Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

‘A commune? But this is different. These are all members of the same family.’

‘I know. You wouldn’t think they’d all want to live together, given the choice. I know I wouldn’t want to live with my family. We usually try to keep as far away from each other as we possibly can.’

Cooper knocked at number 5, Fran Oxley’s house, but got no reply. He listened at the door, thinking he heard voices. But he wasn’t quite sure where the sound was coming from. He tried a bit harder, in case the knocker wasn’t loud enough, or the occupier was at the back of the house. But there was no response. It felt almost as if the house itself were ignoring him.

‘I wonder why no one has ever fitted door bells,’ he said.

‘Probably not worth their while.’

‘I’m going to put my card through the letter box,’ said Cooper. ‘Then at least we’ll have made contact, of a kind.’

He scribbled a note on the back of the card and pushed it through the door. At number 3 he did the same thing, after he got no reply to his knock. But then he looked at Tracy Udall.

‘Can you hear it?’ he said. ‘There’s definitely someone at home somewhere. It sounds like children.’

‘I think you’re right. It’s coming from that direction.’

Cooper walked along the row of houses towards the sound of laughter. He followed the muddy track past the front gates to the end of the terrace. Here, the track made a sharp turn at the last house and vanished behind it. He kept walking, skirting the deep puddles that had gathered in ruts underneath the shadow of the blank gable end. A skim of oil had formed on the surface of the water in the puddles.

Ahead of him, the track continued for another fifty yards, towards more trees. But on his right must be the yard that the brick passages ran into.

Then Cooper stopped. He was amazed to find that there was another row of houses facing the back of Waterloo Terrace. There were eight of them again, all of the same construction — black brick, with an arched passageway between each pair. But all of these homes were unoccupied, and had long since been abandoned. Their windows were broken and their doors stood open, or had been removed altogether. Some of the slates were missing from the roofs, and grass was growing in the guttering. One of the downspouts had collapsed, and water was dripping from the end of the amputated section of pipe. The wall of the house clearly showed the path of the water, where it had discoloured the brick as it trickled towards the ground. In the middle of the row was its name, marked out in a decorative brick panel a couple of feet below the roof. Trafalgar Terrace.

Cooper looked at the yard. On this side, it was protected by a six-foot wire-mesh fence. Inside, he glimpsed stacks of railway sleepers, roof tiles and old tyres. Just on the other side of the fence, two girls were standing barefoot in an old tin bath of the kind that miners once used to wash themselves in front of the fire. The girls were each holding the hand of a woman who stood outside the bath, and they were paddling excitedly in a thick, viscous substance like heavy brown mud. It had splashed up their legs and on to their clothes, but they didn’t seem to care. They were having a wonderful time.

It was the first time Cooper had seen anybody in or near Waterloo Terrace enjoying themselves, and it was like a breath of fresh air. He laughed.

‘That looks fun!’ he called.

But their laughter stopped immediately, and their smiles faded when they saw him.

‘I hope your mum doesn’t mind you getting mud on your clothes. My mother always did when I played in the mud.’

All three of them stared at him silently. Cooper felt irrationally disappointed and hurt. He recognized a tinge of guilt, too — guilt that he had been responsible for destroying that moment of innocent enjoyment.

The mud they were trampling was almost red, and he could smell the earthy aroma from here. But there was no clay soil in this area. The Dark Peak was on acid, peaty soil that formed a different kind of mud altogether — the black, slimy stuff that hikers sank up to their knees in on the summit of Black Hill and Bleaklow. The clay must have been brought in specially. But for what purpose? Was it just for the girls to play in? Or had they borrowed it from some other job their parents were using it for?

‘I don’t want to stop you,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind me.’

But the girls continued to stare at him until he walked past them and on to the back lane. Cooper thought of his nieces, who weren’t far from the ages of the two Oxley girls. He thought about how devastated he would be if Amy and Josie began to regard him with the same fear and suspicion that he had seen on the faces of the Oxley girls, the same dislike and refusal to communicate. But Amy and Josie weren’t Oxleys, they were his nieces. He was their uncle Ben, and they had known him all their lives. They were family to each other, and it made a difference.

At least, it made a difference in the Cooper family.

He looked again at the ruins of Trafalgar Terrace. This was obviously where most of the pigeons lived. They sat in fidgeting rows along the roof ridge, and they were nesting on the window ledges on the upper floors, where a few bits of straw lay among shreds of rotten wood and broken glass from the windows.

‘You’ve no right to be down here.’

Lucas Oxley was standing in front of a gate in the wire fence of his yard. He had a hammer in one hand, and a dozen rusty nails clutched in his other fist. Cooper looked around for something that Lucas might have been nailing, but could see nothing new among the debris on the grass.

Cooper could hear a sort of scurrying and rustling sound behind Oxley. It was coming from among the railway sleepers and tyres stacked in the yard, or perhaps from one of the passages that ran between the houses. Somebody was busy back there. Cooper pictured some of the other Oxleys going about their business, whispering to each other cautiously — knowing, without being told, that there was a stranger nearby. He was becoming convinced that the Oxleys could smell him coming. Maybe if he chose a different aftershave and deodorant next time he made his Sunday-morning trip to Somerfield’s, it would confuse the scent, let him get closer to the nest before they recognized him.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Oxley,’ he said.

Oxley put the handful of nails into a pocket of his jacket, leaving one hand free. He shifted his grip on the shaft of the hammer. Then he looked at Cooper for a while.

There was a smothered laugh from the yard. It was a male laugh — one of the older Oxley sons. Whoever was back there, they sounded to be dragging something heavy across the ground, something that scraped on the concrete and landed with a thud when it was dropped.

Tracy Udall came to stand at Cooper’s side, but sensibly said nothing. Lucas Oxley ignored her.

‘Weather’s not too good this morning,’ said Cooper. ‘A bit wetter than it has been lately.’

Oxley nodded cautiously.

‘But you’re still managing to get a few jobs done outdoors, I see.’

‘What?’

‘You’re getting a few jobs done. Mending a fence, are you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. And you’re keeping your lads busy round the back there, by the sound of it?’

‘They’re good lads.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘Lads always get into a bit of bother now and then. It means nothing.’

‘No.’

‘They’re good lads.’

‘We only wanted a few words, sir.’

‘About anything particular? Or were you just wanting to pass the time of day? Because if you have, you’ve come to the wrong place.’

‘It’s about Neil Granger, sir.’