The loud boom echoed across the village green and bounced off the walls of the limestone houses. It startled a flock of wood pigeons out of their evening roost in a sycamore tree on the edge of the churchyard. For a few moments the birds flapped in a panicked circle, passing overhead and silhouetting themselves against a cascade of light the explosion had hurled into the air.
Cooper looked round, embarrassed at his own reaction, ready to laugh it off if anyone had noticed. Tonight was a test. Fire, heat, explosions, the sight of blazing timbers. When he’d decided to come out on Bonfire Night, he had no idea how he would cope with these sights and sounds. But it was something he had to face. He couldn’t avoid it for ever. There was no future in trying to run away from the past.
A barrage of missiles shrieked across the sky like hunting demons. Cooper was deafened by the screeching and jumped in shock at a volley of bangs on the hillside behind it.
He stopped for a minute to pull himself together. Despite the cold air, he could feel sweat breaking out on his forehead and his hands trembled. The reaction was deep down inside him, impossible to deal with on a deliberate, conscious level. He would have to fight his way through it.
Cooper stood in the yard, his face lit by the coloured flashes, surrounded by crackling and the smell of charcoal and sulphur. He felt once again that he was standing in the middle of a raging inferno, caught up in the heart of that burning building, with flames leaping around him and smoking timbers crashing to the ground, his skin scorched by the heat of the fire.
But there was nothing else for it. He would have to go inside.
39
The lights of three police cars arriving in convoy created quite a stir, even in Bowden. They certainly attracted the attention of the residents who were at home that Tuesday evening, including Caroline Mellor, who appeared at her window across the green to observe the activity.
Two of the vehicles pulled up outside the home of Jason Shaw and officers piled out. The third car swerved across the road and blocked the access to the village. Two armed officers went to the front door, while another covered the back yard. Diane Fry waited at a safe distance with Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst, while uniformed officers were stationed to keep spectators away.
Fry had checked with the Knowle estate office whether Shaw would be working, but he wasn’t on the staff rota for this evening. And his blue Land Rover Discovery stood by the side of the house.
‘Don’t give him time to react,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget there are firearms kept on the premises.’
When there was no response to their hammering on the front door and shouts of ‘Police!’, the entry team produced a small battering ram and swung it at the lock. The door burst open after two strikes and they entered the house. Jason Shaw’s dog could be heard barking hysterically from the rear of the property.
After a few seconds one of the officers appeared in the doorway and signalled to Fry. The CID team moved into the house. But they were disappointed to find it empty.
‘All the rooms are clear, Sergeant.’
‘His Land Rover is here.’
‘Even so, there’s no one home.’
Fry went through the rooms herself and found the gun cabinet. It was securely locked, as it ought to be, so there was no way of telling whether both shotguns were still inside. Not without breaking it open, which would take time.
She looked round for Irvine and Hurst. ‘Get out there and start talking to the neighbours and find out if they know where he is. We don’t want him to get a warning, in case he decides to go to ground.’
‘We’d never find him in these woods, even in daylight.’
‘Exactly. We might need to request the air support unit.’
As Fry looked around the untidy sitting room, she wondered whether she’d made a mistake in trying to make the arrest after dusk. Perhaps she should have waited until morning and conducted the operation at first light. It was galling to think that Shaw had vanished into those dark woodlands. He would know the grounds of Knowle Abbey better than almost anyone. If she didn’t locate him quickly, she might never see Jason Shaw again.
While she waited she examined the items strewn across the surface of a small table. Shaw had gathered a lot of magazines about country sports. Shooting Times, The Field, Sporting Gun. Many of them had cover illustrations of men in ear defenders aiming shotguns at unidentified targets, or dogs with dead birds in their mouths. Fry recalled a failed attempt by an animal rights organisation to get this sort of magazine banished to the top shelf in newsagents, along with the soft porn.
She pushed some of the magazines aside. Underneath she found an object she couldn’t identify. It seemed to be a hoop of something like dried willow, wrapped with a thin band of leather. A web of white string filled the space inside the hoop, decorated with tiny beads, and someone had attached a couple of feathers to the bottom.
‘A dreamcatcher,’ said Luke Irvine, jolting Fry out of her distraction.
‘Is that what it is?’
‘They’re Native American originally. But they’re popular here now.’
Fry frowned. ‘Popular with who?’
Irvine shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, you know — people interested in spiritual things. There was one on the wall at Sandra Blair’s cottage. I think she probably made it herself. I bet she made this one for Mr Shaw.’
‘What is it supposed to do?’ asked Fry.
‘It stops you having bad dreams.’
Fry turned the dreamcatcher over and laid it back on the magazines. It looked incongruous lying against a picture of a slaughtered pheasant in the jaws of a Golden Retriever.
‘I wonder if that worked for Jason Shaw,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t look as though he ever used it.’
‘No.’
‘I came to tell you the dog unit has arrived,’ said Irvine. ‘They’ve brought the sniffer dog for the explosives.’
‘Oh, yes. Let’s get them in.’
An officer entered with a Springer Spaniel, which began to sniff its way enthusiastically around the house.
Fry checked the phone for messages, peered into the cupboards, walked out into the back yard, trying to ignore the barking dog. Becky Hurst appeared, with Mrs Mellor trailing behind her, looking alarmed but flushed with excitement.
‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw Fry, ‘isn’t Detective Sergeant Cooper here?’
‘No. But you remember me, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Mellor, though Fry suspected it wasn’t her memory she was dubious about.
‘You’re aware that we’re looking for Jason Shaw?’
‘Yes. I told your girl here. When I saw Jason half an hour ago, he said he was going down to the gift shop. They wanted him to help out with something.’
Inside the Hartington cheese factory Cooper found that the buildings hadn’t been entirely cleared of their contents. In a corridor he passed pairs of white wellies that looked as though they’d missed their last wash when the factory closed. A few ancient bits of broken equipment stood around, with a metal filing cabinet and a scatter of Stilton cheese leaflets still lying on the floor.
The modern part of the factory was quite different from the old stone buildings. He passed through large cheese storage areas with quarry-tiled floors, and one building like the lower level of a multi-storey car park, with a low ceiling, hefty pillars and shadowy alcoves.
‘Jason? Where are you?’ he called.
There was a muffled laugh somewhere in the darkness.
‘Come on. I know you’re there, Jason. We’re long past the time for playing the fool.’
Something metallic banged against a wall. Cooper wondered if there was a shotgun pointing at him from a dark corner of the building. He moved sideways, away from any residual light that might be creeping through the doorway behind him or from the skylights in the roof.