Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

Back in the office at West Street, Cooper found the rest of the DCs already busy on the phones. He sat down at his desk opposite Gavin Murfin, whose head was bent over some notes in his pocket book that he was trying to transcribe on to a pile of forms. Murfin looked up, shook his head at Cooper in an exaggerated way and sucked his breath through his teeth.

‘Late, Mr Cooper? You’ll be in trouble. It’s a good job Miss is in a meeting.’

‘There was just something I had to do.’

‘There’s plenty to do here,’ said Murfin.

Cooper kept quiet. Friday afternoon wasn’t a time when he should have been in Somerfield’s looking for old men with walking sticks.

But hold on. He shouldn’t even be thinking about Friday afternoon. He should be thinking about Sunday morning — that was when the old man did his shopping. In Edendale, the bus companies ran limited services on Sunday. In fact, some routes didn’t operate at all. The man with the walking stick left Somerfield’s at the same time every Sunday morning, about 10.30 a.m. He walked slowly, too. So, allowing him fifteen minutes to get to the town hall, he couldn’t be expecting to get a bus home before 10.45.

Cooper looked around the office. There must be a bus timetable somewhere.

He went to the shelves that contained their reference library. They also contained a lot of other stuff that nobody knew what to do with, including a stack of urgent memos from county headquarters that was about a foot high and threatening to topple over. But Cooper eventually found what he was looking for.

‘Route 19. The 10.53 bus to Southwoods,’ he said aloud.

Gavin Murfin paused in his transcribing. ‘A bus to where?’

‘Southwoods.’

‘Southwoods? Ah.’

‘Do you know it?’

‘Of course I know it. There’s a decent chippy up there, near the community centre.’

As usual, Cooper found his attention turned off when Murfin got on to the subject of food.

‘Would the 10.53 on Sunday morning be a busy route, I wonder?’ he said. ‘And would it usually be the same driver on duty?’

‘Sunday morning? No, that’s no good at all,’ said Murfin.

‘Why not?’

‘The chippy isn’t open on a Sunday.’

‘Gavin, will you get on with your notes and leave me be?’

Cooper got up and crossed the room to get his coat. Murfin watched him until he was nearly out of the door.

‘What I can’t understand, Ben,’ he said, ‘is why you’re going to Southwoods on the bus, anyway.’

It took only a couple of phone calls to the bus depot in Baslow to establish that the driver he wanted was currently operating the Route 19 service between Edendale Town Hall and Southwoods Estate. Cooper managed to obtain the times when the bus stopped for a few minutes at the terminus outside the town hall, and he was waiting there when the vehicle pulled in and discharged its passengers.

The bus driver looked at his warrant card. ‘You’re looking for an old chap with a walking stick and shopping bag? Yes, I know him. I have to help him on board sometimes. He has some days that are better than others, if you know what I mean.’

‘That’s wonderful. And where does he get off?’

‘Corner of Wembley Avenue, near the Unitarian church.’

‘Does he live on Wembley Avenue?’

‘Well, I couldn’t be sure of that. But he heads in that direction. He might be visiting somebody, for all I know.’

‘Visiting?’

‘Well, a girlfriend or something. Or his mother. I don’t know.’

Cooper stared at him. ‘His mother. Yes.’

‘I didn’t mean his mother,’ said the driver. ‘He’s getting on a bit. His mother will most likely have passed on.’

‘Have you ever noticed how far up Wembley Avenue he goes?’

‘No. He’s not too nippy on his pins, so he’s hardly got up the street when I pull away. There are two more stops between there and the terminus.’

Passengers were starting to squeeze past Cooper to get on the bus as he stood talking to the driver. He became aware that a couple of old ladies had sat down near the front of the bus and were listening to his conversation, with their hands folded on their laps and their eyes bright with interest.

‘Can you drop me off there?’ he said.

‘Where?’

‘Wembley Avenue.’

‘’Course. But you’ll have to wait while I finish getting passengers on.’

Cooper sat down opposite the old ladies, who nudged each other and eyed him eagerly. He looked out of the window at the town hall, desperate not to meet their gaze. He had a horrible premonition of what they were going to say to him, given a minimum of encouragement.

The façade of the town hall boasted four decorative pillars. They stood on ornate bases, which had been partially obscured by the disabled ramps and handrails installed a few years ago to make the place accessible. The building had been edged with decorative stones that had been carved with a wavy pattern. There were so many of them that they were distinctive, and local people had nicknamed their town hall ‘The Wavy House’.

He found he was looking at the noticeboard on the wall of the town hall. The building hosted far more than just council meetings. There were notices announcing line-dancing classes, a slimming club, the WI market, Darby and Joan sessions, bridge nights, a book fair, and t’ai chi lessons. He tried to imagine the old ladies doing t’ai chi, just to keep himself amused.

Finally, the bus set off and wound its way through the streets of Edendale town centre before emerging on to Greaves Road and going north. Cooper tried to appear interested in every single thing that they passed. The old ladies gathered their belongings and got off, casting reluctant glances back.

‘Next stop Wembley Avenue,’ said the driver.

Cooper stood up and waited by the doors. ‘Thanks a lot. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘No trouble. Are you sure you don’t want his name?’

Cooper paused on the step of the bus as the doors folded open. ‘Whose name?’

‘The chap with the walking stick, of course. The one you’ve been asking about.’

‘You know his name?’

‘’Course I do. He’s an OAP. He has to show me his bus pass every time he gets on. His name’s Jim Revill.’

‘I was going to walk up and down Wembley Avenue knocking on people’s doors asking for a man with a stick,’ said Cooper.

‘Well,’ said the driver, ‘that would have been a bit daft, wouldn’t it?’

Jim Revill was totally baffled to find Ben Cooper standing on his doorstep. It was obvious that at first he didn’t recognize him at all. Cooper was used to that feeling himself. He had often seen someone walking down the street and felt sure that he knew them, but from an entirely different context. The woman who served him in the petrol station twice a week was very familiar, but she was unrecognizable when she had come out from behind the counter and was dressed up to the nines, having a drink with her boyfriend in Yates’s Wine Bar. It was a bit unsettling. People should stay in their contexts, safe and familiar.

‘Detective Constable Cooper, Edendale Police,’ he said.

‘Eh?’

‘Sunday mornings at Somerfield’s supermarket.’

‘Ah! Chinese meals for one.’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper, with a sigh. ‘That’s me.’

‘But what are you doing here? This is where I live.’

‘Yes, I know, Mr Revill.’

‘Did you follow me?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

Mr Revill’s face took on a stubborn look. ‘I don’t let people in without seeing their identification and checking up on them.’

‘Quite right.’

Cooper showed his warrant card again, and had to wait while Mr Revill phoned the station. But while the old man made the call, he left the front door open, so that Cooper could easily have walked into his house and pulled the phone right out of the wall, if he had wanted to commit a robbery.