Blind to the Bones

Fry looked at Murfin, warning him not to laugh. She hoped that Alex Dearden wasn’t actually a robot but could be stopped at the appropriate moment.

‘It’s a bit like having a dodgy auto-pilot,’ he said. ‘For the psychologists, it helps them to understand human fallibility. From our point of view, it helps us to design the technology to allow for human error. It’s why computer programs won’t let you close a document without deciding whether you want to save it or not,’ he said. ‘But we’re going to take that concept a whole lot further. A whole lot further. I really can’t tell you any more than that.’

‘Or you’d have to kill me?’ said Fry.

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind.’

When they got out of Eden Valley Software Solutions, Gavin Murfin stopped in the car park and pretended to spit out the imaginary gum he’d been chewing. He trod it into the tarmac and ground the toe of his shoe on it until he was satisfied.

‘Feel better now?’ said Fry.

‘Not until I get a piece of that pie inside me.’

‘Not in my car, you don’t, Gavin.’

‘I’ll be careful of the crumbs, honest.’

‘Do you know how much it cost me to get this car valeted?’

‘Look, I’ll not even take it out of the bag.’

‘No.’

Murfin’s face crumpled, and he sighed deeply. ‘Where to next, then?’

‘We need to speak to Neil Granger, but I tried to phone him, and he’s not at home.’

‘Does that mean we call it a day then?’

‘Yes. Until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? It’s Sunday tomorrow, Diane.’

‘A good day for a drive to Withens, then.’

Murfin sniffed. ‘There’s no good day for a drive to Withens.’

Ben Cooper had his hand on the gate, and had been about to lift the latch. But he stopped at the sound of the voice. A man stood near the end house of Waterloo Terrace, watching Cooper carefully. He had been standing quite still, so that Cooper, who had been more interested in the state of the gardens, hadn’t even noticed him. The man was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, but no tie, and his suit trousers were tucked into black wellington boots. Cooper guessed him to be in his fifties. He had a balding head and some strands of sandy hair that stood up at his temples and moved in the breeze. But his hair was the only thing about him that moved. Even his eyes were quite still, fixed firmly on Cooper. His hands were hanging by his sides, and he carried no weapon of any kind, yet still managed to convey a clear threat.

Cooper felt slightly nervous as he reached for his warrant card, worried that the movement might be taken the wrong way. Maybe he was becoming paranoid, but he had begun to feel that there were other pairs of eyes watching him, too, from somewhere.

‘Detective Constable Cooper, Edendale Police,’ he said. ‘Who am I speaking to?’

The man didn’t reply. His expression shifted subtly from suspicion to contempt, as if a detective ought to know whose house he was visiting.

‘Are you Mr Oxley?’ said Cooper.

‘What do you want?’

Cooper realized that he would have to read the answers in the man’s eyes. This was almost certainly Mr Oxley. Lucas, presumably. The father of Scott, Ryan, Jake and maybe of Sean.

‘If you’re Mr Lucas Oxley, I’d like to talk to you.’

‘Don’t come any further, I said.’

Cooper had automatically begun to lift the latch of the gate again, assuming that once he had made verbal contact, he would be allowed to enter. But he was wrong.

‘What I have to ask you, sir, might not be something you want everyone to hear. Not something you’d want to shout out to your neighbours.’

‘That’s perfectly all right. I’ve no intention of shouting.’

‘I need to ask you –’

‘You don’t need anything. Not from me.’

Cooper was sure he could see movement through one of the downstairs windows of the second house, number two. The curtains were open, but the interior was too dark to be sure if there was anyone there, without staring too hard.

‘You are Mr Oxley, aren’t you?’ said Cooper.

‘Happen I am.’

‘I’ve just been to the church, where there’s been a break-in.’

To Cooper’s surprise, Oxley simply turned on his heel and walked away down the passage between the two end houses. The strands of hair bounced around his ears for a moment until he had disappeared into the shadows.

Cooper opened the gate and took a few steps after him.

‘Mr Oxley!’ he called.

Then he stopped. Something had made the back of his neck prickle uneasily. He stood where he was, a couple of yards along the path from the gate, and he looked at the house. There were certainly faces peering through the windows. Two, three or four of them. He could see their eyes watching his movements. They were like a family glued to a television screen, waiting for the next exciting moment, another car chase or a fight scene. They didn’t look worried, or frightened. They looked expectant.

Yet now that Lucas Oxley had disappeared, there was almost complete silence in the front gardens of Waterloo Terrace. Almost, but not quite. Cooper’s ears caught a faint click, then a strange skittering noise approaching from the far end of the ginnel.

At the last moment, Cooper turned and ran for the gate. He knew he didn’t have time to open it, so he dived at the wall and vaulted it just as a huge, shaggy-haired Alsatian burst from the arched entrance of the ginnel and hurtled down the path towards him.

Cooper stood gasping in the roadway on the other side of the wall, ready to run for his car. But nothing happened. The dog was utterly silent. It hadn’t barked once, or even let out a snarl. It had made no sound as it went for him, except for the skittering of its claws on the concrete of the ginnel. But it seemed to have halted the moment Cooper was on the other side of the gate, and therefore out of its territory.

Cooper looked up at the house, expecting to see satisfied expressions on the faces behind the window. But they weren’t satisfied yet. They were still expectant.

Then a dark shape flashed across Cooper’s field of vision, and a set of sharp white teeth clashed together a few inches from his face. He caught a brief glimpse of a wildly rolling eye as the Alsatian threw itself into the air and lunged its head above the gate in its desperation to sink its fangs into him. He stepped back, sweating. If he had leaned over the gate to see where the dog was, several inches of skin would have been missing from his face by now.

But it was the silence of the dog that was the most terrifying. It was the silence of an animal trained to attack and injure, rather than simply to frighten.

‘Mr Oxley!’ he called. ‘I’m a police officer. This isn’t an acceptable way to behave, you know.’

Silence. And now even the faces had disappeared, satisfied at last. Perhaps this was the favourite form of entertainment in Waterloo Terrace.