The Corpse Bridge (4 page)

As he watched officers manoeuvre the body and crime-scene examiners record every detail with their digital cameras, Cooper began to wonder whether the victim's blood had reached both banks of the river or had drifted into Staffordshire on the current.

But it didn't matter. The body was here, on the Derbyshire side. It was his responsibility for now. The chief constable had said recently that there was no greater privilege than this – the job of investigating the death of another human being.

Sandra Blair was the victim's name, according to Rob Beresford. She lived nearby in the village of Crowdecote and worked in tea rooms in Hartington. As far as Beresford knew, she was unmarried. She was a friend of his mother's, he said. They were in some organisation together. The Women's Institute or the Mothers' Union, or a local historical society. Perhaps all of them. He was vague on the details beyond that point.

‘Any confirmation of ID on the victim?' asked Cooper as the crime-scene manager, Wayne Abbott, broke away from the activity round the body.

‘There are some house keys,' said Abbott. ‘And a phone, but it's been immersed in water, so—'

‘Forensics might be able to get something off it, do you think?'

‘Possibly. Other than that, she had nothing much on her. There's no purse, just the odd bit of small change in the pockets. She was wearing a blue waterproof jacket, which must have weighed her down in the water. Walking boots too.'

‘But the water is so shallow. It wouldn't have stopped her getting out, if she was still alive and conscious.'

Abbott shrugged. His scene suit was wet and streaked with mud. He looked cold too, and must have been very uncomfortable. But this was all part of the job. No one chose a crime scene with the comfort of the investigators in mind.

‘That's not for me to comment on,' he said.

The divers in their wetsuits were still in the water, carefully exploring the riverbed, feeling under rocks, sifting through mud. They were gradually making their way downstream from the location of the body, in case evidence had drifted away in the current and disappeared, following the streams of the victim's blood.

‘No torch among her possessions?' asked Cooper.

Abbott shook his head. ‘Not that we've found.'

‘There must have been one. She wouldn't have come out in the pitch dark without a torch of some kind.'

‘Well, someone else must have been here, I suppose. Maybe they had it.'

‘Perhaps. But she seems to be dressed for the outing, at least.'

He was thinking about Rob Beresford, dressed in his unsuitable muddy trainers and sodden denims. The victim had come out here much better prepared, and presumably for quite a different purpose. What that purpose was, he had no idea. Not yet anyway. But Sandra Blair's life was about to become the focus of a lot of attention.

‘And a hat,' said Cooper, thinking of the head wound and the dark strands of wet hair.

‘Sorry?'

‘She was probably wearing a hat. What happened to it?'

‘No idea.'

Gradually, the entire team was gathering at the Corpse Bridge. The same old circus that any suspicious death attracted. Present at the scene now was Detective Inspector Dean Walker. Cooper knew him, but hadn't worked directly with him until now. His old DI, Paul Hitchens, had moved on – and probably wouldn't be back in E Division for any nostalgic reunions with his ex-colleagues, judging by his comments in the pub on his last day. Walker was only a temporary replacement, though. He was earmarked for better things, a job at headquarters in Ripley. There would still be a vacancy in E Division.

Walker was talking on the phone to a detective chief inspector, the only DCI they still had knocking around in this part of Derbyshire.

In the present circumstances everyone was expected to pick up the slack. The DCI and the DI were each doing two people's jobs. Further down the ladder many of the senior DCs were taking on a sergeant's role, while frontline uniformed PCs were acting as social workers, not to mention standing in for paramedics. Everyone had a story of taking an injured person to hospital in the back of a police car rather than wait for an ambulance that might never come because it was already waiting outside A&E with a previous patient.

Sometimes Cooper wondered who was actually doing the real police work. Community support officers, he supposed. The PCSOs – dressed up to look like police officers, but without any of the powers.

As a DS, he was right in the middle of this mess. He could probably use the freedom to show a bit of initiative, unless this became a major inquiry, in which case they would all lose control to EMSOU's Major Crime Unit.

‘A quick resolution would be nice,' he said, though to no one in particular.

‘Amen to that,' said DC Luke Irvine, who happened to be standing closest. ‘You know I have all these other cases, Ben—'

‘So have we all.'

‘Fair enough, I suppose. What do you want me to do?'

Cooper looked at his watch. ‘You can get up to Earl Sterndale and visit Rob Beresford's parents. Find out whatever they know about Sandra Blair. Obviously, we need an address for her, any family, the next of kin.'

‘Got it.'

‘Oh, and you can let them know their son is still with us, making a statement back at the station. He's phoned them already, but they're probably worried about him.'

‘I'm on my way.'

Cooper looked round. DC Carol Villiers would be at West Street to take Rob Beresford's statement when he arrived. Becky Hurst had a rest day. That left just one member of his team.

DC Gavin Murfin was slouched against a stone wall, his body ballooning like the Michelin Man under several layers of clothing. Murfin looked detached, or at least semi-detached. But Cooper had known him to have the best insights at these moments, some nugget from more than thirty years of experience.

‘What are you thinking, Gavin?' he asked.

Murfin shifted reluctantly from the wall. ‘In the old days I'd be thinking, I wonder how much overtime I can make from this one.'

‘No overtime now, Gavin.'

‘Exactly.'

Cooper watched him slump back again. So did that mean Murfin wasn't thinking about anything at all? With Gavin, it was possible. Though there was also a likelihood that he was just contemplating food.

Another police Land Rover was working its way down the track, bumping over the ruts and splashing through a miniature lake of muddy water that had gathered on the bend before the final descent. Its white paintwork was already filthy and the wipers were struggling to keep an area of windscreen clear for the driver.

‘You had a review with Personnel, didn't you?' said Cooper. ‘What's going to happen?'

Murfin groaned. ‘If I stay on any longer, it's bad news.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I mean they might send me to Glossop,' said Murfin, with a note of despair.

‘It's not the end of the world, Gavin.'

‘No. But you can see it from there.'

‘So, what? You're chucking in the towel? Collecting your pension and waving goodbye?'

‘It seems so. Though I've got a different type of gesture in mind.'

The Land Rover had been forced to stop a hundred yards up the ancient, potholed trackway. There were already too many vehicles down here near the scene. No one was going to stand a chance of turning round when they came to leave. The back-up crew from the Land Rover had decided to take a shortcut across the field to reach the riverside.

Cooper watched them with interest, guessing they were from one of the bigger towns, Chesterfield or even Derby. One officer, climbing over a stock fence on to wet grass, took a couple of electric shocks. Perhaps, thought Cooper, he should have warned them to get the fencing turned off before they did that.

‘So what are you going to do with yourself, Gavin?' he asked. ‘I don't suppose Jean will want you getting under her feet all day long at home.'

‘How right you are. I don't even have any hobbies that will get me out of the house. There's no shed for me to hide in. If I took up gardening, she'd think I'd gone mad and get me certified. Besides, I've just laid a new patio over the flowerbed.'

‘A few cruises?'

Murfin sighed again. ‘Have you ever been on one of those? You get all the same daft biddies and boring old farts on every boat. It's like
Death on the Nile
, but with fewer laughs. When we're not actually on shore trailing round tacky souvenir shops in ninety-degree heat, I spend my time propping up the bar. And I can do that just as well at home, not to mention that the beer's better round here.'

‘You have a couple of young grandchildren now, don't you?' said Cooper. ‘Surely you're looking forward to spending more time with them?'

‘There is that,' said Murfin, without any great enthusiasm.

Cooper felt sure there was something Murfin wasn't telling him. What did he actually have planned for his years in retirement? Something he was embarrassed about, perhaps. Maybe Jean had it all mapped out for him and Gavin had no say in it at all. That would be possible. She might have decided her husband should go to adult education classes to learn Spanish or salsa dancing, or t'ai chi. Or even all three. That would keep him busy, all right.

But the leap of the imagination to picture Gavin Murfin as a Spanish-speaking salsa dancer and t'ai chi expert left Cooper feeling mentally exhausted. His brain wasn't ready for such a shock.

Above the trees Cooper could see the upper slopes of the hills now. On the Derbyshire side there had been a series of disturbing incidents recently – increasingly frequent reports of animals being found slaughtered on the moors. Sheep with their eyes gouged out and their genitals mutilated, a cow with its ears slit, a horse with its tail amputated. People were talking about Satanists and ritual sacrifice. But it didn't take much for Derbyshire people to start talking like that. In Peak District villages they didn't seem to believe in religion very much these days. But they believed in everything else.

Cooper realised they were going to have to extend the search area considerably. Who knew what had been going on in these woods? He would have to speak to the DI to get that organised.

‘Still, you won't miss me when you've got these bright kids,' said Murfin. ‘Look at young Luke there. He's the future. Happy as a pig in clover he is, with this sort of thing.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘He follows you about like a dog, Ben. He knows you'll find him a nice juicy murder case.'

‘Could you actually get some work done, Gavin?' said Cooper.

‘Like what?'

‘Get across the border and see if you can assist our colleagues from Staffordshire.'

D
C Luke Irvine was breathless by the time he reached the top of the trackway where his car was parked on a grass verge. He was driving a Vauxhall hatchback, and it was his current pride and joy. He hated the idea of scraping its paintwork on a dry stone wall in one of these narrow lanes, or having some uniformed bobby snapping his wing mirror off with a Transit van.

As he climbed into his car, he wondered if there was a reason he'd been tasked with finding out about the victim's family. It might mean that he'd end up having to inform bereaved relatives of a death. It was the job everyone dreaded the most. Would Ben Cooper delegate that responsibility to him?

Irvine was conscious of certain subjects he mustn't mention to his DS. It was murmured around the office that Ben Cooper might still be vulnerable to an ill-judged comment. No one knew how he might react to the wrong word. Some said he was on a knife edge, though so far he seemed to be hiding it well. Irvine was even nervous of mentioning the Scenes of Crime department, or crime-scene examiners, or even some forensic detail. It was the department Ben's fiancée had worked in. Would it bring back intolerable memories?

But Irvine wondered whether he was being over-sensitive about this. Cooper was a professional. He could surely deal with these things; separate his job from whatever happened in his private life outside the office. Even the death of a fiancée.

With the car started, he checked his satnav for Earl Sterndale. Ben Cooper would have used a map, of course. He was an obsessive user of Ordnance Survey maps. No, scratch that. Ben would have known exactly which way to go without having to look at any map. Irvine had to accept that he wasn't as familiar with these remoter areas as his DS was. He wasn't a Derbyshire boy like Cooper. He'd grown up in West Yorkshire. Parts of that county were very similar to the Dark Peak, but it didn't help when it came to navigating these back roads.

As he inched his way to the road and turned towards a hamlet called Glutton, Irvine shook his head in frustration. It seemed so difficult these days to know what was the right thing to do or say. Perhaps it was working so closely with Becky Hurst that had done this to him. She'd made him paranoid about blurting out something that might upset or offend anyone listening.

But Becky was right a lot of the time, of course. You had to be careful; what you said, especially when you were a police officer. It didn't really matter what your personal opinions were, as long as you didn't act on them or express them out loud. Not even in an email or a tweet. Someone was bound to report you for inappropriate behaviour. It was almost the worst offence you could commit now. No one allowed police officers to be human, not in the way they once had. No office banter or canteen culture pranks, none of that black humour or contempt for criminals the old school coppers had expressed on a daily basis.

You'd think it was unhealthy to keep all this stuff bottled up, though. All those old guys around the station always seemed so much more relaxed. Take Gavin Murfin. He was so laid back he was practically lying dead on the floor. He said what he thought and didn't care about the consequences. He'd already put in his thirty years' service and could pack his belongings at any moment with the certainty of collecting his full pension.