The Corpse Bridge (21 page)

‘How did you guess?'

‘Oh, I don't know. It just looks like a writer's room. What is the book about?'

‘It's just a little memoir,' said Latham, waving a hand in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘The difficulty I have is that my memory isn't as good as it used to be. It's requiring rather a lot of research to get the facts right. Dates and names and so on. I suppose it's my age.'

Latham perched himself on another chair and gazed vaguely at Cooper.

‘Are you hoping to get it published?' asked Cooper, failing to keep a faint note of incredulity from his voice.

‘I'm told it's very easy to publish a book yourself these days,' said Latham. ‘Modern technology has opened up all kinds of doors. There are things called ebooks now.'

‘Yes.' Cooper eyed the piles of paper. ‘Where's your computer?'

‘My what?'

‘You have a laptop, at least?'

Latham shook his head. ‘I do have a typewriter somewhere. I haven't used it for a while. There was a problem getting new ribbons.'

Cooper didn't know what else to say. If he went any further into the subject, he might end up volunteering to do the work himself. And that was beyond the call of duty.

‘I was at Bowden yesterday,' said Cooper. ‘You know, the estate village for Knowle Abbey?'

‘Oh, the Bowden burial ground?' said Latham. ‘Surely you know all about that?'

‘No, I don't,' said Cooper.

Latham raised an eyebrow at him and Cooper realised his tone had been a bit too sharp.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I don't know anything about the burial ground.'

One of the cats stirred uneasily and dragged itself off the sofa. As it strolled out of the room, Cooper could see that it was beautifully groomed, but obese.

‘I'm afraid there's nothing anyone can do about it,' Latham was saying. ‘It's all perfectly within the rules and regulations.'

‘What is?'

But now he'd set Latham off on a train of thought, the old man wasn't going to be steered by someone else's questions. ‘When a church or burial ground has been consecrated, it comes under the jurisdiction of the bishop,' he said. ‘In the case of a churchyard, the legal effects of consecration can only be removed by an Act of Parliament or the General Synod. But if the land or building isn't vested in an ecclesiastical body, then the bishop has the power of deconsecration.'

‘So?'

Latham nodded at him. ‘That's the case at Bowden, you see. The church was built by a previous Earl Manby and it belongs to the estate. So the bishop of this diocese has agreed to deconsecrate. There was no reason for him to refuse. The church itself isn't used any more, you know. It's the burial ground that has been most at issue.'

‘Are you telling me the present Earl Manby is planning to sell off the church and burial ground at Bowden?'

‘Well, of course.'

‘For what purpose?'

‘That I can't tell you.'

‘He must have some scheme in mind for the land. But can he really do that to a graveyard?'

‘By law, any graves more than seventy-five years old can be removed, though the removal and destruction of gravestones is subject to controls under the Cemeteries Act.' Latham looked at his chaotic table. ‘I could quote you the specific section, if I can find the reference.'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Then there would be the Disused Burial Grounds Act,' said Latham. ‘That dates from the 1880s, but I'm sure it still applies. The prohibition against building on a churchyard can be overridden if the church is declared redundant. Then the land can be deconsecrated and disposed of for any type of development, I think. Remains can be relocated but, if not, you're obliged to allow access to relatives.'

‘There must have been objections from families with relatives buried there,' said Cooper.

‘Indeed. But there are no plans to build on the actual burial ground, as I understand it. You'd have to consult the plans for more information, I suppose.'

Cooper watched the cat return, casually stalking past his legs as if he were just another pile of discarded paper.

‘I wonder what the earl has in mind,' he said. ‘It's bound to be something he can make money from. A residential development, perhaps.'

The Reverend Latham gazed at the returning cat and his expression became dreamy. He reached for a pen and an exercise book from the table and began to scribble in it.

‘That reminds me,' he said. ‘Thank you, Ben. It will make an interesting chapter for my ebook.'

‘What?'

‘Well, we had another example in this diocese,' said Latham. ‘St Martin's Church. It was deconsecrated back in the 1980s. But it stood derelict for almost twenty years before a young couple bought it. I heard that they invested nearly three times the purchase price and it was very interesting what they did. They kept the stained glass and many of the fixtures intact, added skylights in the roof, installed under-floor heating and constructed a rather dramatic staircase up to a galleried library. They even used the wood from the pews to build kitchen counters and a dining room table. The project took them six years to complete, as I recall.'

‘I remember that too,' said Cooper. ‘When they finished the conversion, they listed the property for sale for about six hundred thousand pounds.'

‘Ah, yes.' Latham wrote down the figure. ‘Six hundred thousand pounds. It sounded like an awful lot of money to me. But it was a very unusual property. They let me see inside it once. It had an enormous living area. It incorporated the chancel and nave, and the ceiling must have been about thirty-five feet high. Just imagine what you could do with that.'

Cooper was imagining a vast cathedral-like space filled with stacks of paper and cardboard boxes, but Latham hadn't finished.

‘Well, the really interesting thing,' he said, ‘is that St Martin's had a small graveyard. Over the years graves had been dug deep and coffins stacked on top of each other to make maximum use of the available space. When the church was deconsecrated, the coffins were exhumed and moved to other graveyards. Rumour has it that some of them were never located and might still be buried under the grounds today.'

‘Really?'

Latham laughed gently. ‘Well, if it's true, there's a jacuzzi and a barbecue patio over the top of them now. Fortunately, those deepest graves would be very old burials. The forgotten ones.'

Cooper thought of Bowden village and Knowle Abbey, and some of the people he'd spoken to during the last few days.

‘I don't think there are any forgotten ones in this case,' he said.

H
alf an hour later Cooper was walking along the ragged lines of headstones in the burial ground at Bowden and looking at the names inscribed on them. Several familiar surnames appeared. Shaw, Beresford, Kilner, Mellor, Blair.

The church was still locked, even though it was Sunday. But then, it wasn't just closed. It had been declared redundant. It would never be opened again, not as a place of worship at least. The bulldozer waiting behind the church took on a new meaning now. He could see it had nothing to do with the bonfire.

Mrs Mellor must have seen him from the window of the cottage and recognised him. She came across the green and walked through the graveyard to see what he was looking at.

‘Yes, some of my family are here too,' she said, touching one of the gravestones.

‘So I see.'

‘I take it you know what's going to happen to this? To the church and the graveyard?'

‘Yes, I know. But there have been objections from the families, haven't there?'

‘Of course,' she said. ‘But there are no plans to build over the burial ground itself. The church will be converted, probably for residential use. Then the burials that can be found will be removed and the graveyard will be landscaped. That's what the plans say.'

‘Residential use, you think?'

‘Well, we've heard there's a local artist who wants to turn the church into an art gallery. But it will probably be a holiday home for someone with plenty of money. Like the cottages.'

Cooper looked up. ‘Cottages?'

Mrs Mellor pointed. ‘There are a couple of cottages a bit further into the park. They used to be workers' homes, but the tenants were given notice. They're going to be converted into holiday rentals for tourists. Another money-spinner, no doubt.'

‘Was one of those the Blairs' home?'

‘That's right.'

She looked quite pleased with him, now that he had figured something out for himself, without being told.

‘It's terrible about Sandra,' she said. ‘I heard they confirmed that the body found at the bridge was hers.'

‘Yes.'

‘That family seem to have been fated.'

Mrs Mellor began to drift slowly away as Cooper stood for a few moments by the graves. For generations workers from the estate had been buried in this graveyard. They'd lived in tied cottages on the estate, paid their rent at the estate office, and owed their livelihoods to the earl. When they died, they were buried on the earl's land. Where else would they go?

The Manbys themselves had their memorials at the Lady Chapel attached to the hall, instead of down here with the workers on the edge of the park. Now some of the workers' cottages had to be vacated. They were going to be converted into holiday rentals for tourists. The burial ground would be deconsecrated by the bishop, the burials probably transferred to the cemetery at Buxton. The church would be advertised as a potential residential conversion. It would suit a couple looking for rural seclusion and wonderful views, as long as they had enough money to spend.

‘Mrs Mellor,' called Cooper before the woman had left the graveyard. ‘Do you know Jason Shaw? Does he still have family here in Bowden?'

‘Jason? He has no family and no friends. Nobody has much to do with him. Why?'

‘We know he was in the area near the bridge when Sandra died.'

‘I can't tell you much about him. He works at night. In fact, he's a bit strange like that. He hardly ever goes out in the daylight.'

‘Well, it's true it was dark at the time,' said Cooper. ‘Mr Shaw said he was walking his dog that night.'

Mrs Mellor scowled. ‘He never walks that dog. It lives in a run in his yard. I call it cruel myself.'

D
iane Fry had just finished a phone call with her DCI, Alistair Mackenzie. A team would be arriving from St Ann's soon. This was no longer a case that could be left to Divisional CID.

The second body had been found at a place called Pilsbury Castle. Fry knew enough about the Peak District by now to guess that her mental image of a medieval fortress with high towers and a drawbridge leading over a moat to a portcullised gate would be completely wrong. Maps of England were still marked with the names of castles all over the countryside, but most of the buildings themselves seemed to be long gone.

And she turned out to be right, of course. Like so many other sites, there was nothing left at Pilsbury but a series of mounds and hollows, and a fragment of crumbling stone wall that only an archaeologist could have identified as a castle. Well, if it wasn't for the interpretation boards anyway. You could read about the history, even if you couldn't see it.

Apart from the forensic examiners and some uniformed officers, the only CID presence when she arrived was DC Luke Irvine. She'd been Irvine's sergeant when she was serving in Edendale. She knew he was loyal to Ben Cooper. But that hardly mattered now.

At the inner cordon Fry found the crime-scene manager, Wayne Abbott, stripping off his mask and pulling back the hood of his scene suit. He grinned when he saw her. His face was slightly flushed, either from the warmth of the suit or the physical exertion of his task, or perhaps for some other reason entirely. He seemed unusually cheerful this morning, she thought. In fact, he was almost giggly. In other circumstances she might have said he was a bit tipsy. But surely not even Abbott would come on duty like that.

‘So what have you found?' she asked when she reached the CSM.

‘Oh, eight million fingerprints,' said Abbott breezily.

He laughed and Luke Irvine joined in. If Abbott had made a joke, Fry didn't find it very funny. Not for the first time, she felt as though she were missing out on some aspect of everyday conversation. She hated the use of obscure allusions whose meaning seemed to be shared by relative strangers, but not by her.

‘
Exactly
eight million?' she said, with a frown.

Abbott sighed and shook his head. ‘Never mind.'

Fry looked at Irvine for an explanation, as she often did when she was baffled by something like this.

‘It's a popular culture reference, Diane,' he said patiently.

‘Oh. Don't tell me – a TV show?'

‘Yes.
Homeland
. I suppose you've never heard of it?'

‘Some kind of property programme?'

‘No, Diane.'

Irvine seemed reluctant to explain it any further, so she left it at that. It didn't matter anyway. Whatever
Homeland
was, it couldn't be of any importance.

‘It looks as though your victim took a header off the crag up there,' said Abbott. ‘There's a bit of scuffling and more than one set of shoe marks. And we found a rip in the sleeve of the victim's jacket, which doesn't look as though it was caused by his collision with the tree.'

‘Anything else?'

‘The victim probably came in through the gate there,' said Abbott. ‘His prints are on it, but then so are, well…'

‘Eight million others?'

‘Something like that. It may have been an exaggeration the first time.'

‘What about the information board?' asked Fry.

‘Lots of prints on there too. It's amazing how many people seem to read with their fingers.'