Ben Cooper and Diane Fry 11 - The Devil’s Edge

by Stephen Booth

  An incongruous shape caught her eye. Something round and shiny, a curious object to be nestled in a heap of cow manure. Fry reached in a hand. It was fortunate that she was still wearing her gloves. She took hold of the object and drew it slowly from the manure. It kept coming – more than three feet of it; a length of pale, smooth wood sliding into the light and becoming thicker as it emerged. A baseball bat.

  ‘Well I think that’s pretty clear,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

  *

  An hour later, DCI Mackenzie was preparing to leave the farm. Before he got into his car, he turned to Fry with an ironic smile on his lips.

  ‘You’re a real farm girl, aren’t you? A proper expert in rural life. I was thinking of offering you a job with my team in Derby, but you’re obviously more at home here in the country.’

  ‘What?’ said Fry, outraged. ‘What?’

  Mackenzie laughed as he opened his car door, wiping the soles of his boots carefully on the grass.

  ‘Look at this stuff. I don’t want to take any of this back to the city with me, do I?’

  Fry stood stunned as Mackenzie and his team left the farm.

  ‘A farm girl? Me?’

  At West Street, Cooper had just returned from a session with Superintendent Branagh and DI Hitchens, justifying the exercise to empty and examine the slurry pits outside Riddings.

  In any other inquiry, it would have been out of the question. But these were no ordinary low-priority burglaries they were dealing with. This was a high-profile case, and for once the budget had been stretched. It was important to be seen to be doing something, and officers with shovels and expensive machinery were just the ticket.

  Gavin Murfin was very subdued today. Cooper looked at him, aware that Murfin wasn’t on the rota for duty this weekend.

  ‘Should you be in, Gavin?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but they couldn’t manage without me.’

  ‘Overtime, then?’

  ‘Oh? It hadn’t even crossed my mind.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Well, I’m here to help, anyway.’

  ‘Thanks, Gavin,’ said Cooper.

  ‘First of all, there’s a message for you. William Chadwick phoned. He and his wife want to talk.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘Do you think they might be involved in some way? In connection with the deaths of the Barrons, or Martin Holland?’

  ‘Not really. I did think at one time of finding out about the incident at Chadwick’s school. Checking out the family of the pupil involved.’

  ‘Oh, in case it could have been a revenge attack that went pear-shaped? They just got the wrong house?’

  ‘Valley View is directly across the lane from the Chadwicks. I thought if the attackers were coming into the village by an indirect route, they might easily have got confused.’

  ‘It’s possible. But …?’

  ‘I didn’t bother checking in the end. It doesn’t seem necessary now.’

  At The Cottage, Cooper was invited into a sitting room somewhere in the depths of the barn conversion, with French windows looking out on to a large pond surrounded by reeds and oriental grasses. There was no sign of the herons today. Had they been scared off, or had they simply exhausted the available supply of fish?

  Marietta Chadwick did most of the talking. Her husband sat fidgeting with anxiety, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  ‘This isn’t a place where we expect violence to happen, you know,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘It’s rather beyond our experience.’

  ‘Not for all of you.’ said Cooper.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Some of the residents in this village are probably more familiar with violence than you might think.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  She twisted her hands together nervously. ‘I’m just trying to explain why we … well, why our initial response might have been the wrong one, in retrospect.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We didn’t want to put ourselves forward, that’s the truth of it. We’ve got so used to trying to keep a low profile. Just in case, you know.’

  ‘There’s really no need to make excuses, Mrs Chadwick.’

  ‘I wasn’t … Well, anyway … it’s about Russell Edson.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We’ve never been happy with him. Such an odd man. That Barry Gamble is odd, too, of course – but in a different way. We’ve always thought he was harmless. Not everybody agrees with us, though.’

  ‘Mr Edson?’ said Cooper, trying to steer her back on topic.

  ‘Edson, yes. Well, he’s a complete pain in the neck, to be honest. Have you seen his place? Of course you have.’

  ‘It’s well protected.’

  ‘He uses that CCTV system like a surveillance network. We imagine him sitting inside the house, watching his monitors twenty-four hours a day. If you do the least thing on that lane, he sees you and comes out to object. If you park your car with its wheels slightly over the verge, or let your dog go to the toilet on the grass, or even pick a blackberry off the hedge … The smallest thing, and he’ll be out shouting that it’s his property and you have no rights. He’s a very rude person. Very arrogant.’

  ‘It’s a wonder no one ever punched him on the nose,’ said Chadwick.

  ‘William,’ said his wife warningly.

  ‘I’m speaking metaphorically, of course.’

  ‘Oh, his metaphorical nose,’ said Cooper. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Also, he wants to cut down that wonderful monkey puzzle tree,’ said Mrs Chadwick.

  ‘Does he? I thought he was quite proud of it.’

  Mrs Chadwick shook her head. ‘He has no feeling for anything if it gets in his way. He wants to clear the view of Riddings Edge from his terrace.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Those trees are dying out in their native habitat, you know. Climate change is causing forest fires in Chile.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. But …?’

  She nodded, and looked at her husband. Cooper had the feeling they must have discussed this long and hard, maybe all week. Had it taken them five days, ever since the death of Zoe Barron, to make their minds up about what to do? What had convinced them in the end? he wondered. Another death? Or two, even. The deaths of Martin Holland and Jake Barron had intervened.

  ‘We didn’t come forward before, because it seemed to us that it would only complicate matters,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘The situation here is worrying enough, after all. And we kept hearing that police resources were overstretched. We didn’t want to distract you from doing your job with irrelevant information.’

  ‘When you say “we” …?’

  ‘Bill and I talked it over, of course. And …’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Well, we discussed it with one of our neighbours.’ She pointed vaguely to the north. ‘Mr Nowak, at Lane End.’

  ‘This is about Tuesday night?’ said Cooper impatiently. ‘The time of the attack at Valley View.’

  ‘Yes. There were people in the village that night, you see. Oh, I know that sounds strange. There are always people in the village. And it’s not always clear why. But these were different.’

  Her husband couldn’t resist butting in.

  ‘Russell Edson used to have parties, you know,’ he said. ‘All kinds of people came then. But they haven’t taken place for a while. That’s why we noticed, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you see any vehicles at all?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Nothing unusual.’

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  ‘Well … one. Though the vehicle itself wasn’t unusual. We see it in the village all the time. But it was a bit late for it to be around.’

  ‘A bit late?’

  Mrs Chadwick looked at Cooper rather too brightly.

  ‘Yes, late. After all, you don’t do much gardening in the dark, do you?’

  When he got back to his car, Cooper wond
ered whether to return to the office. There was a nagging voice at the back of his mind – a constant muttering of anxiety, a fretful whisper reeling off all the possible developments at Bridge End he should be worried about. But he knew that if he stopped to listen to it, he would never do anything else. He had to find something to occupy his mind. Carol Villiers had been right. He had to focus, and stay focused.

  A call came in before he could make up his mind what to do next.

  ‘Gavin? Have you got some news?’

  ‘Yes. I was feeling particularly spiteful today, so I decided to check on Mr Edson’s alibi for Tuesday night.’

  ‘He was out for dinner,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You checked up with the restaurant? What made you do that?’

  ‘I don’t like him. Is that a good enough reason?’

  ‘It’ll do for me, Gavin.’

  ‘When we visited him, I remember him being very specific about what he and his mother ordered. Migratory ducks and all that.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘To me that suggested a very good memory. Or more likely that he’d made a note of it, so that he could sound totally convincing if he was asked about it later.’

  ‘Gavin, sometimes I love your appalling cynicism.’

  ‘It gets results,’ said Murfin modestly. ‘See, by doing that, he wasn’t actually telling us a lie. Only by omission, anyway.’

  ‘Go on, then. What was it he omitted to mention?’

  ‘That it wasn’t just him and his mother who were supposed to be eating at Bauers that night. They had a table booked for three.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘They know Edson well there. He dines with us often, they said. So I asked who else was in the party. The head waiter sounds the sort of bloke who clocks everything.’ Murfin laughed. ‘A bit like an upmarket Barry Gamble, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, Gavin.’

  ‘Anyway, there was no third person. A table was set for three, but it seems the third person never arrived.’

  26

  At Riddings Lodge, Cooper found only Glenys Edson at home. In the room packed with antiques, he saw that the glass table was damaged. A jagged crack ran right across it from one edge, shattering the perfect reflection.

  ‘An accident,’ said Glenys Edson, before he had even asked.

  ‘What a shame.’

  ‘These things happen.’

  Cooper glanced at the tapestry, remembering his conversation with Gavin Murfin. You can’t just sit and do nothing for hour after hour, day after day. You’d go mad. You’d start tearing up the furniture.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know when Russell will be back,’ she said. ‘He’s taken the car for a spin.’

  ‘The Jaguar? No, of course not. The MG convertible.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you know where’s he gone?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Mrs Edson, I need you to talk to me about your son. And about Tuesday night.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not telling you anything. Not without Russell here. You’ll have to speak to him.’

  ‘On Tuesday night, you visited Bauers at Warren Hall. You were dining in the restaurant there. Who else was supposed to be with you?’

  Mrs Edson drew herself up as stiffly as she could. ‘I’m afraid that I’m not going to be answering your questions.’

  ‘You know this is a murder inquiry?’

  But he could see that meant nothing to her.

  ‘You’ll have to arrest me then,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, Detective Sergeant, I’ll ask you to leave.’

  Frustrated, Cooper peered through the gates of Riddings Lodge as he used his phone to call the office. He got through to Gavin Murfin.

  ‘How are they getting on with the slurry pits, do you know?’

  ‘They’ve got two pumps set up to remove the liquid, but there are several inches of thick mud at the bottom, which is slowing the job down. I’m told the smell is appalling.’

  ‘Oh, I can imagine.’

  ‘In fact, we’re starting to get complaints from the residents in Riddings,’ said Murfin. ‘I guess the wind must be blowing in the wrong direction.’

  ‘I hope to God they find something,’ said Cooper. ‘Otherwise they’re going to throw me into one of those slurry pits.’

  ‘We’ve found the van, though.’

  ‘The gardener’s van? AJS Gardening Services?’

  ‘That’s the one. Dumped in a lane behind Riddings. No sign of the owner, Mr Summers. Luke Irvine is there.’

  Cooper was at the location within a couple of minutes. The doors of the van had already been opened. In the back, among the gardening tools, he found a small pile of stainless-steel posts, each measuring over three feet long. They were the kind of thing used for preventing parking on grass verges. Very popular in Riddings.

  He picked one up and slapped it against his palm.

  ‘These must weigh about eight pounds each.’

  ‘Good enough for the job,’ said Irvine.

  ‘A bit unwieldy, I would have thought. But if that was what came to hand … a thing this size would certainly strike fear into your victim.’

  ‘What are they exactly?’

  ‘These are the posts they embed in the ground to stop people parking on the grass,’ said Cooper.

  ‘So they are. I tripped over one the other day.’

  ‘And I parked up against one. I don’t know if these are the exact posts used in the attack on the Barrons. But somewhere in Riddings, there’ll be at least one with traces of Zoe Barron’s blood on it.’

  Since Edson had left the Jaguar behind at Riddings Lodge, Cooper called in and asked for the search to be extended to the car. He remembered the thorough cleaning it had received earlier in the week, a handyman in waterproof trousers working away on the bodywork under Edson’s eagle eye. If any evidence was available to be found, the interior was likely to provide more traces.

  Cooper thought about the handyman. He had been checked out, like everyone else. But every job here was contracted out. Someone came in to do the cleaning, the gardening, to wash the car. There was a man to fill the swimming pool, and another man to rake the gravel. And teams of small, soot-blackened children to sweep the chimneys, too.

  Well, maybe not the last one. But it was a close-run thing.

  Gavin Murfin turned up among a team of officers who were arriving to begin a search of the grounds. This could be a long job, unless they had a stroke of luck.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ said Murfin. ‘I suppose Mr Edson didn’t think we would check his alibi. He just couldn’t imagine us going to Warren Hall and asking about his dining arrangements. It took them completely by surprise when I phoned.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s been living in the real world,’ said Cooper. ‘Some of these people in Riddings have probably been used to it all their lives. Being comfortably off, I mean. But something happens to people when they suddenly have unimaginable amounts of money. It seems to be too much for the mind to take.’

  ‘You know what? I think I might lose touch with reality too, if I woke up one morning and discovered I’d won millions of pounds.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve often thought winning the lottery was the worst thing that could happen to anybody. Buying a ticket every week is like playing Russian roulette.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t do Mr Edson much good, in the end.’

  Cooper looked back towards Riddings Lodge. He could only see the roof from here, the late-afternoon sun reflecting from the dormer windows. He was reminded of that glimpse of Chatsworth House a few days ago. Some properties looked magical from a distance. But not so good close up.

  ‘Actually, it’s an older story than that,’ he said.

  Murfin took no notice of the comment, as he often did. If it was too difficult to think about, he didn’t bother. It was a sensible attitude, one that had probably helped him get through life so far without going mad. />
  ‘This Russell Edson,’ said Murfin. ‘I was always a bit troubled about him, like. He gives off the airs and graces, but everyone knows his situation. All fur coat and no knickers, my old mother would have said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It means all show. Outward appearance, with no substance underneath. Someone who pretends to be wealthy or important, when actually all they’ve done is learned how to present themselves. What you find underneath doesn’t match what you see on the surface.’

  ‘All outward appearance. You think so?’

  Murfin was warming to his subject now. For once, he wasn’t eating, or even chewing. Cooper realised that he was serious, might even be excited about the job now that things seemed to be going their way.

  ‘Listen,’ said Murfin. ‘My dad worked for a company once where they were up against a serious business rival. One day, the rivals put personalised number plates on all their vans. I thought that was pretty impressive myself. But Dad told me that when you saw someone put personalised plates on, you knew they were in trouble. In business, you have to pretend you’re doing well. You’ve got to find some way of putting out a message, like. And he was right, too. The rival firm went bust a few months later.’

  Cooper turned at a sudden flurry of excitement in the grounds of the lodge. One of the officers in the search team had raised a hand, and had become instantly the centre of attention. He was standing near the long rhododendron hedge that marked the boundary of the property.

  ‘Sergeant Cooper!’ the officer called urgently. ‘Over here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a body.’

  It lay half on the lawn and half under the rhododendron bushes. Legs in brown corduroy trousers, torso in an old brown anorak. Cooper knew who it was before he had seen the face. Barry Gamble. Lacerations on his face, thorns embedded in his flesh, the hair on the back of his head matted with blood.

  Cooper and Murfin stood watching as the scene was taped off.