had no idea. He had a vague feeling that a baby’s demands for food and attention were pretty constant, but it was only an impression gained at a safe distance from watching his sister-in-law Kate when his two nieces had been
o
very voung. losie and Amy had cried when they were hungry,
- ^ O J - . O ^
or when their nappies needed changing. If there had been a baby left alone in this house, it would surely be crying by now. Long before now. The neighbours would have heard it, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. And they would have reported that, even if they hadn’t bothered to report the fact that they hadn’t seen the baby’s mother for a while.
The thought made Cooper feel a little better as he opened cupboards and wardrobes. But then he looked at the walls of the house and reali/ed how thick they were. These were stonecottages, a hundred and fifty years old, built for millworkers at a time when houses were intended to last several lifetimes. They had solid walls, not those timber and plasterboard things you could put your list through. Without the door or a window open, he could hear nothing from outside the house. He knew it was possible that a baby could have cried and cried in here, and not have been heard. It was possible that it could have cried itself to death.
He pulled aside some clutter at the back of the cupboard under the stairs a vacuum cleaner, a roll of carpet, cardboard boxes,
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an abandoned glass-tupped coffee table. Each time he moved something out of the way, he expected to see a small bundle in a corner. But there was nothing.
‘Ben?’
For once, he was glad to hear Diane Fry’s voice. ‘Through here,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you came.’
fry paused in the doorway, gazing round the room, but without seeming to look at Cooper at all. She walked round the sofa, stopped at the window and rubbed her finger through the grime on one of the panes. ‘Do people never clean their own windows round here?
‘It depends whether you want to see out,’ said Cooper.
‘You’re being enigmatic again, Ben. It doesn’t suit you. Where have you looked?’
‘Everywhere, but not properly.’
‘You take down here then, and I’ll do upstairs. Take it steady, be thorough. There’s no need to panic.’
‘Yes, OK.’
Fry headed (or the stairs. Cooper felt some of the weight lift from him.
‘Diane?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Thanks for coming.’
‘I had to I’m paid to look after you now.’
Back in Marie Tennent’s kitchen, Cooper decided to look in the automatic washer. Like everybody, he had read newspaper stories of children getting trapped in washing machines. But this one was half-full of underwear. Nearby, several nappies were drying on a rack near a radiator.
Then there was the refrigerator, ft contained fruit juice and voghurt, grated carrot and froxen oven chips, some of them well past their best-before dates. A mouldy piece of cheese and a half-used tin of marrowfat peas occupied the top shelf. In the cupboards, there were lots of pans and cooking utensils, but little food. What there was seemed to consist mostly of pasta and lentils, baked beans and cheap white wine. There was no sign of any dog food, or of feeding bowls, so it looked as though the odds were against a dog. There were more notes stuck to
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a cork board phone numbers and shopping reminders. No suicide note.
He opened the back door and found himself looking into a small garden, with a washing line draped across a paved area. The line was encased in frozen snow, like insulation round an electric cable. Cooper couldn’t see what else there was in the garden, because of the unswcpt snow, but he imagined a few bare flower borders around a patch of grass. Birds had been scratching at the snow, and in one corner there was a little brown heap where a neighbourhood cat had thought it was burving its faeces, only to find the heat melting the snow around them. Similar gardens
o o
ran off to the left, separated by low walls and fences. None of the houses overlooked Marie’s garden. The view straight ahead was of the rear wall of the mill, where the windows were few and tiny, dark squares in the snow plastered to the stone. There was a coal bunker against the wall of Marie’s house. As Cooper lifted the lid, a layer of snow slid back and piled against the wall. Nothing inside.
O
That left only one place to hide something the green wheelie bin pushed against the wall near a gate that must lead on to a tiny back alley under the shadow of the mill. To reach it, he had to cross the garden, unsure where the path might be under the snow. There was a padlock on the gate, and it was secure. From here, the mill wall seemed to tower above him like a fortress, blank and forbidding. Of course, this was the northern side. All the windows were on the southern wall, to provide light for the millworkers who had overseen the looms. It was interesting to note that they would have had light for their work, but none on their homes the shadow of the mill saw to that.
As soon as he touched the wheelie bin, Cooper could tell there was something inside. An empty bin was so light on its wheels and so tall that it could be lilted with one finger when it came time for it to be retrieved from wherever the binmen had left it. This one had weight in the bottom. It bumped against the sides a little as he pulled the bin away from the wall to allow room to open the lid. He pushed the snow aside from the lid, staring for a moment at the High Peak Borough Council label that had been stuck to the green plastic. It gave
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dates tor refuse collection arrangements over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
