry to follow.’

‘You sound like one of them top detectives, when they go on TV to explain why they haven’t caught a murderer or found some missing kid. They always say they have too many lines of enquiry. You’re not a top detective, are you?’

‘No,’ said Cooper.

‘I didn’t think you could be. I suppose you just watch too much telly, like me.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘Anyway, it’s bollocks. They don’t have any lines of enquiry at all. They don’t have a bloody clue, if you ask ’em. Not a bloody clue. And when I offer to help them, they don’t want to know. What do we pay our police for, I ask you?’

‘Not much.’

‘But I bet you, if I accidentally forgot to do my trousers up in the street again, they’d be down on me like a ton of bricks.’

Cooper began to edge away towards his car, manoeuvring his trolley so that the wheels moved sideways. The man with the stick followed him.

‘Where do you live?’ he said.

‘Oh, miles away.’

‘I thought you must do. You know nothing about Edendale at all.’

After Ben Cooper had got his shopping home and unloaded, there was time for a glance at the Sunday paper. For some reason, he always picked up the Telegraph , though he knew he would never get around to reading all the sections — even if he had any interest in buying a historic property in Suffolk or worrying about a fall in the FTSE 100 index.

Later, the next stage in his Sunday routine was a visit to the Old School Nursing Home, where his mother was currently living, in remission from the schizophrenia that had forced her family to accept they couldn’t look after her in her old home at Bridge End Farm any longer. Cooper looked at his phone, tempted to switch it off for the rest of the day. But he decided against it.

An hour later, he was sitting with his mother in the lounge at the Old School, trying to analyse the smells that were partly masked by disinfectant. It was then that he got the fourth call of the day.

Scenes of crime officer Liz Petty shook her head. She was crouching in long grass next to a path that ran between trees at the edge of a field.

‘I’ve taken samples from everything in the surrounding area,’ she said. ‘But there are no signs of disturbance, and I can’t see anything that looks like blood. Of course, it depends on the timescale. If it was here a long time, the rain would have washed most traces away by now. But the lab might be able to find something.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not hopeful,’ said Diane Fry.

Beyond the trees, a new crop was showing bright and green in the field. Fry had no idea what the crop might be. She was only glad that the field didn’t contain livestock — she didn’t get on with livestock.

She looked towards some distant farm buildings surrounded by a series of limestone walls. The road behind her was narrow, and ran between two more walls. It was no more than a byway that wandered between rural lanes, and she had seen no buildings since she’d turned off from the last village, just outside Chapel-en-le-Frith. She tried to call up a picture of Emma in this place, but she failed. She couldn’t imagine any reason why Emma Renshaw should have been here.

‘No, it doesn’t make sense.’

‘More likely somebody stopped at the roadside and chucked the phone over the wall,’ said Petty.

‘Almost certainly.’

‘Are you all right, Diane?’

Fry looked at the SOCO in surprise. She had worked with Liz Petty a number of times, and saw her often around West Street. They had exchanged small talk at crime scenes, and recently had found themselves having a drink together in a corner of the room at the leaving party for their division’s old DCI, Stewart Tailby. But surely only friends asked you if you were all right in that tone of voice.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said.

‘I just thought you seemed a bit down today.’

‘Down?’

‘Fed up. I don’t want to intrude, but if you ever wanted to have a chat, you know, we could go out for a drink some time.’

Fry tried to remember what they might have talked about at Mr Tailby’s party. Had she given the impression she wanted to be friendly? Surely she hadn’t told Liz Petty anything about her private life?

‘Well, thanks for the offer,’ she said.

‘That’s OK, Diane. Just let me know.’ Petty stood up and stretched her legs, rustling in her white protective suit. ‘Anyway, I’m about to pack up here. There’s a suspicious death up in Longdendale they need some assistance with.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Fry. ‘I heard.’

‘You’re not going to be working on it?’

‘Apparently, not. I have enough to contend with at the moment.’

Petty clambered over the wall and began to put away her equipment in her van. ‘It probably won’t be anything interesting anyway,’ she said.

Fry looked at the grass where Emma Renshaw’s mobile phone had been found, and thought of Emma’s parents, perhaps waiting even now for their daughter to come home.

‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘But at least it might be something in the real world.’

The police officers protecting the scene at the air shaft were starting to get a bit edgy. The place was difficult to find, and it had taken a couple of attempts by the fire service to guide them up the track. Another patrol car had been positioned at the gateway off the A628, but there was no sign yet of the rest of the team — the forensic medical examiner, the CID, the Scientific Support van, or the senior officer who would take charge.

The gradual arrival of daylight made the scene look even worse than it had in the light of their torches. PC Greg Knott was the more experienced officer. He had attended sudden deaths before, and he knew from the smell, and the condition of the area surrounding the body, that this death had occurred some time ago. The gases building up in the body as decomposition set in had begun to expel the contents of the stomach and intestines, and blood from the victim’s nose and ears caused a confusing picture of the injuries he had sustained.