Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  Real fire was quite different. Real fire was a much more violent and angry red. There was no mistaking the threat from flames, the actual destructive power of them. Their red was more like what Alton saw when he held his hands up against a candle and watched the bones of his fingers become outlined in glowing crimson as flames flickered through his translucent skin. His hands looked as though they were lying in a furnace, ready to be forged like iron in an unimaginable heat. That was the colour of fire. Within his own flesh, he held the true redness of burning coals.

  Sometimes, at night, it crossed his mind that the invasion of nature into his churchyard was his own fault, for having agreed to bless the well dressing. Instead of giving approval to this worship of the goddess of water and the power of the spring, perhaps he should have been evoking the word of God to exorcize the pagan powers and drive them back into the darkness. He imagined scattering the flower-dressed panels with holy water and watching the designs shrivel and burn.

  But when he awoke in the morning, he knew that he was being foolish. Superstitious, even. The church was pragmatic, and it did what the people expected of it. Other churches let people bring animals to be blessed. He only blessed the water.

  And it was St Asaph’s patronal day, too. The first of May. The day when the villagers would once have followed the Wakes Week tradition, with a night vigil in church on the Sunday nearest the saint’s day, followed by a week of celebration. Women would have baked the Wakes Cakes, based on their own traditional recipes. But no longer.

  Alton didn’t know how guilty he should be about his feelings towards Neil. But Philip Granger had succeeded in making it all seem extremely wrong. Since Thursday, the knowledge that had been preying on his mind was the fact that Philip had gone on from St Asaph’s to Shepley Head Lodge, and not to work in Glossop, as he had said. Michael Dearden was a churchwarden.

  Though Dearden hadn’t spoken to Alton since then, that only made it worse. His imagination could fill in the details. He had been creating his own hell within himself, and he had to resolve it somehow.

  During his walk up the hill, Derek Alton had passed through alternate bursts of clear skies and heavy showers. By the time he reached the air shaft, he was soaked. But as he turned away from the hill, it wasn’t just the cold and damp that made Alton shiver and pull his coat closer around his shoulders. Dusk had descended, and it was time for him to leave.

  Down below, Longdendale looked vast and mysterious in the gathering darkness. It lay like a rumpled sheet tugged into peaks and valleys by a restless sleeper, the lights of scattered villages and farms gradually appearing with the dusk.

  Alton had already spent an hour on the hillside, but his vigil had brought no answers – only the chill that had numbed his fingers. He had been given no more answers here than he had in church. He had to make his own decision.

  Ben Cooper and Diane Fry both crashed into their chairs at their desks in the CID room. Cooper could see that Fry looked as tired as he felt himself. Actually, more tired. She looked exhausted and dark-eyed.

  There was more paperwork on Cooper’s desk, but he couldn’t be bothered to look at it. He stared at the ceiling for a while and found his thoughts wandering.

  ‘Diane,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When you went to Wolverhampton with Gavin the other day, you were back in your old home town, weren’t you?’

  Fry didn’t respond immediately. But Cooper knew she had heard the question. He could see the telltale stiffening of her shoulders, the almost visible defensive cloak that she began to throw around herself whenever her private life was mentioned.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I remember you telling me that Warley was where you grew up. You, and your sister.’

  ‘Your memory’s too good sometimes, Ben.’

  ‘But it was important to you,’ he said. ‘I mean, it seemed to be important to you at the time, when you told me about it, Diane.’

  ‘So?’

  Her ability to make him feel uncomfortable was uncanny. And it came so easily to her – all it took was a very slight change in the tone of her voice to insert a little sliver of ice behind her words. She had a pretty unnerving stare, too. But this time, she hadn’t even needed to look at him to let him know that his intrusion was unwelcome. There were subtle messages in every part of her body.

  ‘I was just wondering what it meant to you now, your old home town. Did going back there make you regret leaving it? Did it still feel like home? Did it bring back memories?’

  ‘Ben, have I ever told you that you ask too many questions?’

  ‘I’m a detective,’ said Cooper lightly. ‘That’s what I’m supposed to do.’

  ‘Fine – if you were asking the right questions of the right people. But I’m not a suspect in any of your cases, of which you have plenty that you might usefully be thinking about. Perhaps we ought to talk about improving your focus some time.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a “yes”,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Ben, as far as you’re concerned, I’ve forgotten everything that I ever knew about my home town, and what happened to me there. OK?’

  ‘But you haven’t forgotten your sister,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Not that again.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Diane, I know you haven’t. Since you’ve been in Derbyshire, you’ve still been looking for her. You told me –’

  ‘I don’t care what I told you. Just because I told you something, it doesn’t mean it’s true.’

  ‘Yeah, but this was true, Diane. You can’t pretend it wasn’t.’

  She turned her tired eyes to stare at him. ‘Ben, leave it alone.’

  Cooper hesitated momentarily. He felt like a nervous horse lining up for the last, big fence at the Horse of the Year Show. Yet he had something riding his back that wouldn’t let him shy away from the fence, but spurred him on to go for it.

  ‘Diane,’ he said, ‘what would you say if I could help you find out what happened to Angie?’

  Cooper wondered how much longer he could meet Diane Fry’s stare. It seemed to go on for a long time, as the temperature in the room dropped and the blood began to suffuse his cheeks. Fry opened her mouth once to speak, then closed it again. Cooper hoped the waiting wouldn’t last too long. It would be better to get it over with.

  In the end, Fry broke the stare and stood up without speaking. She walked across the office and looked out of the window, with an expression that suggested she was seeing anything except the back of the main stand of Edendale Football Club across the road. She was trying to hold herself steady, but Cooper could see that her hands shook where they rested on the window ledge. When she did speak, there was none of the anger that he had expected. Her voice was almost a whisper.

  ‘You’re talking to me about my sister again. I told you not to.’

  Cooper nodded, his throat too dry and constricted to speak. But he realized that Fry couldn’t see him. He swallowed, and tried again.

  ‘Yes, Diane.’

  ‘So what is this? You think you could do a better job than me, even at finding my own sister?’

  ‘No. I just thought … Well, if I could help you, I would.’

  Fry’s forehead sank gently against the window pane, and her eyes closed for a moment.

  ‘I can’t believe this.’

  The door of the CID room opened and Gavin Murfin stepped in, carrying a paper bag which was already showing grease stains. He smiled when he saw Fry and Cooper.

  ‘Hey, Diane,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some results on that phone enquiry. Guess who Neil Granger was making calls to the night before he was killed?’

  Fry didn’t even look at him. Her eyes stayed fixed on Cooper.

  ‘Gavin, take a tea break,’ she said.

  Murfin’s eyebrows rose dramatically. ‘I’ve had a break already. I thought you’d want to know –’

  ‘Just get out of he
re and don’t come back for ten minutes. OK, Gavin?’

  Murfin looked at Cooper. He screwed up his face into a snooty school-marm look and wagged his head from side to side before backing out of the room.

  Fry waited until she heard the door close and Murfin’s footsteps in the corridor. Then she turned away from the window to face Cooper. Her forehead was damp from the condensation on the glass and her face was pale, but at least there was a flash of anger now in her eyes, rising beyond the tiredness. Her voice rose almost to a shout.

  ‘You have no right,’ she said. ‘You have no right to interfere in my life. What makes you think you can do this? You’re treading on my territory now, so back off.’

  Cooper began backing straight away. His chair seemed to move of its own accord on its wheels, until it hit the desk behind him.

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ he said.

  ‘Well, don’t. OK?’

  As usual after an attempt to get closer to Diane Fry, Cooper found himself covered in a sheen of sweat and pumped with adrenalin, as if he had just come through a life-threatening situation.

  He wasn’t even sure he was making any progress. Most people would be worn down after a while and give a little bit of themselves in return. But Fry showed no signs of doing that. He had tried the recommended body language – the non-threatening stance, the ‘listening’ position. Maybe he ought to have tried Father Murphy.

  Derek Alton’s car was waiting for him in the lay-by on the A628, near the start of the steep footpath. The same footpath that Neil had used.

  It was already nine o’clock and completely dark when Alton drove past the Quiet Shepherd in Withens. The village was almost silent, but for a couple of vehicles leaving the car park of the pub. The Old Rectory, where the Renshaws lived, was in darkness except for the flickering glow of a candle in one of the windows.

  Alton continued past the county boundary sign, entering South Yorkshire. At the end of the road, he parked his car in a gateway and sat for a few minutes, staring straight ahead.

  Finally, he took a deep breath and got out of the car. There was no sound around him now, but for the murmuring of water moving constantly through the landscape, and the occasional call of a sheep above him on the moor. Alton looked for a light up ahead. But for some reason, the Deardens’ house was in darkness.

  Michael Dearden had found an old kitchen chair and positioned it among the piles of ash and charred timber in the burnt-out stable. He carefully placed the chair so that he could see straight into the yard through part of the front wall that was almost completely gone. His field of vision included the side gate, the back of the garage and fifty yards of fencing along the back field. Whichever way they came, he was sure he would see them. Without telling Gail, he had disabled the sensors that activated the security lighting at the back of the property. That way, intruders would be encouraged to approach the back of the house. And there he would be waiting for them.

  Dearden practised sighting along the barrels into the night. His eyes would soon get accustomed to the darkness. True, it would be impossible to see who his intruders were before he shot at them. But unless they were up to no good, they wouldn’t be in his yard at night, would they?

  He moved the barrels slowly from side to side, allowing himself some satisfaction at the weight of the barrels and the hard nudge of the stock against his shoulder. He felt strong at last. Let them come now. He was ready for them.

  It was only because his eyes were already adjusted to the darkness that Derek Alton saw the movement at all. Even then, it was far too late. The flash followed a second later. Alton would not have been able to say whether he had started to throw himself away from the direction of the discharge, or whether his body had simply rolled with the force of the blast. The impact hit him at the same time that the deafening roar filled the yard. It was a great blast of hot breath that scorched his body and burned his face, the stink filling his nostrils like a giant’s belch. Alton was spun sideways by the force of the hot breath, and his shoulder and right hand were thrashed against the edge of a wall as he fell.

  For Derek Alton, it was the pain that came last. And by then its dark waves barely lapped at his awareness before he floated above it and away. He experienced a surge of joy and reassurance, like a man who had made a long overdue sacrifice.

  38

  Sunday

  On Sunday, Ben Cooper was supposed to be off duty. Instead, he found himself that morning pulling his Toyota into the car park near the Yorkshire Traction bus stop at Withens. When he got out of the car, he could hear the rumble of heavy machinery somewhere – probably the sound of a tractor on the farm next to Waterloo Terrace.

  Cooper cut through a path alongside the churchyard to reach the close where the Renshaws’ house was, the Old Rectory. There was some scaffolding against the side of the house, and the sound of hammering from the roof. Probably there were broken tiles to be replaced after the winter. By now, starlings and other birds would be looking for gaps in the roof so that they could get in to build their nests in a warm, insulated attic. The owners were sensible to get the repairs done.

  Then Cooper realized the flat-bed lorry parked near the scaffolding looked familiar. Anonymous, but familiar.

  He walked round the scaffolding until he could see one of the men working on the roof. He recognized the back of Scott Oxley’s head, but couldn’t see much else of him because he was hidden by some of the planks at the top of the scaffolding. He recognized Scott’s voice, too, when he shouted an instruction to his mate. Another figure came into view, and an arm reached out to pass Scott a hammer. A face peered over the scaffolding and looked down at Cooper. It was Ryan.

  ‘’Morning,’ said Cooper.

  Ryan stared at him, still holding the hammer. Scott slithered down the roof a couple of feet and looked over his shoulder, but didn’t return the greeting. Above Scott, Cooper could see a gap in the roof about four feet across.

  ‘Replacing a few tiles?’ he said.

  ‘Is it illegal, then?’

  ‘Depends.’

  Ryan looked vaguely worried. ‘What does it depend on?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Scott. ‘He’s just trying to wind us up. Give me that hammer.’

  ‘Is the householder at home?’ said Cooper.

  ‘He’s gone out. And we don’t know when he’ll be back.’

  ‘Pity. I might have to talk to you two for a bit, then.’

  Scott began to hit a roof nail with his hammer, muttering something that sounded like ‘nothing fuckin’ better to do’.

  But Cooper wasn’t going to lose the opportunity of talking to a captive audience. The Oxleys couldn’t easily get off the roof and climb down the scaffolding to reach their van. There was no easy escape route today. And the home owner wasn’t even around to tell him to leave.

  ‘Much to do, is there?’ said Cooper. ‘How long are you going to be on this job?’

  ‘A day or two,’ said Scott.

  Ryan was slowly moving back behind the scaffolding, so that Cooper couldn’t see him. How old was Ryan again? Was it fourteen or fifteen? But it was Sunday, of course, so there was no school for him to be attending.

  ‘Just a weekend job, then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Finished by Monday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s good, because they’ve forecast rain.’

  Scott swore under the sound of the hammer. ‘We’ve got a fuckin’ tarpaulin,’ he said.

  ‘But you’ll be finished by Monday anyway?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Where do you get the tiles from?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Well, they’re old tiles on that roof, aren’t they? It isn’t easy to get a good match. Do you have a local supplier?’

  ‘Are you thinking of going into the roofing business, or what?’ said Scott.

  ‘I’m interested. Local enterprises need our support. I might have some roof repairs I need doing myself one day.’<
br />
  A mobile phone started ringing somewhere. Cooper knew it wasn’t his by the sound of the ring, but he took it out of his pocket and looked at it anyway, just in case. Then he saw that Scott Oxley had taken a phone off the leather belt he wore round his jeans. Scott listened for a few minutes, grunted a couple of times, then thrust the phone back. He glowered down at Cooper.

  ‘Bastard,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry? I was just enquiring about some work.’

  ‘You came here to make sure we kept out of the way.’

  Cooper frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  But Scott was clambering down the scaffolding as fast as he could, his boots rattling on the ladder on the final descent. Ryan swung down after him, like a natural scaffolder.

  Cooper took a step backwards, concerned about the change in Scott’s manner. ‘What’s the problem?’ he said. ‘Why are you stopping work?’

  Scott paused only for a second before he got into the cab of the lorry.

  ‘The rain came early,’ he said.

  Puzzled, Cooper stood watching the Oxleys as they drove off. He looked up at the sky, then at the hole in the roof of the house. A starling flew down and landed on the tiles before hopping into the hole and disappearing. Cooper shook his head.

  ‘I think I’ll be taking my business elsewhere, after all,’ he said.

  As Cooper walked back towards the car park, he looked at his mobile phone again. Was there something he ought to know about? But nobody had called him, and his radio was back in the car. Besides, it was his day off, and no one would know that he was in Withens.

  As if to reflect the tragedy at the Deardens’ house, a retaining wall had collapsed during the night. It had been holding back part of the slope behind the lodge, but now it looked as if an explosion had taken place in the hillside and burst through the wall. The dressed stones lay scattered across the yard, covered in black soil, small pebbles and plant debris. It seemed as if even the landscape had managed to force its way through their defences.