Hurst frowned. ‘Well, I suppose so.’

Cooper didn’t want to believe it either, but he knew it was true. No one really understood what went on in other people’s relationships.

‘Besides, everyone knows the spouse is top of the suspect list in a murder inquiry,’ said Irvine, as if playing a trump card.

‘Not in this case – you’ve just told us she wasn’t even in the country at the time.’

‘Never heard of a contract killing? The Redfearns are well-off. She could afford someone good, instead of just some low-life off the street.’

Cooper nodded. It was a possibility they would have to cover, even if it seemed unlikely at this stage.

‘We’ll need to get Mrs Redfearn in as soon as she arrives,’ he said.

‘To confirm ID on the body?’ said Hurst. ‘It won’t be very pleasant for her. Couldn’t we do it from photographs?’

‘That might be better,’ agreed Cooper.

So the body of George Redfearn had lain at Pilsbury Castle for three days. Even in the best of circumstances a human body rapidly became difficult to identify. There was little point in expecting family members to make a visual identification of their loved one’s remains after they’d been lying out in the open for an extended period of time. Fire, explosion or long-term immersion in water worked even more quickly to destroy any recognisable features. Identification then came down to more scientific measures – DNA comparisons or forensic odontology to confirm identity from the teeth.

Cooper recalled that Mr Redfearn’s body had already started to look badly bloated when it was found. Even after twenty-four hours, when the remains had cooled to the temperature of the environment, the skin of the head and neck turned greenish-red and discolouration began to spread across the rest of the torso. The facial features could become quite unrecognisable.

Fortunately, the weather had been cold and this body was exposed to the air. But once bacteria started to dissolve the tissues, gases formed blisters on the skin, and the body swelled grossly and began to leak. In another day or two it would no longer have looked human.

Fry turned towards Cooper. ‘So what connection are we making between these individuals, if there is one?’ she said.

‘I don’t know, Diane. We haven’t found one yet.’

‘I presume you’re looking?’

‘Of course we’re looking. What do you think we’re doing – sitting around on our backsides with our thumbs in our mouths waiting for someone to come all the way from Nottingham and tell us how to do our jobs?’

She raised an eyebrow and Cooper’s anger subsided.

‘But you haven’t found anything,’ said Fry calmly.

He sighed deeply. ‘Not yet, no. It’s difficult to point to any significant similarities. Whether deliberately or accidentally, both victims seem to have fallen far enough for the impact to be fatal.’

‘It hardly constitutes a pattern.’

‘Not on its own, no,’ agreed Cooper. ‘Apart from that … well, the victims aren’t even the same age or gender. True, they’re both white and ethnically British, but—’

‘But the ethnic minority population in this area is – what? Two per cent?’ said Fry.

‘About that.’

‘It’s hardly a multicultural melting pot, is it? So your killer would have to try really, really hard if he wanted to find a black or Asian victim. As far as the evidence goes, these individuals could just have been chosen at random.’

‘Random,’ said Cooper. ‘I hate random.’

‘I know. Me too.’

Those were always the burning questions. Not how the murderer committed the crime, but what motivated him or her to take those specific, drastic measures.

‘But you still think the two incidents are linked?’ said Fry.

‘Yes, I do.’

When Cooper told her the story of the Bowden burial ground, Fry couldn’t help herself. Her reaction was accompanied by a cynical laugh.

‘Your friend Meredith Burns didn’t mention the graveyard, did she? Just general envy, she said.’

‘That was wrong of her,’ agreed Cooper.

‘Trying to avoid bad publicity for the earl, I imagine.’

‘But they reported the incidents – including the graffiti. They must have known questions would be asked.’

‘Wait a minute, though. Burns said the graffiti was discovered by one of the staff before the first visitors arrived on Friday.’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Well, what if that wasn’t the case? What if members of the public saw that graffiti before it was covered up? It would be too late to keep it quiet then. They would have been talking about it all over the area by the end of the day. Some of the visitors would have been taking photographs of it on their phones.’

Cooper nodded. Fry was probably right. He could hear the discussion that might have gone on in the estate office.

‘So they decided to make a pre-emptive call,’ he said. ‘Damage limitation.’

‘And I bet they thought it had worked. A visit from the Neighbourhood Policing Team, probably a PCSO making a few notes for her report and tutting sympathetically. Burns said they didn’t expect anything to come of the visit. She meant they were hoping nothing would come of it. She really didn’t want to see us turning up at the abbey. Though she put a good show on, I’ll give her credit for that. Ms Burns had you more interested in looking at the nursery than enquiring into any reason for the incidents.’

‘That’s not true,’ protested Cooper, aware that he was starting to flush, feeling the familiar discomfort that Diane Fry was so easily able to provoke in him.

‘And now the murder of Mr Redfearn,’ she said. ‘If there’s no evident connection between the two individuals, why do you insist on believing these two incidents are linked?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Cooper. ‘Because of the Corpse Bridge.’

On his desk Cooper found the leaflets that Meredith Burns had given him on Saturday. He put aside the one advertising the Halloween Night and opened the leaflet about the attractions of Knowle Abbey.

For a few minutes he read about its claim to historic associations and the generations of Manbys who’d lived there. He skipped through the stuff about antique furniture and fascinating collections of curiosities, turned the page on details of the restaurant and the craft centre, and the walled nursery. Then he reached a few paragraphs about the extensive parkland on the Knowle estate.

Finally, he dropped the leaflet back on his desk with an exasperated groan.

‘How could I have been so stupid?’ he said.

‘What is it, Ben?’ asked Irvine in surprise.

‘Grandfather,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘Meet Grandfather, 1am. It’s not a person. It’s a place.’

27

‘The family tend to refer to him as the Old Man of Knowle,’ said Meredith Burns as she led the way from the estate office at the abbey. ‘It’s a traditional Manby joke, I think. A reference to the previous earl. The “old man”, you know?’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said.

As he and Diane Fry followed Burns along the signposted trail into the parkland, Cooper reflected that the old Derbyshire lead miners had often talked about ‘t’owd man’ too. But they’d meant something quite different. They’d usually been referring to the Devil.

But who knew what went on in a family like the Manbys? In any family, in fact. Perhaps there was more than a coincidence in the similarity between the miners’ superstition and the way the Manbys referred to the old earl. That portrait of the seventh Lord Manby in the Great Hall made him look a real tyrant. And when had Knowle Abbey begun to deteriorate so much? Had a previous owner neglected its maintenance, while spending his fortune on something else entirely? That would be enough to cause some degree of resentment among his descendants when they inherited a crumbling estate up to its chimneys in debt.