Blind to the Bones by Stephen Booth Read Free Book Online Page B

The lie of the land meant that the sun would rise behind one hill to the south east and disappear behind another to the south west, without touching Withens. No wonder the gardens he could glimpse through the trees had yet to show signs of colour.
    â€˜So what’s the situation here?’ said Cooper.
    â€˜Well, some of the homes have been suffering from the same problems we’re getting elsewhere – recurrent burglaries, often with associated criminal damage. Particularly the more isolated homes, which are less overlooked. There’s one just past the village itself, which has been a particular target. Also the church, I’m afraid.’
    â€˜Oh yes. You said the vicar had reported a break-in.’
    Cooper could see the tower of the church above the trees. It seemed to stand a little away from the village, on the near side of the river. It was a short, square tower, in the Norman style, but nothing like so old as that. There were genuine Saxon and Norman towers in Derbyshire, but this wasn’t one of them. He estimated its date as the middle of the nineteenth century.
    Cooper turned his attention back to Withens.
    â€˜You said some of the homes have been targeted. So presumably others haven’t. Is there any pattern there?’
    Udall hesitated. ‘Possibly.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜There’s a problem family in the village, by the name of Oxley. Dad is the type who makes his living in a way you can’t quite pin down. There’s an extended family and loads of kids, most of them known to us – not to mention Social Services. There’s one little lad who got himself excluded from his primary school for anti-social behaviour. You might have seen something about him in the newspapers. They couldn’t identify him, of course, but they started to call him the “Tiny Terror”.’
    â€˜It does ring a bell,’ said Cooper.
    â€˜I’ll show you when we can get down into the village,’ she said. ‘That would be the best way.’
    This bit of the county was hardly accessible from anywhere else in Derbyshire. It was much easier to get to it from Sheffield on the Yorkshire side, or even from Hyde on the Manchester side. But in the 1970s, someone in an office in London had ruled that it should be in Derbyshire, so that was the way it was. Which county you lived in could make a difference of several thousand pounds to the value of your house.
    Cooper looked down at the village once more, feeling that there was something he hadn’t paid proper attention to. Just below the bridge near the church, the river widened into a pool where a few willows were still bare now, but would surely add a bit of greenery later in the summer. Here, the bank was full of nettles and rosebay willowherb. But there was something strange about the pool.
    He focused PC Udall’s binoculars on the water. But in fact, he could barely see the water, because the pool was half-full of large, flat objects. They seemed to be rectangular wooden boards of various sizes, floating on the surface, but tied to trees on the edge of the water. He could make out some lengths of blue nylon rope dipping in and out of the water. The boards looked as though they might have been there for some time, because there was duckweed clinging to them, and green mould growing in patches on many of the panels. Cooper could see no purpose for the boards at all. They weren’t the usual sort of fly-tipped rubbish, either.
    â€˜That’s strange,’ he said.
    But Udall just shrugged. ‘Well, this is Withens,’ she said.
    T he first building they saw by the side of the road in Withens had long since collapsed. Its walls were tumbled and its timbers blackened, as if there had been a fire a long time ago. Maybe several fires. Now, grass was growing over the stones, and it looked well beyond conversion into a holiday home. Next to the ruins was a fallen oak tree covered in