Dancing With the Virgins

by Stephen Booth

  His cheeks had burned under the policewoman’s stare. This woman looked at him differently from the others. It was more than antagonism, it was contempt. She had seen what had become of his life, and she thought it was his own fault. She saw the squalor and had no hesitation in blaming him for it. And, of course, she was right.

  His world took a sudden shift and became vivid and clear, as if somebody had shaken it to bring the picture into proper focus. Now he saw the colours of his life distinctly, and they were all dark. The revelation coalesced in one great lump all the burdens that had been piling up on him in the last few weeks. He knew now that they had drained his strength and his will, and had been the cause of all those strange, crippling aches in his belly that he hadn’t been able to explain.

  For the first time, Leach faced the impossible magnitude of his problems; the disastrous hole that he had fallen into loomed way over his head like the walls of a deep well. And he had no energy left to climb any more.

  ‘But I never hurt the boys,’ he said to himself. Then louder: ‘Dougie, I never hurt you, did I?’ He reached out to take his youngest son by the shoulders. Dougie wriggled to get away, but his father gripped him harder, making him cry out.

  Leach knew he had to make his decision. He was sure the police would come for him anyway because of what had happened with the young Ranger. The boys would be taken away from him. They would end up in one of those homes. But he had already thought about this moment, and he knew what he had to do. He let Dougie go, and the boy ran towards his brother, pale and shaking with the fear of the unknown. The boys clung to each other, watching their father as they would have watched a wild animal prowling through the house, afraid to move a muscle in case they attracted its attention.

  Leach fingered the barrels of the shotgun, feeling the certainty and solidity of the heavy steel. His hand itched to grip the stock. He reached out to it like a man greeting an old friend. Then he drew back, and looked at the boys as if he had just remembered they were there. He had made careful plans, but he had nearly forgotten them. That was what his brain was like now. Soft as sponge. As rotten and stinking as the stuff he scraped out of the hoof of a cow with foot-rot.

  ‘Will …’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘You know where your Auntie Maureen lives, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘You catch the bus into Edendale and walk to the bus station. Get a Hulley’s number 26. It stops at the corner of Bank Street, near the old library. You know your way from there. There’s enough money for the fare for you and Dougie in an envelope on the table.’ Will said nothing. ‘Can you remember that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a letter for your auntie in there, too. Don’t open it, Will. It’s for Auntie Maureen to read. And there’s two chocolate bars I saved for you. One each. They’re the ones you said you liked. Crisp and crunchy.’ Leach tried a smile, but swallowed it as his throat constricted in a spasm. ‘And Will … make sure young Dougie is all right, won’t you? Promise?’ said Leach.

  ‘Promise,’ said Will.

  ‘That’s a good boy.’

  Leach found his eyes drifting towards the shotgun again. Not much time now. Not much left to say.

  ‘All the things I did, I did because I was trying to save the farm for you. For your future? Do you understand?’ he said.

  The boys nodded, because it was what he expected of them. But Leach could see from their faces that they understood nothing. Probably they never would. By the time they were old enough, their mother would have talked a different story into their heads, one where their father was a weak fool, a drunkard, a bully, a criminal. But that wasn’t right. All he was, really, was a man who had failed. But probably the boys would never understand that, either. If they were lucky.

  ‘Dad?’ said Will.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When have we got to go?’

  ‘Best go now, son,’ said Leach. ‘Before it goes dark.’

  He stared at the boys, wondering what else he should do. There were things which Yvonne had always done, which he had no idea of. He was vaguely aware that Will had taken charge of some of these things himself – somehow young Dougie always seemed to be washed and his hair was clean. But there ought to be something that a father did to look after his sons, some little thing that showed he cared. Especially when he was saying goodbye.

  He saw that Dougie’s jacket collar had been turned over by the strap of his rucksack, exposing the lining underneath. It looked untidy. He reached out a dirt-stained hand to straighten the collar, his fingers passing close to Dougie’s cheek, so that he felt the warmth from the boy’s skin. Dougie was trembling, and his eyes looked puzzled and afraid.

  Leach turned to Will, but the older boy flinched away, and Leach let his hand fall back to his side. He felt a small flicker of anger and hurt, but it died as quickly as it had come, leaving him cold. Cold, and ready.

  ‘Off you go, then.’

  He watched them walk across the yard and down the lane without looking back. He glanced at the cows, whose heads showed over the wall of the barn. They were unsettled because they had been brought inside when there was still grass to be eaten in the fields. But they would be all right.

  Leach went back into the kitchen and stared out of the window. The rain had left dirty streaks on the panes, and the world outside looked blurred and distant. The moor had retreated into low cloud. He could just make out the car parked in the trees at the top of the track, but even that held no meaning any more.

  In contrast, the objects immediately around him seemed alive and weighted with unbearable significance. The colours of the boys’ clothes draped over the rail of the cold Aga were bright and painful, and the smell of the wet earth from his boots on the tiles bit so hard into the back of his nose that it made his eyes water. The clutter that pressed around him seemed to be composed of living things, like an army of rodents gathering to gnaw at his body. If he left it any longer, the vermin would start to eat him alive. But he wouldn’t give them the chance.

  The number 26 to Edendale was late. It had been held up by roadworks and temporary traffic lights in Bakewell, and by an old lady who had slipped on the platform as she fumbled for her bus pass. The driver spent several minutes fussing over her to make sure that she was all right. It wasn’t because he was worried about a claim against his employers for negligence. It was because the old woman’s daughter knew his wife, and because all the other people on the bus were watching him, and a lot of them knew him, too.

  Will and Dougie Leach were standing at the bus stop, carrying the rucksacks they took to school in the mornings. They had their clothes in them for tomorrow, their pajamas and toothbrushes. The driver wasn’t surprised to see the boys on their own. He had done the school run at one time, and he remembered them. When the Leach boys had first started getting on the bus, they had been accompanied to the stop by their mother, or sometimes by their bad-tempered father, who never seemed to have a good word to say to anybody. The driver thought Will was bit of a moody child, and expected he would probably turn out just like his dad in a few years’ time. He felt sorry for Dougie, though. He always looked unhappy; even more so today.

  The driver took the boys’ money and watched them for a moment while they found seats. Then he released the brake and let in the clutch, and forgot about them as he accelerated towards the bend and the descent from the moor towards the A515.

  Will’s face was frozen. But he saw the tears start in Dougie’s eyes. Just as the bus turned the bend, Will grabbed his brother roughly by the shoulder and pushed his own chocolate bar into Dougie’s hands.

  ‘Here, have mine,’ he said. ‘I don’t really like them anyway.’

  The bus was only a few yards away from the stop when they heard the shotgun blast. The boys looked back towards the farm. Above the juddering of the diesel engine and the grinding of the bus’s gears as it approached the hill, they could hear the rooks that roosted in the beech tree
s behind the farmhouse erupt into the air, complaining raucously; they could hear the old farm dog, Molly, begin to bark hysterically in the yard.

  And then they heard the silence that followed. And the silence was the loudest sound of all.

  31

  Mark Roper stopped on the path to Ringham Moor and touched his face gingerly where Leach had hit him. His lip was split, and a tooth was loose. If it was true about Owen, he knew he ought to feel the outrage that had been expressed by his fellow Rangers. But Owen’s arrest the day before had confused him. Mark knew that Owen would have been up here to check on his wall, if he could have done. Instead, Mark was doing it for him.

  When he got near the top of the path above Ringham Edge Farm that afternoon, Mark saw a woman in a yellow jacket climbing towards the Hammond Tower. It was the first time he had seen a woman walking on her own for over a week. There had been plenty of warnings about the dangers for lone women. But some of them couldn’t stay away. There was something that drew them, like the women who were attracted to form relationships with convicted murderers and rapists.

  He had brought a rucksack from home, because the one he usually used for patrols had been in the briefing centre, which had been closed by the police. But at least this rucksack held a pair of binoculars. He focused them on the woman, following her movements through the high bracken until she reached a clear spot. She paused, and looked around. And then Mark saw her face. He recognized the long, red scar and the disfigured cheek, the twisted eye. He had seen her photograph in the incident room at Edendale, during the briefing three days before. Even if he hadn’t recognized her, he would have had to do something. Women weren’t safe alone on Ringham Moor any more.

  Mark called in. ‘Peakland Partridge Three. Put me through to the police incident room.’

  Then he leaned on the wall and looked down on Ringham Edge Farm. And he saw that the police were already there.

  Warren Leach hadn’t bothered to move out of the kitchen after the boys had left the house. The blast of the shotgun had shredded the back of his skull, and his body had been thrown off the chair and on to the floor, where it lay among the debris of dropped food and unwashed clothes. A dog chained near the back door was barking ferociously, driven into a frenzy by the arrival of so many strangers. No one dared go near it. Someone had called for the dog warden and a vet.

  When Ben Cooper had first arrived, a middle-aged man wearing jeans and a tweed jacket had been standing in the yard next to a red pick-up, talking to Todd Weenink. He turned out to be a farmer from across the valley, and Leach had rung to ask him to milk the cows that afternoon.

  ‘He’s taken that way out, has he?’ said the farmer. ‘I can’t say it’s a surprise. He isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. Some prefer to finish it cleanly, like.’

  When Cooper looked at the state of the farm’s kitchen, he realized clean wasn’t the word for what Warren Leach had done. He stood in the doorway of the room, careful not to go too near. He could see a white envelope on the cluttered kitchen table. It was an official-looking envelope, with the address neatly typed. Unlike some of the others, which were obviously bills and unopened, Leach had slit the top of this envelope open with a knife, leaving a greasy butter stain on the edge of the flap. Cooper didn’t need to look at the letter inside. He guessed it was a notification to Mr Warren Leach that a prosecution was being considered under the Firearms Act 1986.

  Cooper wondered whether there was anything else they could have done. They had contacted Social Services after their visit to Yvonne Leach, but that had been out of concern for the children, Will and Dougie. Who had been concerned about the fate of their father? Warren Leach had needed help, if anyone had. The evidence was there to be seen on the floor and walls.

  A few minutes later, Cooper was very glad of the call that took him and Weenink away from the farm and up the hill to meet the young Ranger, Mark Roper.

  Mark seemed even younger today. It wasn’t just the fact that his face was bruised and swollen. In between the bruises, he looked pale and lost, like a boy waiting for somebody to tell him what to do.

  ‘Are you sure it’s her?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Cooper felt certain Mark was observant enough to be right. This was a situation where Diane Fry would have to be involved.

  It was late afternoon by the time Diane Fry arrived at Ringham, and she was in a bad mood. She drove up the track past the farmhouse to where she could see other vehicles parked on the hill.

  ‘Where is she?’ she asked when she saw Cooper and Weenink under the trees. Cooper bent down to her car window.

  ‘She’s up there.’ He gestured vaguely, irritating her still further.

  ‘On the moor?’

  Fry got out of the car and flexed her leg. She could feel her knee starting to swell up. She ought to be at home with a bag of frozen peas on it – if only she had any frozen peas in the freezer compartment of her fridge. She struggled up the rocky slope to look towards the plateau. She was no more than half a mile from Top Quarry.

  ‘Where is she exactly?’

  ‘Near the Cat Stones, where she was attacked,’ said Cooper. ‘It was Mark Roper who reported sighting her earlier this afternoon. She refuses to come down. We were just discussing taking her into custody for her own safety.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She can’t stay up there. She’s not safe. What if she runs into our killer? That would be just great, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not very likely.’

  Cooper shook his head in exasperation as she pulled on her black jacket. ‘OK, I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she said.

  Fry began to walk away, tugging her jacket around her as she strode towards the path, brushing past a PC talking on his personal radio. Cooper and Weenink watched her go. Weenink’s expression was puzzled as he leaned towards his partner.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Fetch the car,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To see Mark Roper again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I feel like something to cheer me up.’

  ‘But –’

  Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘Will you just fetch the car?’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Weenink. ‘I thought it was only women who had a wrong time of the month.’

  Mark was sitting on the ground in his red fleece jacket, with Owen’s walling hammer in his hand. Occasionally, he dug the cutting edge of the hammer hard into the soil and studied the shape of the gouge he had made.

  ‘So is the wall finished?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I thought it was,’ said Mark. ‘But look at that.’

  He pointed down the length of the newly-rebuilt stretch. The stones had bulged and bellied outwards, and the coping stones had slipped from their places, exposing the filling, which trickled from the interior of the wall like grain from a split sack.

  ‘What did that?’

  ‘A rotten stone,’ said Mark. ‘One single rotten stone that crumbled with the weight and let down everything above it. Owen must not have spotted it when he put it in place. He says every stone has to play its part. You can’t have weaknesses, or the whole thing comes down.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ Cooper looked at the young Ranger more closely. ‘Mark, how did you come by those bruises?’

  Mark touched his face again. ‘Oh, I slipped and landed face first on some rocks. I’ll survive.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mark, has Owen ever said anything to you about children?’

  The Ranger looked away. ‘Not much. He always says: “Kids? I love ’em. But I couldn’t eat a whole one.”’

  Cooper nodded, listening for something beyond the old joke. ‘I suppose you have to do school visits as a Ranger.’

  ‘It’s part of the job these days. They say if we educate youngsters about what Rangers do, they’ll respect the Peak Park and what goes on i
n it. That’s the theory, anyway. But Owen says a school visit just gives the kids a chance to take the piss out of you all at once instead of one at a time.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what he means. But Owen has no children, has he?’

  ‘He’s a good bloke, Owen,’ said Mark.

  Todd Weenink was getting impatient at the turn of the conversation. He kicked at the wall and watched as more filling spilled out from between the stones.

  Diane Fry could see Maggie Crew from a distance, her yellow jacket marking her out like a beacon. She was standing a little way from the tower, on the edge of the escarpment where the gritstone plateau fell away into the valley. Maggie was a few yards short of the contorted rock formations that Ben Cooper called the Cat Stones. She was standing quite still, as if afraid to go any closer. Beyond the rocks was the Hammond Tower, which ought to have represented the hand of humanity on the landscape of the moor, but failed to suggest any hint of civilization to Fry’s eye.

  The wind coming down the valley was cold, carrying the first suggestion of November storms. But Maggie made no attempt to shelter behind the rocks. She seemed happy to expose herself to the full blast of the weather.

  She didn’t look round when Fry limped up behind her. But Fry felt as if Maggie had been waiting for her to arrive.

  ‘Maggie, come on. It’s time to go back home.’

  ‘Give me a few minutes, then I’ll go.’

  ‘All right. I’ll stay with you, then.’

  ‘If you like.’

  Maggie didn’t move for a moment. She hesitated as if she wasn’t sure which way to go. Fry had automatically walked up to her left side, understanding Maggie’s vulnerability. Now she watched Maggie’s face, looking for clues about her thoughts in the set of her mouth and squint of her eye.

  ‘I want to remember more,’ said Maggie. ‘I know that’s what you need from me, Diane. I want to be able to tell you that I remember.’

  ‘Maggie, it doesn’t matter. We can do it another way.’

  ‘You said you didn’t have enough information. Insufficient evidence. You needed me to make an identification.’