Читать книгу Blind to the Bones - Stephen Booth - Страница 9

By full light, black-headed gulls had been drifting up from the reservoirs in the valley, scavenging for the previous night’s roadkill.

Every day, on his way into Edendale from Bridge End Farm, Ben Cooper had got used to seeing the squashed and bloodied remains of the wildlife slaughtered by traffic during the hours of darkness. Dead foxes and badgers, rabbits and pheasants, hedgehogs and stoats littered the roadway and the verges. Some of the corpses looked quite fresh until they were flattened into the tarmac by the rush of vehicles. Then their skins burst and their intestines were spread on the road, and it was impossible to tell what species they had belonged to.

It was a pretty hard lesson for the wildlife to learn. The road was part of their territory at night, attracting them because the tarmacked surface retained heat longer than the surrounding landscape. By dawn, though, the road had become a different world entirely, when it was occupied by thundering juggernauts and hurtling cars. As a battle for territory, it was the most unequal of struggles, and the fate of the victims was inevitable and predictable.

Nature never accepted defeat, though. She might lose a battle, but never the war. The gulls and the crows, and a thousand smaller scavengers, made sure the corpses didn’t go to waste. Cooper had always thought it would be a good idea to have nature on your side, rather than against you.

‘And there it is,’ said PC Tracy Udall. ‘Way down there is Withens.’

She passed Cooper the binoculars.

‘Not very scenic, is it?’ he said.

Udall shrugged. ‘It’s just Withens,’ she said.

The vantage point they had found was a lay-by on an unnamed minor road off the A628 – the only place, according to PC Udall, where Withens could be seen without actually being in it.

By 6.30 in the morning, the A628 was already busy with a constant stream of lorries and cars. But, apart from the traffic, there seemed to be no signs of human life for miles along the route through the Longdendale valley. Close to where they had turned off, there had been a pull-in on the left at the top of the hill, with an orange emergency phone provided for stranded motorists. But that was about it for civilization. As if to make the point, a sign by the roadside said: ‘Sheep for seven miles’.

To the north, above Withens, Cooper could see one of the stone air shafts for the old railway tunnels standing on a rise in a fold of the hills. Around the shaft, Withens Moor seemed to be suffering badly from erosion. Where the last layer of peat had been worn away, the bedrock was bare. Ice and rain might loosen the rock eventually, so that it slipped and crashed down on to the houses in the valley or closed the road, as had happened at Castleton.

‘You’re right, it’s not very scenic,’ said Udall. ‘It’s certainly not what the tourist brochures want. There doesn’t seem to be any colour, for a start.’

Cooper sighed. Back home at Bridge End Farm, in the limestone country of the White Peak, the banks of dazzling yellow gorse were in flower now. Many of the fields were a mass of white daisies or golden dandelions, and the umbrellas of wild garlic plants were spreading along the roadside verges, with the pale blue stars of forget-me-nots underfoot.

The warm, damp weather conditions of early spring had caused an explosion of plant growth and animal activity, with the landscape changing by the day. The swallows were nesting, the first cuckoo calling. And just now, there were swathes of bluebells in the broadleaf woods of the Eden Valley. The bluebells had to flower and seed before the tree canopy cast shade over the woodland floor, so every year they had a race against time to reproduce and survive. In this weather, even their colour would be changing – blue when the sky was overcast, and purple in sunlight.

But here was Withens, where the only colour visible was provided by the red canisters of propane gas against the outside walls of some of the houses. So there was no mains gas supply here. Probably it had been one of the last places to get electricity, too, despite the fact that the National Grid power cables ran right through the hillside. As for solar power – in Withens it would have been a joke in poor taste. The lie of the land meant that the sun would rise behind one hill to the south east and disappear behind another to the south west, without touching Withens. No wonder the gardens he could glimpse through the trees had yet to show signs of colour.

‘So what’s the situation here?’ said Cooper.

‘Well, some of the homes have been suffering from the same problems we’re getting elsewhere – recurrent burglaries, often with associated criminal damage. Particularly the more isolated homes, which are less overlooked. There’s one just past the village itself, which has been a particular target. Also the church, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh yes. You said the vicar had reported a break-in.’

Cooper could see the tower of the church above the trees. It seemed to stand a little away from the village, on the near side of the river. It was a short, square tower, in the Norman style, but nothing like so old as that. There were genuine Saxon and Norman towers in Derbyshire, but this wasn’t one of them. He estimated its date as the middle of the nineteenth century.

Cooper turned his attention back to Withens.

‘You said some of the homes have been targeted. So presumably others haven’t. Is there any pattern there?’

Udall hesitated. ‘Possibly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s a problem family in the village, by the name of Oxley. Dad is the type who makes his living in a way you can’t quite pin down. There’s an extended family and loads of kids, most of them known to us – not to mention Social Services. There’s one little lad who got himself excluded from his primary school for anti-social behaviour. You might have seen something about him in the newspapers. They couldn’t identify him, of course, but they started to call him the “Tiny Terror”.’

‘It does ring a bell,’ said Cooper.

‘I’ll show you when we can get down into the village,’ she said. ‘That would be the best way.’

This bit of the county was hardly accessible from anywhere else in Derbyshire. It was much easier to get to it from Sheffield on the Yorkshire side, or even from Hyde on the Manchester side. But in the 1970s, someone in an office in London had ruled that it should be in Derbyshire, so that was the way it was. Which county you lived in could make a difference of several thousand pounds to the value of your house.

Cooper looked down at the village once more, feeling that there was something he hadn’t paid proper attention to. Just below the bridge near the church, the river widened into a pool where a few willows were still bare now, but would surely add a bit of greenery later in the summer. Here, the bank was full of nettles and rosebay willowherb. But there was something strange about the pool.

He focused PC Udall’s binoculars on the water. But in fact, he could barely see the water, because the pool was half-full of large, flat objects. They seemed to be rectangular wooden boards of various sizes, floating on the surface, but tied to trees on the edge of the water. He could make out some lengths of blue nylon rope dipping in and out of the water. The boards looked as though they might have been there for some time, because there was duckweed clinging to them, and green mould growing in patches on many of the panels. Cooper could see no purpose for the boards at all. They weren’t the usual sort of fly-tipped rubbish, either.

‘That’s strange,’ he said.

But Udall just shrugged. ‘Well, this is Withens,’ she said.

The first building they saw by the side of the road in Withens had long since collapsed. Its walls were tumbled and its timbers blackened, as if there had been a fire a long time ago. Maybe several fires. Now, grass was growing over the stones, and it looked well beyond conversion into a holiday home. Next to the ruins was a fallen oak tree covered in thick moss, which clung to the dead bark in pale green shrouds. Where the main bough of the tree had hit the ground, it had begun to rot back slowly into the earth.

Nearby, a burnt-out car stood on the grass verge. It was something about the size of a Ford Fiesta, with its tyres gone, its windows shattered, and its paintwork scorched down to the metal. But removal of abandoned cars was a problem for the local council.

The village itself was no more than a scatter of stone houses, a pub, a church, a phone box, and a few run-down farms. The farms still had yards that opened directly on to the main street, the way it had been in most Peak District villages at one time, until the demand for residential development drove up the price of land. Then the farmers had moved out of the villages that had originally grown up around them, and the old farmyards and dairies had been swept away, to be replaced by desirable residences in attractive rural settings.

It hadn’t happened in Withens. Perhaps nobody had found the village desirable enough. If the farms went out of business here – as looked more than likely from their condition – then their barns and dairies would probably remain rotting for decades before the demand for new housing reached Withens. For now, the presence of the farmyards meant that the main street was well plastered with mud that had dropped from tractor tyres and been churned by the feet of passing cattle.

On the face of the opposite hill, the air shafts looked from a distance like those Second World War gun emplacements known as ‘pill boxes’. They were round and squat, built to survive – though in this case, they had been intended to survive the weather that a century of Dark Peak winters could throw at them, rather than bombardment from the German navy.

Just past the Quiet Shepherd pub, a car park and picnic area had been created. There was a bus stop in the entrance to the car park. As Cooper parked his Toyota next to Udall’s liveried Vauxhall Astra, a little red, white and blue Yorkshire Traction bus turned in from the road. Along the side of the bus was an advert for a local firm of solicitors. After making a circuit of the car park, it drove out again. There were no passengers on board, and no one waiting at the stop.

‘No problem kids hanging around at the moment,’ said Cooper.

‘You’re joking,’ said Udall. ‘On a Saturday? It’s much too early. Come back in the evening, and it’ll be different.’

‘You’ve got two children, haven’t you, Tracy?’

‘A boy and a girl. But they’d damn well better be in their rooms with their PlayStations in the evening, not hanging around on the street.’

‘Or doing their homework?’

‘Well … I don’t expect them to be Einsteins.’

Then Cooper noticed something he hadn’t expected. From the centre of the village, looking towards the north east, he could see a wind farm. Three rows of tall, white turbines stood on a prominent summit, in a location where they would best catch the Pennine winds. Their vast arms turned slowly in the wind, and their blades glinted as they caught a bit of sun from a break in the clouds. They looked like the advance armies of the twenty-first century, marching over the hill towards Withens.

Philip Granger weaved his way between lines of vehicles that had slowed to a crawl on the A628 in Tintwistle. Cars were backed up from the turning to Hadfield, and motorists were getting frustrated. Three long back limousines parked half on the pavement outside the church while they waited for a wedding weren’t helping very much, either.

Further on towards the motorway it would be even worse, with lorries jamming the lights on the A57 and traffic at a standstill right the way through Hollingworth and Mottram. It was always like this. And it always would be, unless someone got around to building a bypass. That’s what Neil always said.

Philip found a gap between two cars that was just wide enough for him to reach the kerb and drew his motorbike on to the pavement in front of his brother’s house. He gave the engine a quick rev before he switched it off, then kicked down the stand and propped his bike against the brick wall. The machine was an old Triumph that had been carefully restored once, though not by him. The roar of its engine was deep and loud, and people who knew him were usually in no doubt that he had arrived somewhere.

He stared back at the car drivers on the road as he took his time unfastening his helmet, locking it into a box mounted over the back wheel of the bike and fastening a chain through the front spokes. You couldn’t be too careful in these parts.

By now, Neil would normally have recognized the sound of the Triumph and left the front door off the latch for his older brother to get into the house. But when Philip walked up the short path he found the door still locked. He rapped the knocker a couple of times, and rang the bell, but got no answer. He knocked again, waited a minute, then backed down the path to look up at the bedroom window, where the curtains were still closed.

Philip glanced at the windows of the houses on either side. Sure enough, the woman on the right was peering at him through her curtains. She didn’t like him, or his motorbike. But Neil said she didn’t like anybody very much. She hated cars and their drivers even more than she hated bikers.

So Philip gave the woman a little wave, gestured at his brother’s bedroom, shrugged and grinned. She stared back at him without a smile.

He fumbled in the pockets of his leathers for some keys. Neil had given him a key to the house when Philip had first helped him move to Tintwistle from Withens. The front door opened straight away with the Yale key, which meant it wasn’t bolted on the inside. Philip couldn’t remember whether Neil used a bolt when he was in the house or not.

In the hallway, with the front door still open, Philip shouted up the stairs.

‘Neil! It’s me!’

He waited a moment.

‘Neil! Are you awake?’

There was no answer. Philip went up the stairs, his motorcycle boots thumping on the steps. The walls of the houses in this terrace weren’t very thick, and the woman next door would probably be waiting outside to complain about the noise he was making, but he didn’t care.

He could see there was no one in the bedroom, though the bed had been slept in. He checked the other rooms and went back downstairs, where he opened and closed all the doors, just to make sure. Finally, he went out into the little back garden and looked at the patch of ground behind the houses where Neil normally kept his car. The VW wasn’t there.

Philip looked at the house next door again, and caught a glimpse of the neighbour watching him. He decided to knock and ask her if she knew where Neil was. But when he did, she shook her head at him from behind a security chain.

Slowly, he went back through Neil’s house and stood for a few moments in the sitting room to take one last look round. Everything seemed as it should be. There was nothing out of place, as far as he could see. But Philip picked up a small brass box on the mantelpiece and looked at the ornate pattern beaten into its lid before putting it down again, a couple of inches to the left. He cocked his head and examined it until he was satisfied.

Then Philip locked his brother’s front door and dug his phone out of an inside pocket. He dialled Neil’s mobile, but it rang without being answered. The second person he called was the Reverend Derek Alton.

In St Asaph’s Church a few minutes later, Derek Alton found his eyes drawn towards the east window and its stained-glass representation of St Asaph, the obscure Celtic saint to whom his church was dedicated. The saint was depicted carrying hot coals in his cloak without setting fire to himself or his clothes – an act that had provided enough evidence of his saintliness for those who decided these things. It was almost the only thing known about his history.

The picture had been created from hundreds of tiny fragments of glass – some green, like fresh grass, or blue like the sky, or red like fire. In the morning, they glowed in the sun from the east. But Alton could see that the bottom half of St Asaph was darker than the rest of him. No light passed through the glass below the red glow of the burning coals held in a fold of his cloak. The saint looked as though he had been cut off at the waist. Alton knew that the effect was caused by the rampant ivy that covered the east wall and was now spreading over the windows. Its spring leaves were a virulent green where they lay against the stonework, and its tendrils were grasping and eager, seeking new holds in the lead that held the pieces of coloured glass together.

When Alton looked closely at the saint’s waist area, he could see the triangular shapes of the young ivy leaves clearly. They were like little green tongues licking at St Asaph’s robes. They were growing day by day now, creeping towards the sun, slowly eating up the picture. Already, the saint’s legs had been swallowed by the relentless force of nature.

If nothing was done to curb the ivy, the lead would crumble and the glass would be pulled apart, piece by piece. One day, it would take only one loud noise to shatter the entire window, and St Asaph would drop into the east aisle.

‘Catching flies, Vicar?’

Alton felt a guilty flush rising under his collar. A tall young man stood in the aisle near the west door. He was dressed in jeans and a blue sweater, and his blond hair had recently been cut and gelled.

‘Oh, it’s you, Scott.’

‘Thank goodness it’s only me, eh? It’s a good job I’m not the chuffin’ bishop. He’d whip your frock off and give your dog collar back to the dog before you could say “Heil Mary”.’

‘Hail Mary,’ said Alton.

‘Yeah, right.’

He watched Scott Oxley move towards him up the narrow aisle, slapping his hand on each pew and rubbing his palm over the carved wooden ends.

‘Did you want something, Scott?’

‘No.’

Scott let him wait for a minute, looking around the church with a smile.

‘Have you heard from Neil today, Vicar?’ said Scott.

‘No, I haven’t. And he said he’d be here to help me work on the churchyard.’

‘Good old Neil.’

Scott walked up to the oak pulpit and smoothed the pulpit cloth with his hand. Alton wished he wouldn’t touch anything, but he held his peace.

‘I phoned Philip and he called at Neil’s house, but he’s not at home. Do you know where Neil is, Scott?’

‘No idea.’

Scott walked back down the aisle of the church, slapping the ends of the pews again as he went. Alton listened to Scott go out into the porch. He needed to make sure that the young man had left. He knew that the big oak outer door would close with a painfully loud slam, as it always did.

A thud shook the church as Scott Oxley slammed the door. Layers of dust danced on the window ledges. But the stained-glass picture of St Asaph didn’t shatter. It wasn’t the time. Not yet.