Sometimes visitors looked over a vista of peat moors like Withens and Black Hill and admired what they thought was entirely natural scenery. They thought the view had nothing manmade in it - no houses or roads, no walls or telegraph poles, nor even electricity pylons.
But they were wrong, of course - the entire landscape here was manmade. Longdendale had been primeval forest once. There had been wild boar here, along with deer, wolves, bears and even wild bulls. Now the only signs left of their presence were in the place names - Wildboar Clough, Swineshaw and Deer Knowl. The monks who had been given control of the valley had cleared the woodland for their sheep, and the Industrial Revolution had begun to produce the acid rain that had fallen on the Dark Peak for centuries, destroying the vegetation and eroding the peat. What visitors admired now was the devastation left by thousands of years of destruction by man.
‘We offered to help down in the village, you know,’ said the maintenance foreman, coming to stand by him.
‘Down in Withens?’
‘Yes. It’s our policy to have good relations with the local community. So we offered our services on some projects. But some of the local people there are not very friendly.’
‘I think you must be talking about the Oxleys.’
462
‘You know them?’
‘We’ve met.’
People like the Oxleys knew perfectly well that this wasn’t an unchanging landscape but a dynamic one. They were like the hefted flocks of sheep on the hillsides, who were so crucial to the balance of the ecology. For those flocks, their grazing territories had become inherited knowledge, passed on from one generation to the next. To farm the vast, unfenced areas of moorland, shepherds had to make use of the sheep’s natural behaviour patterns. After centuries of hefting, they became practically wild animals, relying on the strong territorial instinct that went with their feral nature.
Down on the Withens road, Cooper could see PC UdalFs Vauxhall Astra. He recognized it by the identification number on the roof. In this kind of landscape, those numbers weren’t only for the use of the air support unit’s helicopter crew.
‘It’s a shame about Withens.’ The foreman shook his head sadly. ‘We were thinking of offering to clear the graveyard at the church. It’s very badly overgrown, you know.’
‘Not any more,’ said Cooper, thinking of the task force officers who had spent the past few days painstakingly removing the tangled vegetation and sifting through sinewy roots looking for clues to the identity of the skeleton and the manner of the victim’s death.
‘We even went into the pub a few times, but they didn’t like us being there, we could tell that.’
‘Ah. Foreigners in the pub/ said Cooper.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Nothing important.’
Despite his vantage point, all Cooper could see of Withens was the tower of St Asaph’s church. But he was surprised to find that he could also see the roof of Shepley Head Lodge, out beyond the village to the north, apparently isolated and inaccessible.
The Reverend Derek Alton had created an involuntary link between the two. Early this morning, the vicar had finally been well enough to talk. Among other things that he had needed to get off his chest, he had revealed that Neil Granger had discovered his brother Philip was involved with the spate of antiques thefts in the area. A stolen bronze bust had been the conclusive evidence, he said. And Neil had gone to Alton to ask for his advice about what he should do.
463
The
‘And what did you advise him?’ the vicar had been asked.
To face him. To tell the truth/ t
Philip Granger laughed then. He seemed to throw off the mantle 2
of guilt too easily now that the subject had moved away from the f
death of his brother. f
‘Emma? Emma was mad about Neil. How stupid was that? She I
pursued him for months. I remember she was so thrilled when he I
moved to Bearwood to stay in the house with her and the other | students. But he was gay. I told you, didn’t I, that he was gay?’
‘Yes, sir, you did.’
‘But why did nobody tell Emma? Why didn’t Neil tell her? It would have made it so much easier. Things would have turned out differently. But I had to tell her myself, and she didn’t believe me.’
‘You wanted Emma for yourself?’
‘Yes. I used to e-mail her a lot, because it wasn’t easy to go up to her house to see her. But she always ignored me in favour of Neil. I’m only the brother, you know. Why should he always have got the best? Why did everybody always like him more?’
‘Did you pick Emma up from Bearwood that day?’
‘I waited outside the house until I saw Neil go.’
‘But you only have a motorbike.’
‘I can drive, you know,’ he said. ‘What do you think I am? I borrowed a mate’s car, so there was no chance of Neil recognizing it. I pulled up to the kerb when Emma was on the way to the bus stop. She was surprised to see me, but I told her I was in the area looking for work, and she didn’t think anything of it. It was starting to rain then, and the trains would have been packed. I said I was just on the way home, so she got in the car.’
