‘Not a living soul.’

Cooper gazed into Shaw’s blue eyes while he answered Villiers, but he saw not a flicker of amusement or deceit.

‘Do you know some people called Naden?’ asked Villiers.

Cooper held his breath. That was a good question. He watched Shaw pause for a moment.

‘Naden? Naden … no, I don’t think so. Should I?’

‘Perhaps not.’

There had been a slight hesitation there, though it might mean nothing. A lot of people had trouble remembering names. If they saw each other, it might be different. Maybe Cooper should have arranged an accidental face-to-face encounter before the Nadens left the station, and observed the reactions. But it was too late now.

‘Well, thank you for coming forward, Mr Shaw,’ he said.

Shaw nodded. ‘I hope it was a help.’

Cooper saw him pause, as if he wanted to say more.

‘Is there any other detail you’d like to add, sir?’

‘No, but … I was wondering, has anyone else come in? After the appeals, I mean.’

‘We’ve had some other response,’ said Cooper.

‘Good.’

Shaw stood and Villiers got up to show him out.

‘By the way, sir,’ said Cooper before he reached the door. ‘Where do you work?’

‘Me?’ said Shaw. ‘I work at Knowle Abbey.’

The scene at the Corpse Bridge was much quieter today. There was a marked police car blocking the entrance to the trackway and a scene guard further down, with a crime-scene examiner still working in a tent erected over the stretch of riverbank where Sandra Blair had been found.

But Cooper didn’t want to go all the way down to the scene and nor did the Reverend Latham. The elderly clergyman was content to stop and rest on a bench halfway down the track, where they could see the river and the arch of the stone bridge below them, as well as the hills on the Staffordshire side of the Dove, and even a corner of Knowle Abbey behind a plantation of trees.

‘I think something was going on here,’ said Cooper. ‘More than just a simple murder, if there is such a thing.’

Latham murmured to himself, but said nothing. The old man was thinner than Cooper remembered him, his hands bony and shaking slightly. He supported himself on a stick, but his posture was still upright and his eyes were bright and inquisitive. His voice had lost some of its power – he would struggle to make himself heard in the pews at the back without the help of a microphone. And before he left his house near Edendale, he’d taken the time to wrap himself up warmly in an overcoat and a long scarf, with an incongruous red woollen hat that he said had been knitted by a parishioner.

‘This was what they call the coffin road,’ said Cooper. ‘It leads to the Corpse Bridge.’

‘Indeed,’ said Latham.

‘But am I right in thinking there was more than one coffin way?’

‘Yes, you’re right. There were several old coffin roads from these small settlements along the eastern banks of the Dove. They all converged on this bridge.’

‘Why, though?’

Latham shook his head sadly. ‘For many years coffin roads were the only practical means of transporting corpses from these communities to the graveyards that had burial rights. You see, when populations increased, more churches were built to serve new communities. But that encroached on the territory of existing parish churches and their clergy. It threatened their authority – and, of course, their revenue. They insisted that only a mother church could hold burials.’

‘Just burials?’

‘They were the most lucrative of the triple rites of birth, marriage and death,’ said Latham.

‘So it was all about money?’

‘Money and power,’ said the old clergyman sadly. ‘I’m afraid the established church was to blame for a lot of injustices in those days.’

‘Only in those days?’ said Cooper.

Latham looked at him sharply, but couldn’t resist a twinkle coming into his eyes.

‘No comment, officer.’

‘So where were they taking their dead?’ asked Cooper.

Latham pointed with his stick. ‘Over yonder.’

Cooper followed his gesture. ‘To Knowle Abbey?’

‘Almost. To the burial ground at Bowden. It’s within the abbey estate now, of course. In fact, it always belonged to the Manbys – or to the Vaudreys before them. It housed their workers, just as it does today. The church belonged to them as well. The earl appointed the minister and insisted that everyone attended church on a Sunday, on penalty of dismissal. In those days if they lost their jobs, they lost their homes as well. So people had to do what they were told. And that sort of control spread to other villages.’

‘People even had to bring him their dead.’

‘Indeed. For people living in these villages, bodies had to be transported long distances to reach the burial ground at Bowden, often over difficult terrain like this. And the corpse had to be carried, of course, unless the departed was a particularly wealthy individual. There weren’t many of those in this area.’

They were both silent for a while. Carol Villiers, who had walked down to the crime scene, looked up and began to climb slowly back towards them.

‘Where were the other coffin roads?’ asked Cooper after a few moments.

Latham waved his stick vaguely across the hillside on the Derbyshire side. ‘Oh, I believe there was one from the north, near Harpur Hill. Another came from a village that has long since disappeared under the quarrying operations. And the third was a little to the south, from the direction of Pilsbury. You’ll find only small sections of them now.’

‘Of course.’

‘You mentioned the coffin stone?’ said Latham, raising his head from a contemplation of his bony hands.

‘Yes, someone left an effigy on it. Laid out like a body.’

Latham nodded. ‘Coffin stones weren’t just there to let the bearers take a rest. They were designed to prevent the ground from becoming tainted by death or allowing the spirit of the deceased an opportunity to escape and haunt its place of death.’

Cooper turned and looked at him. ‘You know the stories too, then?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? People still told them in my day.’

‘And even now,’ said Cooper.

‘Really? Perhaps they’re a bit more circumspect when they’re talking to me, then.’ Latham laughed quietly. ‘But with coffin ways – well, what would you expect? I suppose it was inevitable that each one gathered a mass of folklore about phantoms and spirits. Wherever there are corpses, there must be ghosts.’

Cooper spread out his Ordnance Survey map. Many of the coffin roads must have long since disappeared, while the original purposes of those that had survived as footpaths were largely forgotten too.

But here there were two reminders. At the bottom of the hill on the eastern side of the river was the coffin stone, a flat lump of limestone on which the coffin had been placed while the bearers rested. And then there was the name of the bridge itself, still known locally as the Corpse Bridge, though it was clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map with another name. When they heard it mentioned, many visitors to the area probably thought it was a quaint local corruption of some entirely different word. Glutton Bridge wasn’t named for its gluttons, or Chrome Hill because it was made of chrome.

On the brow of the hill, he could see that the path crossed Church Way Field. He supposed it might have been possible once to plot the course of a lost coffin road by the sequence of old field names, and perhaps from local legends and vanished features of the landscape marked on antiquated maps.

But all of those things were gradually disappearing themselves. Even farmers forgot the names of their own fields as traditions were lost from generation to generation. Now they were more likely to refer to a field by its size in acres or its position in relation to the farm. In time Church Way Field would become the Upper Forty. Its associated legends would vanish under the plough and a layer of chemical fertiliser.