The Corpse Bridge (6 page)

‘Crowdecote? Well, I got the address…'

Cooper held up an evidence bag from among the items retrieved from the body.

‘And we've got the key too,' he said.

T
he roads in this area were slippery with mud and wet leaves. Farm vehicles had been busy working well into the autumn, trimming hedgerows and verges, scattering more debris on the already difficult surfaces. Cooper drove carefully, conscious of his tiredness, the risk of a momentary lapse of concentration on a treacherous bend.

Sandra Blair had lived in a stone cottage in a small row of them close to the edge of a narrow road that dipped and twisted its way through the hamlet of Crowdecote like a ski slope, dropping down to the Dove. A few yards away, set back from the road, was the village pub, the Pack Horse Inn. And almost directly opposite, a lane swung off towards Earl Sterndale.

The cottage was separated from the road by a short stretch of iron railings. Behind them there was no room for anything that could be called a garden, just a climbing rose against the front wall and a bird feeder with an empty feed tray positioned right in front of the sash window. The cottage hadn't been decorated for a while, but a carriage lamp and a hand-painted ceramic name plate had been added by the front door in recent years. It had been given the name of Pilsbury Cottage.

‘What car does Sandra Blair drive?' asked Cooper, hoping that Irvine had used a bit of initiative when he got her address.

‘A red Ford Ka,' Irvine said promptly.

Cooper nodded. And there it was. A red Ford Ka, tucked into a tight parking area at the side of the cottage, where it was just clear of the road. Did Sandra get a lift from someone else last night to the place where she'd met her death? Or was she another bike owner, like Rob Beresford? Cooper's money was on the first possibility – it would certainly be much more helpful to the investigation. The second option seemed like too much of a coincidence, at the very least.

‘When we've finished in the cottage, the neighbours will have to be spoken to,' said Cooper.

‘We'll be looking for anyone who witnessed Mrs Blair leaving home last night,' said Irvine, looking over the Ka.

‘Or, failing that, someone who can help us to narrow down the time. If a neighbour can confirm when she was still at home, that would help a bit. And of course—'

‘Any sightings of a vehicle calling at Pilsbury Cottage,' added Irvine. ‘Or the name of a boyfriend, anyone she might have been going out with last night?'

‘Very good, Luke.'

Irvine peered through the driver's window of the Ford. ‘Are the car keys on the ring with those for the house?'

Cooper jingled the keys. ‘No. Let's see if they're inside.'

‘Shouldn't we knock first?' asked Irvine.

‘Why?'

‘Well, just in case … there might be someone at home.'

‘Go ahead, then.'

Irvine gave a loud rap on the front door, while Cooper waited, rattling the keys. He was conscious of faces appearing at windows nearby, wondering who they were and what they were up to. There might be a few calls to the local station shortly.

‘Happy now?' said Cooper when there was no reply.

D
iane Fry twisted uncomfortably at her desk in the Major Crime Unit at St Ann's in Nottingham. She wasn't happy.

Fry had just come back from a meeting with her DCI, Alistair Mackenzie.

‘We can't just leave them to get on with it,' he'd said.

‘Why not?'

‘It's our job.'

It was frustrating being the new girl all over again and not feeling able to argue too much. But Fry felt there were some things that weren't her job.

‘We've got so much else on,' she said, though she was pointing out the obvious.

Mackenzie was unmoved. ‘It makes no difference, Diane. Besides—'

‘What?' She could see him getting round to breaking some kind of bad news. He wasn't sure how she was going to react. Fry knew herself well enough to realise it probably meant she was going to react badly. ‘Sir? What is it?'

‘We've had a request from Derbyshire. Specifically, E Division.'

‘No, no, no,' said Fry. ‘I spent enough time there. I filled in at Divisional CID in Edendale for months while Ben Cooper was on extended sick leave. It was too much. I couldn't stand going back and doing the same thing again.'

‘That's not—' began Mackenzie.

‘Besides, DS Cooper is back at work now. I know he is. I was there when he returned. There can't be someone else…?'

Mackenzie was shaking his head patiently. ‘No, you're getting completely the wrong end of the stick, Diane.'

‘Am I?'

Fry tried to restrain herself. But the sudden prospect that had risen in her mind was too scary. After Ben Cooper's tragedy in the pub fire, she'd been unable to decline the temporary assignment back to E Division, a secondment to take charge of her old team in Divisional CID. A refusal would have been impossible, especially in those circumstances.

And then there had been the unexpected final task, the more personal one for which she was totally unsuited. Breaking bad news, adding another psychological burden to someone who was already down. She had no personal skills for doing that. Ben Cooper must be used to hearing only bad news from her by now. The thought caused an unexpected stab of pain in her abdomen.

‘Let me explain,' said Mackenzie.

So Fry reluctantly sat and listened to his explanation of the request from Derbyshire. She fidgeted at the thought of the task she was being presented with. It opened up all kinds of possibilities in her mind, some of which were completely unprofessional. She suppressed the flight of imagination immediately. Totally inappropriate.

‘Why me?' she said when Mackenzie had finished.

The DCI raised his hands. ‘You're the obvious person. You've got to admit that, Diane.'

‘Perhaps.'

He looked at her more seriously. ‘This is a compliment, you know. It's a sign of how highly you're regarded. Don't just throw that away.'

Fry bit her lip. She knew she was going to have to accept. In fact, her mind was already turning over the ways she might approach the task. Her relationship with Ben Cooper was complicated, but she had to put all that aside. Feelings couldn't come into it. Definitely not.

She gazed back at Mackenzie for a moment, and finally she nodded. There was only one thing to do. She would just have to take the bull by the horns.

T
he interior of Pilsbury Cottage was cramped and dark. The windows in these old cottages were always too small and the ceilings too low. It reminded Cooper that his ancestors must have been people of short stature who spent their time crouched in candlelight huddled against the cold.

‘We need the lights on,' he said.

‘Here.'

Irvine found the switches and the sitting room sprang into focus. It was still cramped, but the furniture and wallpaper were decorated in a series of bright chintzy patterns that made the light suddenly painful on his tired eyes.

‘Check upstairs for any signs that anyone else has been here,' said Cooper. ‘Then see if you can find a diary and an address book.'

‘Anyone else? Oh, you mean like a boyfriend?' said Irvine. ‘Shaver in the bathroom, slippers under the bed?'

‘Possibly.'

While Irvine disappeared upstairs, Cooper stood in the middle of the sitting room and turned through three hundred and sixty degrees to perform a quick survey. The objects scattered around were a little out of the ordinary. They reminded him of the sort of thing his sister Claire collected. Abstract pottery, ethnic art, bowls full of crystals and stacks of scented candles. A Native American dreamcatcher hung from the ceiling and a pack of Tarot cards stood on a bookshelf. One wall was covered with a rug woven in vibrant colours with tribal African figures.

He noticed a large wicker basket next to one of the armchairs by the fireplace. When he lifted the lid, he found balls of wool, scraps of material, knitting needles, a case full of pins and cotton thread, another of buttons and small glass beads.

Cooper saw a phone on a table by the window. He pressed the answering machine button to play back the messages. But a recorded voice told him there weren't any. Even the old messages had been deleted. There was a calls list function too, but the only recent numbers it showed were listed as unavailable.

That was odd. It was almost like someone was trying to hide their contact history. It certainly wasn't a normal thing for the victim of a crime to do. People didn't expect to meet their death when they left the house.

Cooper walked through into the tiny kitchen and found a laptop computer sitting on the table. He looked out of the back door, where there was only a tiny square of garden tucked under the hillside. He could see over a stone wall into a few acres of sheep pasture.

‘Can you see an address book or anything with phone numbers in?' he called, when he heard Irvine come back downstairs.

Irvine had begun opening and closing drawers in a pine dresser in the sitting room. ‘Not yet. But come and have a look – I've found a diary.'

‘Is it a big one?'

‘No, tiny. A little pocket diary.'

‘She didn't record every detail of her life, then.'

‘No such luck.'

Irvine passed him the diary. The cover was plastic, but textured to make it look like leather, and it had little brass corners to protect it from getting dog-eared from use by the end of the year. Cooper riffled through and saw the information it provided would be sparse. There were four days to a page and Sandra Blair had used the space mostly to record dates when she was working, the times of WI meetings, dental appointments, an eye test.

He turned to Thursday 31 October. But the section was blank. To Cooper's eye, it looked suspiciously blank. After the absence of messages on the answering machine, it looked as though Sandra had deliberately failed to mention where she was going last night. Not even to her own diary.

But what about tonight? Well, here was an entry at last. So Sandra hadn't planned to die last night. For Friday 1 November, she'd written: ‘Meet Grandfather, 1am.'

‘What does it say?' asked Irvine.

‘“Meet Grandfather, 1am.” What do you think that means?'

‘Well, someone was meeting their grandfather, I guess.'

‘Grandfather?' said Cooper. ‘How old was Sandra Blair, Luke?'

‘We think she was around thirty-five. But that's an estimate from Mrs Beresford.'

Cooper did a quick mental calculation. ‘It's possible, I suppose. But her grandfather would be approaching eighty, at least.'

‘My grandfather wouldn't be out meeting anyone at one o'clock in the morning,' said Irvine. ‘He's in bed with his hot chocolate by ten at the latest.'

‘There are grandfathers and grandfathers, though.'

Cooper was remembering his Granddad Frank, his mother's father. He'd been a tough old bird, who'd spent most of his life working on the roads as a foreman in the county council's highways department. That was in the days before health and safety, when Frank and his colleagues worked on all kinds of jobs and in all conditions wearing their overalls and flat caps. As foreman, Granddad Frank had insisted on wearing a tie too. He could have walked twenty miles when he was aged nearly eighty, and he never seemed to get more than three or four hours' sleep.

‘Whose grandfather, then?' asked Irvine.

‘I have no idea.'

Irvine frowned. ‘That's a shame, Ben. She was supposed to be meeting him tonight, whoever he is.'

‘Tonight?' said Cooper. ‘Or last night?'

‘It's an entry for today, isn't it?'

‘Yes, but at one in the morning,'

‘Oh, I see what you mean.'

‘If you were going somewhere at one o'clock in the morning, would you enter it in your diary for that day or the day before?'

‘Where would I be going at 1 a.m.?'

‘I don't know. I'm not familiar with your social life. An all-night party? A rave?'

‘Chance would be a fine thing.' Irvine thought about it for a moment. ‘Probably the day before. Because that's when I'd need to remember it. The next day would be no good. If I was the sort of person who might forget something like that.'

‘Speaking of which,' said Cooper. ‘I haven't seen any car keys yet. You?'

‘No. There's a handbag here with the usual sort of stuff in. A purse, but no keys.'

Cooper looked round. They'd left the front door open when they entered the house, just in case someone passing by got worried about them being burglars.

‘Close the door for a minute, Luke,' he said.

Irvine looked surprised, but he pushed the door shut. On the back of it was a row of coat hooks, which held two or three jackets, a waterproof and a scarf.

‘Try the pockets of the top jacket,' said Cooper.

Irvine patted the pockets, dived in with a hand and pulled out a set of car keys on a fob with a logo.

‘Eureka,' he said with a happy grin.

‘Let's take a look in the car, then.'

It was while they were searching the car that a member of the public stopped to ask what they were doing. Irvine showed his warrant card and assured him there was nothing to worry about. Cooper watched the man as he left reluctantly. It would be all round the village in half an hour that something was going on at Pilsbury Cottage. But it couldn't be helped.

‘Nothing in the boot,' said Irvine, except some bags of old clothes. ‘It looks as though she was planning to take them to the charity shop.'

Cooper smiled. He opened the glove compartment, pushed aside some old car parking tickets and till receipts, and put his hand on an address book.

‘Excellent.'

They went back inside the house, away from prying eyes again.