The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery

by Stephen Booth

  An English flag flew over the cafe. Not a Union Jack, but the cross of St George. A lorry driver with tattooed forearms sat on the front bumper of his truck smoking a cigarette. He eyed them suspiciously when they drew into the lay-by, correctly judging them to be out of place.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go in alone,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Suits me,’ said Villiers. ‘I can feel my arteries hardening from here.’

  Cooper nodded at the lorry driver as he passed, but got no response except for a disdainful puff of cigarette smoke.

  Fortunately, the facilities inside the cafe had kept up with modern hygiene standards, at least according to a sticker in the window claiming a five-star rating. Cooper looked a bit closer. The rating was actually for ‘hygeine’. It probably went with the stickers advertising ‘tasty snax’s’ and ‘tea in a mug or takaway’.

  The original doors of the shipping container had been replaced and windows added. The interior had been clad in plywood and finished with melamine. The near end of the container had been fitted out as a catering kitchen with griddles, a microwave, a small oven and grill, and a serving counter with a till. There was even a chilled display cabinet containing canned drinks and chocolate bars. Coca-Cola and Tango, Picnics and Snickers. A pair of refrigerators stood side by side behind the counter. Raw meats kept separate from salad vegetables and dairy produce. Essential for that five-star rating.

  Tables in the cafe would probably seat about twenty-four people, with a few tables outside on the grass when the weather was better. From the loud hum as he passed it, the other unit must house a generator, though there would be lots of space left over for storage.

  Sally herself wore a white cotton apron with the slogan ‘The Full English’. She looked Cooper up and down, instantly assessing him. He wasn’t one of her normal customers. Not a typical trucker or van driver, or even a salesman spending his time on the road.

  Cooper stood at the counter and studied a scrawled menu. A starred item was the Special Burger. There was no indication what was special about it. It was probably best to give it a miss, just in case. The aroma that had hit him as he opened the door was an ingrained odour of old cooking fat and fried onions. He’d made the right decision coming in here alone. Villiers would have been horrified.

  ‘What can I do you for, luv?’ said Sally.

  ‘Just a cup of tea, please.’

  ‘In a mug, or to take away?’

  ‘Oh, a mug.’

  ‘Can’t I tempt you to a bacon and egg butty while I’m at it?’

  ‘No, just the tea, thanks.’

  ‘Coming up in a jiffy.’

  For some reason Cooper had imagined a large woman with big forearms. But she was slim, in her mid-forties, with dyed blonde hair pulled back behind her ears. Under the apron she was wearing denim jeans and a T-shirt. Her face and arms were tanned, as if she’d spent most of the winter on the Mediterranean. She had an egg and a couple of sausages cooking on the grill.

  A worker in a reflective vest sat at a table eating scrambled eggs and bacon on toast with a mug of tea and a copy of the Daily Mirror. The bacon was very well done. It was so dark that it was hardly recognisable as meat.

  Two younger men were sitting at the table nearest to the counter. One of them was just about to start on a cheeseburger with onions and a good squirt of tomato sauce. The other was waiting for the sausages, which Sally whipped off the griddle with a pair of tongs just before they turned black.

  The two men had turned and stared at Cooper when he entered. He’d experienced that reaction many times. Usually in a pub, or anywhere they knew how to recognise a police officer when they saw one.

  Cooper had a feeling he might know these two. It wasn’t an unusual feeling and it might explain the awkward silence. He’d encountered many criminals in his career. He couldn’t remember all of them. Often it was a slight familiarity of the features or the voice. A name might jog his memory better. But there was little doubt that these two had a pretty good idea about who, or what, he was.

  Their faces were angular and brooding, with dark stubble to their cheekbones and curly black hair onto their collars. They were wearing sweatshirts and dirt-streaked denim jeans, and the older one had a tool belt strapped round his waist. They said nothing as they ate, only now and then looking up with a quick stare from their intense, dark eyes.

  The generator was buzzing too loudly for a proper conversation in any case. HGVs were constantly passing on the nearby road, with the occasional air horn honking a few yards away, greeting a fellow trucker parked in the lay-by, or perhaps sending a friendly signal to Sally herself.

  He’d given the right answer to the question anyway. His tea came in a giant mug, branded with the logo of a local tyre business. It was hot too – so hot that he had to put it down straight away on the counter. Better than a polystyrene cup, though.

  The location of truck stops like this figured in the route planning of many lorry drivers. For a long-distance driver, the proprietor of a lay-by transport cafe might be the only person they saw for hours at a time.

  Some of the owners had been working in the same spot for twenty years or more, while others might have invested their redundancy money in a roadside pitch. They were there come rain or snow, because their regular customers relied on them. Five or six days a week, from early morning to late afternoon. Reliability was everything.

  ‘So how’s business?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Very busy. We opened as a cafe for lorry and van drivers. But with the economic climate as it is, we’re getting a lot more suits. Some blokes put up with squirrel-food breakfasts at home, then stop off here for something more interesting. Home-made burgers, toasted sarnies, toasted teacakes, probably with a squirt of brown sauce. They like their all-day English breakfasts. Good grub and a bit of banter.’

  ‘Suits?’

  Sally threw back her head and laughed. She had a loud laugh that filled the cafe, echoing off the plywood walls of the container. With the door standing open, he could probably have heard it from the other side of the A6, even above the roar of traffic.

  ‘That would be people like you, luv,’ she said. ‘People stopping in cars. We got some families too, especially at weekends. You meet all sorts.’

  ‘I’m not sure about “suits”.’

  ‘It’s a term of endearment, honest.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t disrespect my customers. You’ve got to be friendly. People who come through the door, they don’t expect you to be miserable. They want to come in and see a smiling face. Some drivers want to talk. Some have had a bad day and don’t want to talk to anybody. You just go with the flow. The long and short of it is, I’m happy to talk to anybody, if they want to talk to me.’

  ‘You’ll be happy to talk to me, then,’ said Cooper, showing his ID card. ‘Detective Inspector Cooper, Edendale CID.’

  ‘Ooh, are you going to arrest me?’ said Sally. ‘Can you just wait until I’ve got this egg off the grill? Then I’ll let you get the handcuffs on.’

  ‘I told you your prices were daylight robbery, Sally!’ called the truck driver sitting at the back of the cafe.

  No one laughed, though. Cooper could sense the silence behind him, the tense atmosphere that made the back of his neck prickle. He knew the two men at the nearest table were listening to his conversation. When he produced his ID, it had only confirmed their suspicions.

  ‘I’m all legal and above board,’ said Sally. ‘I’m a bona fide businesswoman. I own this place outright. I had to get a loan from the bank, of course. But it’s a good business venture – it came with all the equipment, generator and everything. I reckon it’s worth about ten grand now. That’s not to be sneezed at these days. So I keep my nose clean and I don’t let my customers cause any trouble.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you did,’ said Cooper, sighing inwardly at the predictably defensive reaction to the sight of his ID card.

  ‘This is my livelihood for the forese
eable future,’ said Sally. ‘I wouldn’t think of selling up until I get too old for the hours.’

  ‘You’d miss us all, Sally,’ called the lorry driver.

  ‘Like a boil on my arse.’

  Everyone laughed then, except Cooper. So Sally’s regular customers could be disrespected as much as she liked. They probably loved to exchange a few insults with her. Around here that was a sign of genuine affection. Its effect was to make him feel even more excluded.

  ‘The only thing is, I wish they would extend the lay-by,’ said Sally. ‘I’d like to be able to pack in a few more forty-foot rigs and still leave room for the vans and cars. As it is, I can see drivers slowing down, then going on past when they see the lay-by is full.’

  Cooper drank his tea. That it was hot was about all that could be said for it. He glanced at the clock prominently displayed on the wall of the cafe, no doubt for the benefit of drivers working to a tight schedule. He seemed to have been in here too long already. But it felt rude to leave the tea undrunk when he’d ordered it, and refused the bacon and egg butty too.

  ‘What are the hours like for you?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a dawn start from Monday to Friday,’ said Sally. ‘I get up at 5 a.m. and I’m here for 6.45. The first job is to get the sausages on – they need twenty minutes and have to be ready for regulars when they arrive just after seven.’

  ‘So what time do you close in the evening?’

  ‘Around six. But I’m here later cleaning up and restocking for the next day.’

  Sally eyed him with a guarded expression. He could see she was wondering what it was all about. No amount of small talk would fool her into thinking he wasn’t here about something quite different. The longer he delayed the real questions, the more suspicious she would become.

  ‘Do you remember a fatal collision in the lay-by opposite here?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that?’ said Sally. ‘You’re asking about that. It was years ago.’

  ‘About eight years,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Well, eight years is a long time. Besides, the bloke who caused it got sent down, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.’

  Sally sniffed. ‘Well. So what does it have to do with you, then?’

  ‘You were a witness, weren’t you?’

  ‘Not really. I didn’t see the crash, I just heard it. Everything else was just talk.’

  ‘What do you mean “everything else”?’

  She looked around the cafe. Although Cooper had his back to the tables, he knew she was exchanging glances with her customers, who sat silent over their food, taking everything in.

  ‘Only that it was talked about in here for a long time afterwards,’ said Sally. ‘People who come in here like to have something to talk about. They have their own opinions. I can’t blame them for that.’

  Her lips tightened into a thin line and she turned away to fuss about the sink, turning the tap on at full force to create a gush of running water and a cloud of steam.

  Cooper could have cursed with frustration. He knew he was close to something. If Sally was more willing to talk, she could tell him something useful. But he wasn’t going to get any more out of her right now. It was the wrong time and place. Or perhaps he was the wrong person.

  ‘Thank you anyway,’ he said, draining the last of his tea.

  Before he left Sally’s Snack Box, Cooper paused in the doorway and glanced at the tables. The tide of hostility rolling towards him was almost overwhelming.

  It was a relief to step outside into the cold February air. The smell of diesel fumes from the traffic on the A6 was like a waft of perfume after those mingled aromas of cooking fat and fried onions.

  21

  Luke Irvine was sweating, despite the chilly air and the threat of more drizzle. He seemed to be doing everything wrong and he wasn’t sure how it had happened. There was one thing he definitely understood. Ben Cooper wasn’t happy with him. Maybe he’d just been unlucky and his DI was taking some other frustration out on him. But he’d better keep his head down for a while, just in case.

  Now here he was in Shawhead and DS Sharma had been sent to keep an eye on him. What did Cooper think he would get up to if he was left on his own? It hadn’t escaped Irvine’s notice that Becky Hurst was being given her independence and the opportunity to use her initiative.

  ‘DC Irvine, have you located the Schofields?’ asked Sharma, without even a ‘hello’, as soon as he got out of his car.

  ‘I’ve got Mrs Schofield,’ said Irvine. He indicated Top Barn. ‘She’s at home now. Claimed to be surprised that we were looking for her. She’s never been near Thailand.’

  ‘What about her husband?’

  ‘He’s at a conference in Germany.’ Irvine looked at Sharma, expecting some kind of acknowledgement.

  ‘Who told us the Schofields were away on holiday?’ said Sharma.

  ‘I don’t think they did really. The Hibberts didn’t know where they were, but said they often went on holiday. Last time Mr Hibbert spoke to them, they’d talked about going to Thailand.’

  ‘Not according to Mrs Swindells.’

  ‘Oh, well. Your girlfriend would know.’

  Sharma stared at him. ‘There’s no need for that tone. What other tasks were you given?’

  ‘I followed up on the Hibberts’ movements on Monday.’

  ‘Do they check out?’

  ‘Yes. Well, Mr Hibbert was at home, but taking part in a conference call. And his wife was working at the theatre, as she said.’

  Irvine recalled his visit to New Mills Art Theatre earlier that day. It was located down an unprepossessing side street just past the Swizzels Matlow factory. It looked like a former cinema, probably built at the beginning of the previous century. But it had been converted into a five-hundred-seat theatre, the bulk of its auditorium stretching back down Wood Street.

  Irvine hadn’t realised places like that existed in the Peak District. Beyond the theatre lay streets of terraced, back-to-back houses, like something out of Coronation Street. From the alleys between the houses, he could see that some of them still had the old privies in their back yards, now converted into tool sheds or shelters for wheelie bins.

  At the end of a street, perched close to the edge of the Torrs, he saw a Robinsons pub, the Rock Tavern. At one time he would have called in for a quick beer. But since Ben Cooper had become his DI, he no longer felt able to do that. Cooper would know immediately.

  ‘DI Cooper is on his way here soon,’ said Sharma.

  ‘Good,’ said Irvine, though he wasn’t sure it was a good thing at all.

  As Ben Cooper arrived at the Cloughpit Lane bridge with Carol Villiers, a little Fiat Panda went past, the one that he’d seen in the yard at Shaw Farm. Sarah was driving this time, but she was on her own. Her husband would have looked odd crammed into the passenger seat of such a small car anyway.

  ‘It’s interesting to watch people coming and going, isn’t it?’ said Sharma, appearing at Cooper’s side as he got out of the Toyota. ‘You get a feel for the life of the village. You start to notice the times they come in and out, who drives which car, who never goes out at all.’

  ‘Good observation.’

  Sharma and Irvine joined him and Villiers in a tight little knot around the car, as if they were concerned about being overheard by the inhabitants of Shawhead. There was no one to be seen, though Grant Swindells for one had been to known to lurk within earshot.

  ‘First of all, what have we gleaned about the residents here?’ said Cooper. ‘Where were they on the evening Malcolm Kelsey was killed? Do they have viable alibis? Luke, this was your task, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Hibbert’s story checks out for a start,’ said Irvine. ‘She was at the art theatre, preparing for the next production.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Blood Brothers.’

  Irvine passed him a flyer.

  Coming to New Mills: a stage ve
rsion of the powerful West End hit Blood Brothers, performed by New Mills Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society. Written by Willy Russell, it tells the story of twin brothers, separated at birth. Their contrasting upbringing and the hand fate deals them provides a fast-moving, perceptive and ultimately tragic ending.

  ‘They’re only on casting read-through at the moment. Rehearsals start soon. They take place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for six weeks.’

  ‘Amanda Hibbert is playing a part in Blood Brothers?’

  Irvine shook his head. ‘No, she’s backstage, on set design.’

  ‘And her husband?’

  ‘I’ve established that Ian Hibbert commuted into Manchester on Monday, as he does every day,’ said Irvine, with a hint of pride in his voice at the amount of detail he’d obtained. ‘He drives into New Mills and catches the 7.47 a.m. train from Newtown every morning. It arrives in Manchester Piccadilly by 8.25 a.m. He walks the rest of the way from Piccadilly. He works in one of those high-rise 1960s office blocks on Portland Street. His employers share it with the Polish Consulate and a radio station serving Manchester’s gay community.’

  ‘That’s not right,’ said Cooper.

  Irvine looked stricken. ‘It is. He has a season ticket for that train.’

  Cooper remembered Hibbert saying that too. But it wasn’t true that he took the train from Newtown every morning.

  ‘This morning he was at New Mills Central,’ said Cooper. ‘He took the 7.39 train.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I saw him.’

  ‘You did?’ said Irvine.

  ‘Yes, I did. So why?’

  ‘What do you mean “why”?’

  ‘Why did Mr Hibbert take that train on this particular morning? I wonder.’

  ‘He always takes the train to work,’ protested Irvine.