Cooper was unable to concentrate fully on what was being said next, until he heard his own name mentioned.

‘Oh, and DS Cooper asked us to establish whether there were any traces of petrol at the scene,’ Wayne Abbott was saying.

Branagh switched her attention back to him suddenly and he sat up straight.

‘Why would you do that, DS Cooper?’ she asked.

‘A smell, ma’am.’

‘Got a nose for these things, have you?’

Cooper grimaced. ‘Yes, ma’am. Well, I just thought it was quite noticeable.’

‘And was there any petrol?’

‘No,’ said Abbott, leaving a dramatic pause. ‘In fact, it was diesel fuel. We found evidence of diesel, as well as traces of ammonium nitrate.’

‘Near the body?’

‘It was on the victim’s clothing.’

Superintendent Branagh called Cooper into her office after the briefing.

‘DS Cooper, you seemed to be distracted. What’s on your mind?’

But Cooper didn’t answer directly.

‘There will be another victim, you know,’ he said. ‘Possibly two.’

She looked annoyed. ‘Ben, people in that part of Derbyshire are getting very jumpy,’ she said. ‘They’re already frightened in those small villages. We must not let the idea get out that we expect more killings.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘If your idea about a corpse on each of the coffin roads starts to be spread around—’

‘No one outside this building will hear it from me,’ said Cooper. ‘But ma’am…’

‘What?’

‘I think some of those people will be putting two and two together themselves before very long.’

They’d brought Geoff and Sally Naden in for a second interview. When Poppy Mellor’s version of events was put to them, they confirmed it almost willingly. Their admission seemed to come as quite a relief.

‘It was a group thing,’ said Geoff. ‘We were all going to be there together, in unity. A joint effort.’

Cooper blinked. That was quite a verbal achievement. Naden had made five attempts to spread responsibility within a few sentences.

‘But you say you didn’t get as far as the bridge in the end?’

‘Well, we thought we had the wrong night,’ said Geoff.

‘He thought we had the wrong night,’ said his wife. ‘But planning was never one of his strong points. I had a different opinion.’

‘You were right on this occasion, Mrs Naden,’ said Cooper.

‘Of course I was.’

‘But it was lucky that you listened to your husband. It might have kept you out of danger.’

Naden grimaced at the thought. ‘We never intended any harm,’ he said.

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

‘It was just a protest. A statement. People do a lot worse things when they feel strongly about a cause.’

‘I was never convinced,’ said Sally. ‘I still didn’t think it was the wrong night. I told him as much when we got home.’

‘Several times,’ said Geoff.

‘And the other people in the group?’

‘Beresford,’ said Naden.

‘Yes.’

‘And Jason Shaw,’ he added.

‘Right.’

‘And Sandra, of course,’ said his wife. ‘And there was some girl, though I don’t think we ever saw her.’

‘Beresford’s girlfriend,’ said Naden.

‘Anyone else?’

They both shook their heads.

‘There were some others, in the beginning,’ said Sally. ‘But they just talked and grumbled, and never actually did anything. You know the sort.’

‘That’s right,’ said Geoff. ‘I suppose you might say we were the stalwarts.’

‘But some of us were worse than others,’ said Sally suddenly.

Then she put her hand to her mouth, as if she’d spoken too much. But for once her husband seemed to agree.

‘Sandra was crazy, you know,’ he said. ‘All that weird stuff about magic. It made no sense. And she was always dosing herself with herbal medicines. At least, that’s what she called them.’

Sally’s mouth had drawn into a tight, disapproving line. When Cooper looked at her closely now, he could see the shadows in her face, the tension round her eyes. He wondered what was wrong with her. She looked like a woman who knew about pain.

‘Goodness knows what she was doing to herself,’ said Sally. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Were you aware that Mrs Blair was taking drugs?’ asked Cooper.

They glanced at each other.

‘We guessed,’ said Sally. ‘And she was drinking too, of course. But then, we all know people who drink a bit too much, don’t we?’

Geoff Naden cleared his throat loudly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it might interest you to know that Sandra was by far the most extreme member of the group.’

‘Was she, sir? Extreme in what way?’

Naden could see that he had Cooper’s interest. He leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone.

‘She was most in favour of what they call direct action. She wanted to go further. You understand?’ Naden paused. ‘We were afraid that she might go too far in the end. We thought she might be driven to violence.’

‘Really?’ Cooper couldn’t keep the tone of scepticism from his voice. ‘Was Mrs Blair particularly close to any of the other members of the group?’

‘Ah now,’ said Naden, ‘you’ll have to ask someone else about that.’

30

Cooper returned to his desk and pulled out his map again, with the routes of the coffin roads marked on it.

But as soon as he sat down Becky Hurst looked up from a call.

‘Ben? Ben?’ she said, an unmistakable note of urgency in her voice.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Cooper, still gazing at the map. ‘We’ve got another dead body.’

The conclusion seemed inevitable, a logical fit to the network of coffin ways converging on the bridge. Where there were two bodies, there must be a third.

‘No,’ said Hurst. ‘No dead body. Well, not yet. But the officers we sent to Earl Sterndale. They can’t locate Rob Beresford and his parents are reporting him missing.’

‘Put out an alert for him. He won’t have gone far.’

‘Okay.’

‘What about Jason Shaw?’

‘Carol and Luke are tracing him now.’

Cooper ran a hand through his hair, envisaging disaster. His initial witness, the person who found Sandra Blair’s body, had slipped through his fingers. Worse, Rob Beresford might end up as the next of those bodies.

He heard a cough and found Wayne Abbott standing at his shoulder.

‘I thought you’d like to know straight away,’ said Abbott. ‘Digital forensics have managed to retrieve some interesting images off Sandra Blair’s computer. It looks as though she took them on her smartphone, then emailed them to herself.’

‘Great. Let’s have a look.’

Abbott placed a laptop on his desk and flipped open the screen. A familiar image appeared, caught in a glare of sun.

‘As you can see, first we have some shots of the bridge,’ said Abbott. ‘Taken in daylight, of course.’

‘The Corpse Bridge, taken from west and east banks of the river. It must have been a planning visit. They were well organised.’

‘Right. And here are some of the dummy, but taken indoors.’

‘That’s Mrs Blair’s sitting room,’ said Cooper.

He was looking at a badly lit picture of the effigy of Earl Manby. It was sitting in one of the chintzy armchairs at Pilsbury Cottage with the African rug on the wall behind it.

‘Why would she take a photograph of it, do you think?’

‘She was very proud of her handiwork,’ said Cooper.

Abbott nodded. ‘This will interest you most. Digital forensics managed to retrieve an image from a few months earlier. The quality isn’t very good, but they’ve done their best to enhance this one. It might be important. It was taken in London, I think. Some kind of railway depot. Perhaps a repair yard or a sidings for old rolling stock.’

Cooper leaned forward eagerly. There they were in the photograph, all of them. Geoff Naden stood slightly in front, as if leading a guided walk, with Sally at his elbow. They were flanked by Rob Beresford, Jason Shaw and, lurking to one side, Sandra Blair herself.