‘And the daughter,’ said Cooper. ‘We mustn’t forget Lacey.’
‘The CPS are still deliberating about the charges,’ said Branagh. ‘Joint enterprise murders are difficult to prosecute these days. If we can’t establish who actually committed the act, we’re going to have difficulty getting a murder conviction in court.’
‘Conspiracy to murder?’ said Cooper. ‘Perverting the course of justice?’
‘Those certainly.’
‘It’s funny,’ said Cooper.
‘What is?’
‘That we have a body this time. But we still might not be able to get a murder charge to stick.’
‘Well,’ said Branagh, ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the way it works sometimes, isn’t it, Ben?’
Cooper smiled sadly. He would have preferred a neater outcome than this. And he was sure that Superintendent Branagh would too.
‘The post-mortem on Annette Bower’s remains shows no evidence that she was murdered,’ he said. ‘There’s very little soft tissue left, of course, after ten years. But the pathologist says her skeletal injuries are consistent with a fall of about thirty-five feet on to a hard surface, followed by a rock collapse. She had a fractured arm, several broken ribs, probably a punctured lung. If her initial injuries didn’t kill her, then Mrs Bower would have suffocated under the collapsed debris.’
‘Horrible.’
‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘And her husband left her there to die. We’ve no way of knowing whether he deliberately pushed her into the shaft, or if it was an accident.’
‘Well, we can’t ask him, so it’s academic now, really, from our point of view.’
‘I would have preferred a tidier solution.’
‘It’s rarely tidy, Ben. You know that.’
Cooper had really been thinking of Annette Bower herself. Would she have preferred a tidy ending, a murder charge that would have succeeded in court and brought Reece a life sentence? Or would she have been happy with the outcome, the rogue vigilante justice that he’d met with, no matter how messy the results?
He couldn’t know. No matter how long he stared at Annette Bower’s photograph, he’d never actually known her in life. He’d only met her in death, a muddy skeleton in the darkness of a disused shaft in Mandale Mine.
‘At least the arson case was simple enough,’ said Cooper. ‘Shane Curtis’s killers will be heading for a youth offenders’ institution.’
‘Will that do them any good?’ asked Branagh.
‘Possibly not.’
Cooper recalled seeing the boys brought into the custody suite. Shane Curtis’s younger brother, Troy, looking shocked and frightened at the prospect of court. Nothing that happened to him now would help Troy. But Dev Sharma had once summed it up perfectly. ‘People are capable of making such a mess of their lives.’
When he finished the call with Branagh, Cooper sat back in his chair, hoping that he might finally get a chance to relax. It had been quite a week. The interviews and re-interviews had taken all day, and the initial reports had been written up. It was late afternoon, now, and he’d sent the members of his team home. They’d already racked up enough overtime for this month.
But this was the way it would be from now on. The caseload at Edendale LPU would never get any lighter. The system would creak at the seams for ever, or at least for the rest of his career. He’d been running from one thing to another like a man fighting fires.
Cooper felt something in his pocket and realised he still had the photograph of Annette Bower. He drew it out, found one corner slightly creased and tried to straighten it. Was it his imagination, or was she smiling more widely than when he first picked the photo out of the file? After these past few days, he felt as though he’d actually met her.
Then there was a knock on his office door and Dev Sharma appeared.
‘Have you got a moment, sir?’
Those dreaded words again. Cooper nodded.
‘Come in, Dev. I thought you’d left with everyone else.’
‘Not quite. I won’t be long. It’s just—’
‘Sit down. What is it?’
‘Well, I wanted to let you know straightaway,’ said Sharma. ‘I’m being transferred.’
‘Oh? Where are you going?’
‘To EMSOU.’
‘The Major Crime Unit?’
‘Yes. I’ll be based in Nottingham. It’s an easy enough drive from Derby. Only half an hour on the A52.’
‘A lot easier than getting to Edendale,’ said Cooper.
Sharma smiled. ‘Yes. Even when it isn’t tourist season.’
‘The Major Crime Unit is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? You told me that you’d applied for a transfer before.’
‘Yes, I didn’t think I would get in. It’s a stroke of good luck for me.’
Cooper studied Sharma for a moment. ‘Actually, I didn’t know there was a vacancy for a DS at the Major Crime Unit,’ he said.
‘I believe there’s been a promotion,’ said Sharma.
‘Who?’
‘I probably shouldn’t say any more. I’m sure there’ll be an official notice. I just wanted to tell you first, because I’ve really appreciated working as part of your team.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cooper. ‘Though it hasn’t been all that long, has it?’
‘Unfortunately, no.’
But Cooper was thinking ‘Long enough, to get what you needed from us’. He tried to put the thought out of his mind.
‘We’ll have a farewell dinner for you. Remind me — where did we go when you first came to Edendale?’
‘The Mussel and Crab in Hollowgate.’
‘That’s right. It was pretty good, I thought.’
‘Excellent.’
‘We’ll set a date, then.’
‘They haven’t told me exactly when I’ll transfer,’ said Sharma, ‘but it could be soon.’
‘Does Detective Superintendent Branagh know?’
‘Yes. She’s already approved it.’
Sharma stood up. For a moment, Cooper thought he was going to smile, but he rarely did.
‘Have you finished here today, sir?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Do you want me to help?’
‘No, go home,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s been a long week.’
Sharma went back to the CID room, leaving Cooper alone again, contemplating yet more changes. This job certainly kept him on his toes. Like the officer with the notice taped on his back, he’d become a firefighter, a paramedic and a social worker. Not to mention the man who wrote reports and answered emails.
Cooper pushed back his chair and put on his jacket. There was one more thing he had to do before he finished the paperwork on the Bower case.
In his Toyota on the way out of Edendale, Cooper saw a call come in from Chloe Young. He pulled over on Buxton Road in front of the Silk Mill heritage centre.
‘Hi, Chloe. How are you?’
‘Busy,’ she said. ‘I thought you promised me you didn’t have any bodies for me? Suddenly it’s like rush hour.’
‘Are you too busy to see me?’
‘Well...’
Cooper heard the hesitation all too clearly. Had he ruined everything last time? Did Chloe Young think he was too obsessed with his job? She wouldn’t be the first to think that. It was an occupational hazard for police officers.
But Young was only dealing with some business at her end. She was probably as pestered with reports and emails as he was himself.
‘How about tonight?’ she said.
‘Great,’ said Cooper. ‘Where?’
‘Well,’ said Young again, ‘probably not the opera.’
‘Agreed.’
Cooper put the car back into gear and pulled out on to the road with a smile on his face. Out of Edendale, he turned eastwards. It was Saturday, so he took his time, heading down the A623 from Calver to Baslow and driving through the parkland of Chatsworth House, dodging the sheep on the road until he could cross the open expanses of Beeley Moor and work his way through villages towards the M1. He always preferred the back roads if he wasn’t in a hurry and he had things to think about.