‘That’s right.’
‘So you don’t have far to go for lectures.’
‘My dad usually takes me into Buxton on his way to work.’
‘And what does he do?’
‘He’s a driver. He drives a van for a parcel delivery company.’
‘That can involve an early start, I imagine. He’ll have to get to the depot in plenty of time, so he can load up and get out on his route.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which company does your dad work for?’
‘ABC Despatch. They have a distribution centre just outside Buxton.’
‘I know it. On the industrial estate at Harpur Hill.’
‘That’s it.’
Cooper let a silence develop. Sometimes it was the best way to deal with someone like this. Beresford would be expecting the next question, the one he didn’t want to answer. But if he was left waiting long enough, he wouldn’t be able to stand the tension. Cooper was patient. Besides, he didn’t really have the energy at this time of the morning to try too hard.
The young man began to fidget, and bit his lip.
‘Well, the truth is, I needed to get away from the house for a bit,’ he said.
‘Ah.’
‘The parents. You know what it’s like.’
‘Yes.’
Cooper didn’t really. He’d never had the chance to reach that stage where you didn’t want to be in the house with each other a moment longer. But he’d heard people say it often enough, so he’d come to believe it must be true.
‘You had a row?’
‘That’s it. Nothing serious. But I had to get out, take in a bit of fresh air.’
‘Why did you come down here?’
‘I don’t know. It was just handy.’
Cooper consulted the notes he’d been given. ‘You live in Earl Sterndale, sir. You didn’t walk all this way. It must be a couple of miles at least.’
‘My bike is up the hill there.’
‘A motorbike or…’
‘Just an old pushbike. It’s all I can afford. Student loans, you know.’
‘I see.’
It was obvious that Rob Beresford wasn’t an experienced walker. No one with any sense wore expensive trainers to go hiking in. You needed a pair of boots or good stout shoes on terrain like this, or you risked breaking an ankle, not to mention ruining your footwear. And everyone knew you didn’t wear denims to walk in wet weather. They soon became sodden and heavy, and would take hours to dry out. The young man’s jeans were a much darker blue below the knee, where they’d got soaking wet from the damp undergrowth.
Beresford looked up. ‘There’s one question your mates didn’t ask. And you haven’t asked me either.’
Cooper stopped. ‘What’s that, sir?’
‘Whether I knew the dead woman.’
With a sinking heart, Cooper realised that he’d missed a vital point completely. He could only put it down to tiredness. But it was unacceptable that a witness should have to remind him of an important question he’d overlooked. He’d have to watch himself carefully, or someone else would be keeping an eye on him.
‘And did you, Mr Beresford?’ he asked.
Beresford nodded despondently.
‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘Her name is Sandra Blair.’
4
Detective Sergeant Diane Fry didn’t do early mornings any more. Not if she could avoid it. Since she’d transferred to the Major Crime Unit of the East Midlands Special Operations Unit, her life seemed to be getting back on track. The nights were more peaceful, the days more fulfilling. Apart from a brief setback, when she’d been obliged to return to Derbyshire’s E Division to cover for sick leave, she was doing the job she’d always wanted to do. What’s more, it meant she was able to move back to a city.
When Fry first came to the Peak District, the culture shock had been pretty traumatic. Compared to her old stamping grounds in Birmingham and the Black Country, this had seemed like, well … not just the backwoods, but a barren wasteland. Those vast, bleak expanses of peat moor they called the Dark Peak were like the back of the moon to a city girl. The first day she drove past a road sign that said ‘Sheep for 10 miles’ she’d known she was no longer in civilisation.
Fry drank her coffee and bit into a piece of toast as she sat looking out of her window on to Grosvenor Avenue. She barely noticed the flat itself now. It already felt like a part of her past. She merely drifted in and out, boiled a kettle, ran a shower, lay down to sleep. It was no more her home than any hotel room in any dull town in some far-flung part of the country. She had no more roots in Edendale than the pot plant dying on her window ledge.
For a moment Fry stopped chewing and looked at the plant. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watered it, so there was no wonder it was dying. She peered a bit more closely and poked at a brown leaf, which crumbled at her touch. More dead than dying, then. Somebody had given her the plant, but she couldn’t remember who. It hardly mattered now, did it?
She finally had a new place to move into, in a smart apartment building on the outskirts of Nottingham. Fry was looking forward to seeing traffic, theatres, a bit of nightlife. Proper street lights. And no sheep anywhere.
Proper crimes too. The Major Crime Unit investigated all the serious stuff in the region. There would be no dealing with vast amounts of low-level volume crime, the way they did on division.
Fry checked her phone. Reports were coming through this morning of a suspicious death in Derbyshire. Somewhere near Buxton, a few miles to the west of Edendale. If it was in Derbyshire, it was just within the remit of EMSOU.
She called her DCI, Alistair Mackenzie, to see what he wanted her to do.
‘We do need you back here, Diane.’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re not still hankering after the country life, are you?’
‘You are joking. Sir.’
Mackenzie laughed. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Can we let Divisional CID run with it for now, then?’
‘Yes, unless they encounter any problems. We’ll keep a watching brief.’
Fry ended the call, finished her coffee and got ready to leave. She studied the people moving in Grosvenor Avenue. There weren’t many — just a few students from the multi-occupancy Victorian houses like the one her flat was part of, and a Royal Mail van stopped a few doors up, the postman chatting to someone over a wall.
She turned away. That was enough watching for now. Perhaps for ever.
Yes, that would be the best thing. Very soon she would never have to think about Edendale again. Or any of the people in it.
Ben Cooper stood back and let the recovery team do their work. The victim had finally been removed from the water and placed on the Derbyshire bank of the river. Her hands had been bagged, in case evidence from her attacker was trapped under her fingernails. But the rest of her body was bundled up in heavy clothing, which was completely waterlogged, creating a limp, misshapen mound that hardly looked human. Dark hair spread in sodden strands around her face.
And the victim’s injuries were obvious now too, with blood still leaking from a head wound. Though the bleeding had seemed so little while she was in the river, now the red stain quickly began to spread across the sheeting and on to the ground. The water had kept the head wound open, while washing away the blood downstream.
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.