‘I just said, you could join when you were fifteen. No, it wasn’t that.’
‘What, then?’
‘We used to have post meetings every week. Ours were on a Wednesday evening, seven thirty until nine thirty. In the summer, we met at the post, but during the winter we went to the pub.’
‘The Bird in Hand?’
‘Of course. It was the only one in the village, even then.’
‘And Jimmy wasn’t old enough.’
‘The landlord wouldn’t let him in until he was eighteen.’
‘So he missed some meetings.’
‘He hated that. But there was another problem.’
Massey speeded up his pace, as if to leave Cooper behind. Cooper slithered on the wet grass as he tried to keep up.
‘Mr Massey?’
‘Shirley,’ he said.
Cooper thought he’d misheard. ‘What?’
‘It was Shirley. Shirley Outram.’
‘What was?’
‘The problem.’
Cooper ran and put his hand on the next gate to prevent him opening the latch.
‘Tell me, Mr Massey. Please.’
Massey looked at him, with a searching gaze. Cooper seemed to pass some kind of test, because Massey dropped his hand.
‘Shirley was our only female observer. Yes, we just had the one in our section, and that was quite an innovation at the time, I can tell you. Somehow, she managed to make the uniform look good. A tight mini-skirt and kinky boots. I don’t know how she got away with it. Most of the observers were middle-aged men, you see, and she was a real breath of fresh air. There was quite a social life in the Corps — as well as the pub, there were parties, dances, and so on. You can imagine she was in demand.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that was something else Jimmy was mad keen on — Shirley Outram.’ Massey sighed. ‘It could get pretty tedious on a long exercise. We took radios down, cards, dominoes. But a lot of the time, we just sat around and chatted. You found out a lot about people, sitting down there all night. When you’re frozen solid at two o’clock in the morning on an all-night exercise, on the graveyard shift, it makes a difference who you’re stuck down there with.’
‘You had Jimmy. And you had Leslie Clay.’
He nodded. ‘Les Clay worked in the engine shed at Rowsley until it shut in ’66. He was made redundant in the October, transferred to Bakewell as a porter and got made redundant again five months later, when the line closed. Dr Beeching — there’s a man whose name lives on.’
Cooper recalled that there was a little woodland station not far from here, at Great Longstone. The last stop before the crossing of Monsal Dale viaduct. Now the station was passed only by walkers and cyclists.
‘What age are you?’ asked Massey. ‘I suppose you think this was all a different century?’
‘Well, strictly speaking, sir…’
Massey laughed sourly. ‘Yes, all right. The twentieth century, damn it. Consigned to the history books now.’
‘I heard about the closures,’ said Cooper.
‘The 1968 reorganization came as a jolt. We thought the ROC was safe. It ought to have gone on for ever. But we were called to a special meeting at Group HQ in Coventry, and we went like lambs to the slaughter. The commandant got up and read out a list of posts that would close. Alpha One, Bravo Two… we were devastated. There was a lot of antagonism and bad feeling. They asked the older ones to retire, said they couldn’t go up and down the shaft any more. Some they wanted to transfer to other posts miles away, but that wasn’t the same at all.’
Cooper was glad to see they were walking back towards the house now. His hair was sticking to his head, and the water was running down his neck.
‘Do you know Michael Clay, Mr Massey?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘Les Clay’s son.’
Massey shook his head. ‘I’ve heard his name mentioned. I never met him.’
Cooper watched him for a moment. It sounded like the truth. And Peter Massey just didn’t seem like a man who could tell a lie so convincingly.
‘What about Patrick Rawson? Do you know him?’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Michael Clay’s business partner.’
‘Wasn’t that the man who died up the way there? You asked me about him before.’
‘So I did.’
Cooper showed him the photograph of Rawson. But Massey shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen him.’
‘You’ve never done anything with the old bunker.’
‘It was lucky there was no aircraft recognition post here. Some of them were snapped up by mobile telephone people, so they could put masts up. This one wasn’t of interest to anybody, so they just gave the site back to the landowner.’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes. It’s been abandoned since 1968, you know. It always flooded badly, and my dad said it was too dangerous to go down. So we locked it up and let the cows graze over it. When we had cows, that is.’ Massey gave him an odd look, curiously hopeful, almost plaintive. ‘Why? Did you want to have a look what it’s like inside an ROC post?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve seen one.’
‘And you’re sure that Mr Massey was telling the truth when he said he’d never met Michael Clay?’ asked Fry when he phoned her.
‘Yes. I’m certain of it. He never batted an eyelid. Besides…’
‘What?’
‘Well, if there’s a family feud involved here, I’m just not seeing it, Diane. Les Clay and Peter Massey were the two men who might have been considered responsible for Jimmy Hind’s death in 1968. But Clay died years ago, leaving Massey as the last man standing, so to speak. And Jimmy Hind doesn’t have any family still around to worry about it.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean. There’s no logic in it. No logic that would make Michael Clay either an obvious target as a victim, or a man looking for revenge either. Neither scenario fits.’
‘And yet…’ said Cooper. ‘There’s still something I’m missing.’
‘So what next?’ asked Fry.
Now it was Cooper’s turn to look at his watch. ‘I’ve got to get myself a new cat.’
Cooper had never actually had to choose a cat for himself before. There had been plenty of them around the farm over the years, of course, but they’d just sort of appeared under their own initiative, and the main problem had been controlling their numbers.
At Welbeck Street, he’d inherited Randy with the flat, courtesy of Mrs Shelley, who encouraged strays without any favour or distinction. Judging from Randy’s battered looks, there certainly hadn’t been any selection process based on cuteness, or the potential for posing as a cover model for calendars and birthday cards.
There were all kinds of animals at the Fox Lane Sanctuary — dogs and cats, of course, a few horses and donkeys, even a pig and a couple of sheep. He was surprised to find an injured owl in an aviary, its feathers ruffled miserably, a broken wing hanging at an unnatural angle. It was a tawny, just like the one he’d heard calling again last night. It had woken him in the early hours of the morning with its hunting cry, a sound that would strike fear
