‘What about the boy who was killed in the arson attack at Castle Farm? Have we spoken to his family?’
‘Yes, we’ve interviewed Shane Curtis’s mother,’ said Sharma. ‘Martina Curtis. There doesn’t seem to be a father. She’s distraught obviously. But she’s got friends and relatives there with her now. A support network.’
‘Are there any other children?’
‘A daughter about sixteen, three more boys of fourteen, twelve and nine.’
‘And no father?’ asked Cooper.
‘It would probably more accurate to say “no fathers”. I don’t think there was just one.’
‘Five children. She already has it pretty tough, then. And now this...’
‘They’re all on benefits, of course,’ put in Irvine. ‘Mrs Curtis spends a fair part of her allowances on fags and booze. And she told us she buys National Lottery tickets every week, scratch cards and all.’
‘Waiting for the moment that will change her life, I suppose. A moment that will never come.’
‘It doesn’t do any harm to keep your hopes alive,’ said Hurst.
‘Oh, fine. But she’s doing it on taxpayers’ money.’
‘What did she tell you about Shane?’ asked Cooper.
‘Well, she says Shane was no angel,’ said Sharma.
‘But then, they always do, don’t they?’ added Irvine.
‘Does she have any idea what he was doing in the barn at Castle Farm?’
Sharma shook his head. ‘No, not a clue. But I got the impression she never knew where he was anyway. “He does his own thing” was the way she put it. He was unemployed, though he seems to have had a bit of money to spend, over and above his jobseeker’s allowance. I’m sure he didn’t get it off his mother. She says he liked to go out on his own for hours on end. She doesn’t seem to have any idea what he was doing all that time.’
‘Well, from the forensic evidence,’ said Irvine, ‘he was clearly drinking lager and smoking pot. And considering his criminal record...’
‘... he was probably getting up to other things too,’ put in Hurst. ‘The logic of prior conviction.’
‘He does have a record,’ said Irvine. ‘So he was almost certainly involved in drugs or petty crime.’
‘A record?’
‘Well, it’s true Shane was no angel. He spent eighteen months in juvenile detention at Werrington Youth Offenders Institution.’
‘In Staffordshire, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, near Stoke on Trent.’
‘You’ve got to wonder who he met in there,’ said Irvine. ‘It often leads kids into worse things when they get out.’
‘What were his offences?’
‘Taking a vehicle without consent, driving without a licence or insurance, theft, shoplifting, possession of drugs. The usual sort of list, really.’
‘No mention of previous arson offences?’
‘No. But that doesn’t mean—’
‘It doesn’t mean anything, Luke. Keep an open mind.’
Irvine scowled. ‘Yes, sir.’
Cooper was starting to get worried about Luke Irvine. He’d started off so promisingly when he first transferred from uniform into CID. He’d been a bit naïve, but keen. He’d reminded Cooper of himself when he was at the same stage of his career. But now he was beginning to get awkward and opinionated. His mind wasn’t as open as it should be. Cooper didn’t know what was having this effect on him — perhaps it was something going on in his private life. He would have to make a point of sitting down and talking to Irvine seriously about it when they both had time.
‘What about his friends?’ asked Cooper.
‘A loose association of youths of a similar age around the Woodlands and Cavendish estates,’ said Sharma.
‘A gang?’
‘Mrs Curtis would never have used that term.’
‘And I suppose she doesn’t know the names of any of them?’
‘Shane didn’t exactly bring them home for tea,’ scowled Irvine.
‘So we’re no closer to knowing who he might have been planning to meet there at the barn. Or if he was planning to meet anyone at all. He might have been the victim of a rival gang who took the opportunity of trapping him inside.’
‘You mean a rival loose association of youths,’ said Irvine.
Cooper shook his head. ‘Whatever the circumstances, I don’t think Shane intended it to end up that way.’
Then he looked around the CID room.
‘DC Villiers,’ he said, ‘are you free at the moment? I’d like you to come with me.’
‘Where are we going?’
Cooper waited until they were out of the room before he answered.
‘To Bakewell. We’re going to talk to Naomi Heath.’
‘Reece Bower’s partner?’ said Villiers. ‘I thought you’d be interested.’
‘You know me so well. I could use your opinion on this one.’
Cooper decided not to mention his call to Superintendent Branagh. He would wait until after his meeting this afternoon. Things might have changed by then. He didn’t want to involve Carol Villiers too deeply if he could avoid it.
So he was very quiet as they left the building and walked to the car park. The words of Detective Superintendent Branagh were echoing in his mind. The Bower case was a miscarriage of justice.
Cooper knew there were many ways for a miscarriage of justice to happen. Derbyshire had experienced its fair share of cases. But as he got into his car he was thinking of a much older one — the story of the notorious Dr Hawley Crippen, who was hanged at Pentonville Prison in 1910 for the murder of his wife. It was a case that he’d studied as a police cadet when the history of criminal justice was one of his obsessions.
In that instance, Cora Crippen had disappeared from the family home after a party. Her husband told everyone that she’d returned to the United States and that she’d later died and been cremated. Crippen had immediately moved in his lover, Ethel Neave. Under questioning, he admitted that he’d made up the story to avoid having to explain that Cora had left him for a music hall actor. The Crippen house was searched, but nothing was found and the police had no option but to conclude he was innocent. Yet Crippen panicked and fled to Canada with Neave.
It was only their disappearance that led Scotland Yard to carry out three more searches of the house. On the final search they found a human torso buried under the basement. A mark on the skin of the abdomen was said to match a scar Cora had. Otherwise, the evidence against Dr Crippen was entirely circumstantial. And still he had been hanged.
‘Ben, the barrier’s open.’
Cooper realised he’d been distracted and his car was sitting motionless in the entrance to the car park. He was aware that Villiers was staring at him.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, not at all.’
He drove out on to West Street, back into the modern world of policing. He reminded himself that many years after Crippen had been hanged for the murder of his wife, DNA techniques were used to establish that the remains from the basement were not those of Cora — and weren’t even female. Some said the police had planted the body parts to use as evidence, after becoming convinced of Crippen’s guilt by his attempt to escape.
That wouldn’t happen these days. But when a suspect attempted to escape, it usually pointed quite clearly at their guilt. Reece Bower had evaded justice once. Was he trying to do the same thing again?
11
The road twisted and turned constantly on the way from Baslow into Bakewell. They called this stretch Thirteen Bends. Cooper thought there might actually be fewer than thirteen, but he’d never managed to count them, being too busy steering his car round one sharp curve after another.
He drove down the hill past the Peak District National Park headquarters and arrived in the centre of the town near the visitor centre and the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, with the Rutland Arms hotel looking out over a little square.