The Corpse Bridge (27 page)

Fry took off her jacket and dropped her keys on the table. She had to admit that the rooms sounded empty and strange. She turned and looked at the corner of the lounge, where a table stood waiting for her TV set to arrive.

Well, that was one thing that kept her connected to Edendale. There was one small part of her that still hadn't left.

I
t was a typical early morning in November. A frost lay on the ground and a thick mist blanketed the valley. Above the mist the humped backs of Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill were lit by the sun, like whales breaking the surface.

Ben Cooper couldn't believe he was out so early. He'd been sleeping better for the past few nights, but this morning he woke so promptly that he was out of the house at dawn. Barely half an hour later he was here on the edge of the county, watching the sun rise.

The very top of Parkhouse Hill felt almost razor sharp. With that vertical drop on one side, you wouldn't want to lose your footing on a day like this. He imagined two people up here together. It would be so easy, wouldn't it? He could see the picture now in his mind and hear the conversation.

‘Watch where you're walking. It's slippery.'

‘I'm okay.'

‘Here, let me hold on to you…'

It wouldn't take much. A quick push, a momentary loss of balance. And the result would be serious injury or even death.

He continued to walk until he'd passed through the mist and emerged into sunlight. With a deep breath, Cooper turned and looked northwards. From here the view was stunning. It fired his imagination like no other vista in the Peak District.

Seen from Parkhouse, Chrome Hill was clearly the body of an ancient dinosaur, a dragon sleeping in the Derbyshire landscape. It was half buried in the ground, its sides covered with grass over the centuries. The dragon was quite clear, and obvious. He could see its ridged back and scaly tail. If he leaned a few yards to the left, he'd be able to make out its massive head. Its belly lay beneath those scrubby trees on the southern flank. The rise and fall of its breathing was almost visible to him.

Cooper saw it all so clearly that he even doubted for a moment if the dragon was sleeping at all. Perhaps it was about to rise to its feet with a roar, angered by his unwelcome presence in its lair.

Because that was what this place must be – a dragon's lair. Parkhouse and Chrome were prehistoric anomalies. One glance told him they belonged to a distant past. They shouldn't exist here, in the twenty-first century. These strange hills were a fragment of some parallel universe, dropped into Derbyshire by a momentary connection between their two worlds. He was standing in reality, but looking at legend.

Cooper found a flat rock and spread out his map. He marked Bowden, with its chapel and graveyard. Then he located the villages to the east. With a bit of guesswork, he could trace the probable routes of the coffin ways from each of those villages, the twists and turns the mourners would have taken to reach the crossing at the Corpse Bridge. One track came over the Pilsbury Hills and skirted the site of the castle as it descended to the river.

Another of the routes had passed through an area now swallowed up by an enormous limestone quarry. It was one of a whole series of quarries still operating south of Buxton – vast holes blasted out of the rock, their cliff faces carved into ledges like Roman amphitheatres, with diggers and dumper trucks that looked like Dinky toys as they trundled backwards and forwards on the roadways below. They were much larger than the disused quarry, the remains of which he could see now behind Knowle Abbey. They had become massive white limestone basins gleaming in the sun, but bowls of choking dust when the machinery was loading crushed stone. That route from Deeplow had once been a public right of way, now diverted at the request of the quarry owners, in an attempt to keep walkers away from the quarry.

And of course there had been a third coffin road, at least. He could see it on the map as it approached the bridge from the north. But where did it originate? It was hard to tell, but it looked as though mourners taking their dead to their final resting place at Knowle must have followed a very tortuous route. Their way had led across an area of ground now marked with a scatter of isolated structures arranged in a pattern unlike any community or industrial site he knew of in the Peak District.

Cooper could recall the Reverend Latham's voice describing the funeral.
The bearers and the funeral party making their way down the hill, resting the coffin, dividing and coming together again across the water.

But wait a minute. Dividing? Was that what Latham had said? He was quite sure of it. He could hear the words clearly in his head.
Dividing and coming together again across the water.
Did he mean the funeral party? Surely he must have done. But why would they have divided? They stopped and rested the coffin at the bridge, on the stone put there for the purpose. That was to allow the bearers to change over, the men who'd been carrying the coffin down the hill getting a rest and fresh shoulders taking up the load. So what else happened there?

Cooper looked down at the river. As he watched the waters of the Dove splashing and dancing over the stones, he realised what had happened to him. Somehow he must have been infected by Diane Fry's cynicism, inhaled some of her incessant disbelief like carbon monoxide gas leaking from a faulty stove. Her sneering had affected him, despite his instincts. She'd made him feel reluctant to acknowledge those ancient, deep-down beliefs that his ancestors lived with. And not only lived with, but acted on in their daily lives. His forebears believed in spirits – not just as some quaint, archaic superstition, but as a real and present danger in the landscape. If they were told they needed to cross water to block a spirit's path from the grave, that's exactly what they would have done. Not simply on some occasions if it was convenient, but every time, as a necessity.

Cooper turned and looked down towards the Corpse Bridge, hidden in its belt of trees. A body at the bridge, one at Pilsbury Castle. Did it mean there would be more deaths, one on each of the coffin roads?

W
hen Cooper reached West Street later that morning his team were already hard at work in the CID room, making him feel a twinge of guilt. He was supposed to be showing qualities of leadership.

‘How are things, Gavin?' he asked.

Murfin looked up from his desk. ‘Like a bad day at the mortuary,' he said.

‘It's going that well?'

‘There's good news, though,' said Murfin. ‘There's a lass here who's come in to see you. She asked for you specifically too.'

‘Who is it?'

‘Her name is Poppy Mellor.'

‘Mellor,' said Cooper. ‘That's interesting. When you say a lass, Gavin?'

Murfin shrugged. ‘Twenty-one, maybe.'

‘Good.'

P
oppy Mellor sat nervously in Interview Room One. She looked intimidated by her surroundings, as people often did who had never expected to find themselves in a police station. Looking at her, Cooper thought it had probably taken a lot of courage for her to come here.

She sat with a plastic cup of coffee in front of her on the table. She was staring at it as if she didn't quite know what it was. Cooper could sympathise with that. He'd tasted the liquid that came out of the machine and he couldn't tell what it was either.

‘Miss Mellor?' he said. ‘I'm Detective Sergeant Cooper. You were asking for me.'

She stood up when he came in, then sat down again suddenly, her legs wobbling and unable to support her properly. She looked relieved when she heard his name.

‘Poppy,' she said. ‘No one calls me Miss Mellor.'

She was a tall, athletic-looking girl with dark hair, quite pretty in a way, with long hands moving restlessly against each other on the table, her fingers twisting a set of rings. She'd draped a cream jacket casually over the chair and was wearing a white T-shirt with an esoteric design Cooper couldn't place without staring too closely.

‘Poppy,' said Cooper, sitting down opposite her. ‘I met a lady at the weekend—'

She nodded. ‘My great-aunt Caroline. She lives at Bowden.'

‘Did she mention me to you?'

‘Yes. It's amazing that she remembered your name really. She can be quite vague. You must have made an impression on her.'

Cooper looked at the plastic cup. The coffee had gone cold and a grey skin was forming on the top. It looked disgusting.

‘Would you like me to get you another one of those?' he said.

‘No. Thank you.'

‘I don't blame you.'

He put the cup aside and sat back. She seemed to be relaxing a bit more, but it would be a mistake to push her too hard.

‘Take your time, Poppy,' he said. ‘Just get it clear in your mind what you want to tell me. There's no rush.'

‘Oh, I've thought about it already,' she said. ‘I know what I want to say. It's about Rob.'

‘Rob Beresford?'

‘Yes.'

‘He's a friend of yours?'

‘Yes.'

‘He was part of the scheme, wasn't he? I mean, the whole performance at the Corpse Bridge with the effigy and the noose.'

Poppy looked crestfallen. ‘He didn't do much, you know. In fact, he didn't do anything in the end.'

‘So what was his role?'

‘He was supposed to be the person who found the effigy,' she said. ‘He deliberately didn't play any other part. He had no contact with the others beforehand, so that he would just be an innocent person stumbling across the dummy.'

‘Why didn't they just leave it for some genuinely innocent person to find?'

Poppy shook her head. ‘It might not have been found for weeks, especially if the weather turned bad. And they were worried who might find it. It could have been somebody who didn't bother to report it. It could have been a child. They didn't want to leave that to chance.'

‘So the next step was going to be making sure it got as much publicity as possible, I suppose?'

‘Yes.'

‘They were going to take photos, I imagine?' said Cooper.

‘Of course. Carrying a digital camera would have been a bit too suspicious, but Rob was going to take photos and a short video on his iPhone, then pass them on everywhere he could.'

‘Local papers?'

‘Yes, but Facebook and Twitter too. The video would have gone on YouTube. They were hoping to go viral, he said.'

‘It would certainly have drawn attention to the cause.'

Poppy nodded. ‘That's what they figured. There was no harm to it really.'

‘But it went wrong. What happened?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘And Rob doesn't know either. He wasn't there. Like I said, he had no contact with the others beforehand. They weren't even supposed to have each other's numbers on their phones, just in case. They know you look for things like that.'

‘Yes, we do,' admitted Cooper.

‘But Rob recognised Sandra, obviously. He didn't see how he could claim otherwise. You would have found out. There was no point in him pretending.'

‘We'll need to talk to Rob directly,' said Cooper. ‘He'll have to give us a statement.'

‘I know. But I didn't want you to go along thinking he's a suspect. He isn't.'

Cooper noted that Poppy Mellor seemed to be under the impression that Sandra Blair was murdered. Did she actually suspect Rob Beresford of being responsible? Was that why she'd felt compelled to come in and tell this story on his behalf? Not so much protecting the innocent, as standing by the guilty?

Well, nothing could be taken at face value – even someone who seemed so genuinely well-intentioned.

‘And what was your part in his scheme, Poppy?' asked Cooper.

‘Me? I didn't do anything. Rob wanted me to. I thought it was a good cause, protesting against the earl's plans for the holiday cottages and selling off the church. And the car park, of course.'

‘Car park?'

‘On the burial ground at Bowden. He wants to concrete it over and turn it into a parking area for the holiday lets.'

‘I don't think he can do that,' said Cooper.

‘Well, it's what they say.'

‘Perhaps they do.'

Cooper thought it sounded like a touch of exaggeration, a bit of added propaganda to make the plans sound even worse and cause that extra edge of outrage. Concreting over a graveyard? Who wouldn't object to that?

‘When the group first got together they just talked about things,' said Poppy. ‘Letting off steam, I suppose. But then they decided to walk all the old coffin roads, as a symbolic gesture. It was on one of the walks they had the idea of a bigger protest. Something more dramatic.'

‘Who actually suggested it?'

‘Rob says he can't remember.'

‘We'll ask him again, of course.'

‘He doesn't trust the cops. But he might talk to you.'

Cooper smiled. Well, that was a compliment, he supposed, to be considered not truly a cop.

‘Anyway,' said Poppy. ‘I couldn't do it. I was supposed to be there that night, according to the plan. But I got scared. I sat in my car for a few minutes and then I drove away and went home.'

‘It's nothing to be ashamed of, Poppy.'

‘I bottled out. That's what Rob would say.'

‘But you've talked to Rob since?'

‘Oh, yes. He texted me after it all happened and we met up the next day to talk about it.'

‘On Friday.'

‘Yes. I tried to persuade him to come in and talk to you, but he wouldn't do it.'

‘He won't be happy about you telling me this, then,' said Cooper.

‘No, he won't. But it's for the best. I've thought and thought about this, and I'm concerned for him. He didn't do anything wrong, you see. But I'm frightened there are other people in that group who are much worse. From what Rob says, they might be violent.'