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Dancing With The Virgins by Stephen Booth

In a remote part of the Peak District stand the Nine Virgins, a ring of stones overshadowed by a dark legend. Now, as winter closes in, a tenth figure is added to the circle - the body of Jenny Weston is discovered, her limbs arranged so she appears to be dancing. This might only be the beginning.

Stephen Booth was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley, and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He is well known as a breeder of Toggenburg goats and includes among his other interests folklore, the Internet - and walking in the hills of the Peak District, in which his crime novels are set. He lives with his wife Lesley in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire. Dancing with the Virgins is the sequel to his stunning debut, Black Dog, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award for fiction. Praise for Dancing with the Virgins

‘The plotting is strong and confident … on this form, Booth could soon be up there with the likes of Reginald Hill. If you read only one new crime writer this year, he’s your man’ JANICE YOUNG, Yorkshire Post Praise for Black Dog

‘An exceedingly good first novel: wholly engrossing, it has well-drawn characters and a real sense of place … one looks forward to his next book’ T. J. BINYON, Evening Standard ‘In this atmospheric debut, Stephen Booth makes high summer in Derbyshire as dark and terrifying as midwinter’ VAL MCDERMID

BY THE SAME AUTHOR Black Dog STEPHEN BOOTH DANCING WITH THE VIRGINS

HarperCollinsPublishers

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

The HarperCollins website address is: www.fireandwater.com

This Paperback edition 2002

57986

First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime 2001

Stephen Booth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 00 651433 2

Typeset in Palatino by

Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

I am grateful to Derbyshire Constabulary and the Peak Park Ranger Service for their willing help in the writing of this book. However, the characters portrayed in its pages are entirely imaginary, and their activities bear no relation to those of any members of the real organizations. I know that many Derbyshire police officers and rangers are heroes in their own way.

So many people have made contributions to the story that this is a real team effort. But in particular I owe thanks to my agent, Teresa Chris, without whom none of it would have happened.

and are still actively used as places of worship. Please treat

them with respect.

Lines from ‘This is the Sea’ by The Waterboys Ancient sites in Derbyshire like the Nine Virgins stone

reproduced by permission of Mike Scott and circle are constantly under threat from vandalism,

Edel Music. I quarrying, erosion and abuse. They are also sacred sites,

On the day the first woman died, Mark Roper had radio trouble. At the start of his shift, he had been patrolling in the valley, in the deep dead spot where the gritstone plateau blocked out the signal from the telephone interface point at Bradwell. The silence had been unnerving, even then. It had made him conscious of his isolation in the slowly dying landscape, and it had begun to undermine his confidence and stir up the old uncertainties. But Mark wasn’t frightened then. It was only later he had been frightened.

Normally, this was his favourite time of year - these few weeks of hesitation before the start of winter. He liked to watch the hills changing colour day by day, and the Peak District villages emptying of visitors. But he could tell that today wasn’t quite normal. There was a feeling about this particular Sunday that made him uncomfortable to be alone on Ringham Moor. There was something strained and uneasy in the way the trees stirred in the wind, in the way the dry bracken snapped underfoot and the birds fell silent in the middle of the afternoon.

As Mark climbed out of the dead spot, his horizon

widened until he could see across to Hartington and the Staffordshire border. But even on his way back across the moor towards Partridge Cross, he could not raise his Area Ranger. Maybe the radio handset he had picked up from the briefing centre that morning was the one with the faulty battery connection. Little things like that could change your life forever. ‘Peakland Partridge Three to Peakland Zulu. Owen?’ No matter how many times he tried, his call sign went unanswered. Earlier in the year, they had been burning the heather on this part of Ringham Moor. An acrid charcoal smell still clung to the vegetation, and it mingled with the sweet, fruity scent of the living flowers as it rose from the ground under Mark’s boots. In places, the stems had been left bare and white where the bark had been burned off completely. They showed up in the blackened carpet like tiny bones, like a thousand skeletal fingers poking from the earth. Mark’s father had helped the gamekeepers many times with the swaling, the annual burning of the heather to encourage the growth of fresh shoots for red grouse to feed on. Conditions for burning had to be just right - the heather dry, but the ground wet enough to prevent the fire spreading down into the peat. You could get so hot controlling the flames that you thought your skin would be burned to a cinder, and if you were standing in the wrong place when the wind blew, you could end up black from head to toe. Sometimes, Mark recalled, his father had smelled like Bonfire Night for days.

The scent of the burned heather brought the presence of his father back to him now. It was a sensation so powerful that the tall figure might have been striding alongside him, swinging his huge, reddened hands, talking of working dogs and trout flies, and promising that he would take Mark and his brother on a shoot one day. But he had never carried out his promise. And he hadn’t walked with Mark again, not for a long time now.

The impression left as quickly as it had come, leaving Mark clutching desperately at a memory, reaching for an image that dissipated like a wisp of smoke in the wind.

Fumbling at the radio, he tried again. ‘Peakland Zulu. Can you hear me, Owen? Owen?’ But still there was nothing.

As he climbed to the plateau, the weight of Mark’s rucksack gradually increased, chafing his skin through the fabric of his red fleece, pulling down his shoulders and pressing on the muscles in his back. Despite the chill, his neck was wet with sweat, and he shivered as he came over a rise and the wind grabbed at him. The shadows of clouds were moving across the landscape below him. Brief patches of sunlight revealed a field dotted with sheep, a narrow stretch of tarmac road, an oak spinney, or the roof of a distant farmhouse. Yet the sight of human habitation only heightened his sense of being alone.

It was the environment, not the welfare of people and property, that had led Mark to volunteer as a Peak Park Ranger in the first place. Once, he had wanted to save

the entire world, but in the end he had settled for helping to protect one little bit of it. He had not imagined that he would be called on to tolerate the actions of people who destroyed and defiled the environment, people who had no respect for nature and the lives of animals. It was the most difficult thing he had to learn. Maybe even Owen Fox would never be able to teach him that.

One thing Owen had taught Mark was the importance of good communication; he had told him to stay in touch, always. But this early November day had been the wrong time for Mark to choose for his first solo patrol. Entirely the wrong day to be on his own.

This is Peakland Partridge Three. Owen? Owen? Where are you?’

And, of course, it had been the wrong day for Jenny Weston, too.

Jenny had been riding a yellow six-gear Dawes Kokomo. It had one-inch tyres, and a wire basket bolted over the rear wheel. It was hired from the Peak Cycle centre at Partridge Cross on a three-hour ticket, and Jenny had already ridden nearly five miles to reach the plateau of Ringham Moor.

The moor was littered with prehistoric burial mounds, cairns and stone circles, some so small or so ruined and overgrown that they were barely visible in the heather and bracken. It was not as well used as the moors to the south and west, Stanton and Harthill, but its tracks were more accessible to a mountain bike, its open spaces more solitary, its face that bit closer to the sky.

Ringham had become one of Jenny’s favourite places. There were many reasons that brought her back, needs and compulsions that had worn a track for her bike tyres right to the base of the Hammond Tower on Ringham Edge. She carried an impression in her mind of the view down into the valley from the tower - that steep plummet through the trees on to a litter of rocks at the bottom.

It had been a blustery day, with showers that blew across the hills in squalls, bludgeoning the birches and scattering dead leaves into the heather. There seemed to be little life on the moor. But at the bottom of the track, Jenny had passed a youth wearing a red woollen cap pulled low on his forehead, with large ears that stuck out like table-tennis bats. He had been walking very quickly towards the road, and had refused to raise his head to meet her eye as she passed. Jenny had pressed down harder on the pedals, seeking to gain distance from the youth, so that she over-exerted herself on the slope and had to stop further on, gasping from painful lungs as she looked back. The youth had gone, and there was no one else to be seen - only a fistful of jackdaws drifting against the face of one of the abandoned quarries, and a herd of cattle lying restlessly in a field on the slope below the Virgins.

Jenny had always believed she was safer on a bike. Two wheels and the extra speed gave her the confidence that she could get out of trouble, if she needed to. A woman on her own, in a place like Ringham Moor, ought to think about being careful.

To get to the top of the moor, Jenny had to dismount

ath and wheel the Koko up there when she thechePd the She knew she was almost with iron hand twisted Heart Stone, twelve feet high, and foot holds driven into its sides. At the top, the sandy track was cycleable, as long as you avoided the exposed rocks in the middle. It patches a plateau of dark heather and whinberry, with of rhododendron on the southern slopes. eed ewere

old quarries on two sides, the plateau fell away into on the east and south,

the valleys. paths was marked by a of th~a an The crossing of the main wooden sign scrawled with the name

Virgins and a yellow arrow. Around the sin a area worn by many feet. Someone living in valley the had a peacock; its long drawnout shriek drifted across

the moor before dying away in the wind. By the time she reached the Virgins, jenny could feel the perspiration standing out on her forehead. Her Lycra cycling shorts were tighter on her hips and but-skin of her e been and the tocks than they should blotched from, the exertion and the legs was pink and chafing of the wind. ‘t mind the wind, or the cold, or even the She didn’t exertion. Up here on the moor they to blow away the thoughts that would sit in the corners of her mind all the rest of the week, dark and evil-eyed. Nowhere re in Sheffield,

else could she do wthe crowded streets and the traffic only fed her where anxieties. In early November, the weather kept most people off

the moor. But she could see that someone was sitting against the trunk of a tree near the stone circle, playing a few notes on a flute, toying with a tune that was vaguely familiar. She couldn’t see the musician clearly, but she had an impression of long, fair hair and a multicoloured sweater. Jenny turned the handlebars of the bike away from the Nine Virgins and headed towards a path that ran down through deep bracken. The path turned into a stream bed later in the winter, and the ground was scoured to its sandy bottom. Tree roots ran close to the surface, bursting through to form ragged steps in the steepest parts. Beechnuts crunched underfoot and the bracken was head high. It pressed close around her, its brown, dead hands brushing against her legs and rattling on the spokes of her wheels. Beyond the dip, the Hammond Tower stood at the top of the slope. It was prominent on the horizon, tall and built of grey stone, but serving no apparent purpose. A walled-up doorway faced a flight of roughly cut steps and a steep drop off Ringham Edge. Fallen leaves filled a wide hollow between the tower and the rock outcrops they called the Cat Stones. Jenny sat for a while on a broken ledge at the base of the tower, staring at the view across the dale, waiting for her breathing to slow down, but feeling the chill begin to creep over her skin. She shouldn’t stay long, or her muscles would stiffen. Down in the valley, she could see the farm, with a field full of cows, a cluster of gritstone buildings and a bigger, newer shed with a dark green steel roof. A track

he studied it carefully for figures ran past the farm, and s towards the tower. walking by the gate and heading up But there was no one today. As she stood up to retrieve her bike, she noticed a the stones of the tower which had a een crevice in led drinks cans and c1g crammed with cramp shook her head oh for the’ Rang packets. Jenny es who hg about the litter. it was a j

patrolled the moor. reached the stone circle A few minutes later, s were only about four feet high, again. The Nine Virgins of flattened and eroded and they stood in a clearing Yards grass between clumps of birch and oaks. Fifteen anoutlier le stone on its own, from the circle was a sing - the stone that they called the e Fiddler’ g been dcag to the legend, nine bath been turned to stone dancing on the Sabbath and had ed for them had suf. for their sinThe fiddler whop le stone looked lonely fered the same fate. Noe m se er to stand outside the and isolated, condemn

circle. Jenny stopped the bike and wiped her palms over the tissue. The hills were already misting into grey but the clouds broke and allowed a banks of bracken, was no sound but trickle of sun on to the moor. There ere was for the wind wh ispenng across the heather. it was no one to be seen now; she was alone. And perfectly safe on a bike - as long as you didn t get a puncture. ‘Oh, damn! led to turn her bike upside She dismounted and struggled

down to inspect the back tyre. Immediately she saw the glitter of a sliver of glass. It had slit a gaping wound in the rubber tread and gone straight through to puncture the inner tube. She pulled the glass free, flinching at the sharp edges, and listened to the last gasp of escaping air. The tyre looked peculiarly lifeless as it hung from the wheel, the soft grey skin of its collapsed tube protruding under the rim. Jenny knew what a hassle it was to get the tyre off the back wheel, repair and replace it, and she was already reaching that state of tiredness where everything felt like a major task. But there was nothing else for it. Sighing, she flipped the quick-release lever and dropped the wheel on the ground. The forks of the bike pointed into the air in an undignified posture, like a dead animal on its back. She was reminded of a photograph that had been taken at the height of the panic over mad cow disease. It had shown a slaughtered British Holstein cow, a huge animal with its stomach bloated, its vast udder shiny and leaking a dribble of milk, and its four stiff legs pointing ludicrously to the sky. The cow had been waiting its turn to be rolled into an incinerator. Its photograph had been on the front of leaflets that Jenny had helped to distribute, and she had seen it so many times that the details had stayed with her ever since, along with other images of things that had been done to animals. Automatically, she patted the pouch she wore round her waist, to make sure it was still there. Soon, she would have to decide what to do with what it contained.

Jenny shivered e cold. The feathery stems e’ ocotton and the evening would b grass created patches of golden mist close to the ground. They hovered just above the heather, moving in the wind like live creatures stirring in their nests.ears that It was the noise of the wind in jenny’s covered the soft sound of footsteps until the walker was only a few feet behind her.

In half an hour, Mark was due to go off duty. Owen had given him exact instructions for his first solo patrol - a pass across the face of Ringham and a descent into the valley on the far side, where the moor turned into farmland. There he s for recent damage, and have la scout stiles and signpost around for the worst of the litter left by hikers. On the way back, he should have a glance at the Nine Virgins to see that the ancient monument more scarred than usual; have a word, to have vitched their tents in campers foolhardy k c uldn hmagme why anybody would the woods. Mar want to camp on they were But still t did it. of alone in November. breaking the law when they did. Near the top of the-track he noticed a crumpled Coke Mutteri can, dropped by some careless visitorangrily, angrily, he picked it up and slipped it under the flap chocolate of his rucksack, where it joined a small pile el of empty bar wrappers, aluminium ring-pulls an

Marlboro packet Mark mond Tower, to be disposed of later-near the Hamm

couldn’t tolerate the attitude that made people think it was OK to scatter the environment with litter. They thought their own convenience was more important. If he had his way, Mark would ban these people completely from the national park. He would put tollgates on all the entrance roads and issue passes for admission. It might come to it one day, too. The park couldn’t cope with the constantly rising numbers. There were tyre tracks in the sandy soil here. That meant there had been a mountain biker this way recently. Mark knew his by-laws; he had read the regulations carefully, and he knew what was allowed and what wasn’t. The Peak District National Park Authority had prosecuted mountain bikers before. He smiled in satisfaction, then immediately felt guilty. Owen said the main skills you needed as a Ranger were tact and diplomacy. Why get into an argument when you could achieve more with a friendly word of advice? Mark knew he had a lot to learn. Sometimes he couldn’t find the right things to say to people who appalled him with their stupidity and their disregard for their own safety, the property of others - and, above all, for the environment and its wildlife. That was their greatest crime, these people who desecrated the moors. The last thing they deserved was diplomacy. Though it was only two o’clock, it would be starting to go dark in a couple of hours’ time. For a few days now, Mark had noticed that peculiar half-light, like full moonlight, that came at five o’clock in the afternoon, when all the colours seemed to change and glow for a few minutes before fading into the darkness. The

Summer turning back of the clocks at the end of Briers Walkers Time always worried the Peak Park Rang were liable to miscalculate and still be on the hills when it went dark. cold, but Mark didn’t feel The afternoon was turning the chill. The red fleece jacket he wore prouit was dly, aalso

its silver Peak Park insignia, kept him way came across a reassuring sight for the visitors a Rang - those who were lost and bewildered, exhausted or injured, or simply inadequately dressed and too poorly or walking the moors. The sight of the red equipped f was like a friendly . It meant a Ranger beacon. approaching.

Jenny Weston had been in the act of smiling when rishe slipped shattered, her died. Her smile had as stiffened into a grin of fear ribs. coated, and with a The blade was sharp, tungsten

lethal tip. It slit the cotton and a layer subcutaneous fat aslit through her skin anyer of a of blood thrust towards her Tea .and aalsingleh spur the her T-shirt turned splashed on to the handlebars of the Kokomo. the wound As soon as the knife was Withdrawn, looked hers Jenny looked closed and ceased to bleed esse the the red pressed down, astonished, and patch. Inside her ribcage, her heart sac was already filling with leaking blood; the pressure of it squeezed her heart and constricted its movement. Then her left lung deflated and a gush of fluids filled the cavity. She

began to feel light-headed; her hands and feet turned numb, and her legs lost the strength to hold her body upright. She made no resistance as she was grasped under the armpits and dragged across the clearing, with her heels leaving trails in the sandy soil. As fresh blood failed to reach her brain and extremities, her skin turned a dirty white; her legs and belly looked like lumps of boiled fish as they were deliberately exposed to the light. The blade of the knife left a red smear where it was wiped on the grass. From the handlebars of the bike, a small trickle of blood had run down on to the front wheel. It dripped slowly from spoke to spoke, already darkening and thickening in the air, until it was absorbed into the ground. By the time her attacker had finished, or not long after, Jenny Weston was dead. Mark knew it happened sometimes, but it was such a pointless thing to do. Mindless and irresponsible. Now and then the Ranger briefings mentioned a bike that had not been returned to the hire centre. Hirers had to give proof of their identity and leave a name and address, as well as a Ł20 deposit, so it was hardly worth trying to get away with a mountain bike, considering how easily you would get caught. But sometimes there was one who took the bike away with them. Occasionally, they simply abandoned it on one of the tracks, in a car park, or up here on the moor, like this one. None of it ever made sense to Mark.

The sight of the Kokomo under the gorse bush angered him unreasonably. Its presence w t like a violation - the evidence of selfish humanity ing into his world, like children pawing his most precious possessions with grubby fingers. The bike had been treated as just so much rubbish. Then Mark looked more closely. A streak of red had stained the canary yellow paintwork of the front stem and left rust-like spots on the spokes. He shivd with misgiving and fingered the radio in his pocket* Suddenly he wished he adn’t come out alone, after all. alongside him, no There was no reassuring p

Owen there to know exactly Wa shaking hand, Mark made a note of the colour, With it the pages of model and number of the bike, crumpling his notebook in his haste to get it out of his pocket. The act of writing made him feel better, more in control, as if the ink marks on the page had magically brought a air: ‘Observe, keep a note, report familiar voice from the

back.’ ‘Yes, Owen,’ whispered Mark. dng on his forehead and the back Feelingthesweat ryi bike of his neck, he forced himself to walk past the to where the stones were clustered among the spa ilg birches. Somebody had lit a fire here recently, scorched earth and a pile of white ash. People were always lighting fires near the Virgins, as if they thought the flames might melt their stony hearts. At the midsummer solstice, there were hundreds of folk up here at night, and they did a lot more than light fires. Mark stopped abruptly as he looked into the circle.

The sensations that came reminded him of the terrors of his puberty, the physical sickness and the guilt. He tried to concentrate on studying the ground, to look for evidence of bike tracks or footprints. He tried to think about casting around for telltale objects that might have been dropped by someone who had been in the area. I’m observing, he told himself. I must observe. Be professional and calm, and don’t rush into anything. But he couldn’t keep up the pretence for long. His eyes just wouldn’t focus on anything else. With shameful fascination, Mark found his attention drawn to the centre of the stone circle, where the white shape lay in such startling, rousing incongruity. ‘Oh, Jesus.’ The body of the woman sprawled obscenely among the stones. Her half-naked torso had been flung on the rough grass, her arms and legs twisted in provocative gestures. Her right knee was lifted high, to the level of her waist, and her left leg was stretched taut, as if she might be about to spring into the air. Mark could see every detail of the muscles in her legs, the tendons rigid under the skin at the top of her thigh, the faint crinkling of cellulite on her hips. Her pose was a caricature of life, a cruel parody of flamboyance and movement. Her hands were tilted at the wrist, her toes pointed downwards, and her head nodded to silent music. She was spread against the ground in a final arabesque, in a fatal pirouette, or the last fling of an abandoned tango. Mark wondered whether to write it down. But it sounded too strange, and his hand wouldn’t write any

more, anyway. Instead, he repeated it to himself, over and over, in his head. A dead woman dancing. She looked like a dead woman, dancing. Fifteen miles to the north, in the town of Edendale, the battle had been going on for an hour and a quarter already. The police officers in the front line were battered and breathing hard, their faces swollen with exertion, and their hair stuck to their foreheads with sweat. One or two had their shirts ripped. Another had blood trickling from a cut on his eye. Detective Constable Ben Cooper could see his colleague, Todd Weenink, deep in the thick of it. Weenink had two PCs from the Tactical Support Unit close on either side of him, and there were more men coming in from behind to assist them. They looked exhausted, their expressions grim, but determined. They were struggling against the odds, fighting a battle of containment that they were constantly in danger of losing. The students were charging forward in a solid mass, forcing the police to give ground under the onslaught. In the melee, close up, anything could be happening a poke in the eye, a boot in the crutch, teeth sinking into an ear. The police had not been issued with riot shields or helmets today; there was no body armour, ^ no snarling Alsatians or horses to keep the students at

17 16

bay. There had been no authority given for the use of special weapons, no tear gas canisters held nervously in reserve. In addition, the police had to face a ceaseless barrage of noise - chanted slogans, shouts of abuse and a constant stream of profanities from a hostile crowd. Cooper pulled his hands out of his jeans pockets and turned his coat collar up to try to shut out the cacophony. If he could, he would have closed his eyes, too, to avoid seeing the slaughter, to stop himself from imagining the consequences if the police line collapsed. In

Division. humiliatinoton a another moment, t Cont Constabulary end in

for Derbyshire single arrest made so far. ‘What are we going to do, Sarge?’ he said. Detective Sergeant Rennie was an old a his had seen it all before. He rubbed his jowls, pulled closer around his shoulders, and winced as a PC went and was trampled underfoot. he said. ‘We’ll send out a quesdown Conduct a survey; ‘ tionnaire. ‘I suppose so. But it’s a bit pathetic, Cooper nodded.

isn’t it?’ ‘We’ll make sure there are lots of tick boxes to fill in.’ ‘Even so … d sighed. ‘It’s all we can do, Ben. Rennie shrugged an Otherwise, we just have to sit back and let it happen.’ The police formed a wall and turned ltoeface Cooper attackers again. Beyond the opposing of the High could see the

the lower slopes of the hill. They looked cammpus, set

down on Edendale like benign giants, the educational heights of the Eden Valley. He began to search his pockets for a packet of mints to take the taste of nausea from his mouth. He had a lot of pockets - in his jeans, in his checked shirt, on the inside and the outside of his waxed jacket. But all he found was a scatter of cashpoint receipts, two empty shotgun cartridge cases and half a packet of dog biscuits. Cooper knew there was more than just education that went on in those college buildings on the hill. He had been there himself, for long enough to collect the A-levels he needed to get into the police service. His fellow students had accused him of being singleminded, as if his determination made them guilty about their own pursuit of parties and casual sex. But there had been a demon driving Ben Cooper that his contemporaries would never have understood - a jealous God who would not have tolerated parties. Dave Rennie sat back comfortably in his seat and unscrewed the top of a vacuum flask. He offered Cooper a plastic cup, which he refused as soon as he got a whiff of the metallic tang of the coffee. The sergeant’s expression was serious, his forehead creased with anxiety, like a man with a great responsibility on his mind.

‘You see, if they get rid of the kitchen and sack the canteen staff, that means they’ll put vending machines in instead,’ he said. ‘And then what would happen? I mean, would anybody use them? There’s no point in spending money on vending machines if they don’t get

L used. It would look bad in the budgets, wasting money at a time like this.’ Todd Weenink duck his head and Cooper watched drive his shoulders forward to meet a wiry-haired youth who’d been tormenting him all afternoon. There was a thud as their skulls connected and a scuffing as their feet lashed out. The crowd behind Cooper began yelling. Then the police back-pedalled. Officers fell and were trampled as they lay on the ground. But Weenink broke away and looked around, bemused. His eyes were dazed, as if he might have taken a knock on the head. Then he looked up and caught sight of a student running past him, and made an instinctive grab. The student’s legs folded beneath him under the impact of Weenink’s sixteen stone, and they both sprawled in the mud, exhausted and gasping. Cooper smiled. Quite by chance, it had been the right student Weenink had flattened. The High Peak College wing-threequarter happened to be in possession of the ball, and had been racing for the touchline, within seconds of scoring the winning try of the match. Even while the two opposing players were struggling to get up again from the tackle, the referee blew the final’ whistle. The match had been saved: 12-10 to Edendale Police. ‘Thank God for that,’ said Cooper. ‘Honour preserved, I suppose; said Rennie, putting away his flask. ‘I don’t know about that, Sarge. But our lot always trash the bar if they lose.’

Cooper left the touchline and headed for the clubhouse. In his early days in E Division, they had tried to recruit him to the rugby team. They had thought he looked tall and fit enough to be an asset, but had accused him of lacking ruthlessness in the ruck. Now his job was to order the jugs of beer for the changingroom celebrations. Loyalty to your colleagues meant doing such things on a Sunday afternoon, even when you would rather be at home watching videos with your nieces. After ten years, Cooper was able to look back on his days at High Peak College with some nostalgia. His life had possessed a definite purpose then. Succeeding in his exams had been his role in life, and joining the police his destiny. The feeling had stayed with him through his time as a uniformed constable on the beat; it had followed him as he moved into CID and began to learn a different way of policing. His progress had been watched every inch of the way, and mostly approved of. Mostly. The times when he had made mistakes or expressed doubts were still imprinted in his memory. Then, two years ago, everything had changed. With the violent death of his father, Police Sergeant Joe Cooper, a prop had been knocked from under him, and a great weight had been lifted from his back. His guiding hand had been taken away, and his life had been given back to him. But it had already been too late for Ben Cooper. He had become what his father made him. ‘So that’s why we have to do this Vending Machine Usage Survey,’ said Rennie, pronouncing the capital letters carefully as he walked at Cooper’s shoulder. ‘To

get an idea of the possible take-up on the proposed new refreshment facilities. It’s so that somebody in Admin at HQ can make an informed decision. A decision supported by constructive feedback from the customer base.’ Cooper could practically see the internal memo that Rennie was quoting from. The sergeant had coffee soaking into his moustache. He was wearing knitted woollen gloves, for Heaven’s sake. He looked like somebody’s granddad on an off-season outing to Blackpool. Cooper was conscious that his own thirtieth birthday was approaching next year. It loomed in the distance like a summer storm cloud, making him feel his youth was nearly over before he had got used to being in his twenties. One day, he could be another Dave Rennie. ‘I think Todd might have got a bit of concussion, Sarge.’ ‘He always looks like that; said Rennie. ‘He got a knock on the head.’ ‘Don’t worry - Weenink doesn’t let anybody mess with him. He always gets his revenge.’ Todd Weenink was different, of course. During the last couple of months Cooper had found himself thrown together with Weenink in the latest round of restructuring in the division. In these circumstances, the relationship became almost like a marriage. The issue of ‘them and us’ became focused on a single individual. But there were times when you needed another officer at your side. Without the man or woman at your side, you could find yourself looking the wrong way at the wrong time You had to have a person you could put your trust in. They supported you; and you supported them. Cooper knew it was a law written in invisible ink on the back of the warrant card they gave you when you were sworn in as a constable. It was sewn into your first uniform like an extra seam; it was the page that they always forgot to print in the Police Training Manual. Only a couple of weeks earlier, Weenink had been the man at his side when they had raided a small-scale drugs factory in a converted warehouse on the outskirts of Edendale. One of the occupants had produced a pickaxe, but he had been too slow, and they had executed a takedown between them, with no one injured. Cooper reassured himself by thinking of his date with Helen Milner later on. Within an hour, he would be out of the rugby club and away. He and Helen hadn’t decided where they would go yet. Probably it would be a walk to get the noise out of his head, then a drink or two at the Light House before a meal somewhere. The Light House was where they had gone the very first time they had gone out together. It was hardly more than two months ago that they had met again at Helen’s grandparents’ house in the village of Moorhay and resumed a relationship that had started when they were schoolfriends. But their new beginning had not been without difficulties. Nothing ever was. The clubhouse corridor smelled of sweat and mud and disinfectant, with a permanent underlying essence of embrocation. Dave Rennie helped Cooper carry the jugs of beer to the players in the visitors’ changing room. Then the sergeant’s pager began to bleep.

22 2 23

‘Oh, God damn it. What now?’ Cooper watched Rennie go to the phone in the corridor. He looked back over his shoulder at the changingroom door, which swung open with the constant passing to and fro of players and supporters. Todd Weenink was out of the shower, towelling himself in the middle of a raucous mob, his naked bulk perfectly at home in a melee of pink male flesh and echoing laughter. Weenink already had a beer in front of him. It was amazing that he could keep up the pace. He had arrived for the match only at the very last minute, when everyone else was changed and ready to go out on the pitch, thinking they were going to have to play a man short, and cursing him for letting them down. No doubt Weenink had been out on the booze the night before and had woken up in someone else’s bed many miles away, with rugby the last thing on his mind. Cooper shook his head at the intrusive thoughts that came to him - the contrast between Weenink’s muscular, hairy nakedness and the picture he carried in his mind of the last colleague he had worked so closely with. Todd’s open, up-front, relaxed maleness was world away from Detective Constable Diane Fry. Former Detective Constable, he should say. Now Actin Detective Sergeant. It was a subject Cooper didn’t really want to thin1 about. It brought with it painful memories, some 01 which he still didn’t understand but suspected migh be his own fault.

After a few minutes, he realized Dave Rennie hadn’t come back into the bar. In the steamy atmosphere of the changing room, he couldn’t see Todd either. He had to shout to make himself heard, even when close enough to tap one of the players on the shoulder. ‘Have you seen Todd Weenink?’ ‘He’s gone,’ said the player. ‘Control bleeped Dave Rennie, and Todd went off with him. They went off in a hurry, too. Todd hadn’t even managed to put his trousers on.’ ‘You’re joking.’

‘No, mate. I saw him myself, with his arse hanging out. Should you be with them?’

Cooper stared bleakly at the player. ‘I’m not on call. Control wouldn’t have asked for me.’ ‘Right. You’re the lucky one, then. You can have a few beers.’

‘A few beers, yeah. What more could I ask for?’ Suddenly, Cooper’s mood plummeted. He felt as if he had just been jilted by a lover. If there was a job on, he wanted to be there. He wanted to be part of the team. He wondered why loyalty had to be so painful. And when would he learn to give his loyalty in the right direction? He ought to have learned that lesson from Diane Fry - their brief relationship had certainly been difficult enough to drive it home. Cooper shuddered at a premonition. He thought it likely that she could inflict more pain on him yet, given the chance. The police vehicles cluttering up the roadsides at the bottom of the main track on to Ringham Moor made

24 2 25

Diane Fry frown in exasperation. The scene looked chaotic, as cars with beacons flashing arrived one after another in the gathering dusk and slewed across the narrow verge. A minibus carrying the Tactical Support Unit was unable to squeeze through the gap left by the parked cars until a uniformed sergeant yelled at someone to move. Figures in reflective yellow jackets were caught briefly in the headlights as they passed aimlessly backwards and forwards. Fry itched to take control of the situation, to bring order and a bit of sense to officers so charged with excitement and adrenalin that they were causing more trouble than they were worth. But, in fact, she shouldn” even be here at all. She had thought she had got awa from E Division, that her few weeks in Edendale ha been a bad dream she could soon put behind her. Bu here she still was, answering the call. And before sh knew what was happening, she had found herself out the Peak District countryside again, where civilizatio seemed like a dim memory and the twenty-first centu was reduced to the fantasy of a Victorian novelist. She stood with Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens o the rocks overlooking the road. A fine drizzle was se tling on their clothes and in their hair, and turning t’

gritstone slab under their feet a shade darker. Wi Hitchens at her side, Fry felt as though she had take another step closer in her ambitions. She was alread ‘acting up’ as a detective sergeant, with a transfer to permanent DS’s job in the offing when the immine re-shuffle took place. A move couldn’t come too soon for Fry. At all cos she must avoid the crazy distractions and misjudgements that had plagued her in a spell shortly after her arrival in E Division from West Midlands. The name of her biggest misjudgement was Ben Cooper. The thought of him immediately sparked the surge of anger that always bubbled somewhere deep in her stomach, churning thick and corrosive like an acid that flowed in her small intestines. It happened every time; it only took the mention of Cooper’s name, or even a burst of the wrong music. There were cassettes that she used to play often in her car which she had been forced to throw away - not just casually chucked on the back seat, but hurled into the nearest wheelie bin, with their spools of magnetic tape ripped out and shredded like the innards of a rat she had once seen killed and torn apart by a police Alsatian in a derelict warehouse back in Birmingham. If there had been an open fire in her flat, she would have burned the tapes; she would have happily watched their plastic cases crack and twist and bubble, as they melted into a greasy smear. Fry wiped a sheen of drizzle from her face, where it was starting to make her cheeks feel damp and uncomfortable. No, she hadn’t quite managed to erase Ben Cooper from her memory yet. But she was working on it.

‘We’ve arranged for you to see Maggie Crew at six o’clock,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘You’d better get going, as soon as this lot are out of our way.’ ‘Was she willing to see me?’ ‘Willing isn’t a word I’d use. She’s bloody hard work.’ ‘She’s uncooperative? But why?’

‘You’ll see. Form your own impressions of her, Diane, her

that’s the best way. We want you to get to know her. Get under her skin. Be ranrresented with a chance to

Fry knew she was b g p do something different, to escape the routine chores that the Ben Coopers of the world would be allocated during this enquiry. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ approval. ‘When are they goin Hitchens nodded in app to stop messing about d dressed casually, in denims an DI Hitchers was trainers, and he looked like Hia sncheeks were dark should and been doing something else. unshaven, and there were specks of white paint in hiS hair. ‘We’ve got to keep the road open,’ said the sergean importantly as he passed below them. ‘Yeah. You’re doing a great job. We can see that.’ ‘Control reckons the cavalry,s on thinspector e rugb They tracked down a couple of your

match.’ Fry knew exactly what that meant. The rugby mat was where Ben Cooper would have been with friend, Todd Weenink, and no doubt DS Dave Renni too. Cooper wasn’t a rugby-playing man himself. Fro her own experience, Fry reckoned he was more like to be taking out the half-time oranges and cleaning t players’ boots, generally getting in the way and makin helpful suggestions. But he would have been at t match to support his colleagues. Oh yes, Ben Coo was a great one for supporting his friends. ‘Oh, and you’ll be pleased to know our lads won too!’ called the sergeant. Fry blew through her teeth and jammed her hands into the pockets of her coat, squaring her shoulders like someone bracing herself for a fight. Rennie, Cooper, and Weenink. The dream team. Just what E Division needed to stamp on a spate of attacks on women. At last it looked as though someone had located another place to park. Radios crackled, the sergeant shouted, and cars began to move off, flashing their headlights and spinning their wheels dramatically on the grass as they went. But as the patrols and vans made space, another car arrived. It was an unmarked Mondeo - a private car, not a police vehicle. The doors popped open and a warm fug seemed to ooze out into the evening chill. A voice was raised in complaint from the back seat. ‘I can’t believe we left those uniformed bastards with all the beer,’ it said. Fry recognized DC Weenink immediately. He was damp-haired and pink-faced, and his voice sounded petulant, like an overgrown child. She watched in disgust as he poked bare, muscular legs out of the car door and struggled to pull his trousers on over his jockey shorts. Parts of his anatomy bulged dangerously from his underclothes, and the buttons of his shirt were unfastened over his hairy chest. Even from sevral yards away, Fry knew that his breath smelled of Icohol. She watched DS Rennie get out of the driver’s seat. Ut no Ben Cooper. Suddenly, Fry felt more cheerful.

Her shoulders relaxed, her lips formed a contemptuous smile.

‘Well, if that’s the cavalry,’ she said, ‘my money’s on the Indians.’

DI Hitchens laughed. Weenink heard the laugh, and he looked around for its source. He grinned up at Fry, with his zip still open, his hands pressed round his crotch, the position of them emphasizing rather than concealing the bulge in his shorts.

‘Excuse me, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Can you use me at all?’

Fry stared at him, but Weenink’s grin only grew broader, until it became a smirk. She turned to stride away from the road. She had no time to waste on petty irritations - not when a woman’s entire life had already been wasted up there on the moor. She had seen enough wasted lives, and her own had almost been one of them. But not any more.

Ben Cooper took a swig from his bottle, conserving the beer carefully, anxious about drinking too much. He

didn’t want to become a solitary drinker, though th temptation was strong.

A few minutes ago, he had rung Control to find ou

what was happening. They said the body of a woma

had been found on Ringham Moor, fifteen miles sout

of Edendale. A suspected murder. The control roo

operator didn’t need to mention the other attack tha had taken place not a mile away from the same spo

six weeks before. In that case, the victim had survive - just about.

Now Cooper’s mind was no longer with him as he sat in the sweaty rugby club bar. It was elsewhere, drifting across the moors towards a flutter of tape and the flashing lights, the sound of urgent voices, and the scents and the electric crackle in the air that never failed to give him a buzz of excitement. That sense of satisfaction from taking his place in the team was a thing that couldn’t be explained to someone who had never experienced it.

Yet tomorrow morning, he knew he would be sitting in the monthly Crime Strategy Meeting for Edendale Section. He would be discussing the section’s annual local objectives, the implementation of liaison policies and the measurement of performance. Occasionally, in these meetings, they talked about crime. But they hardly ever talked about the victims.

Cooper watched the rugby players reach the traditional highlight of the evening, when they began to pour pints of beer over each other’s heads. The bare wooden floor of the bar was already awash and turning sticky underfoot. Some of the students looked irritated at the way their clubhouse was being taken over by the more boisterous and more aggressive celebratory style of the police. Soon it would reach the point when it might be better not to have to witness a colleague committing a breach of the peace.

It was time for Ben Cooper to leave. He needed to be awake and alert for the meeting in the morning, and he had a stack of burglaries to work on, as well as a serious assault on a bouncer at one of Edendale’s night clubs. With officers seconded to the murder enquiry, no

30 0 31

doubt there would be someone else’s workload to take over as well. Besides, if he stayed any longer, he would drink too much. It was definitely time to go home. But home was Bridge End Farm, in the shadow of Camphill. Though he was close to his brother Matt, Matt’s young family were gradually making the house their own, until their video games and guinea pig cages left little room for Ben. So for a while he sat on in’ the bar, like an old man in the corner watching the youngsters enjoy themselves, and he thought about the body on Ringham Moor. With a bit of luck, the police team would find some obvious leads and get an early closure. There would be initial witness statements that pointed with clunk ing obviousness to a boyfriend or a spurned lover Sometimes it was as if the perpetrator carried a giant, fluorescent arrow round with him and the word ‘guilty in bright red letters that were visible five miles awa in poor light. All the team would need to do then wa make sure they collected the forensic evidence at th scene without either contaminating it, losing it or stick ing the wrong label on it so that no one could say after wards where it had been found. It was amazing wha could happen to evidence between the first report of crime and the day a case came to court. Cooper fought his’ way to the bar, shouting to th barman to make himself heard above the din. It seeme as though no one else in here wanted to sit down - the were all up on their feet, shouting at each other. Th police were singing triumphal songs, having a gre time. The students were starting to look hostile. The American beer Cooper was drinking came in a brown bottle, with a black label and a faint wisp of vapour from its open neck. It was cold, and he closed both his hands round it, drawing a strange comfort from its chill for a moment before he turned and carried it away from the bar. Instead of returning to his corner, he slipped out of the door into the cooler air outside. For a while, he leaned against a rail near the changing rooms, gazing at the empty pitch, watching the starlings that had arrived in the dusk to pick over the divots in the turf, searching for worms exposed by the players’ studs. He became distantly aware of a more aggressive note to the shouting in the bar behind him, but decided it wasn’t his concern. Cooper continued to believe it was nothing to do with him right up until the moment that a six-foot six-inch student lock forward put a hand like a meat plate on his shoulder.

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Diane Fry had never seen Detective Chief Inspector Stewart Tailby quite so agitated. The DCI loomed owe his group of officers like a head teacher with a class full of pupils in detention, and he was shouting a the Senior SOCO from the Scientific Support Unit. Tailby’s strangely two-tone hair was trembling in the wind as he turned and paced around the crim scene. ‘We’ve got to hit this area fast,’ he said. ‘We can possibly seal it off - we’d need every man in E Division We need to get what we can before the public get u here and trample over everything.’ ‘Well, we could do it in a rush, but it won’t be we selective,’ said the SOCO. ‘Sod being selective,’ said Tailby. ‘Take everythin We’ll worry about being selective later.’ A few yards away, DI Hitchens manoeuvred to kee his senior officer within distance. Other officers ebbe and flowed awkwardly around them, like extras in badly staged Gilbert and Sullivan opera, who had ju realized that nobody had told them what to do wi their hands. ‘The light’s failing fast,’ said Hitchens, gazing at the sky. ‘Well, thanks for that,’ snapped Tailby. ‘I thought I was going blind.’ The DCI strode over to the side of the stone circle and looked down into the disused quarry beyond it. There was a barbed wire fence, but it was too low to keep anybody out. On the other side could be seen the last few yards of an access road, which ended on the lip of the quarry. Diane Fry stretched her neck to see what Tailby was looking at. Someone had been flytipping from the roadway. She could just make out tyre marks, and a heap of bulging black bin liners, some yellow plastic sheeting and a roll of carpet that had been heaved off the edge. The rubbish lay scattered on the slope like the debris of a plane crash. ‘Find out where the entrance to that quarry is,’ said Tailby. ‘And somebody will have to go down there. We need to find the rest of the clothes. Top priority.’ Hitchens had to dodge as Tailby wheeled suddenly and strode back towards the stones, avoiding the lengths of blue tape twisted together between birch trees and metal stakes. In the centre of the circle, the pathologist, Mrs Van Doon, still crouched over the victim under makeshift lighting. Tailby’s face contorted. He seemed to find something outrageous and obscene in the posture of the body. ‘Where’s that tent?’ he called. ‘Get the tent over her before we have an audience.’ He turned his back and walked on a few yards from the circle, where a single stone stood on its

own. DI Hitchens trailed after him at a safe distance. ‘There’s an inscription carved on this stone,’ announced Tailby, with the air of Moses coming down from the mountain. ‘Yes. It looks like a name, sir.’ ‘We’ll need a photographer over here. I want that name deciphering.’ ‘It’s well away from the path,’ said Hitchens. ‘We think the assailant probably brought his victim from the other direction.’ ,So?’ ‘The inscription has probably been there for years. ‘Do you know that? Are you familiar with the stones?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Ever seen them before in your life?’ ‘No, sir.’ Tailby turned. ‘No point asking you, Fry, is there?’ Fry shrugged, but the DCI wasn’t waiting for answer. He looked around to see who else he coul find. ‘You lot, there! Anyone seen these stones befor They’re a famous landmark, they tell me. A significa part of our ancient heritage. They’re an attraction. Visi ors flock to see them. What about you?’ The officers shook their heads. They were the sort men who spent their free time in the pub or in front the telly, doing a bit of DIY or visiting the garden centr The ones with kids went to Alton Towers and Gullive Kingdom. But this thing in front of them wasn’t a the park. There were no white-knuckle rides or icecre vans. Tailby turned back to Hitchens. ‘OK, see? We know nothing about it. We’re all as ignorant as a lot of monkeys. This stone circle might as well be a Tibetan yak compound, for all we know about the place.’ ‘Yes, but ‘ ‘Just see that it’s done,’ snarled Tailby. Then the DCI looked back to where Mrs Van Doon was working. Fry could see that more inscriptions had been scratched into the dirt in the centre of the circle, close to the body. The letters were big and bold, and they spelled out ‘STRIDE’. Whoever had made these was less interested in leaving a long-term record of his presence, though. The drizzle was hardly touching the marks, but a couple of heavy showers would wash them clean away.

‘What about those, then?’ said Tailby. ‘You’re not going to tell me those have been there for years?’ ‘No,’ admitted Hitchens. ‘They’ve got to be more recent.’

‘When did it rain in this area last? Properly, I mean?’ Tailby stared around him. The officers gathered nearby looked at each other, then up at the sky. Fry sympathized. They were detectives - they spent all their time buried in paperwork or making phone calls in windowless offices; occasionally they drove around in a car, shuttling from pub to crown court and back again. How were they supposed to know when it had rained? It was well known that DI Hitchens had just bought a new house in Chesterfield. Tailby himself had a ranchstyle bungalow in a desirable part of Dronfield. Most of the other officers lived miles away, down in the lower

valleys and the dormitory villages. Some of them were from the suburbs of Derby. It could be blowing a blizzard up here on the moor, piling up six-foot drifts of virgin snow, and all these men would see was a faint bit of sleet in the condensation on their kitchen windows. ‘Does it matter?’ said Hitchens. Tailby smiled like a fox with a rabbit. ‘It matters, Inspector, because we can’t say whether the inscriptions were written in the last twenty-four hours or the las two weeks.’ ‘I suppose so, sir.’ Teeth bared, Tailby glared round for another victim There was a shuffling and looking away, a lot o thoughtful glances at the grey blanket of cloud. ‘You useless set of pillocks! Doesn’t anyone know Then find me someone who does!’ Mark Roper finally opened his eyes as Owen Fox parke the Land Rover behind the Partridge Cross briefin centre. The cycle hire staff had closed up for the night’ but there were still a few visitors’ cars left outside. couple were securing their bikes to a rack. It occurre to Mark Roper that one of the cars that still stood dar and unattended probably belonged to the worn whose body lay on the moor. ‘Come on, Mark. Let’s get you inside,’ said Owen. For a moment, Mark didn’t move. Then, slowly, h unfolded his legs and got out. He felt stiff, like an of man with arthritis. His jacket was crumpled, there we grass stains on his knees and black marks on his hand He couldn’t think where the marks had come from, b his hands felt unpleasant and greasy, as if there was something on his skin that would take a long time to remove.

He swayed and supported himself on the side of the Land Rover. Owen moved nearer, not touching him but hovering anxiously. ‘We have to wait while the police come to speak to you, Mark,’ he said. ‘I know.’ ‘Are you up to it?’ ‘I’m all right.’ Owen Fox was a large man, a little ungainly from carrying too much weight around his upper body. His curly hair and wiry beard were going grey, and his face was worn and creased, the sign of a man who spent his life outdoors, regardless of the weather. Mark wanted to draw reassurance from his presence, to lean on his comforting bulk, but an uncertainty held him back. Owen finally took Mark by the arm. But the reassurance failed to come. The contact was safe and impersonal, Owen’s fingers meeting only the fabric of the young Ranger’s red fleece jacket. Mark shivered violently, as if his only source of warmth had suddenly been withdrawn.

‘Let’s get inside,’ said Owen. ‘It’s cold out here. You look to me as though you need a hot drink. A cup of my tea will bring some colour back to your cheeks, won’t it? Green, maybe - but at least it’ll be colour.’ Mark smiled weakly. ‘I’m fine.’ ‘You’re probably suffering from shock. We ought to get a doctor to look at you.’

38 0 39

‘No. I’ll be all right, Owen.’ The briefing centre was empty, but warm. The blackboard on the far wall contained white chalk scrawl that gleamed in the sudden light. The words meant nothing to Mark now. In the corner, the assistant’s desk was scattered with papers - reports and forms, the encroaching paperwork of the modern Peak Park Ranger. Soon, a computer would arrive, even here. Mark needed no encouragement to collapse into a chair near the electric heater. Owen watched him, his face creased with concern, then turned to switch on the kettle. ‘Plenty of sugar in your tea, for the shock.’ Sugar, and a reassuring voice, thought Mark. The things that people needed were simple, really - such as stability and their own part to play in life. But it was Owen he had learned to look to for stability. Now he’ had an inexplicable fear that it would be snatched from his life again. ‘The things people leave on the moor,’ said Owen ‘Litter and rubbish. You’d think they’d at least take thei dead bodies home with them.’ This time Mark couldn’t smile. Owen looked at him. ‘I did tell you to keep in touc Mark,’ he said. ‘I tried, Owen. But I couldn’t get an answer.’ Owen grimaced. ‘Those radios.’ I mustn’t make him feel guilty, thought Mark. Don make him take this burden on himself as well as every thing else. Mark was aware that there were things h didn’t know about Owen, that in their relationshi he only saw the surface of the older man. But there was one thing he did know. Owen needed no more burdens. Ben Cooper jumped at the hand on his shoulder and tensed his body for trouble. He cursed himself for having allowed someone to find him on his own in a vulnerable position. The hand felt like a great weight. The tall student was massively built, with a red, sweaty face and a squashed nose. He leaned down and spoke into Cooper’s ear with a voice that growled like a boulder in a landslide. At first, Cooper had no idea what he was saying. He thought the noise in the bar must have damaged his hearing permanently. He shook his head. The student leaned closer, breathing beer fumes on his neck. ‘You are Constable Cooper, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’

‘I said there’s someone on the phone for you. Some daft bastard who wants to know when it rained last.’ Ten minutes later, Cooper slid into the passenger seat of a Ford Mondeo as it scattered gravel on the sports ground car park. ‘It’s a what, Todd?’ ‘A cyclist from Sheffield; said Weenink. ‘She was found in the middle of the stones on Ringham Moor.’ ‘You mean the Nine Virgins?’ ‘That’s the place. You got it in one. I can see why the SCI loves you.’

‘Everybody knows the Nine Virgins,’ said Cooper.

40 41

‘I wish you’d introduce me, then. I can’t find even one virgin where I live.’ Cooper could detect the sweet smell of beer in the car. He wondered if Weenink was fit to drive. It would be ironic if they got stopped by a Traffic patrol. Todd could lose his job, if he was breathalysed. ‘Is Mr Tailby in charge up there?’ ‘He’s SIO until they manage to pull a superintendent in from somewhere,’ said Weenink. ‘He’s not a happy’, man. He’s got a wide-open scene, public access, SOCOs scattered over a space as big as four football pitches. Also, he has a temper on him as foul as my breath o a Saturday night. But we have to report to DI Hitchens And let me tell you, we’re bloody lucky Hitche arrived.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Earlier on, it was DI Armstrong at the scene. Th Wicked Witch of West Street.’ ‘Don’t say that.’ ‘The Bitch of Buxton, then.’ ‘Shut up, Todd.’ Weenink stopped at the junction of the A6, an seemed to spend a long time waiting for distant traffi to pass on the main road. Finally, he pulled out behin a tanker carrying milk for Hartington Stilton. ‘You don’t understand, Ben,’ he said. ‘That Kim Ar strong, she’s so scary. I’m frightened she’ll put a spe on me and turn me into a eunuch.’ ‘Will you cut it out?’ ‘No, seriously, Ben. They reckon she cursed Ossi Clarke in Traffic one day, and his balls shrivelled u like cashew nuts. The doctors are baffled. He’s been off sick for weeks.’ ‘Todd ‘ ‘Well, he has, hasn’t he? Eh?’ ‘Ossie Clarke is one of the bad-back brigade. He has a slipped disc.’ ‘That’s the official line. Don’t let it lull you into a false sense of security. Anyway, we’re in luck. They couldn’t spare Armstrong from this paedophile enquiry. Apparently it’s warming up for some arrests. There was the little girl that was killed ‘ ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘So Hitchens has had to come in off leave. And you know he’s just moved into a new house with that redheaded nurse? So he’s not happy, either. It’s a barrel of laughs up there, all right. Couldn’t wait to get away for a bit, myself.’ Weenink was taking the back road past the fluorspar works to avoid the bottleneck in Bakewell. He took the bends gently, as if he was just one more pensioner on a Sunday afternoon outing. ‘Todd? Can’t we go a bit faster?’ ‘Mmm, the roads are a bit slippery with all these leaves,’ said Weenink. ‘Can’t be too careful.’ The atmosphere on the moor was gloomy. It made Ben Cooper feel almost guilty about the buzz of anticipation that had stayed with him even in the car with Todd Weenink. The entire stone circle had been taped off, and lights were being set up to illuminate a small tent in the centre. More tape created a pathway as far as a

gorse bush a few yards away. The tape twisted and rattled in the wind with a noise like a crowd of football supporters halfheartedly encouraging their team.

‘There was an inch or two of rain during Thursday night, but it had dried up by morning,’ said Cooper. Several faces turned to stare at him. Hitchens raised an eyebrow, but Tailby nodded.

‘Well, the ground was fine for lifting the sugar beet that morning,’ explained Cooper. He drew a finger through a hollow on the top of one of the stones. ‘On the other hand, there hasn’t been enough sun since then

to dry the moisture out where it’s sheltered from the!

wind.’

He became suddenly aware of the nature of the

looks he was being given. ‘It’s what you asked me,’ he

said.

Hitchens shrugged. He was wearing an old rugby

jersey over his jeans, and might once have played for

the divisional XV until he became senior enough to be,

more at risk of injury from his own side than from the

opposition. ‘Could Stride be a name?’ he asked.

‘What kind of man would leave his name written in

the dirt when he had committed a murder, anyway? said Tailby. ‘And these stones …’

‘The Nine Virgins,’ said Cooper. ‘What are they all about?’

‘They’re the remains of a Bronze Age burial chamber

But local people call them the Virgins because of th legends …’

‘How old?’

‘Three and a half thousand years, give or take.’ ‘The last virgins in Derbyshire, then,’ said Hitchens. Cooper kept his mouth shut. He watched a SOCO

scoop up a tiny patch of bloodstained earth where the body had lain, while he listened to the faint laughter drop hollowly into the wind and disappear with a scatter of dead leaves.

In a short while, no doubt, a detective superintendent would arrive from another division to take over as senior investigating officer. He would be grumbling about the continuing vacancy in E Division that meant he had to be dragged away from his own patch, where there would be several other major incidents to be dealt with as well.

But this was the second attack on a woman in a small area, and this victim was dead. Panic would be setting in at higher levels, and those being kicked by the chiefs would soon be kicking the dog.

Though he knew Ringham Moor well, Ben Cooper found the area around the Nine Virgins disturbed him in a way it had never done before. The atmosphere was all wrong. There was nothing dark and claustrophobic about this murder scene, unlike so many others he had come across. Very often a killing occurred within a close relationship, usually within the confines of a family, where emotions ran high and someone was finally driven to extremes. Here, though, the feeling he got was of space and timelessness, a place where everything ran to its natural sequence, just as it had done for thousands of years. Here, the slow dance of the seasons repeated

44 - 45

L.r itself endlessly on an almost empty stage as nature rolled from life to death and back to life again. Cooper had learned to keep quiet about his thoughts at times. Most senior officers, like DCI Tailby, prided themselves on being practical, logical men. Tailby was from Nottingham, raised in suburban streets and comprehensive schools. He preferred to leave it to people like Ben Cooper to be imaginative - he seemed to regard it as some kind of local idiosyncrasy, a queer characteristic inherited from the distant Celtic ancestors of the Derbyshire hill folk. Cooper watched his fellow officers. Some of them certainly looked as though they felt disorientated and isolated from the realities of the twenty-first century up here. As if to emphasize the point, the sound of a steam train starting up seemed to reach them from the valley below. ‘There’s the train,’ said Cooper. ‘What?’ said Tailby. ‘It’s the Peak Rail line. They run restored steam engines on it. For the tourists, you know.’ A white plume hung across the lights in the bottom of the valley, drifting with the breeze back towards Matlock and vanishing into the darkness as the chug of the engine receded. Tailby spun on his heel. ‘Time to talk to the Rangers,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to get proper lights set up here, you know,’ said the Senior SOCO, ‘if you really want photos of that inscription.’ ‘Believe me,’ said Tailby, ‘I want everything.’

The young Ranger looked vaguely familiar to Ben Cooper. But then, he knew lots of Ropers - one of them had been his Maths teacher at school, another ran the garage on Buxton Road; and he had once arrested a Roper for indecency. They were all certain to be related. Mark was a tall young man, with wide shoulders that didn’t quite fit the rest of his body. His muscles had some catching up to do, but he was wiry and fit. Cooper noticed he had a small streak of vomit staining the front of his red Peak Park Rangers jacket. Somebody at the Partridge Cross Ranger Centre had made him several cups of tea. The tea had done nothing for his pallor, but at least his kidneys were working at full capacity. He emerged from the loo just as the police arrived.

Mark sat down unsteadily when DCI Tailby introduced himself and opened the questioning. ‘I was patrolling the moor,’ said Mark. ‘Ringham Moor. I was on the path from the east, going towards the Virgins.’ ‘That’s the stone circle.’

‘It’s just one of the stone circles. But it’s the one that everybody knows.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I was near the Virgins when I saw a bike.’ ‘Hold on. Before that, did you see anyone else on the moor?’ ‘Nobody at all. It was quiet.’ ‘Nobody? Think right back to when you first left the centre.’ Mark looked automatically towards the window. Cooper followed his gaze. A silver Land Rover with a thin red stripe was parked outside. Beyond the Ranger Service sign on its roof, the dark hump of the moor was still visible against a pale sky. ‘There was a man working in a field on this side of the moor, mending gates. I’ve seen him before. There was no one else.’ ‘OK. Describe this bike,’ said Tailby. Now Mark seemed to regain a bit more confidence. He produced a small notebook from the pocket of his fleece and turned the pages. But he spoke without looking at his notes. The scene was still fresh enough in his mind. ‘It was a yellow Dawes. I recognized it as one of the hire bikes. It had been chucked into the bottom of a gorse bush, in the middle of some birch trees. One of the wheels was off too. I thought somebody had hired it and had an accident and just left it. They do things like that.’ ‘Who do?’ ‘Well, you know - the visitors. Tourists. They just leave a bike somewhere and say it’s been stolen or they’ve lost it or something. You wouldn’t believe the lies some of them tell.’ ‘Did you touch the bike?’ ‘No.’ ‘You’re quite sure about that, Mark?’ ‘Yeah. I just looked for the number. Because I thought it was one of the hire bikes. And it was, wasn’t it?’ ‘Yes, it was.’ Cooper could hear the gratification in the DCI’s voice. The fact it was a hire bike had made it so much easier to identify the victim. She had been obliged to leave her full name and address and proof of identity at the cycle hire centre when she took the bike out earlier that afternoon. So they had already established that her name was Jenny Weston, that she was thirty years old and divorced. She worked as a customer service manager in a large insurance office in Sheffield, and had taken a week’s holiday because she had several days’ leave to get in before the end of the year. By now, her parents had already been contacted, and her father was on his way to identify the body formally. If only it were always so easy. ‘Then I saw something lying in the, middle of the Virgins; said Mark. ‘I went to have a look. Although ‘ ‘Yes?’ ‘Well … I could already see what it was. I could tell, from a few yards away, from where I found the bike. It was a woman. And she was dead.’ Mark moved his hands restlessly, brushing the front of his fleece. Cooper thought at first that he was trying to rub off the vomit stain, but realized he was wrong. i 48 ^ 49

The young Ranger was stroking the badge stitched to the fabric, fondling as if it were the breast of a lover, tracing the silver letters and the stylized millstone symbol of the Peak Park.

‘Did you notice anything about the body?’ asked Tailby.

Mark hesitated. ‘Only that she was, you know…’ His hands made halfhearted gestures. ‘Her clothes…’ ‘You mean her clothes had been interfered with?’ Mark nodded.

‘And did you notice anything else nearby? Anything unusual or out of place?’

‘No.’ ‘So how close did you get to the body, Mark?’

‘I walked as far as the nearest stone. The flat one. I didn’t have to go any closer.’

‘You were quite sure she was dead?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Mark. ‘Oh yes.’

Mark suddenly went a shade whiter. His hand went over his mouth, and he made a dash for the loo. A second later, the police officers heard the sound of vomiting.

DCI Tailby sat for a moment longer, as if still listening for elusive bits of information in the Ranger’s retching.

‘Cooper, find that Area Ranger,’ he said. ‘He knows the lie of the land round here, if anybody does. Tell him we need to arrange proper access to the moor. We need the owner of the land or whoever. And we need to get into that quarry, too. Get on to it.’

Ben Cooper found the Area Ranger waiting by his silver Land Rover outside the briefing centre. Owen Fox was in his early fifties, with grey hair and a thick beard that was going the same way. He was a comfortable badger of a man, with an even more comfortable smell of wool and earth.

‘Mr Fox?’

The Ranger turned, with a distracted air. Though Cooper was wearing his dark green waxed jacket over civilian clothes, he thought Owen would recognize him as a policeman. People always seemed able to tell. They said it was something to do with the look in your eyes. ‘Can I help?’

‘I’m Detective Constable Cooper. If you’ve got time, I’d like to call on your local knowledge.’

Cooper explained that he had been given the job of opening up access to the disused quarry and of securing the route for vehicles to get to the crime scene.

‘We need to see Warren Leach then,’ said Owen. ‘And he is … ?’

‘Ringham Edge Farm. He owns most of the moor. The old quarry road runs across his land. We can go in the Land Rover, if you like.’

The farm was reached by a back road out of the village of Ringham Lees, an almost invisible turning by the corner of the Druid pub. A group of a dozen or so youngsters were hanging around in a bus shelter near the pub. When they saw the lights of the Land Rover coming, two teenage boys ran across the road directly in front of its bonnet and stood laughing and waving from the opposite pavement.

‘Some of these young people,’ said Owen. ‘Their common sense has left home before them. And it didn’t give a forwarding address.’ ‘We get a lot like them in Edendale,’ said Cooper. ‘I bet you do.’

The Ranger had four radio sets in the cab of the Land Rover. The wide-band set under the dashboard was constantly scanning the channels for the Ranger Service and other local organizations. Another set was for the Mountain Rescue team. Behind the seats, fixed to a wire grille, were two battery-operated handsets on permanent charge for when they were needed. Cooper saw that there was also a satellite positioning device in a leather case. But the best-used piece of equipment seemed to be the vacuum flask. It was battered, but no doubt a welcome sight on a freezing day on the moors. ‘Some of this technology is all right,’ said Owen. ‘But we’ll be completely computerized one day. I only hope it’s after my time. I was brought up to think “online” meant your mum had just put the washing out.’ Cooper laughed. ‘Did you say this Leach owns the moor?’

‘Part of it. It’s all privately owned, one way or another. The PDNPA doesn’t own any land, you know. Being a national park doesn’t mean what people think it means.’ ‘No, I know.’

‘But Ringham Moor is one of those places where the landowners have an access agreement with the national park, so Rangers are involved a lot. Especially with the attention the Nine Virgins get. They seem to have a special significance at the summer solstice - a bit like Stonehenge, you know? There can be two hundred or so people gathered up there - illegally, I might add, under the access agreement; not to mention the bylaws covering ancient monuments.’ ‘But what do they get up to exactly?’ ‘Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. Music, jugglers, camp fires. Children and dogs running round. It’s a bit like a medieval fair. One year we had to call in a mountain rescue team to carry off a young lady who’d been dancing from stone to stone, but fell off and broke her leg. Every year I pray it will rain - it keeps things quiet for a change.’ ‘So much for the peace and quiet of the Peak District.’ ‘Peace and quiet? One of our biggest jobs is looking after the safety of visitors. None of them have any common sense. If we left the fences off the old mine shafts, half of them would throw themselves in, thinking it was a new visitor experience.’ Owen Fox had a direct gaze and a sly smile in his eyes when he made a joke, though his face hardly moved. It took a bit of careful listening to understand when he was joking. ‘I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else, though,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve even picked the exact stone where I want my ashes to be scattered.’ They passed a large field containing a herd of black and white cattle and approached Ringham Edge Farm down a steep, narrow lane constricted between stone walls. The farm buildings were built mostly of the dark local gritstone, and the house itself had small, deeply-set

52 53

windows that must let in little light. An extra shadow was thrown on the house by a large modem shed some distance from the track. Close to the shed stood the burnt-out shell of what looked like a Mitsubishi pickup, the paint stripped from its bodywork and the interior of the cab blackened. Many farmers had the habit of letting all sorts of junk accumulate around their farm buildings. Owen glanced at Cooper. ‘Would it be best if I talked to him?’ ‘Leach? Is he likely to be difficult?’ ‘He can be. He needs handling right. Sometimes you have to let people think they’re getting their own way.’ ‘Even when they aren’t?’ ‘Well. Sometimes. You do know, don’t you…’ ‘What?’ ‘It was Warren Leach’s wife Yvonne who found that other woman a few weeks ago.’ ‘Of course - Maggie Crew.’ ‘She got as far as one of the fields at Ringham Edge. Yvonne Leach came across her lying unconscious under a wall. Leach himself just reckoned it was a nuisance, I think. It kept him away from his work for a bit. But this old quarry road is mainly used as a footpath now. It’s a public right of way, and it runs right through the farm. When you have strangers walking past your door all the time, you can soon get to see them as an irritation. Some visitors think farmers are there as a public service, for providing toilets and telephones, or for pulling their cars out of ditches with their tractors. I can’t blame Warren - not really.’

I I

I I When Owen Fox and Ben Cooper pulled up in the Land Rover, they found two boys in a brightly lit byre. They were fussing over a Jersey heifer calf with huge eyes and long black lashes. The animal stood patiently, twitching her damp nostrils with pleasure as she was brushed on each flank until her red coat gleamed. One of the boys reached out to stroke the calf’s muzzle, and she responded with a rasp of a plump tongue across his hand which made the boy smile with pleasure. Behind them, a wooden board was decorated with red and blue rosettes with long ribbons. ‘Is this the calf that won at Bakewell Show?’ asked Owen. The boys looked uncertain what to say. Maybe they had been told not to talk to strangers, thought Cooper. But the Ranger wasn’t really a stranger, was he? He had been to the farm before; he knew Warren Leach. It was part of the Area Ranger’s job to maintain good relations with the farmers and landowners on his patch. ‘Yeah, this is her. She’s called Doll,’ said the older boy. ‘You’re Will, aren’t you?’ said Owen. ‘I can’t remember your brother’s name.’ ‘He’s Dougie.’ Owen walked slowly towards the calf, hushing her quietly as she shied away and rolled her eyes at him. The boys held on to the halter nervously. But the animal calmed down when Owen began to talk to her, stroking her nose, gently following the lie of her coat along the side of her muzzle. He rubbed her shoulder to feel the

firmness of the muscle and ran his hand down her spine. The calf relaxed under his touch.

‘She’s a beauty, lads. In superb condition. She’s a real credit to you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Will. Dougie appeared to be about to add something, but changed his mind.

Both boys seemed shy, but the younger one was particularly uncommunicative. Cooper wasn’t used to silent children. There were several kids of Will and Dougie’s age in his own family - nephews and nieces and second cousins. But none of them was so quiet. They were too noisy, if anything. These days, children were no longer seen and not heard. It was when you could neither see nor hear them that you began to worry, if you were a parent. That was when they were at risk.

But these two were different. They had a reticence about them, a watchfulness that bordered on hostility, as if they had learned to be afraid of visitors.

‘Will you be showing her again next year?’ asked Owen.

That seemed to have been the wrong thing to say. The boys’ faces fell, and Dougie looked as though he might cry.

‘Your dad will take you to the show, won’t he?’ Will shook his head. Now Cooper started to feel uncomfortable. ‘Where is your dad?’ he said.

‘Up at the workshop.’ Will pointed to the back of the house. The two boys looked relieved when they walked away and followed the roadway to a yard, where a metallic clanging came from a shed. Owen stuck his head through the doorway.

‘Warren? Good evening.’

Warren Leach looked up from a bench lit by a dim work-lamp. He was a man with almost no neck. His torso, thick and solid, without a single curve, erupted into bulging shoulders with trapezius muscles that almost reached the line of his jaw. He was wearing blue overalls, with a wide leather belt strapped round his waist.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said gruffly. ‘It never rains but it pours round here, does it? What do you want?’

‘Well, it might have been a friendly social call,’ said Owen.

Leach snorted. ‘Oh aye. Did you come past the shippon?’

‘We did.’

‘I suppose you saw those lads of mine. Are they still messing with that bloody animal?’

‘They look as though they’re doing a grand job with her, Warren. She’s in fine condition.’

‘Oh aye. Fine. And so she should be. The animal gets spoiled rotten. She’s fed better than any of us.’

The farmer was fiddling with a steel coupling pin from a trailer’s towing bracket. The pin trailed a short length of chain, which he swung irritably between his fingers.

‘What’s up now then, Ranger?’

‘Warren, the police need to get access for their vehicles up through here for a while.’

‘Oh?’ ‘On account of the woman killed up there. You know about that.’

56 57

Leach shrugged. ‘It’s no business of mine.’ ‘It’s your land, Warren,’ said Fox patiently.

‘Is it part of the access agreement then? Some tourist gets herself done in and I have to put up with this lot roaring backwards and forwards over my land like maniacs?’ Leach jabbed a finger in Cooper’s direction, effortlessly identifying him as what he was. ‘Well, it must have been in the small print, Ranger, because I missed it.’

‘Can you leave that top gate open for the police vehicles to get on to the moor, please?’

‘Leave it open? Why? They can open and close a gate like anyone else, can’t they? Or have coppers lost the use of their hands as well as their feet these days?’

‘It doesn’t do to make the police think you’re being obstructive,’ said Owen.

‘They can think what the hell they like.’

Cooper stayed silent, ignoring the aggressive glare. He was well used to it from the yobbos of Edendale. The only surprise was to see it in a middleaged Dales farmer. But it was best to let Owen Fox deal with it -it was a chance for him to use his Ranger diplomacy.

‘I suppose I might just have a word with Yvonne then, before I go,’ said Owen.

‘What for? She’s got nothing to say to you.’ ‘Just being polite.’

Leach grunted, and the chain tightened in his thick hands until the steel links squealed against each other. ‘It’ll mean I’ll have to move the cows down to the next field,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s no problem, is it?’

‘No problem? The grass is nearly finished in there. My milk yields’ll be gone to hell. They’re down already with all this disturbance.’

‘It’ll only be for a day or two, Warren.’

‘Would there be compensation, maybe? The police have got money. My money, from the Council Tax.’

‘I can’t imagine so. Think of it as a public service.’ Owen looked at Cooper, but Cooper just smiled. ‘Balls to that,’ said Leach.

‘Come on, Warren.’

Leach tossed the coupling pin into his other hand, slapping it against his palm. On a plastic drum, he had a square leather-bound case with steel clasps. Cooper wondered what it was. Somehow it didn’t look like a piece of farming equipment, more the sort of thing a doctor might carry his kit in for testing a patient’s blood pressure.

‘Only for a day or two, and that’s it,’ said Leach. ‘Tell your police friends they’ll have to get a move on. Let ‘em work the same hours that I have to work to keep this farm going, instead of knocking off for tea every five minutes. I’ve seen it going on. I’m not stupid.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cooper politely. But the farmer only glowered. ‘When would be convenient for an officer to come and talk to you?’

‘What?’ ‘We need to take a statement from you. You’re well positioned here to be a witness.’

‘A witness to what? I went through all this with that other bloody woman that ended up on my land. I never saw this one either.’

58 0 59

‘Do you know who she was?’ ‘Of course not.’

‘Then how do you know you didn’t see her?’ Cooper smiled. ‘Somebody will probably call tomorrow to see you.’

The two men began to walk back towards the Ranger’s Land Rover. ‘I’ll be back to see you soon, Warren,’ said Owen. ‘Don’t bother, Ranger. As soon as I see that red jacket of yours, I’ll be halfway to Bakewell.’ They almost ran right into Yvonne Leach in the gateway as they drove out of the yard. She was a small woman, with wide hips and strands of light brown hair tied loosely back from her face. Owen stopped the Land Rover, and the woman shied away, as nervous as a sheep, rolling her eyes at the vehicle. But she couldn’t slip past quickly enough.

Owen wound down the window. ‘Yvonne - all right?’ ‘Yes.’

‘We’ve just had a word with Warren. I wanted to tell you not to worry about what happened up there. There are plenty of police about here. You’ll be OK.’ ‘I’m not worried,’ said Yvonne, though to Cooper’s eye she looked as scared as any woman he had ever seen.

Warren Leach’s angry bellow came from the yard. ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing? Get in the house.’ They looked round and saw him glaring at Yvonne. She took the chance of sliding along the side of the Land Rover and scuttling round the corner.

Owen drove on up the track. They had to open two gates to get any further, and the Ranger took it slowly to avoid alarming the cows. ‘Marriage,’ he said, after a minute. ‘What about it?’ said Cooper. ‘The most bizarre thing ever invented, in my opinion. You must see what I mean, in your job. Couples tied together for no apparent reason, making each other’s lives a misery. Isn’t marriage one of the major factors in crime? Domestics, you call them. Aren’t ninety per cent of murders committed by the spouse?’ ‘Something like that.’ ‘Well, I rest my case. Weddings ought to be banned, along with other blood sports.’ ‘I thought the police were cynical, but I don’t think I’ve reached your stage, yet,’ said Cooper. Then Owen looked at Cooper sideways and waggled his eyebrows. ‘I can see you’re not married yourself. You don’t have that harassed look. You weren’t thinking about it, by any chance, were you?’ ‘Well…’ Cooper considered the answer for a moment. ‘I suppose it’s kind of the way I see my life going, some day.’ ‘Mmm. Well, close your eyes or look the other way, then.’ The Ranger pulled the Land Rover on to a flat area of bare earth under a stand of beech trees. They were about two hundred feet further up towards the moor, looking down on the farm buildings and the fields around them. Beyond the farm was the village of Ringham Lees, its

lights just visible in the trees in the valley bottom; and further away in the darkness, almost hidden by a spur of hill, were the spires of the two churches in the bigger village of Cargreave. ‘Tell your lot they can park here,’ said Owen. ‘The Virgins are just over the rise. That way to the right leads into Top Quarry. Just ask if you want anything else. They say I’m the man who knows these parts.’ Cooper found the cab of the Land Rover was comfortable and warm, full of things that had a practical use, yet without the slightest conscious attempt at imposing the driver’s personality. ‘Do you live locally, Owen?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a house over there in Cargreave.’ ‘I take it you’re not married either?’ The? You must be joking. I may not be Einstein, but I’m not that stupid.’ ‘A bad experience?’ ‘Other people’s experiences are enough for me, mate. I’ve watched them all go the same way. Those young lads that you meet, full of enthusiasm and vitality, all their lives in front of them. And what happens? A wife and a mortgage. Before you know it, they’re coming into work half-asleep because the new baby’s kept them awake all night, and then they’re moving house to make room for all the family. In the end, they have to get a new job that they hate, just so that they can pay for it all. It’s like getting a life sentence without having the pleasure of committing the crime, the poor sods. Not for me. There’s just me and the cats, since Mother died.’ ‘Was that recently?’ asked Cooper. The loss of his

I I

own father was recent enough to make him curious about someone else’s experience of the death of a parent. ‘It was a year ago. She was very old, of course. And she never feared death, that was a consolation. I used to take her to church until she couldn’t get there any more. But she could see the church tower from her bedroom, and that seemed to be enough at the end.’ ‘And your father?’ ‘Oh, he’s been gone a long time:’ ‘Don’t you find that losing a parent makes the one that’s left seem very precious?’ said Cooper. Owen looked at him cautiously. ‘Yes, you’re right. ActuaffIly, I think I might have worked with your father a time or two.’ ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m sure you did.’ After a moment’s silence, Owen chuckled into his beard. ‘No, I’m on my own. I’m a happy bachelor. Young, free and single, that’s me. Well … two out of three’s not bad. Nobody’s really free.’ Cooper nodded. But he wasn’t thinking about Owen Fox. He was thinking of Yvonne Leach and the two boys he had seen at Ringham Edge Farm. It was one thing to live a life restricted by obligations, in the way that Owen described. But it was another thing altogether when it was fear that ruled your life. And Cooper’s instincts told him that what he had seen at the farm was exactly that. It might be superficially concealed from the outside world, but it was bubbling very close to the surface. The Leaches were people whose lives were ruled by fear.

Since Diane Fry had arrived, the woman had kept her face turned away towards the window. The light from the desk lamp fell only on her left side, outlining her profile, delineating a high cheekbone and a straight nose. It highlighted the gold in a strand of hair tucked behind her ear, and it threw unmerciful shadows on the fine lines etched into the skin of heiyneck. The apartment she lived in was austere, with minimal modern furniture, scrupulously clean, and cold, harsh lighting that created stark lines between light and shade. It was as if the rooms had been designed so that someone moving around in their cool spaces could know precisely where the shadows fell, where details were distinct and where they were not. Fry pictured the woman rehearsing her positioning in these rooms like an actress walking about a stage, seeking the best angle, presenting her most favourable side to the audience. On the other hand, perhaps she moved through the shadows by instinct alone - the instinct of a wounded animal. Because there was no mirror in this room to examine the effect in. No mirror, but a pale patch on the wall where one had once hung.

Maggie Crew sat behind a desk, as if conducting a formal interview with a client. On the desk, there were only a few items - a telephone, an ashtray, a paper knife. Along the side wall were a couple of shelves of law books and journals and a stereo system, finished in matt black, with neat racks of CD cases, their titles too small for Fry to make out. Behind Maggie was a big sash window looking out over the roofs of Matlock. It had a view down the Derwent Valley to the point where it narrowed into a high gorge, with a hill above it that had been hacked and blasted into pieces by quarrying. Heavy green drapes hung from a brass rail over the window, capable of shutting out the natural light entirely during the day. Apart from that, there was little ornamentation in the room. The furnishings spoke to Fry of pretension without showiness, a subtle statement of the owner’s disregard for the comfort of her surroundings. According to the reports, Crew spent all her time in this apartment now, shut away from the world. It wasn’t difficult to understand why. She had been an attractive woman once. ‘My name is Diane Fry, Maggie.’ Maggie nodded. She wore a man’s Calvin Klein cubedesign watch, all minimalist straight lines. A pad of A4 ruled paper lay near her hand, with a silver ballpoint pen. But she made no move to write down Fry’s name. ‘I’ve been asked to work with you for a while, Maggie. If that’s all right with you, of course.’ ‘You know I’ve already agreed to this. Although I don’t know what good it will do.’

‘I want to go through with you again anything you can remember. Any little detail may help us.’ Where you might have expected Maggie Crew to have let her hair grow long to cover the disfigurement, it was cut short, trimmed clear of her forehead. The left side of her face was smooth and white, her cheeks like the skin of someone who had spent too long in the dark. Her hands, too, were pale, the backs of them flat and shapeless. Fry wondered if Maggie was a woman who struggled against gaining weight. But she was not fat now. Her cheekbones were visible in her face, her shoulders were prominent under the fabric of a black jacket. Fry herself liked to wear black But on Maggie it seemed to be more than practicality or an attempt to make herself look slimmer; more, even, than a fashion statement. There was an emotion in the blackness, a dark outer show to match her feelings, to fit the atmosphere of the room. It was a sort of mourning. ‘What happened to the last one?’ said Maggie. ‘We just thought a change of personnel might help. A new approach…’ ‘A fresh face.’ Maggie smiled. She had small, white teeth, but her upper lip drew back a fraction too far, exposing a strip of pink gum and removing the humour from her smile. ‘So.’ She stared at Fry, measuring her like a potential employee, a candidate for a domestic’s job. ‘Diane Fry. What is different about you, then?’ ‘There’s nothing different about me. I’m just here to talk to you.’ ‘Do you know how many people have said that?’ ^ ‘It’s all in your file,’ said Fry. ‘I know your history.’ ‘Ah, yes. You’ve read my file. So you have the advantage of coming here knowing absolutely everything about me. How helpful that must be. Perhaps you think you know more about me than I do myself. Perhaps you think you know how my mind is working, exactly how you might manipulate my subconscious?’ ‘Nobody wants to manipulate you, Maggie.’ ‘Then what do you want? What is it you all want with me? Don’t you know by now that I can’t give it to you? Isn’t that in my file?’ ‘If we keep trying ‘ ‘You think you might be able to make me remember. Then what? My memories might be able to help you, yes. But what will they do to me? What if I don’t want to remember? What if my subconscious has wiped out the memories?’ ‘Do you think that’s the case?’ ‘The doctors say there is no physiological reason for the memory loss. There is no damage to my brain. They tell me it’s probably shock; they call it trauma. They say it’s a safety device, which shuts down memories that the brain doesn’t want. Wipes them out.’ Fry watched her, trying to hide the scepticism in her face. She heard the words, and recognized some of the phrases from the medical reports. But she didn’t believe that you could wipe out memories completely, no matter how unpleasant. They left their traces everywhere, in the overlooked corners of your mind, and in the sensations of your body - the touch of your skin against your clothes, the sudden devastating echo in a sound,

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or the malignant resonance of a smell. Memories were cancerous growths, secretive and spiteful; sometimes you didn’t know they were there until it was too late. Diane Fry knew all about memories.

‘This is just an introductory meeting,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back to talk to you again tomorrow, Maggie. If that’s all right with you.’

‘If you must.’

‘It’s very important now.’

‘Ah.’ Maggie hesitated. ‘Does that mean you have another victim?’

‘Yes, Maggie. And it’s vital we catch this man before he lolls again.’

Maggie stared at Diane Fry out of her good eye, assessing her sharply, staring with the unblinking curiosity of someone who rarely saw a new visitor. ‘Kills?’

‘Yes, it’s murder this time. This victim died.’

Fry watched for a reaction. The trembling in Maggie’s hands and the draining of the colour from her face gave Fry a small measure of satisfaction.

‘We also want to put you on a witness protection programme. You know what that means?’

‘Of course. Remember I’m a lawyer.’

‘We’ll ask you to consider finding somewhere else to stay, if possible, Maggie, until we think it’s safe. In the meantime, a technician will call to install alarms in your apartment. You’ll be given a phone number you can call at any time.’

Maggie took a moment to recover her composure. ‘Is all that necessary?’

‘Maggie, we’re looking for a killer now. And you’re the only person who can identify him.’

‘I won’t go away. I’m staying here.’ ‘But the other precautions…’ said Fry. ‘All right. But there’s one condition.’ ‘Yes?’

‘If you’re going to visit me, do not feel sorry for me. I won’t talk to anyone who shows even the slightest sign of feeling sorry for me. Do you understand?’

‘Of course.’

Diane Fry was glad when Maggie Crew turned away. Since she had met Maggie at the door of her apartment, it had taken her several minutes to settle down, to recover from the initial shock. The sight of her had made Fry’s stomach muscles clench with vicarious pain as she tried to control her expression. But this woman must be used to such reactions by now.

Maggie Crew’s face would never be the same again. The knife had sliced her apart. No plastic surgery could ever completely hide the long, ragged scar that mutilated her cheekbone, splitting her face into two halves like a zip, its raised lips still red and angry, the flesh stretched painfully tight. No surgeon would ever entirely smooth out the ridges of shredded and bruised skin that puckered the corner of her right eye, pulling down her bottom lid to expose the pink veins, and twisting the whole side of her face into a leer.

But there was more even than that. There was the psychological damage that had been done to Maggie Crew. Even to Diane Fry the damage was obvious, though she had never met the woman before. Maggie

^ was a partner in a firm of solicitors in Matlock. She was a successful professional woman, used to feeling selfconfident and sure of her own worth. But now she had lost that confidence; her image of herself had been ravaged, slashed to pieces by the knife that had torn her face. Fry knew that the attack on Maggie had happened six weeks ago. As far as they could ascertain, she had been attacked somewhere near the Cat Stones, the line of rocks below the Hammond Tower, not half a mile from where Jenny Weston’s body had been found. Maggie had been the lucky one. She had managed to stagger halfway off the moor before she collapsed from shock and loss of blood in the shelter of a wall, where she had been found by a farmer’s wife next morning. The doctors said Maggie had been lucky, in that the knife had narrowly missed removing an eye. Fry hoped that nobody had tried telling Maggie herself that she was lucky.

Now Maggie was recovering at home. And that meant she had been sitting here, in this sparse room, hiding from the light. ‘I suppose I should be frightened,’ said Maggie. ‘We’re just taking precautions. No need to be frightened.’ ‘It would make a change - a change from finding people are frightened of me. They don’t know how to react, most of them. They don’t know what to say. They don’t want to talk about my face. Do you want to talk about it? About what my injury means to me.’ Fry shrugged. ‘Not particularly.’

Maggie looked surprised. Disappointed? ‘They say plastic surgery might help. But not yet. The injury is too recent.’ ‘Yes, it takes time.’ ‘Oh, the body heals itself to a certain extent, in time. The blood clots, the wounds close over, fresh skin grows. They can do wonders with surgery, they keep telling me. But it’s never quite the same, is it? You can’t rebuild the original tissue, and your body remembers the injury. You’re always marked in some way.’ The file said that Maggie Crew had received the appropriate counselling. She had gone through all the consultations with a psychiatrist. She had been encouraged to write down her feelings, to talk to Victim Support. The police had treated her with kid gloves for a time. But at the end of the day, they weren’t getting what they wanted. Maggie Crew knew far more than she had told them. She had seen her assailant and survived. He was the same man, they now suspected, who had killed Jenny Weston. It was at this moment, more than ever, that they needed the information locked in Maggie’s head. Fry wondered how secure the apartment was. It occupied part of the second floor of Derwent Court, a converted spa hotel, a relic of the town’s Victorian past as a health resort. The building had stood derelict for years before an influx of county council office workers had boosted the demand for housing in Matlock. Now comfortably-off residents lived at the end of its marble corridors and stared all day at an expensive view over the Derwent Valley, counting the cable

cars as they ferried tourists to the Heights of Abraham. At least there was a concierge in the lobby downstairs.

She would have to have a word with him before she left - he would be able to keep an extra careful eye out for visitors to Derwent Court.

She stared out of the window into the darkness. The quarry-blasted hillside stood out white and stark on the skyline to the south. No attempt had been made to repair or disguise the damage that had been done to the landscape by the mineral companies. The scars had been left as a symbolic reminder, a legacy of the past. And perhaps as a warning too. A warning of what might easily happen again one day - if no one did anything to prevent it.

‘Yes, some things take time,’ said Maggie. ‘Other things take a miracle.’

Ben Cooper had already formed a clear idea in his mind of what Jenny Weston had been like. There had been no shortage of details there, for once. The entry in the log at the cycle hire centre had given them the basics. Not only that, but the cycle hire manager knew which car was hers. Once they had got access to it, they had found her handbag in the glove compartment, with her diary and all the information they could possibly want, written on the front page in her own hand. It listed not only the name, address and phone number of her next of kin, but also Jenny’s date of birth, her National Insurance number, the numbers of her bank account and her mobile phone, the names of her doctor, dentist and vet, her religion, the address of her insurance company,

her National Trust membership number, her height and weight, and her shoe size. And her blood group.

And then her father, Eric Weston, had lost no time arriving from his home at Alfreton as soon as they contacted him. Cooper had arrived back at Partridge Cross from Ringham Edge Farm just in time to sit in on the interview with DCI Tailby. Mr Weston had been all too willing to tell them about his daughter. He recited the details eagerly, as if he needed to remind himself, too, of who Jenny was. Of who she had been.

Jenny had been married at twenty-one. Her husband, Martin Stafford, had not been liked by her parents. Police officers heard that one often, of course. Very few parents thought the men their daughters chose were good enough. But in this case, Stafford had lasted about three and a half years before his violent nature became obvious. Jenny had stayed with him another two years before they had finally parted.

The story was a familiar one. A woman abused, yet reluctant to believe that there wasn’t something worth preserving in her marriage; convinced, somehow, that her man did what he did because he loved her. It seemed incredible to Cooper that some women continued to expect far too much of marriage. Their beliefs died hard.

Mr Weston was deputy head teacher of one of the Eden Valley secondary schools. He had that rather weary and worn look that identified middleaged teachers. His hair was mostly on the back of his head, curly and untidy, and not trimmed on his neck for a long time. He wore a grey suit, but there were shiny

patches on the trousers and an indefinable scent that reminded Cooper of his own school days. Chalk and musty text books, school dinners and badly washed schoolboys.

It seemed that Mr Weston was inclined to blame Martin Stafford for Jenny’s death. This was despite the fact that, as far as he was aware, the two of them hadn’t seen each other for three years. ‘It would be just like him to have got in touch again, and for jenny to agree to meet him, without telling us,’ he said.

‘Do you know where Mr Stafford lives now?’ asked Tailby.

‘No, I don’t. I think Jenny knew. But she never told us that, either.’ ‘Why?, ‘She thought we would interfere. We were so worried about her. She never seemed to see sense where that man was concerned.’ ‘There are no children from the marriage?’ ‘No.’ ‘That’s fortunate, I suppose?’ ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Mr Weston. Jenny had met Stafford while she was a student at the University of Derby. He had been a journalist then, working at the city’s Evening Telegraph - a senior reporter with a flair for off-beat features, or so he had said. According to Mr Weston, Stafford had cultivated a knowing, cynical image, had drunk too much and had cared about little except himself and his career. ‘Jenny was studying to be a radiologist,’ he said. ‘She was already in the third year of her course, and doing really well. She could have had a good career ahead of her, if it hadn’t been for Stafford. She met him in a pub in Derby, and he made a beeline for her. She was an attractive girl. And far too trusting.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘She became completely besotted with him. She wouldn’t listen to us when we told her to put her studies first, that her own career was more important. In the end, she gave up her studies to marry Stafford when he asked her to. She said she wanted to start a family with him. We had to accept it.’ ‘But you said there were no children?’ ‘No children. Only divorce.’ Even the divorce had come only after a series of shortlived reconciliations which were, according to Jenny’s father, simply Martin Stafford’s demonstrations of his ability to manipulate their daughter. He had some inexplicable power over her, and he was reluctant to give it up. The situation dragged on for a long time, painfully and unsatisfactorily. ‘When it was all over, jenny managed to get a job with Global Assurance in Derby,’ said Mr Weston. ‘But then she had to move to their new call centre when it was built in Sheffield. We didn’t like it. It meant she was away from us, away from her family. She went to live alone in that little terraced house off the Ecclesall Road. It was too far away. All she had with her was her blessed cat, not even a dog. Her mother was very upset. She worried about what might happen to her. We both did.’ In

74 75

‘You were worried that Mr Stafford might try to get back in touch with her?’ ‘Yes, of course. And that we wouldn’t know about it. Anything could have happened.’ ‘But it didn’t.’ ‘Well … not so far as we know.’ Mr Weston tried to recall a quick succession of boyfriends after Jenny had moved to Sheffield. All of them, he was sure, were men who were completely wrong for her. To Ben Cooper, Jenny sounded as though she had gone through those men like a woman looking for something she would never find, a woman whose better judgement had been cast aside. For what? A kind of penance? At one point, there had been an abortion. Jenny had not told her father at the time. His wife had told him about it, much later. ‘That was something I .could never understand,’ he said. He shook his head, and Cooper saw the glitter of tears in the teacher’s eyes. ‘I never will understand it. Jenny always wanted children.’ And Jenny had hated her job, too. She had been good at it, had been promoted to supervisor, with twentyfive girls working for her. She had responsibilities and a better salary; she was well regarded by her employers and liked by her colleagues. But she had hated it. ‘She said it was a sweatshop. She really disliked that. She kept talking about the pressure, unattainable targets, the constant surveillance by managers to make sure you were always working, the tedium, the repetitiveness, the strain of being polite all the time to customers who didn’t want to speak to you. Oh, and the posters round the walls. They all said: “Smile”.’ Jenny had also been depressed by the rate of burnout among her staff - even the best of them lasting little more than twelve months in the job. Many sacrificed themselves, as Jenny saw it, to marriage and to raising a family, purely as a means of escape. ‘She didn’t even manage to make any proper friends. She said animals were preferable to people. It might have helped a lot if she could have made friends. But Jenny said she barely had a chance to get to know any of her colleagues before they were gone. All the new recruits to these call centres now are youngsters, straight from school into their induction training, pulling on their telephone headsets and believing that’s what work is all about. In my position, I see them leaving school, full of hope, and I know what will happen to them. We do our best with them, you know, but that’s how a lot of them end up. Very sad.’ ‘Did Jenny talk of escaping from the job?’ asked Tailby. ‘Oh yes. All the time.’ Of course she had talked of escaping; everyone did. She talked of working with animals, of being a veterinary nurse or running a wildlife sanctuary. But there was nothing she was qualified to do, and nowhere else she could go. Now and then she thought about her lost career as a radiologist. And those were the worst times, said Eric Weston. It was knowing it was too late that depressed her the most. ‘The one thing that Jenny really loved was the Peak

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District,’ said Mr Weston. ‘We used to bring her here as a child at weekends and in the summer holidays. Days out in Dovedale and at Castleton. When she went to university she joined a student walking club and they hiked over all the hills in the area. They did the whole of the Pennine Way one summer, staying at youth hostels. It was where she always came back to.’ Later, after her divorce, Jenny had again spent as much time as she could in the Peak District, walking, but often alone, since friends didn’t seem to last long. She had tried pony trekking a few times, said Mr Weston. But recently she had taken to mountain biking. She had her own bike at home, but had preferred to hire a bike from Peak Cycle Hire or from one of the Derbyshire County Council hire centres. Often she rode the trails created from the old railway lines. But at times, when she felt the need, she would leave the trails and set off on to the moors. ‘Yes, Ringham Moor was one of her favourite places,’ said Mr Weston. ‘We went there once as a family, many years ago. Jenny and John - that’s her brother - and Susan and me, a happy family together.’ And Mr Weston added that he thought, perhaps, Jenny might have been trying to recapture happy memories, a happiness that had escaped her in other ways. He didn’t know what had prompted her to take to the moors on that particular day. He didn’t know why she had headed for Ringham. He had no more answers to give. Ben Cooper had walked away from the interview dissatisfied. Jenny Weston had not been anyone out of

the ordinary. She had achieved nothing exceptional, and nothing extraordinary had happened to her during her lifetime. Could she really just have been another woman who had made all the wrong choices? If so, Jenny had been making the wrong choices right up until the moment she died. And one of those choices had been fatal.

Ills

The kitchen was the room the Coopers used most at Bridge End Farm. It had that familiar lived-in look which was inevitable with six people in the house, two of them children. Though Ben Cooper still lived at the farm, he had begun to find himself spending less and less time in the company of his brother and his family. He wasn’t sure why this was, when his mother was still upstairs and in need of his support.

Matt had already been driven indoors by the darkness that was steadily drawing in now. He sat at the kitchen table with Farmers Weekly, reading articles predicting more gloom for the farming industry. In the sitting room, Matt’s wife Kate and their daughters were watching cartoons on the TV.

‘We’ll be visiting Dad’s grave next week,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s the anniversary.’

‘As if I would forget,’ said Matt.

Matt turned the page of his magazine, but he no longer seemed to be focusing on the words. ‘Don’t say anything to Mum,’ he said. ‘You know it only upsets her. Now she’s stable, it would be nice if we could keep it like that for a while, rather than causing

another episode like the last one. It’s not fair on the girls.’

‘We can’t just say nothing,’ said Cooper. ‘She’d be devastated if she knew we’d been to the cemetery without her.’

‘But if she really hasn’t remembered? Do we risk starting her off again? She’s been doing so well recently. It could set her back months, going over it all again, just because it’s the anniversary. It would be a kindness to let her forget.’

‘I don’t think it’s honest,’ said Cooper.

‘Some things are best not remembered. With luck, her memory will let her down.’

‘So schizophrenia can be a blessing. That’s nice to know.’

‘I didn’t mean that, and you know it.’ Matt put down the Farmers Weekly wearily and rubbed his face. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just -‘ He shrugged. ‘There’s no end to it, is there?’

The brothers didn’t need to say any more to each other. It had all been said before, many times.

Kate looked in from the sitting room, releasing a burst of cartoon noise as she opened the door. Matt picked up his magazine again. Cooper had a book on the shelf that he was halfway through reading - Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. He always seemed to be years behind what everybody else was talking about. There was so little time to read. And often, like now, he couldn’t concentrate on what was in front of him.

‘Matt, do you know a farmer called Warren Leach?’ ‘Leach? Leach … Where does he farm?’

‘Ringham Edge.’

Matt frowned over his pages. ‘I’ve heard of him. I don’t think I’ve ever met him to speak to. Dark-haired bloke, miserable sort?’

‘That sounds like him.’ What’s he done?’

‘Nothing that I know of. I just came across him on an enquiry.’

‘Ringham Edge. Small dairy herd, is it? And a lot of marginal land?’

‘Yes.’ Matt nodded and went back to his magazine. He turned a page, but found nothing he liked any better.

‘You know, some of them are in deep trouble,’ he said.

‘Who?’ ‘Farmers like Leach at Ringham Edge. Small-scale livestock farmers, with no chance of diversification. But he’s only one of many, of course.’

‘Things looked pretty depressing up there, I must admit.’

‘It’s all pretty depressing. All of it.’ ‘Come on, Matt. It’s not that bad.’

‘Yes, it is. It’s all gone to hell. I can’t see the time when farming will ever be the same again. Not around here, anyway. All the small farmers are going out of business. It’s too much for them. Far too much.’

‘Have you heard anything specific about Leach?’ Matt shook his head firmly. ‘I said I’ve seen him, that’s all. I don’t actually know him.’

‘But I expect you might know people who do.’

‘I expect I might,’ said Matt.

‘There could be rumours about him. Farmers talk to each other, don’t they? Down at the mart.’

Malt’s face set into stubborn lines. ‘Are you asking me to find out things about this bloke Leach?’

‘Just … I wondered if you might hear anything, you know. If you did…’

‘Sorry, Ben.’ ‘What?’ ‘I mean, no, I won’t do it. I don’t much like being

asked to be some sort of secret policeman. I don’t like being asked to be a policeman at all, come to that. You’re welcome to that job.’

Kate stood in the doorway. She frowned at Ben and shook her head, scenting an argument between the brothers. She said arguments upset the children. And she was right to be protective - there had been enough disruption in their young lives.

So Ben Cooper said nothing, just nursed his thoughts to himself. He and Matt had never talked about their father properly. Not ever, in the whole of their lives. And when he died, it was too late to start. Yet Cooper longed to know what his brother felt; he wanted to be able to tell him what his own feelings were, how much he had come to resent the memory of their father, and how much that resentment hurt because it was such a contradiction to the way he had viewed him when he was alive. He felt as though he was trampling a fallen idol.

But he suspected that their father still was an idol, of a kind, for Matt. And it was the police that Matt blamed for their father’s death.

I ^ Matt could have found out about Warren Leach, if he wanted to. He was right, of course - there were many farmers in trouble. There were farms left standing empty all around the Peak District now. At first, they had been snapped up by wealthy incomers, people who boasted of having ‘a country house with a big garden’, and thought it was a huge joke. Worst of all were the people who played at farming, filling a paddock with rare breeds of sheep, a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, a donkey and a goat. They drove the real farmers to apoplexy. And already buyers were getting choosier. Some of the older, more run-down farms that were coming on the market stayed unsold for many months. New owners could no longer rely on selling the land that went with them to provide the capital for work on the house. Neighbouring farmers didn’t want the land they couldn’t afford it. And if it was difficult land, the high hill land, it was useless to them anyway. All they could keep on it were a few sheep, which themselves were worth next to nothing. Cooper went upstairs and looked in at his mother’s bedroom. She was sleeping, and her face was peaceful. He could always tell from her face the state of her mind; the turmoil in her brain was reflected in the contortions of her expression, even in her sleep. Satisfied, he got washed and changed and went back down to the kitchen. The girls, Amy and Josie, had joined their parents at the table, and the room was full of noise and life. Cooper waved goodbye and walked down the passage to the back door.

I I

L 84 For a moment, he stood and looked at the farm. The outline of the buildings became clear as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He could hear the cattle moving quietly, one of the dogs snuffling in the yard, a pheasant cackling, startled by some predator perhaps. Beyond the barn, the dark bulk of the hill came slowly into focus, its crown bare against the sky, but its middle faintly ragged, where the tree line followed the contours of the valley. Most of the fields down here at Bridge End were good, rich land. They had inherited the farm from their maternal grandfather, who had died at some vast age, still tottering about the place in his ancient shiny black suit and his army boots, with baling twine tied round his trouser bottoms. Officially, the farm had passed to their mother, and still belonged to her. But Matt had been the one to run it, right from the beginning, when he was barely a year or two out of agricultural college and working as a cowman on a big tenanted farm at Rowsley. Their father, Joe Cooper, had never been interested in the farm. He had been happy to let Matt take charge, though occasionally rolling up his sleeves on his offduty days to help stack bales of hay or round up the sheep. Joe had been a big, powerful man. It ought to have been Ben Cooper’s abiding memory of him - tall and strong, with heavily muscled forearms and his huge hands wielding a pitchfork, his shirt open at his neck instead of buttoned up with a service tie at his throat, maybe laughing and at ease with his sons. But that wasn’t Ben’s lasting memory. Nothing like it.

Cooper wondered what the future of the farm would be. So many farmers were getting out - going bankrupt or just clearing out of the industry while they could. Pastures had been left to grow weeds and bracken encroached rapidly on to the higher fields, until some farms were like sores on the Peak. It was the farmers, after all, who had looked after the landscape of the national park. Within a generation or two, their absence would change the appearance of the countryside altogether.

A family that lost their farm would join the drift away from the Peak District into the soulless housing estates of the big cities, signing on to the list of unemployed in Sheffield or Manchester while their old homes were taken over by affluent city dwellers, their farmland converted into golf courses or pony trekking centres. To Ben Cooper, it was a neglected tragedy, a kind of surreptitious ethnic cleansing that would never trouble the United Nations.

He felt a familiar object bump his foot by the door. This strangely shaped lump of stone had stood by the back door of the farmhouse for decades, maybe for centuries. It was roughly rounded, with a broader base and a hollow in the middle, with a hole hacked through the bottom.

Everyone had used the stone as a boot scraper or a container for loose screws, until Cooper had seen a photograph in a local history book of an identical object. It was described in the caption as an Iron Age quern, used for grinding corn. It was two thousand years old.

The quern still stood by the back door of Bridge End Farm, unaltered from the last day it had been used for grinding corn. It had been emptied of screws and cleaned up. No boots were scraped on it now. The quern had always stood where it was, as far as anybody knew, so there was no suggestion of moving it. It was preserved for posterity. But nobody used it any more.

Before Cooper could get out of the house, Kate called to him from the passageway.

‘Ben, Helen Milner rang earlier this evening. She sounded a bit upset. She said you were supposed to be meeting her. I told her you were probably working.’

Cooper winced. Helen would have turned up at the rugby club looking for him - they’d had a date tonight. They’d been going out together for only two months. He knew all too well how she would interpret the way he had stood her up.

‘I meant to phone her, but I completely forgot.’ ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Kate. ‘And Helen didn’t sound too surprised, either.’

There was no one waiting at home for Diane Fry when she pulled on to the drive at Grosvenor Avenue. The old house was converted into flats and bedsits, and her neighbours were mostly students that she rarely saw. They seem to spend most of their time in the pub.

Her room was cold, with a peculiar damp chill that seeped from the walls even in summer. She was already realizing what an uncomfortable, depressing experience a winter in Edendale was going to be. The three-bar

L_ electric fire barely chased the chill from the room. And it ate money from the meter at an alarming rate. She wound down with a few stretching exercises, until her body tingled comfortably. She couldn’t remember when she had eaten last, and there was no food in the flat. But fasting was good for the body. It made her stomach feel tight and her brain active. She had found that eating meals caused her digestive system to drain her energy. Fry examined herself in the mirror. There was no injury to be seen on her own face. But it didn’t mean there was no scar. It meant only that it was the sort of scar that nobody else could see, that no one else could tell the way she was marked. That was how she was so much luckier than Maggie Crew. So lucky. Like Maggie, unwilling to reveal her disfigurement to the gaze of a stranger, Fry knew the bitter taste of resentment against someone who knew your innermost secrets. She had felt like telling Maggie that she ought to get out and face people. But surely it was equally futile to try to avoid the person you resented. ‘What an idiot,’ she said, then mentally gave herself a reprimand for talking to herself. But she had meant it for Ben Cooper really, thinking of him buddying up so cosily with Todd Weenink. In the end, they were two of a kind. Besides, she thought, even Ben Cooper didn’t know all her secrets. Fry drove into Sheffield, gradually relaxing as the vast sprawl of houses and factories closed around her, shielding her from the dark hills she was leaving behind

I boats another ten feet towards the hills around the city.

in Derbyshire. She had first travelled into the city when she needed to find a martial arts centre away from Edendale, where the dojo used by Ben Cooper had become a no-go zone. Seeing the city streets then had reminded her exactly why she had come to this area. She went straight into the centre of the city, circled the ring road and parked in a multistorey car park near one of the main shopping streets, The Moor. Then she walked back towards the transport interchange at the bottom of the hill and waited for the carriages of a Supertram to pass before crossing the road. The old railway arches at this end of the city would disappear when modernization reached them. But for now, they were home to a small group of people. No, not a group - they were a series of individuals. They lay in sleeping bags, under filthy blankets and cardboard boxes, huddled close together, yet still in their own completely separate worlds, not speaking to each other or acknowledging anyone else at all. They had isolated themselves for their own protection. Fry knew that the human mind was capable of shutting out many things when necessary, even the close proximity of other people. The canal passed under the railway line here. There was a lock full of scum-covered water, waiting to lift The spaces under the arches had once been used for workshops and storage areas. For years now they had been boarded up, but the boards had been ripped off the doorways, exposing deep, dank caverns it would be foolish to enter.

Fry waited by the lock gate. After a few minutes, a figure stepped out of the shadows at the back of the arch and came towards her. It was a woman, a few years younger than herself. Her eyes looked simultaneously beaten and defiant. ‘I’ve not seen you around here before. What is it you want?’

Fry stared at her hard, but failed to see what she wanted to see. ‘I’m just looking,’ she said. ‘Are you after sex? Drugs?’ ‘No.’ ‘You must be the cops, then.’ ‘I’m looking for this woman.’ Fry took the photograph from her wallet. It was old and worn, taken at least ten years ago. She knew it was futile hoping for an identification, but she had to keep trying. If you gave up trying, you gave up everything. ‘Never seen her before.’ ‘You haven’t looked properly.’ ‘Is she in trouble, then?’ The woman looked at the photo, and pulled a face, curling her lip and wrinkling her nose. ‘Nah. She’s too clean, for a start. And what sort of hairstyle is that, I ask you?’ ‘She may not look like that any more,’ said Fry. ‘Eh?’ She laughed. ‘You’re wasting your time then, aren’t you, duck?’ The woman walked away. Just like all the others did. Fry wanted to get her into a wrist hold, lock the kwikcuffs, take her back to the station and question her until she found out what she wanted to know. But she was out of her territory here, in the position of begging for movements on the edge of his vision. T e ncers week afraid of the dark, and nor was he. He loved to go wandering at night above the quarry, his arms outstretched like a blind man, gently feeling his way through the darkness, caressing the skins of the thin birches, touching the leaves that appeared in front of his face, letting his feet whisper and sigh in the heather, navigating by the glint of a star on a fragment of quartz. 90 R 91 I was the fault of Ben Cooper.

information. And she was taking enough risks as it was. In fact, she was a damned idiot. What had stirred up her need to follow this quest? It was a need she had tried to suppress for a long time, so why should it surface now? But she knew why. It was another thing that

Fry considered how out of place Cooper would be here, in the city. He was chained like a prisoner to the area he came from. He would be completely lost in these streets; but he was never lost on the moors. Ben Cooper smelled his way around like a sheepdog - she had seen him do it, and it drove her mad. But even Cooper would be indoors by now, probably at home among his relatives at that farm on the road towards Hucklow. He would be comfortably settled in his nest, just like the cattle lying in their straw in the sheds she had seen there once. For Diane Fry, indoors was always the safest place to be. No one would choose to be out on the hills at night. And now it was totally dark on the moor - a world of multiple shades of black that formed imaginary shapes and half-seen h .4- ‘t I

In the darkness, he was able to sense the world completely. Not just the little bit around him, but the entire breadth and stretch of it, the whole roll and curve of its body and the movement of its breath. He could feel the warmth of the earth underfoot and touch the great, empty reaches of the sky. With a still mind and total concentration on the rhythms of his body, he could lift himself off the ground and soar into the sky. He had learned to see the darkened landscape flying past below him, drawing away from him faster and faster, until he could see the whole of the valley down there, the whole of the Peak District, the whole of Derbyshire, with its towns and villages suddenly dwindling into insignificance among the black hills, and the long strings of streetlights turning as fragile as the strands of a cobweb. It was all so tiny and unimportant down there. It was nothing but a film of human detritus on the face of the earth. All it would take was one last heave of the tectonic plates below the surface, and all those towns and villages would be gone for ever as the landscape rearranged itself, tucking away the evidence of civilization like a chambermaid tidying the bedclothes, like a housewife shaking out the sheets to toss away the dead skin and fluff, and straightening out the covers to hide the stains. He liked to imagine this happening; he cherished the image like a comforting dream. It was not so long ago, after all, that the last volcano had splashed lava and red-hot ash over the valley of the Derwent, and the last glaciers had ground their way through the limestone to carve those scenic gorges. Five hundred thousand years or so? It was nothing in a couple of million. And man had been here only a few thousand of those years, electric light a hundred. Nature could shrug

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I off the infestation of civilization with one gentle spasm, the irritated twitch of a shoulder to shake off a fly. Then new valleys and lakes would appear, and entirely different hills would rise up in between them. And the birches would begin the task of colonization all over again. He had no doubt this would happen one day. But not in his lifetime. The time of the promised millennial cataclysms had long since passed, leaving just more of the same petty human pain and despair. No, he didn’t fear the darkness; he liked it. But tonight there were people on the moor, policemen and lights. They were in the middle of the stone circle, like the occupants of an alien spacecraft, turning the night into a fairground, destroying the silence with the thump of their generator and their bored, meaningless chatter. He knew their lights would make the shadows in the trees seem even darker, so that he was invisible to their unpractised eyes. It allowed him to get closer, until he was near enough to hear the Virgins sighing and singing in the wind, near enough to catch the faint fragments of the Fiddler’s tune, its notes tangling in the tops of the birches and dropping to the ground with the leaves as they died. There was no dance tonight, only a dirge. There was no hope in the music that he heard, no whispers of encouragement from the stones. And he knew it wouldn’t happen for him now. He had thought his own world could be changed, that his life could be stripped and made afresh, the evidence of his past tucked away, the stains hidden from sight. But he had seen her face. And now it was too late.

L Ben Cooper rubbed a hand across his eyes. There were too many bodies pressed close around him in the darkness. He could feel their heat, smell their sweat and their cotton shirts, hear their breathing and the scraping of their boots. But all he could see was a bright square and a few vague shapes, the outline of a head or shoulder here and there on the edge of the light. Just before they vanished, the Virgins had seemed to move. They had shuffled right and left, faded in and out of focus, come closer and backed away, as if they had been caught for a moment in a celebratory dance. Then they had disappeared with a click and the whirr of a motor, flicking out of sight in a white glare, with tendrils of smoke left drifting in the beam. Cooper shifted uneasily, frustrated by the inactivity. It was early in the morning, but his mind was already alert. In fact, his imagination was streaming ahead of the facts, and vivid images were flipping through his brain. Yesterday, he had stood on Ringham Moor himself. He had felt the bite of the wind up there, and listened to it hissing through the dying heather as the

I birch leaves crackled under his feet. And he had seen where all this started - with the stones. One indistinct shape stood out from the others in the darkness. From the corner of his eye, a subtle change in the pattern of the shadows suggested a face had turned towards him for a second. Cooper felt the brief glance like a draught of air entering the room and stroking its fingers across his face. Suddenly, he felt selfconscious and conspicuous, afraid to move a muscle for fear of drawing attention to himself. He knew it was not in his interest to attract her attention. He wouldn’t know what on earth to say to her if he did. A voice came out of the darkness. ‘Forty feet across, on a shallow, sandy floor. Drag marks nearly twenty feet into the centre. No signs of a struggle. However …’ The next slide appeared on the screen, bizarre and meaningless until the projector pulled it into focus. To Cooper, it looked as if an aerial shot had been taken from high above the earth, where the hull of an ancient boat lay half-buried in a desert. There was a ragged elliptical shape, dark red and scattered with black flecks. It was set in a strange, grainy yellow landscape like deep sand that blurred the edges of the shape and rolled away towards distant orange hills that cast no shadows. He might have been looking at some kind of Noah’s Ark, stranded on a remote mountainside in Syria, the subject of endless arguments about its reality. The jagged black marks in the centre could have been the remains of a petrified wheelhouse, crumbled masts and decking, or rigging long since turned to dust. But there

was no natural sunlight in this desert, only artificial colours. Then a shadow moved in front of the screen, and a weary face was caught by the light of the projector. ‘You can all see what this is. It needs no explanation from me. Death would have occurred within minutes.’ Cooper had to shake himself out of his daydream. The police officers around him became solid shapes again, reverting to the familiar faces of a Derbyshire CID team. On the screen, they were being shown an enhanced postmortem image, a photograph taken on the mortuary slab. The red ellipse was the entry wound made by a sharp, single-bladed knife an inch below the bottom rib. A fatal stab wound to the heart. Those pale orange hills were human flesh - the slope of a woman’s abdomen and the lower edge of her ribcage. The grains of sand were her pores and skin cells, enlarged beyond recognition, distorted by lighting that drained all remnants of humanity from the corpse. This yellow desert was the body of Jenny Weston. And no one was arguing the reality of her death. It was much too late for that. ‘And we found so many damn camp fires you’d think there had been a boy scout jamboree up there,’ said DCI Tailby, as the slide changed to a view of Ringham Moor. Cooper saw few smiles, and heard no laughter. It was too early in the morning, the subject was too lacking in the potential for a quick joke. The DCI tried again. ‘But the SOCOs tell us these were no boy scouts. Not unless they give badges for sex, drugs and animal sacrifice in the scouts these days.’

The briefing had been called early, while it was still dark. Many of the officers looked tired and bleary-eyed. They had gone to bed late last night and hadn’t got enough sleep. But they would wake up as the day went on, as the caffeine kicked in and they were forced to concentrate on their tasks. The incident room at Edendale Divisional HeadI11C full B C hd b i quarters was only a . en ooper a een expecting there would be hardly anywhere left to sit by the time he arrived, but he was surprised by the sparse attendance. Then he discovered that teams were already out at the scene, up on the moor waiting for first light to continue the careful sweep for delicate forensic traces that would vanish or be utterly contaminated at the first sign of heavy rain or the first set of feet to trample over the site. Alongside Tailby sat the Divisional Commander, Cohn Jepson. They had to call him Chief Superintendent Jepson now. Although the rank was supposed to have been abolished in the 1980s, Derbyshire Constabulary had restored the title for its divisional commanders, though without the salary level that went with it. No detective superintendent had arrived yet, though Edendale was still without its own CID chief. For the time being, Tailby was being allowed to make the running. Cooper thought the DCI looked a little greyer at the temples than the day before, a little more stooped at the shoulders. The slide show they had begun with was depressing enough. The photographer had captured a chill bleakness in his establishing shots of the moor, and an

impressionistic arrangement of angles and perspective in his close-ups of the Virgins. The slides of the victim had silenced the room, except for an increased shuffling of boots on the floor. They showed in brutal clarity the curious position of the woman’s limbs, the absence of clothing on the lower half of her body, the red stain on her T-shirt. After the unsettling realism, the autopsy shots had concluded on a note of fantasy. As usual, they seemed divorced from the actual death, too clinical, and reeking too much of antiseptic to be human.

The most interesting result from the postmortem was that there had been no sign of sexual assault on Jenny Weston. So why had some of the victim’s clothes been removed? There were two main possibilities - either her killer had been interrupted, or the intention had been to mislead the police.

Now, with the lights on again, Tailby was forced to admit that all they knew so far about the circumstances of Jenny Weston’s death was the situation they had found on Ringham Moor, and a bewildering array of items recovered by the SOCOs.

‘These camp fires - are they recent, sir?’ asked someone.

‘Some are clearly quite old,’ said Tailby. ‘A couple of months anyway, dating from the summer, when there is most activity up there. But others are more recent, with ash still present - we would expect it to be washed away into the ground after a few spells of rainfall. But the Peak Park Rangers for that area tell us there are often people camping on Ringham Moor, even in

September and October. Right through the middle of winter sometimes. Even in the snow.’

‘We’ve got some right little Sir Edmund Hillarys, haven’t we?’

It had to be Todd Weenink who couldn’t resist. He looked as crumpled as the rest, perhaps even more so. He had almost certainly had more to drink the night before than the average man could take. Casual flippancy seemed to seep out of him like sweat from a ripe Stilton. Cooper watched Tailby’s grey eyes warm as he glanced at Weenink, grateful for the response.

‘Of course, there’s no indication so far that anybody camping out on the moor is necessarily a suspect for the attack on our latest victim, or even a witness. However …’ Tailby pinned a photograph to a big cork board. ‘By a stroke of luck, we also have this.’

The photo showed a patch of grey ash, with a few black sticks of charred wood poking through it. The ash looked as though it had been roughly brushed over. And there, to one side, was the partial imprint of the sole of a boot or shoe.

‘It’s early days, yet,’ said the DCI. ‘But we’re hopeful of an identification on the footwear. There’s sufficient impression from the sole to get a match, we think.’

‘But was it made at the time, sir?’

‘Ah.’ Tailby pointed to a small, dark smudge on the photograph. ‘This is a trace of the victim’s blood. The significant thing about it is that the print was made on top of the blood stain while it was still fresh.’

He nodded with some degree of satisfaction. Early forensic evidence was exactly what everyone prayed

for. A boot print that would connect its wearer to the scene at the time of the offence - what better could they ask for at such an early stage? Well, a suspect with footwear to compare the boot print to, that’s what.

‘Read the preliminary crime scene report,’ said Tailby.

There was another shuffling of papers. Cooper looked down at his file. There was a computer-printed list of items retrieved from the area around the Virgins, but it was a long one, difficult to take in. The SOCOs had taken samples of vegetation, including heather, whinberry, gorse and three types of grass. They had taken sections of bark from the trunks of the birches where they had been cut by a knife or splashed with an unknown substance. They had brought in stones, halfbricks, bags of ash and cinders, sheets of corrugated iron, a small metal grille like a fire grate, a burnt corner of the Sheffield Star where half a dozen screwed-up pages had been used to help light a fire, a British Midland Airways refresher tissue wrapper, a whole pile of aluminium ring-pulls, several cigarette butts, a Findus crispy pancake packet, and a selection of used condoms.

The forensic team had covered a wide area - all of the clearing around the stones, right into the birches and as far as the fence around the edge of the quarry. The SOCOs must have balked at the view to the east, towards the edge of the plateau. Cooper could remember a sea of bracken - damp, endless acres of it, stretching to the Hammond Tower and beyond, flowing over the edge of the cliff, dense and almost impenetrable. Beyond the bracken was a low wire fence with wooden

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posts, then beyond it a precipitous drop. From there, an object would plummet a thousand feet into the trees that grew at acute angles on the lower edges of the slope into the dale.

Scrapings had been taken from a pool of white wax that had solidified in the hollow of a rotten tree, while digging in what at first appeared to be a rubbish hole turned up the bones of an animal. There were latent prints collected from the handlebars, saddle, front wheel and crossbar of the Dawes Kokomo Jenny Weston had been riding, and more samples of blood had been scraped from the frame of the bike.

‘We think the names on the stones are just old graffiti. The inscription scraped on the ground is more recent. It looks like “STRIDE”. If it means anything at all to anybody, speak up.’

Nobody spoke. They were looking at two more photographs on the board behind Tailby. There were two women, alive and smiling at the camera, though the one on the left looked guarded, maybe a little bit haughty, as if the photographer were taking a liberty getting her in the shot.

‘Are we looking at the same assailant in both cases?’ said Tailby. ‘Someone who was practising, as it were, on the earlier victim, Maggie Crew? Are we looking at someone who has succeeded in perfecting his technique with Jenny Weston?’

It was a very strange idea of perfection. Ben Cooper looked to see whether the other officers were reacting the same way. But most of them showed no surprise at the irony of the thought. Then something made him

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glance towards the far side of the room. Leaning casually against a desk was Diane Fry. She’d had her fair hair cut even shorter, and it gave an angular look to her lean face. He was sure she had lost weight, too. She had been slim before, but now there was a suggestion of something taut and thinly-stretched.

‘Don’t let ideas like that distract you,’ said Tailby. ‘We are treating this incident as an entirely separate enquiry, until the evidence proves otherwise. At this stage, we’re concentrating on collecting information. All right?’

His audience seemed to take this as a cue to start shuffling their papers again, looking for what information there already was. Cooper dragged his eyes away from Fry and did the same. At this stage, the information was pretty thin. Forensics results were awaited. Initial witness reports were sparse. True, they had details of Jenny Weston - who she was, where she lived, what she had done for a living. The minute details of her life were starting to emerge. But there was nothing to show what had made her go cycling on Ringham Moor on an early November afternoon, and why she had ended up dead among the Nine Virgins.

‘Somebody must have seen Jenny before she was killed. Maybe, just maybe, somebody also saw her killer. So have we got any leads so far? Paul?’

DI Hitchens stood up, straightening his jacket, looking much smarter this morning in his dark grey suit. ‘We’re looking at the likelihood that the killer arrived

at Ringham Moor by car,’ he said. ‘We’ve already visited the houses close to the parking places on the edges of

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the moor, and we’ve collected a list of vehicles that were noticed around the time of the incident. It goes without saying that the vast majority of those vehicles will be totally impossible to trace. We’re lucky, though. If it had been the height of summer, it would be a lot worse.’

There were sighs and nods. It was a problem nobody in E Division needed telling about. The number of cars from out of the area greatly outnumbered the locally registered ones, especially in summer. Many of the Peak District’s twentyfive million visitors a year drove through Edendale and its surrounding villages at some time. Most were just passing through and were no different from a million other tourist cars. Nobody took any notice of them individually - they were just an anonymous mass, a crawling stream of red and blue insects covering the roads and car parks like insects swarming in the August heat. They were a naturally occurring phenomenon, like greenfly.

Visitors and their cars brought their own kind of problems for crime management. The mention of them reminded Ben Cooper that, right now, he should have been in the Crime Strategy Meeting.

‘We need to trace Jenny Weston’s movements exactly, particularly in the last couple of hours before she died. DCs Cooper and Weenink will start with the cycle hire centre at Partridge Cross this morning,’ said Tailby.

Weenink sat just behind Cooper in the incident room. He had a seat against the wall, his shoulders almost making a dent in the plaster. He looked as though he wanted to put his feet up on the table, but was resisting the temptation. There were only five officers in

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the Edendale section CID now, a closer-knit grouping since the recent reorganization. Cooper hadn’t known Weenink so well before. He had the sneaking feeling that there was no one in the division who envied him.

For a while, Cooper had been convinced that his fall from popularity had only one cause - the arrival in E Division of Diane Fry, on a transfer from West Midlands. She was ambitious; some might say ruthless. Her arrival had coincided with the moment things had started to go wrong for Cooper, when his hopes of promotion had been set back in favour of hers. Fry seemed not to have put a foot wrong so far. There were people who made all the right moves without trying; and there were others who followed their own instinct wherever it might take them, and ended up in the mire. Cooper blamed himself for being naive with Diane Fry. It took time to earn trust.

Probably his father would have been able to tell him that. His father had seen everything there was to be known about office politics and in-fighting inside the police service. He had managed to steer clear of all that; he had never fallen victim to backstabbing from his colleagues. It had been the street that had killed him, in the end.

‘There are a number of names and addresses on the list for interview this morning,’ said Hitchens. ‘Colleagues, friends, neighbours. We expect the list to increase as the day goes on. There have been several boyfriends, according to the father. They all have to be traced. Fortunately, we have the victim’s own address book from her house. And, of course, there is the

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ex-husband. We need to dig out the details of Jenny Weston’s life. Narrow those names down. Give us something to go on.’

‘Hey, Ben,’ said Weenink when the meeting broke up. ‘This tracing her route business - are they saying we’ve got to go by bike?’

‘Of course not,’ said Cooper. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘We’ll walk.’

DI Hitchens touched Diane Fry’s arm and kept her back while the others left the incident room. DCI Tailby looked at them both thoughtfully. Fry knew she must have had his backing to get the move up to Acting Detective Sergeant, but she wasn’t quite sure how to read him yet. She was more comfortable working with either Hitchens or DI Armstrong, both of whom she felt she understood.

‘The ex-husband, Martin Stafford…’ said Tailby. ‘Do we have an address?’ asked Fry.

‘No, but we should be able to track him down through his employment record. He was a journalist, at least while he was married to Jenny Weston. I’ve asked for somebody to visit his old employers in Derby to look at his personnel records. With luck, they should have a note of any reference they gave him when he moved on. He may be completely out of the area by now, of course. Journalists move around quite a bit.’

‘What about a current boyfriend?’

‘Nobody seems sure who the latest one was, Diane,’ said Hitchens. ‘There are one or two of the girls at the

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call centre that she talked to about boyfriends sometimes. But they were very vague. Obviously, we’re going through the address book. But she used phone numbers, not addresses. Results might take a little time.’ ‘I see.’

‘We do have this note.’ Hitchens held up an evidence bag. ‘One of the team found it in the back of her diary.’ ‘What is it?’ said Tailby. ‘A love letter?’

‘Hardly a letter. It’s only two lines. And there’s no evidence love was involved either. The note reads: “Nine o’clock Friday at the cottage. Buy some fruitflavoured ones.”’

Tailby stared at him. Fry remembered that the DCI was a lay preacher at a United Reformed Church in Dronfield.

‘We believe it’s a reference to contraceptives, sir,’ said Hitchens.

‘Yes?’ ‘Condoms. We think it’s a fair assumption that the note is from a boyfriend. There’s no date, and it’s unsigned. But it looks fairly recent. Otherwise, why would it still be in her diary?’

‘Good point.’ Tailby put down the reports and took off his glasses.

‘I take it you are to remain as SIO, sir?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Detective Superintendent Prince is tied up with this case in Derby, the double shooting,’ said Tailby. ‘A drugs territory dispute. We’re getting some stick about it down there, apparently.’

‘Yes.’

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‘It means Mr Prince can only keep a watching brief on this case, I’m afraid. But he thinks we’ve got a good start.’

‘Possibly,’ said Hitchens. ‘But there is speculation about the other attack.’

Tailby shook his head. ‘They smell different to me. This Jenny Weston sounds like a woman who got involved with the wrong sort of chap. It’s an old story. You’ll see.’

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The Partridge Cross cycle hire centre was in a converted railway station. Past it ran what had once been the Cromford amp; High Peak rail line, now the High Peak Trail, a smoothly tarmacked stretch of track perfect for walkers and cyclists.

There was still a morning mist lingering in places, and the old railway cuttings seemed to have drawn it down on to the trail. It gave a damp nip to the air that hit Ben Cooper and Todd Weenink as soon as they got out of the car. But there were already vehicles in the car park. Some had cycle racks on their tailgates and mountain bikes hoisted high in the air. A family with three small children were strapping on their safety helmets ready to hit the trail. There were no traces of Jenny Weston left here now.

The day’s weather forecast from the Met Office was posted on a board outside the hire centre, next to a notice warning hirers that bikes had to be returned by 6 p.m. in the summer, or by dusk in the winter. At the other end of the building a counter concession was selling ice cream, sweets and canned drinks. In a compound, they saw at least one Dawes Kokomo among

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the tandems and trailer cycles. Before they went into the hire centre, they stopped and looked at the bikes.

‘You wouldn’t get me on one of these,’ said Weenink, immediately sitting astride a tandem and looking like a cowboy trying to mount a donkey. ‘Unless it was with the right bird on the back, of course. Preferably the local bike, up for a quick pedal in the woods.’

Across the car park was the Ranger centre, a twostorey converted barn. They had passed it on the way in, and Cooper had noticed Owen Fox’s silver Land Rover parked in the yard.

They found Don Marsden, the cycle hire manager, leaning against a wooden counter, wiping his hands on a cloth. He had been tinkering with one of the hire bikes, checking the tightness of the forks on the wheels, testing the brakes and adjusting the saddle. Now he was waiting for his first customer of the morning, a blank page of the log book in front of him.

Marsden wore a red sweater like a Ranger, but with a different logo on the breast pocket. He didn’t look like a cyclist himself - he had a heavy paunch pushing out the front of his sweater and a goatee beard covering part of his double chin. Behind the counter, the office he worked in was crowded. It contained everything from a microwave oven and a personal computer with drifting parabolic shapes filling its screen, to displays of maps and route guides. It was just gone nine thirty and the centre had been open only a few minutes. Marsden gave them a cheerful greeting, and his cheerfulness didn’t falter even when he discovered they were police officers.

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‘I was told you’d be back,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘We’ve got your earlier statement,’ said Cooper.

‘We’re just trying to establish the victim’s exact movements yesterday.’

‘Fair enough.’ Don leaned on the counter with an expectant smile.

‘Is this the woman you remember seeing?’ Cooper produced a copy of the photograph provided by Eric Weston, a picture of Jenny at her cousin’s wedding two years before. Jenny was dressed in a dove grey suit. Unlike the others in the wedding group, she was not wearing a hat, and her dark hair curled round her face, the strands of it echoing the curve of her smile. She looked as though she had been enjoying herself for once.

‘Oh, yes. I don’t need to see the photo either,’ said Don. ‘I remember her. Weston, that’s right. She’s here in the book. She took out a mountain bike at twelve forty-five. It was what she always had. She was a regular, you see.’

‘A regular? How often did she come?’

‘About once every two weeks in the summer. I think she probably went to some of the other hire centres on the weekends in between. Winter, it depended on the weather. But we’re open every day of the year here, except Christmas Day.’

‘So you knew who she was.’

‘I recognized her, of course. And you get to know the names of the regulars, after a bit. You have to enter it in the book, see, and on the computer. They have to show me some ID and put a deposit down on the bike.

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Twenty quid, it is. She gave me cash. Do you know … ?’ ‘Somebody else will sort that out, I expect,’ said Cooper.

‘Right. Only it’s not something that’s happened to me before, the customer dying before they can reclaim their deposit. It’s not in the regulations.’

Weenink had been flicking through leaflets advertising the local attractions of Lathkill Dale and Carsington Water. Now he seemed to take notice for the first time of what Marsden was saying.

‘Did she chat to you, then?’ he asked. ‘I mean, did she just come in, pay the money and take the bike, or did she pass the time of day a bit?’

‘She didn’t say much really,’ admitted Don. ‘She was pleasant, you know. But I wouldn’t have said she was the chatty type. Not with me, anyway. Women on their own are a bit distant these days. They learn not to be too friendly.’

He sounded regretful. Cooper wondered what his prospects were as an interviewee when the reporters and TV crews arrived, as they surely would. It was lucky they had got to Don Marsden before the cameras. He had a feeling the story might get embellished along the way later on.

‘So what else do you know about her?’ suggested Weenink.

Don shook his head. ‘Just where she came from. I’ve got her address, look. The Quadrant, Totley, Sheffield. I’ve been through it once or twice, I think. She normally showed me her driving licence for ID. We have to go through the procedure every time. Can’t

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make exceptions. But as for knowing anything about her - not really. Except I don’t think she was married.’ ‘Oh? What makes you say that?’

‘Dunno really. Just the way she was. Friendly, yeah. But it was more like she seemed to be able to please herself what she did. I had the impression there probably wasn’t a husband and kids at home waiting for her to get back. Do you know what I mean?’

Weenink simply stared at the cycle hire man. This was his principal interrogation technique, the intimidatory stare. He had perfected the art of silent disbelief.

‘You’re quite observant really, Don,’ said Cooper.

‘I think so. You see all sorts here, you know. You get to recognize the types.’

‘It was a quarter to one when she came in, you said.’

‘That’s right. It’s in the book.’ ‘You saw her arrive, did you?’

‘Yeah. I was standing in the doorway there, as it happens. It was quiet, like now. Maybe not so quiet as this, but quiet anyway. I saw her car pull up. A Fiat, right? So I came back in, and I had a bike ready for her. I knew what she’d want.’

‘Where did she park?’ asked Weenink, though he knew exactly where the Fiat had been found.

‘Just over there, the first bay on the left.’ ‘Were there any other cars here?’

‘One or two. Three or four, maybe. I didn’t really count them.’

‘Anybody else that you knew? Any other regulars?’ ‘No. But the ones who hired bikes are in the book

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here. The other policemen took their names and addresses. Of course, there are some folk who bring their own bikes. They don’t come in here at all unless they want a map or something, or they want to ask directions. Some walk or go jogging. Them I don’t notice so much.’

Cooper turned the book round to look at it. The next bike hire recorded after Jenny Weston’s entry was nearly half an hour later, when a tandem had been signed out to a couple called Sharman, from Matlock. Other hirers weren’t his concern, for now. Checking them out was somebody else’s job.

‘Did Jenny Weston ever tell you where she was heading?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Don. ‘But she usually set off eastwards, down the trail towards Ashbourne.’

‘Is that what she did yesterday?’

‘That’s right. It’s sensible for somebody on their own to tell me where they’re going. In case they have an accident or something, you know. There are times when people get lost and are really late back with the bikes. You start to wonder whether something’s happened to them. But there’s not much you can do, if you’ve no idea where they’ve set off to.’

‘Jenny’s bike was overdue for being returned, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it was. She had a three-hour ticket. It should have been back here by a quarter to four, by rights. You have to pay extra if you go over - two pounds more. Or you can lose your twenty quid altogether. We’re supposed to close at dusk anyway.’

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‘Did you worry about the fact she wasn’t back?’

‘I thought it was unusual, that’s all. There’s plenty of folk late back. But it was odd for her. She’d never been late before, so I did wonder. But when it came time to close, I would have been reporting in. Head office would have made a decision whether to call you lot. But, of course, young Mark Roper found her before that, didn’t he?’

Cooper pricked up his ears. ‘How did you hear that?’

‘Owen Fox told me. He came through from the Ranger centre when he heard. It’s practically next door, see.’

‘Do you work closely with the Rangers?’

‘We help each other out a bit. I’ve known Owen Fox for years. Good bloke, Owen.’

Weenink had wandered past the wooden barrier and was examining the bikes stacked in the back of the building.

‘Hey, look at this.’ He had found a machine that looked like a wheelchair with a unicycle welded on to the front. It had no pedals, but there were two handles in front of the rider, attached to a gear wheel. Weenink squeezed himself into the seat and waggled the steering from side to side.

‘They’re hand-cranked,’ said Don, watching him cautiously. ‘For disabled people, you know.’

‘Brilliant.’ Cooper felt Weenink was starting to become an embarrassment. It always happened when he got bored. ‘Well, thanks for your time, Don.’

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‘No problem. As you can see, I’ve got no customers.’ ‘You might find it gets busier later on.’

‘Doubt it. Not at this time of the year, on a Monday. And half-term isn’t until next week.’

‘No, you don’t understand. Once people see the news about the murder, it’ll be crowded down here.’

Don looked shocked. ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? Why should people want to come here?’

Cooper shrugged. ‘I can’t explain it. But they will.’ ‘Oh, they’ll be running coach trips,’ said Weenink, grinning from the doorway. ‘Tours for Ghouls Limited.’

‘Not to mention the newspapers and the TV cameras.’ ‘Blimey.’ Don looked nervously out of the doorway at the bike compound. ‘I didn’t expect that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect people would be like that. Perhaps I’d better ring the boss and ask if I can close up for the day.’

‘Close? Why would you want to do that? You could be a TV star, mate,’ said Weenink.

Don smiled uncertainly. As they walked away, he was watching the car park entrance. He still wasn’t sure whether they were joking.

Diane Fry always forgot. It slipped her mind every time how hopeful the family of a victim were when they saw the police on their doorstep in the early stages of an enquiry. They had such confidence, so often misplaced. An early resolution was their main hope, an end to the nightmare. They believed the police were doing their best, but rarely was a detective able to bring them hope.

Mr Weston was in the front garden of his house in

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Alfreton, raking leaves with an absorbed expression. He looked up sharply when he heard the police car pull into the drive. But DI Hitchens simply shook his head, and Weston turned back to his driveway and attacked the leaves with his rake as if he wanted to stab them into the ground. ‘Was there something else you wanted to ask?’ he said, when they reached him. ‘A few things, Mr Weston,’ said Hitchens. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Can’t be helped, I suppose. It’ll go on and on, won’t it?’ The Westons’ house was a large semi in a style that might have been called 1920s mock Tudor, with stucco above and brick below. The Tudor effect was achieved by a few stray bits of black wood, which supported nothing, inserted into the walls. But the house was substantial and well cared for. The front door was of some oak-like wood, and through the bay window Fry caught a glimpse of a lounge with cast-iron wall lights in the shape of flaming torches, a wheel-shaped chandelier supporting electric candles and a log basket on a brick hearth. ‘I’ve taken compassionate leave for a few days,’ said Weston. ‘I need to look after Susan. The head of my school has been very understanding.’ Fry became aware of Mrs Weston standing in the background, listening. She was pale and looked tired. ‘Have you found Martin Stafford?’ she asked. ‘Not yet, Mrs Weston,’ said Hitchens. ‘So he’s got away.’ ‘We’ll locate him, eventually.’

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‘He always had a violent tendency.’ ‘We want to eliminate him from the enquiry, obviously.’ Mrs Weston stared at him as if she didn’t understand what he was saying. ‘Susan -‘ said her husband. ‘I always said he was no good,’ she said. ‘I was always afraid it would come to this.’ ‘I don’t think we know any more about Martin Stafford than we’ve told you already,’ said Mr Weston. ‘There might be something at the house in Totley, I suppose. I mean Jenny’s house. He might have written to her or something.’ ‘Trying to creep back,’ said his wife. ‘We’ve already looked there,’ said Hitchens. ‘We found this ‘ The Westons examined the photocopy that he showed them. It was a note rather than a letter - just a few lines about an arrangement to meet somewhere. But it was addressed to jenny, and it was written in terms that suggested a close relationship. Mrs Weston coloured faintly when she reached the line about fruit flavours. ‘There’s no name on it,’ she said. ‘No,’ said Fry. ‘That’s why we’re showing it to you. In case you recognize it.’ ‘You think it might be from Stafford?’ asked Mr Weston. ‘There’s no date on it, either.’ ‘Unfortunately not.’ ‘I can’t really remember what his writing was like. Susan?’

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‘No,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘I mean, I don’t know. It could be.’ ‘Did he ever write to you? Might you have something that we could compare it to?’ The couple looked at each other. ‘Have we still got that postcard?’ said Mr Weston. His wife went to a mahogany dresser and opened a drawer. It was one of those drawers that were always full of things that you never wanted. But Mrs Weston soon located a plastic wallet of the kind that usually contained holiday snaps. ‘I don’t know why we kept it,’ she said. ‘But you can see what sort of man he is.’ Fry studied the postcard. It showed a view on one side of a beach lined with tourist hotels. ‘Hawaii,’ she said. ‘Very nice.’ She turned the card over. It was addressed to the Weston and signed ‘Martin (your former son-in-law)’. The rest of it seemed fairly innocuous - a few lines about how hot the weather was, how luxurious the hotel, how stimulating the nightlife. ‘Spent nearly 2,000 pounds already!’, it said, as if it was a boast. ‘I’m not sure what it tells me,’ said Fry. ‘This holiday was presumably after the divorce.’ ‘Not only after the divorce - paid for by the divorce,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘He spent his share of the proceedings from the sale of their house in Derby. He never seemed to want for money, I don’t know why. While Jenny had to spend all of her share and borrow more to buy that little place in Totley, Stafford went on this holiday in Hawaii. The postcard was to rub it in. No other reason.’

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I ‘Apart from Martin Stafford, we’d also want to try to trace any boyfriends that Jenny had recently,’ said Hitchens. ‘We’ve been asked that before,’ said Mr Weston. ‘I gave you some names that we knew. We didn’t know of anyone else. Not recently.’ ‘She didn’t talk to us about things like that,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘Not since Stafford.’ ‘Not even then,’ said her husband. ‘We had to work it all out for ourselves, what was going on. She didn’t want to say anything against him. Can you believe it?’ ‘She was loyal,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘I tried to teach her always to be loyal to her husband. No matter what.’ Mr Weston looked down at the teacups. His wife continued to stare straight ahead, past Fry’s shoulder. It was an aggressive and challenging stare, but it wasn’t directed at Fry at all. It was hitting the wall behind her and ricocheting with unerring accuracy into the back of the seat next to her, passing through Eric Weston’s heart on the way. ‘No matter what,’ repeated Mrs Weston. Diane Fry was always fascinated by those little secret means of communication that passed between couples without the need for explanation. You had to be very close to someone to be able to do it, very familiar with each other’s thoughts. ‘But she divorced him, in the end,’ said Hitchens. Mrs Weston nodded. ‘Young women are less tolerant. They have higher expectations of what marriage should

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be like. They come to a point where they can’t tolerate it any more. You can’t blame them, I suppose. But it isn’t something I could do. My generation was brought up differently. We always believed that we had to grin and bear it, to accept our lot in life. To accept life’s burdens.’

Mr Weston was looking more and more uncomfortable in his seat. He rattled his teacup in its saucer and cleared his throat.

‘Can we take this postcard?’ asked Fry.

‘The writing doesn’t look anything like the note,’ said Mrs Weston.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ admitted Fry. ‘Well, that’s that, then.’

Back in the car, Diane Fry called in for an update on the other lines of enquiry. The teams canvassing neighbours in Totley had found someone who remembered a man looking for Jenny two weeks’ previously, asking for her by name. The man was described as being of medium height and ordinary. He had been quite respectably dressed, and had spoken in a local accent. Very useful.

A second neighbour, who lived nearly opposite Jenny’s house in The Quadrant, recalled a strange car parked in the road one night. A man had been sitting in it, but he had driven off at about the time that Jenny had left her house.

A third witness reported a light-coloured van, possibly an old Ford Transit or something similar, which had passed slowly along the road twice. At the time, the

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neighbour had thought it might be gypsies -‘totters’, he called them - looking for scrap, or anything they could steal.

Several neighbours recalled female visitors to Jenny’s home, including a girl with dark dreadlocks who had attracted particular attention in The Quadrant for a while. Dreadlocks were rare in Totley.

All the fragments of information had been passed to the officers interviewing Jenny’s colleagues at Global Assurance. But none of the colleagues could remember Jenny ever complaining of being harassed by a disgruntled boyfriend. If it had been her ex-husband trying to get back in touch, Jenny had not confided the fact to anyone. But the incident room staff would put the information into the HOLMES system. Correlations might be thrown up. Just one detail could send the whole enquiry in a new direction.

DI Hitchens had been on the mobile phone to the DCI back at Divisional Headquarters in West Street. When he finished the call, Hitchens turned to Fry and told her what they wanted her to do next.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she said. But he wasn’t.

Mark Roper rattled a fork against the plastic bowl. Three cats appeared from the shrubbery at the end of the garden - a grey one and two tabbies. They ran with their tails in the air and brushed themselves against Mark’s legs until he put their bowls on the ground and they began to gnaw at their chunks of meat.

While they ate, Mark went to clean out the bedding for the rabbits and freshen the water in their cages. The

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rabbits stared at him through the mesh, twitching their noses as they sniffed his familiar smell. For a while, Mark sat on an upturned milk crate to watch the cats feed. Normally, he would have been at work, but he had been told to take a day off. He couldn’t understand what they expected him to do at home, except to sit and think, to relive the moment he had found the body of the murdered woman, and to wonder about the events that had led up to her death among the Nine Virgins. Mark would have much preferred to be with Owen, to be busy with jobs that would take his mind off things. But he hadn’t wanted to argue, in case they thought his reaction was strange. He could think of nothing worse than sitting in the house all day, as some people did. He soon became claustrophobic and restless, and angry at the untidiness - the dirty clothes draped over chairs, the empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays left on the floor. In any case, the house contained nothing of his father any more. His clothes had gone, and so had his books, his walking stick and his stuffed Tawny Owl. The man who lived with Mark’s mother now had removed every remaining trace of her husband from the house. But he had never thought to bother with the garden. Here, Mark recognized every item that his father had collected over the years - every lump of wood, and every stone. This milk crate was one that his father had found by the roadside and had thought might be useful one day. Mark had helped his father make these rabbit cages; the frames still bore the marks made by

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I a saw and a plane held in his father’s hands. Their relationship still lived on in these little things. These, and the nightmares that Mark suffered now and then, when he would wake up in the night, calling for his dad like a child.

Mark sat on the crate for a while and thought about the woman on the moor; and then he thought about Owen Fox. He had started to get used to relying on Owen for an element of stability in his life. The fear that the stability might be taken from him once again made Mark swear abruptly, so that the cats were startled and scuttled away from their bowls. The rabbits lifted their ears and gazed at him with their strange pink eyes. Like Mark, they were suddenly terrified of the unknown things that might lie beyond their cages in the outside world. Todd Weenink looked up towards the road at the sound of a car approaching the cycle hire centre. Ben Cooper saw his partner stiffen, and heard him start to curse, low but vehemently. Spurts of Weenink’s breath were hitting the air, swirling ominously. Cooper could almost see the curses forming into dark, solid lumps in the mist.

‘Don’t look now, Ben, but the weather just got a few degrees colder round here,’ said Weenink. The car that splashed through the puddles and pulled up in front of the hire centre was a black Peugeot. When it stopped, the headlights were turned down to sidelights, but its doors remained closed and no one got out. It sat there with traces of steam rising from its

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bonnet and mingling with the mist. And with each tick of its cooling engine, Cooper felt his heart chill a little more.

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It was only an hour or so after the morning news that the first visitors started to arrive on Ringham Moor. They parked up on all the roadside verges, filling the lay-bys and blocking the field gates. Within a few minutes, the first of them began to wander up the tracks that led on to the moor. They came in ones and twos mostly, but some had brought their children for a day out.

‘Look at them,’ said the uniformed sergeant in charge of containing the crime scene. ‘Can’t you hear the conversations over the cornflakes? “Nothing much on the telly today - why don’t we all go and see where the lady got herself murdered?”’

These people had come wrapped up well, in their sweaters and anoraks and boots and hats. They brought their cameras, too, and their binoculars. They took photos of any policemen they saw, and of the crime scene tape rattling in the wind; they were excited by the sight of the small tent that the SOCOs had erected in the middle of the Nine Virgins, over the spot where Jenny Weston had lain.

Officers had been posted to block the main paths. But

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they were too easily visible across the moor, and soon they found that people were simply cutting across the vast expanses of heather to avoid them. They shouted themselves hoarse and got the bottoms of their trouser legs soaking wet trying to intercept the stragglers. The sergeant called in for reinforcements, but found there were no more officers available. As always, the division was short of resources.

““Just do the best you can,”’ he reported. ‘That’s what they always say. “Just do the best you can.”’ One young PC found himself being followed around

by two old ladies who bombarded him with questions. They pulled at his sleeve and patted his arm and demanded to know whether there was a lot of blood, and how big the murderer’s knife had been, and whether the body was still inside the tent. The constable appealed to his sergeant to help him. But the sergeant was busy threatening to arrest a small, fat man in a fluorescent green bubble jacket who refused to move as he stared at the tent with feverish eyes and asked one question over and over again: ‘She was naked, wasn’t she? It said on the news she was naked.’

Finally, the officers were forced to retreat, reducing the size of the area they were trying to protect. They clustered round the clearing, abandoning the heather and birches to the intruders, like a garrison under siege.

‘Haven’t they got anything else to do?’ complained the PC to the sergeant for the tenth time. ‘Can’t they go and pester the ducks in Bakewell or something?’

‘There’ll be more of them yet, Wragg. It’s still early,’

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said the sergeant, watching the green jacket constantly circling the clearing like a bird of prey.

‘Early for what?’

‘Early for the real loonies.’ ‘What do you call this lot, then?’

The sergeant shrugged as PC Wragg shook off the grasping fingers of the old ladies. ‘These are just your normal, everyday members of the public. Wait till the pubs open. Then you’ll see a real circus.’

‘Christ, why don’t they leave us alone?’

‘It’s a bit of excitement for them, you see. Some of them probably think it’s a film set. They think we’re filming an episode of Peak Practice or something. In fact, I reckon those old dears have mistaken you for what’s his name, the heart-throb doctor.’

‘Let’s hope the forensics lot are finished soon over at the quarry.’

‘Shush. Don’t let on. The gongoozlers’ll be over that way too, if they hear you.’

‘I think it’s too late, Sarge.’

The old ladies had spotted a police Range Rover and the Scientific Support Unit’s Maverick parking on the roadway above the abandoned quarry. The pair set off at a brisk pace, adjusting their hats and twirling their walking sticks. A family with three children and a Jack Russell terrier had settled down on the grass under the birch trees and had begun to unpack sandwiches and flasks. One of the children got out a kite and unfurled the line. Another threw a stick for the dog to chase.

The sergeant looked around for the little man in the green jacket, and saw him crouched in the heather, his

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hands compulsively pulling up clumps of whinberry. He looked like a wild dog, eager and alert, sniffing the air for carrion. ‘I’m sure I know that one,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ve seen him somewhere before.’ ‘He looks as though he shouldn’t be out on his own,’ said PC Wragg. ‘I reckon there ought to be at least two male nurses with him, carrying a strait jacket and a bucket of tranquillizers.’ ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ve a feeling he’s a respectable member of society. A teacher or a lawyer, something like that. I can’t quite place him, but it’ll come.’ Wragg held up his hand like a traffic policeman as he saw more walkers approaching. ‘I’m sorry, ladies. This is a crime scene. I’ll have to ask you to walk another way, please.’ ‘Oh, but we always come this way.’ There were four women, all in early middle age, with their hair tied back and their faces flushed and healthy. They were in bright cagoules and striped leggings, like a gaggle of multicoloured sheep. They had probably left their husbands at home washing their cars or playing golf. ‘Not today, I’m afraid, ladies,’ said Wragg firmly. ‘Please take another route.’ ‘He’s very polite,’ said one woman. ‘Have you the right to stop us walking along here?’ asked another in a different tone. ‘It’s a public right of way, after all.’ ‘That’s right - it’s marked on the Ordnance Survey

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map.’ The third one produced the map as evidence and pointed at it triumphantly. ‘All the same…’ said Wragg. The women began to turn away. But the second one paused and glowered at Wragg. ‘You’d be better off making it safe for people to go about their business rather than stopping us using public rights of way. Get the man who’s attacking women, that’s the best thing you can do.’ PC Wragg watched them go. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he said to their retreating backs. ‘You’ll have to get used to that,’ said his sergeant. ‘As far as the public are concerned, it’s all your fault.’ The man in the green bubble jacket was still maneuvering for a closer approach, watching the officers until they were distracted by something else, then creeping a few inches nearer. ‘So help me, I’m going to thump him if he gets in reach,’ said PC Wragg. ‘Just the sight of him makes my skin crawl.’ Of course, Ben Cooper realized that the black Peugeot was familiar. It was just that he hadn’t expected to see it here. Maybe it was destined to follow him around for ever, like a kind of ghostly hearse, with a phantom undertaker at the wheel. ‘It’s Diane Fry,’ he said. Todd Weenink cursed some more. ‘Oh great. First the Wicked Witch of West Street, DI Armstrong. Now the Frozen Bitch from the Black Country. God, we could do without this. Stand by for a laugh a minute.’

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‘I thought she was already gone,’ said Cooper. ‘Fry? I wish.’

They watched Fry get out of the Peugeot and look around the car park. To Cooper, she still seemed thin, despite a heavy woollen jacket with a hood against the cold. She had never looked healthy - too much in need of a few good meals, and with a strength that was all sinew and technique, rather than muscle. For a moment, he wondered how she spent her time now. No one else in Edendale had taken the trouble to befriend her since his own efforts had failed. Diane Fry carried something dark and immovable on her shoulder, something that had accompanied her from West Midlands when she transferred. Cooper felt a frisson of unease at the thought of what might happen to her eventually, if she was left entirely on her own.

Finally, Fry saw them and walked directly towards Weenink. She took him aside and spoke to him quietly for a minute. Cooper could see that Todd looked unhappy. But then he walked to their car and drove away without a glance, his face set into a scowl.

Cooper stood quite still, like a child reluctant to draw attention to himself. He wanted to shove his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, but was worried about how it might be interpreted.

He found the officer safety techniques from the training manuals running through his mind - extracts from the sections on employing empathy. Don’t excite the suspect by sudden movements, they said. Show a willingness to resolve the situation by cooperation. That

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was fine. But there was one problem here. The manuals always recommended maintaining a verbal exchange with the suspect for as long as possible, if you were going to maintain empathy.

Cooper watched her as she took her time reading the notices in the window of the cycle hire centre, as if she were totally fascinated by the weather forecast or the penalties for returning a bike after the deadline.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Wrong?’ Fry’s stare was capable of raising the temperature of his skin until he felt his face was glowing like a red traffic light. ‘DC Weenink is required back at Division, that’s all.’

‘Why?’ said Cooper. ‘What’s so important that they pull him off the job just like that?’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Can’t? Does that mean you do know why? Or haven’t they told you either?’

‘It’s nothing to do with you, OK?’

Cooper opened his mouth, then realized it would be a waste of time trying to explain that Todd Weenink was his partner.

‘Right. OK. So now what?’

‘Well, we’re following jenny Weston’s route, aren’t we?’

‘We?’ ‘Since I’ve deprived you of your friend, you’ll have to put up with me. Sorry. Is it this way?’

She turned away from him towards the trail. Cooper felt as though she had reduced him to insignificance with a mere twitch of her narrow shoulder. He followed

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her, a step behind, staring at the back of her head, trying to figure out what exactly was going on in her mind. He knew their relationship had got off on the wrong foot. He had tried to be friends with her when she was the new girl in E Division and no one else had bothered. It had gone wrong, of course. But there was something in Fry’s manner, something about the way she held her body when she spoke to him, that told him it was more complicated than that. Things always were more complicated than they seemed.

Throughout the drive to Partridge Cross, Diane Fry had been preparing herself for dealing with Ben Cooper by repeating a mantra to herself. ‘Just keep him at arm’s length. Don’t let him get under your skin.’ She knew the best thing was to concentrate on the job in hand and discourage conversation. But it had still taken her a few moments to bring herself under proper control when she found herself facing him, alone and with nothing to distract her attention. And as usual she found herself unable to deter him from making his infuriating small talk. ‘So has your transfer has been put back, then?’ said Cooper. ‘Did something go wrong?’ ‘There’s been a delay, that’s all. Some kind of administrative hold-up. You’re stuck with me for a while longer.’ ‘That’s good.’ She looked at Cooper suspiciously. But, as always, he seemed to be saying only what he meant. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to do.’

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I Fry studied the cycle hire centre. With its collection of colourful bikes and the mist still hanging against the embankment, the stone building looked like a picture from a children’s story book. It typified the air of unreality about the area that she had yet to come to terms with. Back in Birmingham, they would have flattened this place long ago for a new motorway link road. ‘So this is Partridge Cross,’ she said. ‘I thought they were kidding me about the name. It sounds like something out of The Archers.’ ‘It used to be a railway station bn the High Peak line ‘ ‘I think you can keep that sort of stuff for the tourists.’ She waited for Cooper to take offence. But all he did was raise his eyebrows. ‘Diane, I know something went wrong between us before, but it shouldn’t stop us working together,’ he said. She hated it when he was tolerant and reasonable. She would have preferred him to show signs of resentment. She had got the promotion that everybody’s favourite detective constable had thought was owed to him by right, and surely it was inevitable that he would resent her. Fry sighed. ‘Have we got a map or anything?’ she said. They knew that Jenny Weston had set off from Partridge Cross an hour and a quarter before her death. She had headed eastwards on the High Peak Trail, where the strip of black compacted gravel provided easy going.

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Beech and elder trees overhung the trail, with nettles and brambles dying back on the verges. Jenny would have passed under the A515 before she left the trail and crossed the route of the old Roman road to begin the ascent to Ringham Moor.

The mist began to break up as they climbed away from the hire centre. A jet liner went overhead towards East Midlands Airport, leaving a white streak in the sky. A farm dog barked halfheartedly in the distance. In between the noises, it was so unnaturally quiet that when a flock of pigeons passed overhead the noise of their wings sounded as loud as the jet.

But a few people were already starting to arrive on the trail. A woman with iron grey hair jogged by. She was wearing purple Lycra and a clashing yellow bumbag, and she had two large, shaggy dogs panting to keep up with her. Cooper stopped her and ran through the questions on his list. Had she been this way yesterday afternoon? Did she remember seeing this cyclist? He showed her the snapshot of Jenny Weston provided by her father, and described her bike and clothing. If not, who else had she seen? The woman did her best, but couldn’t help. She urged the dogs on as she crunched away again.

Walkers began to appear in pairs, and once there was a small group of half a dozen. They all said ‘hello’ to the detectives, even before they were asked to stop and answer questions.

‘Is it obvious who we are?’ asked Fry uneasily.

‘No, it’s just the thing to do, if you’re walking out here. It’s a sign of comradeship.’

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Fry snorted. Then a lone man passed them, walking slowly, with his head down. He was wearing a worn anorak, and his hair was dark and greasy. Fry’s eyes hardened and her shoulders tensed. The man glanced at them nervously as he passed.

‘Morning,’ he said.

Cooper started to go through the routine with him, but he claimed not to have been in the area before. He let the man go, but Fry stopped when he was a few yards past them.

‘I didn’t like the look of him,’ she said. ‘We ought to check him out properly.’

‘Why? He’s probably just a bird-watcher or something.’

There were views across open fields on either side and the low bankings you could easily walk over. But half a mile further on, the scenery changed. The trail entered a rocky gorge with sheer faces of crumbling limestone. The rock had been hacked into sharp angles by the crude blasting methods of the railway builders. The bramble-covered slopes above them would be impossible to scramble up, and there were lots of places to hide among the tumbled rocks and deep crevices.

They were still some distance from the point where Jenny Weston had tackled the climb on to Ringham Moor. Ahead, there would be police tape and officers posted to prevent them approaching too near to the crime scene.

‘Aren’t we chasing hares?’ asked Cooper. ‘We have to go through the routine.’

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W ‘We ought to be looking at Jenny’s life. Not where she was, but why she was here.’ ‘It’s procedure.’ Up ahead was a tunnel, a black shadow across the trail. The glimpse of light and greenery at the far end only emphasized the blackness they had to walk through to reach it. As they entered, the ground underfoot became softer and carved into ruts by bike tyres. In the middle, the walls and roof were panelled with curved planks and buttressed with iron. Water ran steadily down the wooden sides and dripped from the roof. They had to watch for the gleam and flicker of it in the weak light to avoid the splashes. ‘You’re dealing with the earlier victim, aren’t you?’ said Cooper. Yes, Maggie Crew.’ If it’s the same assailant, I suppose the main hope we’ve got is Crew herself. She’s the only witness.’ ‘She’s crucial,’ said Fry. ‘If we’re ever going to get an identification, it will be from her.’ ‘Only potentially crucial, I suppose.’ ,Why?’

‘She can’t remember anything. Isn’t that right?’ ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that,’ said Fry. The tunnel had been driven through the rock face at the centre of the gorge, where pink gneiss showed through the limestone. Ferns clung in patches, and a silver birch had tried to colonize a high ledge. The only sounds were the dripping and their own footsteps, until a hissing roar began behind them. They turned to see a racing cyclist, his head down, his face invisible behind

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L an aerodynamic helmet and wraparound shades. He was well past before they could stop him. The original chunks of dressed stone in the tunnel walls had been filled in here and there with bricks. The number of small stones that had fallen at each side of the path looked a bit ominous, as if the tunnel was slowly crumbling around them. Behind the boarding, a mass of stone that had rolled down from the limestone face was prevented only by the damp boards and rusted iron from closing the trail completely. ‘What do you mean, it’s not as simple as that?’ asked Cooper. ‘What I mean is that she does have the memories. The current thinking is that she’s burying them, though. Her mind is suppressing them because they’re too upsetting. There’s a blank for several hours either side of the incident, caused by the trauma. But there might be certain triggers, certain circumstances in which the memories will surface. We need to find a trigger. It could just be a sound, a smell, the sight of something she recognizes. We don’t know.’ ‘But how are we even going to hope for that - unless we can face her directly with her assailant? Isn’t there another way, Diane?’ She shrugged. ‘The counsellors tried to help, but she got too distressed. So we’re not allowed to pressure her into seeing a psychiatrist to take it any further.’ Now it was starting to get busier, with families out for the afternoon. Cooper and Fry crossed the road and began the ascent to the moor. They stopped to look at the field where the farmworker, Victor McCauley, had

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been working when he saw Jenny on her bike just after half past one.

They emerged above the remains of the mist, and Cooper stared across the expanse of heather and whinberry that covered the plateau. He wasn’t quite sure about this Diane Fry who talked about triggers and the current thinking. It sounded wrong. He wondered if she had been on a training course recently.

‘Jenny ended up at the Nine Virgins, that way,’ he said. ‘But we don’t know which route she took across the moor.’

‘Whichever way she went, it took nearly threequarters of an hour from when McCauley saw her.’ ‘Yes. So she probably took the long route. Towards

the Cat Stones and the Hammond Tower. Then past the top of Ringham Edge Farm.’

‘Let’s go there, then.’

There was no escape from the wind once they started to walk across the moor. The uniformity and lack of distraction in the landscape meant there was no escape from your thoughts, either. Or from the presence of the person you were with.

As they approached the Cat Stones, the wind seemed to double in strength, battering at them from the rocky outcrops. Cooper shivered, and Fry pulled her collar up higher. There was no life on Ringham Moor, apart from the vegetation, itself already turning brown and brittle. The moor was empty right the way across to the outline of the tower, perched above the steep drop on its eastern edge.

‘Maybe it’s a test, Diane,’ said Cooper, after a while.

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‘You what?’

‘Putting you on to Maggie Crew. You’ve got the hardest job. Maybe they’re just putting you through the wringer. They want to see whether you come out the other side.’

At first, he didn’t think she was going to answer. Fry walked on a few more yards, her eyes fixed ahead, concentrating on where she was going, oblivious to the fascinations of the landscape around her.

‘Which I will,’ she said. ‘I come through everything.’

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Ben Cooper recognized the look of a martyr when he saw one. And Yvonne Leach had that look - the defeated air of a woman worn down by many years of battling against the odds.

But it was more than that. She had an expression that Cooper had seen in the eyes of his own mother so many times. For some reason, there were women who slipped into the role of martyr as if it were their destiny. At one time, Cooper had found the tendency so frustrating in his mother that he had become angry with her, though she was not the person his anger should have been turned against. For years now, he had been drained of the anger. The sight of Mrs Leach brought it all back to him.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Leach. Is your husband around at the moment?’

‘No. I don’t know where he is,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’s about the farm somewhere?’ ‘Perhaps he is.’

She had kept Cooper standing in the yard, advancing from her doorstep so that he had to retreat to a point where he couldn’t see into the house. He noted her

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defensiveness without surprise. Many of these small hill farmers were used to making do on little money, especially when they had children to raise. But when things became too bad, it was often the women on whom the burden fell; the women were the first to suffer the internal fractures that could tear apart their families and their lives. They always tried to hide it. But there were inadvertent signs - little giveaways that you could learn to see, with practice.

‘I noticed the Land Rover wasn’t in the yard,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s gone out, then.’

‘Do you know where, Mrs Leach?’

She shrugged. ‘He doesn’t always tell me where he’s going. Why should he?’

Now Cooper registered the note of defiance, and assessed the woman more carefully. Although her clothes were old, they were clean and neatly pressed. Her hair, streaking to grey, had not seen a hairdresser for some time, but it was brushed and tied neatly back. Cooper realized she had even applied a touch of make-up this morning. Her lips showed two unsteady lines of red, her cheeks traces of powder.

‘If you see your husband, please tell him we’d like to speak to him again,’ he said.

Then Mrs Leach smiled. It was a strangely elated smile, escaping through lips that trembled slightly. Cooper wondered whether she was on the verge of hysteria, a step away from being tipped over the edge. He wanted to stay for a while and talk to her, to tell her to seek medical advice before it was too late. He wanted to tell her that those were the saddest words in

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the language: ‘too late’. But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t his job.

‘If I see him,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, I’ll tell him if I see him.’

‘And how are the boys?’

She looked surprised, almost unnerved, as if someone had just delivered bad news.

‘What?’ ‘Will and Dougie, is that their names? I saw them the other day. A couple of grand lads.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Leach took a handkerchief from her pocket and began to twist it as she watched Cooper’s face suspiciously.

‘They were tending to a fine-looking calf. They said her name was Doll.’

‘They showed her at Bakewell.’ ‘And won a prize, too.’

‘They were that pleased,’ she said. Her voice rose suddenly on the last word, as if she had lost control of her pitch. She screwed up the handkerchief and began to dab at her lips.

‘I’m sure you must be very proud of them.’ Mrs Leach nodded.

‘I suppose they’re at school just now,’ said Cooper. She made an indecipherable noise through the handkerchief that might have been agreement.

‘How old are they?’ ‘Six and nine - no, ten.’

‘Both still at the primary school in Cargreave, then,’ he said.

She nodded again.

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‘I suppose Will is going to be off to secondary school next year. Do they go to Matlock or Bakewell from here?’

‘I forget.’

Cooper looked back to where Diane Fry waited impatiently at the gate, eyeing the muck in the yard with distaste. It was only the mud left by the hooves of the cows as they passed through to the milking parlour from the wet fields. But it should have been cleaned up by now. Ringham Edge had the look of a well-maintained farm in other ways - the house and the buildings were in good condition, the tractor he could see in the shed was almost new. But there was the burnt-out pick-up standing abandoned by the shed, and the yard hadn’t been washed clean of mud for days.

‘Is everything all right, Mrs Leach? No problems?’ Yvonne Leach laughed, and then looked at him with astonishment. ‘What is it you want?’ she said.

‘We’re trying to trace the movements of the woman who was killed on the moor yesterday. We think she might have come this way.’

‘Oh?’ She ran her hand across her mouth again, and kept it there for a moment. To hide an inappropriate smile or some other expression; Cooper couldn’t tell. The woman’s eyes certainly weren’t smiling. He began to describe Jenny Weston. He showed Mrs Leach the photo. She took it in her hand and looked at it for a long time. When she handed it back, there was a smear of lipstick on the edge of the print.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I never saw her.’

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‘Did you see anybody else come by this way? Yesterday afternoon?’

‘People are always coming by. It’s a right of way, the track there. We take no notice of them, as long as they don’t bother us.’

‘It must have been fairly quiet yesterday, I suppose. Not many walkers.’

‘Yes. Quiet.’

‘I just thought, if it was so quiet, you might have noticed somebody more.’

Yvonne Leach seemed to be losing interest, or was thinking about something else. ‘There was the other one, too. A few weeks ago.’

‘Yes. She was attacked near the Cat Stones, we think. Up by the tower somewhere.’

‘It was me that found her, you know. That time.’ ‘Yes, of course.’

‘She was in a terrible state. Who would do a thing like that?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t know.’

‘Is it the same man this time?’ she asked. And she covered her lips again. She used both hands this time, as!if afraid her mouth was running out of control.

‘I’m afraid we just don’t know,’ said Cooper.

He saw that she had rubbed at her mouth so much that the lipstick had been removed completely, except for a small smudge in one corner of her lip. He turned to walk away. But as he crossed the yard, Cooper looked back and saw Yvonne Leach fold her handkerchief and begin to dab anxiously at her mouth all over again.

It was obvious the woman was in trouble, but what

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could he do? When he spoke to Warren Leach next, he could mention his wife’s condition, but he couldn’t hold out much hope that the man would listen. He could talk to the Social Services, and say he was concerned about the welfare of the two boys in the household. But he knew his concerns would be a low priority for them - they were overwhelmed with more urgent calls on their time. They were so stretched that they could only respond when something had already happened, when things had gone too far. They acted when it was already too late.

But Ben Cooper understood that. It was what the police did, too.

Diane Fry was relieved that Cooper was quiet for once. Privately, she had no doubt they were wasting their time. The leads would come from elsewhere than from wandering around the landscape. There had to be a link between Jenny Weston’s death and the previous assault - it was no more than half a mile away that Maggie Crew had been attacked among the boulders of the Cat Stones. Maggie and Jenny had been two women alone, unsuspecting. One was unable to describe her assailant; the second was dead. The worst scenario was that the victims had been chosen at random. Stranger murders meant no witness trail, and no motivation. The lack of relationship between victim and killer presented the investigator with a hopeless task.

That was why they needed Maggie Crew. Some day, in some way, she would provide them with an identification. Her memories had to come back.

At the top of the farm track, they met up with DCs

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Toni Gardner and Danny Boyle, who had been working their way backwards from the stone circle, via the Hammond Tower. They shook their heads at each other. A waste of time, they said. Then they walked back towards the Nine Virgins, where the group of uniformed officers guarded the taped-off scene. Fry looked at the stones in incomprehension. What was all the fuss about? She could think of lots of better places to come to at night, even if what you wanted to do was take off your clothes and light fires and smoke a bit of cannabis. ‘Kind of small for Stonehenge, isn’t it?’ she said. But Cooper didn’t rise to the bait. One stone had a flat top, and she found it was big enough to sit on comfortably. But then she remembered some of the traces that the SOCOs had collected from the stones and it occurred to her the flat stone had probably been used for other things than just sitting on. She looked around for Cooper again. ‘The Nine Virgins? You people round here really do have active imaginations, don’t you?’ Still he didn’t respond. After a moment, they headed southwards, to where there was a view down on to Ringham Lees village. Swathes of leaves lined the path, and tiny quartz crystals glittered in the sand like fragments of glass. The birches rattled their dry leaves, and a pair of jays darted at each other among the trees. They could see there were members of the public on the moor now, lots of them. A small, fat man in a green bubble jacket stood by the side of the path and waited for them to draw level. He looked at Fry eagerly.

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‘Where are her clothes?’ he said. ‘What?’ ‘Keep walking,’ said Cooper, without looking round. Fry wanted to question the little man, but she followed Cooper as he veered off and took a rabbit track across the heather. The rough stems of the plants grabbed at her ankles. At one spot there was an area a few square yards wide which had been burned off, leaving black, brittle stalks that crumbled underfoot and a layer of ash that was gradually being washed into the ground by the rain. ‘Hold on, Ben.’ He stopped impatiently. ‘He’s just one of the local weirdos. You can spot them a mile off. Let the uniforms deal with him.’ ‘I can’t believe people like that. They’re sick.’ ‘Right. But he’s probably already in a Care in the Community scheme, or something.’ ‘What the hell’s that?’ ‘Care in the Community? Well, it’s a bit difficult to explain ‘ ‘No - that.’ Fry was pointing at a fungus clinging to the bark of an oak tree. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. It was pale and bulbous, like a human organ that had been bleached or left out in the rain. She put her hand to it gingerly. It was firm to the touch at first, but gave under the pressure of her fingers like a fresh bread roll. White, not wholemeal. The fungus was dry on top, but cold and clammy underneath, and it moved slightly under her fingers.

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Then she noticed that there were lots more fungi on the ground, all different kinds. Some were dark and coiled like dog turds, but black and ragged at the edges, as if they had been half eaten. Other fungi were like stones, some like cups, some like human ears. Fry stared at them with revulsion. How anybody could visit this moor for pleasure she could not imagine. There was nothing to recommend it to anyone, except to the weirdos and the ghouls attracted by death and the bizarre. Ben Cooper set off again and managed to get ahead of Fry to reach the edge of the plateau, where it dropped away into the valley. He stood on the precipice and felt the wind catch his breath and freeze the lobes of his ears. He felt as though he could step off the edge and let the wind carry him away across the patchwork of fields and dry-stone walls. From his vantage point, Cooper could see the people on the moor winding their way in ones and twos through the heather and bracken. Yet the place still had a feeling of solitude and isolation, somewhere you could just be yourself, free of expectations. He understood what Jenny Weston had seen in the moor. ‘It’s so cold and bleak,’ said Fry, catching up with him. ‘What’s the name of that pub in Ringham where we can get lunch?’ ‘The Druid,’ he said, brought suddenly to earth. ‘God, those Victorians. Romantic minds, they had. Anything more than a few years old had to be connected with Ancient Britons and Druids, didn’t it? In actual

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I fact, most of these rocks were just dropped here by glaciers or something, and got worn into these shapes by the appalling weather you get up here.’ ‘Well, I suppose so.’ ‘You sound disappointed. A bit of a Victorian yourself, aren’t you, Ben? A romantic at heart?’ ‘We can get down to the village by cutting through South Quarry.’ ‘Fine.’ After Fry had turned away to follow the path, Cooper shook his head in despair. It was such a small mistake for a woman like Jenny Weston to have made. Yet it had been the biggest mistake of her life. Why had she chosen to come up here at the beginning of November? It was one of the quietest times of the year, when even retired couples were putting away their walking boots, turning up the central heating and pulling the sofa closer to the TV to watch their holiday videos. And for some reason, Jenny had let the wrong person get close to her. There were so many mistakes. It seemed as though she had been heading directly on a course towards her own destruction. A few minutes later, Cooper slid down the last few feet of the slope into South Quarry, as Fry struggled behind him. ‘Hello. What’s this?’ he said. Unlike Top Quarry, these abandoned workings had been left with a level, sandy bottom, clear of debris. The entrance was open to the road, and sometimes cars parked in the first part of the quarry. The face wasn’t

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so high there, and it was possible to climb a narrow track up and get straight on to the moor. Visitors normally stopped short of taking their cars on to the steep roadway that dropped into the lower part of the quarry, afraid that they might never get back up again, or that their wheels might slip off the edge.

But on the rock-spattered floor in the deepest part of the quarry stood a van. Whoever had driven it here had managed to find a flat area where the wagons had once been loaded with stone. The angle of the quarry walls hid the spot completely from the road fifty yards away. Unless you were looking, you would never find it.

‘It’s an old VW Transporter,’ said Cooper. ‘Long wheelbase version. And over twenty years old, if you can believe the registration plates. But look at the state of the tyres. This thing hasn’t moved in a good while.’

Fry pulled out her personal radio. ‘I’ll call in and get them to do a check on that number. It’s probably stolen.’ Cooper walked round the van carefully. As well as

the back doors, there was a side loading door on the nearside. But the windows at the back had been painted over, in the way that market traders did to screen their goods from prying eyes. Cooper reached the driver’s door and peered into the cab. The seats were worn and split, and a large cobweb glistened across the corner between the sidelight and the dashboard. An old curtain hung behind the seats, concealing the interior.

‘They’re going to call back in a minute,’ said Fry. ‘Is it unlocked?’

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‘I haven’t tried yet.’

Cooper took a tissue from his pocket and tried the handle of the driver’s door. The metal was tarnished and beginning to rust through the chrome. The button depressed, but there was no click of the catch, and the door didn’t move. He edged round the bonnet. The manufacturer’s VW badge had gone from the grille. No surprise there - at one time, the badges had been prized by local kids as trophies, as the initials were said to stand for their favourite catch phrase ‘Very Wicked’.

The passenger door was also locked. So was the side door. And so were the rear doors.

‘If this van was abandoned here by a car thief, it was a very security-conscious thief,’ he said.

‘Perhaps it’s not stolen at all, then. Maybe it was somebody who couldn’t be bothered taking it to the scrapyard.’

Fry’s radio crackled. While she listened, Cooper crouched to look underneath the van, noting a missing section of exhaust pipe and a dark patch on the ground that might have been oil. A cover was missing from one of the rear lights, and there were holes in the wheel arches caused by serious corrosion.

‘It’s registered to a Mr Calvin Lawrence of Stockport,’ said Fry. ‘But there’s no report of it being stolen.’ ‘Well, it hasn’t been on the road legally since October

1999,’ said Cooper, peering at the licence disc just visible behind the windscreen. ‘Not that it means anything necessarily.’ Discs were colour coded so that the month of expiry could be detected from a distance. But this

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one was so faded its original colour could have been any selection from the rainbow.

‘So the owner has abandoned it, then. This Calvin Lawrence presumably. Just another MoT failure, that’s all. We’ll get someone to remove it and report the owner for illegal tipping.’

‘It’s odd, though. Why come all the way from Stockport to leave it here? There must be any number of out-of-the-way places on the way between here and Stockport that you could abandon an old van, if you wanted to.’

‘Not to mention scrapyards,’ said Fry.

‘Funny that people never seem to think of that, isn’t it? As if the countryside is here just for them to use as a huge dump-it site.’

‘We’re not here to worry about the environment, Ben. Leave that to your friends with the red jackets.’

But Cooper was still frowning. ‘And if you were going to do that, why leave the plates on? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It isn’t our concern. We’ll pass it on to uniformed section.’

‘The funniest thing, though…’ said Cooper, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Have you noticed? The funniest thing about this van … is the smell.’

Fry sniffed, but shook her head. ‘Why, what is it? Petrol?’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, what then?’

Cooper stared at the side door of the van, his head cocked on one side as though he was listening to the

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sounds of its suspension rusting, or its rubber seals slowly rotting in the damp air. He waited until he was absolutely sure of what his senses were telling him. ‘Chicken curry,’ he said.

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Mark Roper had watched the police walk away from the farmhouse at Ringham Edge. They hadn’t got into the house, no more than anybody ever did. At first, he had thought the woman with Detective Constable Cooper might have been a social worker. Yvonne Leach had looked nervous when she opened the door, but it had soon become clear they had no knowledge or power that she might be afraid of. They hadn’t even glanced at the big shed behind the farmhouse, either.

For Mark, the choice was impossible. If he went to the police with his suspicions, it would be obvious where the information had come from. Obvious to Warren Leach, at least. It would be bad for farmers to get the idea that Rangers were spying on them, reporting them to the police, to social workers, or to the RSPCA over things that were none of the Rangers’ business. That would do nothing for relationships with landowners, which Owen said were so important to the Peak District National Park. There was no point in antagonizing Leach any further, so Owen said.

The source of the information would be obvious to Owen, too. And that would be even worse.

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Mark moved slightly as Yvonne Leach crossed the yard. He knew his outline was camouflaged by the trees behind him on the hillside, and his red jacket was below the level of the stone wall. Mrs Leach wouldn’t see him, anyway. The woman was too absorbed in her own troubles to see what went on around her. Leach himself had gone out an hour before. There had been police parked up the hill under the beeches, but they had ignored the farmer. They had nothing on Warren Leach, then. Not yet. Mark would have to wait a bit longer.

He wondered what Owen would do in the same situation. Probably he would recommend patience. But how long could you be expected to wait? How long could Mark be patient?

Cautiously, Ben Cooper put his ear to the cold metal. It felt damp and uncomfortable. Fry looked as though she was about to speak, but he hastily held up a hand to silence her. He could hear vague stirrings from inside the van; he could even feel a slight movement in the side panel as the springs of the suspension shifted.

He gestured to Fry, and they both walked away from the van until they were out of earshot.

‘There’s definitely somebody in there. What do we do?’

Fry had no hesitation. ‘We get some back-up before we do anything. No heroics. Not even from you, understand?’

‘Fair enough,’ said Cooper, and held his hands up like a man pleading for a truce.

Fry called in, and they waited, watching the van. They

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knew there were officers not far away, up on the moor. They had no more than a few minutes to wait - but it could seem like a long time.

Finally, a uniformed sergeant and two PCs in stab-proof vests, with their hands on their sidehandled batons, walked up to the van. As Cooper and Fry watched, the sergeant banged on the side door.

‘Police! Open up!’

The sergeant had a heavy fist and his pounding made a noise that must have reverberated deafeningly inside the van. There was a sudden scuffling and muffled cursing, a moment of silence, then a clunk as the latch on the side door went down. The door began to move, screeching as its runner stuck, then sliding slowly open. The officers near the van tensed and took a couple of steps backwards.

‘What do you want, man? Oh, shit.’

When the door was open about a foot, a face appeared, masked by a straggly beard and a woollen hat. The face was low down towards the floor of the van, with a bare arm stretched up to the handle. The rest of his body was wrapped up in a sleeping bag. All that was visible was the head and one arm.

‘Step out of the van, please,’ said the sergeant. ‘You what?’

‘Step out of the van, please, sir. Let me see your hands as you come out.’

‘I’m in fucking bed. What do you want?’

‘We need to talk to you. Is there anyone else in there?’

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The sergeant ducked his head through the door, well clear of possible contact with the figure on the floor, and quick enough to avoid the door being slammed on his head.

‘Right. Let’s have both of you out. Sharp, now.’ Standing behind the sergeant, Cooper breathed deeply. A whole miasma of smells had been released by the opening of the door - not just the aroma of the chicken curry that had been eaten recently, but a small army of scents that competed with it for attention. Some of the smells were dark and musty, others sharp and metallic. Cooper longed to get inside the van and absorb the sensations. But he stood waiting patiently while the sergeant urged the occupants out into the welcoming arms of his constables.

‘Come on, come on. Let’s have you, son.’ ‘Oh God, hang on then.’

The face disappeared for a few seconds, and there was a heaving as a body was hauled from a sleeping bag. The sergeant kept a hand causally on the door. Finally, a young man emerged, bundled in clothes and muttering. He sat on the step of the van until one of the PCs helped him up.

‘And your girlfriend as well. Out here.’

A second figure came out of the gloom, a slight, narrow-shouldered figure, moving more slowly, like someone still half-asleep. No - more than half-asleep, an actual sleep walker, with eyes that were barely aware of what was around them, as if they were focused on a dream world that no one else could see. This one said nothing, merely peering from a mass of tangled blond

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hair at the watching faces with faintly inquisitive eyes. Not angry or nervous, thought Cooper. Not frightened or aggressive. Just slightly puzzled, as if she had noticed an unfamiliar noise or spotted an animal she didn’t recognize. She was clutching a blanket to her chest with thin, pale hands.

Cooper left Fry’s side and moved a step closer to the van and took another sniff. There was no scent of drugs that he recognized. If they had been smoking cannabis inside the van, it would be detectable to the nose. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been taking something else. He looked at the sergeant, who nodded in agreement. It might be an excuse for searching the van, if they wanted it. They could get a dog down here and take the vehicle apart in no time.

‘Are you the owner of this vehicle?’ the sergeant asked the youth with the straggly beard.

‘Yes, it’s mine,’ he said. ‘And it’s not nicked.’ ‘Right. Let’s have your names.’

‘We’re not doing anything wrong.’

‘Names. You first.’ The sergeant pointed at the youth. ‘Homer Simpson,’ he said.

Cooper and Fry smiled. At first, the youth might actually have thought they were appreciating the joke. But advance information was very useful.

‘Nice try, Calvin,’ said Fry.

He looked surprised, then deflated.

‘It is Calvin Lawrence, isn’t it? Of Benson Street, Stockport?’

‘Is it me you’re after?’ ‘Depends what you’ve done.’

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‘I haven’t done anything. How did you know my name?’

‘Listen, if you want to be anonymous, try taking the plates off the van. It’s still registered in your name. Bit of a giveaway, that.’

‘Shit.’ ‘Not much of a mastermind, are you, Calvin?’ ‘They call me Cal,’ he said.

‘Is Benson Street, Stockport, still your home address?’ ‘No, that’s my parents’ house.’

‘Can we have your current address, please?’ ‘Number One, Quarry Avenue, Stonesville.’ The sergeant wrote it down. ‘Where’s that?’

Cal sneered, and looked at the other officers, inviting them to share his disdain. ‘It’s here, man. I live here.’ ‘In the van?’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘You’re giving that thing as your permanent residence?’

‘It’s as permanent as anything is.’

‘That might be debatable. Do the owners of this property know you’re here? Have you got permission for overnight parking?’

‘Jesus, are you real?’ said Cal. ‘Or did I just fall into an old Benny Hill Show?’

‘No? In that case, you might find your home is more temporary than you think, son.’

Cal folded his arms across the holes in his sweater. A mulish look came over his face. ‘You’ll have to drag us out of here, if you want to move us.’

‘Well, we can arrange that, if necessary.’

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The sergeant looked at the girl. She had said nothing yet. In fact, her attention seemed to have wandered. She gently pushed some of the hair from her eyes as she turned to watch the movement of some homemade wind chimes hanging in a birch tree on the edge of the quarry. Cooper realized that the chimes were providing a constant background tune that made the sergeant’s voice sound curiously discordant and out of place, a meaningless animal growl against the harmonies of a distant choir. The sound of the chimes seemed to mean more to this dreamy young woman than the small army of police officers who had invaded her home. ‘And your name, miss?’ said the sergeant. She seemed not to have heard him. Her gaze remained directed into space, oblivious to the turn in the conversation, unaware of the attention that was on her. ‘You, miss. Can we have your name, please?’ Then she turned and smiled at him, a whimsical smile, not unfriendly or sullen. She pushed back her hair again and her fingers danced across her face, fluttering on her cheeks in a curious gesture. Then Cooper saw the faint fuzz of hair on the jawline and the top lip, the Adam’s apple and wide forehead under the hair. Not ‘miss’ at all, but another male. Cal butted in, moving slightly to impose himself between his friend and the policeman. ‘You’ve got it wrong again. We call him Stride,’ he said. The sergeant had noticed his mistake, too. ‘OK. But I’m talking to him, not you.’ ‘Just don’t talk to him like that.’

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The sergeant stared grimly at the second youth. ‘Your name, please, sir.’ The silence continued. The young man’s eyes began to drift back towards the floor of the quarry, but too slowly for the sergeant. He reached out a hand, ready to grab the youth’s arm. Cal tensed angrily, and the two PCs stepped forward. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ The youth’s voice was soft. His lips barely moved, so that his words were no more than a whisper. But they all heard it clearly. The sergeant’s hand stopped short of touching him, uncertain of what he had been about to do. He looked like a man who found himself with a passing swan in the sights of his twelve-bore, with his finger already on the trigger. ‘If we don’t get some identity from you, we’re going to take you down to the station for questioning,’ he said.

‘Oh, right, here comes the harassment,’ said Cal. ‘What made you wait so long? Take him down to the station. You are so full of shit. I mean, what does it matter what name his parents gave him? What does it matter where he comes from? It’s who he is, that’s all you need to know. All anyone needs. Jesus.’ ‘Religious gentleman, are you, sir? They tell me if you call Jesus’s name often enough, the Virgin Mary gets annoyed and tells you he can’t come out to play today.’ Finally, the one called Stride sighed and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Not really. It’s only a name.’ ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to insist, sir. Otherwise, you can come with us.’

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They waited expectantly. Finally, Stride sat down in the doorway of the van and leaned into the interior. The police began to look uneasy again. He pulled a cardboard box towards him and rummaged around inside it, reaching right down to the bottom through heaps of paper and clothes. Some of the contents he pulled out and deposited on the step, examining each one carefully as he handled them.

Cal watched him, his expression a mixture of concern and affection. Stride looked up at him, and something passed between them when their eyes met. Cooper cocked his head, listening hard for the sound of the message they were communicating, but it was something he couldn’t fathom, maybe something quite beyond his own experience.

Then Stride suddenly held out his hand with an object that glinted, sharp and metallic. The sergeant already had his baton half out of his service belt by the time Stride opened his hand and showed it to his friend.

‘Hey, that’s the can-opener we lost,’ said Cal.

The sergeant looked embarrassed, then angry. Stride smiled at him. His fingers went to his face again. They flickered against his cheek, like a repeated word in sign language. Did it mean he was laughing?

Then he produced a small enamel biscuit tin, whipping it in front of them like a conjuror producing a rabbit. The tin was a startling royal blue, with Victorianstyle portraits in round, gilt frames on the lid. He popped the lid open, and showed them that the tin was crammed with small items: photographs, letters, postcards, the stub of an airline ticket, a few metal

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badges, a gold pen, a roll of yellowed newspaper cuttings.

‘That’s me,’ he said.

The sergeant replaced his baton and took a plastic card-holder from him. The edges were cracked and split, and one corner was turned over. Inside was a card headed with the initials NUS over a badly coloured photograph, taken against a curtain in harsh, glaring light.

‘This is your Student Union card?’ he said, comparing the face to Stride’s.

‘When I was at uni in Sheffield.’

‘The hair’s longer now, but I suppose it’s you.’ ‘It’s me.’

‘Simon Bevington.’ The sergeant wrote it down, and noted the membership number. ‘This address. What is it? Is this where your parents live, like your friend? Digs? Or what?’

‘A bedsit.’

‘I see. When did you last live there?’ ‘Six months ago. A year. Who knows?’

‘This union card is last year’s. When did you leave university?’

‘January.’ ‘And where do your parents live?’ ‘I’ve forgotten.’

‘Come off it.’

‘My life has nothing to do with them any more.’

‘I wonder if they agree with that, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘We can trace them, you know.’

‘I wish you joy.’

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The sergeant looked round at the two CID officers, and turned back to the young men. ‘We’ll need statements from you. Then we’ll see whether we have to move you from here.’

‘Jesus,’ said Cal.

‘A statement!’ said Stride. ‘Can it be any statement I like? How about: “Sergeant, I love you”?’

Cooper watched the young man carefully. It was difficult to tell whether his manner was an act or not. But he had just succeeded in attracting serious attention to himself. Because it was certainly his name that had recently been scratched into the ground in the middle of the Nine Virgins.

Cooper sighed. The smell of chicken curry was making him hungry. But he was going to miss his lunch at the pub in Ringham, after all.

Diane Fry called in to report their whereabouts to the incident room, but finished the call with a thoughtful look.

‘What is it?’ asked Cooper.

‘The team in Totley have been following up on Jenny Weston’s visitors. Do you remember a girl with dreadlocks being mentioned?’

‘Sure. The neighbours seem to have noticed every move she made.’

‘They’re pretty sure now that this girl was more than just a visitor. It seems she was actually living with Jenny Weston at her house for a while.’

‘Have they identified her?’

‘She was introduced to one of Jenny’s work

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colleagues as Ros Daniels. She was aged about 20, and believed to be from Cheshire.’

‘They’ll be keen to question her, then. She has to know what was going on in Jenny’s life better than anyone does.’

‘Oh, they would question her, if they could find her,’ said Fry. ‘But it seems Ros Daniels is missing.’

Back on the moor, an excuse had finally been found to arrest the little man in the green bubble jacket. He had been discovered lying naked in the heather in the middle of one of the smaller stone circles. He had been dreaming blissfully, apparently oblivious to anyone passing, just as he was unaware of his skin turning blue and his genitals shrivelling to the size of a button mushroom. The police had made him get dressed and charged him with indecent exposure. And PC Wragg had smiled.

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In South Quarry later that afternoon, Cal and Stride were sitting on a convenient rock alongside their van. They had two mugs of tea and were rolling tobacco into Rizla papers with practised fingers. Stride’s movements were languid as he stooped over the task, occasionally pushing the hair back from his eyes. He wore what looked like an old greatcoat from an Army surplus store and a pair of combat trousers, with his tin of tobacco balanced on one knee. He was entirely concentrated on rolling his cigarette, his delicate fingers prodding the tobacco neatly into place. Occasionally, he smiled to himself, as if at some private joke.

It seemed to Ben Cooper that the one called Cal was altogether more watchful. Though he didn’t look up, he was certainly aware that he was being observed. His shoulders were tense, and he frowned as he licked the edge of his Rizla before pushing his tobacco tin away in one of the pockets of a camouflage jacket. A stud in his nose glittered briefly as he turned to watch Stride light up. The skin of Cal’s scalp was visible through his dark stubble, hardly any longer than the stubble on his cheeks.

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‘What do you make of them?’ asked DCI Tailby. ‘Mostly harmless,’ said DI Hitchens.

Cooper laughed, and Tailby looked at him sharply. ‘Was that a joke?’

‘The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, sir,’ explained Cooper. ‘It’s how the guide describes the planet Earth. Just those two words: “mostly harmless”.’

The DCI looked at him for a moment. His grey wings of hair lifted in the wind that buffeted the quarry edge, then settled back on his temples like roosting doves.

‘Douglas Adams,’ said DI Hitchens helpfully. ‘I liked Marvin the Paranoid Android, myself.’ The DCI had turned his stare on Hitchens instead. ‘Not that I meant it as a joke, sir. I meant these two - I think they’re mostly harmless. No police records.’

Cal and Stride sat without speaking, smoking their cigarettes, staring into space, apparently at peace with the world. Cooper recalled that there had been cigarette ends in the inventory of items recovered by the scenes of crime team near Jenny Weston ‘s body. But they had been Marlboro, not handmade roll-ups.

Above the VW van, a birch had rooted itself on a precarious ledge in the quarry side. Its lower branches were hung with small metal objects, bits of tinfoil and sections of baked bean cans tinkling and clanging in the wind.

‘And what’s all that lot supposed to be?’ asked Tailby. ‘Some new way of doing the washing-up?’

‘Tree art,’ said Hitchens. ‘Bevington has written some poems that are stuck to the chimes. They’re meant to

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create an atmosphere of peace and harmony, he says. Do you want to go and have a closer look?’

‘No, thanks. Too much harmony is bad for me.’ Tailby glared down at the van. To Cooper, it seemed that it was taking a great effort for Cal not to look up and stare back.

‘Can we positively eliminate them as suspects?’ asked Tailby.

‘They have no apparent connection with the victim, and there’s no motive that we know of. There is no witness evidence to tie them in any closer to the scene than this.’

‘What about their shoes?’

‘I got a quick look,’ said Cooper. ‘Calvin Lawrence is wearing trainers, and Bevington has a pair of Doc Martens. Neither would match the partial print we found.’

‘They may have a pair of boots in the van. I know they don’t look as though they have much, but even these two could own more than one pair of shoes.’

‘We’d need a search warrant to look in the van. We don’t have reasonable suspicion.’

Stride lay back on the rock, letting his coat fall open, resting his head back so that he was gazing at the sky. His hands were resting on his face near his eyes, but the fingers were still. The smoke from his roll-up drifted straight up for a few feet, then was caught in the wind and dispersed. Whatever he could see up there in the sky caused him to smile with some deep, inner pleasure. The smile was so sudden that it made the detectives look up as well. But there was nothing to be seen except

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clouds scudding high across the moor. The clouds were growing darker. There could be rain soon.

‘If you think those wind chimes are strange, Cooper has something else to show us,’ said Hitchens.

They walked round the quarry edge to a sheltered spot enclosed by two rocks. In a shallow basin in one of the rocks were what appeared at first to be a series of giant candles. They were made of wax, a foot tall, and they had been carefully sculpted, each into the same distinctive shape, with a long straight shaft, faintly ribbed with veins, and a swollen, rounded head like a cowl, with a small hole in the very tip. They were all sorts of colours - swirling blues and reds, butter yellow, subtle tints of brown and green, and a pure white one, with delicate streaks of gold in the veins of the shaft. They stood like soldiers on parade, pointing permanently skywards.

‘That’s disgusting,’ said Tailby.

‘They represent the phallus,’ said Hitchens.

‘I can see exactly what they represent,’ said Tailby. ‘And phallus wasn’t the word that sprang to mind.’

‘I think it probably takes quite some doing to get the shape just right, like that. I was thinking of a nomination for the Turner Prize.’

‘And who is the Leonardo da Vinci we have to thank for this lot?’

‘The one called Cal. He’s quite proud of them. He calls this place the phallus farm.’

‘They’re obscene.’

‘I doubt they’re committing an offence,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t want to look at them. Let’s go back.’

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They walked back round the quarry to the path. Cooper noticed a group of women appear on the far side of the quarry. They were wearing cagoules and leggings, bright and chatty. They looked down at Cal and Stride for a while, then walked past the birch tree and studied the wind chimes.

‘Where’s Acting DS Fry?’ asked Tailby. ‘Wasn’t she here earlier?’

‘She has one of her sessions with Maggie Crew,’ said Hitchens.

‘Oh, yes.’ The DCI drew the words out like a sigh. He didn’t sound hopeful of Maggie Crew.

Tailby stood quietly for a minute, staring at the van and the two youths. ‘I’ve got a press conference to do in half an hour,’ he said. ‘What am I going to tell the TV and the newspapers?’

‘How about telling them to keep out of our bloody way?’ suggested Hitchens.

‘All right,’ said Tailby. ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.’ The group of women had moved on. They could be heard chatting again for a while. But they fell very silent when they reached the rock that contained the phallus farm.

At the West Street HQ, they had already been making structural alterations to the canteen. They had succeeded in making it both smaller and less welcoming at the same time. Perhaps it was a deliberate ploy to make the introduction of the vending machines seem like an improvement.

But E Division was lucky. Their neighbours in B

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Division had no canteen at all. A mobile sandwich service called at the front of the building every lunchtime. Beyond that, it was a question of a kettle, a jar of Nescafe and a packet of chocolate biscuits in the corner of every office. There could be no ‘canteen culture’ when there was no canteen. Problem solved.

Ben Cooper carried a cup of coffee to a table where some of his shift were already sitting, and he arrived in the middle of a conversation that immediately made him uneasy.

‘She’s a real hard bitch,’ Todd Weenink was saying. Opposite Weenink was Toni Gardner, a DC from another shift, who still had her straight blonde hair tied back into a ponytail in the fashion of the uniformed officers. She nodded in agreement. ‘She’s a toughie, all right.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Cooper, though he felt he could have a good guess.

‘That Diane Fry,’ said Weenink.

‘A snotty cow, she is, too,’ said Gardner.

Cooper settled down on a spare chair, concentrating on not spilling his coffee so that he didn’t have to meet anyone’s eye.

‘She’s just trying too hard,’ he said. ‘She’ll settle down after a bit.’

Weenink shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t know how you can be so tolerant. I know I wouldn’t be, if it was me.’ Cooper looked at the officers round the table, and he

wanted to tell them about the time that Diane Fry had reluctantly confided in him the secrets of her past, the dreadful history of her family, and the heroin-addict

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sister she hadn’t seen since she was sixteen. But he knew it was impossible to share this knowledge with anyone else. ‘I’d tell her where to stick her stripes,’ said Gardner. She smiled at Todd Weenink, as if willing him to notice that she was agreeing with him. Cooper realized that there was more going on here. Todd had an attraction for some women that he never fully understood. He supposed it was a kind of overt masculinity, the sense of sexual challenge in his dark smirk and the way he held his body. Yet these things were not what women said they looked for in men. Not the women Ben Cooper talked to, anyway. Gradually, the conversation veered to other topics grumbles about supervisors, night shifts and salaries. Every man there could have run E Division better than the Divisional Commander. Under their guidance, the clear-up rate would double. But then there were the courts to deal with, of course. Not to mention the GPS. The Criminal Preservation Society, they called it - the body of lawyers given the responsibility of prosecuting the alleged offenders the police produced for them. There was a general shaking of heads. ‘And we’re chasing up white vans tomorrow,’ said Weenink. ‘I can’t wait.’ Finally, the other officers drifted away and left Cooper and Weenink alone. ‘Are you all right, Todd?’ ‘Sure. Why?’ ‘I just wondered what all that was about earlier on today. What did you get called back for?’

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‘Oh, just the usual sort of bollocks,’ said Weenink dismissively. ‘Somebody upstairs with their knickers in a twist.’ On the television screen in the corner of the room, DCI Tailby’s face appeared. It was a clip from the coverage of the press conference. Tailby was trying to look serious and professional, but hopeful. ‘Todd,’ said Cooper, ‘what do you know about Maggie Crew? The victim that Diane Fry is dealing with.’ ‘I know she can’t remember much about the attack, that’s all. But I can’t say I’d want to remember much myself, really. It’s tough on a woman, getting her face messed up like that.’ ‘Do you know if she’s ever been married or anything?’ ‘No. She’s a solicitor, all business suits and fancy briefs. Likes to be called “Ms”, I expect.’ ‘Has she got children?’ ‘Kids? You’re joking. I bet her womb has cobwebs.’ Cooper ran his mind back over the earlier conversation. He felt dissatisfied with the way it had ended. ‘Look, you have to realize she’s a bit of an outsider; he said. ‘Who?’ ‘Diane Fry. Being an outsider can be a difficult thing to deal with. It takes time.’ ‘You don’t have to tell me about that; said Weenink. ‘I’m an outsider, too. And I always will be. Neither one thing nor the other, that’s me.’ ‘You mean because you’re Dutch?’

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‘Half-Dutch. My dad’s from Rotterdam. He came over to work in the British shipyards back in the seventies. He ended up in Sheffield.’

‘What shipyards?’

‘Exactly. There are none left. That’s why he ended up in Sheffield. He worked in a steel mill, until that closed too.’

‘I bet you got the piss taken out of your name when you were a kid.’

Weenink scowled. ‘Are you kidding? I cursed my dad as a bastard every day, just because he gave me that name. It’s pronounced like “Vaining” but with a “k” on the end, I’d say. I’d tell them and tell them till I was blue in the face, but do you think they took any notice?’ ‘It was a joke,’ said Cooper.

‘What was?’

‘Taking the piss. Like “wee”, you know.’

Weenink flushed. ‘It’s pronounced like “Vaining” .. . ‘… but with a “k” on the end. Right.’

Cooper began to look around the canteen for an excuse to leave.

‘Anyway,’ said Weenink slowly, ‘when I got bigger than the rest of them, they stopped doing it.’ His face solidified into his notorious stare. ‘Once I’d smashed the first one’s teeth in, anyway.’

‘Sorry, time’s up for the public. Next item on the agenda - minutes of the last meeting.’

The chairman of Cargreave Parish Council wore a white cardigan and a tweed skirt, and she was so shortsighted that she barely seemed able to recognize her

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colleagues at the far end of the table. Councillor Mary Salt preferred to be known as ‘chair’, but some members of the council refused to be forced into ways that sounded a bit modem. They still called her ‘chairman’, ignoring her angry, myopic glare.

Owen Fox didn’t belong to Councillor Salt’s party. He was an Independent, so his voice carried no weight in the important decisions, like where to spend the parish’s share of the Council Tax. But he and the chairman had known each other for many years.

The parish room was cold and echoey, with a creaky wooden floor and a small stage at one end that had been turned into a Chinese laundry for rehearsals of the village pantomime. From where he sat, Owen could see Councillor Salt’s legs tucked under the table in her flesh-coloured tights. Her legs looked tight and shiny, like sausage skins. His fingers itched for a fork to prick them.

The council meeting started with fifteen minutes of public questions. Usually, there were only one or two familiar faces sitting at the back of the room, sometimes no one at all. But tonight the room was full, and more chairs had been brought in. These people wanted to ask what action was being taken to make the area safe. They wanted a senior police officer to be brought to the next meeting to answer questions, and the clerk was instructed to write to the Chief Constable. Then the chairman moved the agenda on. The public were allowed only fifteen minutes.

The real business of the meeting involved correspondence from the National Park Authority about a visitor

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questionnaire and a landscape enhancement grant scheme. The county council had replied to a letter about street lamps, and there was another discussion about installing a height barrier at the entrance to the village car park to stop gypsies getting their caravans on. The success of the Millennium tree-planting scheme was reported, and next year’s well-dressing considered. Mobile library visits were changing to alternate Thursdays. The bowls club were having a quiz night. Soon, the dangers of walking on Ringham Moor were long forgotten. The public got only fifteen minutes, after all.

‘Any other business?’ asked the chairman finally. Councillor Salt looked round the table. Nobody responded, and Owen checked his watch. Not a bad time. Some of the other councillors would head for the Dancing Badger for a ritual exchange of gossip, but for Owen it would be a chance to get back to the house. Socializing in the village had never held any attractions for Owen; even less so now.

‘Meeting closed, then.’

Owen made a dash for the door, trying to get out into the street before any members of the public could corner him and ask about the attacks on Ringham Moor. He didn’t have the answers they wanted, no more than anyone else did. Nobody knew who it was stalking the moor. And nobody knew when he would strike again.

But Owen had his own thoughts. It only needed someone to ask him the right question, and he would no longer be able to keep them to himself.

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The lamp on the desk was tilted at an angle that directed light into Diane Fry’s eyes and made Maggie Crew’s face more difficult to see in the shadows between the lamp and the window. There was little light left in the sky over Matlock as the evening drew in, and Fry felt a creeping sense of unease in the apartment. If she had been in Maggie’s position herself, she would have felt no reassurance from the panic buttons and the extra vigilance the police had promised.

‘You understand that I need to talk to you, Maggie,’ she said.

‘You can talk as much as you like. I’ve got plenty of time.’

Fry’s reading of Maggie’s file and her discussion with DI Armstrong had convinced her that she had to be persistent if she was to get anything out of this woman. Deep inside, Maggie Crew had valuable memories locked in -memories the police needed, memories that would help them to identify a man who had now become a killer.

‘I want to talk to you about our new victim,’ she said. Maggie waited, playing with the lamp. No sign of interest. Fry tried again.

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‘The woman found dead on Ringham Moor.’ Maggie shrugged. Fry felt a spasm of irritation, but controlled it. The file said that Maggie Crew was frustrated and bitter over the failure of the police to find her attacker. She mustn’t let personal reactions get in the way of doing the job. ‘I know nothing about your new victim,’ said Maggie. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Let me help you, then. Her name is Jenny Weston. She’s thirty years old. I mean she was, when she died. She won’t ever be any older now. ‘Jenny Weston was five foot six and half, and she weighed sixty kilos. That’s nine and a half stone. She had been trying to lose weight recently, but wasn’t very successful. She lived in a modernized terrace house in Totley, on the outskirts of Sheffield, and she worked as a section supervisor at an insurance call centre. She might not seem to have had much in common with you, but maybe you would have got on with her. Jenny liked cycling and classical music, Haydn and Strauss. I see you like Strauss, Maggie.’ She nodded towards the stereo. A CD of Tales from the Vienna Woods lay on the top, the one case out of place from the neat racks. It was a rare splash of colour in the dark corner. The light dipped slightly. Maggie’s outline began to come back into focus as Fry blinked and her eyes readjusted to the darkness. ‘Somebody loaned it to me,’ said Maggie. ‘I haven’t listened to it.’

‘Jenny bought her clothes at Marks amp; Spencer and

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I Next, where she had store cards. She banked with the NatWest, but transferred her credit card account to one that supported Greenpeace. She was a big animal lover. She was a member of lots of societies, including the RSPCA, and she helped out as a volunteer for the local Cats Protection League. She had her own cat called Nelson. Do you know why she called him that? Because when she took him in as a stray he had an infection that made him keep one eye closed. Have you ever had a cat, Maggie?’ Maggie maintained the stare. Fry had no idea whether she was getting through to her. ‘We know a lot more about Jenny. We know she borrowed show business biographies and Maeve Binchy novels from her local library. She drove a blue Fiat Cinquecento, but she didn’t wash it very often. On the back seat were her spare shoes, an orange and her mobile phone. When we rang the number, it played “The William Tell Overture”.’ Maggie’s eyes were expressionless and unblinking, though her hands fidgeted restlessly and her shoulders were tense. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t listen to Rossini, either.’ Fry had all the details of Jenny’s life at her fingertips. Yet they knew almost nothing about the young woman who had stayed with her in Totley several weeks ago. Ros Daniels had disappeared as mysteriously as she had come, as far as Jenny’s neighbours were concerned. She had been seen walking up The Quadrant one day with a rucksack on her back, and she had knocked at Jenny’s door. Her hair was described as being ‘in

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tangles’ by an old man who had passed her on his way to the post office and who had noticed her heavy boots and the rings in her nose. He was seventy-five years old and not well up on modem fashions, but he was quite an observant old man. He had given it as his opinion that she hadn’t been wearing a bra, either. But it was only from a colleague at the Global Assurance call centre that the police had learned the young woman’s name. The colleague had visited Jenny’s home, and had been introduced. The miracle was that she had remembered Ros’s name at all. ‘She was a girl, really. I’d say she was no more than twenty years old. A student type, you know? All dreadlocks and combat trousers she was, and sitting slumped on the floor like she’d not even been taught how to use a chair. Never had a job, you could tell. Never had to work in a call centre selling insurance, that’s for sure.’ ‘Did she say much?’ “‘Hi.” That was what she said. And that was said a bit contemptuous, like. As if she’d weighed me up in a glance and thought I was too boring and respectable and hardly worth bothering with. It was a cheek, I thought. I mean, if I’m boring and respectable, then so was fenny Weston. So what was she doing at Jenny’s house, this Ros?’ ‘Did Jenny never explain who she was?’ ‘Never. I did try to ask her next day. Discreetly, like. I asked where Ros was from, and Jenny said from Cheshire. But then she changed the subject straight away, almost as if she’d said too much, though she hadn’t told me anything at all. She didn’t want to talk about her, that was plain. Well, she could be a bit stand-offish when she wanted to, could

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Jenny. I can’t imagine what she had to do with that girl.’ Fry watched Maggie’s hands moving impatiently. The cat had brought no response. That was no surprise. It was obvious there had never been a pet to disturb the orderly surroundings of Maggie Crew’s apartment. ‘Jenny’s next birthday would have been on the 11th of December,’ she said. ‘She was a Sagittarian. She was interested in horoscopes, too. She wore a chain with a silver star-sign symbol - the archer, half horse and half man. She had made an appointment with her dentist for next Tuesday, because she was worried about a loose filling. Jenny Weston was the sort of person who started buying her Christmas presents early. In fact, she had already bought a cashmere sweater for her mother, and a book on Peak District aircraft wrecks for her father, who used to be in the RAF. She had even bought a toy mouse with a bell on it, for the cat.’ Maggie sighed. ‘Why are you telling me all this? I don’t want to know any of it.’ ‘Jenny had taken a week’s holiday from work. It seems she loved the Peak District. But you do, too. Don’t you, Maggie?’ ‘I used to,’ she said. ‘Something changed my view.’ ‘Well, Jenny must have loved it right up to her last breath. She never learned that disillusionment. She never had the chance.’

‘She was a member of the National Trust, too. We found lots of photographs she took at National Trust properties. That was another hobby of hers - photography. It seems her favourite place to visit was probably

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T Hammond Hall. You know Hammond Hall well, don’t you, Maggie?’ ‘It says so in my file, I suppose,’ she said. ‘You’re a volunteer guide there, aren’t you?’ ‘I used to be.’ ‘You might have met Jenny Weston, then. You might have shown her round some time, explained the history of the Tudor wall-hangings to her, or directed her to the ladies’ toilets perhaps.’ ‘I never really notice the visitors, you know. They’re just an anonymous mass. I forget them all as soon as they’ve gone. Unless they ask particularly interesting questions.’ ‘Jenny might have done that. She was interested in history.’ ‘Lots of people are.’ The volunteers co-ordinator at Hammond Hall had been interviewed after the assault on Maggie Crew. She had described Maggie as very knowledgeable. A bit cool and austere, perhaps, but some visitors preferred her as a guide because of the depth of her knowledge. ‘Jenny may even have dealt with your car insurance,’ said Fry, ‘or the insurance on your house.’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘How do you know? I haven’t said what company she worked for.’ Maggie regarded Fry steadily from the side of her eye. ‘This is getting tiresome. What exactly is it you want from me?’ ‘I want you to help us find the man who killed Jenny Weston.’

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‘And why should I do that?’ She shifted in her seat as she asked the question. Fry prayed she wouldn’t turn towards her completely. She had got so far that she didn’t want her nerve to fail now. She didn’t want her face to show the reaction that made her stomach clench and her fingers tighten into tense fists. ‘Because we think he’s the same man who did that to your face, Maggie,’ she said. A minimum number of objects were lined up in an orderly line on the desk; no more than a paperweight, an ashtray, a telephone - and a wicked-looking letter opener shaped like a dagger, with a sharp blade and imitation rubies set into its handle. The letter opener was the only item of any ostentation in the room, and it stood out like a beacon, the light from the lamp reflecting in its red stones. In a moment of thought, Maggie toyed with its handle, turning it so that the tip pointed towards Fry, then spinning it away again to line up neatly with the paperweight in a satisfying geometric pattern. ‘So tell me one more thing,’ said Maggie. ‘How was this woman killed?’ ‘She was stabbed to death.’ Maggie took her hand away from the letter opener quickly, and picked up her pen instead. ‘It’s a waste of time, you know. I can’t remember any more than I have already.’ ‘I don’t believe memories are gone forever, do you? They’ll come back, Maggie. But they’ll come back when you’re least expecting them. You’ll find they surprise

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you in ordinary things. It will be a face you see on TV that reminds you of someone. An item of clothing that you wore on the day. A glimpse of your own reflection in a window at night.’

Maggie’s mouth tightened, and the lines round her good eye flattened out in anger.

‘They will come back, Maggie,’ said Fry, ‘Better to let them come to the surface when you can deal with them than to allow them to ambush you when you least expect them. Believe me on this.’

Maggie stared at her. Gradually, her mouth relaxed. ‘Are you talking from experience?’

Fry barely managed a nod. Ridiculously, the simple question had done exactly what she had been warning Maggie against. The burst of recollection was so strong and so physical that she was quite unprepared for it. She had to look away now, and be damned to her determination to look the woman in the eye. She stared at the drapes over the window, counting the brass rings on the curtain rail while she breathed slowly and steadily, counting to three as she inhaled, holding for another count of three, exhaling and counting; holding again.

It only took a few seconds before she was fully under control. She knew there was little outward sign. Most people noticed nothing, certainly her male colleagues. But Maggie was watching her fixedly, in absolute silence. When Fry met her stare again, something had changed. There was an indefinable difference in the atmosphere, as if somebody had just turned on the central heating, and a hint of warmth was beginning to creep into the cold walls.

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‘Would you like some coffee?’ said Maggie.

Fry caught a glimpse into a kitchen as Maggie opened the door at the far end of the room. While she waited, Fry looked through her notes, checking the items she had marked for raising in conversation. One thing she hadn’t mentioned yet was Maggie’s family. The closest surviving relative was a sister, who lived somewhere in the west of Ireland.

She watched Maggie pour the coffee from a cafetiere. She wore no jewellery of any kind on her hands - no rings, no bracelet. There was no make-up on her face, either, though it might have helped to hide the scars. She wore no lipstick. Her only adornment consisted of two tiny gold studs in her ears, like miniature crosses.

‘Last time you were interviewed,’ said Fry, ‘you weren’t in a steady relationship, according to the notes. Is that still the case?’

‘Yes.’ Maggie smiled, without humour. ‘They do put everything in my file, don’t they? Yes, it makes life difficult when it comes to forming relationships. Nobody wants to have to look at a face that would frighten the horses.’

‘Of course, a long-term relationship isn’t to be taken for granted these days. Not everybody wants commitment. I suppose it depends whether you want children or not, and how you want them to grow up.’

‘I’ve never wanted children anyway,’ said Maggie. ‘Some people think that’s very strange for a woman.’ She laughed, but it was a nervous laugh, at the thought of a disconcerting prospect. ‘Well, perhaps I’ll change. Perhaps I’ll wake up one day and discover I have a

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maternal instinct after all. What do you think? We’re all victims of our hormones, aren’t we?’ Maggie put down the cafetiere. She picked up the pen that had lain by her hand all through the interview. She scrawled some notes on her pad, filling the empty lines for the first time. Fry leaned forward slightly to try to see what she was writing. But she could see that it was some kind of shorthand. Maggie wrote for a couple of minutes, concentrating as if Fry had suddenly ceased to be present. Then she threw down her pen. ‘When will you come to see me again?’ she asked. ‘Wednesday,’ said Fry promptly. ‘Make it in the morning. Nine o’clock. My mind is fresher then.’ ‘OK.’ Fry looked at the big sash window and the remnants of the autumn sun forming red streaks and dark shadows on the roofs of Matlock. The sun was setting somewhere behind her. The light must be falling on the front of the building, because it certainly wasn’t reaching the room where they sat. In the morning, it would be different. In the morning, Maggie’s mind might be fresher. But the light would also be in the southeast, shining on this window. Lighting up Maggie’s face. Will and Dougie Leach were sitting quietly in the kitchen at Ringham Edge Farm. Their father had brought the portable television set into the kitchen, and they were watching the news, eyes fixed on the face of the newsreader as he spoke about interest rates, trade wars, and disasters in distant parts of the world.

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It was well past the boys’ normal bedtime. Their mother would never have let them stay up so late. She would have hurried them off to bed with warnings about being up early for school in the morning. But their father didn’t seem to care. He forgot about them as long as they were quiet and didn’t get in his way. And Will and Dougie had learned how to be quiet. Warren Leach was crouched over the old oak desk in the front room of the farmhouse - the room he called an office. He had a desk lamp with a dim forty-watt bulb held over a scatter of papers. The boys had no real idea what the papers were, except that they were bad news. Every night he got the papers out and looked at them again. But no matter how many times he looked, they only ever seemed to make him more unhappy. The news finished and some incomprehensible comedy programme started, with a lot of swearing. The boys shifted uncomfortably, knowing their mother would have been angry to see them watching the programme. But without her to tell them what to do, the boys sat on, their eyes growing tired, reluctant to move or make a noise in case they were noticed. Finally, when little Dougie was already asleep with his head on the arm of the chair, Will heard the front door bang. Their father had gone out. Will got up to switch off the television. He shook his brother awake, and together they crept up the stairs to their bedrooms. Their beds were unmade, the sheets tangled and uncomfortable. But both of them were so tired that they didn’t notice. But Will didn’t go to sleep straight away. For a while,

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he lay staring at the ceiling and wondering where it was that his father went. He prayed that he hadn’t gone near the shippon, that his father would leave Doll alone. Although people didn’t come at night any more, Will knew there was nothing good about what his father was doing.

Will had lived all his life on the farm. He knew its patterns and routines, he understood the rhythms of its activities. And there was one thing that he knew perfectly well. There was nothing that could possibly need doing around the farm at this time of night.

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‘All right, what’s the latest weirdo count?’

To Ben Cooper, Chief Superintendent Jepson looked as though he didn’t really want to know the answer. It was a question that risked spoiling the Tuesday morning meeting almost before it had started. Cooper tried hard to fade into the background of the incident room. He and Todd Weenink would be following up the line of enquiry about a white van reported in the Ringham Edge area, which one witness claimed to have seen before, and which might therefore be local. That was all the excitement he needed for this morning.

Cooper saw DCI Tailby hesitate at the Chief Super’s question and look sideways at DI Hitchens. But Hitchens looked very cheerful for such an early hour, and he had the answers ready.

‘Well, the uniforms on duty up there say they had trouble turning away a bunch of characters in black coats,’ he said. ‘Apparently they were carrying so much metalwork on their bodies they wouldn’t have got through airport security without the help of a surgeon.’ ‘What did they want?’

‘They said blood had been spilled on the Virgins, and

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that meant the power would manifest some time in the next twenty-four hours, so they had to be there to receive it.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Jepson.

‘They were pretty insistent. In the end, they only retreated as far as the pub in Ringham. The inspector is worried that when they come back they’ll be tanked up and more aggressive. Fortunately, I think we’ve managed to keep them out of the way of the other lot so far.’

‘What other lot?’

‘The other lot who say they have to perform a cleansing ritual dedicated to the Great Goddess, so as to dispel the influence of evil from the stone circle, which is a sacred place. Some of the bobbies were all for letting them go ahead with that one.’

‘You what?’

‘Well, they’re all women, and it seems they have to perform this ritual naked.’

Jepson put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘It’s called “sky-clad”,’ said Hitchens.

‘What is?’

‘Having no clothes on. You’re clad in nothing but the sky, so that you’re much closer to nature and the Great Goddess.’

‘Hitchens, are you enjoying this?’

‘No, sir. I’m just reporting the information that the uniformed section gathered. They spent quite a while talking to this lot, I think. We might have some converts in E Division. They’ll be wanting to form an Edendale chapter of the Order of the Golden Moon.’

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‘Haven’t we had any plain old psychics and mediums, then?’

‘You’re kidding. Twelve at the last count. We’ve also had a dowser offering to locate the knife using nothing but a bent twig; an animal linguist who wants to interrogate the squirrels, because she thinks they could have been eyewitnesses, and a UFO expert who has proof that the victim was abducted by aliens for unspecified experiments which went wrong. Oh, and some preservation experts from that government department, English Heritage.’

‘English Heritage? What the hell do they want?’ ‘They demand the right to inspect the stone circle for damage. They say it’s a priceless piece of our cultural history.’

Jepson frowned. ‘I’ve heard that phrase before. Is it from a book or something?’

‘Could be,’ said Hitchens.’It seems to be us that English Heritage suspect of damaging the stones, by the way.’ ‘They’re nuts. Get rid of them.’

‘They’re not half as bad as the press. That lot are all over us like a nasty disease.’

‘Was that their chopper over the moor yesterday?’ ‘Sure. And it was also one of their blokes we pulled down from the top of a tree with his long lens. He’d already been up there a day or so, in camouflage gear. He slept tied to a branch. He said he learned how to do it at an eco-warriors’ protest camp in Berkshire.’

‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Jepson, half-admiringly.

‘I don’t know about neat. Twenty-four hours is a long time. You should have seen the state of the grass at the

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bottom of the tree. That’s how we located him. Even our bobbies know human shit when they see it.’

Jepson pulled a face. Then he looked suspiciously at Tailby, who had been listening silently.

‘What have you got to say, Stewart?’

‘It’s a pretty depressing story, I’m afraid.’ Tailby sounded resigned. ‘The sixteen fires we found remnants of, they were all set during the last three months. Some of the people who made them built them properly. Others … well, others were lucky not to have set fire to the whole moor. There are the animal bones we found buried nearby, too. First indications suggest a mediumsized dog.’

Cooper remembered seeing the slides of the animal bones. It hadn’t been immediately obvious what they were. They were just slivers of something pale caught in the dark fibrous peat, like those burnt stems of heather, crumbling and white, Then the slide had suddenly come into focus, and the shapes of the white splinters came together in a vaguely familiar shape. He had thought of the farmyard at home, of rats caught by the sheepdogs, and the discarded evidence of foxes hunting in the fields. But this wasn’t quite the same. This was something much bigger, something with a heavier and wider skull than a rat.

‘Do those two gypsies go in for animal sacrifices?’ asked Jepson.

‘The youths in the van? They’re not exactly gypsies,’ said Hitchens.

‘Whatever they are.’

‘They’re just travellers, sir,’ said Cooper.

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‘Travellers, my arse. They’re not g What makes them travellers?’

‘They’re classed as having no settled home, sn Volkswagen van doesn’t count as a home under law, even if it’s broken down.’

‘So what do they live on down there, Cooper? P and berries, or what?’

‘Our information is that Calvin Lawrence catches bus into Bakewell once a week to collect his bei money.’

‘Ah. So he’s a Social Security scrounger. What at the other one?’

‘Simon Bevington isn’t even registered for benei said Cooper, ‘He seems to stay in the vicinity of quarry or on the moor. He doesn’t claim anythin suppose they must share what little they’ve got.’

‘Oh, love and peace, hallelujah,’ said Jepson.

‘It must be enough for both of them - they hai have an extravagant lifestyle. But they’re not gypsi ‘They could be circus trapeze artists, for all I c

Cooper. Have we asked them about animal sacrific ‘No, sir.’

‘Then ask them. And find this Martin Stafford the girl, Ros Daniels. We ought to be able to fine least one of them, shouldn’t we? Is there anything e And don’t make it anything too exciting. I’ve enough for today.’

‘Well,’ said Hitchens, as if suddenly noticing important item that everyone had forgotten, ‘then the phallus farm.’

‘What kind of farm?’ said Jepson.

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I ‘Well, I don’t mean Warren Leach’s kind of farm. There are no EU subsidies for this particular crop….’ Warren Leach was waiting for the milk tanker. It was one of the few routines that still held his day together. Bringing the cows in, milking, waiting for the tanker. The morning’s yield was taken for Hartington Stilton, the local cheese made at the dairy in Dovedale. It was something most farmers were proud of, that their milk was going for Stilton. It was like still being part of the traditional dairy industry of the dales, not an anonymous unit of production for some huge commercial organization. Leach had once been proud of it himself, and had boasted about the quality of his milk. Now he found he couldn’t care less. He would have been just as happy to pour the stuff down the drain or into the nearest ditch. The lad who normally came to help him had not turned up yesterday or today, so Leach had done everything himself. Gary was one of the Dawsons, from over the moor at Pilhough. The Dawsons weren’t up to much, but at least they were farming folk. But there had been a blazing row on Sunday afternoon, when Leach had lost his temper and sworn at the lad and accused him of being idle. Gary had threatened he would never come again, and it looked as though he never would. In a way, Leach preferred it; he preferred to be left on his own, to have so much to do that it left no time for thinking. Yet it only lasted for a while, only until after the tanker had gone and the rest of the jobs held

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no urgency. Then, when there were no cows bellowing for attention, no tanker driver sounding his horn in the lane, when his sons had gone off to school in Cargreave on the bus - then he found the rest of the day stretched before him endlessly. But this morning a car had arrived. He had been expecting the tanker turning in from the road, but the sound of the engine was wrong. The big diesel always made the glass in the windows of the farmhouse vibrate, and the layer of dust on the window ledge dance and slide before it settled into a new pattern. There had been plenty of police vehicles going by the farm for the past two days, of course - but they went straight up the lane, past the front of the shippon. They didn’t turn into the yard like this car did. Leach’s chest grew tight with apprehension. He had known it would only be a matter of time before the men he feared arrived. The farmer looked at his hands, astonished at the dirt ingrained in his fingers, as if he hadn’t washed for days. How long had his hands been like that? He glanced at the steel cabinet where his shotgun was locked, and waited for the familiar surge of aggression to come, for the righteous anger to drive strength and heat into his limbs. He was the sort of man who ought to be able to see a bailiff off, no problem. But something was wrong. Somehow the adrenalin failed to flow, the flush of testosterone never came. He felt weak and helpless; he was alone and cornered, yet with no fight left in him. It was the feeling that he had always dreaded would come to him in the end.

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Leach laughed quietly as he listened for the men to enter the gate. ‘You’ve had it, Warren. What use are you now?’ He thought of not answering the door, of hiding in another room until the strangers went away. It was what a woman might do, or a child. Was he reduced to that? Unable to face the answer, he stood paralysed when the knock came at the door. A second knock followed, more impatient. Then Leach moved, without a thought in his head about what he would say. What did bailiffs do in these circumstances? Obviously, the men hadn’t come alone in a car to take away his furniture. Maybe they had come to deliver a court notice. Maybe they had just come to check what he had that was worth selling. Good luck to them, then. There was precious little. But they weren’t bailiffs, after all, just the police again. The first face he saw he recognized immediately, and it reminded him that there were vitally important things he ought to have done, but hadn’t. He had watched the police cars and vans go backwards and forwards across his land, cursing each one as they went, yet desperate to know what they were doing up on the moor, to hear what they had found out about the woman who had died. He longed for someone to tell him what was going on. Yet now these policemen had arrived, he didn’t know what to do, except to tell them he had nothing to say. ‘Detective Constable Cooper and Detective Constable Weenink, Mr Leach. We just need a few words, that’s all. We won’t keep you from your work long. We know how busy you farmers always are.’ r The one who spoke tried a smile. Leach refused to be impressed. ‘Cut the crap. I see enough of it rounc here.’ ‘If that’s the way you want it.’ Leach looked at the other one, the big one in the leather jacket, and felt a small measure of his old confi dence starting to return. ‘What have they sent you tw( for? Ranger scared to come here any more, is he’ Thought he needed to send in the heavy mob? Yot won’t get anything out of me, anyway.’ ‘We’re collecting information about vehicles seer in this area on Sunday,’ said Weenink, staring at the farmer. ‘Are you now? But they’ve asked me about thi; before.’ ‘We’re following up a report on a van that wa; noticed leaving your farm entrance between two an( three o’clock that day. Was that your van?’ ‘Does it look as though I’ve got a van? A Land Rover but that’s knackered. Otherwise it’s a tractor or the bad of a cow if I want to get about.’ ‘Does that mean I can put you down as “does no own a van”?’ ‘If you like.’ ‘The witness said it was a white van, but not ver clean. Probably a Ford Transit.’ ‘Lots of those about.’ ‘Do you recall seeing this van?’ asked Cooper. ‘Di( it belong to a visitor to the farm?’ ‘I don’t get many visitors here.’ ‘But that afternoon you did, didn’t you?’

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‘Not that I remember.’ ‘Could it have been a sales rep? An agricultural engineer? Something like that?’ ‘Can’t afford to speak to either of ‘em at the moment.’ ‘A parcel delivery?’ ‘You’re joking.’ ‘Do you know anybody with a van of that description?’ ‘Listen, let me help you out. It would likely have been some bugger who’d got lost and decided to use my land to turn round on. Or maybe he’d stopped to have his sandwiches with his van blocking my gateway. That’s happened before, too. Police’ll never do anything about it, obviously. Too bloody busy, aren’t you?’ ‘I’m sure if you phoned the station, they would send somebody out when they had a car available.’ Leach began to cough. He was wishing the policemen would go away; his lungs were responding as if he had an allergic reaction. He was too tired to argue with them. Besides, they didn’t look as though they would put up with absolutely anything, the way the Ranger did. ‘Do you get joyriders up here?’ said Cooper. ‘It’s a quiet spot. They like to abandon vehicles somewhere and set fire to them.’ Leach followed the detective’s gaze. He was looking at the scorched shell of the pick-up on the hard-standing near the big shed. ‘A bit of an accident,’ said Leach. ‘I’ll get a few spares off it when I get round to it.’ ‘This white van …’ said Weenink. Leach shrugged. ‘I’d like to help, but ‘

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‘What about your two sons?’ asked Cooper. ‘What about them?’ ‘Were they at home on Sunday? They might have seen the van. Can we speak to them?’ ‘They’re at school.’ ‘Someone could call back later.’ ‘I don’t know about that.’ ‘And your wife?’ said Cooper. ‘Was she here at the time?’ ‘My wife?’ Leach finally spat out the irritation that had been troubling his lungs, narrowly missing Cooper’s boots. ‘You’re wasting your time, mister. You can forget all about her.’ Later in the morning, Diane Fry and DI Hitchens walked into the DCI’s office. Tailby looked at them with a faint hope. ‘Is there something?’ he said. ‘A couple of things on the parents. The Weston,’ said Hitchens. ‘Oh?’ ‘Number one, they had a burglary last year, at a weekend cottage they’ve got at Ashford-in-the-Water.’ ‘A weekend cottage? That’s nice, on a teacher’s salary.’ ‘Apparently, the Westons are planning on retiring to this cottage in a year or two. Presumably Mr Weston is taking early retirement. He’s a deputy head, by the way.’ ‘A good pension, I suppose.’ Fry thought the DCI was starting to sound wistful. His own retirement date was a few years away yet,

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but he could make it come closer if he wanted to. She wondered how much the cottage had cost the Westons. She imagined honeysuckle growing by the front door and roses in the garden, a couple of loungers by a small pond with a few Koi carp. She tried to imagine Tailby living in such a cottage. But Eric Weston had a Mrs Weston to retire to his cottage with. It made a difference. ‘A burglary, eh?’

‘And we detected it, too,’ said Hitchens. ‘Who needs Home Office grants?’

Tailby grunted, unamused. The previous year, word had gone round that there was government cash available for special initiatives targeting residential burglaries. Divisions were invited to come up with their own projects - but there were criteria to be met. There had to be a target area with a high enough level of burglaries. E Division had failed to get the cash, because no matter how they juggled the geography or the time periods, the figures just wouldn’t stack up.

‘This was more than a burglary, actually. The place was trashed. It was a real mess - you should see the photos.’

‘There’s nothing new in that.’

‘I talked to the investigating officer yesterday, anyway,’ said Hitchens. ‘At least he’s still in the division. Usually you find they’ve long since moved on somewhere else, or they’ve packed it in and joined that firm of enquiry agents that set up in town a couple of years back.’

‘What’s the other thing?’ asked the DCI.

‘Well, Mr Weston had a little bit of trouble last year.

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There was an enquiry after a fatal accident to a child on a school trip he was leading.’

‘OK. We might as well ask him about it, I suppose.’ ‘More than that, sir.’

Why?, Hitchens tapped the file. ‘It all came out when we made the arrest for the burglary. This convicted offender, name of Wayne Sugden - it turned out he was the uncle of the child that died. It was no secret that the family blamed Mr Weston for the accident, because it was all over the papers. He got death threats, too, but we could never prove where they came from. It seems the Sugdens are a pretty close clan in Edendale. You’re not safe if you harm one of their number.’

‘So the burglary could have been revenge on Weston?’ said Tailby. ‘Is it significant?’

‘There’s one good reason it might be,’ said Hitchens. ‘This Wayne Sugden. He got sent down for twelve months, protesting his innocence all the way to Derby nick. But the trouble is - they let him out two weeks ago.’

Ben Cooper was back in the CID room when Diane Fry returned from her meeting. She saw him, but she started tidying files and brushing biscuit crumbs from an unoccupied desk.

‘So, Diane, how have you been getting on with Maggie Crew?’ he said.

He didn’t think there was anything about his tone of voice that could have made Fry look sharply at him in the way that she did now.

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‘What’s your interest in Maggie Crew?’ ‘Just asking.’ ‘She’s not one of your underdogs, you know.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I heard you at the briefing this morning. You couldn’t help putting your oar in about those two travellers in the quarry, could you? You’re turning into quite the little rebel, with this habit of sticking up for people against all odds.’ ‘That’s not the intention.’ Cooper turned to one side and picked up some papers from his desk, dropping his eyes from contact with hers. He heard her sigh with exasperation and bang a chair on the floor. He let a few moments of silence develop before he spoke again. ‘I’ve heard you’re going to be working with DI Armstrong; he said. ‘When your promotion is confirmed.’ Fry didn’t answer straight away. He looked up to see her frowning at him. ‘She’s doing some very good work,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘You don’t sound too sure about that, Ben,’ she said. ‘What problem have you got with Kim Armstrong?’ ‘No problem, really.’ Cooper eyed the files on his desk. The work had been piling up since the murder enquiry started. There were so many things for him to follow up, when he had time. He was startled when he found that Fry had moved suddenly nearer to him and was staring into his face. He found her closeness intimidating.

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‘Come on, out with it,’ she said. ‘What are you suggesting about DI Armstrong?’ ‘Well, she’s got her own agenda, of course. Everybody says that.’ ‘That’s a load of crap, and you know it. Kim Armstrong is a capable woman doing a good job. She’s in charge of a major enquiry, and she cares about what she’s doing. There was a little girl that was killed…’ Fry ground to a halt. Cooper realized that he was smiling at her. The expression on his face must look ridiculous and derisive, but it was a natural response that had sprung from deep inside him at seeing Fry suddenly passionate in her defence of someone. He nodded at her, though the gesture barely seemed adequate. She backed off, baffled. She picked up a wastepaper bin from the floor and put it on the empty desk, then began clearing out drawers. Cooper watched her hurl the leftover possessions of the previous occupant into the bin without looking at them. ‘OK, Diane,’ he said. ‘You were telling me about this little girl who was killed. What happened to her?’ Fry pulled out a 1999 calendar with pictures of naked women draped over bright red sports cars. With a grimace, she tore it in half and thrust it into the bin. ‘Nobody really knows,’ she said. ‘Nobody knows what awful things might have happened to her before she died.’

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Owen Fox felt his fingers start to tingle. He thought about finding his gloves in his jacket pocket to protect himself from the cold. But he knew it wasn’t just the cold that he could feel.

There were things that had passed through his hands during the past few years that didn’t bear to be thought about. Most days, he could clear the memories from his head. He got out on the tops of the hills and let the wind blow them out of the corners of his mind. But somehow his hands still felt the memories of their own accord; his fingers still touched the blood and the slack limbs and the cold cheeks. It was as if he was forever holding a dead body, as if he carried that child with him every day, and always would.

Could the hands remember better than the brain? Sometimes it took only the touch of some object, normally familiar - the feel of the sleeve of a well-worn leather jacket, the bulge of fruit in a plastic carrier bag, a sudden spurt of warm vegetable soup from a bowl. And a thing so mundane could bring back an instant recollection that would set him trembling and unable to breathe, his throat twisted and knotted with anguish.

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Sometimes a smell or a sound could do the same thing - just the familiar chemical reek of petrol on the forecourt of a filling station, or the tick of a cooling engine. But it was the feel of things that he couldn’t escape; his sense of touch tormented him until he wanted to cut off his hands.

Owen followed the deep crease that ran across his palm from just below the index finger to the outer edge of his hand. He was fascinated by the way the line broke and diverged, forked into two and was crossed by other lines. In palmistry, it was supposed to be the life line, wasn’t it? Or was that the other line, the one that ran across the base of his thumb? It didn’t matter, anyway - both lines ended in a web of tiny creases like a smudge of gauze; there was no sudden stop, just a fading out in a tangle of vagueness and uncertainties.

He forced himself to pull his gaze away. He worried that staring too hard at his hands might make the shape of the child reappear, bright and unforgettable in her torn blue dress; still heavy and limp in his arms. Best to think of something else. Maybe there was something he ought to be doing to help Mark, to make it easier for him to get over the shock.

Mustn’t feel guilty about Mark, thought Owen. He’ll get over it, because he’s only a young lad. Mustn’t take on that burden as well as everything else. No more burdens. Let others take the guilt.

Mark Roper was moving cautiously across the slopes of dying heather, placing his boots on the bare surface of the rabbit tracks to avoid the snap of dead stems.

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The spring of the peat underfoot felt like a welcoming response from the earth to his presence, the clutch of brittle foliage at his trousers like the touch of a friend. He had already been waiting for an hour. But none of the men Mark had been watching had seen him as he stood above them in the birches up the hill. Mark had left his red jacket at home today, and he had long since learned the art of being inconspicuous. He had also been prepared to wait as long as necessary for the policemen to leave.

He knew the two men were detectives, because he recognized one of them from Sunday, when they had questioned him. It was the one called Cooper. Mark had seen him again, with a woman, when he had talked to Yvonne Leach. This detective was young, and you could tell he was local. He was the one who lacked the hard-eyed aggressiveness that Mark had seen in the other policemen. In fact, he could almost have been a Ranger. This detective, Cooper, was also the one who had made Mark think of what his own brother would have looked like by now - if he had still been alive.

Finally, the two policemen had driven away down the track from Ringham Edge Farm. Perhaps they were heading back to the cycle hire centre, where the car park was full of police vehicles this morning and the first visitors of the day were getting an unpleasant surprise as they unloaded their mountain bikes and strapped on their cycling helmets.

Just over the shoulder of Ringham Moor were the Nine Virgins. And up there, Mark knew there would

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be more police, keeping the public away from the stone circle, like priests guarding an altar from the profane.

A hundred yards along the slope of the hill, Owen Fox was working on the boundary wall. There was still a lot to be done on the wall, and the Area Ranger would probably work on right through the day until the light started to go.

As Mark watched, Owen pulled on his gloves and picked up the new Pennine walling hammer he had bought only a few weeks before. It was a three-pound hammer with a sharp cutting edge fixed at a right angle to the shaft - a tool designed to slice the corners off the stones, so that only blunt edges protruded from the wall, leaving it solid and safe. Sometimes, Mark wished he could ask Owen to use his hammer and shape the rest of the world like that - with no sharp edges that could pierce the skin of his emotions or rip the protective veneer from his memories.

Owen had a small rucksack on the ground, with his radio aerial protruding from the top. Nearby, his stones were laid out in the order he would need them, leaving a clear work area. The ground was already levelled and the foundation stones blocked together. Now the building stones had to be laid, and coordination of hand and eye would be needed to know exactly which stone to choose to plug a gap.

Silently, Mark continued to make progress, until he was standing only a few yards from the wall. For a while, he watched Owen’s hands as he worked. He was shaping the stones, carving them into new forms,

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until he had made them fit tightly together. When the wall was finished, it would be impossible to move a single stone by hand. Surely a man who could create with such care would never think of destroying anything?

Owen hefted another stone and swung the cutting edge of his hammer, slicing the gritstone into yellow shards that left a dusting of powder on his gloves. ‘Owen?’ The Ranger looked up, surprised. His hammer was poised in the air, its edge catching the light, a little bit of golden stone dust trickling down the shaft on to his red fleece. Mark was shocked by the look that he had caught on Owen’s face. He saw the Ranger start to compose his expression into an air of normality as he mentally rehearsed the lines he would use for a tourist. And then Owen saw who had startled him. ‘What are you doing here, Mark?’ he said. ‘You should be at home.’ ‘So should you. It’s your day off.’ Owen shrugged. ‘There are things to do. This wall won’t wait. The boundaries have to be maintained, whatever else goes on. No one will do the job but me. Certainly not Warren Leach.’ The wall formed a boundary where the top fields of Ringham Edge Farm met the woods. Mark had already helped Owen to replace a stile which had collapsed with use over the years. Its original builders had used flat gritstone slabs instead of wooden steps, and the structure hadn’t done too badly - it had survived for the best part of two hundred years. But the weight of

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walkers’ boots had proved too much, loosening tt slabs until they shifted out of balance and becan dangerous. Now Owen had worked up the hill to a stretch wall that had fallen. Walkers had been crossing he too - the ones too lazy to walk a few yards to the stiff

It was a double wall, but the topping stones had bei dislodged one by one, and the weather had got into t centre, washing through the filling until the sid

bulged and slipped. Mark and Owen stood together among the scatters stones for a minute or two. Despite his proximity Owen, there still seemed to be too much distan between them for Mark’s satisfaction. The greeting I had received was not the one he had expected. It w not the reason he had waited in the trees until t] policemen had gone. For Mark, the unfamiliar gi between them felt like that yawning gap in the wa waiting to be bridged by a careful hand. ‘Did you talk to the police yesterday, Owen?’ he sai ‘Yes, they’re talking to everybody.’ ‘What did you talk about?’ Owen laughed. ‘You’d be surprised.’

He picked up a stone, knocked off some dirt, a held it up to the light to study it, like a diamond deal

examining the facets of a newly polished gem. Ma liked to watch Owen at work. He thought Owen w a completely different man when he was out on t hills. He never seemed at home in the briefing cent sitting in front of the little electric heater, hunched the assistant’s desk scattered with paperwork.

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‘What was it they wanted to know, Owen?’ Mark insisted.

Owen had been Mark’s friend and mentor throughout his assessment and training as a Ranger and during his first few weeks in the job itself. Mark had become accustomed to the comforting presence of the bearded man in the red jacket; he had glowed with pride as people greeted Owen like an old friend, laughed at all his jokes and bombarded him with questions on every subject - questions he never failed to respond to with courtesy, even when he plainly didn’t know the answer.

‘It was just questions,’ said Owen. ‘They want to make use of my local knowledge. Don’t they all?’ ‘The time of the next bus to Buxton, then? Or the nearest all-night chemist’s.’

Owen smiled at Mark’s tentative joke, a reference to a shared memory of an encounter with two elderly women on a remote track by a reservoir on the heights of the Dark Peak. It was enough to provide the surge of reassurance Mark needed, enough to ease the chill he had felt when he had first seen the expression on Owen’s face.

‘I wondered if the police might want to interview me again,’ said Mark.

‘You’ve told them everything, haven’t you?’ ‘I think so.’

But Mark knew he hadn’t, not everything. The policemen hadn’t been as easy to talk to as he might have hoped. There were some things you just couldn’t say when they were writing down every word. There were things that sounded too stupid and strange. For

a start, he didn’t know how to describe to the police the way that the woman had looked to him as she lay among the stones. The way that she had seemed to dance.

‘Anyway,’ said Owen as he handed Mark a topping stone, ‘it’s all over with now. You can forget about it. Get on with the job. Why would they want to start bothering you again?’

Mark started stacking the stones to one side, lining them up on the grass, ready to be replaced when Owen had rebuilt the lower part of the wall.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mark. ‘I’ve never … well, I’ve never been involved in anything like this before.’

‘I know, lad. Pass me the line.’

Owen took off his thick cotton work gloves and ran two lines between wooden pins along the damaged section of wall to mark out its alignment.

‘But the police aren’t so bad. They’re just doing their job, like you and me.’

Owen’s voice was slow and steady. Calming. It didn’t really matter what he was saying, because Mark found it reassuring just to listen to the sound. He had never heard Owen raise his voice. There had often been occasions when he might have done - when a mountain biker or a motorcyclist openly defied his friendly warnings that they were breaking the law and risking prosecution; when ill-equipped hikers ignored both his advice and common sense and put their own and others’ lives at risk; when a farmer, now and then, chose to be downright pig-headed. Farmers like Warren Leach at Ringham Edge, maybe. But Owen never got angry.

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‘So there’s nothing to worry about. You tell them what you found, Mark, and that’s all they need to know. As long as it’s simple for them, they won’t bother you any more. And if they do, just send them to see me, eh? I’ll give them a flea in their ear.’

Owen smiled, showing his teeth through his grey beard, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Like most Rangers, he never wore a hat, and his hair was permanently windblown and untidy, curling into his ears. ‘Owen,’ said Mark.

‘Yes?’ ‘Where were you?’

Owen smacked his gloves together to remove traces of mud and grit. ‘When, Mark?’

‘On Sunday afternoon. You know…’

Mark watched Owen ‘s puzzled smile carefully. This time Owen smiled without showing his teeth. His eyes narrowed, but the crinkles were absent.

‘You had a problem with the radio, Mark.’

‘I just thought that maybe you weren’t there…’ ‘But I wouldn’t let you down like that, Mark. Now, would I?’

Mark looked past the wall and down at the farm buildings of Ringham Edge. They were gathered defensively round a crew yard like a medieval settlement, their gritstone walls turned outwards to the rest of the world. The biggest shed was much newer than the rest of the farm. Its green corrugated steel roof was damp from the drizzle earlier in the day, and it gleamed now in the weak sun.

Mark thought for a moment of the woman on Ring

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ham Moor. Her death had at least been sudden; she had been given no time to consider, no time to reflect on what she had done with her life, for good or evil.

Owen had told Mark there were times when it was best to back off, to avoid confrontation, to let something go. He said that a soft word was better than an angry reaction, that a cool head was better than that hot surge of blind rage that was inevitably followed by the realization that you had made a terrible mistake.

Mark passed another stone. It was furred dark green with lichen, so he knew it had come from the north face of the wall. When a wall had been built by Owen, it was solid and reliable, the absolute symbol of stability.

Mark decided he would have to ask Owen again tomorrow about why he hadn’t been able to get hold of him on the radio. And maybe he would ask the day after, too. Just to hear a little bit more reassurance.

The Westons sat together, their faces no longer hopeful. They were losing faith in the investigation, disappointed by their first real contact with the police, dismayed by the realization of their fallibility. And they had noticed that at first they had been talking to a detective chief inspector, then an inspector; now it was a mere acting detective sergeant. The word ‘acting’ seemed to be the biggest insult of all.

‘Don’t take it the wrong way,’ said Eric Weston. ‘We’re sure you’re doing your best.’

‘There are a lot of people working on this enquiry,’ said Diane Fry patiently. ‘There are lots of leads to be followed up. This is just one of them.’

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‘We understand. Really.’

Mrs Weston had set out teacups on a glass-topped table. She served the tea as a well-rehearsed routine, performed without any hint of welcome. In the same way, she had apologized for the condition of the lounge, explaining that they weren’t bothering to decorate in view of their move, before long, to the retirement cottage at Ashford. New people always redecorated when they bought a house, she said. So why bother? It would only be wasted expense.

The log basket on the hearth was filled with paper and small sticks, ready to light a fire. A storage heater under the bay window was enough to take the chill off the room. But the decor looked perfectly presentable to Fry. Anything that wasn’t stained by mould or hung with cobwebs looked fine to her. Back at the flat, anything that didn’t have a layer of dust was meant for sitting on.

‘I believe you’ve already been asked about a young woman called Ros Daniels.’

‘We have,’ said Mr Weston. ‘We’ve never heard of her. When they told us she’d been staying with Jenny, we thought she was probably one of the girls she worked with, who had nowhere to stay. Jenny would have put her up for a while. She was like that.’

‘But Ros Daniels never worked at Global Assurance, as far as we can tell.’

‘So we’re told. Jenny must have met her somewhere else.’

‘Any idea where that might have been?’ ‘Sorry, no.’

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‘The only other people she ever talked about were the ones in the animal welfare groups,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘You could try them.’

‘We will.’ Fry stared at her cooling tea. ‘I also want to ask you whether your daughter had mentioned being bothered by anybody. Did she complain about anyone hanging round outside her house or following her? Did she refer to any unwanted or nuisance phone calls?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Like a stalker?’ said Mrs Weston. ‘You mean like a stalker?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘She never said anything,’ said Mr Weston. ‘There was the phone call,’ said his wife. ‘Oh?’

Mr Weston had retreated further into his armchair and was watching the two women helplessly, as if he was no part of what was going on.

‘Jenny mentioned she had been phoned up,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘She didn’t say it was a nuisance call, exactly. She just thought there was something strange about it. But she never took it any further, as far as I know. It just happened to be on her mind when I was speaking to her.’

‘Who made this phone call?’

Mrs Weston stared at her. ‘The police, of course. They said it was to check up on home security. But they asked some funny questions, and she didn’t think it was quite right.’

‘Did Jenny give you the name of the officer who phoned?’

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Vp~ ‘No.’ ‘A man or a woman?’

‘A man, I think. Yes, definitely.’ ‘He didn’t give any identification?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Mrs Weston irritably. She looked at her husband again, and back at Fry. ‘You mean he might not have been from the police at all?’ she said. ‘I’m afraid that’s possible.’

The couple shook their heads in unison. ‘Jenny was always too trusting,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘It took her a long time to learn the truth about people. All those terrible men. She was better off with just herself and the cat, if truth be told.’

‘Could this phone call have been in connection with the burglary at your cottage in Ashford?’ asked Fry. ‘Oh, the burglary,’ said Eric Weston. ‘Why do you want to talk about that?’

‘We’re following up everything we can, sir.’ ‘I suppose so.’

‘You’ve not seen any sign of Wayne Sugden since then? Your daughter didn’t mention him getting in contact?’

‘But that man is in prison, isn’t he?’ ‘Not any more, sir.’

‘What?’ Weston seemed roused to emotion at last. ‘Do we take it you didn’t know that?’ asked Fry. ‘Nobody told us that. Shouldn’t somebody have told us?’

‘It isn’t usual,’ she said. ‘Unless there is a particular risk to the victims. In a rape case, for example, or an offence against a child. It can be quite a trauma running

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into a perpetrator unexpectedly in the street when you thought he was behind bars.’

‘But not in this case.’

‘It would have been thought unlikely that Sugden would return to burgle the same house.’

‘But not impossible that he might return and track down our daughter to take his revenge, presumably.’ ‘Well …’

‘Because that’s why you’re asking, isn’t it? You must be thinking that it could have been him that killed Jenny.’

‘It isn’t as simple as that, sir,’ said Fry. ‘No?’

‘There are certain aspects to the burglary which interest us, that’s all. Am I right in thinking you were away at the time?’

‘Yes, in Cyprus,’ said Weston. ‘We go there when we can during the school holidays.’

‘And how long were you away on this occasion?’ ‘A month. I had to be back to prepare for the new term then. There’s a lot of work to do before we start, you know. People don’t realize that.’

‘So you weren’t using the cottage in Ashford at the time of the burglary.’

‘No. We’d asked one of the neighbours to call in occasionally to check on things: water the plants, that sort of thing. They deliver free papers and all sorts of junk mail and just leave it sticking out of the letter box, you know. It’s a complete giveaway that the place is unoccupied.’

Fry studied the log basket in the hearth. She felt the

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Westons staring at her, trying to divine the direction of her questions.

‘And who reported the burglary?’

‘The people next door. They heard glass breaking. Later, they noticed the window was broken. That’s how he got in.’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘He made a terrible mess of the cottage, you know. He took a video recorder, a bit of cash and some jewellery, that’s all. But it was the damage that was the worst thing. He broke chairs, he smashed pictures, threw Tabasco sauce on the walls and the carpet. Susan wouldn’t use the cottage again until we had it redecorated and changed all the locks.’

‘There were no fingerprints,’ said Fry.

‘He must have worn gloves. Even young children know to do that these days, don’t they? But he was identified by someone who saw him near the cottage. And they said there were some fibres on his jacket from one of our armchairs. The evidence seemed conclusive.’

‘I’m afraid we have to take another look at the question of motive. The Sugden family has reason to feel very bitter towards you.’

‘Ah,’ said Weston. ‘You know about my bit of trouble. But it’s not as if it will be in the police records, is it? My name was cleared completely. Still, some people find it difficult to forget.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

Mr Weston shrugged apologetically. ‘There was an accident, that’s all. A boy was badly injured.’

‘This was on a field trip?’

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‘Yes. We had taken a party to Losehill Hall. You know the National Park study centre near Castleton?’

Fry didn’t know it, but she nodded, unwilling to admit the gaps in her local knowledge.

‘There was a bit of a fuss about it at the time. Some hysterical reactions. There was a full enquiry by the education department. The police were involved for a while, but of course there were never any charges.’

‘I see. You were in charge of the party?’

‘Yes, indeed. But there was found to be no negligence on my part. It was an accident, pure and simple. Nobody could have predicted it. The boy slipped away from the party. I had warned them all personally about the danger, and we had the right number of adults supervising the group. All the children had been told to stay on the path. But some of them don’t listen to what you tell them. Some of them have never been taught proper discipline.’

‘That’s down to the parents, I suppose.’

Weston smiled faintly. ‘Try telling that to Gavin Ferrigan’s family. They were most abusive. Aggressive even. We had some very unpleasant scenes, I can tell you. I was forced to take legal advice to protect my position. I couldn’t have my integrity being called into doubt in that way; it was undermining my authority as deputy head.’ ‘You say the boy was badly hurt?’

‘He suffered serious head injuries. I did my best. I pulled him out of the water, tried to keep him warm until the air ambulance arrived. But he’d hit his head on some rocks in the stream. Five days later, they decided to turn off his life-support machine.’

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‘But it blew over in the end, as far as you were concerned?’

‘Eventually. There was a lot of talk - ridiculous, unfounded allegations. It was very embarrassing for a while. It made me feel ashamed, although I knew I had done nothing wrong. Everyone made me feel it was my fault. Everyone.’

‘And Gavin Ferrigan’s mother is Wayne Sugden’s sister.’

‘Apparently. The father, Ferrigan, was already in prison then for drug dealing. But the rest of the family turned up in force for the inquest. It was most unpleasant.’ Weston shuddered at the memory. ‘I kept being forced to justify myself. But I had nothing to apologize for, did I? I did everything right. I did my best for him.’

A few minutes later, Eric Weston followed Fry into the hallway to show her out. He hesitated at the foot of the stairs near the heavy oak door, looking back over his shoulder where his wife could be heard piling crockery in the kitchen.

‘The accident to Gavin Ferrigan…’ he said. ‘You have to understand it was a very difficult experience for me.’

‘Yes, I’m sure it was.’

‘It’s just that … some people never forget. Some people like to make you go on feeling ashamed for ever.’

The clattering in the kitchen had stopped, and Mr Weston suddenly seemed to notice the silence.

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‘Well, goodbye, then,’ he said. ‘Sorry we couldn’t help any more. Anything we can do, of course.’

He ushered Fry outside and stood on the step with the door half-closed behind him.

‘The Ferrigan thing - do you really think it’s relevant to … you know?’

‘We can’t say at the moment.’

‘It would be very bad if it was,’ said Weston. ‘Very bad.’

He had stepped back inside the house before Fry had reached the gate. Fry heard Mrs Weston ‘s voice raised querulously, and a subdued murmur in return, followed by the slamming of something against a hard surface.

She went back to her car and looked at her map. She wanted the quickest way out and back on to the hills. Unlike Ben Cooper, Fry felt no desire to defend the

underdogs - not when they were people like Eric Weston. But she was angry and embarrassed to find that Weston’s words had awakened a deep echo in her own mind. She was appalled that a couple of sentences he had uttered had matched so exactly her own feelings, from a period in her life that was not so very long ago.

‘It made me feel ashamed, although I knew I had done nothing wrong,’ he had said. ‘Everyone made me feel it was my fault. Everyone.’

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‘White vans and more white vans,’ said Chief Superintendent Jepson, waving a handful of report forms. ‘Do you know how many white vans there are? How many within two days’ drive of here? Millions?’

‘Quite a few thousand, certainly,’ said DCI Tailby. ‘Do you propose to check out every one? Are you going to send my officers out on a van-spotting tour of the country? Perhaps you could give them those little I-Spy books and tell them not to come back until they’ve ticked off one with a rusty wheel arch?’

We could ask local forces to do that for us, of course.’ Oh, of course. My colleagues in ACPO will love me. They’ll call me the White Van Man for the rest of my career.’

‘That would be rather unkind.’

DCI Tailby had been reviewing the information for the Divisional Commander. There was plenty of it - an entire flood of it, rapidly filling up the megabytes on the computer. None of it pinned down any known persons actually in the vicinity of the Nine Virgins at the same time as Jenny Weston, with the exception of the Ranger, Mark Roper. The nearest locations of individuals identi

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fled were those of the farmworker, Victor McCauley, the two young men living in the quarry, and the Leach family, who had been going about their business at Ringham Edge.

DI Hitchens had brought a map of Ringham Moor, with the locations marked by the incident room staff. The trouble was, there were too many paths winding their way across the moor. There could be other individuals that hadn’t been seen. The white van wasn’t much, but it was a start.

‘And what about Europe?’ said Jepson. ‘Two days’ drive? Do you realize this van of yours could be in any city in half the countries of the European Union by now? Are you planning some day-trips? Are you intending to besmirch my good name with Europol? I suppose they’ll start calling me Monsieur la Camionnette Blanche.’

‘We don’t think it’s a French make,’ said Hitchens. ‘More likely a Ford Transit.’

Chief Superintendent Jepson sighed melodramatically. ‘If I start getting postcards from CID officers from all over the French Riviera, I’ll want to know why.’

‘I don’t think any of that will be necessary, sir,’ said Tailby.

‘If we don’t make any progress soon, it will be, Stewart. Does this Martin Stafford sound like somebody who’d drive a white Transit van, Hitchens?’

‘No, sir. But who knows?’

‘Who indeed? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we the people who are supposed to find out things like that?’

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‘We’re busy tracing Stafford right now.’

‘I’m also interested in the witness who said this van she saw was local. How does she know it was local?’

‘She thinks she’s seen it before, sir. She remembers that it was dirty, and has a rusted wheel arch. She notices things like that, she says. When pressed, she said she associates it with animals.’

‘We’re following it up, anyway,’ said Hitchens. ‘Checking out farmers, and so on. As it happens, it’s market day today in Edendale. Lots of vehicles in town. All we need is a bit of luck.’

‘We do deserve it,’ said Tailby.

Jepson nodded. ‘And the witness saw this van in the entrance to Ringham Edge Farm. Visiting Warren Leach, then?’

‘Could have been,’ said Hitchens. ‘But, as Mr Leach himself says, the driver could have been using the roadway for some other purpose. Bear in mind there’s access to the moor there. It’s the same access that we’ve been using ourselves for the last two days.’

‘Obliterating any tyre tracks in the process, naturally,’ said Jepson.

‘Well, maybe.’

‘Yes, we always like to wipe out a fair bit of forensic evidence right at the start, don’t we? We’re well known for it. One of our more outstanding talents, you might say.’

‘I think you’re exaggerating there, sir,’ said Tailby. ‘Am I?’ said Jepson. ‘I don’t think so. Has it ever occurred to you there might be a case for keeping police

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officers away from a crime scene completely when a body is found? We might actually get better results that way.’

‘It’s a thought, sir,’ said Hitchens. ‘We could suggest it as a special project group for the Operational Planning Department.’

‘I’ll think about it. It was also Leach’s wife who found the earlier victim, Crew, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘We mustn’t overlook any correlations that the computer throws up, Stewart.’

‘We’re not doing that, sir. I’m keeping Leach in mind until we can eliminate him.’

‘What about boyfriends of the victim?’

‘All accounted for, except for the one who wrote the note. All the others deny writing it, and their handwriting doesn’t match.’

‘And Stafford’s writing doesn’t seem to match, either.’

‘I’ve sent the samples to a handwriting expert. But at first glance, they’re quite unalike.’

‘So, a mystery boyfriend, then. I suppose that’s what you would call a start, is it?’

‘A mystery boyfriend who drives a white van?’ said Hitchens.

‘A mystery boyfriend who drives a white Transit van with a rusty wheel arch, who has something to do with animals and who possesses a sharp knife and a pair of boots that match our partial print. That would be ideal, I suppose,’ said Jepson. ‘Is that all you want for Christmas?’

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r ‘If it’s Santa asking, I’d wish for Maggie Crew’s memories to come back as well,’ said Tailby. ‘Ah, yes. How’s Fry been getting on with her?’ ‘It’s slow going, by all accounts. Crew is completely closed in on herself. Putting Fry on her was a bit of a last resort. But we can’t treat her with kid gloves for ever, not if women are going to start dying on us.’ ‘Are you sure Fry’s the right person?’ said Jepson. ‘Where’s Ben Cooper today?’ ‘Cooper’s on the white van team,’ said Hitchens. ‘I can’t help feeling somebody else might have been better than Fry. Cooper does at least try to understand people. He has a bit more empathy.’ ‘Well,’ said Hitchens, ‘we’ve done empathy.’ ‘And what about Sugden?’ asked Jepson. ‘It would be helpful to appear to be questioning a suspect. Politically helpful, I mean.’ ‘We’re bringing him in now.’ ‘Good. And the woman from Cheshire - Ros Daniels?’ ‘Not a trace of her. It’ll take a damn sight more than empathy to find her, I’m afraid.’ Wayne Sugden hadn’t wanted to come to the station to be interviewed. It was understandable. He had been out of prison only two weeks, and the cells in the detention suite at Edendale carried bad memories for him. But in the end, they had just put him in an interview room, where Diane Fry and DI Hitchens found him bubbling with fear and anger. ‘You can’t leave people alone, can you? Once you’ve got a downer on a bloke, that’s it. Am I going to get

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I this for the rest of my life? I’d be better off back inside.’ ‘Let’s just calm down, Mr Sugden,’ said Hitchens. ‘We only want a chat.’ ‘Oh, yeah? I know your chats. I’m saying nothing. Not a word. Fetch me a solicitor.’ Sugden could just about qualify as a match for the description given by Jenny’s neighbour. He was about five foot eight, a little overweight from his spell of prison food and lack of exercise, with pale eyes and hair the colour of Dettol. His accent was certainly local. Maybe he could even dress respectably sometimes when he finally put those jeans and the stained black sweatshirt in the wash. ‘I know my rights,’ he said. ‘It’s on the card. Here, you haven’t shown me the card. I can make a complaint, you know.’ Fry couldn’t raise any sympathy for Sugden. Maybe if she had just been released from prison herself, the last person she would have wanted to see was a policeman, and the last place she would have wanted to be was Edendale police station. But then, she would have thought of that in the first place before she got herself sent down for burglary. ‘We’re trying to eliminate as many people as possible from a current enquiry, Mr Sugden,’ she said. ‘We just want to ask you a few simple questions.’ Sugden smiled bitterly. ‘Nothing’s simple in this life. Your lot taught me that, at least. You made my life bloody complicated.’ ‘Wednesday 22nd October, Mr Sugden,’ said Hitchens.

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‘What about it?’

‘Where were you that night?’ ‘Can’t remember.’

‘You were only just out of prison. You were released the previous day. If it were me, I’d remember exactly what I was doing in my first days of freedom.’

‘I expect I went for a drink,’ said Sugden. ‘To celebrate.’

‘Anywhere nice? I’m always open to recommendations.’

‘A couple of pubs I know in Edendale.’ ‘On your own?’ asked Fry.

‘I met up with a few people, said hello. Come to think of it, they bought me a few drinks. They all knew I’d been set up something rotten.’

‘What it is to have friends,’ said Hitchens. ‘What time did you go to Sheffield?’

‘Eh? I never went to Sheffield. I told you - just the pubs in town.’

‘Do you know a place called Totley?’ ‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Sugden cautiously. ‘Ever been there?’

‘Couldn’t say.’

‘I’m asking you to say.’

‘Did some place get burgled? It wasn’t me. And if you’re saying it was, I want that solicitor now.’ ‘Nothing like that, Mr Sugden. Take it easy.’

‘What then? What’s it all about? You try anything else on, and you’ll be in dead trouble. It’s my human rights.’ ‘You learned a lot in prison, didn’t you, Mr Sugden?’ ‘Enough.’

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‘What we’re interested in is whether you were in Totley on the night of Wednesday 22nd October,’ said Fry.

‘Wednesday 22nd October. You said it before. The day after I came out.’

There was a triumphant look on Sugden’s face. Fry had seen it on faces so often before. She could practically hear the dialogue that went with it. ‘I suppose you’re going to claim you were never there,’ she said.

‘Am I?’ said Sugden.

‘That’s what they all say,’ said Fry. “‘I was never there.” We get sick of hearing it.’

‘That Wednesday I was in the pub. Two or three pubs. There’s people will tell you that. Alibis.’

‘Move forward to Friday 24th October, then. Were you in a car in Totley that night?’

‘A car?’ Sugden laughed. ‘My wife sold the car when I went inside. You’d have thought she was hoping I wouldn’t be coming out again.’

‘You might have hired a car.’

‘Never in my life. Friday night? I think I went to the pub again.’

‘A varied social life, then.’

Sugden shrugged. He was gaining confidence. ‘That’s what you did both nights?’ asked Hitchens. ‘Yeah.’

‘You weren’t selling stolen video recorders, by any chance?’

‘Hey,’ said Sugden, ‘I think that’s a “no comment”.’ ‘We’d really like to eliminate you from our enquiries, Mr Sugden.’

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‘Well, it wasn’t like that. Right? And anyway…’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I was never there.’

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The old cattle market was close to Edendale rain station. The overgrown tracks that ran alongside market were where the cattle waggons had once bi unloaded, in the days when animals were moved train. These days, they came in by trailer and by h cattle transporters that brought half of Edendale to

centre to a halt on market days as they attemptec negotiate the narrow corners. The days of Pilkington amp; Son, Livestock Auctione were numbered anyway. And not just because of d inconvenient location or the lengthening list of Et pean Union regulations that became ever more diffi to comply with. The number of cattle markets dwindling fast, even in rural counties like Derbyst And three years ago, the futuristic white sails of a i agricultural business centre that the farmers ca ‘Nine Nipples’ had appeared fifteen miles away Bakewell, part of a Ł12 million regeneration projec had a vast parking area, modern penning, three rings, meeting rooms, an IT centre and conference fa ties. Since it opened, Pilkington amp; Son had merely b counting the days.

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As a result, a bare minimum of maintenance had been done on the buildings in Edendale during the past ten years. There were gaps in the roof and missing sections of corrugated iron in the walls, rusty gates falling off their hinges, and pens whose steel bars had been bent out of shape by vandals. At night, youths rode their motorbikes through the aisles like rodeo cowboys. On the street side, the windows were full of jagged holes where the panes had been used for target practice.

Outside, the open-air pens were surrounded by parked Land Rovers, muddy livestock trailers and transporters slewed on to the pavements. Ben Cooper and Todd Weenink had difficulty finding a space for their car, and ended up parking across the front bumper of a wagon owned by a haulier from Lincolnshire.

The main building held cattle, and two smaller ones across the road were for pigs and sheep. Many of the sheep pens were empty, but there were some Derbyshire Gritstone ewes crammed together between wooden hurdles. A man was trying to drive a group of piglets up a strawed ramp into a lorry with nothing but a wooden board and a mouthful of curses. Once in the lorry, the pigs clattered and squealed hysterically, before emerging back down the ramp as the man dodged and screamed, rapidly losing his temper.

A patrol car was blocking one of the side roads, with its hazard lights on and the stripes on its rear glowing bright red. A uniformed officer ran back to speak to them.

‘It’s bloody chaos here,’ he said. ‘No wonder Traffic have hysterics every time it’s market day.’

‘Where’s the van?’ said Cooper.

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‘Over there.’ He pointed to one of the cobbled areas crammed with vehicles of all kinds. ‘It’s right at the back, so I’d say it won’t be leaving for a while.’

‘Have you got the details?’

‘This is the registration.’ The officer passed him a page from his notebook. ‘It’s registered to a Mr Keith Teasdale. An Edendale address, as you can see.’ ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘We’ve been told to hang around for a bit, in case you need us.’

‘OK. But don’t make yourselves too obvious. Hide your baboon’s bum, for a start.’

‘We’ll try. There’s just nowhere to park. The town centre bobby is here, too, by the way. They expect to see him on market day, so he’s no problem.’

Cooper and Weenink wound their way through the parked vehicles. They passed a fifty-foot-long transporter that already had two decks of calves loaded. A lorry that had been washed and scrubbed inside drove off with dirty water pouring out under the hinges of the tailgate. A farmer was trying to negotiate a cattle trailer into a space that was obviously too small.

When they found the Transit van, it was blocked in at the back of the parking area, with its bonnet against the wall and no way of reversing out past the trailer behind it.

‘I suppose it was white once,’ said Cooper, drawing his finger through the grime on the back doors. Weenink had walked round the front, squeezing his

bulk between the van and the wing mirror of a Daihatsu Fourtrak next to it.

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‘Has it got a rusty wheel arch?’ asked Cooper.

‘Two of them. Also a rusty passenger door and rusty sills all the way along this side. And look at all this crap hanging out of the side door.’

Cooper peered along the van. Strands of yellow straw stuck out from under the bottom of the side-loading door like a badly trimmed fringe of hair.

‘It reminds me of a particularly hairy blonde I knew once,’ said Weenink. ‘She was a real goer. But stripped down to her knickers, she looked like Wurzel Gummidge.’

‘Let’s go and find Mr Keith Teasdale,’ said Cooper. A police constable and an RSPCA inspector stood chatting by the door, their uniforms almost identical but for the policeman’s helmet. The RSPCA man looked like a farmer himself and nodded amicably at the customers walking past. Above their heads were posters advertising fertilizers and animal feeds.

Inside the building, market workers were channelling cattle through a complicated network of steel pens towards the sale ring. As Cooper and Weenink entered, a group of bullocks turned on each other and engaged in a shoving match in the passageway. Side by side, two of the animals completely filled the passage, and their flanks were squeezed against the five-foot high steel bars of the pens on either side. Yipping and shouting, the attendants flicked their backs with sticks until they went in the right direction. Then steel gates were shut along the passageways with a series of loud clangs.

At the back was the sale ring itself, surrounded by

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tiers of wooden benches like a miniature amphitheatre. Rows of farmers lined the benches, while others pressed against the steel tubular sides of the ring, their boots resting on a wooden platform like men propping up the bar at their local pub. Above them, the low girders supporting the roof of the mart were covered with roosting starlings.

In the ring were four men, booted and overalled, with sticks in their hands to keep the beasts moving through. The exits and entrances were just wide enough for men to squeeze through, but too narrow for animals desperate to escape from the claustrophobic confines of the ring and the circles of watching, predatory eyes.

Cooper stopped to examine the next lot coming in. They were store cattle, down from the hill farms, destined to go to arable land in the east for fattening and breeding. Some were spattered with mud and faeces; others had rear hooves that had grown into long, curved toes like Persian slippers, and they hobbled as they moved.

Some of the beasts went to press their faces against the steel sides of the ring to gaze back towards the holding pens until the men drove them away, making them parade for the buyers to see the way they moved. Then the animals would panic and skid on their own excrement on a concrete surface perfunctorily scattered with sawdust. The larger cattle made the men slip behind wooden barriers in front of the auctioneer’s podium to escape injury.

As Cooper watched, one animal refused to be directed

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to the exit gate, and it ended up in the ring with the next beast. They circled and barged each other in confusion as the men set about them.

‘Jesus, Ben, I think I’m going off beef all of a sudden,’ said Weenink.

Cooper saw one or two farmers he recognized. Bridge End Farm was his brother’s business, but he had been to enough auctions and farm sales with Matt to be familiar with some of the names and faces. There were a few who seemed to turn up wherever farmers got together. These events were their social life, as well as their livelihood.

The first farmer shook his head when asked about Keith Teasdale. The second did the same. Cooper continued to work his way through the crowd, followed by Weenink. The auctioneer was Abel Pilkington himself, and his voice never stopped. He rattled out his litany: ‘Forty, forty, forty. Five. Forty-five, forty-five. Fifty where? Fifty, fifty, fifty. Am I missing anyone?’ It became a continuous, semi-audible stream of figures, amplified and distorted by the microphone. It was impossible to see anyone bidding, but Pilkington had each beast sold in a matter of seconds and the next one on its way in.

‘Aye, that’s Teasdale over there,’ said an old farmer at last. ‘He’s working in the ring, see.’

The man at the entrance gate to the sale ring looked either tired or bored. There were bags under his eyes and he moved with less energy than the others, though he was younger than some. He was a dark, thin man with heavy black stubble and a Mexican-style mous

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tache and a shifty look in his eye. His entire skill lay in the timing of the opening of the gate. He barely used his stick unless an animal threatened to pin him against the side of the ring.

Cooper was beginning to feel light-headed with claustrophobia and the intensity of the noise. Most of the audience seemed to be shouting and chattering constantly to each other all around the ring, ignoring the auctioneer, while weighing up the animals from the corners of their eyes. There was a continuous bellowing of animals waiting to be driven into the ring or marshalled back into their pens. Gates clanged and cattle transporters started up outside. At times, the auctioneer could barely be heard above the din.

The sun came out and shone through the Perspex roof. The heat in the ring rose several degrees as it hit the dirty floor and sweaty bodies.

‘How do we get him out of there?’ said Weenink. ‘I’m not going in that ring. Not without body armour and a riot shield.’

Cooper tapped one of the attendants on the shoulder and showed him his warrant card.

‘We need to speak to Keith Teasdale. Tell him we’ll see him in the car park, where his van is.’

They stood and watched as the man exchanged a few words with Teasdale. The bullocks in the ring circled, sniffing at the hands of the spectators. Even three feet away, Cooper could feel the blast of the breath from the animals’ nostrils. One lumbered too close to the buyers, and they stood back, pulling their arms in to avoid getting them trapped against the steel bars. One

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bullock released a stream of green diarrhoea that hit the concrete and splashed an old farmer’s trousers. He seemed not to notice. Teasdale looked up at the detectives when the other man pointed. His face was expressionless, but he nodded briefly. Cooper and Weenink were glad to get out into the open air. While they waited, they read the signs on the outside wall of the office, which advertised farm sales. Farmers seemed to be selling off everything - their stock, their equipment, their land, their homes.

Back at the ring, the next lots were going in. Twoweekold calves that could barely walk were being sold for the price of a couple of pints of beer. DCI Tailby turned over the interview reports from the officers who had dragged themselves round a series of pubs in the back streets of Edendale. He suspected there would be some expense claims following the reports soon.

‘So it looks as though Sugden’s alibis will stand up,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid so; said DI Hitchens. ‘Typical. Motive, but no opportunity.’ ‘A bit like fish and no chips.’ ‘If you say so, Paul.’

‘Do you want the latest news on Martin Stafford?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Fire away.’ When Hitchens and Fry had entered his office, Tailby had been sneaking a crafty smoke of his pipe, to ease the ache in his head from staring at the

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d computer screen. He waved his hand at the cloud of smoke to see the DI better. ‘We’ve been following a bit of a long trail,’ said Hitchens. ‘Diane has the details.’ ‘Martin Stafford left Jenny Weston four years ago,’ said Fry. ‘And while the divorce was going on, he left his job too. He moved from the Derby Evening Telegraph to the Leicester Mercury. But he was there only eighteen months, then had a spell on a small weekly in Cheshire. I tracked one of the reporters down there. She said he drank too much, had affairs in office hours, boasted about his talents as a journalist but never bothered to put them to use. He generally seemed to give the impression he was too good for the place.’ ‘I can’t say I’m warming to him yet. I don’t suppose he lasted any longer at the Cheshire paper?’ ‘Less,’ said Fry. ‘Twelve months. He had a couple of blazing rows with the editor, then announced one day that he was going freelance.’ ‘Damn. End of employment trail, then.’ ‘His last employers have an address in Macclesfield, so I asked Cheshire to chase him up. But there’s a Punjabi family living there now. Mail still arrives for Stafford, but they just throw it away.’ ‘What about the electoral register?’ ‘He’s still registered at the Macclesfield address. The register is taken in October, of course.’ ‘Is that it, then?’ ‘Not quite, sir. I reckoned if he had been trying to set himself up as a freelancer, he ought to have tried some of the bigger papers in the region for work. So I checked

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with a few, just in case any of them had him on their books. The Features Editor at the Sheffield Star was very helpful and dug out a proposal letter from Martin Stafford from a few months back. The address was a flat in Congleton. That’s as fresh as we’ll get. And it’s not too far away.’

‘Phone number?’

‘Got it, but we haven’t tried it yet,’ said Fry. ‘You think he’s still there?’

DI Hitchens took over. ‘I think if he’s getting no work as a freelance, he’ll either have moved to another area, found some other kind of job entirely, or ended up on the dole. My money’s on the second or third. Because he hasn’t gone far from the district at any time, has he?’

Tailby looked pleased. ‘I think you’re probably right. Have we been in touch with Cheshire again?’

‘I asked them to keep a discreet eye on the flat and see if anybody answering Stafford’s description was around,’ said Hitchens. ‘We faxed them his picture from Jenny’s wedding photo.’

‘And?’ Hitchens smiled. He looked particularly satisfied with himself, as if he were the first man to bring good news all year. ‘Stafford arrived home fifteen minutes ago,’ he said.

The DCI regarded him with a mixture of emotions flickering across his face. Fry could see that Hitchens really got under his skin sometimes. But it was undoubtedly good news.

‘How long will it take you to get to Congleton?’ asked Tailby.

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‘Not long. If we drive fast.’ ‘Drive fast then.’

Keith Teasdale smelled as though he had spent all his life in close contact with cattle. But in the market car park, it was Ben Cooper and Todd Weenink who were out of place, with their alien smell of clean cars and offices.

‘What’s wrong with the van, then?’ said Teasdale. ‘It’s got its MoT, look. It’s taxed and insured. What’s the problem?’

Cooper explained what they wanted to know, and watched to see whether Teasdale relaxed. But he remained defensive.

‘Can’t I drive where I want to? Without some nosey old biddy reporting me?’

Teasdale had brought his stick with him. He tapped it on the side of the Transit as he spoke, loosening some flakes of rust that dropped off the wheel arch.

‘I’m sure we could find something wrong with it, if we looked,’ said Weenink.

‘We need some help, that’s all,’ said Cooper. ‘If you were in the area, we need to eliminate you. If it wasn’t you, we keep looking. It’s quite simple.’

Teasdale looked at his boots and scratched the heavy black stubble on his cheeks. The gesture was intended to suggest that he was thinking.

‘I get around a lot,’ he said. ‘I do little jobs for people. Farmers mostly.’

‘What sort of jobs?’

‘Anything I can get. There’s only a couple of days’

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work here. The rest of the time I do a bit of fencing or ratting. That sort of stuff.’

‘Ratting?’ said Weenink.

‘I clear rats out of barns and grain sheds.’ ‘You use terriers, I suppose?’ said Cooper.

‘That’s right. Lot of rats around this time of year. They start looking for somewhere warm and dry to live when the fields are harvested and the weather turns colder.’

‘Is Warren Leach at Ringham Edge Farm one of your customers?’

‘I know Leach.’

‘Were you there on Sunday?’

‘I was up that way.’ Teasdale hesitated. ‘I was thinking of calling in at Ringham Edge, but I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I ran into the lad who worked for him. Gary Dawson. Gary used to help Warren Leach with the milking and stuff, but he said he’d just walked out on him. He said Warren was in a terrible temper all the time these days. So I decided not to go up to Ringham Edge. He can be an awkward bugger at the best of times, Warren. In a temper, he’s nasty. I can do without that.’

‘And what about Totley? Do you know it?’ asked Cooper.

‘I know it.’

‘Not many farmers up there. Not much ratting to do.’

‘I do all sorts of jobs.’

Weenink was peering through the back windows of the van. They were painted over, but some of the paint

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had flaked off on the inside, and there were a few small gaps where the glass was clear.

‘What’s the going rate for scrap metal then, these days?’ he asked.

‘Hey,’ said Teasdale, whose attention had been on Cooper. ‘What are you doing there?’

‘Scrap, eh?’ said Cooper. ‘The lady at Totley was right, then.’

‘It’s legal,’ said Teasdale sullenly.

Cooper nodded. ‘It depends how you go about it,’ he said. And Teasdale scowled at him.

‘Are you sure you weren’t at Ringham Edge Farm?’ asked Weenink.

‘It would be helpful all round if we could eliminate you,’ said Cooper.

Teasdale kicked the nearest tyre of his van. A few lumps of mud fell out of the tread. ‘All right. Gary Dawson told me it’d be a waste of time, but I went up there anyway. I need the money I get from jobs like that. They pay me next to nothing here, and it won’t last forever. You have to take the work where you can find it.’

‘That’s a bit more like it,’ said Cooper. ‘Now we know where we are. What time was this?’

‘About half past two, maybe.’ ‘And were you at the farm long?’

‘Five minutes. Just long enough for Leach to give me a mouthful of abuse. I wasn’t standing for that, so I cleared off. I know things are bad up there, but there’s no excuse for that, is there?’

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It was getting dark by the time Martin Stafford was brought into Divisional Headquarters at West Street. Stafford hadn’t seemed surprised to see the police outside the door of his flat in Congleton. In fact, he had made a point of taking a careful note of their names and numbers from their warrant cards, as if they had brought him information that would be useful.

Diane Fry sat alongside DCI Tailby in the interview room. Stafford was dark and good-looking, his hair well brushed back and falling slightly over his ears. He had eyes that laughed all the time, and what was sometimes called a boyish grin. He was the sort of man that some women fell for without considering the consequences. He was the sort of man that some fathers would forbid their daughters to marry. The grin made Fry want to punch him.

‘Yes, of course I heard about it. I saw it on the TV,’ said Stafford.

‘But you never thought to come forward, sir?’ ‘Not really.’

Tailby waited, letting Stafford fill in the gaps rather than leaping in with the questions. Fry suspected that the DCI was already feeling disappointed. Stafford had come too willingly and looked too relaxed.

‘We hadn’t had any contact with each other for three years,’ said Stafford. ‘I’m sorry she’s dead, but - well, it may sound a bit hard, but she was nothing to do with me. Not any more.’

‘Would you say there was a certain amount of animosity in your parting, Mr Stafford?’

‘I’m a journalist, Chief Inspector.’

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‘So?, ‘I don’t use words like animosity. They don’t fit in a headline.’

‘I see.’

‘Besides, most newspaper readers wouldn’t understand what it meant. I’d be more likely to say spite. Yes, as far as Jenny was concerned, I might say spiteful. Still, I am sorry she’s dead. Really.’

‘When you say you hadn’t been in contact, do you mean that you hadn’t met for three years?’

Stafford smiled slightly. ‘I mean we hadn’t spoken at all.’

‘No telephone calls?’ ‘No.’

‘What about letters? Did you write to her?’

‘We did all our corresponding through solicitors,’ said Stafford. ‘It seemed to help to filter out the venom.’ ‘You mean the spite.’

‘Exactly.’ ‘But you did send a postcard to your ex-wife’s parents.’

‘Oh, that. They showed you that, did they?’ Stafford laughed, as if amused at the prank of a child who didn’t know any better. ‘It was just a joke. I’m amazed they kept it. They could hardly have wanted a memento of me.’

‘Was there some spite on the part of Mr and Mrs Weston as well, then?’

‘Chief Inspector, in this case I would go along with animosity.’

Fry studied the leather jacket Stafford wore. It had

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been an expensive jacket once. It had probably taken a long time for it to get so decrepit. Or should that be scruffy?

‘How’s the freelance journalism business these days?’ she asked.

‘Tough,’ admitted Stafford. ‘Very competitive, you know. But I’m keeping my head above water.’

‘Can’t afford a smart car, then, I suppose?’

‘I drive an Escort. It isn’t exactly brand new.’ ‘When were you last in Totley?’

‘Where?’ ‘Totley.’ ‘That’s Sheffield, isn’t it? I think I’ve passed through

it from time to time on the way into the city. It’s the sort of place that you do just pass through, if I remember rightly. Not the sort of place you’d stop. Unless you live there, of course. Is there a reason for that question?’

‘Do you know where your ex-wife lived after the house you shared was sold?’ asked Tailby.

‘Well, I didn’t,’ said Stafford slowly. ‘But might I make an intelligent guess that it was Totley?’

‘Her neighbours have reported a man trying to find her.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘The afternoon of Wednesday 22nd of October…’ Stafford produced a diary. ‘I have detailed records of my movements right here, Chief Inspector. I thought you’d never ask.’

‘We’ll take the details from you when you give a statement.’

‘Fine.’

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‘Is the name Ros Daniels familiar to you?’ asked Fry. Martin Stafford shrugged. ‘I have such a lot of old

girlfriends, you know. It’s difficult to remember all their names.’

‘About twenty years old, hair in dreadlocks and a couple of rings in her nose.’

‘Hardly, dear.’

‘She was known to your ex-wife.’

Stafford shook his head. ‘Jenny was mixing in different circles from when we were married, then. I’ve no idea who the person you’re describing could be.’

‘Very well,’ said Tailby. ‘That’ll do for now.’

‘I am sorry, you know,’ said Stafford. ‘But she was nothing to do with me any more.’

When Stafford had gone, DCI Tailby seemed to want to sit for a while. Fry stayed with him, wondering if he wanted to discuss the interview, or whether he was content with his own thoughts.

‘Did you believe him, sir?’ she said.

Tailby looked at her in surprise. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It rings true. He believes that Jenny Weston was nothing to do with him.’

‘It seems as though she’s nothing to do with anybody, really,’ said Fry. And as soon as she had said it, the irony of the sentence lodged in a corner of her chest. It was as if the words hadn’t been her own at all, but had been said by someone else about her. She was aware that her life had become completely solitary, apart from the unavoidable professional contact with her colleagues, who had soon learned not to enquire about her

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private life. She was nothing to do with anybody, really. ‘Not quite true,’ said Tailby, watching Fry curiously.

‘There’s one person out there that she has a whole lot to do with. Though maybe she never knew it.’

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In the end, Wednesday morning looked set to be overcast. Diane Fry had come through the Forestry Commission plantations and down past Flash Dam. She was already slightly late, but she sat in her car at the top of Sydnope Hill for a while and looked down on Matlock. She was watching the clouds come closer. They were rolling in from the east, their shadows chasing across the slopes of the hills and into the town.

Fry had worked out where the roof of Derwent Court was, deep among the other roofs. At the moment, its tiles were glittering as the clear November sun fell on the remains of an overnight frost. She was due at Maggie’s at nine. But by the time the clouds had closed in enough for her satisfaction, it was nearly five past. Fry started the car. Maggie would be annoyed that she was late, but that was tough. She didn’t want any distractions today. It was difficult enough as it was.

From here, she could see how damaged the landscape was to the east. Huge sections had been gouged and blasted from the side of Masson Hill, on the opposite side of the town. Bare terraces of exposed rock had been left by the quarrying, flat and unnatural in the slope of

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the hill. She checked the sky again for clouds. It was safe. There would be no sun on Maggie’s window now.

‘So you did come back,’ said Maggie a few minutes later. ‘I imagined I might have escaped your attentions. I thought you might have forgotten me.’

‘Never, Maggie.’

‘Oh? You remember me for my sparkling personality, do you? My intellect? My savage wit?’

Fry noticed that Maggie had rearranged the lamps in the room. The lighting was softer, less uncompromising, perhaps designed to put her visitor at ease and make her more welcome. A new chair had been placed in front of the desk - this one was upholstered in green satin on the seat and back, and when Fry sat in it she found it remarkably comfortable.

The cafetiere stood ready on the desk with cream and sugar in a ceramic jug and bowl. By such signs, Fry knew she was making progress. But it was a fragile intimacy; it could be broken in a second, by the ringing of a phone or the scrape of a chair leg.

‘I thought we were getting along fine before,’ she said.

‘Did you?’ Maggie fiddled with the lamp, tilting the shade so that the shadows played backwards and forwards across her face. Fry found the effect disconcerting, as Maggie’s good eye came first into the light, startling and white, then vanished again into the shadows of her face.

With the Weston enquiry going nowhere, it seemed to Diane Fry that her interviews with Maggie Crew

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were a kind of Eastern Front, the one place where the breakthrough might come, if there was going to be one. Maggie was their only real witness. She could identify her assailant. However she did it, Fry would have to drag those memories out kicking and screaming. So she sat here alone with this woman, struggling to get through to her, digging for her memories like a miner hitting rock.

‘Have you thought about what we said last time?’ asked Fry.

But Maggie responded with another question. ‘Do you know how many visitors I get?’ ‘No.’

‘Do you know what it’s like sitting here wondering whether anybody will come?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Maggie slammed back the arm of the lamp as far as it would go, throwing the full glare of the bulb into Fry’s face.

‘That’s the one thing I told you I wouldn’t tolerate. Do not feel sorry for me. Understand?’

Fry had to bite back the natural response, reminding herself that this was a woman who was in a psychologically delicate balance. She needed careful handling, not an all-out row. Not the accusation of self-pity and hypocrisy that had sprung to her lips.

‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ ‘Be my guest.’

‘What I’d really like to do,’ said Fry, ‘is take you back to when it happened, to jog your memory. I want you to try again, Maggie.’

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‘Why should I?’

‘For Jenny Weston’s sake. And to help us stop him from killing any more. Maggie - you can’t refuse.’ Maggie blinked, and hesitated. ‘Your colleagues

always used a different approach. They tried to be sympathetic, to put me at my ease - all that sort of thing. I hated it.’

‘I don’t care about that. I’ve got a job to do. I need you to help me.’

Maggie stared at her. ‘Coffee?’ she said, and reached for the cafetiere.

Fry nodded. Her clenched fingers began to relax. She looked around the room while Maggie poured. The place really wasn’t welcoming at all, even with a comfortable chair and the smell of fresh coffee. What would bring Maggie’s memories out into the light again? When you had suffered that sort of trauma, you needed some kind of closure. It was possible that her memories wouldn’t be fully released until they had her attacker behind bars.

On the other hand, there might be something deeper inside that was keeping Maggie’s mind shut down. She had to find a trigger that would release those memories.

Fry had a twin-deck tape recorder set up. She had fully expected Maggie to refuse to be taped, but she had agreed readily; in fact, she had seemed almost relieved. Perhaps the tape machine could be a compromise, an impersonal middle ground. She probably thought a tape couldn’t bring back memories, only capture the ones you already had. But Fry wasn’t sure about that. Today, she meant to take Maggie further.

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For a few minutes, they sat comfortably over their coffee. They even made a bit of small talk about the weather and Maggie’s neighbours, just as if Fry were a friend paying a social call. Who knew - there might even be chocolate biscuits with the coffee.

‘I feel as though I’m getting unfit sitting here all day,’ said Maggie. ‘Before I know it, I’ll be putting weight

on.

No chocolate biscuits, then. Fry unwrapped two fresh tapes and inserted them in the machine.

‘You don’t look as though you have any trouble with your weight, Diane,’ said Maggie.

‘I don’t have time to put weight on.’ It was the answer she always gave when people asked her. She tested the tape machine, and both tapes began to turn. ‘Ready?’ ‘There’s something I want to tell you first.’

‘Yes?’ ‘I’ve decided to go back to work,’ said Maggie.

‘Is that wise?’ said Fry, immediately thinking of the dangers to Maggie rather than of the psychological advantages of getting her back into the outside world.

‘I’ve got to get out of this apartment some time.’ ‘You must take precautions for your own safety. We’ll send someone to your office to check out the security arrangements.’

Maggie sighed. ‘If you insist.’

‘If you’re going back to work, I’ll have to make an appointment, I suppose. Solicitors’ time is expensive, isn’t it?’

Maggie smiled at the comment. Fry liked to see her smile. It almost gave her an appearance of normality.

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But there was still a pain haunting her eyes, and still a strange physical vulnerability in the glimpse of pink gum.

‘I’ll pencil you in for Friday,’ said Maggie. ‘Two o’clock, at our offices in Mill Street.’

Fry made a show of getting out her diary and writing it down. ‘Fine. At least it will take your mind off things. Do you find your work interesting?’

‘Interesting?’ Maggie considered the word. ‘I suppose some people might think so. But in fact it’s ninety per cent drudgery. Wading through mountains of paperwork until your eyes are sore, filling in reports and applications. Sitting in endless meetings.’

‘Join the club.’

‘And there are the most objectionable of people to deal with. Their concerns are unbelievable. It’s all jealousy and selfishness and greed. Husbands and wives, children and parents, colleagues and business partners - all desperate to know about what someone else is up to. The times they have asked me to employ enquiry agents to look into their sordid little affairs. And not just the clients, either. My partners are just as bad.’

‘You don’t get on with your partners?’

‘We work together satisfactorily. But they’re all the same - complacent, self-centred and obsessed. They’re so singleminded that their lives are empty shells. They’ll discover it one day, but it will be too late.’

Fry nodded. The description Maggie had just given of her partners echoed her own file. Maggie Crew’s history was one of professional achievements, and little else. Maggie talked of empty lives. But it only took a

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glance round the room to see whose life was the emptiest of all.

Fry watched the way Maggie drank her coffee without turning fully to the desk, then spun her chair back towards the window.

‘Ready now?’

Maggie nodded and closed her eyes.

‘Tell me what happened that day, Maggie.’

Maggie didn’t need to ask what day she meant. ‘I’ve been over it so many times before. I can’t remember.’ ‘What would you normally have done that day? It was a Sunday, wasn’t it?’

‘All right, then. On a Sunday, I would have got up later than usual, had a leisurely breakfast. Toast and marmalade and two cups of coffee, probably. I need coffee to get myself ready for the day. I would have switched on the TV to get the morning news. Maybe I looked out of the window and I saw what a nice day it was.’

Fry watched Maggie gradually becoming less tense. She was starting to relax as she focused on the world outside herself. The best way was to ask few questions. Encourage the interviewee to close their eyes and picture the scene, down to even the tiniest details; let them recall smells, noises, their feelings at the time. Officers were no longer trained to take control of an interview. Too many courts had accepted the contention of defendants and lawyers that the police had suggested the answers themselves.

Eventually, this process might be conducted by machine entirely. Two tape decks to record the answers,

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and a third to repeat the necessary phrases: ‘Now, just close your eyes…’ ‘Is that what made you decide to go to Ringham Moor? That it was a nice day?’ ‘I really don’t know,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s OK.’ ‘Ringham Moor is not too far away. I’ve walked there lots of times. I used to go there before I became a partner. Afterwards, there never seemed to be time.’ ‘All right. Move forward a bit. To when you reached Ringham ‘ Maggie was silent. Fry tried to detect from the expression on just one side of her face whether she was remembering any more. But it was impossible to tell. Finally, Maggie’s eyes came fully open, and her body tensed again. ‘Does it tell you in my file that I’m unable to form relationships?’ Fry could only nod. The moment was lost. No point in trying to recreate it now. ‘Yes, it would. But I was like that before, you know,’ said Maggie. ‘Too busy for relationships. And it’s too late now.’ ‘Not necessarily.’ ‘Please don’t try to patronize me on the subject. I’m learning to be a realist. People won’t accept me now. But people have never really accepted me in my entire life.’ Fry frowned. If there was anything in the file to support this perception, she had missed it. Maggie Crew had received a perfectly normal education and upbring256 ing. Her father had been a regional manager for British Rail, and the family had lived in Wingerworth, near Chesterfield. Mrs Crew had died some. years ago of cancer, and a sister, Catherine, had married and lived in Ireland. Maggie’s father was still alive, though, and living not so far away. The two girls, Fry noted, had attended a well-known Catholic girls school in Chesterfield, and both had gone on to university. Maggie had studied for her Law degree in Nottingham. She had been successful in her career, yet had never married or had children. ‘Do you see much of your father?’ asked Fry. ‘He’s rather elderly now,’ said Maggie. ‘Yes?’ ‘And … well, we were never a very close family, really.’ ‘Does the same apply to your sister?’ ‘Cath? She has her own family. A husband and four children. Why would she bother about me? She’s as content as an old cat in her little town in Ireland.’ ‘And did you never want to do the same, Maggie?’ But Maggie smiled. Fry was beginning to recognize that smile as one that signalled a subject she didn’t want to discuss. ‘What about you, Diane?’ said Maggie. ‘Married?’ ‘No.’ ‘Children?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ah. It would interfere with the career, perhaps? No creche at the police station? No husband at home, no mother-in-law to look after them during the day? It’s

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so difficult for some women, I know. We see them in the legal profession, carrying their babies invisibly on their backs in court, disposable nappies spilling out of their briefcases, baby sick on their clothes, yawning from lack of sleep on the night before an important case. You can’t help but feel sorry for them.’

‘It happens in the police, too.’

‘No broody feelings for you either, Diane? No ticking biological clock?’

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘You’re lucky, then. I find the idea pretty horrific, to be perfectly honest. Awful, puking things, aren’t they? I can understand women who have abortions. It’s a horrible business, but there must be times when it seems vastly preferable to the alternative.’

Fry was conscious of Maggie’s gentle probing. It was well done, the sign of a skilful interviewer. The fact that Fry had allowed herself to be interviewed had encouraged Maggie, of course. At this point, she either went along with the game and told Maggie what she wanted to know, or she closed it down and risked losing the fragile intimacy she had built up.

‘I had an abortion once,’ she said.

Maggie’s voice dropped a shade, sliding a sympathetic note. into her next words.

‘They tell me you always wonder what the baby would have been like, what sex it was. You think about what name you would have given it, if it had been allowed to live. Even an abortion doesn’t mean a clean ending, it seems to me.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

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A small silence developed between them. Fry held on to it, valuing the suggestion of understanding. At the same time, she was calculating how she could use it. The time was almost right.

‘But there’s more, isn’t there?’ said Maggie quietly. ‘Something else that you can’t forget.’

‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘There is.’ She told herself it was for the best. She could work it out of her system later. Maggie seemed to decide not to push for details. ‘Sometimes there are things you need to remember,

no matter how much it hurts,’ she said. ‘A necessary pain?’

‘Maybe. But that necessary pain … does it always have to be a pain that you inflict on yourself? Because that sort of pain hurts all the more, don’t you find?’

Fry put her finger on the ‘play’ and ‘record’ buttons, and looked at Maggie.

‘Shall we try again?’

Maggie closed her eyes. The tapes whirred quietly. ‘Think about when you reached Ringham…’ Maggie breathed quietly. ‘I remember the leaves

under my feet,’ she said. ‘There were deep piles of them. They crunched when I trod in them. Thousands of dead leaves. I kicked some of them up in the air, like I used to do when I was child. A great heap of them, all brown and gold.’

Fry thought she had stopped there. She waited for a moment, listening to the click of the tape decks. She had just opened her mouth to nudge Maggie with a question, when she began again.

‘The wind blew the leaves about, and I grabbed

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at them, trying to catch them in my hands. Some of them landed on me; they were on my arms and in my face, touching my skin. They felt cold and clammy, not what I expected at all. They smelled of damp and rottenness. I tried to brush them off my face. There were leaves in my hair as well, sticking there like bats. Then I didn’t think it was funny any more. I brushed at the leaves harder. I had my head down, to get them

off.

The sound of Maggie’s voice had changed. It had a childish intonation that Fry had not heard before. It was slightly shocking coming from the mouth of this woman. It was as if she were recalling a childhood incident, not a trauma from a few weeks ago.

This time the pause was even longer. Fry squeezed her fingers together to stop herself breaking the silence and interrupting. She looked at the tapes to make sure they were both still running. But the silence went on too long.

‘Is there anyone else around?’ asked Fry as gently as she could, though her urge was to push Maggie harder as they reached a critical stage.

‘Anyone else? No, she’s not there.’

Fry shook her head, thinking she had misheard. ‘Who?’

Now Maggie looked confused too, as if two different memories were mingling together.

‘I had my head down, looking at the ground,’ she repeated. ‘I was looking at the ground, where the leaves were. That’s why I didn’t see him.’

Maggie’s voice had become bleak. Her pitch had risen

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slightly as people’s voices did when they were close to that crack in the facade that let through the tears.

‘If I hadn’t kicked at the leaves, I would have heard him coming. I could have got away.’

‘When did you first become aware of another person, Maggie?’

‘He was already close then.’

‘How did you know? Did you hear him?’

‘The leaves were rustling. They were too loud. I wasn’t paying attention.’

‘All right. You didn’t hear him. Did you smell him, Maggie?’

‘Smell him?’ Maggie frowned. Her nostrils flared as if she was drawing in remembered odours.

Fry knew that smells were powerful aids to memory. If Maggie could recall a single whiff of something - a distinctive deodorant, body odour, cigarette smoke - it would be something to add to the picture.

‘I can’t smell him,’ said Maggie. ‘Only the leaves.’ ‘Can you hear him now?’ asked Fry, switching to the present tense that Maggie herself had started using.

Maggie’s eyes were distant. Was she listening? Fry was sure that Maggie could hear something. Some sound was replaying in her mind, but Fry was powerless to know what it was until she felt able to share it.

‘A rustling noise,’ said Maggie hesitantly, at last. ‘The leaves again? He was walking through the leaves. You heard his feet in the leaves.’

‘Yes, there was that too. But something else. A plastic rustling. No, not plastic - nylon. He was wearing a nylon cagoule or anorak.’

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Fry felt a little surge of excitement. ‘That’s very tapes would fail to catch, though they kept on turning. good, Maggie. Think carefully now. Can you see it, this And there was a high, distant noise, like the wheeze in cagoule? What colour is it?’ the chest of an asthmatic, or the faint whimper of a Maggie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Black. Maybe small creature dying at the side of the road.

blue.’ ‘I can’t remember,’ said Maggie. ‘I can’t remember.’ ‘That’s good. Can you describe it? Does it have but tons or a zip? Has it got a hood?’ ‘I can’t tell.’

‘Why not?’

Maggie paused. ‘It’s dark.’

Fry opened her mouth and shut it again. She looked at the tape machine, wondering whether it had heard the same thing that she had. Then she stared at Maggie Crew, resisting an urge to grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her, to force her to answer the biggest question of all.

‘Maggie,’ she said, ‘what were you doing on the moor in the dark?’

But Maggie was silent now. Fry thought she had lost her completely, that she had slipped away into sleep or some other world. But if she had, it was a world where there were only nightmares. Maggie’s body was rigid, her face strained and frightened. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut. She shook her head abruptly, like someone throwing off brambles tangled in her hair. Fry caught a glimpse of red, puckered tissue, glistening as if freshly burned.

Then Maggie put her hands to her face, covering her right eye, her fingers pressed tightly to her forehead for protection. There was only the sound of her breathing in the room, a ragged hiss through her nose that the

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‘Golden Virginia,’ said Owen Fox. ‘It’s their favourite.’ Owen had a six-pack of lager in one hand, a tin of tobacco in the other. Ben Cooper followed him uncertainly. He had paid for the lager and tobacco, and he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to be able to claim them back on expenses. ‘Are you sure it will work?’ said Cooper. ‘It seems a bit like bribing the natives with glass beads.’ ‘It’s the only way to get close to these spiritual types,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve got to appeal to their materialism.’ ‘Still ‘ ‘Trust me, Ben. I’m a Ranger.’ But Cooper was still doubtful. It was because he knew he shouldn’t be there at all. This wasn’t an official visit there had been no action form issued for him to conduct another interview with Calvin Lawrence and Simon Bevington. But he needed to talk to them on his own. There were things he couldn’t concentrate on properly with Diane Fry and a bunch of uniformed officers crowding round the van. Cooper could smell cigarette smoke on Owen’s jacket. He guessed he had been to see Cal and Stride quite

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recently, and his red fleece had absorbed the scent of their roll-ups. Owen walked up to the van and stood by the cab. He gestured to Cooper to stand out of sight, and knocked on the side door. It was an unusual knock, a series of short and long raps. After half a minute, the door slid partly open. ‘Cal,’ said Owen. ‘We come in peace.’ ‘Bloody hell, it’s Red Rum. What’s up? Got no tourists to piss off ?’ ‘Yes, but pissing you off is more fun.’ Cal stuck his head out of the door and spotted Cooper. ‘What’s he want?’ ‘A bit of your friendly conversation. No hassle. He’s all right, Cal.’ The youth stared at Cooper, then back at Owen. ‘You saying he’s all right? He’s a copper. Coppers is bastards, period.’ ‘He’s all right.’ Cal nodded. ‘Give us the cans then, you mean sod.’ Owen winked at Cooper, and they clambered into the back of the VW. Cooper’s senses sprang instantly alive, awakened by the powerful mixture of scents and sensations contained in the van. Cal and Stride had been smoking roll-ups for months in the enclosed space, and their aroma had ingrained itself into the panels of the van and soaked into the blankets and cushions and sleeping bags that lay on the floor. There was the pungent smell of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes. And, overlying it, the odour of cooked food, including a lingering trace of the chicken curry they had eaten at least two days before. There was also a slightly

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‘So what are you doing here on your own?’ said Cal. ‘Where’s the heavy mob?’ ‘I just wanted to talk. I thought I might be able to help.’ Cal snorted. ‘Bullshit. Since when did the cops help the likes of us? You’re employed by middle-class, middleaged folk with their property and comfortable lives to protect.’ ‘People like your parents, you mean?’ ‘Yes, people like them.’ ‘Well, we’re here to protect everybody.’ ‘Stuff that. I don’t pay your wages. I don’t pay any taxes. So why should you bother about me?’ Cooper hesitated while he considered the answer. Everything depended on saying the right thing. ‘Hey,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve just realized - that means you don’t pay my wages either. Well, what a revelation.’ He started to get up, brushing down his jacket. ‘That’s that, then. I’ll be off. I can’t be wasting my time with a couple of dirty, idle gypsies. I’ve got nice, clean middle-class people to look after.’ ‘Yeah. Fuck off, then,’ said Cal, popping the ring-pull off a can of lager. Owen stood over him. He didn’t say anything. Cal looked at Cooper. ‘I hate this bastard in the red jacket,’ he said. ‘He thinks he’s my dad or something.’ ‘We all know you never had a father, Calvin,’ said Owen. ‘And if you call me Calvin again, I’ll set fire to your fuckin’ beard.’ ‘Get the matches out then, Calvin.’

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I worrying whiff of gas from the tworing camping stove behind the driver’s seat. Cooper hesitated when he saw Stride. He was sitting in the back corner, barely visible in the gloom. ‘Don’t worry about Stride,’ said Cal. ‘He’s just doing an auric egg.’ ‘OK. That’s fine.’ Cooper eyed Stride cautiously. He didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, really, let alone laying an egg. He was very still, sitting upright, with his eyes closed and his hands in his lap. The expression on his face was concentrated, but calm. Cooper wondered if Stride genuinely hadn’t noticed there was anyone else in the van. It seemed unlikely. It must just be a bit of acting talent, mustn’t it? ‘It’s to protect himself against negative mind energies,’ said Cal. ‘Right.’ ‘He puts a shell round his aura.’ ‘No problem.’ Owen settled himself on a pillow to one side of an old chest of drawers. Cooper followed suit on the other side. He felt something hard pressing into his hip. He looked down to find the biscuit tin packed with small mementoes that Stride had searched in for his NUS card. The boy’s entire previous life was crammed into that tin. Maybe he very rarely opened it, but at least he had brought it with him into his new life. It was useless for him to pretend that memories of his past life held no value for him. The evidence said differently.

Cal’s eyes glittered. He offered a can to Cooper, who shook his head. Then he held it up above his head, and the Ranger took it.

‘We both came for the solstice,’ said Cal. ‘That’s how we ended up in this quarry. There were loads of people parked down here then. It was like a real community. But the van broke down, and I had no dosh to get it repaired. It’s something to do with the drive shaft, they reckon. Coming down that slope knackered it.’

‘And you’ve stayed ever since.’ ‘Everybody else drifted off and left us.’ ‘Did you and Stride come together?’

‘No, we didn’t know each other until then. He’d been camping over the valley there - the place they call Robin Hood’s Stride. There’s a cave there, some kind of hermit’s place or something, where he was sheltering. He didn’t know anything about the Nine Virgins, but he wandered over to see what was happening. That’s how we met up, and that’s why we called him Stride. We just seemed to hit it off. He had nowhere else to go, you see.’

Cooper realized he was being watched. He had forgotten Stride for a moment. He had been so still and quiet he could have been camouflaged by an entire forest of trees instead of sitting there in full view a few inches away. His eyes were open now and he was looking at Cooper.

‘Nowhere else to go,’ he said.

Stride’s paleness was worrying. Cooper wondered what medical attention the two youths had access to. None, he supposed. In an earlier age, Stride would have

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been described as sickly and consumptive. Cooper would have liked to find out how he came to be camping in a hermit’s cave in the Peak District in the first place. But it seemed too big a question to ask.

‘You went to university, didn’t you?’ he said.

Stride nodded. Cal passed him the tobacco and the Rizlas, and he began to roll a cigarette.

‘What degree did you get?’

Stride smiled. ‘Did I say I got a degree?’

‘It’s usually the reason for going to university.’ ‘Only if you finish the course. Otherwise they get a bit stuffy about giving it to you.’

‘I see. You dropped out.’

Now Stride laughed. ‘You might call it that.’ ‘So what were you studying?’

Stride stared at him, a sudden gleam in his eye, his hand fluttering to his mouth in that curious gesture. Energy seemed to visibly flow through him. From an almost catatonic state he was transformed into a ball of vitality.

‘You really want to know?’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ ‘What?’

He was excited now, tugging at Cooper’s sleeve like a puppy wanting him to come out and play. Cooper looked at Owen, who just smiled and nodded affectionately at Stride.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You might learn something.’

They jumped out of the van, and Cooper scrambled up the path after Stride to reach the top of the quarry. The chimes were moving slowly in the birch, jingling gently. One of them turned and caught the sunlight,

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and Cooper could almost make out the words scrawled on the silver foil in felt-tipped pen.

Stride turned to him at the top of the quarry face and held his hand to his ear, like a bad actor miming his reaction to a knock at the door.

‘Can you hear it? We’re right on the edge.’ ‘The edge?’

Cooper listened. All he could hear was the wind which caught at him now they were on the plateau. It carried a whispering in the bracken and the jingle of the chimes. He listened more carefully. He heard several types of bird call - finches twittering nearby, a robin singing in the birches, the jackdaws in Top Quarry; and something else further away, possibly rooks and a blackbird. There was nothing more. Cooper looked up. There was a kestrel hovering over the rough grass on the edge of the quarry, but it was absolutely silent.

‘Do you hear it?’ said Stride. ‘That’s great.’ ‘The edge of what?’

‘The reality zone. From here on, all that stuff down there disappears.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of Matlock and the A6.

‘Not for me, it doesn’t.’

Suddenly, Stride threw himself full-length into the damp bracken. For a moment, he disappeared completely as the brown leaves closed over him. Only his laugh could be heard from somewhere in the dripping depths.

‘Look at this!’ he said. His head appeared. He wiped a bracken leaf across his face, smearing the rain water on his skin and licking the moisture off his lips, closing

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his eyes in ecstasy. Bits of foliage and fragments of dead heather were clinging to his hair and shoulders; the sleeves of his jacket were soaked.

‘I suppose you think this is just a weed. Farmers tear it up and burn it, because it’s a pest. But bracken is a miracle. All ferns are a miracle. Look, look.’ He stroked a tiny, furled leaf. It would probably never open now - it was too late in the year. ‘Each of these produces hundreds of spores. They’re spread around by the wind or animals. I’m doing it now. Look!’ He rolled over on the ground, laughing breathlessly. ‘I’m part of the process! I’m part of nature!’

Stride plucked a larger leaf and held it in front of Cooper’s face. ‘Every spore that lands grows into a little disc. And do you know what? It has both male and female sexual organs. It’s a bisexual. Humans will tell you that isn’t natural. But it is!’

He thrust the leaf into Cooper’s hands. It smelled damp and green and broken. Cooper held it lightly, not sure what to do with it, reluctant just to walk away, too intrigued by the performance to stop it.

‘The male organs release sperm. Oh, yes. We know about sperm, don’t we? But ferns … their sperm use the rain water. See? The leaves are always damp up here, in the autumn, so the sperm can travel through the moisture to reach the female organs and fertilize the eggs. And then a new plant grows. A new fern. More bracken. More and more of it. And you know what else? Ferns have been doing that for three hundred million years.’

Stride stared at Cooper wildly. ‘Prehistoric tree ferns

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grew to over a hundred feet. They’re way down there now, under the ground, still there. Fossilized tree ferns. We call them coal.’ He snatched the leaf back from Cooper as if he wasn’t worthy to hold it. ‘So which is the most successful species? The cleverest? The most efficient? The most useful? Humans?’ He laughed. ‘I studied botany. They tried to tell me it was a science; they tried to make me study mycology and phytopathology. They wanted me to look at diagrams of a monocotyledon or analyse the process of hydrotropism. They wanted me to see pistils and radicles and calyxes. But all I saw were miracles everywhere. Miracles of life.’

He stepped out of the bracken and bent down to the ground near the path. He picked up a small piece of quartz. He held it with gentleness, handling it as if it were a living thing, sensitive to his touch.

‘Look at the earth. She looks so attractive, you could stroke her. Her fur is like velvet. But she’s a wild creature, she can never be tamed. A huge beast, sleeping. Or maybe only pretending to be asleep. This is her body.’

Cooper was silent, feeling foolish and embarrassed, like a man who had wandered into the wrong church service and didn’t know what to do when everyone else prayed.

‘The dancers know all about it,’ said Stride. ‘The dancers became part of her body.’

A suggestion of movement on the moor made Cooper look up. For a moment, he thought there were people standing in the trees at the scene of Jenny Weston’s

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murder - grey shapes that passed each other slowly, leaning to whisper to one another across the sandy earth of the clearing. Then he realized that he was seeing the Nine Virgins themselves, the stones momentarily transformed by the intensity of Stride’s conviction.

‘I can understand why our ancestors worshipped trees,’ said Stride. ‘Can’t you? When you hear a chainsaw in the woods, when you see a JCB and smell new tarmac, don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel, deep inside your head, the cry of “murder”? Do you understand?’

Cooper frowned, wanting to see what he meant. ‘I understand that you’ve found some sort of truth for yourself.’

‘Believe those who are seeking the truth,’ said Stride. ‘But doubt those who say they’ve found it.’

When they got back to the van, Stride seemed rapidly to become exhausted. He collapsed on the cushions, stretched out full-length, limp and breathing raggedly. After a few minutes, he spoke, though his voice was barely loud enough for them to hear.

‘I can still see her face,’ he said.

Stride’s own face was hidden by the shadows of the candle, expressionless, moving with the flickering light in unnatural ways. Cooper felt too warm in the claustrophobic interior of the van. He was uncomfortably hemmed in by the rugs and blankets and the smell of unwashed bodies, too tightly embraced by the metal walls. He longed for escape.

‘Whose face?’ he said.

But Stride seemed to have departed. Though his body

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still sprawled against the cushions, his mind had left, perhaps to drift over the moor with the kestrel. He had sunk into a state of exhaustion, and when he spoke again it was no more than a whisper, addressed only to himself. ‘I can still see her face.’ Owen and Cal seemed at ease with each other. Cooper wondered what they had talked about while he was away, whether they had simply exchanged comfortable insults as they drank their beer. Owen drained his can and they all went outside, leaving Stride alone. Cal was still looking at Cooper suspiciously. ‘Do you really not have a life to go back to, Cal?’ said Cooper. ‘Oh, yeah. If I wanted to. There are the aged parents, if I want to spend the rest of my life being lectured at. There was a girlfriend as well. But, well … sometimes you’re better off on your own, you know?’ ‘But you’re not on your own now.’ The and Stride? Stride says it was karma, us meeting like that. You know, the idea of fate repaying you for what you’ve done in a previous life?’ ‘He seems to be quite knowledgeable about esoteric practices.’ ‘He knows sod all about it,’ said Cal. ‘Oh?’ ‘He’s picked up a few phrases from books here and there, that’s all. But it keeps him content in himself. That’s what religion is for, isn’t it? Whatever he believes in, it works for him.’ ‘Like the auric egg.’

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‘Yeah, well. If he actually believes it keeps negative mind energies away, then it probably does.’ Cooper considered this. It seemed as useful as any advice a psychiatrist could have given. ‘How well do you really know Stride?’ ‘He’s my brother.’ ‘You met him only a few months ago, at the summer solstice.’ ‘That doesn’t make any difference. He’s my brother.’ ‘I bet you don’t know anything about him. Where is he from?’ ‘What does it matter? Who cares what he did or where he came from in another life? This is our life. This is what matters now.’ ‘Do you go up on the moor sometimes?’ asked Cooper. ‘Of course.’ ‘To the stone circle?’ ‘Stride likes to talk to the Virgins. Nothing wrong with that. He’s not doing any harm.’ ‘Do you go with him? Or does he go on his own?’ Cal clamped his mouth shut. ‘I think I’ve talked to you enough.’ ‘Does he go out on his own at night?’ ‘You’re like all the others really, aren’t you? You sneak your way into the van, thinking you’ll get something on us. Well, just leave off Stride. He doesn’t do anyone any harm, not now.’ ‘Not now?’ said Cooper gently. But Cal turned on his heel with a scowl and walked back to the van. Cooper looked at his watch. He had

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spent too long at Ringham Moor already. He had an appointment with another set of stones, and there would be trouble if he was late.

Like most things in Edendale, the cemetery was built halfway up a hill. Over the bottom wall, beech trees ran down Mill Bank to an estate of new housing off Meadow Road, where white semis clustered round the back of the council highways depot. A squirrel foraged among the leaves and dead branches on the floor beneath the beeches.

Sergeant Joe Cooper was buried in the new part of the cemetery, brought into use four or five years ago, when the old one became full. In the new cemetery, there were no visible graves, only rows of headstones, with the grass mowed smooth right up to them. The dead were no longer allowed to be untidy. These headstones would never loosen and tilt and grow moss with age. They were orderly, almost regimented, a picture of civic perfection. Sergeant Cooper was far tidier now than he had been at the moment of his dying, when his blood had run out on to the stone setts in Clappergate, leaving a stain that had taken council workmen weeks to remove. His killing had darkened the reputation of the town for months afterwards. No wonder they wanted to tidy him away.

Occasionally, a jam-jar full of spring flowers or petunias appeared in front of the headstone. The Coopers never knew who they were from.

The brothers had said nothing to each other as they drove to the cemetery. By the time they were out of the

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car and back in the open air, Ben was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the silence between them.

‘We went to see Warren Leach again yesterday,’ he said as they followed the path towards their father’s grave. ‘I just wondered if you found anything out…’

Matt didn’t answer. His shoulders stiffened a bit, and his stride quickened.

‘There must be somebody who knows him, Matt.’ ‘I dare say.’

But Matt sounded so dismissive that Ben knew not to press it. The silence had grown even deeper by the time they reached the right spot. On every occasion they came, the row of graves had extended a little further, as if their father was somehow physically receding into the past.

Ben and Matt left their flowers and found a bench under the hawthorn hedge, where they could see the headstone. The cemetery grass had been raked clear of leaves. It glittered an unnaturally bright green against the browns and oranges of the hillside behind it, and the grey of the stone houses piled on top of each other on the outskirts of the town.

For a while, the brothers sat and watched each other’s breath drifting in small clouds, cold and formless, vanishing before it had even moved out of reach.

‘Two years, and it doesn’t seem a day,’ said Matt. His words couldn’t help but sound trite, but Ben was sure they were sincere. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

‘I still keep expecting him to appear. I think he’s going to come round the corner and tell me to stop idling

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around. It’s as if he’s just been on night shift for a while. Remember when we didn’t used to see him for a few days, then he would appear again, looking so tired? He always said it was short turn that was the real killer.’

‘He was already too old for night shifts by then.’ ‘But he wouldn’t stop doing it. He always did his stint.’

There was a new National Police Memorial being created in Staffordshire, with a commemorative avenue of trees known as ‘The Beat’ and a daily roll of honour showing details of the officers who had died on duty. The work would take several years to complete, and Ben Cooper had offered to help.

Here in the cemetery, Sergeant Joe Cooper’s name was carved in stone. Eventually, it would be worn away by the rain driven down the Eden Valley, and the February frosts would crumble the surfaces. But now, just two years from his death, the letters were still crisp and clear, with sharply chiselled edges, cold and precise. Life might be brief and transient, scrawled in the sand. But death was written in a much harder alphabet.

Ben had the names of the group of youths who had killed his father imprinted on his mind. Now and then, they cropped up in other enquiries, or in court cases he read about in the Eden Valley Times. Two of them were still serving ten-year sentences for manslaughter, but those who were free seemed to be following predictable careers. It wouldn’t be long before they, too, had a taste of prison. The thought gave Cooper no satisfaction. It would solve nothing.

As always on these occasions, he found his brain spill

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ing out memories like sour wine from an uncorked bottle; deeply stored images of his father that were preserved as if in vinegar. There were glimpses of a tall, strong man with wide shoulders and huge hands tossing bales of hay with a pitchfork, his face flushed and laughing. At other times he was frowning and angry, a terrifying figure in a dark uniform, opening his mouth to bring down the wrath of God on his sons. But among Ben’s memories was also a picture of his father lying dead and bleeding on the stone setts of Clappergate. It was a sight Ben hadn’t even seen, yet it was etched on his mind like a nail embedded in a tree - it was long grown over, but still there, hard and sharp, splitting the flesh that pressed too tightly around it.

But Ben had to close the stopper tight on his thoughts. He couldn’t bear to taste those memories. The pain of them was too thick for him to swallow.

‘He always expected great things of you,’ said Matt. ‘He didn’t just expect great things - he demanded them.’

‘He demanded a lot, that’s true. But he was very proud of you. And you did exactly what he hoped for, always.’

Ben looked at his brother. ‘Matt, he gave me an appalling time. He drove me like a maniac. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. I always had to do better, to work a bit harder. But you were different. You were the favoured son.’

‘Rubbish.’ ‘He never drove you like he did me. He left you alone to do whatever you wanted.’

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‘Exactly,’ said Matt. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It shows that it was you that he cared about, Ben. He cared about you more than anything.’

‘It didn’t feel like it at the time.’

‘It was obvious to everybody else. Obvious to me, anyway. It didn’t matter to him what I did. It didn’t matter how hard I worked, how successful I was at what I chose to do. It meant nothing to him. He would just say, “That’s fine,” and he’d turn away to ask how your training was going, or how you’d dealt with an incident, and what your feelings were about it. Every last detail about you was important to him. But me, I could just do what I liked. I might as well not have been there.’

Ben thought he and Matt had little in common physically, except perhaps a look of their father around the eyes and nose. Their mother was blue-eyed, but the eyes of both her sons were brown, their hair dark where she was fair. Though Cooper was five foot eleven, it was Matt who had inherited their father’s size, the wide shoulders, the enormous hands and the uncertain temper.

‘Matt, you’re the one who’s like him. Everyone says that. People always told me I took after Mum. But Dad and me, we were like chalk and cheese. It infuriated him every time he saw me reading a book. He nearly threw me out of the house when I got interested in music and joined the choir. For Heaven’s sake, I barely came up to his shoulder. I was a pigmy in his eyes.’

Matt stood up. When he towered over him, with that

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exasperated frown, Matt looked more than ever like Sergeant Joe Cooper come back to life.

‘Maybe you never saw the similarity, Ben,’ he said. ‘But everybody else did. I can see him in you now, over this case you’re involved in, this woman who was killed on Ringham Moor.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’

‘You stand here by his grave, today of all days, and you start asking me about this bloody Warren Leach. As if I cared about all that. But Dad would be proud of you, all right. Your head’s full of the same big ideas that his was, like justice and truth. You think you have to put the world right on your own. Just like him. You’re exactly like him.’

Before his brother could reply, Matt walked away to stand over the grave, leaving Ben on the bench. Matt rearranged the flowers at the foot of the headstone and re-read the inscription.

Ben stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ he said.

Matt half-turned his head. His eyes glistened, and he wiped the heel of his hand across his face. ‘You can’t help it, Ben,’ he said. ‘Neither of us can help it.’

They walked in silence back through the cemetery, passing a workman sweeping up leaves. When they reached the car, Matt paused and looked back at the cemetery. Their father’s grave was no longer discernible from here. It had merged into anonymous rows of headstones, swallowed up among centuries of Edendale dead.

‘Ben … this Warren Leach,’ said Matt. ‘What about him?’

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‘They say his farm is in big trouble. Creditors are calling the debts in, the usual story. He’s very close to bankruptcy, they reckon, but he won’t admit it. Leach is the type who’ll try to pretend it’s not happening until it’s much too late. It’ll only take one small thing to be the last straw.’

Cooper thought back to the two occasions he had met the farmer. ‘He isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. But it can’t be much of a life up there.’

‘Those hill farmers are proud men. They think they don’t need anyone else; they want to believe they’re self-reliant, like their ancestors always were. It’s hard for men like that to admit any sort of weakness. Losing the farm would be the end of the world for Warren Leach. He must be close to the edge.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you, Ben? I’m not sure.’ ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I’d watch out for Warren Leach, if I were you. When a man is driven close to the edge, he might do anything. And, unlike you, Ben, some men can completely lose sight of what’s right and what’s wrong.’

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Each time Diane Fry emerged from Maggie Crew’s apartment, the rest of the world looked garish and unreal. It was like coming out of the cinema after a horror matinee. One minute it was all nightmare figures leaping out of the dark and blood splattering against the camera lens, and suddenly you found yourself standing at the traffic lights outside Mothercare with the sun in your eyes and an ice-cream van playing ‘Greensleeves’.

Today, Matlock looked like a badly designed DisneyWorld set. There were the mock turrets of Riber Castle on one side of the valley and the Heights of Abraham and Gulliver’s Kingdom on the other, with the River Derwent in the bottom and the old locomotives getting up steam at Matlock Bridge station. But in between, the design had gone wrong, with crowds wandering about searching in vain for Mickey Mouse and Pluto, and endless traffic choking the central square, where there ought to have been fountains and open-air restaurants, and children demanding Big Macs. And this was one of the quietest times of the year. During the summer, the chaos was mindless. Where were they all going?

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What were they looking for? What were they trying to escape? Fry had yet to understand what made twentyfive million people a year visit the Peak District. There were no shopping centres, no big sports arenas, no exhibition centres or concert halls, not even a decent football ground. All these people did was cause problems and pollution, going nowhere and doing nothing. So pointless. Today, though, Fry was glad of the crowds. Their aimless swarming was an antidote to the obsessive isolation of the apartment at Derwent Court. Maggie’s solitary martyrdom was too reminiscent of periods of her own life - so painful and bitter, yet somehow horribly alluring, like the temptation to give yourself up to drowning when you were too exhausted to swim any more. Fry knew how easy it was to reach that stage. She knew you could find yourself in a situation where a greeting from a stranger was a torture, and the words ‘good morning’ from the postman were as welcome as the plague. When somebody rang the door bell, you not only refused to answer it, you wanted to hide in another room, in case they saw you through the window and knew you were there. Once you allowed yourself to become a recluse, then the world began to seem a long way off, beyond your reach. It became a place where you would be an alien, if you ever found yourself there. And you knew the people from that world would see you as an alien, too. You were not like them. You were different. Disfigured.

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I Fry supported herself against the side of her car and shuddered. Memory was such a physical thing. It was more physical than her own skin, than the clothes she wore, or the ground she stood on. A terrible, physical thing. And some memories never seemed to lose their power to hurt. They never weakened with age, nor dimmed as the years went by. They simply slipped behind a cloud of everyday concerns and trivial preoccupations, waiting until the right moment to emerge, more powerful than ever. And memories still hit hardest when they were most unexpected. There was no doubt Maggie Crew was a damaged woman. Fry had begun to dread going to see her. While she was there, in Maggie’s house, she felt somehow at home. Yet afterwards, within a few minutes of leaving, when she was sitting in the car with her hand on the ignition key, she would suddenly begin to shake. She realized now that she was sweating, her hands were trembling, and her legs felt weak, as if she hadn’t eaten for days. She had to wind down the window and let in the cold air to shock herself back into alertness. She wasn’t used to feeling so drained of energy as she was now. She was usually able to direct energy into her body at a moment’s notice. She had trained for years to feel it flow and channel it where it was needed. But an hour with Maggie Crew had sapped that vitality. So what was going wrong? There were things for her to do back at HQ, but noth ing urgent - she had been given a free hand to spend as long as she needed to with Maggie. That meant she had time to call at her own flat in Edendale on the way.

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She decided a shower would help wash away the cold stickiness that was clinging to her skin. Yet Fry drove round town for a while, turning through the steep streets aimlessly, unwilling to arrive home until her energy had returned and her mood had dissipated. Of course, there was a physical reason for her frame of mind, too. Her body craved action, something to focus the pent-up tension, some target to hit out at. Her old shotokan master in Warley had taught her to recognize the feeling and use it. Very soon, she would have to find time to visit her new dojo in Sheffield to get that release, or the dark well of anger would boil over and the wrong target would be in the way. For Fry, each time she found herself back with Maggie Crew in that soulless apartment now it was like leaving the light to enter a tunnel. She recalled the tunnel on the High Peak Trail, with its dripping water and landslides of rock barely held back by the wooden roof. But she had been with Ben Cooper then, and that made a difference. Gradually, she felt her normal equilibrium coming back, and she turned the wheel towards Edendale. Her flat in Grosvenor Avenue was depressing enough, but in a tangible sort of way. It was simply dismal and uncomfortable, not laden with painful emotions. That was what she had liked about the place when she had rented it - it held no memories, no associations, not even any significant possessions from her old life. She had thrown them all away, given them to charity shops or dumped them in recycling bins - books, clothes, the

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I lot. So the flat was empty of feeling. A cold kind of comfort. Fry waited outside the flat until she was sure that the mood had gone. But even then, when she got inside and stared with glad contempt at the filthy walls, there was a niggle at the back of her mind, a lingering suspicion that she had brought something of Maggie Crew with her into the room. She cursed. She had learned to recognize emotional entanglement the moment it began to infect her. The first twinge of it indicated a lowering of her defences, a weakness in her immune system that had to be tackled. A course of antibiotics was what she needed, a period of isolation, perhaps. She looked at her diary. She had made an appointment with Maggie Crew for Friday. She would phone to cancel it in the morning. She took out her pen and put a thick, black line through the date. She immediately felt better. Stride had started measuring the days. When each one arrived, it was shorter than the last. And the moor was changing as he watched; it was dying slowly on itself, folding and shrivelling, transforming like a chameleon to adapt itself to the new season. As the days shortened, the green chlorophyll broke down in the leaves. Its gradual ebbing away revealed the underlying colours - the yellows, oranges and reds that had been masked all summer. Toxic waste products excreted into the dying leaves made the trees shrink away from their own foliage. They were rejecting parts of themselves as superfluous, recoiling as if from something alien and repulsive, so that their stems dried and loosened on

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the branch and the wind carried the unwanted leaves away. But Stride knew this wasn’t really death he was seeing. It

wasn’t an ending, only the preparation for another beginning. The leaves that drifted to the ground in their millions would slowly decay and disintegrate, returning nutrients to the soil and into the tree roots, ready for growth to begin again next spring. The great recycling system had started up. Millions of organic systems would break down and be renewed on a scale far beyond anything that Derbyshire Dales District Council could dream of.

In some places, though, he had found the foliage of the mountain ash and of more exotic, imported species, like the Russian vines that climbed the walls of roadside cottages. These leaves were red. And they made Stride think of death - of real death. He tried to avoid them, drawing back the toes of his Doc Martens as if touching the dead leaves would contaminate him. He hated the way they spread in soft, wet layers on the ground. He hated their colour and their slithery consistency. They looked to him like ever-widening pools of congealing blood.

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By Thursday, four days after Jenny Weston’s body had been found, the enquiry team were starting to dissipate their energies fruitlessly, like men urinating into a strong wind. There were no answers to be obtained any more. The morning briefing seemed to consist entirely of questions.

‘This young woman, Ros Daniels. Are there no indications to her whereabouts at all?’ said DCI Tailby. ‘We’ve got a decent description, but matching it to

missing persons is hoping for a lot,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘Most of these young people who leave home are never reported missing in the first place. But Cheshire Police are still working on it. And we do have a couple of lorry drivers who saw a girl hitch-hiking out of Macclesfield towards Buxton on the A537.’

‘That’s the Macclesfield Forest road,’ said Ben Cooper. ‘It’s a bit isolated up there. She was taking a risk hitching, a girl like that on her own.’

‘That’s why the truckers remember her particularly, Cooper. But one of them said she looked as though she wouldn’t be frightened of much. He said she looked like Tank Girl.’

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‘I don’t know who Tank Girl is,’ said Tailby, ‘but I dare say I can imagine it.’ Hitchens smiled. ‘It was the combat trousers and the hairstyle, I suppose. And a certain aggressiveness of manner, too. Sounds like our girl, all right. In any case, she was staying at Jenny Weston’s house, at least up to six weeks before Jenny was killed. Forensics found plenty of traces in the house that didn’t belong to Weston.’ ‘There are other possibilities. What about Warren Leach, sir?’ asked Cooper. ‘He was certainly in the area,’ said Hitchens. ‘He has to be eliminated. And he has a connection to Maggie Crew - his wife was the finder on that one.’ ‘Mmm. I don’t like coincidences,’ said Tailby. ‘And is there some significance in the way that the victim’s body was arranged? Anybody had any ideas on that?’ No one answered. Cooper wondered whether they had all shared the same thought when they saw the position of Jenny Weston’s body. He had put his own reaction down to another burst of imagination, the idea that Jenny had been made to dance at the moment of her death. It was certainly too strange a thought to be contributed to the morning briefing. ‘And how do we find out more about Leach?’ said Tailby, almost to himself. Then suddenly there were voices chiming in from all round the room. ‘Talk to his neighbours?’ suggested someone. ‘He hasn’t got any neighbours,’ said another officer.

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‘Friends, then.’ ‘Like who?’ ‘There’s Keith Teasdale. The rat man.’ ‘Is he a friend?’ ‘The nearest thing he’s got, probably.’ Tailby raised a hand, halfheartedly. ‘OK, we’ll talk to Teasdale again. Is there anything else?’ Cooper took a breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. There was something about the way he said it that quietened the laughter. ‘Cooper?’ ‘I checked the firearms register for Warren Leach.’ ‘Firearms?’ said Tailby. Heads were raised, and ears pricked up. ‘Leach has a shotgun, I suppose? Most farmers have them.’ ‘Yes, there’s a shotgun. But when I was there the other day with Owen Fox, Leach also had a captive bolt pistol.’ ‘A what?’ ‘A humane killer. It’s used for putting animals down. It fires a steel bolt directly into the brain.’ ‘Do you need an FAC for that, Cooper?’ ‘Well, not if you’re a licensed slaughterman. But Warren Leach has no licence. Farmers can get them, if they can show that they need one. But there’s no record of Leach ever even applying for one.’ ‘So he’s in illegal possession,’ said Tailby. ‘OK, let’s interview him again. Teasdale first, then Leach. Let’s do it.’ Somebody patted Cooper on the shoulder. And

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Tailby hurried to close the meeting before anybody asked any more questions.

DI Hitchens walked over to Ben Cooper. ‘I want Diane Fry to go to the cattle market with you, not Todd Weenink,’ he said. ‘You’re too close to some of these people. That’s your problem, Ben. Diane sees things that you don’t.’

Across the room, Fry was watching him already. Cooper couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, but then he never had been able to read her. Maybe she did see things he didn’t - but from the look on her face these days, they were things that he didn’t want to see.

The two farmers had been just about to leave the cattle market. The sale was over for the day, and most of the vehicles had left the car parks, but for a few transporters still waiting to load. The men were dressed in overalls and flat caps and smelled as though they had spent some of their money in the bar before setting off home.

‘You couldn’t buy a pint of beer for those prices I got,’ said one of them.

‘Bastards,’ said the other. ‘All pissing in the same pot, these dealers.’

Ben Cooper nodded sympathetically. ‘I know what you mean. The farmer has to put up with lower prices all the time when meat is still selling for the same amount in the supermarkets.’

‘Bloody right. There’s no justice to it. What will they

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do when every farmer in the country has gone to the wall? That’s what I want to know.’

Cooper was waiting for Diane Fry to finish taking a call on the radio in the car. He was the sort of person that people always chose to talk to, especially when they had problems. Maybe there was something about his face that encouraged them.

‘They’ll buy all their bloody meat from abroad, that’s what,’ said the second farmer. ‘They don’t need us any more. They can get anything they want cheaper somewhere else. These prices are just a way of killing us off one by one.’ He spat into a drainage channel. ‘Bastards.’

‘If we had another war like the last one, they’d be buggered.’

‘Aye, good and proper.’

Finally, Fry came back from the car and stood listening to their conversation in amazement. ‘Have you finished writing the script for Farming Today? If so, I wonder if any of you know where Keith Teasdale is?’

The first farmer opened his mouth as if he might say something, then closed it firmly.

‘You’ll have to ask Abel Pilkington,’ said the other man. ‘He’s inside somewhere. What’s Slasher Teasdale done, then?’

‘Slasher?’ The farmer said: ‘It’s a nickname.’ ‘What does it mean?’

‘Ah. You’ll have to ask him that.’

Cooper and Fry had parked at the back of the cattle market, close to where a double-decker transporter was reversed up to the loading area, its tailgate lowered on

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to the concrete apron. They scrambled up on to the concrete, but could see no one among the rows of steel pens. They crossed an iron platform that moved underfoot, and found themselves looking at the face of an enormous weighing scale. It recorded their combined weight at just over twenty-three stone.

‘You’ve put a bit of weight on,’ said Cooper. ‘What?’

‘Well, it isn’t me. I’m thirteen stone and always have been. I never change.’

Fry stared doubtfully at the scale. Cooper wondered whether she knew he was joking. She looked genuinely worried. ‘I shouldn’t bother about it too much,’ he said. ‘They sell ‘em by the kilo here, anyway. The more you weigh on the hoof, the more money you fetch in the ring.’

Fry wasn’t amused. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘You hold on here and talk to yourself about the price of beef while I find this Pilkington character.’

‘If you say so.’

Cooper waited by the transporter while Fry crossed the concrete and stood on the vehicle’s steel ramp. Inside the market, the silence of the building was strange after the bellowing cacophony of Tuesday. The starlings gathered on the ledges were whistling plaintively and darting in and out of the gaps in the roof. All traces of blood and urine and the soft, green faeces of frightened animals had been hosed away into the gutters behind the pens. Here and there the floor was still wet, drying very slowly in dark, glistening patches.

‘Where is everyone?’ asked Fry, hushing her voice

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automatically at the first bounce of the echo from the breeze-block walls.

‘In the back, probably,’ said Cooper. ‘Near the sale rings.’

‘OK.’ She set off down the passageway opposite the ramp, walking between the steel pens.

‘Are you sure you want me to wait here, Diane?’ ‘Yes. Just keep an eye out.’

‘I might be able to show you the way,’ called Cooper, his voice getting louder and more insistent, echoing in the roof space.

‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘I can find my way through an empty building without your assistance.’

Fry had hardly got halfway down the passage when a gate clanged open somewhere. She heard Cooper call something else to her, a single word that sounded like an insult. She couldn’t quite hear what he said because of the noise, a crashing of gates and the thudding of hooves on concrete. But she reacted angrily to the sound of the word, and turned to answer him.

‘Did you say “bollocks”?’ she yelled.

Cooper began to shake his head and opened his mouth to shout at her again. But Fry was distracted by a vibration in the ground, the impression of an earthquake approaching from behind. She turned and saw double doors open and a great bellowing rush of animals burst through the gap into the passage where she was standing. The heaving beasts filled the entire width of the passageway as they barrelled towards her.

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Fry spun to her left and found a section of brick wall and a six-foot wide pen that had long since lost its gate. She dodged into the pen as the cattle reached her, but found one of the animals following her blindly, barged aside by the rush of its companions. It was frightened and angry, and it swung its head from side to side, catching her clothes with the sharp points of its horns. She backed against the wall, braced herself and lashed out with a kick, which landed on the animal’s heavily muscled shoulder. It hardly seemed to notice.

Now the beast was confused. It slipped and lurched around the pen, making Fry jump to keep her feet out of the way of its hooves. She smacked it twice on the nose with her fist. It shook its head, and backed off. She took the opportunity to leap out of the way over the nearest gate and into the next pen, where she slipped on the damp floor, twisted her ankle and fell flat on her back.

She became aware of Ben Cooper standing over her. She was infuriated to see a smile playing across his face as he looked down at her.

‘Actually, I shouted “bullocks”,’ he said.

The driver of the transporter had appeared and joined Cooper on the loading bay as the cattle thundered up the ramp into the wagon. He watched in amazement as Fry clambered from pen to pen.

‘You could hurt yourself doing that,’ he said. Looking around for someone to blame, Fry saw a dark-haired youth in a pair of green wellingtons coming towards her.

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‘I nearly got trampled by those animals then,’ she said. ‘Aren’t there any precautions?’

The youth merely chortled, flapping uneven teeth at her as he passed. Behind him, Abel Pilkington himself glowered from the wall of the sale ring, hooking his thumbs through the braces of his overalls.

‘Any fool knows not to stand in the passages when cattle’s being moved. How did you get in?’ he said. ‘Through the loading bay.’

‘Well, you’ve no right. There’s signs, you know. Authorized persons only past this point, they say.’ The dark-haired youth had connected a thick hose to

a tap. A high-pressure jet began to hit the ground where the cattle had passed, and water cascaded down the passageway. Fry had to raise her voice above the noise, but Pilkington seemed used to it.

‘We’re looking for Keith Teasdale,’ she said.

‘Why didn’t you say so? He’s not here. Once we finish the sale, he goes off to his other job. Down at Lowbridge.’ ‘Do you mean the abattoir?’ said Cooper.

‘That’s it. That’s where you’ll find Slasher Teasdale.’ ‘Why Slasher?’ said Fry.

‘It’s a nickname. If you ask him nicely, happen he’ll demonstrate.’

Pilkington continued to glower at them, and didn’t bother saying goodbye as they walked back towards the loading bay. By the time they reached the car, Fry was limping slightly.

‘Have you hurt your leg?’ said Cooper.

‘I slipped, that’s all. The floor’s wet in some of those pens.’

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‘Diane, you’ve, er, got your shoes a bit messy, too. It looks like cow shit.’

Fry looked down at her feet. ‘Bullocks’,’ she said.

Lowbridge was called a village, but the spread of development along the valley bottom from Edendale meant there was no distinction any more between the two places - no green fields or farms to separate them, only a road sign indicating the point where one house was in Edendale and the one next door was in Lowbridge.

The abattoir was off the Castleton Road. Unlike the cattle market, it was modern and clean, all stainless steel and white tiles, like a vast urinal, its surfaces washed constantly. The air smelled of disinfectant, and the men moving around inside sloshed about in plastic aprons and thigh boots, with white caps covering their hair. The atmosphere reminded Fry of a hospital operating theatre.

‘Ben,’ she said, ‘I know Teasdale claims to have a legitimate reason to be in the Ringham area when jenny Weston was killed…’

‘But you’re sceptical. Maybe you’re thinking about this nickname, Slasher. But it would be a bit of a giveaway, don’t you think? Like a burglar wearing a striped sweater and carrying a bag marked “swag”.’

‘Look at this place he works. Don’t you think he might have some expertise with a knife - and access to a nice, sharp blade of his choice?’ She got irritated when he didn’t respond. ‘Too obvious for you, is it? I suppose you prefer to look for the inner meaning of things?’

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‘Not necessarily. But I find keeping an open mind allows a bit of fresh air in.’

‘Don’t talk to me about an open mind. Your mind is so rustic it should be in a woolly coat with a sheepdog behind it.’

‘Thanks.’ Fry took a deep breath. ‘Let’s have a word with Teasdale’s employer before we speak to the man himself.’

She took a cautious peek round the wall into the building, and was relieved to see no dead animals, and no blood.

‘Teasdale?’ said the manager when they found him in his office. ‘Keith Teasdale? Yes, he’s on the books.’

The office was like any other - a computer in the corner and a desk littered with paperwork. From the extent of it, it looked as though an abattoir manager might actually have more paperwork to deal with than a police officer, though it was hard to believe. The manager had his work clothes in a kind of anteroom with a washbasin.

‘Well, you can talk to Teasdale if you really want to. He’s around the place somewhere.’

‘How long has he been with you?’ asked Fry.

‘Oh, a year or two. I’m not sure exactly without looking it up. He’s not one of the full-time staff, you know.’

‘But experienced, though?’ ‘Experienced? Well … In what way?’

‘Experienced in the use of a knife? For bleeding animals. Gutting, and so on. Whatever it is you do here.’

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‘Teasdale?’ The manager stared at Fry. ‘We are talking about Keith Teasdale?’ ‘I believe so, sir.’ The manager began to laugh. ‘Expertise with a knife.’ He laughed some more. Cooper and Fry looked at each other. ‘Could we share the joke?’ asked Fry. The manager pulled a tissue from a box on the desk. They expected him to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes. But instead he began to wipe his hands, rubbing between the fingers as if to dry a sudden outbreak of sweat. ‘Keith Teasdale does not use a knife in his work.’ He began to snigger again. ‘As far as I know, anyway.’ ‘So what does he do exactly, sir?’ ‘Keith Teasdale. Old Keith, eh? Expertise with a knife? Expertise with a yard brush, more like. Teasdale is a cleaner. He shoves a wet mop about the place. Not much of a lethal weapon, surely?’ ‘I see.’ ‘Unless you can be charged with being in possession of an offensive mop bucket.’ ‘But they call him Slasher at the market,’ protested Fry. ‘We call him that here too,’ said the manager. ‘Ah, I see. What’s in a name? Is that evidence against him, then?’ Now another tissue had to be used. And this one did go to the face to mop up the tears. ‘Do you want me to tell you how he got the nickname “Slasher”?’ A man appeared in the doorway of the anteroom,

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hesitated when he saw the visitors and began to go away again with an apologetic nod. ‘Hey, Chris,’ called the manager. ‘This is the police. They want to know why we call Keith Teasdale “Slasher”!’ The other man began to laugh too. ‘Are you going to tell them?’ ‘Of course. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but I’ ‘Poor old Keith.’ They both laughed for a while. Fry was beginning to go pink with anger. ‘Basically, Keith Teasdale has a bladder problem,’ said the manager. ‘Sorry, didn’t I explain? We’re police officers, not doctors.’ ‘No, but that’s why he got his nickname, you see. He’s always having a slash somewhere. Round the back of the building. In the lorry park. Over by the hedge there. It got to be a joke that any time you went round a corner, there was Keith having a slash. One day the ministry inspectors were here, and they saw him at it. He got a real ticking off then. Head office wanted me to sack him. But he’s harmless really. Since then, he’s had to put up with everyone calling him Slasher, though. It’s become quite a joke, I can tell you.’ ‘I’m positively splitting my sides, as you can see, sir.’ The manager looked at her. ‘Well, you have to be a part of it to appreciate it, I suppose. You develop a peculiar sort of sense of humour working here.’ ‘So I gather.’

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When they finally located Keith Teasdale, he was digging a solidified mass of dead leaves out of a drain cover behind the abattoir. There was a curious smell on this side of the building, more reminiscent of a butcher’s shop than a hospital. But the brush Teasdale clutched in one hand looked particularly unthreatening.

‘I’ve already told you I’ve been up to Warren Leach’s place,’ he said.

‘Known him for long?’ asked Cooper.

‘Yes, years. How old is his eldest lad, Will? Eleven? I remember when he was just a nipper. He wanted to help me with the rats once, because he took a liking to the terriers. But his dad stopped him coming near me. He always was a bit of a sour bugger, Warren.’

‘Would you say you know him well?’

‘No one knows Warren well. It doesn’t do to get too close to him. Nasty temper, he has.’

Teasdale folded his hands over the end of his brush. His fingers that had turned brown and creased and faintly shiny, matching his corduroy trousers.

‘But you’re still doing work for him. You were at Ringham Edge Farm on Sunday,’ pointed out Cooper. ‘I was. But Warren sent me packing, like I said. No

money to pay for rodent control, he said. Can you believe it? That’s no good on a farm, no good at all. You can’t have rats round a milking parlour. It should be clean, like this place is.’

‘When was the last time you went before that?’ Teasdale rolled his eyes and chewed the tips of his moustache. ‘Can’t remember exactly. It’d be a month or two, anyway. Is it important, then? Am I a witness?’

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‘Have you noticed anything unusual going on at the farm?’ asked Fry.

‘Unusual? There’s nothing much usual about Warren Leach.’

‘What about Mrs Leach? Do you know her?’

‘Her you never see. Well, maybe just a passing glimpse now and then. But she never speaks, never wants to say hello. She’s unsociable. But then, she is married to Warren, so you can’t blame her, I reckon.’

Teasdale seemed to get bored with the conversation suddenly and tossed his clump of leaves into a wheelbarrow, where they landed with a wet thud.

‘Did they tell you in there what they call me?’ he said, watching the leaves shift and settle in the barrow. ‘Yes, they did,’ said Cooper.

Teasdale nodded. ‘They love it. They think it’s a great laugh here, and at the mart. They usually tell people to ask me to demonstrate. Did they tell you that?’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘But don’t bother.’

On the way to Ringham Edge, they had to slow down as they came up behind a tractor towing a trailer stacked high with bales of straw. Golden flakes spiralled off the load and drifted across the windscreen of the car.

‘When we get to the farm, I think we should make a point of trying to see all the Leach family,’ said Cooper. ‘What’s the purpose of that?’

‘There’s something wrong there.’

‘We’ve had no reports of anything wrong.’

Cooper glanced at her face, thinking again how thin she was becoming. It made her look gaunt and haunted

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rather than tough and angular, as she had been when she arrived a few months ago from West Midlands. Fry’s hair was shorter, too, as if she had taken scissors to it and hacked off a couple of inches in a bored moment. There was one other thing that Cooper noticed about Diane Fry, though. She never mentioned his father now, not since that first time they had met. Sergeant Joe Cooper meant nothing to her. He wondered what Fry did these days when she went off duty. He wondered what she would be doing tonight, after work. But, for once, Cooper found that his imagination failed him completely. He had already agreed to go out for a drink with Todd Weenink that night. Weenink called it ‘a session’, which meant he intended to drink a lot of beer. Cooper wasn’t really looking forward to it. He would miss a rehearsal for the police male voice choir, and it was getting to their busiest time of year, when they performed at community halls and old people’s homes in the area. Besides, he had seen how morose and aggressive his colleague could become under the influence of alcohol. But they were partners, and Cooper understood that these occasions were necessary, a kind of bonding. He thought Weenink had no one else to talk to since his marriage had ended. His relationships with women were probably not noted for their conversation. ‘A session’, he sensed, was code for Weenink needing someone to talk to, an admission that he was feeling lonely. That was why Cooper couldn’t refuse.

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In the crew yard at Ringham Edge Farm, Warren Leach spoke to his sons in a voice thick with suppressed anger. ‘Bring that beast down here,’ he said. The boys stood open-mouthed; Dougie was close to tears. They both knew about the death of animals. They had both seen the huge pit that the excavator had dug behind the barn a while ago, and had heard the shots as the ewes were dispatched one by one. Afterwards, they had crept out of the house to stand in horrified fascination on the edge of the newly turned earth. They had tried to imagine the lifeless bodies of the sheep below their feet; they had pictured them lying on their backs with their eyes blank and their thin legs stiff and pointing upwards, and the wet soil thick in their fleeces and in their mouths. ‘No. Please, Dad,’ said Will. Leach lost his temper at the pleading tone, driven beyond patience. ‘Am I talking to that wall? Now shift your arses and get that beast down here! Do as I say! If I have to say it again, I’ll be saying it with this belt.’ Will pulled Dougie’s arm and dragged him reluctantly away. Leach dug into an old canvas satchel and checked the captive bolt pistol that Keith Teasdale had given him. The steel casing of the gun was heavy and solid in his hand. ‘Bloody animal,’ he muttered to the gun. ‘Draining money from me like water. Not any more.’ There was no one in the yard to hear him. He was thinking of the day they had bought the calf at Edendale cattle market. It had been Yvonne herself who had

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picked it out, and it had been her idea to buy it for the boys. It had been a fine young animal, too, and would have made a handsome heifer. But for weeks, Leach had found he couldn’t bear to see the calf. Its eyes rolled at him accusingly, like the eyes of another bloody martyr; its coat gleamed with the gloss of an extravagance that he couldn’t afford. Now he couldn’t even stand the thought that the animal was on the premises. He couldn’t concentrate on any of the pressing problems that were piling up on him because of the time he spent dwelling on the calf. It had to be disposed of before he could work out how to get the farm and his life out of the mess they were in. It had to go. It was standing in his way. ‘We’ll sort this out once and for all,’ he said, and snapped a cartridge into the gun. Finally, the boys dragged the calf, protesting, on a rope halter into the yard. ‘Dad ‘ ‘Just shut up. Just bloody shut up!’ He snatched the halter from Will’s hand and led the calf a few feet away. The boys stood fixed to the spot, unable to take their eyes away. Dougie winced and put his hand to his mouth to stifle a cry as his father lashed out with a boot to take the calf’s front legs from underneath it. The animal folded up on to its knees in the dirt with a frightened gasp. As it struggled to regain its feet, Leach stood astride its neck to pin it down and grasped its halter firmly in his left hand. Then he pulled the gun from his pocket and centred the barrel against the top of the calf’s skull, in the centre of its forehead.

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He worked the barrel through the hair and adjusted the angle between the horn buds. He needed a clear path for the bolt to penetrate the layer of bone and enter the brain. The calf, sensing the uselessness of its struggles, suddenly relaxed in his grasp, resigned to an inexplicable end. ‘It has to be done,’ said Leach. ‘It can’t go on like this any longer. You’ve got to understand these things. It’s part of your education.’ Leach looked up at the boys. But he barely saw their faces. Instead, he saw a small cloud of dust behind their heads. It was drifting above the stone wall that bordered the lane. Then he became aware of the noise of an engine, and a second later a red Toyota bounced through the pothole by the gate and entered the yard. Leach kept the barrel pressed to the calf’s head, fingering the trigger. He smiled at the thought of the look that would be on his visitors’ faces, when he pulled the trigger in front of them. Then he recognized Ben Cooper at the wheel of the Toyota and saw Diane Fry get out of the passenger seat as the car slid to a halt. She had a clipboard in her hand, and she didn’t seem to notice the boys or the calf as she walked up to Leach. Surprised, the farmer let go of the animal. It scrambled away, leaving him standing straddle-legged, with the bolt pistol still in his hand. ‘Mr Warren Leach?’ said Fry. Leach stared at her, making a tiny, abrupt movement of his head that she could take for a nod.

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IqqI’Acting Detective Sergeant Fry, Edendale Police. According to our records, you do not have the required licence entitling you to possess that captive bolt pistol.’ Leach looked at the gun, baffled. ‘I must have forgotten to get one.’ ‘We have to apply the rules, I’m afraid, sir.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘You’re in possession of an unlicensed weapon.’ She held out her hand. ‘You’ll be given a receipt. Then you can reclaim the weapon if and when you obtain the appropriate licence.’ ‘I don’t believe this. Do you think I’m going to give my gun to you just like that?’ Fry raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Are you refusing to surrender an unlicensed weapon, sir?’ Ben Cooper got out of the car and ambled towards them. He nodded at the farmer. ‘Give it up, Mr Leach. Be sensible.’ The three of them looked at each other for a minute. Fry was beginning to get impatient. Cooper could see her muscles tense. He turned to the boys waiting to one side with wide eyes. ‘Better clear off, lads,’ he said. ‘You really don’t want to see this.’ ‘No,’ said Leach. He turned the pistol round and gave it to Cooper. Fry began to fill in a receipt. ‘Now, if you’ve quite finished,’ said Leach, ‘I’ve got work to do.’

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Out of tradition, Ben Cooper and Todd Weenink started their evening at the Wheatsheaf. There were three pubs that stood close together around the market place, and three or four more down the side streets that they could take in without walking more than a few yards. But the Wheatsheaf had a whole range of guest beers on the bar, strong ales with names like Derbyshire Black and Old Sheep Dip. Weenink was the one drinking harder and faster, and he soon reached the stage where he wanted to share his personal insights. ‘There’s just no excitement in the job any more,’ he said. ‘Every day you come into work and they tell you to go and detect a burglary or something.’ ‘Several burglaries,’ said Cooper. ‘Six burglaries and four car breakins. Every morning.’ ‘And a criminal damage or two, as well.’ ‘That’s it. The same day after day. It’s mind numbing. We don’t even get a good ram-raid now. Not for ages.’ Weenink had spilled some beer on his leather jacket, and his sleeve stuck to the table when he moved his arm. Cooper was struggling to keep up with his

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consumption. He hadn’t seen Weenink drink quite so hard since his marriage had broken up after less than two years. Weenink’s wife had said she hadn’t realized what she was tying herself to. And she hadn’t just meant Todd. She had meant the police service. ‘Ram-raiding has pretty well been designed out in the town centre,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, it’s a shame. They were a bit more exciting than the other crap. All you get now is shoplifting. Where’s the fun in that, Ben?’ They moved on to the Red Lion, a comfortable pub with somebody’s choice of seventies pop music piped discreetly into the bar, and a row of computer games. The landlord knew them both, and they got the first round on the house. It disappeared too quickly for Cooper’s peace of mind. ‘The CCTV cameras have cut out a lot of the other stuff, too,’ he said. ‘Bloody cameras. It’s a bit too much like Big Brother, if you ask me.’ Cooper was impressed by Weenink’s literary knowledge. He wouldn’t have put him down as a George Orwell fan. 1984 was one of Cooper’s favourite novels, along with Lord of the Flies. Then he frowned. ‘We are talking about George Orwell, aren’t we?’ ‘Never heard of either of him,’ said Weenink, and belched. ‘Is he from another division? I suppose you’ve met him at Police Federation meetings, or something.’ Cooper took another sip of beer. So Todd Weenink

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only read the TV pages in the Eden Valley Times, after all. The third pub was the Station Hotel. They were heading downmarket now. There was no piped music here, no TV screens or bar meals - only a pool table and saltandvinegar crisps, and a jukebox full of heavy metal CDs. The customers all seemed to be wearing old Iron Maiden Tshirts. A woman walked past towards the bar in a pair of leather trousers. ‘Eat my pants, look at the arse on that,’ said Weenink. ‘Don’t say that. It’s disgusting.’ Over the next beer, Weenink studied Cooper with exaggerated care. ‘You’re a fucking poofter, you are, Ben. Do you know that? A fucking poofter. But I love you. You’re my mate.’ They nodded at each other, bleary-eyed. There was no need for words, really. The beer fumes drew them together in a warm, sentimental embrace. Weenink took out a packet of cigarettes and offered Cooper one. Cooper took it. He hadn’t smoked since he was sixteen years old. He looked at it for a minute. Weenink tried to give him a light, but Cooper shook his head and laid the cigarette carefully on his beer mat, lining it up alongside his glass. This particular mat had a picture of a female pop singer on it. Cooper laughed and laughed. It looked as though she had a cigarette up her nose. ‘You know, Ben,’ said Weenink after sufficient silence. ‘You and me, we won’t take any shit from anybody.’ ‘Right.’

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‘Am I right?’ ‘You’re right, Todd.’

Weenink watched the woman with the leather trousers walk back across the room and took a drag of his cigarette. ‘What was I saying?’

‘Let’s go somewhere else, shall we?’

Cooper and Weenink walked out of the pub, across the street and through Market Square, staggering slightly as their feet slithered on the cobbles.

‘Here, we can play leapfrog on these,’ said Weenink, swinging on the black cast-iron street furniture, not noticing when he banged his shin on the metal. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the square. A middleaged couple getting into their car turned to look at them. Cooper could almost hear them tutting. For once, there were no noisy groups of youths in the square to distract attention.

‘Come on,’ he said.

Weenink allowed himself to be led away from the square, down the passage by the Somerfield supermarket. They came out on the riverside walk under the nineteenth-century bridge across the River Eden.

‘Not much life down here,’ said Weenink. ‘Isn’t there a night club open or something?’

‘Night club? On a Thursday?’ ‘I need another drink.’

‘It’s closing time.’

‘But we’ve missed some pubs out.’

Weenink slowed down and stared at the river. Dark shadows lurked just below the surface of the slowmoving water. They were only stones, though. The

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