Blind to the Bones. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ lets,’ said Udall. ‘It’s divided into two studio apartments, with a shared patio round the back. No doubt they provide a useful bit of extra income, in case the crematorium market dries up.’

      ‘Not much chance of that. There’s no shortage of people to burn. And nowhere to bury them these days, either.’

      ‘No, the graveyards are really in demand. People are dying to get in them.’

      ‘Is that one of Sergeant Boyce’s, too?’

      Udall flushed a little, but said nothing. She tugged at the bottom edge of her vest to pull it down over her hips, where her duty belt was heavily hung with baton, handcuffs, CS spray, and a series of leather pouches that Cooper had forgotten the use for. In fact, he didn’t think they even had all those things to wear in the days when he was in uniform. Changes happened fast in the police service, and six years away from a uniform was long enough to get out of touch.

      Tracy Udall had dark hair pulled back almost painfully tightly into a short ponytail that protruded from her white trilby-style hat. Cooper had presumed from what she’d told him that the father of her child hadn’t been around from the word go. Now she must be only a couple of years on the other side of thirty. Unfortunately, Sergeant Jimmy Boyce was married, with four kids of his own.

      Cooper knew he could probably learn a lot from PC Udall and her colleagues – the day-to-day, on the ground stuff about policing that had started to pass him by after six years at a CID desk in Edendale. It was his chief superintendent at E Division who had first uttered the words ‘lateral development’ when he had failed to get promoted to the detective sergeant’s job he had hoped for. Lateral development meant a move to a different speciality without the benefit of promotion, but it came with the suggestion that wider experience might count favourably towards future advancement. On the other hand, his mother might have said it was just a case of ‘always jam tomorrow’.

      Yet, suddenly, here he was on a secondment to the Rural Crime Team – playing an advisory role to Sergeant Boyce’s pro-active squad of uniformed officers. These were people who knew the problems of the Peak District’s villages. They had gained their knowledge from years as community constables, liaising with the local people and listening to their troubles. Those troubles often involved a catalogue of burglaries, petty thefts, vandalism and car crimes that were committed with impunity, to all intents and purposes. Prioritization was the buzz word these days, and property crime was low priority. Members of the public in some areas could consider themselves lucky if they got any police response at all, except for the offer of a crime number for their insurance claim and a sympathetic letter from Victim Support.

      Cooper was glad to help, if he could. But while he stood with PC Tracy Udall on this roadside in the Longdendale valley, he couldn’t help wondering if this was the first step on the path of his lateral development. Was Sergeant Boyce tipped to move onwards and upwards after the initial success of his team? Did a uniformed sergeant’s job await some lucky detective constable in a few months’ time? He wondered what Detective Sergeant Diane Fry would make of that, as his immediate supervisor. But it didn’t take much effort to imagine the smile on her face. She would be glad to be rid of him, he was sure of it.

      Now Cooper was standing in sunlight, and he found he was sweating under his waxed coat. It was one of those spring days when you didn’t know what to wear when you went out in the morning. Whatever you chose, you knew you were going to get wet, or too warm. Probably both. There was nothing predictable about the weather in the Peak District at any time of the year, no matter how long you lived there. Outdoors, you were forever taking off layers of clothing and putting them back on again, as you passed from sweaty uphill slog to the biting wind of an exposed plateau. In April, you never knew from one moment to the next what sort of weather was going to hit you. A squall, a gale, a deluge of hailstones, or a warm burst of sun – you could get it all within an hour.

      Down in the converted farmhouse, the suspects roused from their beds would be getting ready for a trip. With a bit of luck, they wouldn’t be seeing much sunlight for a while.

      ‘An isolated farmhouse is an ideal base for an illegal operation. And God knows, there are plenty of those between here and Edendale,’ said Udall.

      ‘Too many,’ said Cooper.

      ‘And they make great drugs factories particularly. It’s taking diversification a bit far, if you ask me. Definitely too far. If they can’t make a living at farming, they should stick to opening tea rooms and doing bed and breakfast.’

      ‘But there’s more money in drugs. And you don’t have to deal with tourists.’

      ‘The neighbours are going to get a shock,’ said Udall. ‘You can see they’ve got no security to speak of. There are no walls and no gates, and the lights are mostly to show off the garden and the fish pond. And the Afghan doesn’t look as though it would put up much of a fight.’

      ‘People are used to thinking that they don’t need to set up fortifications around their homes in this area.’

      ‘Ah, but the architect isn’t from this area. He lived in Sheffield until two years ago. He ought to know better.’

      ‘It’s the scenery,’ said Cooper. ‘It gives people a false sense of sanity.’

      If Cooper were to be honest with himself, his short spell with the E Division Rural Crime Team was already starting to feel like a breath of fresh air. Winter in Edendale had been long and hard, and full of other complications. Diane Fry, for one.

      And then he had chosen to move out of Bridge End Farm for the first time in his life. He had left home at almost thirty years old, and now he had all the business of looking after himself, and the unexpected implications of having property, even though his flat in Edendale was only rented. He had his own territory now, and that made life look different. That, and his looming thirtieth birthday, made a lot of things look different. It was as if he had suddenly been lifted out of his old, familiar rut and pointed in a different direction, so that he wasn’t quite sure who or what he was any more. In fact, he was a bit like the former farmhouse down there – designed for a different purpose entirely.

      ‘Besides, houses like this need security these days. Almost every house of any size in Longdendale has been targeted by thieves during the last eighteen months or so,’ said Udall. ‘Some of them have been hit more than once. If the thieves don’t get in the first time, they do a recce and come back later.’

      ‘Professionals, then?’

      ‘No doubt about it.’

      ‘Local? Or the travelling variety?’

      ‘Well, we definitely think they’re using somewhere on our patch to store the stuff they’ve nicked. Another isolated farmhouse, probably.’

      ‘What items are they going for?’

      ‘This lot go for antiques: clocks, porcelain – anything small that looks as though it might be worth a bit of money. There’s a huge market for that kind of thing. It’s likely they’re collecting enough for a vanload, then shipping it off to the States or somewhere in Europe. Easy money, all right.’

      The Shetland pony was deliberately bullying the two Muscovy ducks, nudging them around the paddock until they began to flap their wings and quack angrily.

      ‘Did the architect design the alterations himself?’ said Cooper.

      ‘I believe so. But he СКАЧАТЬ