The Corpse Bridge
Authors: Stephen Booth
For Lesley, as always
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones
âepitaph on the grave of William Shakespeare
Chapter 1
Thursday 31 October
D
usk was falling on the Corpse Bridge by the time Jason Shaw reached the river. The broken stone setts felt slippery under his boots after a heavy shower, and the walls ran with moisture in the fading light. He shivered and shook the rain from his hair as he checked his watch one more time. He was going to be late.
Jason had come out unprepared for a downpour. He'd been in such a hurry, and the autumn weather was so unpredictable, that he'd been fooled into thinking a light jacket would be enough, and he'd left his waterproofs in the Land Rover. So when the shower started he'd stopped to shelter under a sycamore tree while the water drummed on the earth all around him and turned the river below into a seething foam. But it was the end of October and the leaves were almost gone from the trees. Within seconds his hair was plastered to his skull and water dripped inside his collar as rain cascaded through the branches. He decided he'd get less wet if he returned to the path and just hoped for the shower to ease off. By the time the sky cleared he was soaking.
And that was one of his problems. He always seemed to be in a hurry these days. There was too much going on in his life, so he was constantly rushing from one thing to the next. Sometimes he just wished everything would stop for a while and let him get his breath. If only he had time to think, at least. Perhaps he wouldn't make so many bad decisions. He might be more prepared for what the world threw at him.
But circumstances were conspiring against him all the time. The situation was out of control and he was being dragged along, as if by an irresistible current. The most important decisions in his life were being made by other people. He was aware of it, but couldn't do anything about it.
And Jason knew who was responsible for that. The one person he could never say âno' to.
He was trembling with cold as he stepped round a patch of mud that had collected in a damaged section of the track. Every few yards the setts had been shattered or dislodged, exposing the earth beneath to serious erosion. Much of this destruction had been caused by off-roaders. The national park authority was trying to enforce a traffic regulation order on some of these narrow-walled byways and green lanes to keep four-by-fours and trail bikes from using them. There were places in Derbyshire where off-roaders swarmed in their hundreds on bank holiday weekends, with whole convoys of Land Rovers forcing their way down bridleways and gouging new tracks out of the hillsides. By the end of the summer you could see their wheel tracks for miles. Most were intruders from the cities, leaving their mark on the landscape.
It was as he was wiping the water from his eyes that Jason saw her. At first she seemed like an illusion â a pale shape glimpsed through a blur of water and the deceptive colours of twilight. He wasn't a superstitious person, but Jason felt a jolt of fear at the ghostly flicker and swirl as the figure dodged its way through the trees on the other side of the bridge.
But did the figure run? It hardly seemed the right word. To Jason, she appeared to float or hover, her feet hardly touching the ground. By the time she vanished from his sight on the opposite hill, he still wasn't sure whether he'd imagined the figure or not. He realised there had been no sound from her. But that could have been an atmospheric effect, a result of the damp air and the evening stillness.
And finally there was a noise. Something bigger and definitely physical was crashing through the undergrowth where the woman had disappeared. Jason saw nothing, but he felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to stir, an icy chill surging through his limbs. He heard one shout, an incoherent yell with no words, a cry that might almost have come from an animal.
Then the crashing stopped, and there was silence.
Jason was left standing for a moment on the approach to the Corpse Bridge, listening carefully for a sound, but hearing only the rush of the river and the dripping of rain from the trees.
O
f course, Geoff and Sally Naden shouldn't have been there at all. Not that evening. It was entirely the wrong night, a different time of the week from the one they'd planned. Yes, it was definitely a mistake. At least, that was what Geoff insisted.
Sally was in a bad mood even before they came out. She recognised her own moods, and knew that Geoff would say she was sulking. But she didn't really care tonight. She wasn't as young as she used to be, and she just wanted to get this over with.
âIt was definitely you,' said Geoff. âYou got it wrong again. You're always getting things wrong.'
âRubbish,' she said. âIt's tonight, I'm certain.'
Sally had been saying ârubbish' all evening, since even before they left the house. She didn't have the energy or inclination to spell out her argument in coherent sentences. But she was starting to get bored with ârubbish'. She might have to think of something else to say.
âYou'll get things wrong once too often some day soon,' said Geoff, âand that will be the end of you. I hope you've written your will.'
âNonsense,' she said.
Of course, Geoff was talking through his elbow. But Sally had to admit he was right about one thing. Some mistakes could have disastrous consequences. You found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, met the sort of person you'd normally spend your whole life avoiding, and you could end up putting yourself in a dangerous situation. In those circumstances, one of you might have an accident. Out here, in a spot as quiet as this, an accident might be fatal.
Sally had been thinking about murder for a while now. Not all the time, just off and on when the mood took her. Sometimes it would be when she was in bed at night, trying to get to sleep but finding herself staring at the bedroom ceiling for hours, while the weight of her husband's comatose body dragged the duvet off her again. Or it might be while she was driving, frustrated by the traffic, hearing his parting words repeating in her mind over and over. Those were the times when she fantasised about finally putting an end to it all. It would be a kindness really.
She'd once heard someone claim that the best way to commit a murder and get away with it was to lure your victim up on to a high place, such as a cliff. As long as there were no eyewitnesses, it was almost impossible to prove from forensic evidence whether that person fell or was pushed. The fall had to be terminal, and unobserved. It needed to happen at a time when no one else was around.
But there was someone else here. Sally had been absorbed in such a world of her own that the sudden realisation came as a shock.
âDid you hear that?' she said.
Geoff had already stopped, his head tilted on one side. âI'm not sure.'
âI thought there was somethingâ'
He'd obviously heard the same thing, but Sally saw that he couldn't bring himself to agree with her, even now.
âPerhaps we should go back,' he said instead.
And that was typical. He wouldn't get into an argument, but would make it seem as though whatever they did next was entirely his own idea.
Geoff and Sally Naden turned back and began to walk up the track. They knew someone was nearby, and it made them nervous. Sally was still sure she was right. But this wasn't the way it was supposed to be.
J
ust before six o'clock, Poppy Mellor was sitting in her car, parked against a stone wall on the Staffordshire side of the river.
Earlier that afternoon she'd been for a trip with some friends to Monkey Forest in Trentham. She'd always had an interest in apes and monkeys. And those forty acres of land south of Stoke were the only place in the country you could see them roaming free. A hundred and forty Barbary macaques in a Staffordshire woodland were the closest she could get, until she'd saved enough money for a trip to North Africa. Up in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, that was where the macaques came from.
Poppy gazed down the slope at the dripping trees and bare fields. The Atlas Mountains were a bit different from the borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire, she imagined.
She'd been sitting in her car for a few minutes thinking about the noise. She was in the middle of reading a text message from Imogen, one of her friends from the drama studies course at uni. Her dad would raise his eyebrows at the idea of her texting someone she'd seen only a few hours before. He would say it was a kind of compulsion. But she always felt this need to be in touch.
Those monkeys at Trentham lived in close family groups. She loved them for that. Whenever you saw them, they were either physically touching or talking to each other, sometimes both. Their hierarchy was complex too, though she supposed one always had to be the leader. Every macaque knew its role, and they could rely on each other totally for loyalty and support.
Poppy sighed. Humans had a lot to learn from other primates. She ought to tell her dad that. She could just picture his face now. Some people's reactions were so predictable. For months she'd longed for something to happen that would make her life more interesting.
She turned up her CD player and wondered if anyone had heard that scream. There were lots of strange noises out in the country at night. It could have been a fox, perhaps? It was mating season and vixens called like that sometimes.
But Poppy knew it hadn't been a fox. Even from a distance, it had unmistakably been a primate. Or more specifically, human.
F
urther down the slope, on either side of the bridge, Jason Shaw and the Nadens were unaware of Poppy's presence. Jason peered cautiously into the trees as he climbed the slope, stopped, walked a few yards into the undergrowth, then changed his mind and came back again.
Three hundred yards away, Poppy had got out of her car. She glanced for a moment at the clouds scudding overhead, revealing brief glimpses of the moon, still pale against the twilight blue sky. Then she leaned on the stone wall and gazed down into the valley where the river ran through the darkening woods. Her eyesight was good, but she could see no movement, no sign of any human presence among the trees. Poppy thought of making a phone call, but knew it would be pointless. So she got back in her car, switched on the headlights and accelerated away down the road towards Hartington. The Nadens took longer to reach their home, after stopping to argue about the best route to take.