uneven stones, and he had difficulty keeping his balance as he tried to get to the side against the force of the water. He reached out a hand to grasp the branch of a birch sapling grow ing out of the bank and found himself clutching something else an item of clothing. It
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was a shirt — a blue shirt, with a thin white stripe and white cuffs. He could see the label inside the collar and recognized that it was from a well-known manufacturer, not one of the cheap
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Portuguese things that he bought himself from the bargain shops in Eclendale.
The driver looked up, and saw that the streambed was full of clothes. There were shirts and trousers draped across the stones, and socks and jockey shorts with water bubbling over them as if somebody had decided to do their washing the primitive way. A blue and red striped tic hung from a clump of dead heather. A shoe had Oiled with water and sunk to the bottom, where its laces waved in the current like strands of seaweed.
Then the driver remembered the unidentified body found near here, the man who had been hit by the snowplough. There had been an overnight bag with the bodv, but it had been empty
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of clothes.
‘Have you called in yet?’ he shouted to his partner.
‘Yes.’ ‘
‘Do it again, then.’
Ben Cooper had decided to walk to Dam Street. The house where Marie Tennent had lived was no more than half a mile from divisional headquarters, just across town in the tangle of backstreets near one of the old silk mills. It hardly seemed worth getting a car out, not when the streets were still clogged with crawling vehicles and pedestrians slithering
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around in the roadway because the pavements hadn’t been cleared yet. Besides, there were few enough places to park in the Dam Street area, even without the snow. The millworkers’ houses had been built long before anybody needed either garages or streets wide enough to park cars on.
The silk mill itself had recently been converted into a heritage centre. The old three-storey stone building had become derelict and for wears had been in danger of demolition, but now a new
/ o
cafe and shop had been built. Cooper wondered what on earth had possessed the designers to build the extension out of red brick when the old mill and all the other buildings around it were stone. The Peak District was stone country. Brick felt like an alien substance. On the corner of Dam Street, a man in a hooded parka was walking a Doberman tightlv held on a chain. He eved Cooper
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HO
suspiciously, hauling hack on the Jog’s lead as if trying to give the impression it would attack at the slightest provocation.
Cooper let him pass and walked on until he located Marie Tcnncnt’s house. It was at the end of a terrace, with a tiny front garden and a view to the side over the millpond at the
hack of the heritage centre. Between the house and the one
o
next door was a high stone wall that effectively prevented any communication with the neighbours. It seemed peculiarly quiet at this end of the street. Part of the effect was perhaps caused hv the stretch of water, which was covered hv a thin skin of ice. Cooper looked at the houses on the opposite side of the street. Their windows and doors were hoarded up. They were either awaiting renovation or demolition.
First he knocked on the neighbour’s door, but got no reply. He had decided to try again after he checked out number 10
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when there was a voice behind him.
‘Yeah?’
It was the man with the Doberman, and he was fiddling with the chain as if he were about to let the dog loose. The dog didn’t look particularly interested, but Cooper didn’t feel like taking a chance. He showed his ID.
‘Do you live here, sir?’
‘I suppose so. What do you want?’
‘I’m making some enquiries about your next-door neighbour, Marie Tennent.’
‘Scottish lass?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think she’s Scottish.’
‘Her name’s Tennent.
‘Ihat’s it. Like the lager. What s she done, then? Sit!’
I he Doberman sat with a sigh of relief. On closer inspection, the dog looked worn out, as if it had been pounding the streets for too long. In fact, it looked like some of the Edcndale coppers used to when they had done a quick shift changeover and had been on duty eighteen hours out of twenty-four.
‘I’m afraid she’s had an accident,’ said Cooper.
