The Devil’s Edge bcadf-11

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Not far from me, then.’

  ‘Aye.’ Gamble peered at Cooper more closely, suddenly resembling a startled sheep. ‘I think I might have known…’

  ‘My father, I expect. Yes.’

  ‘That’s it. Well… like I was saying, that was a proper village, the sort of place where you know everyone, because folk join in. You know them because your parents knew their parents, and so on.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Here, it’s not like that. You can see it just by looking at the place. These newcomers, they know how to keep their privacy all right. So you get the walls, the cameras, the long drives, the locked gates. All of that stuff.’ Gamble smirked again. ‘And when you look at those things, you’ve got to wonder, haven’t you?’

  ‘Wonder what?’

  ‘Well… you wonder what it is they’ve got to be so private about.’

  ‘I see.’

  Cooper thought for a moment that Gamble was going to wink at him. Instead he leaned closer, with a sly grin and a lift of one bushy eyebrow. Then he nodded in the general direction of Valley View and Moorside House.

  ‘What secrets have these people got? What is it they’re trying so hard to hide?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘I have no idea. But perhaps you do?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gamble, delightedly. ‘Now we’re really on the same wavelength. You know what the Bible says. There is a God in Heaven that revealeth all secrets.’

  ‘Are you a churchgoer?’

  ‘Yes, I am. But none of them ever go to chapel. That would be the day.’

  ‘You’re a Methodist, then?’

  ‘Certainly. Someone has to be. There aren’t many of us left.’

  ‘Mr Gamble,’ said Cooper. Then, seeing that he wasn’t getting the man’s attention because of some sound outside the house, he repeated it more loudly. ‘Mr Gamble!’

  Gamble jumped. ‘Yes? What? Have I told you enough? Have you got the information you need?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Cooper glanced at the man’s wife, who seemed to shrug helplessly, using only her eyes. He wondered if it would be possible to get the chance to speak to her on her own. And, if he did, whether she would cling to his leg, whimpering pitifully.

  ‘Tell me again what you saw last night.’

  ‘I did all that.’

  ‘A preliminary statement. We’ll need more, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I didn’t see much, not really. Not until I looked through the window.’

  ‘You’d heard a noise, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, a thump or a crash. Perhaps both, I’m not sure now.’

  Cooper stifled a sigh. Somebody who already couldn’t be sure the day after an incident probably wasn’t going to make a great witness in court.

  ‘Tell me exactly where you were when you heard the noise.’

  ‘It was dark,’ said Gamble.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I was in the lane.’

  His answers had become suddenly terse. Cooper wished he had someone else with him for this interview. Becky Hurst, preferably. Someone to watch for reactions and absorb impressions, to chip in with an unexpected question. A partner he could discuss the visit with afterwards. But right now he couldn’t spare Becky or any of the other members of his team. There were too many people to speak to, and too many doors to knock on. The first twenty-four hours were so crucial.

  ‘Which lane do you mean?’ said Cooper. ‘Curbar Lane?’

  ‘No, at the back.’

  ‘There’s a small lane running up to Riddings Lodge. Do you mean that one?’

  ‘Yes, it goes as far as Lane End, the Nowaks’ place. We call it Croft Lane.’

  ‘Croft Lane? Is that where you were?’

  Gamble nodded. ‘Thereabouts.’

  Cooper gritted his teeth. Thereabouts wasn’t good enough.

  ‘We’re going to have to take you back there and let you show us the exact spot,’ he said.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was a tree,’ said Gamble. ‘I was standing near a tree. But it was dark, you see.’

  ‘And what were you doing near this tree?’

  ‘Just… standing. I’d been out for a walk.’

  ‘And you heard…?’

  ‘A thump or a crash.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘A thumping crash. A crashing thump. I don’t know. Both.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I looked towards the house. The Barrons’ place, Valley View. That was where the noise seemed to come from.’

  Cooper leaned forward, deliberately pressuring Gamble to come up with an answer. ‘And what did you see?’

  ‘I saw a light on.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘Was that where the noise came from?’

  ‘It seemed so to me.’

  ‘So you went to investigate.’

  ‘Exactly. Neighbourly concern. Anyone would do the same.’

  ‘And when you investigated, you saw…?’

  ‘I looked through the window and realised there was something wrong.’

  ‘Wait. Before you looked through the window…?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything. No one around. It was dark, though, like I said. There might have been people in the garden, among the trees, watching me. I thought I was quite brave, actually.’

  Cooper had to admit that was true. In those circumstances, Mr Gamble could have been putting himself at risk. He started to feel a bit guilty about questioning him so closely.

  ‘What do you know about the Barrons?’ he said.

  ‘Well, everyone knows they have plenty of money,’ said Gamble, visibly relaxing. ‘Rolling in it, they are. You should see the stuff the children get. Mobile phones, those iPod things. New trainers every week. We have grandchildren, and they don’t get anything like that. It doesn’t make them any less happy. And they’ll grow up knowing the value of money. The Barrons’ kids are just ruined.’

  ‘Was it generally believed that the Barrons had valuable items in the house?’

  ‘Obviously. The builders knew it, the neighbours knew it, anyone coming to the house knew. They never tried to make any secret of how rich they were. Far from it. She told me once how much the taps in their bathroom had cost. It was enough to buy me a new car.’

  ‘I wasn’t really thinking of bath taps. Antiques, maybe. Or a lot of cash in the house?’

  Gamble looked at Cooper thoughtfully, giving him his full attention for the first time.

  ‘Well, if you’re asking me, I’d say yes. People like that don’t make their money by paying income tax, do they? I wouldn’t be surprised to find a cupboard stuffed with cash. And I bet they wouldn’t keep quiet about it, either.’

  ‘What about the Barrons’ neighbours?’

  ‘Well, you’ve got the Hollands on one side, at Fourways. They’re mostly harmless. Spend their time walking and picking flowers, or some such. There’s the Kaye bloke at Moorside. He arrived in the village like the Queen visiting the natives. He’s never spoken to me yet, the stuck-up bugger. I never got inside the gate either.’

  ‘Interesting. And the Chadwicks? They’re nearest to you, but you haven’t mentioned them yet.’

  Gamble’s lips tightened. For once, he seemed to be reluctant to answer.

  ‘Mr Chadwick is a teacher, I believe.’

  Still Gamble was silent. His expression suggested that he was searching his memory for something to say. Something that would give the right impression, perhaps. Finally Mrs Gamble offered some information.

  ‘The Chadwicks are having a party tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘Their daughter has just got her A level results.’

  ‘A stars,’ burst out Gamble. ‘She was screeching about it to her friends on her mobile phone all day long. A stars. They all get A stars these days. It doesn’t mean a thing. In my day, you were lucky to get a few O levels.’

  ‘Well,
perhaps not everyone…’

  ‘The bloody Chadwicks think their child is an intellectual and artistic miracle, of course. Gifted at everything. A genius, but perfectly normal at the same time.’

  ‘And Mr Edson at Riddings Lodge?’

  ‘Oh, the lottery winner. We don’t see much of him.’

  ‘Lottery winner?’

  ‘So they say. Won millions on the rollover, he did. Bought Riddings Lodge and some place in Tuscany. Took on a housekeeper and moved his mother in to live a life of luxury. You see him swanning about in a brand-new Jag, or sometimes a vintage MG in the summer.’

  ‘Oh, I think I might have met him.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  Cooper thought of the man who had stopped his car in the village earlier to offer a piece of his mind.

  ‘It’s about time I had a word with him, I think. On his own territory.’

  Gamble was wearing brown corduroy trousers that were getting rather baggy at the knees. When he stepped outside to follow Cooper to the gate, he pulled on a dark grey fleece over his faded checked shirt.

  At the gate, he gazed up and down the street, his protruding ears almost flapping, the beads on his cowboy hat rattling quietly. He was like a Native American scout, scenting buffalo.

  Cooper moved closer to Gamble. He noticed that the sleeves of his fleece were covered with small burrs and thorns that had snagged in the wool. He thought of suggesting that a woollen fleece wasn’t the best garment to wear when squeezing through hedges or climbing fences. But he decided against it.

  Cooper drove the Toyota up the hill and turned up the small lane that ran past the back of Fourways. He was immediately faced with ‘Private Road’ signs and warnings that there was no public right of way. He slowed the car almost to a crawl as he reached a blind bend between high hedges. You wouldn’t want to meet something coming the other way.

  At the end, a driveway went off to the left towards Lane End. On his right, he was facing a set of gates.

  These gates weren’t just black wrought iron like the others he’d seen. They were decorated with gold highlights, and had gilt finials and scrollwork. It was as if they had pretensions to be the entrance to Buckingham Palace. They exuded an air of having gone one better than their neighbours. There would have been no doubt in Cooper’s mind who lived behind them, even if the name of the house hadn’t been prominently displayed. Riddings Lodge.

  Cooper pressed a button on the entry phone and waited for an answer.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Police, sir. Detective Sergeant Cooper, Edendale CID.’

  ‘Do you have identification?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But-’

  ‘There’s a camera.’

  ‘Okay, I see it.’

  Cooper held his warrant card up towards the lens of a camera mounted so that it was pointing directly at the area in front of the gates. After a moment, he heard the click and hum of the gates beginning to open.

  ‘All right.’

  The voice didn’t sound very welcoming. But not many people managed to give a good impression through the speaker on an entry phone.

  Cooper drove on to a vast paved area around a central water feature, with a fountain and stone cherubs. It was like driving into a Roman piazza. Well, a Roman piazza with imitation Victorian gas lamps. When he saw the house, at first it looked modern. Everything shiny and new, like an illustration from a high-end property brochure. He was thinking of an upmarket country hotel. Then he noticed that it featured several decorative arched leaded windows, as if the owner had changed his mind and decided to live in a bishop’s palace instead.

  Although he couldn’t see the extent of the grounds, he sensed that they must be enormous. All he could make out from the piazza was a large monkey puzzle tree, its shape suggesting a mature specimen, with deep green leaves forming dense clusters at the top. A male tree, judging by the cones.

  He was greeted at the door of the house by a woman in an apron, who introduced herself as the housekeeper. She led him into a hallway, watched him carefully as he wiped his feet, then escorted him across an expanse of carpet so soft and springy that he felt as though he was walking on a trampoline. A good jump and bounce, and his head would almost touch that crystal chandelier.

  He entered a room filled with a confusingly diverse range of furniture and ornaments. Porcelain vases, a brass bar ometer, a large tapestry showing figures against a background of stylised foliage and towers. There were so many items he felt as though he’d just walked into an antiques shop.

  The man he’d seen in the metallic blue Jaguar XF was sitting at a large round glass table. His image was reflected perfectly in its surface, as if he was looking out over a pool of clear, still water. Iron-grey hair swept back, a sardonic eyebrow, a loud and commanding tone of voice.

  ‘Russell Edson. This is my mother, Glenys.’

  Edson didn’t bother getting up, didn’t offer to shake hands. The gesture towards the plump lady with the blue rinse was fairly perfunctory too. He seemed supremely confident about who was important in this room, and who wasn’t. So far, he was only counting himself in the first category.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr Edson.’

  ‘Well, I hope you have some news, Sergeant. Made a quick arrest, have you? No, I suppose that would be too much to hope for from our local constabulary.’

  ‘It’s early days yet, sir,’ said Cooper, falling back on a stock phrase to cover what he would really have liked to say.

  ‘Early days? Of course, I expect you like to take your time. Judging from the speed that things happen around here, we’ll all be in our graves by the time you crack the case.’

  Cooper recalled the number plate of the Jag that Edson had been driving – RSE1. He could think of a few possibilities for what ‘S’ stood for. He could hear Gavin Murfin’s voice in his head. Russell Soddin’ Edson.

  ‘I just need to know if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary last night, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’ve talked to the old man of the woods? He can’t be hard to find, at least. You only need to follow the smell.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gamble, for heaven’s sake. Barry Gamble.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Gamble, yes.’

  ‘I mean, he was the only person who saw anything, so far as I’m aware. Not that he would be my idea of a reliable witness. But I suppose you have to make do with what you can get. There’s a definite shortage of evidence, from what I hear. The police are baffled, and all that.’

  Edson snorted loudly, and Cooper realised he was laughing.

  ‘How do you know about Mr Gamble being a witness, sir?’

  ‘Well, if there was going to be a witness, it would be him, wouldn’t it? It’s rather stating the obvious. Besides, he was here.’

  ‘Here? At your house? When?’

  ‘Last night, of course. The idiot came running up our drive and banged on the window. He frightened the life out of my mother, I can tell you. She can do without shocks like that at her age. So I went out to see what was going on, planning to give him a piece of my mind, and he was standing there on the drive, with the security lights on him, gibbering about Zoe Barron being injured. When I finally got a proper story out of him, I offered him the use of my mobile phone to dial 999. But it turned out the old fool had his own phone with him all the time.’

  Cooper glanced at Glenys Edson. She hadn’t spoken, but had stared at him so fixedly throughout his visit that she was starting to make him feel uneasy. When he looked more closely, he could see that she was heavily made up, and probably well over seventy. Perhaps she was afraid to speak in case the make-up cracked. Or perhaps she had tried to conceal her age with Botox treatment, and couldn’t move her face anyway.

  ‘So Mr Gamble ran to your house first,’ said Cooper, ‘before he called the police or an ambulance?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edson.

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  Edson shrugged. ‘Why do people do any
thing? In his case, I’d suggest insanity.’

  ‘I don’t think he mentioned that he came here – either to me, or to the officers who took his initial statement.’

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ said Edson. ‘If you’re going to spend much time in Riddings, you’ll find that people never tell you more than they think you need to know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  Edson seemed to look at him properly for the first time, perhaps detecting something in his tone of voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, would you like a drink?’ he said. ‘My housekeeper will-’

  ‘No thank you, sir. I have some more visits to make.’

  Cooper could have drunk a coffee right now. But he would have been afraid to put his cup down on that glass table. It must take someone hours to polish it to such an immaculate shine, without a streak or a smear. Even with a coaster, the danger of spilling just a drop of liquid on the table was too great. It would be like splashing acid on the Mona Lisa and expecting da Vinci to paint it all over again tomorrow.

  ‘In that case, if I can’t help you any further…’

  ‘Do you have many staff at Riddings Lodge, sir?’

  ‘The housekeeper, Mrs Davis, and a girl who helps her in the kitchen. A couple of cleaners. And an odd-job man I get in to maintain the property – there’s quite a lot of work, as you can imagine. Why do you ask?’

  ‘We’ll need to speak to them too.’

  ‘I’ll make sure they’re available.’

  Cooper gazed out of the window of the lounge. He was looking at a vast expanse of garden, sloping lawns leading down to a pond so large that it might have been described as a lake. The monkey puzzle tree stood in a prominent position, dominating the foreground.

  ‘The tree is splendid,’ he said.

  ‘Do you like it?’ asked Edson. ‘There are male and female trees, I’m told. You need both sexes for the seeds to be fertile, but there isn’t another one of this species for miles.’

  Beyond the tree, a long bank of rhododendrons formed a backdrop and blocked out any sign of the neighbouring properties. To Cooper’s eye, the flower beds on either side looked regimented and weed-free.

  ‘Are you a keen gardener, sir?’ he said.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Edson. ‘I get a man in to do that, too.’