The Dead Place. Stephen Booth
than rotten eggs at a convicted felon. Ritual humiliation, all the same.
Behind the church was the graveyard itself, small and under-used. There’d be no need to close this one to burials for a few years yet.
‘Melvyn Hudson said there were very few funerals in Wardlow,’ said Fry.
‘He’s from the funeral directors, Hudson and Slack?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I’m sure Mr Hudson is right. A lot of these graves date back to Victorian times.’
Several large sycamores and beeches darkened the top end of the graveyard, and nothing grew underneath the trees. Even their own seedlings had sprouted and died in the barren ground. Dead branches, beech nuts and small stones crunched under their feet as they walked among the gravestones. Swallows swooped around them, diving almost to the ground in pursuit of the small flies that hung in clouds over the graves. The Victorian graves were surrounded by low iron railings, rusted and falling apart in the damp air.
‘Here’s the deceased councillor,’ said Cooper. ‘Mrs Sellars, right? It’s by far the newest burial here.’
‘OK. Now, where’s the phone box?’
‘The other side of the church.’
A small parish room was attached to the church, a kitchen visible through a window piled with jars, cutlery and old newspapers. As they walked past it towards the phone box, Cooper saw a movement inside a house directly across the road. It was no more than a shape against the light, but he knew they were being watched.
‘Has anyone spoken to the neighbours?’ he asked.
‘All those who had a view of the church or the phone box,’ said Fry. ‘Uniforms did it yesterday.’
‘The residents directly opposite have a good view.’
‘Unfortunately, they were attending the councillor’s funeral themselves.’
‘Pity.’
‘As you can see, there aren’t many others to talk to.’
Cooper looked at the red phone box itself, twenty yards away from where he was standing. It was more than a pity, wasn’t it? It was a big stroke of luck for the individual who’d made the phone call. There was no way he could have known that the occupiers of that property opposite weren’t watching every movement he made.
Although he hadn’t heard the tapes himself yet, Cooper was starting to have a sneaking doubt about the caller’s intentions. On the surface, he appeared to have taken care to conceal his identity, as might be expected. But some of this individual’s actions looked almost reckless – as if he wanted to be identified. Maybe the whole thing was no more than a cry for help. But there was no point in suggesting the idea to Fry.
Behind the churchyard, Cooper could see a sprawl of farm buildings and trailers, and a wandering pattern of drystone walls. A cockerel crowed somewhere nearby, though it was already afternoon. The phone box stood close to a footpath sign, its fingerpost so weathered that the lettering had worn away completely, and now it seemed to indicate a path that led nowhere.
Then the sun came out, and the limestone walls formed themselves into a bright tracery running across the landscape. Cooper wondered what he might find if he followed those white pathways. The instinct to pursue the light rather than return to the gloomy churchyard was almost irresistible.
Half a mile north, at the junction with the A623, there was a smaller collection of houses called Wardlow Mires. A petrol station and another pub called the Three Stags’ Heads sat among farms and some derelict buildings covered in honeysuckle.
The A623 took traffic through sheep pastures and across the plateau towards Manchester. Almost as soon as Cooper turned on to it, he sensed the landscape opening out on his left. In a gap between the hills stood a strange, isolated outcrop of limestone. Its distinctive shape looked almost artificial – straight, pillared walls of white rock split by crevices and fissures, and a rounded cap grassed over like a green skullcap. The slopes of short, sheep-nibbled grass around it seemed to be gradually encroaching on the limestone, as if reaching up to pull it back into the ground.
The rock looked familiar. Searching his memory, Cooper thought it might be called Peter’s Stone. He had no idea what the name meant, but guessed it was probably some biblical reference to St Peter, the reasons for it lost in the passage of time and the mists of folklore.
‘Can I listen to the tapes some time, Diane?’ he said.
‘Don’t imagine you’ll recognize the voice. It’s electronically disguised.’
‘I might have some ideas, though.’
‘Yes, OK. Remind me when we get back.’
‘Thanks.’
Fry tapped a finger on the map. ‘Ben, we should be going the other way. Eyam.’
Cooper pulled over and reversed into the Litton turning. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘my unidentified remains were found at Litton Foot, in Ravensdale.’
‘Yes? What about them?’
‘Litton Foot is less than three miles from Wardlow across country. It falls within your circle.’
Fry looked at the map. ‘But your body is eighteen months old, Ben.’
‘I know.’ Cooper shrugged. ‘I just thought I’d mention it.’
‘Tell me about Eyam.’
‘For a start, it’s pronounced “Eem”. The village was infected by the plague from some infected cloth, but the villagers quarantined themselves so they wouldn’t spread it to the rest of Derbyshire.’
‘When was this?’
‘Seventeenth century.’
‘OK.’
‘Well, three hundred and fifty people died in Eyam. The names of the victims are recorded on some of the cottages. Plague victims couldn’t be buried in the churchyard, so their graves are in the fields around the village. Whole families together sometimes.’
‘Are these places well known?’
‘Well known? They’re a tourist attraction.’
Back at West Street, Diane Fry disappeared for a meeting with the DI before the evening briefing, and Cooper didn’t get a chance to remind her of her promise. So instead of listening to the tapes, he took the opportunity to spread out the photos of the human remains found in Ravensdale.
The quality of crime scene photography had improved tremendously since the photographic department spent money on replacing its printing equipment. Colours had started to bear some relationship to reality, instead of looking like snaps taken by a passing tourist with a Polaroid. Now you could see that the stuff on the floor near a body was actually blood, not the corner of a donkey-brown rug.
Outdoors, they sometimes managed to get quite interesting lighting effects. In one of the Ravensdale photographs, Cooper could make out the dappling effect of sunlight through the canopy of trees. The sun had swung round to the south by the time the shots were taken, so it must have been around the middle of the day. The photographer would have been wondering when he’d get a chance for his lunch.
There was also a sketch plan done by one of the SOCOs, complete with arrows indicating the points of the compass. It confirmed what Cooper had noticed at the site: the feet of the victim had been pointing to the east and the head to the west.
He had a feeling there was some significance in that alignment. It was one of those half-remembered things, a vague superstition in the back of his mind. He couldn’t have said who had put the idea in his head, or when. Maybe it was only something he’d overheard as a child, a whispered conversation among elderly relatives at a funeral, a bit of local folklore.
East to west. Yes, there was some significance,