Dancing With the Virgins

14

‘All right, what’s the latest weirdo count?’

To Ben Cooper, Chief Superintendent Jepson looked as though he didn’t really want to know the answer. It was a question that risked spoiling the Tuesday morning meeting almost before it had started. Cooper tried hard to fade into the background of the incident room. He and Todd Weenink would be following up the line of enquiry about a white van reported in the Ringham Edge area, which one witness claimed to have seen before, and which might therefore be local. That was all the excitement he needed for this morning.

Cooper saw DCI Tailby hesitate at the Chief Super’s question and look sideways at DI Hitchens. But Hitchens looked very cheerful for such an early hour, and he had the answers ready.

‘Well, the uniforms on duty up there say they had trouble turning away a bunch of characters in black coats,’ he said. ‘Apparently they were carrying so much metalwork on their bodies they wouldn’t have got through airport security without the help of a surgeon.’

‘What did they want?’

‘They said blood had been spilled on the Virgins, and that meant the power would manifest some time in the next twenty-four hours, so they had to be there to receive it.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Jepson.

‘They were pretty insistent. In the end, they only retreated as far as the pub in Ringham. The inspector is worried that when they come back they’ll be tanked up and more aggressive. Fortunately, I think we’ve managed to keep them out of the way of the other lot so far.’

‘What other lot?’

‘The other lot who say they have to perform a cleansing ritual dedicated to the Great Goddess, so as to dispel the influence of evil from the stone circle, which is a sacred place. Some of the bobbies were all for letting them go ahead with that one.’

‘You what?’

‘Well, they’re all women, and it seems they have to perform this ritual naked.’

Jepson put his head in his hands and groaned.

‘It’s called “sky-clad”,’ said Hitchens.

‘What is?’

‘Having no clothes on. You’re clad in nothing but the sky, so that you’re much closer to nature and the Great Goddess.’

‘Hitchens, are you enjoying this?’

‘No, sir. I’m just reporting the information that the uniformed section gathered. They spent quite a while talking to this lot, I think. We might have some converts in E Division. They’ll be wanting to form an Edendale chapter of the Order of the Golden Moon.’

‘Haven’t we had any plain old psychics and mediums, then?’

‘You’re kidding. Twelve at the last count. We’ve also had a dowser offering to locate the knife using nothing but a bent twig; an animal linguist who wants to interrogate the squirrels, because she thinks they could have been eyewitnesses, and a UFO expert who has proof that the victim was abducted by aliens for unspecified experiments which went wrong. Oh, and some preservation experts from that government department, English Heritage.’

‘English Heritage? What the hell do they want?’

‘They demand the right to inspect the stone circle for damage. They say it’s a priceless piece of our cultural history.’

Jepson frowned. ‘I’ve heard that phrase before. Is it from a book or something?’

‘Could be,’ said Hitchens. ‘It seems to be us that English Heritage suspect of damaging the stones, by the way.’

‘They’re nuts. Get rid of them.’

‘They’re not half as bad as the press. That lot are all over us like a nasty disease.’

‘Was that their chopper over the moor yesterday?’

‘Sure. And it was also one of their blokes we pulled down from the top of a tree with his long lens. He’d already been up there a day or so, in camouflage gear. He slept tied to a branch. He said he learned how to do it at an eco-warriors’ protest camp in Berkshire.’

‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Jepson, half-admiringly.

‘I don’t know about neat. Twenty-four hours is a long time. You should have seen the state of the grass at the bottom of the tree. That’s how we located him. Even our bobbies know human shit when they see it.’

Jepson pulled a face. Then he looked suspiciously at Tailby, who had been listening silently.

‘What have you got to say, Stewart?’

‘It’s a pretty depressing story, I’m afraid.’ Tailby sounded resigned. ‘The sixteen fires we found remnants of, they were all set during the last three months. Some of the people who made them built them properly. Others. . well, others were lucky not to have set fire to the whole moor. There are the animal bones we found buried nearby, too. First indications suggest a medium-sized dog.’

Cooper remembered seeing the slides of the animal bones. It hadn’t been immediately obvious what they were. They were just slivers of something pale caught in the dark fibrous peat, like those burnt stems of heather, crumbling and white. Then the slide had suddenly come into focus, and the shapes of the white splinters came together in a vaguely familiar shape. He had thought of the farmyard at home, of rats caught by the sheepdogs, and the discarded evidence of foxes hunting in the fields. But this wasn’t quite the same. This was something much bigger, something with a heavier and wider skull than a rat.

‘Do those two gypsies go in for animal sacrifices?’ asked Jepson.

‘The youths in the van? They’re not exactly gypsies,’ said Hitchens.

‘Whatever they are.’

‘They’re just travellers, sir,’ said Cooper.

‘Travellers, my arse. They’re not going anywhere. What makes them travellers?’

‘They’re classed as having no settled home, sir. A Volkswagen van doesn’t count as a home under the law, even if it’s broken down.’

‘So what do they live on down there, Cooper? Nuts and berries, or what?’

‘Our information is that Calvin Lawrence catches the bus into Bakewell once a week to collect his benefit money.’

‘Ah. So he’s a Social Security scrounger. What about the other one?’

‘Simon Bevington isn’t even registered for benefits,’ said Cooper. ‘He seems to stay in the vicinity of the quarry or on the moor. He doesn’t claim anything. I suppose they must share what little they’ve got.’

‘Oh, love and peace, hallelujah,’ said Jepson.

‘It must be enough for both of them — they hardly have an extravagant lifestyle. But they’re not gypsies.’

‘They could be circus trapeze artists, for all I care, Cooper. Have we asked them about animal sacrifices?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then ask them. And find this Martin Stafford and the girl, Ros Daniels. We ought to be able to find at least one of them, shouldn’t we? Is there anything else? And don’t make it anything too exciting. I’ve had enough for today.’

‘Well,’ said Hitchens, as if suddenly noticing an important item that everyone had forgotten, ‘there is the phallus farm.’

‘What kind of farm?’ said Jepson.

‘Well, I don’t mean Warren Leach’s kind of farm. There are no EU subsidies for this particular crop. .’

Warren Leach was waiting for the milk tanker. It was one of the few routines that still held his day together. Bringing the cows in, milking, waiting for the tanker. The morning’s yield was taken for Hartington Stilton, the local cheese made at the dairy in Dovedale. It was something most farmers were proud of, that their milk was going for Stilton. It was like still being part of the traditional dairy industry of the dales, not an anonymous unit of production for some huge commercial organization. Leach had once been proud of it himself, and had boasted about the quality of his milk. Now he found he couldn’t care less. He would have been just as happy to pour the stuff down the drain or into the nearest ditch.

The lad who normally came to help him had not turned up yesterday or today, so Leach had done everything himself. Gary was one of the Dawsons, from over the moor at Pilhough. The Dawsons weren’t up to much, but at least they were farming folk. But there had been a blazing row on Sunday afternoon, when Leach had lost his temper and sworn at the lad and accused him of being idle. Gary had threatened he would never come again, and it looked as though he never would.

In a way, Leach preferred it; he preferred to be left on his own, to have so much to do that it left no time for thinking. Yet it only lasted for a while, only until after the tanker had gone and the rest of the jobs held no urgency. Then, when there were no cows bellowing for attention, no tanker driver sounding his horn in the lane, when his sons had gone off to school in Cargreave on the bus — then he found the rest of the day stretched before him endlessly.

But this morning a car had arrived. He had been expecting the tanker turning in from the road, but the sound of the engine was wrong. The big diesel always made the glass in the windows of the farmhouse vibrate, and the layer of dust on the window ledge dance and slide before it settled into a new pattern. There had been plenty of police vehicles going by the farm for the past two days, of course — but they went straight up the lane, past the front of the shippon. They didn’t turn into the yard like this car did.

Leach’s chest grew tight with apprehension. He had known it would only be a matter of time before the men he feared arrived.

The farmer looked at his hands, astonished at the dirt ingrained in his fingers, as if he hadn’t washed for days. How long had his hands been like that? He glanced at the steel cabinet where his shotgun was locked, and waited for the familiar surge of aggression to come, for the righteous anger to drive strength and heat into his limbs. He was the sort of man who ought to be able to see a bailiff off, no problem. But something was wrong. Somehow the adrenalin failed to flow, the flush of testosterone never came. He felt weak and helpless; he was alone and cornered, yet with no fight left in him. It was the feeling that he had always dreaded would come to him in the end.

Leach laughed quietly as he listened for the men to enter the gate. ‘You’ve had it, Warren. What use are you now?’ He thought of not answering the door, of hiding in another room until the strangers went away. It was what a woman might do, or a child. Was he reduced to that?

Unable to face the answer, he stood paralysed when the knock came at the door. A second knock followed, more impatient. Then Leach moved, without a thought in his head about what he would say. What did bailiffs do in these circumstances? Obviously, the men hadn’t come alone in a car to take away his furniture. Maybe they had come to deliver a court notice. Maybe they had just come to check what he had that was worth selling. Good luck to them, then. There was precious little.

But they weren’t bailiffs, after all, just the police again. The first face he saw he recognized immediately, and it reminded him that there were vitally important things he ought to have done, but hadn’t. He had watched the police cars and vans go backwards and forwards across his land, cursing each one as they went, yet desperate to know what they were doing up on the moor, to hear what they had found out about the woman who had died. He longed for someone to tell him what was going on. Yet now these policemen had arrived, he didn’t know what to do, except to tell them he had nothing to say.

‘Detective Constable Cooper and Detective Constable Weenink, Mr Leach. We just need a few words, that’s all. We won’t keep you from your work long. We know how busy you farmers always are.’

The one who spoke tried a smile. Leach refused to be impressed. ‘Cut the crap. I see enough of it round here.’

‘If that’s the way you want it.’

Leach looked at the other one, the big one in the leather jacket, and felt a small measure of his old confidence starting to return. ‘What have they sent you two for? Ranger scared to come here any more, is he? Thought he needed to send in the heavy mob? You won’t get anything out of me, anyway.’

‘We’re collecting information about vehicles seen in this area on Sunday,’ said Weenink, staring at the farmer.

‘Are you now? But they’ve asked me about this before.’

‘We’re following up a report on a van that was noticed leaving your farm entrance between two and three o’clock that day. Was that your van?’

‘Does it look as though I’ve got a van? A Land Rover, but that’s knackered. Otherwise it’s a tractor or the back of a cow if I want to get about.’

‘Does that mean I can put you down as “does not own a van”?’

‘If you like.’

‘The witness said it was a white van, but not very clean. Probably a Ford Transit.’

‘Lots of those about.’

‘Do you recall seeing this van?’ asked Cooper. ‘Did it belong to a visitor to the farm?’

‘I don’t get many visitors here.’

‘But that afternoon you did, didn’t you?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘Could it have been a sales rep? An agricultural engineer? Something like that?’

‘Can’t afford to speak to either of ’em at the moment.’

‘A parcel delivery?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Do you know anybody with a van of that description?’

‘Listen, let me help you out. It would likely have been some bugger who’d got lost and decided to use my land to turn round on. Or maybe he’d stopped to have his sandwiches with his van blocking my gateway. That’s happened before, too. Police’ll never do anything about it, obviously. Too bloody busy, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sure if you phoned the station, they would send somebody out when they had a car available.’

Leach began to cough. He was wishing the policemen would go away; his lungs were responding as if he had an allergic reaction. He was too tired to argue with them. Besides, they didn’t look as though they would put up with absolutely anything, the way the Ranger did.

‘Do you get joyriders up here?’ said Cooper. ‘It’s a quiet spot. They like to abandon vehicles somewhere and set fire to them.’

Leach followed the detective’s gaze. He was looking at the scorched shell of the pick-up on the hard-standing near the big shed.

‘A bit of an accident,’ said Leach. ‘I’ll get a few spares off it when I get round to it.’

‘This white van. .’ said Weenink.

Leach shrugged. ‘I’d like to help, but — ’

‘What about your two sons?’ asked Cooper.

‘What about them?’

‘Were they at home on Sunday? They might have seen the van. Can we speak to them?’

‘They’re at school.’

‘Someone could call back later.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘And your wife?’ said Cooper. ‘Was she here at the time?’

‘My wife?’ Leach finally spat out the irritation that had been troubling his lungs, narrowly missing Cooper’s boots. ‘You’re wasting your time, mister. You can forget all about her.’

Later in the morning, Diane Fry and DI Hitchens walked into the DCI’s office. Tailby looked at them with a faint hope. ‘Is there something?’ he said.

‘A couple of things on the parents. The Westons,’ said Hitchens.

‘Oh?’

‘Number one, they had a burglary last year, at a weekend cottage they’ve got at Ashford-in-the-Water.’

‘A weekend cottage? That’s nice, on a teacher’s salary.’

‘Apparently, the Westons are planning on retiring to this cottage in a year or two. Presumably Mr Weston is taking early retirement. He’s a deputy head, by the way.’

‘A good pension, I suppose.’

Fry thought the DCI was starting to sound wistful. His own retirement date was a few years away yet, but he could make it come closer if he wanted to. She wondered how much the cottage had cost the Westons. She imagined honeysuckle growing by the front door and roses in the garden, a couple of loungers by a small pond with a few Koi carp. She tried to imagine Tailby living in such a cottage. But Eric Weston had a Mrs Weston to retire to his cottage with. It made a difference.

‘A burglary, eh?’

‘And we detected it, too,’ said Hitchens. ‘Who needs Home Office grants?’

Tailby grunted, unamused. The previous year, word had gone round that there was government cash available for special initiatives targeting residential burglaries. Divisions were invited to come up with their own projects — but there were criteria to be met. There had to be a target area with a high enough level of burglaries. E Division had failed to get the cash, because no matter how they juggled the geography or the time periods, the figures just wouldn’t stack up.

‘This was more than a burglary, actually. The place was trashed. It was a real mess — you should see the photos.’

‘There’s nothing new in that.’

‘I talked to the investigating officer yesterday, anyway,’ said Hitchens. ‘At least he’s still in the division. Usually you find they’ve long since moved on somewhere else, or they’ve packed it in and joined that firm of enquiry agents that set up in town a couple of years back.’

‘What’s the other thing?’ asked the DCI.

‘Well, Mr Weston had a little bit of trouble last year. There was an enquiry after a fatal accident to a child on a school trip he was leading.’

‘OK. We might as well ask him about it, I suppose.’

‘More than that, sir.’

‘Why?’

Hitchens tapped the file. ‘It all came out when we made the arrest for the burglary. This convicted offender, name of Wayne Sugden — it turned out he was the uncle of the child that died. It was no secret that the family blamed Mr Weston for the accident, because it was all over the papers. He got death threats, too, but we could never prove where they came from. It seems the Sugdens are a pretty close clan in Edendale. You’re not safe if you harm one of their number.’

‘So the burglary could have been revenge on Weston?’ said Tailby. ‘Is it significant?’

‘There’s one good reason it might be,’ said Hitchens. ‘This Wayne Sugden. He got sent down for twelve months, protesting his innocence all the way to Derby nick. But the trouble is — they let him out two weeks ago.’

Ben Cooper was back in the CID room when Diane Fry returned from her meeting. She saw him, but she started tidying files and brushing biscuit crumbs from an unoccupied desk.

‘So, Diane, how have you been getting on with Maggie Crew?’ he said.

He didn’t think there was anything about his tone of voice that could have made Fry look sharply at him in the way that she did now.

‘What’s your interest in Maggie Crew?’

‘Just asking.’

‘She’s not one of your underdogs, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard you at the briefing this morning. You couldn’t help putting your oar in about those two travellers in the quarry, could you? You’re turning into quite the little rebel, with this habit of sticking up for people against all odds.’

‘That’s not the intention.’

Cooper turned to one side and picked up some papers from his desk, dropping his eyes from contact with hers. He heard her sigh with exasperation and bang a chair on the floor. He let a few moments of silence develop before he spoke again.

‘I’ve heard you’re going to be working with DI Armstrong,’ he said. ‘When your promotion is confirmed.’

Fry didn’t answer straight away. He looked up to see her frowning at him. ‘She’s doing some very good work,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘You don’t sound too sure about that, Ben,’ she said. ‘What problem have you got with Kim Armstrong?’

‘No problem, really.’

Cooper eyed the files on his desk. The work had been piling up since the murder enquiry started. There were so many things for him to follow up, when he had time. He was startled when he found that Fry had moved suddenly nearer to him and was staring into his face. He found her closeness intimidating.

‘Come on, out with it,’ she said. ‘What are you suggesting about DI Armstrong?’

‘Well, she’s got her own agenda, of course. Everybody says that.’

‘That’s a load of crap, and you know it. Kim Armstrong is a capable woman doing a good job. She’s in charge of a major enquiry, and she cares about what she’s doing. There was a little girl that was killed. .’

Fry ground to a halt. Cooper realized that he was smiling at her. The expression on his face must look ridiculous and derisive, but it was a natural response that had sprung from deep inside him at seeing Fry suddenly passionate in her defence of someone. He nodded at her, though the gesture barely seemed adequate.

She backed off, baffled. She picked up a waste-paper bin from the floor and put it on the empty desk, then began clearing out drawers. Cooper watched her hurl the leftover possessions of the previous occupant into the bin without looking at them.

‘OK, Diane,’ he said. ‘You were telling me about this little girl who was killed. What happened to her?’

Fry pulled out a 1999 calendar with pictures of naked women draped over bright red sports cars. With a grimace, she tore it in half and thrust it into the bin.

‘Nobody really knows,’ she said. ‘Nobody knows what awful things might have happened to her before she died.’