It didn’t seem right, really. The city ought to be noisier and livelier than a small country town. But she was in the suburbs here, twenty minutes from the city centre with its pubs and shops and theatres. Suburban life had its own rhythm.

Fry let herself into the apartment, remembering to clear the burglar alarm. It was something she’d never had to do in Edendale. But then, she didn’t have anything worth stealing. She’d never felt the urge to surround herself with material possessions. But she lived here now. Perhaps she would feel obliged to go shopping.

She walked to the windows and looked outside. She found herself worrying about where she should put her wheelie bins without making the development look untidy. And she realised with a shock that she must have become middle class.

Fry took off her jacket and dropped her keys on the table. She had to admit that the rooms sounded empty and strange. She turned and looked at the corner of the lounge, where a table stood waiting for her TV set to arrive.

Well, that was one thing that kept her connected to Edendale. There was one small part of her that still hadn’t left.

28

29

When Poppy Mellor had gone, Cooper thought back to his conversation with Rob Beresford that early morning near the Corpse Bridge. After Halloween night he’d been dog-tired or he might not have missed so much.

While he sat waiting in the police car at the Corpse Bridge, Rob Beresford must have had plenty of time to think things through and consider his position. It would have been obvious to him the victim would soon be identified. The fact that she was known to him would emerge during the investigation. If he hadn’t mentioned straight away that he recognised her, it would have looked bad for him when the facts came out. It would certainly have put him under suspicion. Only the guilty made a secret of something like that.

So Beresford had definitely made the sensible decision, coming straight out with it. He must have been worried when Cooper failed to ask him the right question. It was easy in those circumstances to start thinking the police knew more than they actually did. Perhaps Rob Beresford had given Cooper more credit than he deserved. When Beresford blurted out that he knew the victim, it had been one of those moments when you grasped your courage in both hands and took an irrevocable step, when you made a decision there was no going back from. It had almost worked for him, too.

Cooper wondered if it was a sign of another weakness in his own attitude that he’d accepted the likelihood of Rob Beresford and Sandra Blair knowing each other. It was the way things were around here. If you’d lived in one of these villages for a while, you did know everyone. Cooper grew up that way, thinking nothing odd at all in the fact that if you saw a face you didn’t know, it would certainly belong to a tourist, someone who would be gone back to their own part of the country next week. Those who belonged to the area were all people he knew, or at least recognised.

So perhaps it should have struck him as too much of a coincidence that Rob Beresford knew Sandra Blair, but it didn’t at the time. That was a situation where another officer might have taken a different attitude and made a better decision. Diane Fry, for example. Her city girl scepticism would have been a great advantage.

Cooper shook his head. It wasn’t often he found himself thinking that. Or perhaps he’d let the thought cross his mind a few times, but dismissed it too easily.

He went slowly back into the CID room, where he stopped by Luke Irvine’s desk.

‘Well, Luke,’ he said, ‘now I know who the weak link is.’

‘Sorry?’

Cooper called Gavin Murfin over and explained Poppy Mellor’s story to them.

‘We’re going to need background checks on everyone involved,’ said Cooper when he’d finished. ‘You can share the tasks out between you.’

‘Who was in this group, then?’ asked Irvine.

‘All of them, I think,’ said Cooper. ‘Rob Beresford, Jason Shaw, the Nadens – and Sandra Blair herself. But there might be more we don’t know about. The Nadens and Shaw only came forward after the appeals because they thought someone else had been there at the bridge that night who might have seen them and been able to describe them to us.’

‘Someone who wasn’t a member of the group, you mean.’

‘Exactly. Either innocent members of the public or individuals who were involved in some activity of their own. Whichever it was, they knew it would look bad if they didn’t admit straight away to their presence. Just as Rob Beresford figured he should admit that he knew Sandra Blair. They would have looked guilty if we found out from another source.’

‘They weren’t just opportunists, were they?’ said Irvine.

‘Not at all. They’d thought about this and planned it. When it went wrong they did the sensible thing. It might have worked out too, but for Poppy Mellor. She thinks she’s defending the innocent. But perhaps not.’

‘And the target of their bizarre scheme is the Manby family.’

‘It seems so. They’re protesting against development plans for the graveyard at Bowden.’

‘Everyone keeps saying “the Manby family”. But who is there living at the abbey, apart from the earl himself?’

‘I can tell you that,’ said Murfin, flicking through the pages of his notebook. ‘I’ve got it here. There’s the earl’s wife, Countess Caroline. And three grown-up children. The eldest is Lord Peter Manby. Then there’s the Honourable Richard, and Lady Imogen. Peter is the heir. He’ll be the next earl in due course. That’s why he gets to be called Lord, when his younger brother is just Honourable.’

‘You’ve done a bit of research, then, Gavin.’

‘I thought if we were going to be mingling with the aristocracy…’

‘Well, we’re not.’

Murfin sighed. ‘It’s probably for the best. You’d only embarrass us with your uncouth ways.’

‘I’m not sure the younger Manbys spend much time at the abbey,’ said Cooper. ‘No more than they have to, anyway.’

‘Well, would you? It must be like living in a fish tank, with people gawping at you all day long.’

‘Doesn’t Peter Manby have some other claim to fame?’ said Irvine. ‘His name rings a bell vaguely.’

‘He worked in the media for a while, then ran his own production company making strange little indie films. It was never a success. Then he stood as a parliamentary candidate for the High Peak a couple of general elections ago.’

‘He wanted to be an MP?’

‘I don’t know whether he seriously hoped to get elected. He stood as an Independent candidate. They never get in, do they? Not around here.’

‘He must be in his mid-to-late thirties now.’

‘The last I could see, he was working for an advertising agency in London.’

‘Well,’ said Irvine, ‘it sounds as though he’s doing anything he can to get away from Knowle Abbey.’

‘I imagine he’s just trying out a few things while he has the freedom to,’ said Cooper. ‘Once he succeeds his father, he’ll be tied to Knowle. All the responsibilities will be his then. Personally, I don’t really envy him.’

Ben Cooper had a lot of notes to write out before the morning briefing. When he reported his interview with Poppy Mellor, he found himself stumbling a bit over his own scrawl, trying to cast light on the motives and identity of the group of which both Sandra Blair and Rob Beresford had been members.

‘What’s your next move, DS Cooper?’ asked Superintendent Branagh.

Cooper thought he detected a dwindling of her interest in the tone of the question.

‘I’ll despatch a team to pick up Rob Beresford. And we’ll need to talk to the Nadens and Jason Shaw again. We should try to get some more names from them.’

‘Are we considering charges?’