Alton had attended the opening of the inquest, and he remembered the crows being mentioned. The pathologist had explained why some of the injuries on the body were not, in themselves, an indication of unlawful killing. Firstly, the injuries to his face had occurred after death. And secondly, they had not been of human origin.
There was still blue tape rattling in the breeze, though one of the metal stakes the police had used had fallen over now, the shallow covering of peat failing to provide a secure anchor for it in the ground. But Alton wasn’t looking at the fluttering tape. He was watching the faint white clouds of steam drifting from the air shaft, coiling on the edge of the stones for a moment before being dispersed by the wind.
He knew he had been stupid to let himself get involved in the Border Rats’ raid on the Hey Bridge well dressing. He had thought he was being accepted at last by the Oxleys - or that was what he had told himself. But it had been a mistake, and the Rural Dean had made that clear. His reputation was already damaged by a misjudgement. But that wasn’t what was worrying Derek Alton most.
That afternoon, when he had looked again at the picture of St
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Asaph in the stained glass, he realized that the red representing J
the burning coals was the wrong colour. It was too pale when the g
sunlight caught it, too gentle in its tones - almost pink, in fact. T;
There was nothing threatening about it, nothing that suggested a
:5t
danger of scorching St Asaph’s cloak.
Real fire was quite different. Real fire was a much more violent I
and angry red. There was no mistaking the threat from flames, the actual destructive power of them. Their red was more like what Alton saw when he held his hands up against a candle and watched the bones of his fingers become outlined in glowing crimson as flames flickered through his translucent skin. His hands looked as though they were lying in a furnace, ready to be forged like iron in an unimaginable heat. That was the colour of fire. Within his own flesh, he held the true redness of burning coals.
Sometimes, at night, it crossed his mind that the invasion of nature into his churchyard was his own fault, for having agreed to bless the well dressing. Instead of giving approval to this worship of the goddess of water and the power of the spring, perhaps he should have been evoking the word of God to exorcize the pagan powers and drive them back into the darkness. He imagined scattering the flower-dressed panels with holy water and watching the designs shrivel and burn.
But when he awoke in the morning, he knew that he was being foolish. Superstitious, even. The church was pragmatic, and it did what the people expected of it. Other churches let people bring animals to be blessed. He only blessed the water.
And it was St Asaph’s patronal day, too. The first of May. The day when the villagers would once have followed the Wakes Week tradition, with a night vigil in church on the Sunday nearest the saint’s day, followed by a week of celebration. Women would have baked the Wakes Cakes, based on their own traditional recipes. But no longer.
Alton didn’t know how guilty he should be about his feelings towards Neil. But Philip Granger had succeeded in making it all seem extremely wrong. Since Thursday, the knowledge that had been preying on his mind was the fact that Philip had gone on from St Asaph’s to Shepley Head Lodge, and not to work in Glossop, as he had said. Michael Dearden was a churchwarden.
Though Dearden hadn’t spoken to Alton since then, that only made it worse. His imagination could fill in the details. He had
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been creating his own hell within himself, and he had to resolve it somehow.
During his walk up the hill, Derek Alton had passed through alternate bursts of clear skies and heavy showers. By the time he reached the air shaft, he was soaked. But as he turned away from the hill, it wasn’t just the cold and damp that made Alton shiver and pull his coat closer around his shoulders. Dusk had descended, and it was time for him to leave.
Down below, Longdendale looked vast and mysterious in the gathering darkness. It lay like a rumpled sheet tugged into peaks and valleys by a restless sleeper, the lights of scattered villages and farms gradually appearing with the dusk.
Alton had already spent an hour on the hillside, but his vigil had brought no answers - only the chill that had numbed his fingers. He had been given no more answers here than he had in church. He had to make his own decision.
Ben Cooper and Diane Fry both crashed into their chairs at their desks in the CID room. Cooper could see that Fry looked as tired as he felt himself. Actually, more tired. She looked exhausted and dark-eyed.
There was more paperwork on Cooper’s desk, but he couldn’t be bothered to look at it. He stared at the ceiling for a while and found his thoughts wandering.
‘Diane,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘When you went to Wolverhampton with Gavin the other day, you were back in your old home town, weren’t you?’
Fry didn’t respond immediately. But Cooper knew she had heard the question. He could see the telltale stiffening of her shoulders, the almost visible defensive cloak that she began to throw around herself whenever her private life was mentioned.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I remember you telling me that Warley was where you grew up. You, and your sister.’
‘Your memory’s too good sometimes, Ben.’
‘But it was important to you,’ he said. ‘I mean, it seemed to be important to you at the time, when you told me about it, Diane.’
‘So?’
