Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  When Cooper drove into the parking area near the substation building, he noticed that the towers were numbered on their sides. At the moment, numbers five and eight were motionless, the ends of their blades turned back like claws. Small doors set into each tower were reminiscent of bulkheads in a submarine. Built on concrete bases, the towers hardly seemed to vibrate, despite the weight and the movement of the blades.

  ‘You should get plenty of wind up here,’ said Cooper to the foreman of the maintenance crew. ‘Too much, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes, sometimes. But there are aerodynamic stalls on the blade tips to prevent damage to the gearbox and generator, and hydraulic disc brakes to lock the turbines.’

  ‘You know what looks a bit frightening about these things?’

  ‘Frightening? What’s that?’

  ‘These blades are so big. They’re out of proportion. They look too big for the tower to support.’

  ‘Yes, the rotors are over 120 feet in diameter,’ said the foreman. ‘The towers are 114 feet.’

  ‘So they are wider than the tower is high. It seems wrong.’

  The foreman smiled at him. ‘It’s perfectly safe.’

  The noise of the wind was in Cooper’s ears up here. But it couldn’t disguise the sound of the turbines, that steady whoosh-whoosh, like a giant washing machine on its rinse cycle. No – a whole laundrette full of giant washing machines. Closer to number one tower, Cooper could hear the hum of the motor inside the base and the occasional metallic clunk of a switch. But there was an eerie whistling somewhere, too – a high-pitched keening from the blades as they sliced through the air. It was like a ghostly voice singing on the wind. And since the turbines ran constantly, all day and all night, that uncanny whistling and thudding must never cease.

  It might be a little scary to come upon the wind farm unexpectedly in the dark, and to have your car headlights catch the movement of those vast white arms as they turned against the night sky.

  Cooper turned his back on the towers to look out over Longdendale. Viewed from this height, the valleys were like deep wounds in the moors, and it seemed amazing that there were people living down there. To the west, the sky was so dark and heavy that it seemed more solid than the land.

  Sometimes visitors looked over a vista of peat moors like Withens and Black Hill and admired what they thought was entirely natural scenery. They thought the view had nothing man-made in it – no houses or roads, no walls or telegraph poles, nor even electricity pylons.

  But they were wrong, of course – the entire landscape here was man-made. Longdendale had been primeval forest once. There had been wild boar here, along with deer, wolves, bears and even wild bulls. Now the only signs left of their presence were in the place names – Wildboar Clough, Swineshaw and Deer Knowl. The monks who had been given control of the valley had cleared the woodland for their sheep, and the Industrial Revolution had begun to produce the acid rain that had fallen on the Dark Peak for centuries, destroying the vegetation and eroding the peat. What visitors admired now was the devastation left by thousands of years of destruction by man.

  ‘We offered to help down in the village, you know,’ said the maintenance foreman, coming to stand by him.

  ‘Down in Withens?’

  ‘Yes. It’s our policy to have good relations with the local community. So we offered our services on some projects. But some of the local people there are not very friendly.’

  ‘I think you must be talking about the Oxleys.’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘We’ve met.’

  People like the Oxleys knew perfectly well that this wasn’t an unchanging landscape but a dynamic one. They were like the hefted flocks of sheep on the hillsides, who were so crucial to the balance of the ecology. For those flocks, their grazing territories had become inherited knowledge, passed on from one generation to the next. To farm the vast, unfenced areas of moorland, shepherds had to make use of the sheep’s natural behaviour patterns. After centuries of hefting, they became practically wild animals, relying on the strong territorial instinct that went with their feral nature.

  Down on the Withens road, Cooper could see PC Udall’s Vauxhall Astra. He recognized it by the identification number on the roof. In this kind of landscape, those numbers weren’t only for the use of the air support unit’s helicopter crew.

  ‘It’s a shame about Withens.’ The foreman shook his head sadly. ‘We were thinking of offering to clear the graveyard at the church. It’s very badly overgrown, you know.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Cooper, thinking of the task force officers who had spent the past few days painstakingly removing the tangled vegetation and sifting through sinewy roots looking for clues to the identity of the skeleton and the manner of the victim’s death.

  ‘We even went into the pub a few times, but they didn’t like us being there, we could tell that.’

  ‘Ah. Foreigners in the pub,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Nothing important.’

  Despite his vantage point, all Cooper could see of Withens was the tower of St Asaph’s church. But he was surprised to find that he could also see the roof of Shepley Head Lodge, out beyond the village to the north, apparently isolated and inaccessible.

  The Reverend Derek Alton had created an involuntary link between the two. Early this morning, the vicar had finally been well enough to talk. Among other things that he had needed to get off his chest, he had revealed that Neil Granger had discovered his brother Philip was involved with the spate of antiques thefts in the area. A stolen bronze bust had been the conclusive evidence, he said. And Neil had gone to Alton to ask for his advice about what he should do.

  ‘And what did you advise him?’ the vicar had been asked.

  ‘To face him. To tell the truth.’

  Philip Granger laughed then. He seemed to throw off the mantle of guilt too easily now that the subject had moved away from the death of his brother.

  ‘Emma? Emma was mad about Neil. How stupid was that? She pursued him for months. I remember she was so thrilled when he moved to Bearwood to stay in the house with her and the other students. But he was gay. I told you, didn’t I, that he was gay?’

  ‘Yes, sir, you did.’

  ‘But why did nobody tell Emma? Why didn’t Neil tell her? It would have made it so much easier. Things would have turned out differently. But I had to tell her myself, and she didn’t believe me.’

  ‘You wanted Emma for yourself?’

  ‘Yes. I used to e-mail her a lot, because it wasn’t easy to go up to her house to see her. But she always ignored me in favour of Neil. I’m only the brother, you know. Why should he always have got the best? Why did everybody always like him more?’

  ‘Did you pick Emma up from Bearwood that day?’

  ‘I waited outside the house until I saw Neil go.’

  ‘But you only have a motorbike.’

  ‘I can drive, you know,’ he said. ‘What do you think I am? I borrowed a mate’s car, so there was no chance of Neil recognizing it. I pulled up to the kerb when Emma was on the way to the bus stop. She was surprised to see me, but I told her I was in the area looking for work, and she didn’t think anything of it. It was starting to rain then, and the trains would have been packed. I said I was just on the way home, so she got in the car.’

  ‘She would have mentioned it to Neil afterwards, if –’

  ‘Yeah. But I only wanted to talk to her, you know. It wouldn’t have mattered, except – Well, it went all right for a while. We chatted about all kinds of things, and I thought we were getting on really well, until she started to talk about Neil. Do you know what she wanted? She wanted me to speak to Neil for her, to tell him how much she liked him. How pathetic is that?’

  ‘How far on the way home did you get?’ said Fry coldly, picturing the quiet road where Emma’s mobile phone had been found.

  ‘I don’t really know. We argued a lot. I turned off the A6 somewhere when she started to get really
upset. She got her mobile phone out and was going to phone her parents, but I grabbed it off her and threw it out of the window.’

  ‘We found that,’ said Fry. ‘What I want to know is where you killed her.’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know where it was. She started calling me all kinds of things and comparing me to Neil, so I lost my temper and hit her. Then she started screaming and got out of the car, so I went after her and hit her again. I hit her a few times, until she stopped screaming.’

  Fry paused. Not for Granger to recover this time, but for herself. Now, finally, she could picture Emma Renshaw – but it was as Emma had been at the moment of her death, not as she had been in life.

  As soon as she was finished here, Fry had to visit the Renshaws. She had made them a promise that she would keep them up to date personally on the enquiry. But explaining the facts of the case against Philip Granger to them would not be easy.

  ‘This must have been a very quiet spot, Mr Granger,’ she said.

  ‘I parked on a grass verge somewhere. All I remember were some stone walls and a gate into a field.’

  ‘What did you do with Emma?’

  ‘I dragged her into the field and hid her behind the wall. No cars came past all the time we were there. So I was lucky, too, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘Mr Granger, we’re going to ask you to look at some maps and show us the area where you think you were at the time,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘I was lost,’ said Granger. ‘I can’t tell you the exact place.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we’ll want to narrow it down as much as possible, so that we can do our best to find Emma. Are you willing to co-operate in that, sir?’

  Granger shrugged. ‘OK. But you have to realize it was all my brother’s fault.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Fry.

  ‘Oh, yes, it was,’ he said. ‘It was his fault. My dear little brother.’

  Ben Cooper watched through his rearview mirror as a bus pulled up near the Pepper Pot Inn in the village of Midhopestones. Only three people got off the bus. Two of them looked at the threatening sky and went into the pub. The third one waited until the bus had set off again and began to walk slowly up the road.

  Cooper hadn’t felt the need to tell Angie Fry what sort of car he drove. She probably knew that already, along with its registration number. And maybe his date of birth, his mother’s maiden name and his National Insurance number.

  As Angie got into the Toyota, he continued looking at his mirror, expecting to see a car turning into the road or manoeuvring to leave the pub car park. But there was nothing. He started the engine.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Angie.

  ‘Somewhere quiet.’

  ‘Embarrassed to be seen with me, Ben?’

  Cooper didn’t answer, but continued to drive back towards the Flouch crossroads. They passed through Langsett, and soon the surrounding landscape began to look suitably remote. He felt confident that Angie would not be familiar with this area and would have no idea where they were heading.

  ‘Angie, I take it you know what happened to Diane there before she transferred to Derbyshire?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In fact, you’re remarkably well informed for someone who hasn’t been in touch with her sister for so long.’

  Angie hesitated. ‘There are ways of finding these things out.’

  ‘I’m sure there are. Especially with the help of your friend who drives the dark blue BMW with a blocked registration.’

  ‘Blocked registration?’ she repeated, dumbly seizing on the part of his sentence she didn’t understand.

  ‘What is he? National Crime Squad? Special Branch? Who are you working with who doesn’t want some long-lost sister blundering on to his pitch?’

  ‘Ben, you don’t understand the situation.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Cooper.

  And for the first time he began to feel angry about the way he had been treated. He had known from the start that he was being lied to. There was no way that Angie Fry could have obtained the information that she had without inside help, without someone with exactly the right contacts and the means of asking. Being lied to was bad enough. But it was the underlying contempt that really angered him, the assumption that he was just some stupid bumpkin copper who would go along with anything he was asked to do.

  Cooper had no idea what bigger cause he was expected to become a minor sacrifice for. Probably an undercover operation against major drug dealers, or some other large-scale organized crime. For himself, he didn’t really care. But Diane was expected to be an unwitting sacrifice, too.

  And worst of all was the fact that the whole plan seemed to have been put together with such casual arrogance. He was appalled and infuriated by the utter cynicism of the idea that he would willingly be the means of destroying someone’s hope – someone who apparently considered him a friend.

  ‘Angie, you should tell your friend that he ought to have trained you to lie better,’ he said, and put his foot down to drive a little faster as he hit the A628.

  Angie slumped back against the headrest of her seat. ‘I’m sure there’s a way out of this situation,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  She rolled her head wearily and looked at him sideways.

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘There’s always a way out of situations like this,’ said Cooper. ‘It takes a bit of courage, but it’s the only way.’

  ‘I’ve a feeling it might be something I don’t want to hear about.’

  As the white turbines of the wind farm appeared to the north and the air shaft for the railway tunnels came into view on the face of the opposite hill, Cooper began to feel more and more in control of the situation. It was the first time he’d felt in control since he’d visited Withens.

  ‘This way involves telling the truth,’ he said.

  Angie sighed. ‘That’s what I was afraid you’d say.’

  43

  Most of the visitors to Withens were carrying umbrellas or wearing nylon cagoules with hoods turned up against the gentle rain. At least Eric Oxley wouldn’t have to water the well dressing much today.

  Ben Cooper had taken up a position on the edge of the small crowd surrounding the well dressing. The sight of the tourists had just reminded him that he’d made another date with Peggy Check for this afternoon, and he had let her down again. He hoped she would understand. There was already too much in his life that was going to be hard to explain.

  Cooper didn’t have to wait long before Diane Fry came to stand at his side.

  ‘So how were the Renshaws?’ he said.

  Fry hunched her shoulders in a characteristically tense gesture. ‘Sarah Renshaw forced me to watch a video of Emma. A selection of memories, specially edited. One sequence showed Emma in black make-up, playing the recorder for the Border Rats.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Funnily enough, Neil Granger was in it, too.’

  Cooper hadn’t brought an umbrella, or a waterproof. He could feel drops of the Withens rain starting to trickle down his collar.

  ‘What’s the progress on Philip Granger?’ he said.

  ‘We think he’s pretty well tied down for the killing of his brother. It’ll be up to the lawyers whether they go for a murder charge or manslaughter. We can’t prove his intention.’

  ‘Did any of the Oxleys know that it was Philip who killed his brother?’

  ‘They say not. And do you know, Ben, I think I actually believe them.’

  ‘Maybe it just wouldn’t occur to them – he was a member of the family, after all.’

  ‘We can all be wrong about our family.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there isn’t enough evidence to charge Philip Granger with the murder of Emma Renshaw. Not unless Emma’s body turns up. We did trace the phone thief through his prints – they were all over it, but they were left in the blood after it had dried. He was pic
ked up at Matlock, and he’s told us where he found the phone.’

  ‘It was Emma’s blood?’

  ‘They matched the DNA.’

  ‘So he picked up the phone, found it didn’t work, and dumped it. Or noticed the blood and panicked.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cooper began to move away, but Fry held him back by putting her hand on his arm. He wished she wouldn’t touch him. The way it made him feel didn’t help him to be sure in his own mind that he was doing the right thing. He could only hope that she wasn’t going to ruin it completely and be nice to him.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject, Ben, asking the National Grid maintenance man to check the tunnel under the air shaft was a very good thought.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s a pity you completely forgot to mention it to me.’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’

  They began to walk across the road together towards their cars. Gradually, the crowd of people began to thin out in front of them.

  ‘Anyway, I’m sure we’ll find Emma’s body soon,’ said Fry. ‘Granger says he hid it behind a wall, but he was in such a panic that he can’t remember where it was, or even what road he was on. He was genuinely lost. But the search teams are working their way through all the likely areas.’

  ‘I suppose it’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Let’s hope to God it’s soon. The Renshaws can’t stand this much longer. It will overturn their lives completely. But nobody can go for ever without knowing the truth.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ said Cooper.

  Fry stopped suddenly in the middle of the road, oblivious to the mud that splashed on to her shoes from a puddle. Cooper walked on, bending his head into the rain. He was moving towards the sound of the water that streamed through Withens, washing away the ash and eroding the surfaces down to the bedrock.

  For a moment, he had seen two figures that were so alike they could have been mirror images distorted by the rain. They both looked lonely and isolated, and both stood with their shoulders stiff with tension and readiness for a fight. From twenty feet apart, they stared at each other. But the moment couldn’t last.