Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

Cooper patted his pockets until he found a notebook and pen, and wrote the number down by the light of a streetlamp before he forgot it. Then he pulled out his mobile phone and called the comms room at West Street to request a PNC check.

‘Sorry, DC Cooper,’ said the operator. ‘I can’t give you any information. That’s a blocked number.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

A blocked number? Cooper had never come across one before, not in ten years of police service.

‘Thanks anyway.’

Well, one thing was for sure. Criminals and drug addicts didn’t own dark blue BMWs with blocked numbers. The privilege was only extended to vehicles whose ownership was officially protected. Investigators in vulnerable positions, like the DSS. But mostly police officers involved in sensitive operations. What exactly had Diane Fry been sticking her nose into?

Ben Cooper walked back to his flat, but didn’t go in. He unlocked his own car and drove out of town on Castleton Road until he found the street where Diane Fry lived. A few minutes later, he was looking up at the window of Fry’s flat. This was a student area, and the houses had been converted into as many flats and bedsits as possible, so they would be pretty basic. But Fry was on a sergeant’s pay now. Surely she could afford something better than this? There was nothing special about the Peugeot car she ran. She didn’t take exotic holidays that he was aware of. But where else would her salary go? Was there something he didn’t know about her life?

Well, of course, there were lots of things he didn’t know. Would it do Diane any good to find her? Was that where Diane’s salary went — on her efforts to find Angie? And then he thought about a heroin addiction. It was an expensive habit to feed.

Cooper had been intending to ring the bell, but for some reason he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He had been in Fry’s flat only once, and that was an occasion he had very vague memories of. All he really knew was that he hadn’t been welcome. He had no conviction that he would be any more welcome now.

He thought of Ruby Wallwin. When you live alone for a long time, you become a hermit and the outside world becomes a threat. You hear someone’s footsteps in the corridor, and hope that they will pass by. And when they do, you take it as another sign that the world has rejected you, that you’re not wanted. In that way, you paint yourself into a corner, building a barrier that the world can never cross. And you hole up for the siege.

Surely this was what she needed? This was the great frustration that caused the chip on her shoulder? But if he got the two of them together, would she move away? She once told him that it was the reason she’d come to Derbyshire.

Besides, why make life any more difficult for himself? Surely he could just go home and forget all about it.

Cooper turned his car, switched on the radio and headed back into Edendale. If the curtains at the window of one of the first-floor flats had twitched as he left, he wouldn’t have noticed.

Friday

Ben Cooper wasn’t really asleep when his alarm went off next morning. He hadn’t slept properly at all, but had spent the night turning restlessly in his bed, worried that he’d miss the alarm. When the high-pitched beeping came, it penetrated a foggy limbo he had been suspended in, a world halfway between waking and sleep. His mind had been groggily circling and circling around the same thoughts, hovering over a deep well of anxiety without being able to see clearly what the cause of his uneasiness was.

Cooper pressed the button to stop the noise, and opened his eyes to stare into the darkness. It was totally black in his room. Black, and silent. There was no traffic on the road outside and no birds singing, no one moving around the house, not even any water hissing through the old plumbing of 8 Welbeck Street. The silence made him feel cold. But perhaps that was only anticipation. He knew how cold it would be outside, once he had left the house. It was six o’clock in the morning, and it was April.

Cooper swung his feet from under the duvet, sat up and pulled back the curtain. It was also raining.

‘Oh, great.’

For a moment, he thought about lying down and pulling the bedclothes back over himself, and staying there until it got light, as normal people did. But then he sighed, switched on the bedside light, and headed for the bathroom. He had no time to waste — he was on an early shift today, and a briefing meeting had been scheduled for 8 a.m.

He skirted the pile of ironing that had been waiting for him to get to it for days, and stumbled in bare feet on the pine floorboards in the passage between his bedroom and the bathroom. It was warmer at this end of the flat, but that only made the thought of going out worse.

He had managed to have a shower and a shave and was trying to drink a coffee when his mobile phone rang on the kitchen table.

‘No, I haven’t set off yet,’ he said to his coffee mug, even before he picked up the phone.

A large black cat walked sleepily into the kitchen and looked at him in a puzzled manner. If Cooper was up and moving around, it must be breakfast time. But it knew something wasn’t quite right.

Cooper transferred his coffee to the other hand and picked up the phone.

‘Ben Cooper.’ He listened for a moment. ‘No, I haven’t set off yet, Diane. Yes, I know there’s work to do before the morning briefing. What makes you think I’ll be late? I’ll be there on time.’

He pushed the phone into the pocket of his leather jacket, where he had thrown it over a chair the night before. He picked up the shirt, sweater and jeans that he’d put ready. The sitting room was dark, and only a thin sliver of light entered through the curtains from the streetlamp across the road. It glinted off the framed picture over his mantelpiece, as if his father were winking at him from his seat on the second row of the Edendale police line-up. Then Cooper noticed the cat.

‘Here, Randy — do you want this coffee? I haven’t time to drink it.’

The cat fixed him with its yellow eyes, puzzlement turning to disdain.

‘No? Never mind.’

With the cat marching in front of him, its tail in the air, Cooper pulled his clothes on as he headed back to the kitchen. He put two bowls of cat food out and placed them on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. The noise of the rain was loud on the glass roof. Here in the centre of town there was always light, and he could make out the roofs of the houses that backed on to the Welbeck Street gardens from Meadow Road. The rest of the world out there was asleep. He would have to be careful that he was quiet as he left, so as not to disturb his new neighbour.

Cooper looked at his watch. If he didn’t hurry, he actually was going to be late.

The Eden Valley hadn’t yet experienced the full impact of its annual influx of tourists, but the May Day bank holiday would make up for that. Everything was geared up for the season — the craft shops were open and full of the aromas of freshly painted and varnished stock produced during the winter, the tourist attractions were spring cleaned and ready, the cafés and pubs were holding their breath, praying for a good summer.

The bank holiday weekend would be particularly busy this year, because Edendale was hosting a day of dance. It was what the morris dancers called an ‘ale’, though they said the name had nothing to do with the amount of beer that was drunk. Sides from all over the North and Midlands would be converging on the town to perform in the streets and in front of the pubs. With the help of a bit of good weather, the town would be packed.

Recently a television crew had been filming around Edendale, too. Their vehicles and equipment regularly blocked the narrow streets off the market square, irritating the shopkeepers and residents, who had to step over yards of cable snaking across the pavements and cobbles.