Стивен Бут: Blind to the Bones

Now Cooper was standing in sunlight, and he found he was sweating under his waxed coat. It was one of those spring days when you didn’t know what to wear when you went out in the morning. Whatever you chose, you knew you were going to get wet, or too warm. Probably both. There was nothing predictable about the weather in the Peak District at any time of the year, no matter how long you lived there. Outdoors, you were forever taking off layers of clothing and putting them back on again, as you passed from sweaty uphill slog to the biting wind of an exposed plateau. In April, you never knew from one moment to the next what sort of weather was going to hit you. A squall, a gale, a deluge of hailstones, or a warm burst of sun — you could get it all within an hour.

Down in the converted farmhouse, the suspects roused from their beds would be getting ready for a trip. With a bit of luck, they wouldn’t be seeing much sunlight for a while.

‘An isolated farmhouse is an ideal base for an illegal operation. And God knows, there are plenty of those between here and Edendale,’ said Udall.

‘Too many,’ said Cooper.

‘And they make great drugs factories particularly. It’s taking diversification a bit far, if you ask me. Definitely too far. If they can’t make a living at farming, they should stick to opening tea rooms and doing bed and breakfast.’

‘But there’s more money in drugs. And you don’t have to deal with tourists.’

‘The neighbours are going to get a shock,’ said Udall. ‘You can see they’ve got no security to speak of. There are no walls and no gates, and the lights are mostly to show off the garden and the fish pond. And the Afghan doesn’t look as though it would put up much of a fight.’

‘People are used to thinking that they don’t need to set up fortifications around their homes in this area.’

‘Ah, but the architect isn’t from this area. He lived in Sheffield until two years ago. He ought to know better.’

‘It’s the scenery,’ said Cooper. ‘It gives people a false sense of sanity.’

If Cooper were to be honest with himself, his short spell with the E Division Rural Crime Team was already starting to feel like a breath of fresh air. Winter in Edendale had been long and hard, and full of other complications. Diane Fry, for one.

And then he had chosen to move out of Bridge End Farm for the first time in his life. He had left home at almost thirty years old, and now he had all the business of looking after himself, and the unexpected implications of having property, even though his flat in Edendale was only rented. He had his own territory now, and that made life look different. That, and his looming thirtieth birthday, made a lot of things look different. It was as if he had suddenly been lifted out of his old, familiar rut and pointed in a different direction, so that he wasn’t quite sure who or what he was any more. In fact, he was a bit like the former farmhouse down there — designed for a different purpose entirely.

‘Besides, houses like this need security these days. Almost every house of any size in Longdendale has been targeted by thieves during the last eighteen months or so,’ said Udall. ‘Some of them have been hit more than once. If the thieves don’t get in the first time, they do a recce and come back later.’

‘Professionals, then?’

‘No doubt about it.’

‘Local? Or the travelling variety?’

‘Well, we definitely think they’re using somewhere on our patch to store the stuff they’ve nicked. Another isolated farmhouse, probably.’

‘What items are they going for?’

‘This lot go for antiques: clocks, porcelain — anything small that looks as though it might be worth a bit of money. There’s a huge market for that kind of thing. It’s likely they’re collecting enough for a vanload, then shipping it off to the States or somewhere in Europe. Easy money, all right.’

The Shetland pony was deliberately bullying the two Muscovy ducks, nudging them around the paddock until they began to flap their wings and quack angrily.

‘Did the architect design the alterations himself?’ said Cooper.

‘I believe so. But he seems to have designed them for looks, rather than with security in mind, doesn’t he?’

‘You’re right. He really should have known better. Here they come.’

The task force officers were escorting two men out of the target house. Each man had his hands cuffed behind his back and an officer gripping his elbow. They looked as though they had dressed hastily in whatever had come to hand first. Much as Cooper had done himself, in fact. But these two would have the chance to put their feet up for a while in a warm, dry cell when they reached the section station at Glossop.

Cooper turned the binoculars westwards, looking for more signs of civilization in the bare Dark Peak landscape of peat moors and heather. His attention was caught by a small, tree-lined valley and the glimpse of a church tower.

‘What’s over there?’ he said.

‘That? Oh, that’s Withens.’

Cooper could hardly see the village itself. It seemed to be lying in the bottom of a hollow, slipped casually into a narrow cleft in the moors. There were trees above the village on the lower slopes, through which the roofs of houses were barely visible. But the valley was so narrow that it looked as though the two facing slopes were only waiting for the right moment to slide back together and crush the village completely, and all its inhabitants with it.

‘Withens,’ said Cooper, trying the sound of the name in his mouth as he might taste an unfamiliar morsel of food, not sure whether it was going to be bitter or sweet, soft on the teeth or difficult to chew.

Above the village was a moorland plateau, a gloomy blend of dark khakis and greens, with no sign of the purple flowers of the heather that would bring colour in the summer. Much of the landscape up there would be quagmire — a wet morass of peat bog that shifted underfoot, sucking at the soles of boots and clinging to trousers. Across the valley, Bleaklow Mountain stood right on the watershed of England, and attracted sixty inches of rain a year to its wastes of haggs and groughs.

‘I thought we’d go down to the village and take a look when we’ve finished here,’ said Udall. ‘You might be interested to see it. Withens has its own problems. As it happens, the local vicar reported a break-in yesterday.’

‘Fine.’

Cooper noticed a pair of black shapes in the distance, circling over the moor. He turned the binoculars towards them, grateful for any sign of life in the landscape.

But this wasn’t the sort of life he welcomed. They were carrion crows. Though he couldn’t see what had attracted them, he guessed they probably had their eye on a weak lamb. Sometimes, before shearing, their prey might be an adult sheep that had rolled over and couldn’t get up again because of the weight of the unshorn fleece on its back. But in the spring it was the sickliest lambs that the crows were looking for as they flapped and circled over the moors. Just now, their diet would consist mostly of young grouse and the eggs of other birds. But a weak lamb was a great bonus. Its carcass would last them for days.

If they’d found a lamb up there, then they would land in a little while and perch on a handy rock as they waited patiently for it to weaken enough to be helpless. Then they would begin to work on its eyes, picking at the white flesh as if they were delicacies that had to be eaten fresh. And once the lamb was blind, the crows could eat the rest of it at their leisure, while it died.

Cooper lowered the binoculars and looked up at the dark bulk of the hills beyond Withens.

‘Tracy, have you noticed the smoke?’ he said.