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

by Stephen Booth

  Cooper looked up as he walked. The sky … well, the sky was so much more visible than during the day. It dominated the moor, weighed down on him as he walked. All the time he was conscious of its glittering black canopy hanging over his head and swirling on the horizon. Out on the moor at night, you soon became aware how big the sky was. So much bigger than your own little world. So huge that it put everything beneath it into perspective.

  Cooper was well aware that some people never looked up at the sky. It just didn’t occur to them to step out at night into an empty landscape and gaze at the stars. It was no wonder they failed to keep their lives in proper perspective. Small things seemed to take on an enormous significance for them. A momentary offence became a matter of life and death. An insult was the last straw. And the outcome could be disastrous. Tragic. If only they would all stop occasionally and look at the night sky, just take a few minutes to count the stars and reflect on the millions of solar systems they represented. The mind reeled at the immensity of the universe. The soul was humbled at an individual’s insignificant place in it.

  That was one of the reasons he had never thought the Chadwicks capable of acting against Jake and Zoe Barron. They had spent their time watching the Perseid meteor shower, up here on the Devil’s Edge in the darkness. No perceived insult or offence from their neighbours could seem important enough to them after that.

  Moths appeared suddenly in front of his face, fluttering out of the night. His ears told him that invisible sheep lay breathing and cudding in the heather. A gust of wind rattled through the bracken like an approaching train, blowing a squall of rain against his face. But there was nothing to worry about here. None of those things was a threat. It was only the imagination that turned them into something quite different.

  After a few minutes, his feet hit rock, and he knew he was near the edge. Stepping more carefully now, he felt his way between the boulders until a view opened up in front of him. It was a panorama across the Derwent Valley, deep pits of blackness with the lights of villages here and there like clusters of beads strung up the hillsides. From here, he could see right up to the ghostly gleam of the limestone quarries in Middleton Dale.

  For a moment he experienced a surge of panic as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He didn’t normally suffer from vertigo. But the sudden drop appearing beneath his feet had thrown him off balance, mentally as well as physically. He swayed a little on the balls of his feet, held out his arms to steady himself. The sensation was like solid ground lurching beneath his boots, as if the horizontal rock shelf had tilted towards forty-five degrees in an effort to tip him off the edge into the valley. For that second, he’d thought he was about to join the dead sheep, broken and bloodied amid the wreckage of millstones. But gradually the world was righting itself, his balance steadied and he knew he wasn’t going to fall.

  Cooper felt the sweat dampening his forehead as he took a deep breath. That was definitely a primal fear, the terror of falling from a great height. The edge was a place that seemed to exploit that fear. His footsteps had been led to the drop as if by some unseen temptation.

  The moor might look bare and empty in the cold light of reality. But in the minds of the people who’d travelled across it, there must have existed a dark forest of superstition, a psychological world inhabited by trolls and demons, crowded with all kinds of dangers that lurked in the darkness. Their consciousness would have been full of stories of death and madness, tales of ghosts and cut-throats, fear of storms and fog and sucking bogs. Above all, this would have become a mythical landscape where you might encounter terrible beasts.

  Yet if there were demons on Big Moor, he hadn’t seen them. The Savages had become as mythical as hobs. But what about the evil at work down there in Riddings? Were those devils human? Or just a part of the landscape?

  His mobile phone rang. Just one ring, then silence. Cooper looked at the display, and recognised the number he’d dialled only a few minutes ago. That was clever. Edson had called his phone to establish his position in the darkness. Now he knew exactly how close Cooper was.

  ‘Don’t come any nearer, Sergeant.’

  Cooper stopped, peering into the night.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, sir. I just need you to come with me.’

  ‘I’m fine here, thank you.’

  ‘Mr Edson …’

  ‘No. Stay where you are.’

  As his eyes adjusted, Cooper began to make out the shape of the man a few yards away. He couldn’t be sure from here, but it looked as though Edson was standing right on the edge, on the very rim of a flat, rocky outcrop jutting out into space. His figure was outlined against the distant lights somewhere up the valley. Around him was nothing but empty air.

  Cooper wiped the rain out of his eyes, and pulled his jacket closer around him. He was starting to get very cold, and the throbbing headache was returning. He knew that if he stayed motionless too long in this wind and rain, exhaustion would begin to get the better of him. He could feel it now, surging in waves through his veins.

  This mustn’t take too long. The only thing he could do was distract Edson’s attention, or try to get him to talk.

  ‘Mr Edson, you’re not a rock climber, are you?’ he said.

  ‘Me? Good heavens, no.’

  ‘Much too dangerous for you, I suppose?’

  ‘I can’t see the point of it. Why do you ask?’

  ‘We found magnesium carbonate in your car.’

  ‘Magnesium …?’

  ‘It’s used sometimes in taxidermy, for whitening skulls. You don’t go in for taxidermy, do you?’

  ‘No, of course not. Stuffing dead animals?’ Edson stared at him. ‘Sergeant, have you lost your mind? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘The other most common use for magnesium carbonate is in the form of a chalk. It’s useful as a drying agent for the hands. To help the grip, you know. It’s used by most often by gymnasts and weightlifters. And by rock climbers, of course.’

  ‘I don’t know how it could have got into my car. That’s a bit of a mystery.’

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ said Cooper.

  Through the rain, he saw another figure approaching along the edge. Not from the direction of the car park, but from the packhorse route. Villiers had worked her way round, finding her direction across the moor, even in the dark.

  A blast of wind buffeted the edge, and Cooper had difficulty keeping his feet. Edson swayed and held out his arms to balance himself. He was wearing a long black coat, which flapped angrily in the wind. The downpour was becoming torrential now. It pounded on the rocks and cascaded over the edge, forming instant waterfalls.

  This had to be done more quickly. Cooper knew he had to try to keep Edson talking, giving Villiers the chance to get into position.

  ‘We found Barry Gamble’s body,’ he said. ‘Was Mr Gamble trying to blackmail you, sir. Is that what it was?’

  Edson laughed. ‘Oh, he tried. In a very roundabout way. He was wasting his time with me, though.’

  ‘Because of the money, you mean?’

  ‘The lottery money? It’s all vanished. Extravagant expenditure, a series of bad investments. I had to mortgage the house to release some capital, and now I can’t make the payments on it. Everything will have to go. No, there’s no money left, not a penny. I’m up to my neck in debt.’

  ‘So the big lottery winner is broke?’

  ‘Absolutely stony, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A whole series of mistakes, Mr Edson.’

  ‘Mistakes? Yes. Too many to count.’

  Shivering, Cooper moved a few paces closer, feeling the rock carefully underfoot with each step. He saw Edson turn, and could sense the man looking at him through the rain.

  ‘It’s a pity I told you that Barry Gamble came to Riddings Lodge that night,’ said Edson. ‘You didn’t know about that until I mentioned it, did you? Gamble hadn’t let on.’

  ‘No, sir, he hadn’t.’

  Edson shook his head. ‘St
range man. I didn’t expect him to be the sort of person to keep a secret. Just one more mistake.’

  Finally, Cooper felt close enough to hold a proper conversation, instead of shouting against the noise of the wind and rain. He could almost see Edson’s eyes, just a glimmer of white in the darkness.

  ‘So what happened, Mr Edson? Why did it go so wrong?’

  ‘I’m not sure where it all went wrong. Oh, I didn’t know enough about money from the beginning, I suppose. I certainly didn’t realise how quickly it would disappear. And I was a fool to trust Jake Barron. But after that …’

  A few more steps, and Cooper was close now. He could see Edson smiling sadly. Yet his expression also seemed to reflect a sort of satisfaction, as if somehow things had actually gone the way he expected.

  ‘After that was when everything really started to fall apart, surely?’ said Cooper. ‘The death of Zoe Barron wasn’t part of the plan, was it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you just wanted to punish the Barrons. But you hired the wrong people. You’d heard about the Savages and how they got away with their crimes. You figured another attack would just be put down to them. But the people you hired weren’t professionals like the Savages. These boys were complete amateurs. They had no idea how to do the job right. They didn’t know the way to hurt someone without killing them. They didn’t know what to do to make it look like a genuine robbery. A mobile phone and a purse? What sort of haul is that? Right there, when you made that decision – that was your worst mistake.’

  Edson took a step closer to the edge, wiping the rain from his face. The wind whipped round him, lashing his hair, flapping his coat open like the wings of a bird.

  Cooper began to move towards him, but saw how slippery the wet rock was. He was afraid of startling Edson and making him lose his footing. The edge was too high, the drop too steep and sudden. Making a sudden move would be dangerous. He looked past Edson, met Villiers’ eye, made a small gesture to keep her back.

  ‘It’s very good,’ said Edson. ‘Your story, I mean. All those things that went wrong. I think it’s probably very accurate, in a way. An example of bad planning. Yes, it was an appalling decision to employ amateurs. It’s always better to spend a bit more money and use professionals. You get what you pay for, after all.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  Edson paused, and looked out over the dark valley.

  ‘There’s only one problem with that story, Sergeant Cooper,’ he said. ‘The person who hired those thugs to attack the Barrons – it wasn’t me.’

  With a loud crack, a slice of rock shifted, dropped, then slowly peeled away from the face of the edge.

  Cooper saw Russell Edson held for one second in mid-air, his arms outstretched, his coat flapping around him like wings. He was a huge black bird, screaming and screaming, a creature fighting against the blast of the wind and the pull of gravity. His last moment was only a flicker of movement, a dark thrashing against the sky.

  And then he began to fall.

  28

  Tuesday

  On the eastern edges, car windscreens flashed in the sun, like secret signals being sent across the valley. There would be no climbers on the Devil’s Edge today. The rock faces were too wet, and there was too much police activity. Parties of gritstone addicts took one look and went further north, to Froggatt or Stanage.

  But at E Division headquarters in West Street, Edendale, plenty was going on. The August bank holiday weekend was over, and Ben Cooper was at his desk, chest-high in paperwork. Who knew there would be so many forms to fill in when you’d just been involved in a fatal incident?

  He’d told the whole story to Liz the day before, emptying out his feelings to her all day long, it seemed. And she’d listened to him for hours, as the bank holiday crowds thronged into the Peak District around them, intent on squeezing every last ounce of enjoyment from the scenery, from the picturesque villages, the stately homes and heritage centres. It had meant, for once, that Liz didn’t talk only about the wedding. He cared about her deeply, of course. Yet he was already starting to feel exhausted by the subject.

  Wearily, Cooper stopped for a moment to gaze out of the window of the CID room at the rooftops of the town, longing to be out there in the open. But he was stuck here for quite a while yet, head down, repeating details he’d already given several times over.

  At the same time, he was waiting impatiently for something to be decided. And waiting, as everyone knew, was the most difficult thing in the world.

  ‘Daydreaming, Ben?’

  He started, and turned to find Diane Fry at his shoulder. She had never lost that ability to creep up on him when he wasn’t expecting it. It was a trick that made him feel particularly vulnerable.

  ‘Oh, Diane.’ He stood up eagerly. ‘Is there any …?’

  ‘News? Yes, the CPS have made a decision. Quick work, for them. But they’ve established precedents in the last few years. Similar cases, with similar reasons for their decision.’

  ‘What decision?’

  ‘No prosecution,’ said Fry. ‘Not in the public interest.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’

  ‘I’m pleased for your brother, Ben.’

  ‘And it’s a victory for you too.’

  A shadow passed across her face. ‘A victory of sorts,’ she said.

  ‘No, you did a really good job at the farm,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Average, I thought.’

  ‘Well, anyway … Thanks, Diane. I just wanted to say that.’

  ‘I didn’t do it as a favour to you.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t. But I’m saying thank you nevertheless.’

  Cooper wondered why it always seemed to end up like this between them, why even saying thank you had to sound like an argument.

  ‘You know, when you first came to E Division,’ he said, ‘I really thought we would be able to work together.’

  ‘It’s too late for that now. There’s one DS too many in Edendale. A team can only have one leader.’

  ‘What went wrong, Diane?’ he asked, hearing the echo of a question he’d asked Russell Edson not so long ago

  ‘Wrong? I couldn’t say.’

  Cooper gazed at her, but she looked away. To his ears, her answer seemed to mean ‘I don’t want to say’. Perhaps she just liked to give the impression that she knew more than she was telling. On the other hand, he couldn’t resist a nagging suspicion that she did know something he didn’t.

  He was sure of one thing, though. He would never find out what it was unless he asked her exactly the right question.

  ‘You had a tough one in this Riddings place, from what I hear,’ said Fry. ‘Too many people with malicious intent. Whether there’s a prosecution or not, it never makes for a good outcome.’

  Cooper wondered if that was a subtle dig, some oblique reference to the Bridge End Farm incident.

  ‘Matt was a different case,’ he said.

  ‘I know the difference,’ said Fry. ‘There are people who think they’re doing the right thing, protecting their families. And there are others who know that what they’re doing is wrong, but don’t care. I met one of those not very long ago, in Birmingham. He was as close to me as your brother is to you, genetically speaking. In other ways, we were worlds apart. But he’s gone now.’

  ‘Oh, you mean your biological father. He’s still alive, though, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, as far as I know. But to be honest, I wish I’d killed him.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Cooper, shocked that she could even contemplate the idea.

  ‘Yes, really.’

  He began to feel angry. ‘If both your parents had died, you wouldn’t even think of saying that.’

  She looked at him then, a mixture of emotions passing across her face. He wondered which of them would win. But this was Diane Fry he was talking to.

  ‘I suppose I ought to apologise,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, don’t feel that you have to.’

  �
��We’re so different, you and me. I’ll never understand your world. And you, Ben, will never understand mine. I’m not going to apologise for that.’

  ‘That wasn’t … Oh, never mind.’

  ‘I am sorry about your parents, really. I imagine it must have been hard.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s only an effort of the imagination with you. You don’t really understand, do you?’

  Fry was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t think I ever did,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing you’re right about.’

  He searched for something else to say. But he saw Gavin Murfin watching them from across the room, and only one thing came to mind.

  ‘So were there any repercussions for you, Diane? I mean from your own, er … incident in Nottingham?’

  ‘I received words of advice.’

  ‘Lucky.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  Cooper watched Fry walk away. He hadn’t asked her whether she had been successful in obtaining a transfer, or finding another job. He knew she’d been looking for a few weeks now. If she did, though, he would be the last person she told.

  Well, one thing was certain. When she did go, Fry would be remembered. Though maybe not for the right reasons. Murfin still talked about the battered chips he’d seen in the Black Country, when he was there with Fry on an inquiry. He’d been trying to persuade his local chippy to make them for him ever since. Luckily for his arteries, they’d refused so far.

  Fry paused in the doorway, caught once more in the act of passing from one place to another. It was the way that Cooper would always imagine her.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘who have you got in Interview Room One?’

  ‘It’s my Riddings suspect,’ said Cooper. ‘Name of Edson.’

  In Interview Room One, Cooper sat down next to DI Hitchens and regarded the man across the table. He was accompanied by his solicitor, and he looked relaxed and confident.