Blind to the Bones. Stephen Booth

her, and she had rubbed it out with an eraser. That had never seemed enough, though, so she would draw over it again, trying to create a happier picture on paper that was already grubby and smeared with charcoal from the old one.

      Then a boyfriend had taken her into Birmingham City Art Gallery one wet Brum afternoon, to try to raise her cultural standards. There had been a special exhibition on, and it was there she had seen one of the visions of Hell painted by Breughel the Younger. There had been a lot of other stuff, too, but it had been the Breughel that impressed her. She had kept the memory of it for much longer than she had kept the boyfriend. He had lasted only a few weeks. But the vision of Hell was still with her twelve years later.

      Now Fry imagined her fear as one of those Breughel visions, all demons and flames. With the therapist’s help, she had learned to cover her mental painting with a pastoral landscape rendered in gentle colours – brown and white cows grazing in a wildflower meadow, a cottage with clematis growing by the door, a cat relaxing in the sun on a window ledge. And always in her picture there was a young girl. She stood right in the middle foreground, clutching a wicker basket in her bare arms, smiling as she scattered grain for the hens around her feet.

      The picture had stayed intact for a while. The cows had never seemed to run out of grass in their pasture, the sun always shone on the cat. And the girl had never aged, so that her skin had remained pink and fresh, and unbroken. Just like the photograph of Emma Renshaw.

      But Fry’s picture didn’t have the advantage of photographic permanence. It had been done with cheap paints. After a year or two, the colours had worn thin. They were scoured away by the rubbing of her hands, by her constant touching and stroking to make sure the picture was still intact. When she had handled her picture too often, the Breughel showed through again. That was when she had to go back for help, to prevent the faces of the tormented souls emerging once more from the red petals of the poppies, to convince herself that the hooves in the grass were those of cattle and not goat-footed demons. She needed reassurance to make her see the leaves of the clematis instead of the flames leaping from the pit. She needed help to see the innocence of the girl, not the scaly claws of the birds at her feet.

      Each time she had to lay the paint on thicker, layer upon layer of it, with a bigger and bigger brush and in brighter and brighter colours. Finally, the picture had become so garish that she could no longer see anything but what lay underneath. She saw only blood in the poppies, and mould in the grass. She saw the bones under the skin of the girl.

       6

      Ben Cooper and Tracy Udall found the Reverend Derek Alton in his churchyard. He’d taken a bit of finding, because he was almost invisible among the weeds and overgrown shrubs. Alton was wearing wellingtons and corduroy trousers, and he was clutching a scythe in gloved hands. Thistle burrs and bramble thorns had stuck to his trousers. Now and then, he took a half-hearted swipe at the weeds, flattening them, but not cutting through them. In between swipes, he paused and stared gloomily at the plants.

      ‘I think your scythe needs sharpening,’ said Cooper.

      Alton looked up and wiped his forehead with the back of one of his gloves. ‘Yes, I know. But the sharpening stone has gone missing.’

      ‘In fact, don’t you think that the job would be a lot easier with a decent brush cutter? You could hire a four-stroke model, so that you wouldn’t have to trail an extension lead all the way out here.’

      Alton looked at the scythe dubiously, then down at his feet. Cooper saw that there was a gaping slash in the rubber across the toes of one of the vicar’s wellington boots. Perhaps a petrol-driven brush cutter wasn’t such a good idea after all – not if he could nearly take his toes off with a blunt hand scythe.

      The church was small and stone-built. But it was a dark stone, almost black, unlike the golden sandstone or the almost white limestone that had been used in other areas. Maybe it hadn’t always been black, but had been stained by soot from the steam trains that had travelled on the railway lines below ground here.

      PC Udall went to take a look at the vestry, where Mr Alton had reported the break-in.

      ‘Is it your turn on the rota for tidying up the churchyard then, Mr Alton?’ said Cooper.

      ‘Rota?’ Alton laughed. ‘I am the rota.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘Other churches have rotas. My other church, All Saints in Hey Bridge – that has a churchyard rota. The graves are tended wonderfully, and the parishioners don’t expect the vicar to lift a finger, let alone wield a scythe. Here in Withens, though … Well, they’re too busy to spare the time, I suppose.’

      ‘Who are your churchwardens here?’

      ‘Michael Dearden and Marion Oxley.’

      ‘I’ve heard of the Oxleys.’

      ‘Good for you.’

      ‘But who’s Mr Dearden?’

      ‘Shepley Head Lodge. It’s out past the village, that way.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘They’re both very worthy people, but they have their own concerns, you see.’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘The trouble is, when we get the first bit of sunshine in the spring, this is what happens.’

      Cooper looked around at the undergrowth. There were gravestones somewhere in there, but it was difficult to be sure. Mats of rough grass had grown over the plots, and brambles and ivy had attached themselves to the stones, so that few of the inscriptions were decipherable. He realized he was standing on what had once been a flagged path, but the grass and dandelions had forced their way through between the flags and covered them. Burgeoning nature was out of control here, and it was spreading nearer and nearer to the church itself.

      ‘So you have no help at all?’ said Cooper.

      ‘A young man called Neil Granger is going to help me. At least, he said he was going to. He said he had one of those things you mentioned, a brush cutter, and some other tools. But he hasn’t turned up. I don’t suppose he could be bothered in the end.’ Alton sighed. ‘He’s always seemed a very genuine young man, but there we are. It’s the way of the world these days. Young people think nothing of letting others down.’

      ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Cooper.

      Alton suddenly looked at him again, and smiled. ‘Good heavens, a policeman who doesn’t have a cynical view of humanity. Let me tell the curators of the folk museum in Glossop about you – they might want to preserve you for posterity.’

      ‘Young people always get a bad press. But I don’t think they’re any worse than they used to be, on the whole. We should put in a bit more effort, take an interest in what they’re doing, instead of writing them off.’

      ‘You make me feel positively ashamed,’ said Alton. ‘It should be part of my pastoral duties to draw the best out of the young people in my parish, not denigrate them. I’ll do my best to emulate your attitude.’

      If it had been anyone else he was talking to, Cooper might have thought they were taking the mickey out of him. If it had been Diane Fry speaking the same words, they would have meant something quite different. But, strangely, the Reverend Alton seemed sincere.

      ‘Take an interest in them – that’s what you should do,’ said Cooper.

      ‘I will. Thank you.’

      Cooper felt sure he was being patronizing. It was ridiculous to find himself lecturing a clergyman on showing an interest in his parishioners. But the vicar genuinely didn’t seem to mind. Probably he had received far blunter advice from his parishioners.

      ‘PC Udall tells me there have been some problems in the village with the children of the Oxley family.’