The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery

by Stephen Booth

  Mrs Schofield frowned, as if she was having difficulty figuring out who he meant.

  ‘My late . . . ? Oh, you mean Ashley. It’s Scott Brooks, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She relaxed considerably. Relief hardly covered this emotion. She looked almost pleased.

  ‘No, I hadn’t heard,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He took his own life.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. He was never terribly stable. Not after—’

  ‘After the accident? When Ashley was killed?’

  She put a hand to her mouth and twisted her face into a tragic mask.

  ‘It was a very bad time,’ she said. ‘Poor Ashley. I was very, very upset by what happened to her. She was family, you see. And for me there’s nothing so important as family. But I suppose justice was done in the end.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Cooper.

  It was a question he genuinely wanted to know the answer to. And for the first time since he’d been in her house, Donna Schofield seemed to reply honestly.

  ‘Nothing could have been bad enough for him,’ she said, with a tight grimace that changed her face altogether. ‘He should never be released.’

  Cooper left the house, glad to step out into the fresh air. He was reflecting how ironic it was that a woman who was prepared to put on such an act had waited so long before she made her appearance on the stage. Perhaps she liked to keep her audience in anticipation and make a dramatic entrance. Only a leading part suited Donna Schofield.

  He found Luke Irvine waiting for him in the road.

  ‘Did you do a DVLA check?’

  ‘Yes, the Range Rover is registered to Sarah Wyatt and the Panda to Nick Wyatt,’ said Irvine.

  ‘Thanks, Luke.’

  Irvine looked puzzled. ‘Is that useful?’

  ‘Very,’ said Cooper. ‘It may lead us into the next act.’

  23

  Bugsworth Basin was the southern terminus of the Peak Forest Canal. It lay in a natural valley cut through by a small brook and had been the centre of burnt lime production for over a hundred years, with nineteen kilns operating here and six miles of tramway bringing limestone to the basin.

  It looked very different now as Cooper drove down into the complex. The site had been closed back in the 1920s and lay abandoned and derelict for more than forty years. As a result it had suffered the fate of medieval castles and ruined abbeys, and many other abandoned sites. Local people had regarded it as an open invitation to help themselves to stone for the construction of their homes or repairs to farm buildings.

  Cooper had seen the effect of that at locations around the Peak District. Stone robbing could destroy a site completely within a few decades. Original bits of Bugsworth Basin were probably scattered all over this corner of Derbyshire by the time a restoration project had begun in the late sixties. Without a bunch of enthusiasts, the complex would have been lost for ever. They’d faced massive leakage problems, when water was found to be seeping away into the underlying rock from dozens of places. But here the basin was now, protected by law as an ancient monument, fully in water and open to use by narrowboats for the past ten years.

  Above the basin stood the village. Many local people still called it ‘Buggy’, despite the fact that villagers had voted to change its name to Buxworth years ago. They thought ‘Bux’ sounded better than ‘Bug’.

  When he and Villiers got out of the car, Cooper could hear the continuous rush of traffic on the A6. When it was built, the bypass had been rerouted slightly to the west to avoid the canal basin. But it was very close. An inn that had once been on the opposite side had disappeared under the southbound carriageway.

  So there was just one pub left now. The Navigation Inn. A banner on the wall was advertising a steam rally, while a hazard sign warned motorists of toads crossing the road.

  ‘Perhaps the pub first?’ said Villiers.

  From the car park they walked down a set of steps into the beer garden past an old gas lamp. A millstone rested against the outside wall, the familiar symbol of the Peak District National Park.

  Inside the pub people were sitting on cushioned wooden settles eating pasta and garlic bread. Around them were bits of canal paraphernalia – painted cans, a model of a narrowboat. Adverts for local businesses kept flashing up on a large screen. It seemed incongruous, until he noticed that the backs of the settles had adverts painted on them. WH Cowburn and Cowpar Ltd of Manchester. A company that used to transport its products by boat on the canal.

  The staff shook their heads when they were shown the photo of Ian Hibbert. He hadn’t been in the pub, as far as they could remember. And there was no one called Anne-Marie, either on the staff or among the customers.

  ‘The boat people, then,’ said Cooper. ‘Let’s see who’s home.’

  The Upper Basin had originally been covered by a lime transfer shed. But it had been one of the main targets of stone robbing, and now all that remained was a set of steps down to water level and an inner arch like a lonely fragment of ancient bridge over a stagnant bed of rushes. Collapses had destroyed the drawing tunnels to the Gnat Hole lime kilns and exposed the brickwork of the combustion chambers. The mouths of the tunnels were still visible in the stone banking by the side of the canal, black little caves that tempted the curious to crouch and duck inside.

  The water here was brown and slick with patches of oil where each arm of the canal ended. Here the stagnant surface was cluttered with dead branches and empty plastic bottles. The wind pushed the water sluggishly towards the end of the basin.

  Cooper stopped on its edge. A road cut through the canal complex over Silk Hill bridge, then crossed the A6 a few yards from the lay-by where Ashley Brooks had died. That road crossing was where two people had been seen on the night of the collision, standing in the rain watching the traffic. It was so close to the scene of the fatal crash here. Yet you would know it from the noise of the road.

  They crossed the narrow road and stepped through a gate. They descended a grassy slope to a stubby arm of the canal where one boat was moored, tucked away from the rest of the basin. A bearded man was leaning on the boat. When they stopped to speak to him, he was willing to talk, but unable to help them with their enquiry.

  They carried on, under an echoey stone bridge and emerging into the Middle Basin, where two lines of boats were moored. Cooper heard the dull rumble of a diesel engine as a boat started up. From the footbridge he looked along a row of narrowboats with orange life belts and boat hooks on their roofs. As he walked along the towpath, he noticed the names of the boats. Top Dog, Mollie, Clarice, Leanne.

  ‘What are the chances?’ said Villiers. ‘Realistically?’

  ‘Better here than in Shawhead,’ said Cooper. ‘People are more observant here. They know what’s going on around them.’

  ‘If you say so, Ben.’

  Cooper felt sure it was true. There were said to be thirty-five thousand boats on Britain’s inland waterways. And about fifteen thousand people lived permanently on their boats. Yet there was still an element of mystery about life on the waterways. Those people known as ‘live-aboards’ had taken a step outside society. They avoided not only the daily commute, but the whole concept of roads. They spent their time down here on the canal, below the level of the traffic and largely unnoticed by the rest of the world.

  So their lives were inevitably slower. Even when they were on the move, the speed limit on the canal system was four miles an hour. It was a life lived at walking pace. Surely it meant they were more likely to notice things – the smallest changes in their environment, the least bit of unusual activity? They weren’t rushing past in one of those insulated metal bubbles, oblivious to their surroundings.

  The next two boat owners they spoke to were apologetic but said they had only been moored in the basin a day or two and would be moving on soon. They only had leisure or visitor moorings.

  ‘There are no residential moorings here at Bugsworth,’ one of them
said. ‘So no permanent live-aboards.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Villiers as they moved on to the next boat.

  ‘If you want to live on a static boat for any length of time and list it as your home, you have to find a residential mooring where you can stay long-term,’ said Cooper. ‘The only official alternative is to be a continuous cruiser – always travelling the waterways, never staying in one spot for longer than fourteen days.’

  ‘The only “official” alternative?’

  ‘There are always unofficial ways,’ said Cooper. ‘There are plenty of moorings available for a boat over the winter, where owners aren’t supposed to stay on board. But if you look carefully for signs of live-aboards, you can see them. Possessions stored on the roof, well-tended plants around the boat. Mooring owners might not openly accept live-aboards, but they can turn a blind eye if you talk to them nicely.’

  ‘And pay them enough?’ suggested Villiers.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  They tried two more boats and turned under another bridge in the Lower Basin, where more boats were moored by the remains of the old crushing house, where lime had been produced. Mallard ducks climbed onto the bank and clustered at their feet, hoping for tidbits of food. A school party straggled by and visitors stood around a scale model of the basin.

  ‘I don’t know what the appeal is about a place like this,’ said Villiers. ‘It’s basically just a flooded car park, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps when you look at it from the outside,’ said Cooper. ‘But we’re trying to see things through other people’s eyes.’

  They were heading towards the horse bridges, where it was possible to cross to either side of the basin. A couple of volunteer workers were manning a small shop selling guides near the gauging point, the narrowest part of the canal. The garden of the old Wharfinger’s House was full of pigs, goats and hens, fenced off from the vegetable beds.

  Cooper and Villiers had to step back as a Royal Mail van drove along the towpath to deliver to a terrace of canalside cottages known as Teapot Row. The cottages looked quaint in this setting and probably featured in many photographs taken by visitors.

  Just past the last cottage was an entrance to Bugsworth Mill. It was another ruin. But around the shell of the burned-out mill an industrial estate had sprung up. Steel fabrication, motorcycle repairs, a stonemasons.

  They found more narrowboats moored against the bank on this stretch of the canal. And it was here that they had their first success.

  ‘Yes, we’ve seen him,’ said the boater, handing back the photo of Ian Hibbert. ‘He visits someone on a boat here.’

  ‘A person by the name of Anne-Marie?’

  ‘I don’t know that.’

  ‘Which boat?’

  ‘It’s not here now. They move around.’

  ‘Do you know the name of the boat, then?’

  ‘There’s no name on the side. If you see it, it’s the black one with a diamond pattern on the bow.’

  Cooper studied the boater. He was wearing a life jacket, essential for single-handed boating, especially in the winter when the banks could be slippery.

  ‘Do you think anyone else might know who they are?’

  ‘There are the people on the working boat.’

  Of course, there weren’t only leisure boats on the Peak Forest Canal. Cooper recalled hearing of a restaurant boat that ran from Whaley Bridge. In its glory days it claimed to have had Princess Diana on board, enjoying a dinner cruise while chugging up and down the canal.

  ‘There’s a couple who run a working boat,’ said the man. ‘They carry supplies for boaters and canalside properties. You know the sort of thing – they sell diesel, logs and kindling, and keep a stock of rope fenders, mooring pins, windlasses, guide books . . . We’re on their regular route here and they know everyone.’

  ‘Have they been through recently?’

  ‘They’ve just gone back down the canal, as a matter of fact. I think they were topping up someone’s water supply in the basin, or pumping out the toilet tank. You only missed them by a few minutes.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘A pleasure.’

  By the time they’d got half a mile from the basin, Cooper and Villiers found themselves close to the point where the River Goyt passed under the canal.

  Cooper looked around. An interpretation board with a map of Bugsworth Basin. A dog waste bin overflowing with plastic bags, their handles knotted tightly together. Above him was the A6 on its approach to the Bridgemont Roundabout.

  To his surprise an unlocked gate provided access from the canal towpath directly onto the side of the A6. Within a few seconds Cooper found himself standing almost on the road markings designed to slow vehicles down as they got close to the roundabout.

  He looked south towards the lay-by and saw lorries thundering round the bend towards him. Even as they slowed, the draft of their passing swept his hair across his forehead and tugged at his clothes, as if they were trying to blow him right off the road and back down to the canal.

  In New Mills the marina was being refurbished. Pontoons were being replaced and new bollards installed to supply water and electricity. A new toilet and shower block had been built, and the site surrounded by security fencing.

  They met up with Sharma and Irvine on the canalside.

  ‘Any luck?’ said Sharma.

  ‘We’re looking for a black narrowboat with no name on the side but a diamond pattern on the prow. Have you seen any sign of it?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Whoever it was, they’ve moved on then,’ said Cooper. ‘Did you notice a working boat go through, selling diesel and logs?’

  ‘Yes, I saw that,’ said Irvine. ‘It stood out from the other boats. But it disappeared that way.’

  He waved his hand towards the north, where the Swizzels factory looked over the canal on the other side of Albion Road.

  ‘You’re certainly a man for details,’ said Sharma. ‘Are these things important?’

  ‘Yes, they help to form an overall picture. Details reveal the connections. In this case there has to be some connection between the suicide of Scott Brooks, the people in Shawhead and what happened to Malcolm Kelsey that night.’

  Cooper remembered the notes left around Brooks’ house. Scott had definitely been sending a message, but he was failing to grasp the significance of it.

  A narrowboat nosed under the Albion Road bridge towards the marina and one of the boaters called out to a man walking his dog along the towpath.

  ‘What is that big factory we’ve just passed?’ she asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Swizzels Matlow,’ called the man in return.

  ‘What do they make there?’

  ‘Confectionery,’ he said. ‘Sweets.’

  ‘Ah, I thought I could smell something.’

  Cooper watched the narrowboat chug slowly away up the canal and turned to the dog walker.

  ‘Swizzels Matlow,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What sort of sweets do they make?’

  ‘Oh, all kinds of stuff. Parma Violets, Refreshers. And of course the old favourite – Love Hearts.’

  Love Hearts? Cooper suddenly realised the significance of the messages left around Scott Brooks’ house. They may have meant nothing to Becky Hurst, because she was from a different background and generation. But he ought to have known. And now he owed it to Hurst to get her in on this.

  Cooper turned to Dev Sharma, who just smiled.

  ‘I thought I could smell something myself,’ he said. ‘And of course I was just going to ask.’

  Swizzels Matlow were still based in the same Victorian wick factory they’d moved into in 1940 to escape the Blitz. From here they shipped their confectionery all across Europe. Not only Love Hearts and Parma Violets, but Fruity Pops, Drumstick Lollies and Refreshers. All the fizzy tastes of childhood. They also happened to be one of the area’s largest employers.

  Th
e Swizzels factory was down in Newtown, between the River Goyt and the Peak Forest Canal. A large packaging and export facility stood at the end of a road skirting the Newtown recreation ground. But the bulk of the factory consisted of an old stone mill backing onto the canal, close to the Albion Road bridge.

  It was a typically no-nonsense, solid slab of a building, four storeys high with long rows of huge windows and a tall chimney. A more modern concrete and brick extension had been built along the canalside. Despite its size, it was really only visible from the bridge or the towpath. Narrowboats chugged past it each day, some of the boaters unaware that they were passing a real-life Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

  To Cooper’s eye, it didn’t look much like its media nickname. They called it the Factory of Love.

  And that was only partly because Love Hearts were their most famous product. Everyone knew those tablet-shaped sweets with short, pithy love messages printed on one side. Cooper could taste them, from his childhood. The yellow lemony ones, the sweet orange, or the purple, perfumed berry flavour. When you sucked them, they disintegrated into a starchy powder in your mouth.

  When he drew into the visitors’ car park, a twenty-ton tanker full of sugar was just arriving at the gate. Blue Swizzels Matlow lorries were heading out in the other direction, no doubt laden with sweets. As soon as he got out of the car, he became aware of a high-pitched hum and a powerful smell like burned sugar.

  Becky Hurst was already there ahead of him. After a wait in the reception area, they were directed to the staff canteen. Inside the factory the panes of the windows were coated with sugar. Staff were everywhere, in white overalls, gloves and hair-nets. Conveyor belts were running continuously. Cooper glimpsed a warehouse full of colours and flavours. Through a window he could see a hot, thick syrup pouring from taps and running along steel belts as it cooled and hardened. Plastic containers of it were being squeezed into shape, cut into blocks and packed at the end of a production line.

  Rotating brushes swept the sherbet dust off Fizzers, giant rollers squeezed slabs of brightly coloured goo into thin snakes, trays packed with jelly sweets queued to be baked in an oven. In one room he saw huge, gurgling cauldrons and pieces of puffed rice popped out of silver machines. It was impossible to escape a vision of that real-life Willie Wonka’s.