‘Couldn’t someone else do the identification? Someone who knew Mrs Blair well?’
‘Yes, of course, if we really needed it,’ said Cooper. ‘We could get Miss Grindey to do it. But it’s a sensitive issue for the family of a murder victim. They feel it’s their job, to make that official confirmation of the death of their family member. They don’t understand when it’s been left to some person they didn’t even know, and they can get very upset about it. It just doesn’t feel right to them. They should be the first to know about the death, too. But in this case…’
‘Understood.’
Cooper took a last look around the centre of the village. His route back to Edendale would be up through Hartington Dale and north on the A515 to the turning for Tideswell.
Despite the visitors, Hartington was actually quieter than he remembered it. That was due to the closure of the cheese factory, he supposed. There were no delivery vehicles coming and going to the empty factory in Stonewell Lane. There was no major employer in the village now. And he didn’t have time to buy that piece of cheese either.
‘After that you can call it a day, Luke,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if there are any house-to-house enquiries to do near the crime scene.’
‘There are no houses there,’ said Irvine.
‘Exactly. I’m going to get the press office to start putting out some public appeals as soon as possible. Tomorrow we’ll see what forensics have come up with. Then we ought to have some leads to follow up.’
‘Suits me,’ said Irvine. ‘I’ve got a date tonight anyway.’
Cooper looked at him as he started the Toyota. He couldn’t help a twinge of envy. He’d been Luke Irvine’s age once and it wasn’t all that long ago either. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to say those words to a colleague: ‘I’ve got a date tonight.’ It sounded so innocent. The sentence seemed to hang in the air inside the car, oozing with freedom and hope for the future.
With a jerk, Cooper put the car into gear and drove away from Hartington.
‘Good luck with that then, Luke,’ he said.
10
The first appeals for witnesses were broadcast on the local TV news early that evening. They appeared on Twitter feeds for the police and BBC Radio Derby, and were soon all over the internet. Detectives wanted to hear from anyone who’d been in an area of the Upper Dove Valley last night near a location known as Hollins Bridge.
When Cooper heard the appeal, he realised the press office had decided against using the familiar colloquial name for the bridge. Instead they had chosen the official name, which featured on Ordnance Survey maps of the White Peak but was never used by ordinary people. At least, it wasn’t used by local people — only by visitors who relied entirely on maps.
That was a pity. The individuals they were hoping to hear from would surely be local. Too often people didn’t have enough knowledge about their own locality. Not accurate, factual knowledge. They just knew the stories and legends, and the vernacular names.
So he just had to hope that someone with useful information would make the proper connection. But wasn’t that the whole principle behind solving crime?
Cooper tidied the paperwork on his desk, pulled on his jacket and left the office. He drove out through the barrier from the police compound and headed down West Street towards the town.
Dusk was long past and it was dark over Edendale. Below him street lights sparkled in the cold air and windows of houses glowed in their pale colours. It would only need the first heavy frost to arrive and the town would start to look quite Christmassy.
The thought reminded him that he had some shopping to do. Instead of continuing all the way to Fargate, he turned off into Hollowgate and found a parking place in the market square near the war memorial.
When he got out of the car, Cooper listened for a few moments, enjoying the sound of the River Eden running below him in the darkness. At night its sound had a mysterious quality, as if thousands of tiny, invisible creatures were out there, whispering and murmuring until daylight came again. He could picture the mallard ducks that lived on this stretch of the river through the centre of town. They would be bobbing gently on the surface as they slept with their heads towards the weir. The flow of water didn’t seem to bother them. He’d always admired the ability of the mallards to float calmly in whatever torrent of water came their way.
He turned towards the town. The high street was only a few yards away and some of the shops were still open. Even at the beginning of November, there were groups of young people sitting out in the beer gardens of the pubs. The smoking ban had made some of them quite hardy.
Cooper thought he might even walk down to the Hanging Gate for a drink before he went home to Welbeck Street. It was certainly a tempting thought.
Sally Naden was having a bad day with the pain. Sometimes the tablets weren’t enough to keep its excruciating surges suppressed all day long. By the middle of the afternoon the pain could break through its anaesthetic restraints like a deranged killer ripping out of a straitjacket. Once loose, the agony swept through her body in uncontrolled waves and left her exhausted and helpless.
So her mind was distracted and she wasn’t quite thinking straight by the time the phone rang and Geoff began to tell her this garbled story about people being killed and the police looking for someone. She thought he was describing the plot of some TV programme he’d been watching. He was a great one for sitting in front of episodes of Lewis and Midsomer Murders and trying to guess who did it. In fact, he would get really tetchy if you interrupted him at the wrong moment and he missed a vital clue.
As she listened to him gabbling down the line, she thought he must finally have lost touch with reality. That was the risk of watching detective drama stories all the time. You ended up confusing them with the real world. Life wasn’t actually like that. People didn’t get killed every day, the way they did in Inspector Barnaby’s world.
Finally, Sally began to realise what he was telling her.
‘Seriously? You mean-’
‘We were there,’ said Geoff.
‘It’s not possible.’
‘Well, I think it is. What are we going to do?’
Geoff had calmed down a bit and she could hear him trying to formulate a plan. What was in his own best interests? That would be the concern foremost in his mind.
‘The chances are, they’ll find out we were in the area, one way or another,’ he said. ‘Someone will have seen us or our car, or … Well, you know — it will come out sooner or later. And it will look bad if we haven’t mentioned it.’
Sally laughed, but winced with the pain it caused her. ‘You mean they might suspect you of murder? That’s a joke.’
‘Both of us,’ said Geoff firmly. ‘We were both there.’
Sally felt another surge of pain as she thought about what they’d have to do. But, for the first time in many years, she knew that her husband was right.
It was a difficult decision for Jason Shaw too. That evening, after he’d listened to the news, he sat in his little cottage in Bowden and stared at the log fire for quite a while, gulping from a can of lager. When that one was finished, he went to the fridge to fetch another. He needed something to help him think.
He remembered very clearly the figure he’d seen running through the woods near the Corpse Bridge. That pale shape in the twilight dodging through the trees. Its unnatural appearance had made him wonder whether his eyesight had been blurred by the rain.
More worrying had been the noises. The sound of something crashing through the undergrowth and that wordless yell. Who had been shouting and who were they calling to?
Jason had heard many noises in the woods at night. Often they were nocturnal animals. Foxes or badgers, or even owls. Their screeching could be unnerving if you weren’t used to it. But at least their presence was natural in the darkness. Sometimes there were gamekeepers or poachers. But they didn’t shout to each other like that. Or at least, the poachers didn’t. They wanted to remain unnoticed, so they moved as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Jason knew that as well as anyone.