Cooper would have liked to be able to see behind the façade being presented at Knowle on behalf of his lordship, if only for the sake of his own curiosity. But it probably wouldn’t happen now. He wondered if Detective Superintendent Branagh had ever managed to get a few words with the earl, as he’d suggested. That was a conversation he would love to have overheard. They were two people accustomed to exercising power.
In a way coffin roads represented the worst aspects of the hierarchical structures so many people had lived with. They weren’t legacies from an ancient past, but were deliberately brought into being during medieval times. They were an unintended side-effect of an old canon law on the rights of parishioners. As Bill Latham had said himself, they were just one more exercise in power and privilege.
Cooper put on his jacket and set off to visit Knowle Abbey for the final time.
Staff interviews were under way at Knowle. The Major Crime Unit had taken over the estate office, ousting Meredith Burns from her desk.
Cooper thought of that message they’d found: ‘Meet Grandfather, 1am’. But that must have been a different meeting, surely? It had been marked in Sandra Blair’s diary for 31 October. And this killing had happened earlier than one o’clock. It had been planned for the period when the bonfire was blazing away in Bowden, a time when many of the staff from the abbey were either at home themselves or distracted from their duties.
‘A shotgun,’ he said when he met Fry at the outer cordon. ‘That’s a totally different situation altogether from the other deaths, Diane.’
‘Absolutely.’
Of course, there were many legally held shotguns in the possession of ordinary individuals in an area like this. Farmers always had them. Cooper owned one himself, though he kept it in the gun cabinet at Bridge End Farm with Matt’s.
But right now he was thinking of the men he’d seen at that remote farmstead on Axe Edge Moor. Bagshaw Farm, the home of Daniel Grady. Had one of those men been sent on a different kind of rat hunt?
He hadn’t liked Grady and felt sure a bit of digging would turn up all kinds of dubious activities. But was Grady so closely involved with the protest group? Or did somebody simply have enough money to pay him for this kind of service?
Cooper told Fry about the plans for Alderhill Quarry and the link to George Redfearn’s company. Her mouth fell open when he mentioned the sum of two hundred million pounds.
‘Do you remember what Meredith Burns said that first time we visited Knowle Abbey?’ said Cooper. ‘When I offended her by asking for a photograph of the earl?’
‘Yes, she said he wasn’t a rock star. I thought that was stating the obvious myself.’
‘No, not that. She said he would much rather find some other way of paying for the upkeep of the abbey, instead of letting all these visitors in. Because it was his home.’
‘Oh, yes. I do remember,’ said Fry.
‘Well, this is it, isn’t it?’
‘This is what?’
‘The quarry scheme is his alternative way of funding the repair and maintenance of Knowle Abbey.’ Cooper waved a hand at the visitors being turned away at the gate, at the car parking area, and the buildings converted for use as a restaurant, a craft centre, a gift shop. ‘The revenue from the quarry would have enabled him to put a stop to all this. No more crowds of visitors coming in to gawp at his home.’
‘Well, it would be a shame, I suppose,’ said Fry, ‘if you’re interested in that sort of thing. But there are plenty of other historic houses in Derbyshire. Chatsworth is much grander, they tell me. And Haddon Hall is supposed to be better preserved.’
‘No, no, you’re missing the point,’ said Cooper. ‘Think about it for a minute. No paying visitors means no restaurant, no craft centre, no gift shop and no plant nursery. And without those there would be no guides, no car park attendants, no catering staff or shop assistants. A lot of people would lose their jobs.’
‘You’re right.’
Cooper sighed. He didn’t want to be right. Not all the time. Not when the truth seemed so tragic and so inevitable.
‘At the moment Knowle Abbey is putting a lot of money back into local communities through the wages paid to all these staff. That would stop if the quarry goes ahead. Eden Valley Mineral Products would have no interest in employing local people.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘It’s just like the cheese factory all over again.’
‘What?’ said Fry, puzzled.
‘Never mind.’
‘You know, that’s not what I expected you to say.’
‘What did you expect me to say, Diane?’
‘“I told you so.”’
37
‘So it’s a smokescreen, isn’t it?’ said Fry.
‘What is?’
‘This business about the Corpse Bridge. It was all designed to distract our attention, to make us think the deaths were connected with the redevelopment of the graveyard. I have to say that if I’d been the investigating officer myself in those initial stages, the idea would never have occurred to me.’
‘That’s because of your local ignorance,’ protested Cooper. ‘You’d never heard of the Corpse Bridge or a coffin road.’
‘Exactly,’ said Fry. ‘Except that I wouldn’t describe it as ignorance. I’d call it the advantage of an unbiased mind.’
Cooper thought about it for a moment. Could she be right about this? To be fair, she sometimes was right. That cold objectivity of hers had its place.
‘But if it was a deliberate distraction,’ he said slowly, ‘that would mean…’
‘Yes, Ben. That whoever was responsible expected to be dealing with a local person, who knew the history of the Corpse Bridge. They anticipated it would be someone like you, in fact.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘Surely anyone would have made the connection eventually, once they started asking a few questions.’
‘Eventually, perhaps. But we’d have picked up more useful lines of inquiry by then. And we’d have saved ourselves a lot of time and effort. And perhaps some lives.’
‘So you’re fixing your mind on the quarry protests.’
‘And you’re still fixated with the Corpse Bridge and the Bowden protest group.’
‘Someone planned all this,’ said Cooper. ‘An individual who knows all about lying and when to tell the truth — or, at least, a partial truth. They all followed the same strategy. They gave us the truth when there was no point in trying to conceal it. Rob Beresford admitted straight away that he knew Sandra Blair. Both the Nadens and Jason Shaw came forward to admit they were in the area at the time she died. It made them look innocent and willing to cooperate. And Brendan Kilner pointed me in the direction of the burial ground at Bowden when I enquired about a connection between the names. Once I’d asked him that question, he knew I’d find out the answer some other way. So he told me. But even Kilner only gave me as little as he needed to and no more.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I think there was a policy at work here. Rules of engagement, if you like. It’s a bit too neat for each of them to have thought of doing that separately. People just don’t react in that way without some advance preparation. The instinct of the guilty is to tell a lie.’
‘There’s still a big question for you to think about, though, isn’t there? Who was with Sandra Blair at the bridge that night?’
Cooper couldn’t answer that question, no matter how much he would have liked to. He had to let it pass. Instead, he considered the crime scene, with its tents and arc lights and figures in white scene suits going backwards and forwards to the forensic vans.
‘So the earl was attacked at the Grandfather Oak?’ he said.
‘His attacker was standing under the tree,’ said Fry. ‘The earl was shot at close range the first time. He probably saw his attacker and turned away to escape. The first blast caught him in the back of the right shoulder.’