Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

Cooper tried the door again, but there was still no response. And it still didn’t feel right. People who didn’t answer their door to the police were a challenge. They made him want to know more about them.

‘Number 4, then,’ he said. ‘Mr Scott Oxley.’

Cooper knocked on the next door. They were all looking the same already. And at number 4, Scott wasn’t in, either.

He shrugged at Udall.

‘There are three more houses yet,’ she said.

They didn’t need to go out of the gate and down the path to the next house, because there was no wall or fence separating numbers 3 and 4. There was nothing to prevent them just walking a few feet along the flags. But they did have to cross the entrance to one of the dark passages that Cooper thought of as a ginnel — though they weren’t anything like the usual narrow alleyways that he was familiar with in White Peak villages. Ginnels could be pleasant little thoroughfares, bordered by hedges and trees, and offering glimpses of other people’s back gardens or flower-covered walls. They usually led somewhere that you wanted to go, too. But the dark, brick passages of Waterloo Terrace held no temptation at all.

‘I suppose these passages lead into a kind of communal yard at the back,’ said Udall. ‘I don’t know what they keep back there.’

‘Perhaps Mr Lucas Oxley will tell us.’

But there wasn’t much chance of that. Again, there was no response to his knocking.

‘It’s starting to feel as though we’re not wanted,’ said Cooper.

And then he heard a very low growl, which stopped almost immediately. It died simultaneously with the sound of his own voice, so that he wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard it at first. Logically, he wasn’t sure. But emotionally, he had no doubts.

‘Well, you got that about right.’

Lucas Oxley was standing just within the arch of the passage that ran between numbers 1 and 2. He was wearing the same suit that he’d had on the day before yesterday, and the same hat. The long snout of the shaggy-haired Alsatian protruded from the corner of the brick wall, close to its owner’s leg. Its eyes were fixed on Cooper, and a small string of saliva dripped from the side of its mouth on to the path.

Oxley had been standing so still that again Cooper wouldn’t have been aware of him, but for the dog. A man who could keep still, and a dog that could keep silent. They made a formidable combination.

Lucas Oxley looked annoyed. Briefly, Cooper wondered whether he was more irritated by the fact that his dog had let him down and broken its silence, or by his unwelcome visitors. Tracy Udall took a couple of steps to the side to separate herself from Cooper and create two targets instead of one. There was a low brick wall between them and Oxley, but it was no barrier to the dog. Cooper couldn’t see the body of the Alsatian, but he was hoping that Oxley had it on a strong leash, for now. He had to be polite, anyway, until other measures were called for. It was procedure.

‘Police, Mr Oxley. Detective Constable Cooper and Police Constable Udall.’

‘You were here before,’ said Oxley suspiciously.

He looked at Udall. Cooper could tell from the corner of his eye that Udall had adopted a non-threatening stance known as the ‘Father Murphy’, with her palms open and facing upwards, her left foot slightly forward and her body half-turned. Her forearms would be in contact with her baton and handcuffs, and her cuffs could be drawn unobtrusively, if necessary. It had been automatic for her, something deeply ingrained from her training. And it was a sensible precaution.

But Cooper felt a bit more relaxed. He had met this dog before, and he knew it would have attacked by now, if Lucas Oxley intended it to. But this time he couldn’t mistake Udall’s uniform.

‘I was here on Saturday,’ said Cooper. ‘What’s the dog called?’

Oxley shifted his feet a bit. He was a man of so little movement that this was almost a burst of activity. Watching him carefully, Cooper decided to read it as a form of apology. Oxley gazed down at the dog.

‘Nelson,’ he said.

‘Nelson? That’s a grand name.’ Cooper could see that the dog had two eyes, so maybe the name had some other significance than a reference to Admiral Horatio Nelson. The row of houses was called Waterloo Terrace. But surely the Battle of Waterloo was on land, won by the Duke of Wellington?

The Alsatian looked pleased to hear its name and get a bit of attention from its owner. Cooper still couldn’t see its body for the brickwork, but the angle of its head changed, and he knew it had sat down. He let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

‘We’d just like a few words, if you don’t mind.’

‘Well, I mind.’

Cooper took a breath, but pretended he hadn’t heard properly. ‘We’re asking a few routine questions. You know about the death of your nephew, Neil Granger?’

‘I heard.’

‘It’s a quiet village, isn’t it? We’re hoping that residents like yourself might have seen something. A strange vehicle, or anyone acting suspiciously around the area some time on Friday night or Saturday morning.’

‘I saw nothing,’ said Oxley. ‘Are you finished?’

‘Well, we’d like to have a word with any members of your family—’

‘They’re not at home. You know the way out.’

The Alsatian’s ears went up as it heard the change of tone in Lucas Oxley’s voice, and it let out another rumbling growl. At this point, the procedure was to retreat.

‘Don’t you want to help ?’ said Cooper in frustration.

Oxley looked unimpressed. ‘We help ourselves,’ he said.

In the next lay-by down the valley from where Neil Granger had left his Volkswagen, there was a roadside café in a portakabin, for lorry drivers who wanted to stop on their trans-Pennine runs over the A628. Across the road, black-and-white crash barriers had a strip of red reflectors set into them, warning of the bend as well as the drop.

The lay-by itself contained the usual debris from passing vehicles — fragments of windscreen glass, cigarette packets, aluminium drinks cans, bits of broken pallet, an entire lorry wheel. And, inexplicably, a pair of green serge trousers lay on the grass, with their legs intertwined. The wall was topped by barbed wire strung between rusted iron posts, intended to discourage people from falling over into the stream below. Further up the hill, water ran down a series of natural steps formed from dark, smooth stones.

PC Udall pulled up as close as she could to the café. A huge twelve-wheeler Mercedes articulated lorry rumbled into the lay-by behind them. If it had been a small lay-by, like the one where the VW was parked, the truck would almost have filled it on its own. The grill, with its three-pointed star, was right behind their rear bumper, while the driver’s cab was somewhere above them, out of sight. The driver could see down into the car, without being seen himself — until Cooper got out.

There were two women serving inside the café, surrounded by smells of frying bacon and clouds of steam that the ventilator could hardly cope with. They were busy, and they shook their heads briskly when Cooper and Udall began asking questions. They didn’t remember any customers, except a few of their regular truckers. They didn’t see anything in the lay-by, unless it parked right up by their door.

Even after a few minutes, Cooper was glad to get out of the stuffy atmosphere. He found he was sweating, and took his jacket off. Then he looked at the sky and saw the clouds dragging more showers towards his end of the valley. Above Torside Reservoir, the rain and sunlight were chasing each other across the face of the hillside so fast that it was as if somebody had just turned up the speed on a film.