Dancing With the Virgins

by Stephen Booth

  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.’

  The one who spoke tried a smile. Leach refused to be impressed. ‘Cut the crap. I see enough of it round 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 confidence starting to return. ‘What have they sent you two for? Ranger scared to come here any more, is he? Thought he needed to send in the heavy mob? You won’t get anything out of me, anyway.’

  ‘We’re collecting information about vehicles seen in this area on Sunday,’ said Weenink, staring at the farmer.

  ‘Are you now? But they’ve asked me about this before.’

  ‘We’re following up a report on a van that was noticed leaving your farm entrance between two and 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 back of a cow if I want to get about.’

  ‘Does that mean I can put you down as “does not own a van”?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘The witness said it was a white van, but not very clean. Probably a Ford Transit.’

  ‘Lots of those about.’

  ‘Do you recall seeing this van?’ asked Cooper. ‘Did it belong to a visitor to the farm?’

  ‘I don’t get many visitors here.’

  ‘But that afternoon you did, didn’t you?’

  ‘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 –’

  ‘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 Westons,’ 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, 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. 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.

  ‘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.

  ‘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 waste-paper 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.’

  15

  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.

  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. 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 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, 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 walkers’ boots had proved too much, loosening the slabs until they shifted out of balance and became dangerous.