Dancing With the Virgins

by Stephen Booth

  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 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 moustache 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 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. Two-week-old 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 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 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.

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nbsp; ‘How long will it take you to get to Congleton?’ asked Tailby.

  ‘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’ 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 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?’

  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.’

  ‘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 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.’

  ‘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 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.’

  18