But by the time he reached Gun Road and the turning for Rowarth, Cooper could feel the character of the scenery changing without even looking. The road had become narrower, the grazing rougher, the farms smaller. And there were the sheep, dotted across the slopes.
Most of all, he was aware of the hills beginning to fill the horizon. The dark bulk of Kinder Scout lay along the skyline, an unmistakable presence. When he turned onto the Rowarth road, he was driving directly towards it.
He had a powerful urge to keep on driving and not stop until he reached the horizon. Cooper imagined heading right on into the high hills of the Dark Peak. The thought made him smile to himself. He would do that soon. Very soon. Nothing could keep him off the hills for long. They were where he got his energy and inspiration from. They were where he belonged.
But right now he had an interview to do. The pub at Rowarth was like nothing else in the New Mills area. For a start it had a seventy-foot-long Pullman railway carriage standing in its grounds, once used as guest accommodation but still retaining the original wood panelling and brass fittings.
Cooper found Charles Bateman sitting at a table on a terrace overlooking a large water wheel that looked as if it might have been turning until quite recently. It was quite a sheltered spot, but there was still a chill in the damp air. There was no one else out on the terrace and Cooper wondered if it was normally only used in the summer months. Bateman seemed to have chosen it to be on his own.
Yet he had obviously just finished a meal and there were two used plates on the table, their cutlery laid neatly to one side. Cooper wondered who Bateman’s lunch companion had been. Mrs Bateman perhaps? Or did he travel to this out of the way location for another, more surreptitious purpose?
‘I’m sorry to drag you all the way out here,’ said Bateman. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been taking a couple of days off work to deal with some personal issues. But if it’s important . . . ?’
‘I appreciate it, sir,’ said Cooper.
‘This pub used to be a mill,’ said Bateman, when Cooper sat down at his table. ‘It was destroyed by a flood in 1930. The wheel is just a reconstruction.’
‘I didn’t know that. It’s very convincing.’
Bateman laughed drily, his face slightly flushed.
‘That sums up my life really,’ he said. ‘Everything was lost years ago. And all that’s left is a convincing replica. Still working on the surface, but achieving nothing.’
Cooper was taken aback by the sudden outburst of self-pity. He hadn’t been prepared for all that gloom and despondency. He looked at the second empty plate, wondering what the conversation had been like at the table before he arrived and wishing he’d seen the person whose seat he’d taken. It was pointless speculation, though it made Charles Bateman seem more human.
And some kind of response was required. He couldn’t just sit and stare at the man in embarrassed silence after that.
‘I’m sorry to hear you say that, Mr Bateman. Did you have higher ambitions in life than working as transport manager at an animal feed company?’
Bateman smiled. ‘When we get older, we all have failed ambitions and crushed hopes,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you haven’t reached that age yet?’
The one thing Cooper didn’t want to do was allow the conversation to become about himself. So he didn’t reply and Bateman suddenly seemed to pull himself together.
‘Have you eaten?’ he said.
Cooper began to say ‘Of course’. And it was only then that he realised he hadn’t eaten so far today. It might explain the gnawing in his stomach and the slight tremble in his hand when he’d got out of the car in Rowarth. He’d only had time for a coffee before he left the flat this morning and he’d missed lunch. Perhaps his visit to Sally’s Snack Box had put him off the idea of food.
Bateman gestured at his plate. ‘The al fresco menu. But it’s good. Cajun chicken butterfly breast in a spinach tortilla.’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
Bateman gazed at the water wheel. ‘Do you know, there’s no bus service out here any more?’ he said. ‘The pub’s owners bought their own London Routemaster bus to provide a service to customers, so they could pick them up around the area and take them back home at the end of the evening. Don’t you think that’s a splendid idea? A bit of private enterprise.’
Cooper looked ostentatiously at his watch. He hadn’t come here to listen to Mr Bateman’s personal opinions, even if it was his day off.
‘Ah, I see you’re back to being the detective inspector,’ said Bateman sadly.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Cooper.
‘What can I do for you then, Inspector?’
‘Mr Bateman, when we spoke at your office the other day, I believe you may have overlooked one incident in Malcolm Kelsey’s history with your company,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘Quite a major incident, wasn’t it? On the A6.’
Bateman coughed his nervous cough. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Eight years,’ said Cooper.
‘About that, I suppose.’
‘There was a serious collision near the Bridgemont Roundabout, when a woman was killed.’
‘You’re right, of course. But it wasn’t Mac Kelsey’s fault. An HGV driver veered off the road while texting. He was jailed for dangerous driving. But Mac was parked up in a lay-by at the time. His vehicle was stationary. He had no responsibility for the accident. So I didn’t see how it might be—’
‘Relevant, I know.’
‘Well, it isn’t. Is it?’
‘In fact, I think it might be,’ said Cooper. ‘If only for the reason that there’s still something you’re not telling me.’
‘About that incident?’
‘Yes.’
Since Mr Bateman wasn’t in his office at Windmill Feed Solutions, he wasn’t able to refer to Mac Kelsey’s personnel file. But clearly he didn’t need to. Either the recollection of the incident was still clear in his head, or he’d anticipated Cooper’s questions and refreshed his memory.
‘It isn’t in the file,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t mention it earlier. It was a personal detail, which I saw fit not to put into the official record at the time.’
‘Well, now is the time to mention it,’ said Cooper.
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘So what do you know, Mr Bateman?’
Bateman fiddled with his used cutlery. Then he tapped the knife sharply against the plate with a clang, a sign that he’d made a firm decision.
‘As I said, the collision wasn’t Mac’s fault. It was an appalling incident, of course, with a tragic outcome. But Mac Kelsey was blameless. He was driving a van for us then – a long wheelbase Renault Master, a vehicle we use for deliveries to smaller customers. The main collision was between the Iveco Stralis travelling on the A6, and a small private car and a Polish-registered Volvo FH, both parked in the lay-by. Mac’s van was stationary in front of the Volvo.’
‘It seems the Polish lorry was shunted forward by the collision and hit the back of the van,’ said Cooper.
‘That’s right. It caused considerable damage, but it could have been worse. The van was empty at the time, so it was light and the impact pushed it forward. Mac himself was barely injured, just a few bruises.’
‘So what was the problem?’
Bateman sighed. ‘It was covered by our insurers and they claimed against the employers of the responsible driver, of course. The incident itself is in our files. But not the one factor that I thought would have looked bad on Mac Kelsey’s employment record.’
‘Which was?’
‘Just the one fact,’ said Bateman. ‘That lay-by on the A6? Mac Kelsey shouldn’t have been there at all.’
Luke Irvine was thinking about the train Ian Hibbert had caught yesterday morning. Why the different train and the different route?
He knew what Ben Cooper would have said. Go there and see for yourself. By being there, you could notice th
ings that no one would tell you, no matter how many questions you asked them. In fact, you might never ask the right question. Cooper had said that too sometimes.
So Irvine arrived at New Mills Central and waited on the platform for a few minutes for the next train to pull in.
While he waited he checked the timetable. On this line the first stop was at Strines, an unmanned station in the middle of nowhere. Then it went through a series of suburbs around Stockport. Marple, Romiley, Bredbury, Brinnington, Reddish North, Ashburys.
When the purple and yellow Northern Rail train drew in, Irvine climbed on, wondering how far he should travel. All the way into Manchester?
But he didn’t have to go far. Just past Marple Bridge station, Irvine got up suddenly from his seat. The train was passing over a viaduct and right alongside he could see a stretch of water, with a boat moored at a narrow wharf and a pile of gravel on the bank for repairs. He turned to a man across the aisle.
‘Excuse me, do you happen to know what canal that is?’
‘Oh, it’s the Peak Forest, I think.’
‘Thank you.’
Irvine sat down again. It was the same canal that ended at Bugsworth Basin. And there, just nosing its way under a bridge, was the same working boat he’d seen yesterday.
In Nottingham Diane Fry had decided to go and speak to her boss, Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Mackenzie. He had worked in Derby before transferring to EMSOU to join the Major Crime Unit and they’d worked closely together.
‘There’s a murder case under way in Derbyshire,’ said Fry.
Mackenzie looked preoccupied, his head bent over a thick report on his desk.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘We should be leading the inquiry. Would you like me to go up there?’
‘Not now, Diane.’
‘In an advisory capacity perhaps.’
‘No,’ said Mackenzie. ‘You have enough to do. I’d prefer you to concentrate on the job in hand.’
Fry hesitated. ‘So is someone else, then . . . ?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
Dissatisfied, Fry went back to her own desk. She hated it when she didn’t know what was going on. But transparency wasn’t a notable quality of senior officers in the police service. The higher up the command structure you rose, the more opaque you became.
She tried to concentrate on the briefings in front of her. She had to be fully conversant with the details before the planning meeting for the first operation. It was essential to be on top of your brief when you were dealing with partner agencies. You had to know what you were talking about. Otherwise it could turn into a competition, one agency trying to prove it was more on the ball than the others.
But she couldn’t concentrate. There was a cold, hard knot in her stomach she couldn’t ignore. She knew there must be a reason for DCI Mackenzie’s dismissal of her. The one thing she couldn’t cope with was the feeling she wasn’t wanted, that her talents weren’t appreciated. That somehow she had put a step wrong.
Fry bit her lip, as her thoughts focused on one thing she’d done. On one person. Of course she wouldn’t be sent to Derbyshire for a murder inquiry now. Certainly not in E Division anyway. Her relationship with Ben Cooper was general knowledge, obviously. And at some level of the hierarchy it was considered inappropriate. She had made a serious mistake.
She remembered the moment their hands had touched on the table in the pub last night. Why she should remember that simple touch, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t make sense when there had been much more intimate moments in their relationship. But somehow that contact would be what she remembered – an innocent, uncomplicated connection between two people. It was the kind of moment that was hard to come by. In her life, at least.
A few customers were leaving the pub at Rowarth and Charles Bateman took another drink as he waited for them to get in their cars and disperse. It looked like white wine he was drinking, but at least it was only a small one.
‘Mac Kelsey,’ he said. ‘Why do you think he was parked in that lay-by, Detective Inspector Cooper?’
‘To be honest, the question hadn’t occurred to me,’ admitted Cooper.
‘Well, he’d long since finished his deliveries for the day. He’d finished early, in fact. He was a good worker, was Mac. Very organised. He could get through a schedule quicker than anyone else when he wanted to. He worked through his lunch breaks sometimes to get finished quicker. Some of the other men spin the job out as long as they can. But not Mac. It was one of the reasons he was still with us after his other little incidents. He learned from his mistakes. But I did have a suspicion . . .’
‘Yes?’
Bateman wiped a drop of wine from his lip. ‘Well, there was a spate of it at the time. I think a lot of drivers were involved. I heard rumours from other companies and there were even some prosecutions, which made everyone nervous. One transport outfit lost its licence and had to close down completely.’
Bateman looked at Cooper and seemed to realise that he still hadn’t explained what he was worried about.
‘Smuggling,’ he said.
‘Really? Smuggling what?’
‘Cigarettes usually. Large quantities of them, coming across the Channel via European hauliers. No duty paid, you see. Sometimes it was alcohol – vodka was a favourite. They could put it into water bottles and no one could tell the difference unless they opened a bottle to taste it. I even heard of a case of people smuggling garlic into Sweden, where there’s duty on it apparently. Anyway large quantities of items come in from Europe illegally and when they arrive here they’re switched from the European vehicle to a local driver, who sees the goods to their final destination, wherever that may be.’
‘And you suspected Mac Kelsey was involved.’
‘I suspected it was going on. Well, you have to be a bit suspicious in my job. I’m sending blokes out there with valuable company assets and they’re on their own all day. It would be nice to have a tracking system so I can see on screen where all our vehicles are at any given moment. But the company won’t do it. They’re frightened of all the drivers just walking out of the yard if we tried it. So I have to be able to trust the men.’
‘But you didn’t have any reason to suspect Mr Kelsey specifically?’ said Cooper.
‘No. But it was the circumstances of that crash – the one in which the young woman died. There was no reason why he should have been in that lay-by. I had the idea that he might have been making a switch with the Polish driver. If that came out, it would have invalidated our insurance. And that’s a whole can of worms that you don’t want to open, let me tell you. Insurance companies are terrible to deal with – worse even than the police.’
‘So you just kept quiet about it?’
Bateman shrugged. ‘Luckily, the Polish driver didn’t speak much English, so his value as a witness was limited. When he was released from hospital he couldn’t wait to get back home to Poland. So I said nothing and no one asked. I don’t think anyone even examined the contents of the Polish lorry. Why would they? It was carrying paper for a printing works and most of it was destroyed in the fire. So officially I have no idea whether there were any cigarettes in it or not. We just let it pass.’
‘And no questions were asked.’
‘No. It was good for everyone.’
Bateman didn’t really look as though he felt it was good for everyone. Perhaps the incident had been eating at him during the past eight years. And now he was being asked about it for the first time. Time could put things into a different light.
‘It’s not something I’m proud of,’ he said. ‘But you find yourself in a position where you have to make compromises. I’ve always told myself there was one positive result – I helped to save the job of a good driver.’
Cooper wondered if Mr Bateman was sharing the same thought that was in his own head. That he’d saved Mac Kelsey’s job for eight years, but in the end it might have cost Kelsey his life.
‘Remind me,’ said
Cooper, ‘when did Malcolm Kelsey first join Windmill Feed Solutions?’
‘It was about nine years ago. He came to us as a van driver initially.’
‘Yes, I remember you saying that. Do you recall who he worked for before you gave him a job?’
‘He was with a local delivery company. I believe they specialised in office supplies.’
‘Mr Bateman, were you aware that Mac Kelsey carried a Taser and a baseball bat concealed in his cab?’
‘No, but I’m not all that surprised,’ said Bateman. ‘In my experience a lot of drivers feel they need some kind of personal protection. A Taser is unusual, though. It’s likely Mac or one of his colleagues managed to obtain it on a run to Europe and brought it back in his cab. They’re in common use among European drivers, who are afraid of robbers trying to gas them in their cabs, or illegal migrants attempting to get aboard their trucks.’
‘He could have got up to ten years in prison for that alone,’ said Cooper. ‘Unauthorised possession of a Taser is illegal in the UK.’
‘But not in some European countries. In the Czech Republic I believe their use is positively encouraged for vulnerable members of the public.’
‘It’s a bit academic, I suppose,’ said Cooper. ‘Mac Kelsey didn’t get a chance to use it on this occasion.’
27
Ben Cooper walked into the mortuary at Edendale District General Hospital again. He’d been here only the day before for the result of the post-mortem on Mac Kelsey. Today he’d made an appointment with Dr van Doon to warn her ahead of time and give her chance to study the case. A post-mortem examination was required in any sudden or unnatural death, but the crash in which Ashley Brooks had died happened eight years ago.
The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery Page 26
