For a while it had all seemed to be going well. With the financial targets hit, solicitors were instructed to begin the conveyancing process. But on the same day the company that owned the pub announced it was exchanging contracts with a third party – a developer who would make the deal pay by building houses on the car park.

Irvine remembered calling into the pub one night for a drink when the news had just broken. The mood was disturbing. Everyone he spoke to was frustrated and angry, convinced they had been betrayed by big business and exploited for a quick profit.

One of his neighbours, who’d had a couple of drinks too many, buttonholed him at the bar while he was ordering a bottle of Thornbridge Sour Brown. Like a doctor, Irvine found he could never escape the fact that he was a police officer, even when he was off duty. In fact, it had been worse since he joined CID and became a detective. Everyone wanted to hear gory details of cases, tell him their theories, or ask him for clandestine forms of assistance that would undoubtedly lose him his job.

That night, though, there was only one topic of conversation. The last-minute betrayal over the sale of the pub had turned people’s minds to committing crime rather than solving it.

‘This could definitely be a motive for murder,’ this same neighbour had said, leaning close to him at the bar. ‘With a hundred and eighty-five potential suspects at the last count. They might all commit the crime together, like the plot of an Agatha Christie story.’

‘By far the least believable Christie plot,’ said Irvine, who had watched Poirot on TV.

The man tapped the side of his nose and almost winked. ‘Where there’s a motive, people will find a means.’

But a week or two later the public outcry against the decision had changed the minds of both the pub’s owners and the potential buyer. The project went ahead and Bamford owned its community hub. When he went into the Angler’s Rest now for a Sour Brown, people again asked for gory details or the kind of assistance that would lose him his job.

‘I suppose you’re involved in that case over near Buxton,’ said the man now, with an inquisitive lift of the eyebrows.

‘Maybe so.’

But as Irvine looked at his neighbour, he recalled that earlier conversation. An Agatha Christie plot? He wondered if he should phone Ben Cooper right now with the interesting idea that had just come into his head.

But of course not. Unlike Cooper, he had a life after all.

‘Do you fancy another drink, mate?’ he said.

21

22

The Reverend William Latham lived in a small bungalow on one of the newer estates on the edge of Edendale. This wasn’t quite sheltered housing for the elderly, but most of the people Cooper saw were past retirement age. They’d reached the time in their lives when they couldn’t manage a big garden and didn’t want to be coping with stairs.

He supposed it was a pleasant enough location. You could see the hills from here, and there was a bus route into town at the corner of the road. But it felt like the last stop on a journey, the sort of place you would never leave.

The Reverend Latham was cautious about visitors. When Cooper rang the bell he shuffled down the hall and called through the door to ask who it was.

‘Bill? I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s Ben Cooper again.’

Latham opened the door and peered out before lifting the security chain.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said.

‘Quite right.’

‘So what can I do for you? More questions about coffin roads?’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘A burial ground.’

‘Ah. Interesting.’

Latham invited him in, though he left Cooper to close and lock the front door, which rather undermined his caution about visitors. The old man led him down the hall into an untidy sitting room. As Cooper looked around he realised that untidy would be a kind word for this room. It looked like benevolent chaos.

Cooper was used to seeing homes occupied by drug addicts and low-end criminals. They were invariably chaotic, a mess of used needles, empty alcohol bottles, rotting food and dirty clothes. That wasn’t the case here. The disorder consisted of books and newspapers, pens and paper clips, cardboard boxes and piles of typed A4 sheets. There was a table under there somewhere and several chairs. An ancient leather sofa was occupied by two grey long-haired cats, sitting happily among the scattered papers and the remains of chewed cardboard.

‘This is Peter and Paul,’ said Latham, gesturing at the cats. ‘Say hello.’

Cooper wasn’t sure whether the old man was speaking to him or to the cats. But he said hello anyway. The cats glared at him and showed no signs of moving from the sofa to let him sit down.

‘There’s a chair here,’ said Latham, picking up a pile of multicoloured folders which slipped out of his grasp and cascaded on to the carpet. Cooper bent to pick them up, but the old man stopped him. ‘No, no, it’s all right. They’re as well filed on the floor as anywhere else, I suppose.’

Cooper removed a pair of glasses from the chair and placed them on the table. ‘Are you writing a book or something?’ he said.

‘How did you guess?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It just looks like a writer’s room. What is the book about?’

‘It’s just a little memoir,’ said Latham, waving a hand in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘The difficulty I have is that my memory isn’t as good as it used to be. It’s requiring rather a lot of research to get the facts right. Dates and names and so on. I suppose it’s my age.’

Latham perched himself on another chair and gazed vaguely at Cooper.

‘Are you hoping to get it published?’ asked Cooper, failing to keep a faint note of incredulity from his voice.

‘I’m told it’s very easy to publish a book yourself these days,’ said Latham. ‘Modern technology has opened up all kinds of doors. There are things called ebooks now.’

‘Yes.’ Cooper eyed the piles of paper. ‘Where’s your computer?’

‘My what?’

‘You have a laptop, at least?’

Latham shook his head. ‘I do have a typewriter somewhere. I haven’t used it for a while. There was a problem getting new ribbons.’

Cooper didn’t know what else to say. If he went any further into the subject, he might end up volunteering to do the work himself. And that was beyond the call of duty.

‘I was at Bowden yesterday,’ said Cooper. ‘You know, the estate village for Knowle Abbey?’

‘Oh, the Bowden burial ground?’ said Latham. ‘Surely you know all about that?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Cooper.

Latham raised an eyebrow at him and Cooper realised his tone had been a bit too sharp.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about the burial ground.’

One of the cats stirred uneasily and dragged itself off the sofa. As it strolled out of the room, Cooper could see that it was beautifully groomed, but obese.

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do about it,’ Latham was saying. ‘It’s all perfectly within the rules and regulations.’

‘What is?’

But now he’d set Latham off on a train of thought, the old man wasn’t going to be steered by someone else’s questions. ‘When a church or burial ground has been consecrated, it comes under the jurisdiction of the bishop,’ he said. ‘In the case of a churchyard, the legal effects of consecration can only be removed by an Act of Parliament or the General Synod. But if the land or building isn’t vested in an ecclesiastical body, then the bishop has the power of deconsecration.’

‘So?’

Latham nodded at him. ‘That’s the case at Bowden, you see. The church was built by a previous Earl Manby and it belongs to the estate. So the bishop of this diocese has agreed to deconsecrate. There was no reason for him to refuse. The church itself isn’t used any more, you know. It’s the burial ground that has been most at issue.’