Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

His foot nudged something heavy that made a metallic scraping sound as it moved. Cooper leaned down and felt what was on the ground. Something round and heavy, and made of steel. He moved his hand along, but had the sense of something that stretched several yards ahead of him. There were more lying next to it, too. Scaffolding pipes.

It was becoming more difficult to move around here. The ground was littered with unidentifiable objects, and the path between them wasn’t clear. But up ahead, Cooper could see the outline of the flat-bed lorry the Oxleys used.

He looked towards the houses. Apart from number 7, where Mrs Wallwin lived, none of them had their curtains drawn closed on their downstairs windows. Numbers 2 and 4 had lights showing, and Cooper could see into their kitchens. Presumably, the Oxleys weren’t concerned about people peering into their windows from the back. Who would be in the yard behind Waterloo Terrace at night, anyway? Nobody with any sense, thought Cooper.

Mrs Wallwin, though, had different habits. Either she had good reason to expect someone to be peering in, or she had something to hide. Wendy Tagg would say the latter. But Cooper thought he’d be surprised if Mrs Wallwin didn’t get some level of harassment from the Oxley children, even if it was only banging on her windows and shouting insults. Even the youngest children would soon have picked up on the atmosphere of hostility towards her, and weren’t so restrained in expressing it.

Cooper made the decision not to venture any further, but to go back down the passage or through the house to his car, where he could call in and fetch a torch. But before he could turn round, he became aware that he was seeing a movement just beyond the garden — the movement of a dark shape against the stacks of pallets in the yard and the slightly lighter tree cover on the hillside behind Withens. He watched the shape move along the fence, then stop and turn towards him.

Cautiously, Cooper felt his way towards the fence and found he could see a gap where a gate must be open. He edged sideways, manoeuvring for a better angle from where he could see the figure against the sky.

It was a person, certainly, but it seemed unnaturally tall. Scott Oxley was tall — but not that tall. There were other things wrong, too — the silhouette didn’t quite gel with what a human outline should look like. Cooper was squinting to try to make out details of the odd shape, when he realized there was another standing within a couple of feet of it. Then a third and a fourth became visible. There was a line of them along the inside of the fence, standing among the pallets and scaffolding pipes and piles of old tyres.

There was a scratching sound and a spark of flame from a match as one of the figures lit a cigarette. Cooper saw the heads and shoulders of four people. He saw four black faces, but no eyes. Where their eyes should have been, there were only a series of metallic flashes reflecting the flame of the match before it died.

But it wasn’t the sight of the reflected flames that stirred the hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck. It wasn’t the whiff of sulphur from the match, or the acrid taste of the cigarette smoke on the air. His overwhelming memory of the moment would be the bittersweet mingling of sweat, leather and beer. And the faint jingling of tiny bells.

As soon as they turned off the motorway and headed back into Derbyshire, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin began passing through fields of oilseed rape that Fry had noticed on their way to the West Midlands. She had the window open, and the ammonia reek of the crop filled the car. She had surprised herself earlier by knowing that the yellow flowers were oilseed rape. Ben Cooper’s world must be rubbing off on her.

‘Well, that was a bit of a waste of time,’ said Murfin.

‘Not entirely.’

‘Eh? That Stark girl was a dead loss. She has a short-term memory problem, if you ask me.’

‘She certainly couldn’t remember anything that wasn’t in the West Midlands reports at the time.’

‘She remembered the Renshaws.’

‘Yes. In fact, you’d almost think she wanted to forget all about it.’

‘But Emma Renshaw was supposed to be her friend,’ protested Murfin.

‘Mmm. But people deal with these things in different ways, Gavin. Maybe Debbie Stark had it right. She said she was upset for a while, but then she managed to put it behind her. Like she said, she had to move on, and get on with her life.’

‘I wouldn’t forget my friends so quickly.’

‘I don’t know. Old schoolfriends, old college friends — we soon lose touch with them, because it doesn’t take long before we have nothing in common any more.’

‘I didn’t go to college,’ said Murfin.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yeah, I suppose so. But I’ve missed my tea because of her, that’s all.’

Fry knew that, whatever Gavin Murfin’s drawbacks, he had served in CID for years and had a lot of experience of interviews and had come across all kinds of suspects.

‘Gavin, what do you make of Howard Renshaw?’ she said.

‘Our Howard? He’s one of those people whose brain is way ahead of his mouth.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He never uses a single word that he hasn’t thought about before he says it,’ said Murfin. ‘I hate that kind. Give me somebody whose mouth keeps working when their brain’s stopped completely. That’s the kind of person I like to interview. It gives me a chance for a kip between questions. It can be a bit wasteful of tape though, like.’

‘Ben Cooper said that he got the impression Howard was trying to sell us something all the time.’

‘You took Ben to see the Renshaws?’

‘Yes. Is that a problem, Gavin?’

‘Nope. I just thought he would have had his hands full with the Oxleys and rats, and stuff.’

‘Rats?’

‘It was nothing important. We had a look at the old railway tunnels the other day when we were down that way.’

‘Oh.’

‘Ben asked the bloke there to check out the tunnel under the air shaft where Granger’s body was found.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He seems to have a thing about air shafts. Maybe they’re phallic symbols. I reckon I’d see phallic symbols everywhere if my sex life was as bad as Ben’s.’

Fry looked at Murfin. It had been a good idea to make him drive. The trip to the Black Country had been the longest uninterrupted period she had ever seen him go without eating. What’s more, the withdrawal symptoms were making him unusually talkative.

‘Does Ben Cooper talk to you about his sex life?’ she said.

‘Nah. But I can tell. Trouble is, he always picks the wrong ones, and then he gets let down. I mean, there was that Canadian bird—’

‘Yes, I remember that, Gavin.’

Murfin glanced at her. ‘’Course you do, that’s right. But I don’t think he blamed you for that, Diane. Not entirely.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You see, when something like that happens, it takes him time to get over it. He goes all funny and starts talking to himself.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘Ben’s a mite over-sensitive, if you ask me. But I suppose it takes all sorts.’

‘You’re getting to be a proper little psychologist, Gavin.’

‘That’s me. Clement Freud.’

Fry looked at Murfin again to correct him, and noticed that he was chewing something.

‘What are you eating?’

‘Just some chocolate I had stashed away for emergencies, Diane. Do you want some?’

‘How long has it been in your pocket?’

‘A day or two.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘I need the energy for all this brain work.’