‘Do you sing soprano?’
‘Tenor.’
A couple of miles down the road towards Edendale, Cooper turned the Toyota off on to a side road and headed back out of the valley.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Fry.
y o oj
‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said. ‘Something that came to me when we were talking about DI Armstrong.’
‘What exactly do you mean?’ said Fry, with a warning note
JJJ ‘O
in her voice.
‘You remember I said she was “poached” by B Division?’
‘Are you still harping on that?’
‘No, no, you don’t understand. I was thinking about poaching.’
‘Come again?’
‘Just up here there’s a big estate, the Colishaw Estate. That’s an “estate” as in a large area of privately owned land. Not a housing estate.’
o
‘I think I’ve got that, thanks.’
‘The Colishaw Estate runs shoots. That means they breed a lot of pheasants. There are deer on the estate too. Not to mention rabbits and hare and partridge.’
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‘Is this a nature lesson? If so, could we possibly do it tomorrow?’
‘Obviously, it’s a big target for poachers,’ said Cooper patiently.
‘Right.’
‘The professional gangs used to be a big problem, but they don’t bother so much any more. There’s no money in it now. Rut the local men still get down there.’
o
‘Chasing the pheasants and rabbits.’
‘You don’t exactly chase them.’
Cooper pulled the Toyota on to the verge near a patch of woodland, where signs warned ‘Private Property’. There was little traffic on the road, and the night was totally black but for the stars in a clear sky. The Toyota’s sidelights illuminated
JJO
a wall and a length of barbed wire.
‘There’s an old hut down there,’ he said, pointing into the wood. ‘It’s always been a favourite for poachers to lie up in. It’s well away from where the keepers patrol, even when they bother. Jackie Sherratt was a notorious poacher. He used to use it all the time. He must often have taken his son Lee there. As part of his training.’
‘Sherratt? Hold on. You think ?’
‘It’s possible. I think Lee could have chosen the hut to lie up in. No one will have thought of checking this out. It’s too distant from Moorhay. But a lad like Lee wouldn’t think anything of
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moving this far.’
o
‘Don’t tell me — you want to check it out?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right here and now?’
‘Why not?’
‘Are you crazy? It’s the middle of the night!’
‘I’m going down anyway,’ said Cooper. ‘You can wait here if you like.’
He got out of the car, pulling a sturdy torch from the glove compartment.
‘We can’t do this.’
‘I can,’ said Cooper. ‘You’ll obviously have to go by the book, won’t you?’
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He climbed over the wall and began to walk into the wood, finding the start of a narrow path that had been invisible from the road.
‘Hold on, for God’s sake,’ said Fry, slamming her door.
He smiled and keyed the electronic locks.
‘Can’t be too careful.’
They set off close together, sharing the light of the torch. Cooper had always felt a part of the world he worked in, especially when he was out working in the open. But Diane Fry, he thought, would be for ever a stranger to it. He was alert for any sounds in the wood, but she seemed completely absorbed in herself, as if the darkness meant not only that she couldn’t see, but also that she could neither hear nor smell what was around her, nor even feel the nature of the ground underfoot. Cooper was listening hard. Any countryman knew that the sounds that animals made could tell you whether there was a human presence in the area.
At that moment, he could hear the echo of a faint screech deep in the wood, a fleeting sound like the scratching of a nail on glass, or chalk across a blackboard, but with a plaintive falling note at the end.
‘Little owl.’
‘Eh?’ said Fry.
‘Little owl.’
‘What are you talking about? Is it Cowboys and Indians? You Big Chief Little Owl, me squaw?’
‘I’m talking about the bird. Can’t you hear it?’
‘No.’
They both listened for a moment.
‘It’s gone now,’ said Cooper.
Fry seemed genuinely reluctant to go into the woods in the dark. He was surprised by her behaviour. Afraid of the dark? Surely not Diane Fry; not Macho Woman.
‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘We could leave it until tomorrow, if you like. I could suggest it at the morning briefing, and see if anyone can be bothered to put out an action for it. We’re not getting overtime for this,
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after all. It doesn’t make good business sense, does it? If you
want to look at it like that.’
‘Since we’re here, let’s just do it, then we can go home.’ ‘On the other hand, if he is down there, he’ll probably have
moved on somewhere else by tomorrow.’ ‘Can you just shut up and get on with it?’
Diane shee found the darkness disturbing. The deeper they moved
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into the wood, the more she wished that she had brought a torch
O
of her own, that she had refused to go along with the idea, that
‘OO‘
she had stayed in the car after all. Or better still, that she had never stupidly agreed to play squash with a jerk like Ben Cooper. She had known it had been a mistake from the start. She should never have let herself get involved, not even for one evening. And now it had ended up like this. With a stupid escapade that she could see no way of getting herself out of.
In front of her. Cooper was walking with an exaggerated
‘rooo
carefulness, lifting his feet high in front of him before placing them cautiously back on the ground. He pointed the torch downwards, shielding its light with his hand so that it would not be visible in the distance. At one point he stopped to rest against a tree. When he straightened up again, Fry felt him stagger as if he was drunk. She grabbed his arm to support him, but felt no resistance in his muscles. Peering into his face
‘o
by the dim light, she saw that his cheeks were drawn, and his eyelids were heavy.
‘You’re exhausted,’ she said. ‘You can’t go on with this. We’ll have to turn back.’
‘Not now,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ll be all right.’
He shook himself vigorously and they set off again. Soon, a darker area of blackness began to form up ahead. Cooper switched off the torch and signalled her closer so that he could whisper into her ear. His breath felt warm on her cheek, which was starting to feel a faint chill in the night air.
‘That’s the hut. You stay here while I take a look through the window at the side there. Don’t make a sound.’
Fry began to protest, but he hushed her. Then he was gone, creeping through the trees towards the side of the hut. Soon his
177
shape had vanished into the gloom, and she found herself on her own. Immediately, she felt the sweat break out on her forehead. She cursed silently, knowing what was about to come.
As soon as she was alone, the darkness began to close in around her. It moved suddenly on her from every side, dropping like a heavy blanket, pressing against her body and smothering her with its warm, stickv embrace. Its weight drove the breath from her lungs and pinioned her limbs, draining the strength from her muscles. Her eyes stretched wide, and her ears strained for noises in the woods as she felt her heart stumble and flutter, gripped with the
old, familiar fear.
Around her, the night murmured and fluttered with unseen things, hundreds of tiny shiftings and stirrings that seemed to
o ‘oo
edge continually nearer, inch by inch, clear but unidentifiable. Next, her skin began to crawl with imagined sensations. It was as if she had stood in a seething nest of tiny ants that ran all over her body in their thousands, scurrying backwards and forwards, scuttling in and out of her intimate crevices, tickling her flesh with
O‘o
their tiny feet and antennae. Her flesh squirmed and writhed as an icy chill seeped into her bones.
She had always known the old memories were still powerful and raw, ready to rise up and grab at her hands and face from the darkness, throwing her thoughts into turmoil and her body into immobility. Desperately, she tried to count the number of dark forms that loomed around her, mere smudges of silhouettes
‘o
that crept ever nearer, reaching out to nuzzle her neck with their teeth and squeeze the air from her throat.
And then she seemed to hear a voice in the darkness. A familiar voice, coarse and slurring in a Birmingham accent. ‘It’s a copper,’ it said. Taunting laughter moving in the shadows. The same dark, stained pillars of menace all around, whichever way she turned. ‘A copper. She’s a copper.’
The light fell on her face, blinding her. She knew there was a person behind the light, but she couldn’t make out his eyes. She tensed automatically, her hands closing into fists, the first two knuckles protruding, with her thumbs locked over her fingers,
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and her legs moving to take her balance. Concentrate. Pour the adrenaline into the muscles. Get ready to strike.
‘Are you OK?’
A concerned voice, northern vowels. Whispering. Unthreatening. Fry let the muscles relax slowly, coming back to an awareness of the woods, to the fact she was in Derbyshire, many miles from Birmingham. The reality of the horror was months behind her, and only the wounds in her mind were still raw and terrible where they were exposed to the cold wind of memory. She took a breath, felt her lungs trembling and ragged.
Cooper leaned towards her face, so they were only a few inches apart. ‘Are you OK, Diane?’
Instinctively, she reached out a hand to touch him, like a child seeking affection, a protective embrace. She felt his solidity and his reassuring warmth, and closed her eyes to grasp at the elusive sensations of tenderness and affection. The feeling of another human body so close was unfamiliar. It was a long time since she had wanted someone to hold her and comfort her, a lifetime since there had been someone to wipe away the tears that she now felt gathering in the corners of her eyes.
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‘What’s wrong?’
o
Fry pulled back her hand, blinked her eyes, drew herself upright. Control and concentration, that’s what she needed. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs, forcing her heartbeat to slow down. Control and concentration.
‘I’m fine, Ben. What did you see?’
‘He’s in there, all right. He’s got a candle lit, and I could see his face in a sort of half-profile.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘It’s definitely him.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘Are you joking? We nick him.’
Fry sighed. ‘All right. Let’s nick him then.’
Cooper put his hand on her arm, and gave it a squeeze. She bit her lip at the friendly gesture, and firmly shook him off.
‘There’s just the one door, and there’s no lock on it,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in fast, one either side of him, take him by surprise. I’ll do the words. OK?’
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‘Fine by me.’
They approached the door, paused to look at each other. Cooper nodded, flicked the catch and kicked the door backwards on its hinges. He was in the hut fast, moving to his right, allowing Fry space to get alongside him.
A young man was bending over a wooden table against the far side of the hut. A candle threw a fitful light on his face and cast his shadow on the opposite wall. I here was an old chair and a small cupboard in the room, and even a worn carpet on the floor. But the hut smelled of earth and mouldy bread.
Cooper began to reach for his warrant card, which was deep inside the inner pocket of his jacket.
‘Lee Sherratt? I’m a police officer.’
Sherratt turned round, slowly and deliberately, and only then did Cooper see the gun. It came up in his hands as they lifted from the table, the barrel swinging outwards and upwards, with Sherratt’s fingers turning white where they gripped the stock, one index finger creeping towards the trigger guard, a blackened fingernail touching the steel of the trigger, applying the first pressure …
Cooper stood numbed with surprise, his right hand pushed into his pocket, immobile. His mind had come to a halt, no instincts sprang up to tell him what to do. The last thing he
1O 1O
had been expecting was that he would die here, in the poacher’s hut, on a threadbare carpet gritty with soil and fragments of stale food.
Then Diane Fry came into view. She was moving at twice the speed of Sherratt. Her left foot lashed out in a straight-legged sideways kick that impacted with Sherratt’s wrist and knocked the rifle out of his hands towards the wall of the hut. Even before the gun had landed, she regained her footing, shifted her balance and was striking a closed-fist rising blow to his solar plexus. Sherratt folded backwards into the table, then collapsed face down on to the floor and vomited on the carpet. Fry stepped back to avoid the mess.
‘You don’t have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be given in evidence,’ she said.
‘Shit,’ said Cooper.
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Fry dug into her pockets and pulled out her kwik-cuft’s and her mobile phone.
‘I suppose 1 could have called in first and waited for the back-up,’ she said. ‘But, like I said, there arc times.’
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15
out where are they, sir?’
‘We don’t know exactly. Somewhere on the Pennine Way, we think.’
‘But that’s two hundred and fifty miles long.’
‘And there are twenty-two of them, apparently,’ said DCI Tailby. ‘And they’ve all got to be interviewed. Paul?’
DI Hitchens wras sitting next to Tailby at the head of the briefing room. He seemed to be moving into a central position again in the Vernon enquiry.
‘The hikers seen on the Eden Valley Trail are all students from Newcastle on a week’s walking holiday. Apparently, they stayed overnight on Saturday at the camping barn at Hathersage, intending to reach the start of the Pennine Way via Barber Booth sometime on Sunday. But nearly four days have elapsed, and we estimate they will be somewhere in West or North Yorkshire by now. The local police are trying to locate them for us.’
Tailby nodded. ‘DI Hitchens is in charge of this line of enquiry. When the students are located, he will travel to Yorkshire to interview them, accompanied by DC Fry.’
There was a faint trickle of comment, quickly hushed. Ben Cooper saw the DI look round and grin at Fry.
‘Mr and Mrs Vernon are coming in today to film their television appeal, which will be broadcast later,’ said Tailby. ‘We are, of course, hopeful of some results from the public.’ He smiled to himself as he said it — a small, self-mocking smile,
‘o‘
as he thought of the phone calls that would certainly pour in from the cranks and the eccentrics, the over-zealous and the neurotic, the well-intentioned but mistaken, and the sad, sad cases desperate for a bit of attention. From among the hundreds
there might, though, be one or two calls that would provide
t? ‘o ‘r
vital help.
The DCI looked down at his checklist. ‘Have we anything on Daniel Vernon vet? Who’s on that?’
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A burly DC leaning against the side wall raised a hand in acknowled
gement.
‘Yes, Weenink?’
‘I checked with his faculty at Exeter University. Vernon is about to start the second year of the political science course. It’s social dialectics this term, apparently. I always thought that was a sort of sexual disease.’ Weenink waited for the expected laughs, smirking as he thrust his hands into his pockets and slouched more casually. ‘Term doesn’t start for another two weeks, but the new intake, the first years, arrive before that to register and find their way about, get fixed up with digs, all that sort of thing.’
‘But Daniel Vernon is a second-year student,’ said Tailby impatiently.
‘He’s a buddy,’ responded Weenink.
‘What?’
‘Some of the established students turn up early to give advice to the newcomers. Some of the kids turn up at university on their own and they’ve never been away from home before. The older ones befriend them. They call them buddies.’
‘You found this out from the faculty?’
‘From the Students’ Union. Vernon checked in there on Saturday morning and worked over the weekend meeting new students. The Union president remembers him being called away sometime Monday night.’
‘And he arrived home on Tuesday? How? Has he a car? Did he use the train?’
Weenink shrugged. ‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘I’d like you to concentrate on pinning his movements down precisely,’ said Tailby. The need to know whether we can eliminate Daniel Vernon from the enquiry. Laura Vernon was seen talking to a young man in the garden at the Mount just before she disappeared on Saturday night. That could just as easily have been Daniel as any boyfriend, unless he has a solid alibi for the period.’ He waited for Weenink to nod his understanding. ‘Meanwhile, as you all know, we have Lee Sherratt in custody, thanks to a bit of initiative last night by DCs Cooper and Fry.’
The DCI said the word ‘initiative’ as if he wasn’t entirely
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sure it was something he approved of It was, after all, contrary to current philosophies. Policework was now a team activity, a question of routine legvvork and good communication, compar ing and correlating, inputting vast amounts of data and seeing what came out of the computer or what matched up at the torensics lab. Unplanned night-time arrests in remote spots by off-duty detectives did not fit the plan.
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