Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  He focused PC Udall’s binoculars on the water. But in fact, he could barely see the water, because the pool was half-full of large, flat objects. They seemed to be rectangular wooden boards of various sizes, floating on the surface, but tied to trees on the edge of the water. He could make out some lengths of blue nylon rope dipping in and out of the water. The boards looked as though they might have been there for some time, because there was duckweed clinging to them, and green mould growing in patches on many of the panels. Cooper could see no purpose for the boards at all. They weren’t the usual sort of fly-tipped rubbish, either.

  ‘That’s strange,’ he said.

  But Udall just shrugged. ‘Well, this is Withens,’ she said.

  The first building they saw by the side of the road in Withens had long since collapsed. Its walls were tumbled and its timbers blackened, as if there had been a fire a long time ago. Maybe several fires. Now, grass was growing over the stones, and it looked well beyond conversion into a holiday home. Next to the ruins was a fallen oak tree covered in thick moss, which clung to the dead bark in pale green shrouds. Where the main bough of the tree had hit the ground, it had begun to rot back slowly into the earth.

  Nearby, a burnt-out car stood on the grass verge. It was something about the size of a Ford Fiesta, with its tyres gone, its windows shattered, and its paintwork scorched down to the metal. But removal of abandoned cars was a problem for the local council.

  The village itself was no more than a scatter of stone houses, a pub, a church, a phone box, and a few run-down farms. The farms still had yards that opened directly on to the main street, the way it had been in most Peak District villages at one time, until the demand for residential development drove up the price of land. Then the farmers had moved out of the villages that had originally grown up around them, and the old farmyards and dairies had been swept away, to be replaced by desirable residences in attractive rural settings.

  It hadn’t happened in Withens. Perhaps nobody had found the village desirable enough. If the farms went out of business here – as looked more than likely from their condition – then their barns and dairies would probably remain rotting for decades before the demand for new housing reached Withens. For now, the presence of the farmyards meant that the main street was well plastered with mud that had dropped from tractor tyres and been churned by the feet of passing cattle.

  On the face of the opposite hill, the air shafts looked from a distance like those Second World War gun emplacements known as ‘pill boxes’. They were round and squat, built to survive – though in this case, they had been intended to survive the weather that a century of Dark Peak winters could throw at them, rather than bombardment from the German navy.

  Just past the Quiet Shepherd pub, a car park and picnic area had been created. There was a bus stop in the entrance to the car park. As Cooper parked his Toyota next to Udall’s liveried Vauxhall Astra, a little red, white and blue Yorkshire Traction bus turned in from the road. Along the side of the bus was an advert for a local firm of solicitors. After making a circuit of the car park, it drove out again. There were no passengers on board, and no one waiting at the stop.

  ‘No problem kids hanging around at the moment,’ said Cooper.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Udall. ‘On a Saturday? It’s much too early. Come back in the evening, and it’ll be different.’

  ‘You’ve got two children, haven’t you, Tracy?’

  ‘A boy and a girl. But they’d damn well better be in their rooms with their PlayStations in the evening, not hanging around on the street.’

  ‘Or doing their homework?’

  ‘Well … I don’t expect them to be Einsteins.’

  Then Cooper noticed something he hadn’t expected. From the centre of the village, looking towards the north east, he could see a wind farm. Three rows of tall, white turbines stood on a prominent summit, in a location where they would best catch the Pennine winds. Their vast arms turned slowly in the wind, and their blades glinted as they caught a bit of sun from a break in the clouds. They looked like the advance armies of the twenty-first century, marching over the hill towards Withens.

  Philip Granger weaved his way between lines of vehicles that had slowed to a crawl on the A628 in Tintwistle. Cars were backed up from the turning to Hadfield, and motorists were getting frustrated. Three long back limousines parked half on the pavement outside the church while they waited for a wedding weren’t helping very much, either.

  Further on towards the motorway it would be even worse, with lorries jamming the lights on the A57 and traffic at a standstill right the way through Hollingworth and Mottram. It was always like this. And it always would be, unless someone got around to building a bypass. That’s what Neil always said.

  Philip found a gap between two cars that was just wide enough for him to reach the kerb and drew his motorbike on to the pavement in front of his brother’s house. He gave the engine a quick rev before he switched it off, then kicked down the stand and propped his bike against the brick wall. The machine was an old Triumph that had been carefully restored once, though not by him. The roar of its engine was deep and loud, and people who knew him were usually in no doubt that he had arrived somewhere.

  He stared back at the car drivers on the road as he took his time unfastening his helmet, locking it into a box mounted over the back wheel of the bike and fastening a chain through the front spokes. You couldn’t be too careful in these parts.

  By now, Neil would normally have recognized the sound of the Triumph and left the front door off the latch for his older brother to get into the house. But when Philip walked up the short path he found the door still locked. He rapped the knocker a couple of times, and rang the bell, but got no answer. He knocked again, waited a minute, then backed down the path to look up at the bedroom window, where the curtains were still closed.

  Philip glanced at the windows of the houses on either side. Sure enough, the woman on the right was peering at him through her curtains. She didn’t like him, or his motorbike. But Neil said she didn’t like anybody very much. She hated cars and their drivers even more than she hated bikers.

  So Philip gave the woman a little wave, gestured at his brother’s bedroom, shrugged and grinned. She stared back at him without a smile.

  He fumbled in the pockets of his leathers for some keys. Neil had given him a key to the house when Philip had first helped him move to Tintwistle from Withens. The front door opened straight away with the Yale key, which meant it wasn’t bolted on the inside. Philip couldn’t remember whether Neil used a bolt when he was in the house or not.

  In the hallway, with the front door still open, Philip shouted up the stairs.

  ‘Neil! It’s me!’

  He waited a moment.

  ‘Neil! Are you awake?’

  There was no answer. Philip went up the stairs, his motorcycle boots thumping on the steps. The walls of the houses in this terrace weren’t very thick, and the woman next door would probably be waiting outside to complain about the noise he was making, but he didn’t care.

  He could see there was no one in the bedroom, though the bed had been slept in. He checked the other rooms and went back downstairs, where he opened and closed all the doors, just to make sure. Finally, he went out into the little back garden and looked at the patch of ground behind the houses where Neil normally kept his car. The VW wasn’t there.

  Philip looked at the house next door again, and caught a glimpse of the neighbour watching him. He decided to knock and ask her if she knew where Neil was. But when he did, she shook her head at him from behind a security chain.

  Slowly, he went back through Neil’s house and stood for a few moments in the sitting room to take one last look round. Everything seemed as it should be. There was nothing out of place, as far as he could see. But Philip picked up a small brass box on the mantelpiece and looked at the ornate pattern beaten into its lid before putting it down again, a couple of inches to the left. He cocked his head and
examined it until he was satisfied.

  Then Philip locked his brother’s front door and dug his phone out of an inside pocket. He dialled Neil’s mobile, but it rang without being answered. The second person he called was the Reverend Derek Alton.

  In St Asaph’s Church a few minutes later, Derek Alton found his eyes drawn towards the east window and its stained-glass representation of St Asaph, the obscure Celtic saint to whom his church was dedicated. The saint was depicted carrying hot coals in his cloak without setting fire to himself or his clothes – an act that had provided enough evidence of his saintliness for those who decided these things. It was almost the only thing known about his history.

  The picture had been created from hundreds of tiny fragments of glass – some green, like fresh grass, or blue like the sky, or red like fire. In the morning, they glowed in the sun from the east. But Alton could see that the bottom half of St Asaph was darker than the rest of him. No light passed through the glass below the red glow of the burning coals held in a fold of his cloak. The saint looked as though he had been cut off at the waist. Alton knew that the effect was caused by the rampant ivy that covered the east wall and was now spreading over the windows. Its spring leaves were a virulent green where they lay against the stonework, and its tendrils were grasping and eager, seeking new holds in the lead that held the pieces of coloured glass together.

  When Alton looked closely at the saint’s waist area, he could see the triangular shapes of the young ivy leaves clearly. They were like little green tongues licking at St Asaph’s robes. They were growing day by day now, creeping towards the sun, slowly eating up the picture. Already, the saint’s legs had been swallowed by the relentless force of nature.

  If nothing was done to curb the ivy, the lead would crumble and the glass would be pulled apart, piece by piece. One day, it would take only one loud noise to shatter the entire window, and St Asaph would drop into the east aisle.

  ‘Catching flies, Vicar?’

  Alton felt a guilty flush rising under his collar. A tall young man stood in the aisle near the west door. He was dressed in jeans and a blue sweater, and his blond hair had recently been cut and gelled.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Scott.’

  ‘Thank goodness it’s only me, eh? It’s a good job I’m not the chuffin’ bishop. He’d whip your frock off and give your dog collar back to the dog before you could say “Heil Mary”.’

  ‘Hail Mary,’ said Alton.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  He watched Scott Oxley move towards him up the narrow aisle, slapping his hand on each pew and rubbing his palm over the carved wooden ends.

  ‘Did you want something, Scott?’

  ‘No.’

  Scott let him wait for a minute, looking around the church with a smile.

  ‘Have you heard from Neil today, Vicar?’ said Scott.

  ‘No, I haven’t. And he said he’d be here to help me work on the churchyard.’

  ‘Good old Neil.’

  Scott walked up to the oak pulpit and smoothed the pulpit cloth with his hand. Alton wished he wouldn’t touch anything, but he held his peace.

  ‘I phoned Philip and he called at Neil’s house, but he’s not at home. Do you know where Neil is, Scott?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Scott walked back down the aisle of the church, slapping the ends of the pews again as he went. Alton listened to Scott go out into the porch. He needed to make sure that the young man had left. He knew that the big oak outer door would close with a painfully loud slam, as it always did.

  A thud shook the church as Scott Oxley slammed the door. Layers of dust danced on the window ledges. But the stained-glass picture of St Asaph didn’t shatter. It wasn’t the time. Not yet.

  5

  Sarah Renshaw looked as though she hadn’t combed her hair that morning. She had a perm several weeks old, but it was springing out in all the wrong directions, like a burst mattress. Her plaid skirt was covered in dog hairs, and her shoes had dried mud clinging to the edges of the soles.

  Also, her eyes were bright and her face looked unnaturally flushed. In a younger person, Diane Fry would have suspected alcohol or substance abuse. With a woman of Mrs Renshaw’s age, her first thought was the menopause. Hot flushes and irrational behaviour – that’s what the menopause offered.

  Fry shuddered a little as she experienced one of those moments when the future poked its unpleasant face into her mind and leered at her.

  Gavin Murfin had been chattering cheerfully to the Renshaws as he brought them upstairs. Fry had been able to hear him all the way along the corridor, telling them little jokes about the difficulties of getting good detectives these days. As they came nearer, Murfin had been explaining that after he had done twelve years in CID, his reward would be that he’d get sent back on the beat, because twelve years was the maximum tenure for a detective constable.

  ‘Of course, they don’t call it being on the beat any more,’ he said. ‘They call it “core policing”. That’s because everyone says “Cor blimey, not this bloody lark again.”’

  Murfin had ushered the Renshaws in and pulled a face at Fry over their shoulders. She realized he had simply been filling the silence with words to avoid having the Renshaws talk to him. It was quite clear that Sarah and Howard Renshaw were more than happy to discuss their daughter. But it felt so odd that they talked about her in the present tense. It clashed with the conviction that Fry was already forming in her own mind.

  ‘Emma had phoned us just the day before, to say she’d be home on the Thursday afternoon,’ said Mrs Renshaw. ‘She’s always very good about phoning us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But she never arrived. We thought she’d changed her mind, or that something had come up in Birmingham. We couldn’t get through to her on her mobile, because it was switched off. So we rang the house where she lives during the term, and the girl she shares with told us she’d gone home for Easter. But she hadn’t gone home. She never arrived.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We rang the police in Birmingham, but they weren’t interested,’ said Mrs Renshaw.

  ‘It was Smethwick,’ said her husband. ‘The local station.’

  Howard Renshaw was a big man, well padded, like a businessman who had eaten too many lunches. His hair was a little too long for the image, but at least he combed it away from his bald patch rather than trying to hide it. He looked neater than his wife, as if he took more care over his appearance. But he sat back in his chair, slightly behind Sarah, to let her take centre stage.

  ‘Anyway, they weren’t interested,’ said Sarah. ‘They said she was an adult, and it was up to her what she did. Unless we had evidence that a crime had been committed, there was nothing they could do.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite right,’ said Fry. ‘She was a young woman under the age of twenty-one. Enquiries are always made in those circumstances.’

  Mrs Renshaw shook her head briefly, as if bothered by a small fly. ‘So we went to the house ourselves. Number 360B, Darlaston Road, Bearwood. We had to get the landlord to open Emma’s room, because all the tenants have their own individual keys. One of Emma’s bags was gone, and some clothes she must have packed to bring home with her.’

  ‘What about personal items? A purse? Car keys?’

  ‘She had a couple of shoulder bags, and those little rucksack things, so I couldn’t tell which she was planning to carry with her. But her purse wasn’t there with her credit cards, or her keys.’

  ‘She has a car, but she decided not to take it to the West Midlands with her,’ said Howard. ‘The car’s still in our garage. It’s an Audi.’

  ‘It’s only two years old,’ said Sarah.

  ‘But if she had her purse, some money, her credit cards –’

  ‘We know. The police said she could have gone away somewhere, if she had money with her.’

  ‘I’m afraid it happens all the time, Mrs Renshaw. In a city full of students, the police will have a lot of similar case
s to deal with every year.’

  ‘Emma’s at the Birmingham School of Art and Design,’ said Sarah, as if that were somehow different from being just a student. ‘She’s studying for a BA in Fine Art. She’s particularly interested in Marketing Design. In fact, she should have had a placement last year, but she’s missed it now. It’s going to be very difficult for her to catch up.’

  ‘Emma’s very talented, you know,’ said Howard. ‘You must see some of her work. We have all kinds of things in the house. Some of them are pieces we brought back home from her room at Bearwood – work she’d done during term time.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want those to be lost,’ said Sarah. ‘There are some pieces that she hasn’t finished yet.’

  Not finished yet? Diane Fry looked hard at the couple. Hope was one thing – but did the Renshaws genuinely believe their daughter would turn up tomorrow, or the day after, to finish her latest design project or take her Audi for a run?

  She watched Sarah Renshaw turn towards her husband. They exchanged a meaningful glance and a little private smile, as if there were no one else in the room.

  ‘We made our own posters,’ said Howard. ‘My brother had them done for us at his office. “Have you seen this girl?” they said. We put them up in newsagents and at the students union, and at all the places she went to in Birmingham and the Black Country. Some of them weren’t the nicest of places, you know – bars and clubs, not the sort of establishment we would go in normally, or expect Emma to, either. But she’s a student, and they live a different life. We understand that.’

  ‘She’s an art student, of course,’ said Sarah. ‘They’re allowed to be a little Bohemian, aren’t they?’

  ‘But no one had seen her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Renshaw, you know that the West Midlands police did make some enquiries at the time.’