‘I couldn’t say.’
Cooper frowned. ‘What really binds such a disparate group together?’ he said. ‘It clearly isn’t an interest in the Kinder Mass Trespass. I get the feeling there’s a lot more going on with this group.’
‘Swingers?’ said Irvine.
‘What?’
‘Well, it happens. A bit of partner swapping. They tell me it goes on in my village.’
‘In Bamford?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘I can’t imagine it,’ said Cooper. ‘Besides, Mr Sharpe is gay, isn’t he?’
‘He could be bisexual.’
‘No, no. It doesn’t add up.’
Irvine shrugged. ‘Well, it might provide a motive. A bit of old-fashioned jealousy.’
‘We’ll keep it in mind.’
Carol Villiers put her head round the door.
‘I’ve just spoken to the hospital where Liam Sharpe was admitted. They’re discharging him this morning, so I’ve arranged to go and speak to him at his home in Bramhall.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Oh, and we’ve just taken a call from Elsa Roth,’ said Villiers. ‘She’d like to have a meeting.’
‘Who have we got free, Carol?’
‘No, she’d like to meet with you, Ben. She says she feels she can talk to you.’
‘All right. At their house?’
‘No, she wants to see you at the Chestnut Centre. It’s not far from Hayfield.’
‘I know it. The otter place.’
‘She didn’t say why she chose it. But I imagine she wanted to get away from the house — and from Darius. Don’t you?’
Cooper had to acknowledge to himself that he wanted to hear what Elsa Roth might have to say when she was on her own, away from her husband. He hadn’t really got a grasp of who she was yet. But then, had he got a clear picture of any of the members of that walking group?
‘Let’s have a conference this afternoon when I get back,’ he said. ‘I’d like outlines of every one of these twelve people on my desk and we can go through them all. Use the time between now and then to do a bit of research, find out their background and family connections. Carol, will you co-ordinate that, please?’
‘Of course. What do you hope to find, Ben?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Cooper. ‘But perhaps the answers we’re looking for might lie in their history.’
Gavin Murfin eased himself out of his car, careful to avoid scraping the driver’s door on the brick wall of the mill. He felt protective towards his little green Skoda. It was his most valuable possession, considering that a building society still had the biggest claim on the ownership of his house.
When he arrived in Manchester, Murfin had driven up Bradford Road and turned in through an arched entrance to reach a cobbled courtyard overlooked by hundreds of windows, with fire-escape ladders snaking up the walls. Brunswick Mill was a massive nineteenth-century survivor from Manchester’s cotton-manufacturing heyday. He felt as though he could almost remember those days — though maybe he’d just heard the old folk talking about them when he was a kid.
The mill stood seven storeys high, backing onto the Ashton Canal. Murfin craned his neck to look up at its top floors, where windows were boarded up and tree saplings grew out of the guttering.
He loved a bit of old industrial architecture. Perhaps he had an affinity with it. After all, he was something of an ancient brick monolith himself, designed for a practical purpose that had long since disappeared and now converted into a multi-functional community facility. Dinosaurs never did adapt very well. A meteorite struck, the climate began to change, and that was pretty much that. Extinct before you knew it. Lots of little hairy apes running around instead, ruling the world.
Murfin sighed as he locked his car and brushed the crumbs off his jacket. Recently North Division had been visited by a ‘Police Now’ officer from the West Midlands who’d been directly recruited as a university graduate and had just finished her two-year training scheme, complete with summer academy, skills sessions and personal development planning. She’d mentioned that she might go on to be an inspector in another two years’ time if she opted for the fast-track programme.
That was when Murfin realised he’d made the wrong choice when he decided to work his way up from being a cadet. All that foot-slogging and driving about and picking up drunks from the street on a Saturday night. Getting punched and abused and working killer night shifts. He’d completely wasted all those years getting experience of front-line policing when he should just have gone to university, then sneaked in through the back door and done a personal development plan instead.
It was too late now, of course. At least he’d done his thirty and got his pension. The trouble was, he’d got bored silly when he didn’t have the job any more. He’d been desperate for something to do.
Among the occupants of Brunswick Mill now was a Thai fight club. But a large part of the building had been converted into a series of rehearsal studios, with practice rooms and a central hub where musicians could buy drinks and snacks, as well as leads and strings for their guitars.
Inside, Murfin was directed to one of the practice rooms. A tune he didn’t recognise was being played as he entered. Something that sounded as though it came from the 1970s. A man’s voice singing over a guitar about riding in the sky.
The room contained a drum kit, microphones and stands, amplifiers and a tangle of leads. There were psychedelic hangings on the wall, and a couch in the corner for when the band became exhausted by arguing. One of the amplifiers stood on something that looked like a giant Rubik’s cube.
‘Mr Farnley?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
Robert Farnley was a heavily built man of about seventy with glasses and a few remaining strands of grey hair. He stopped playing and stared when he saw his visitor. Murfin had noticed he had that effect on a lot of people over the years.
‘What can I do for you?’ said Farnley when Murfin introduced himself.
‘Jonathan Matthew,’ said Murfin. ‘How much do you know about him?’
‘Well, he doesn’t talk a lot,’ said Farnley. ‘But he can play.’
‘Sounds like the opposite of me.’
Farnley smiled, but with a puzzled frown. Murfin looked around for a chair, then began to ease his backside onto a speaker. Farnley winced as the casing creaked under his weight.
‘Here, take my chair,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
As Farnley perched on a stool instead, Murfin made himself comfortable.
‘Jonathan plays the guitar,’ he said.
‘No, not really. He plays bass.’
‘That’s still a guitar to me.’
Farnley picked up a guitar that flashed blindingly in the overhead lights.
‘This is a guitar,’ he said. ‘This is a Gretsch Country Classic. It’s my favourite guitar. A birthday present from my wife, Margo.’
‘Nice,’ said Murfin.
‘It’s more than nice.’
‘Of course. It’s a classic, like.’
Farnley put the guitar down carefully and patted it as if to apologise for disturbing it in front of such a philistine.
‘How long has Jonathan been playing with you?’ asked Murfin.
‘A few months. He replaced the original guy I had.’
‘Why did you want to replace him?’
‘No reason in particular,’ said Farnley. ‘He left, that’s all. Bass players come and go. They’re attracted to the light, like moths. I’m hoping Jonno will stay around.’
Murfin wasn’t very good on accents. He had trouble with Manchester voices and couldn’t distinguish Yorkshire from Lancashire. But he’d been listening to Farnley and detected the transatlantic twang.
‘I’ve always been a Mancunian, no matter how much time I spent in Canada,’ said Farnley when he asked. ‘I was the oldest of four children, brought up in a two-up two-down here in the back streets of Ancoats before we moved to Gorton. My dad bought me my first guitar when I was thirteen. That was the start of my music career.’