Blind to the Bones (50 page)

‘But who else would it be?'

‘I don't know. But there's no evidence it's the Oxleys.'

‘It wouldn't be hard to find some evidence. I've told your people no end of times, you'd only have to raid those houses in Waterloo Terrace, and you'd come away with a rare stash of stolen goods. And I know you could do it, if you wanted to. You did at Hey Bridge the other morning.'

‘That operation was based on extensive intelligence.'

‘Intelligence?' Dearden laughed. ‘Well, that counts me out, then. Obviously, I don't have the intelligence to see what's in front of my face. It's no wonder you lot take no notice of me. I'm just a silly old bugger who's imagining things, as far as you're concerned.'

‘I'm sure that's not the case, sir.'

‘But I'm sure you'd soon sit up and take notice of me if I decided to do something about these break-ins myself, wouldn't you?'

Cooper looked at him more closely, and noticed the challenging stare and the slightly wobbly smile.

‘Do what, exactly?' he said.

‘Oh, that would be telling. But I've got something in mind that would put the wind up the Oxleys once and for all.'

‘That wouldn't be a sensible thing to do, sir,' said Cooper. ‘I'd have to advise you against any unilateral action.'

‘Exactly,' said Dearden triumphantly. ‘I knew whose side you'd be on.'

‘Mr Dearden –'

But Michael Dearden was no longer listening. He got back into his pick-up, revved the engine and spun his wheels as he headed out of Withens. Cooper watched him as he climbed up Dead Edge and crashed his gears as he drove back over the border.

Cooper frowned. Derek Alton had said that Dearden avoided driving through Withens because he dreaded seeing the Oxleys in the road in front of Waterloo Terrace, as he had the day he'd knocked down and injured Jake. That might be so. But Cooper could detect no guilt in Michael Dearden. At least, not about what had happened to Jake Oxley.

F
urther up the village, over the bridge, Cooper could see the supports being set up for the well-dressing boards opposite Waterloo Terrace. The well consisted of a stone trough full of clear water that Cooper knew would be ice cold, though there was no obvious source for it.

But he noticed there was another well near the church. It had water bubbling into it from the wall behind, but it looked abandoned, and it wasn't being prepared for dressing like the one further up the village.

There was a familiar face among the little crowd. Eric Oxley. He was the only adult member of the Oxley family here, though Cooper thought he had seen some of the children darting around, excited by what they had found waiting for them when they got home from school. Soon, the Yorkshire Traction bus driver would be doing extra business running tours to the scene. There were screens around the grave now, but a tent hadn't been erected yet to protect the scene from the weather.

As Cooper approached, Eric Oxley seemed suddenly to remember their first meeting, when Cooper had been trying to find Shepley Head Lodge.

‘Shop!' snorted Eric. ‘We're bloody lucky we've got a pub.'

‘You've got a church too,' pointed out Cooper.

‘Aye, there's a church.'

‘The Reverend Alton says the congregations at St Asaph's are very small, even when there are services here. I'd have thought the church would have been closed by now, to be honest.'

Oxley looked down the village at the church. ‘Everybody here thought they would have closed it, too,' he said. ‘But that chap arrived, when we didn't expect it.'

‘Mr Alton?'

‘Aye, Alton. Have you seen him, messing about in the graveyard?'

‘He's trying to tidy it up, to improve the look of the place. He says nobody else will do it.'

‘Maybe not.'

‘He's fighting a losing battle, Mr Oxley. He could do with some help.'

But Oxley just looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.

‘Have you done?'

‘I see your daughter-in-law has been working on the well dressing,' said Cooper.

‘Aye. She does it every year. The younger ones help, too.'

‘Right.' Cooper remembered the girls in the bath full of clay. ‘Puddling', they called it – making the clay ready for spreading on the boards.

‘It'll be up at the weekend,' said Oxley.

‘But what about the other well? The one below the church. Why isn't that one dressed as well?'

‘That well isn't used. It hasn't been used for a long time.'

‘But there's water in it.'

‘I know that.'

‘So why isn't it used?'

‘It's on the wrong side of the church,' said Oxley.

‘What do you mean, the wrong side?'

Eric Oxley shrugged. ‘People won't use the water down that end. They say it's polluted.'

‘But there are no farming activities at the end of the village. The farms are at the other end. Down there, there's just the church and the graveyard, and the village hall.'

‘Like I said – people reckon it's polluted.'

‘But what by?'

But Oxley either didn't know the answer, or couldn't be bothered to explain it. With a twitch of his shoulder, he began to walk off.

‘Mr Oxley,' called Cooper.

‘Aye?' said the old man, without looking round.

‘Those graves at the back of the church. Were those men some of the navvies working on the railway tunnels?'

‘Yes.'

‘I noticed that they all seem to have died around the same time. What did they die of?'

Oxley had stopped, but he still didn't answer.

‘Was it an accident in the tunnels?' said Cooper. ‘I thought perhaps it was a roof collapse, or an explosion, or something like that. But they died over a period of about a week. Was it an accident, Mr Oxley?'

‘Not really.'

Oxley turned back towards him at last. Cooper couldn't see any expression in his eyes but for the usual suspicion. Oxley's gaze slid past Cooper towards the graveyard itself, and to the neglected well, full of water that the villagers ignored. When he spoke, his voice was tinged not with suspicion, but with anger.

‘No, it wasn't an accident that killed them.'

‘Not an accident? What, then?'

Oxley took a deep breath and met Cooper's eyes at last when he spoke.

‘It was cholera.'

S
uddenly, there was a scuffling and a shout from the churchyard gate, and two people burst through before anyone could stop them. They ran towards the tape, the man in the lead not bothering to stop as he charged into it and dragged it with him towards the makeshift grave. The Renshaws.

‘Stop them!'

The nearest scenes of crime officer was taken completely by surprise. He tried to turn, tripped on a clump of weeds and dropped his video camera. He began to swear as Howard Renshaw shouldered him aside and trampled into the middle of the sacrosanct crime scene, destroying evidence with every step.

Before anyone could get near him, Howard had dropped to his knees, plunged his hands into the tangled roots and peaty soil, and picked up the skull.

‘He had her here all the time,' he said.

‘Mr Renshaw, please!'

Sarah was hanging back behind the cordon, not looking at the remains in the shallow grave, but staring at her husband as he ran his hands over the plates of the skull like a man caressing the head of a lover.

‘Emma,' he said. ‘She liked me to dry her hair when she'd washed it. I can remember being able to feel her scalp move over her skull when I ran the towel through her hair. I know the feel of her skull.'

As a SOCO took hold of the skull and tried to gently prise it from his grip, Howard looked up and caught Fry's eye. ‘And this is her skull. It's my daughter.'

He resisted only a moment more, before allowing two police officers to pull him away.

D
erek Alton sat awkwardly on his chair in the interview room at West Street. He was sweating, but then the room was always stuffy, and few interviewees found it comfortable. The interviewing officers tended to sweat, too. It didn't make them guilty.

Alton was a fidgeter. Some people went very still, as if in shock; others insisted on getting up and pacing the room. There were some who appeared quite relaxed – but they were usually the regulars, who had been here and done it all before.

But Alton was a fidgeter. He sat, but not comfortably, shifting from one buttock to the other, edging his chair a little nearer to the table, then away again. His hands were constantly moving. He squeezed one with the fingers of the other, then turned both hands upside down and looked at his palms, as if surprised to see them. Or perhaps just surprised to see something that he could read there. Then Alton put his hands back flat on the table, hiding the palms. But his fingers were still moving. When he lifted his hands again, his fingertips left faint perspiration stains on the polished surface of the table.

Cooper watched him with fascination. These moments before the interview started were often the most important. The interviewee didn't know what questions were going to be asked, and that allowed him to imagine the worst. If he had enough imagination, Alton might already have mentally painted himself into a corner, in a way that his interviewers were forbidden from doing. Just as they were obliged under the PACE rules to explain to him what his rights were, they also couldn't tell him any untruths about what evidence they might have, or what other witnesses had said, or mislead him about what could happen to him. But Derek Alton could do all of that for himself, given time.

‘There's nothing to worry about, Mr Alton,' said Fry. ‘You're here by your own free will to make a statement. You're free to leave at any time. Do you understand?'

Alton nodded, but stared at her as if she had threatened him with impending doom and destruction.

‘Yes, I understand.'

Fry seemed to hear the same shake in his voice that Cooper did. ‘Are you quite comfortable, sir?' she said. ‘Would you like a drink of water before we start? A cup of tea perhaps? Coffee?'

‘No, I'm fine. Thank you.'

‘If you feel the need for a break at any time, just say so, and we'll stop the interview.'

‘You're very considerate.'

Fry looked a bit surprised to be regarded as considerate. She was only doing what the PACE rules told her to. She was doing it by the book.

‘You've kindly given us a statement about the circumstances surrounding your discovery of human remains in the churchyard of St Asaph's, Withens,' she said. ‘This is the church where you are the incumbent.'

She had to read the word ‘incumbent' from Derek Alton's statement. It wasn't a job title that she was familiar with.

‘I'm priest in charge of Hey Bridge and Withens,' said Alton.

‘So you're the incumbent at Withens?' said Fry, unsure whether he was contradicting himself.

‘That's right.'

‘You've said in your statement that there wasn't anything particular that made you choose that part of the churchyard to clear.'

‘Well, only because of the graves there. They're very small memorial stones. They were disappearing completely.'

‘When was it last cleared?'

‘I really don't know,' said Alton. ‘It was already deteriorating when I came to Withens.'

‘Have you noticed any disturbance in that particular area?'

‘Well, not really.'

‘Not really? Was there something?'

‘There's litter left. Beer cans, that sort of thing. Sometimes you can tell people have been in that part of the churchyard at night – branches broken off the trees, ground trampled. Once or twice, somebody has tried to start a fire.'

‘It's out of sight from the road, isn't it?'

‘Yes, indeed. That's the problem.'

‘Mr Alton, do you know who comes into the churchyard at night?'

Alton looked a little more nervous.

‘Children? Teenagers?' said Fry.

‘Yes, I think so. Usually. But I can't imagine they would do anything like this …'

‘Any particular youngsters you might be able to identify?'

Alton grimaced. ‘Of course. The Oxleys.'

‘Thank you, sir. DC Cooper will make sure you get back home to Withens.'

B
en Cooper had noticed Tracy Udall's Astra in the car park at West Street, and guessed she must have been summoned to a divisional meeting that had been taking place upstairs. When he found her, she was in the locker room, cleaning her rigid handcuffs, oiling the boss and ratchet bar with WD40.