Dancing With the Virgins

by Stephen Booth

  ‘A bit early to be doing Christmas, aren’t you? It’s only just gone Bonfire Night.’

  Helen laughed. ‘Yes, they do get confused sometimes.’

  But somehow it didn’t look quite right. There was something wrong about Father Christmas’s costume. He looked like one of those cut-price Santas in the shops in Edendale at Christmas, with home-made suits and cotton-wool beards that never fit. Most of them would scare the kids to death, if they got too close. But these days, there was no touching allowed, not even by Santa. No ‘come and sit on my knee, little girl.’

  Cooper thought of Warren Leach’s boys, their air of guarded distance, an instinctive wariness of strangers. There had seemed little innocence about the Leach place. He wondered what the two boys had seen or experienced in their lives that made them nervous of visitors.

  He looked again at the drawing in his hands. It wasn’t the red jacket that made it look wrong. It was the trousers. Every child knew that Santa’s trousers were red, the same as his jacket. But Carly had changed crayons halfway through drawing her picture of Father Christmas and his presents. She had selected her new colour carefully – and it wasn’t a colour that a child of six would normally choose. It wasn’t bright or dramatic enough; it was too dull and adult somehow.

  Yes, everyone knew Santas were dressed all in red. But this Santa had grey trousers.

  The house was set deep into the hillside, below the level of the road. Its front door was at the foot of a steep, narrow flight of stone steps lined with wooden tubs and pots of wilted sweet peas, enclosed by a well of sheer walls and blocked-up windows. The remains of dead plants trailed down to the door, leaving patches of dark mould and slime on the steps, treacherous patches that would send an unwary postman hurtling to the bottom. Yet on the window ledge of the room above the road there was a single pelargonium in bloom, its red flowers gleaming against the grey curtain.

  When Owen Fox answered the door, he appeared to be standing at the bottom of a deep hole. He looked as though he had been dozing; he was sleepy-eyed and half-dressed, and his beard and hair were tangled. When he saw Diane Fry standing on the steps above him, he pulled his dressing gown around his chest.

  ‘Do you want some help?’ he said. ‘I suppose you need my local knowledge again?’

  Owen began to ease the door closed behind him, trying to shut himself out on the step with the police, as if distancing himself from his own life. He looked faintly ridiculous in his T-shirt, dressing gown and slippers.

  ‘Is it about Cal and Stride?’ he said. ‘Give me a minute, then I’ll be with you. No problem.’

  Then Owen looked up and saw DI Hitchens standing on the roadside, and he read something in his expression. He stared at Hitchens like a man contemplating the final ascent of Mount Everest and knowing he would never make it, because the effort was too great. Owen Fox had become a small man at the bottom of a dark pit. He stood out of the light, away from the world, desolate and alone. The sun that reached his pot plants fell short of crossing his doorstep.

  ‘Don’t bother shutting the door,’ said Hitchens. ‘We’ve got a search warrant.’

  28

  ‘That was the river, this is the sea.’

  Ben Cooper turned up the volume on his stereo and opened the cover of his Waterboys CD. He was amazed to find it dated from 1985. In fact, most of the music he possessed was the stuff he had liked twelve or fifteen years ago as a teenager. Somehow, his tastes hadn’t changed during the time since he had joined the police service – or maybe he just hadn’t had time to discover any new kinds of music.

  Cooper looked at his books. The copy of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin he had been trying to read was written in 1994. It was about the most recent thing on his shelves, and somebody had given him that. Apart from the job, it seemed his time had been spent drinking beer with other police officers, taking part in individual sports or walking in the countryside. At least he had some friends outside the service. He made a mental note to get in touch with Oscar and Rakki. It had been months since they had gone anywhere together.

  One of the CDs in the rack was of a concert by the Derbyshire Constabulary Choir, recorded six years ago. There was a photo of the choir on the cover, and on the back row with the tenors was Ben Cooper himself, then a uniformed PC. Cooper compared the picture with his reflection in the mirror in the wardrobe door. His hair was a bit shorter at the back now, his face a bit fuller. But he looked much the same, didn’t he? So why did he feel so different inside? Was it the police service that had done that to him?

  Suddenly, he felt weary. He replaced the CD and lay down on his bed, letting the sound of Mike Scott’s voice roll over him. ‘Once you were tethered, now you are free. That was the river, this is the sea.’

  Cooper had begun to drowse when there was a knock on the door and his sister-in-law Kate’s voice called: ‘Ben? Phone.’

  He turned down the music and went out on to the landing, where there was a telephone extension.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘It’s Diane Fry.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t sound so disappointed. I’ll try not to hog the phone line too long if you’re expecting one of your girlfriends to ring.’

  ‘Did you want something, Diane? As you pointed out before, it’s my rest day.’

  ‘Sorry, were you doing something important? I don’t know why, but I pictured you sitting in your bedroom on your own like a sulky teenager, with some awful music turned up too loud.’

  Cooper felt certain she could tell that he was going red, even at the other end of the line. ‘If you’ve rung up just to take the piss, I’m going to put the phone down.’

  ‘Oh well, I thought you might be interested in the news, that’s all.’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘We’ve just pulled in your friend. Owen Fox.’

  Cooper stared at the wallpaper. Its green swirls seemed to run together in a blur. He became aware of movements behind the door of his mother’s room, faint sounds like the stirring of an animal emerging from its nest.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said.

  Shortly into the meeting, DI Hitchens began to find himself on the defensive. He looked sideways at Tailby, as if wondering why the DCI had let him take the lead.

  ‘Cooper, the fact is that HOLMES was already showing up a link,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘But that’s just one of those things.’

  ‘With only one correlation, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But his name also came up in the earlier case. Look at this. There were plenty of vehicles seen in the area at the time Maggie Crew was attacked. But three witnesses reported seeing a silver Land Rover. Two of them were specific that it belonged to the Peak Park Ranger Service. We checked with the PPRS and identified the vehicle. It was the one that Owen Fox drives.’

  ‘It means nothing.’

  ‘It couldn’t be ignored when his name also cropped up in the paedophile enquiry.’

  Ben Cooper had checked the action forms for the last few days. The allocator hadn’t followed up the Owen Fox link from HOLMES. So he must have taken the same view – that it was just like a police officer’s name cropping up more than once in an enquiry. It was inevitable; it meant nothing. Owen Fox was right there, on the spot, and he was bound to appear in the system.

  ‘We had to bring him in,’ repeated Hitchens. ‘We have to let people see us doing something.’

  ‘What about Roper?’ asked Tailby.

  ‘We’ll have him here in a few minutes.’

  ‘And have we let the Ranger Service know what’s happening?’ said Tailby.

  ‘Of course. Fox is suspended from duty, as from this morning. They’re arranging a solicitor for him.’

  ‘That job is his life,’ said Cooper.

  ‘If the allegations are true, he’s abused his position,’ pointed out Diane Fry.

  ‘Owen Fox and Mark Roper were in the area at the time Jenny Weston was killed,’ said Tailby. ‘They were there.�
��

  ‘Fox knows the area better than anybody,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘Yes, everyone would expect to see him around. They might even be glad to see him. They would trust a Ranger, wouldn’t they?’ said Fry.

  ‘And Jenny Weston was killed by someone who got close to her. We said from the start it was someone she knew or trusted.’ Hitchens looked as though he felt he had made his point sufficiently. ‘Fox has a suspended sentence for an assault on a woman ten years ago. If it hadn’t been for his address turning up in the intelligence gathered by DI Armstrong’s enquiry, his background would never have been checked out. It’s unbelievable. The sort of thing that trips us up every time.’

  ‘He’s very highly regarded,’ said Cooper. ‘Very highly.’

  ‘He’s never been married,’ said Hitchens. ‘He’s a loner.’

  ‘He seems to get on well enough with his colleagues.’

  ‘With other men, you mean.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’

  ‘That’s enough, Cooper,’ said Tailby. ‘Let’s calm down.’

  Cooper flushed. ‘But Owen Fox …’

  Tailby sighed. ‘Yes, Cooper?’

  ‘Well …’ Cooper struggled for the words with the eyes of the DCI on him. ‘It’s just that I always thought … he’s on our side, sir.’

  But Cooper was remembering the drawing that Helen Milner had shown him, the one by little Carly. Fathr Chistmass. But a Father Christmas who had grey trousers.

  Tailby looked at him with a mixture of contempt and bewilderment. ‘On our side?’ he said. ‘Cooper, there’s no such thing.’

  Ben Cooper was seething as they walked back down the corridor.

  ‘It’s crap, Diane,’ he said. ‘It stinks. It’s scapegoat time.’

  ‘Oh God, here we go. Stand by for a lecture on righteousness.’

  Cooper felt his face glowing red. His hands trembled in the way they always did when he felt that surge of anger and outrage. He knew his feelings had no place at all in the rigid procedures laid down by computer packages like HOLMES.

  ‘It isn’t right.’

  ‘It doesn’t suit you, obviously,’ said Fry. ‘Did you know about Fox’s conviction for assault? No, of course you didn’t. Well, face the facts, Ben. You chose the wrong friend again.’

  ‘Not Owen Fox.’

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’

  Cooper stared at Fry, started to speak, but closed his mouth. He felt his face flushing even more.

  ‘Ben,’ she said, ‘you look as guilty as hell. What are you up to?’

  ‘I think all of you are wrong,’ he said. ‘This time you’ve picked the wrong scapegoat.’

  Owen Fox’s house was cluttered and warm. There was a stunning view out of the back window, casting light into the back rooms. But the rooms at the front of the house, below street-level, must have been permanently dark.

  There were a couple of cats somewhere – black, elusive shapes that slunk out of the way when the police appeared. They darted in and out of a cat flap on the back door and peered malevolently through the windows from outside. Maybe they just wanted feeding, but it was a job they would have to delegate to the neighbours.

  Between thick walls, the rooms were crammed with old furniture. A lot of the pieces might have been items Owen had inherited from his parents, or even his grandparents. They looked to be full of history, an integral part of their surroundings. A solid-fuel Raeburn stove stood in the kitchen, the plaster above it covered in a layer of red dust.

  ‘It’s weird,’ said Hitchens. ‘The computer looks really out of place.’

  ‘Computer?’

  ‘In there.’

  The computer stood among heaps of books, with a used coffee mug on the mouse mat and Friday’s Buxton Advertiser draped over the printer. One of the detectives working with DI Armstrong’s team had arrived and booted it up. He already had a Microsoft Windows image on screen.

  On a small shelf behind the desk there was a framed photograph of Owen. He was standing against the side of a Land Rover in his Ranger uniform. The photo was a few years old, but Owen’s hair and beard were already grey.

  ‘Apparently the kids call him Father Christmas,’ said the detective cheerfully.

  ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘Plug the printer in for me, mate. I’m going to print some log files out.’

  Cooper looked for the leads, found a whole tangle of them at the back of the table, and tried to trace the power and data leads for the printer.

  ‘What’s this one?’

  ‘That’s the phone connection.’

  ‘I can’t see a modem here.’

  ‘It’s an internal.’

  ‘He’s got access to the Internet?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the detective. ‘I can’t wait to see what Santa’s got on his hard drive.’

  Cooper went upstairs to look at the bedrooms. The rooms smelled musty, and it was obvious Owen didn’t do much cleaning, or even open the windows very often. One room contained a double bed. Cooper remembered that Owen had looked after his mother until she died, aged ninety. Her room was still as it must have been just after her death – the sympathy cards still on the window ledge, the tea tray next to the bed, even the bed itself unmade, as if the old lady had only just got up. The smells of this room were familiar to Cooper. They were redolent of the worst periods of his own mother’s illness, the schizophrenia that had thrown the Coopers’ lives into chaos in the past two years.

  He drew the curtain back a few inches, loosening a shower of dust. He was startled by a small explosion and a burst of coloured light above the neighbouring houses. Then he remembered it was the weekend for official village bonfires. He had passed the site of the Cargreave bonfire on his way into the village. The mere sight of the enormous heap of branches and old doors had brought back to him all the familiar smells of the Guy Fawkes nights of his youth – the black stink of the gunpowder and scorched fireworks cases, the stab of woodsmoke on the back of the throat, the scent of trampled grass, the hotdog stands and baked potato stalls. His mouth had begun to water at imaginary wafts of fried onions and melted cheese mingling with the sharpness of a November frost.

  Presumably there would be plenty more fireworks later on. But there would be no stuffed Guy Fawkes on the bonfire this year. No one considered it acceptable to burn Catholics in effigy these days, not even in Derbyshire.

  Cooper looked in the smaller bedroom, but found it was jammed full with old furniture and boxes of books. The frame of a single bed was hidden under there somewhere, but there was no way of getting to it. He looked along the landing. There was only a bathroom and a small airing cupboard left.

  He went back to the first bedroom again. It was dark and stuffy, like a sick room. Cooper wanted to yank back the curtains and let the light in, but he imagined the whole thing would wither and crumble to dust when the sunlight touched it. He had just realized why the bed was unmade. Owen had been sleeping in it himself.

  Though the detective was still downstairs and a constable was on the door, the forensic team had already moved on from the cottage in Cargreave. They had left to search the Ranger centre at Partridge Cross, where Owen Fox spent so much of his time. Later, they would carry away papers from his desk, along with a spare pair of boots, a rucksack, and a waste-paper bin.

  ‘What sort of cigarettes do you smoke?’ DCI Tailby asked the Ranger in the interview room.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Owen.

  ‘Just a crafty one now and then, is it? Maybe you’re not supposed to smoke in the briefing centre?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Really? Do you know your jacket smells of smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it does.’

  Owen looked pained. ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘We know about your record, Owen,’ said Tailby. ‘You’ve got a bit of a temper, haven’t you? You take it out on women sometimes. No doubt cigarettes help you to keep calm.’

  ‘I don�
��t smoke.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Which of your colleagues smoke? The other Rangers?’

  ‘None that I know of. They like to stay fit. It’s no good being short of breath if you have to walk up hills.’

  ‘What about visitors? Do you let them smoke in the centre?’

  ‘No, it’s a no-smoking zone.’

  Tailby let the tapes run for a few seconds and glanced at Diane Fry across the table.

  ‘So how do you explain the cigarette ash in the bin in your office?’ she said.

  Owen looked baffled. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I mean the waste-paper bin.’

  ‘I’ve still no idea.’

  ‘Do you recognize this rucksack?’ Tailby produced the item in a sealed plastic bag. It was a blue Berghaus with green webbing shoulder straps.

  ‘Yes, it’s one of mine,’ said Owen.

  ‘This rucksack was recovered from the briefing centre. Can you explain the ash and the cigarette end we found at the bottom of it?’

  Tailby saw the Ranger hesitate. The DCI kept his face composed, careful not to make the Ranger aware of the importance of the question. He set the reaction aside to come back to later.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ said Owen.

  ‘As well as the waste-paper bin, and the rucksack, our forensics people found cigarette ends at the scene of Jenny Weston’s murder. All the same make of cigarettes. That’s a lot of evidence of smoking, Mr Fox. For someone who doesn’t smoke.’

  Owen shook his head. ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Tailby, after a pause, ‘there must be a lot of stress in your job now and then.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Is there anything that’s stressed you out particularly that you can think of?’

  Owen seemed to turn inwards, his eyes becoming distant. ‘You mean like Cargreave Festival Day,’ he said. ‘Do you know about that? I think about Festival Day all the time.’

  ‘Tell us,’ said Tailby.

  ‘It was in all the papers. Pages and pages of it.’

  ‘Tell us anyway.’

  Owen stroked his beard nervously. He looked like a man who ought to be pale and afraid of the light. And perhaps he would have been, too, if it weren’t for the job; it kept him out of doors, up on the hills, exposed to the weather. For most of the time.