Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

‘We do have a bit of information about this item,’ said Kessen. ‘DI Hitchens will fill us in.’

‘Well, we e-mailed pictures of the bust to a couple of experts yesterday and asked them to give it the once-over,’ said Hitchens. ‘Apparently, it’s a copy of an original in marble that can be found in a museum in Florence. The character with the curly hair and beard is Lucius Verrus, an obscure Roman emperor. Closer to home, though, there’s a larger copy of this in Chatsworth House. That’s the Duke of Devonshire’s stately home, a few miles east of here.’

‘I think we know what Chatsworth House is,’ said Kessen.

Gavin Murfin put his hand up. ‘Have Chatsworth had any antiques lifted recently?’ he said. ‘I mean, I went in there once with the wife and kids, and the bloody place was stuffed with them. You could hardly move for antiques. God knows what the old Duke’s insurance premiums must be like.’

‘Thank you, Murfin,’ said Hitchens, with an uneasy glance at the DCI.

‘In fact, while we were there, I said to the wife that if I ever got kicked off the force I thought I’d go into the antiques trade. I could train the kids to sneak a few bits of china and silver out of Chatsworth now and then, and they’d never be missed. The place is massive. In fact, can you believe there was no one even living in the part of the house that we went in? So how would they know what they’ve got, and what they haven’t? Someone could make a mint that way, I reckon.’

‘Gavin...’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘We’re investigating a suspicious death,’ said Hitchens. ‘Not planning The Italian Job .’

‘Sorry.’

‘Are there prints on the bust, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘Yes, the victim’s. Neil Granger’s.’

‘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.’