‘Everyone knows you don’t disturb that end of the graveyard,’ said Eric. ‘It’s where the railwaymen are buried.’
‘The ones who died of cholera?’
‘That’s right. Who would go digging up the ground there?’
‘The Reverend Alton would, obviously.’
‘Daft bugger.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘If it hadn’t been him, it would have been somebody else. A stranger. Even a foreigner.’
But Eric just stared at him. Cooper supposed this superstitious fear of ‘disturbing’ the cholera had somehow been inherited from the ancestors who had lived in the shanty town and had good reason to fear the disease. Where better to hide a dead body than among so many others? But the Oxleys’ decision had been based on the belief that the tradition of leaving that part of the graveyard undisturbed would continue indefinitely. They hadn’t seen that things were changing. They hadn’t understood that change was inevitable. And that was always a mistake. Always.
‘At least you’ve still got your traditions,’ said Cooper.
‘What, the Border Rats? It won’t last much longer/ said Eric.
‘Why?’
‘Well, for one thing, these grandsons of mine won’t keep it up without me and their dad to make them do it. The tradition will pass on to the folk from Hey Bridge, and other places. And they’ll make of it whatever they want. It won’t ever be the same again.’
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Eric Oxley picked up his hat and his stick, and shook his head. ‘Times change/ he said. ‘And our time is nearly over.’
In the car park, a crowd had gathered in the rain to watch the morning performance by the Border Rats. Though the musicians from Hey Bridge were doing their best, the dancers lacked the energy and enthusiasm of their earlier display in Edendale.
Cooper could see that they were approaching the final dance, the ritual killing of the rat. Did the aggressive banging of the sticks on the ground really represent the tunnel workers killing rats? Was it a celebration of the murder of Nathan Pidcock? Was there any difference?
The men who began the ritual might have known its meaning, but by the third, fourth and fifth generation, the story had changed. It meant whatever it had to mean for those performing it.
His neighbour, Peggy Check, had made a good point. Somebody was being symbolically killed in this ritual. It might be Nathan Pidcock, the carrier who had caused the cholera outbreak through his greed. But the target of the sticks might also be more recent, the victim of a murder committed by a close-knit group who would never talk. And no witnesses except, perhaps, for one frightened boy. The postmortem on the skeletalized remains found in the churchyard had revealed several broken bones. Barry Cully had been beaten to death and his body concealed in a shallow grave among the other dead of Withens. The scene of his murder had burned to ashes.
The Border Rats’ performance might be an old tradition. But the story they told could be much more recent. Could it be the story of Barry Cully’s murder?
He waited, listening to the chant and the screaming, watching the dancers approach the climax of their performance. The rat fell and was symbolically beaten with the sticks. Then he got up, and the Border Rats took the sporadic applause from the damp crowd.
Was he any the wiser? No. But it had been a nice theory.
Cooper began to walk back across the road, passing in front of the church. He didn’t give a second glance to Ruby Wallwin, who had been asked by Marion Oxley to put the finishing touches to the Withens well dressing. She was clutching a handful of the most delicate petals of all, which she had collected only that morning. She had shuffled down to the bank of the stream in her bedroom slippers, her joints still stiff because she had only just
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got out of bed, but knowing that the petals had to be perfectly fresh. They were white dog roses, pure and gleaming, still damp from the rainfall overnight.
Mrs Wallwin had never got chance to talk to the vicar, and it was too late now. But she thought it was probably for the best anyway that she hadn’t said anything. The Oxleys were starting to accept her now, and it wouldn’t do for them to think she was passing on the things she overheard them shouting at each other when they forgot she was there.
Ruby Wallwin bent to the bottom corner of the picture, where a group of black figures had been created from tiny alder cones and roasted coffee beans. She wasn’t sure of the meaning of the picture. But she knew that the white rose petals she lay at the feet of the black figures looked very much like bones.
Diane Fry was sitting in an interview room at West Street with DI Paul Kitchens. She stared at the man across the table, hoping they weren’t going to have a repeat of the silence she had endured during the last interview she’d conducted here.
‘The stick that was found in the railway tunnel has Neil Granger’s blood on it/ she said. ‘Not to mention traces of his cerebrospinal fluid, and fragments of bone embedded in the wood.’
She looked up, but got no reaction.
‘At the other end of the stick, we have some fingerprints. As it happens, these are prints that we already had on record.’
That was lucky, wasn’t it?’ said Kitchens, with a smile. ‘Sometimes, we do get a bit of luck.’
Fry nodded. ‘Detective Inspector Kitchens is right. We collected these particular fingerprints very recently.’
There was no response, but she hadn’t asked a question yet. Fry stared at the man opposite her, and he met her gaze calmly. She was a little unnerved by his appearance - his paleness, the blackness of his hair and the dark stubble on his cheeks.
‘We took these prints for elimination purposes/ she said. ‘The same prints were on the bronze bust we found, and on a small brass box/
He actually nodded then, as if encouraging her to continue.
