The Corpse Bridge (17 page)

Branagh handed over to DI Walker, who had been at the scene. He was a young detective inspector, who'd risen quickly through the ranks, but who might yet be overtaken in his career by those fast-tracked graduates just starting their three-year programmes. Slim and blond-haired, Walker looked more like an actor auditioning for the role of a fictional aristocratic detective than a real police officer. It was said that he had public school and university education too – though surely that didn't make any difference in today's police service?

‘Our search of the scene is still ongoing,' said Walker. ‘Given the statements from witnesses, we've extended the search area quite considerably.'

He indicated a large-scale map on the wall of the briefing room. Around the area of Hollins Bridge, the map was shaded in sectors to show the designated areas. As Walker said, the search teams were working their way steadily further from the bridge itself.

‘We've almost completed the area on our side of the river,' the DI was saying. ‘We're waiting for our colleagues in Staffordshire to do the same. They have some difficult terrain on their side, where it's a bit steeper, so it's taking longer. I'll be liaising with them later today on that. Meanwhile, these are the items we've found so far.'

Photos were pinned up on a board next to the map, with indicators to show where each item had been found. The noose was there and so was the witch ball with its screwed-up bits of paper and the clay eagle's head. Most distinctive of them was the effigy discovered lying on the coffin stone, which caused a lot of murmuring through the room.

‘It's just a guy, isn't it?' said someone.

‘Yep, someone had it ready for Bonfire Night and lost it,' added a second officer.

But a third shook his head. ‘I've never seen one like that. It's too well made. Why would you go to all that trouble, just to burn it?'

DI Walker agreed. ‘That's what we think, too. It may have been designed deliberately to look like someone. I think it would be fair to say that it isn't our victim, anyway.'

There was a ripple of laughter again and Walker looked pleased. In that moment he seemed even more like a performer, gratified to get a reaction from his audience.

‘However, we have one suggestion put forward for the identity of the effigy,' said Walker cheerfully. ‘DS Cooper has a theory.'

All eyes turned to Cooper and he stood up. Briefly, he explained his reasoning, from the eagle's head to the emblem of the Manbys, then the situation at Knowle Abbey, with the anonymous letter, the mysterious intruder and the vandalism of the chapel.

‘So it's possible this is part of a campaign by someone with a grudge against the Manby family,' concluded Cooper.

‘And who's the effigy of?' asked a voice from behind him in the room. ‘Is it the earl? I have no idea what he looks like.'

Walker pinned a photograph on to the board next to the picture of the effigy. It was a blown-up detail from a formal occasion that had been featured in
Derbyshire Life
. The Right Honourable Walter, Earl Manby, was pictured in white tie and tails, beaming at the camera with his best air of bonhomie. He was clean shaven, with iron-grey hair neatly clipped and slicked down. His cheeks were full and his skin shone with a slightly florid glow, which might just have been a sign that he'd been enjoying a convivial evening. Apart from that, Cooper had to admit the photograph bore no similarity to the effigy at all.

‘The photo is a year or two old,' said Becky Hurst, against a deafeningly dubious silence. ‘But it was all we could lay our hands on.'

‘Well, be that as it may,' said DI Walker, ‘it's something to bear in mind that there may be a connection with Knowle Abbey. The presence of the rope noose within a few yards of the effigy is worrying. It starts to look like a serious threat.'

Another murmur ran round the room. Walker waited for it to subside.

‘Although it also seems a possibility from the evidence at Sandra Blair's house that the victim may have made the effigy herself,' he said. ‘We're waiting for confirmation of that.'

‘Why would she do that?' asked someone.

‘We don't know. In fact, a better question might be “Who did she make it for?”'

It was a good point, of course. Cooper had to admit that. He decided to sit back and listen to the rest of the briefing in dignified silence.

‘We're still working our way through the diary and address book belonging to the victim, but the good news is that we've located Mrs Blair's sister. Her name is Maureen Mackinnon and she'll be arriving from Scotland in the morning.'

Cooper frowned. Why hadn't he been able to locate a Dundee phone number in Sandra's address book?

DI Walker might have seen his expression. He hesitated, looked down at his notes and said, ‘Mrs Mackinnon lives in Dunfermline, I believe.'

Oh, well. Dundee, Dunfermline. It was probably too easy to confuse them. It must have taken Luke Irvine a while to sort that one out.

‘There was the note in the diary about meeting “Grandfather”,' said Cooper, forgetting his resolution to keep quiet.

‘According to Mrs Mackinnon, the victim doesn't have a grandfather,' said Walker with an air of finality. ‘Not a living one she could have been meeting.'

And Cooper wasn't surprised to hear that.

‘Okay, thank you,' said Superintendent Branagh. ‘Let me say at this point that we won't be releasing any details to the public of what we found at the scene. Specifically, there will be no mention of the effigy or the noose. Understood? All right. What about forensics?'

The crime-scene manager, Wayne Abbott, took over the floor. He was a marked contrast to the DI, heavily built and shaven-headed like a football hooligan but totally on the ball when it came to the details of a crime scene.

‘Our scene is pretty messy,' said Abbott. ‘Muddy, badly churned up, rained on and trampled. It couldn't have been worse really. There's no viable DNA to work with, for a start, and trace evidence is fragmentary. We've recovered some shoe marks close to where the body was found. They'll be difficult to identify with any certainty, but we're working on it.'

‘Fingerprints?'

‘We've retrieved a few partials from the victim's clothing and from the effigy,' said Abbott. ‘Many of them are the victim's own, of course. The others we haven't been able to identify. There's no match from the database.'

‘That's privatisation for you,' said someone.

Cooper turned round to look, but couldn't see who had spoken. It could have been Gavin Murfin, but he looked too innocent and his mouth was full anyway.

Creeping privatisation was a standing grievance among some officers. And fingerprint records had already been privatised during the past twelve months. There was no storage room left at the Regional Identification Bureau in Nottingham. So, like other East Midlands forces, Derbyshire had decided to digitise their records and move to an entirely electronic process. Half a million paper records were being destroyed after they were scanned and stored on a secure server.

‘That's nothing to do with it,' said Superintendent Branagh sharply. And no one seemed ready to argue with her.

Abbott looked across at where Cooper sat and met his eye.

‘The one thing we have established,' he said, ‘is that the material used in making the effigy matches samples of fabric found in the victim's home. There's also a sketch that resembles the final design. So it seems we can confirm that the victim created the effigy herself.'

Cooper breathed a sigh of relief. At least he'd been right about something. He looked across the room and gasped in surprise. If he wasn't mistaken, he'd almost caught Diane Fry smiling.

I
n Edendale that evening the streets were wet with more rain. The Christmas lights hadn't gone up in the town yet. But it wouldn't be long, now that it was November. Most of the shops just couldn't wait to get the Halloween costumes and Guy Fawkes masks off their shelves and fill the space with Christmas gift wrap and tinsel.

Ben Cooper had almost forgotten that he was expected somewhere that evening. He was supposed to be helping his sister Claire get her new shop ready for opening.

Well, his family expected him to forget things, or to be too busy to turn up, or to get called away. And sometimes, lately, they'd expected him just not to be up to it. But that had changed now, hadn't it?

Claire had closed the old shop months ago. To be fair, it had been a bit of a niche venture, even when times were good. He could have told her that at the time, but he knew she wouldn't be willing to hear it. If you wanted to do something badly enough, you needed encouragement and support from your family and friends, not discouraging words and predictions of disaster.

Still, it was certainly true that the market for healing crystals and scented candles had fallen through the floor when the economic downturn came along. Edendale people didn't really go for that sort of thing. The older residents were happy with their goose fat and paraffin lamps. The younger ones thought you could get it all on the internet.

And visitors to the area were spending less money than ever in the town. Even those with a bit of spare cash preferred to spend it in the farm shops or the outdoor clothing stores, or perhaps to visit one of those historic attractions like Knowle Abbey. Small local businesses were struggling against the competition, whatever area of retail they were in.

Cooper thought of the dreamcatcher and the Tarot cards in Sandra Blair's cottage at Crowdecote. It was ironic to think that Sandra might have been a customer of Claire's at one time, in the old shop. But Sandra Blair was dead and Claire Cooper had moved on.

The new shop was just off the market square in Edendale. It stood in the steep, cobbled alley called Nick i'th Tor. There had been a half-hearted campaign recently to change the name of the street on the argument that visitors couldn't pronounce it so were too embarrassed to ask for directions to it. But the idea never stood a chance. Edendale was too proud of its history and too fond of its traditions – even if no one knew what they meant.

He could see through the front window that his brother Matt was in the shop, putting up some shelves for one of the displays. Claire wouldn't lash out money on professional shopfitters when she could persuade members of her family to do the job for her. But then all the Coopers were like that. It seemed to be an inherited trait.

‘Hi, Matt,' he said as he entered.

As soon as he opened the door, he was hit by the powerful smells of fresh paint and plaster, and newly sawn timber.

Matt turned. His broad shoulders and increasing girth had been crammed into an old set of blue overalls that hadn't really fitted him for a couple of years now. Only the lower buttons were fastened on the front, exposing an ancient woolly sweater full of holes. He looked like a grizzly bear struggling to get out of a duvet cover. His face was red and there was a smudge of grease on his cheek. In fact, he looked pretty much as he always did back at the farm.

‘Oh, you made it,' he said. ‘I thought I was going to be on my own again tonight.'

‘Where's the boss?'

‘Who?'

‘The owner of the shop. Shouldn't she be here supervising?'

‘Oh, Claire's not going to be here tonight. She's been down in Birmingham for some trade exhibition or something. Networking and looking at new product lines.'

‘Looking at new product lines?'

‘That's what she said.'

‘Oh, I can just hear her saying it.'

‘Well, her train from Birmingham doesn't get in until later. She has to change in Sheffield, you know.'

‘Of course. So what needs doing?'

‘You can finish off the paintwork behind the counter.'

‘No problem.'

Ben found a brush and opened a half-used tin of gloss white. A dust sheet was already spread on the floor to catch drips, and the panels on the wall behind the counter were primed and ready for painting.

The place was already completely unrecognisable. This used to be a second-hand bookshop, which had been empty for a while since the death of its owner. Ben could remember all too clearly the dusty upstairs rooms above the shop, where only certain clients were invited to browse. But Claire was only converting the ground floor, so far at least.

It was a smart choice of location, he had to admit. He'd always liked these narrow lanes in the oldest part of Edendale, between Eyre Street and the market square. Claire's new shop was only a couple of doors down from Larkin's, a traditional bakery whose window was always full of pastries and cheeses – apricot white stilton, homity pies and enormous high-baked pork pies. And a few yards away in the market square itself was a celebrated butcher's and game dealers called Ferris's. Between them these two establishments were among Edendale's most popular businesses, with locals and visitors alike. They were such a draw that this corner of the market square could qualify as a retail destination, as far as Edendale had one.

So Claire had wisely gone for a complementary business, an outlet for local farmers' produce. Most of it was organic, of course. Rare breed meats, gluten-free products, dry cured bacon and home-made cakes. A sign already in the window advertised her venture into a more upmarket range. Uncle Roy's Comestible Concoctions – fudge sauces and wholegrain mustards, seaweed salt and country bramble jelly.

Ben noticed a large sign propped against the wall near where Matt was working. It was probably ready to go in the window display when the stock began to arrive.

‘What does that sign say?' he asked.

‘Totally Locally,' said Matt.

‘And that is?'

‘It's the Totally Locally campaign. You must have heard of it.'

‘No, Matt.'