Dancing With the Virgins

24

That morning, the dowser was working his way backwards and forwards across the edge of the birch wood, treading carefully as if he was walking an imaginary white line, his eyes fixed on a forked twig held in front of him. He held it strangely, with his palms turned upwards. Every now and then, the twig twitched, and the dowser would stop and scuff at the ground with the toe of his boot. Then he would move on. He looked cold and disconsolate.

Diane Fry had a copy of the latest Eden Valley Times. The attack on Karen Tavisker had come too late for the newspaper’s deadline, though it was already appearing on the local radio news bulletins. The Times did have three pages covering a public meeting and protests outside the hall, with all the old material about Jenny Weston and Maggie Crew rehashed into one big mess that somebody had to take the blame for. The guilty faces of Jepson and Tailby stared out from a crowd waving banners that said ‘We demand action’.

There was a highly speculative piece headed ‘The Sabbath Slayer?’ It attempted to make a link between the legend of the Nine Virgins, who had been turned to stone for dancing on the Sabbath, and the fact that the attacks on Crew and Weston had both taken place on Sundays, when the women had been out walking or cycling on the moor. The conclusion was that a religious maniac could be punishing women for enjoying themselves on the Lord’s Day. As a theory, it held plenty of tabloid drama, but little substance. Yet it had already been murmured by officers on the enquiry team, in their more desperate moments.

There was also an interesting secondary story on the third page. A reporter and photographer had found two young men living in an old VW van in an abandoned quarry at Ringham Moor, and they had scented a different angle.

‘Have you seen this photograph? Calvin Lawrence looks a mass murderer if ever I saw one,’ said Fry.

‘But they’ve made Stride look like a half-wit.’

‘That youth needs psychiatric help. Have you seen their background reports? He dropped out of university during one of his recurring periods of acute depression.’

‘That doesn’t make him a half-wit,’ said Cooper.

‘Simon Bevington tried to kill himself twice. It might mean that he shouldn’t be out and about unsupervised. The bloke’s a nutter.’

‘He isn’t a danger to anybody but himself. Besides, I think he is supervised. Cal takes care of him. I reckon Stride’s better looked after where he is than he would be in any hostel. That’s real care in the community. He’s found someone who actually cares about him, no strings attached.’

‘Oh, lucky him.’

‘He isn’t dangerous,’ insisted Cooper. ‘He just sees the world in a different way from most people. Different, that’s what he is.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Different like the Yorkshire Ripper was different. He’s a nutter, Ben.’

‘He’s strange, that’s all. My mother would say he was a bit fey.’

Fry snorted. ‘You’re a bloody strange copper, Ben. Do you really think there are people in this world who are complete angels?’

‘Well. .’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose he is a bit like that. In a way.’

‘What?’

‘Innocent, you know. Detached from the real world. Ethereal.’

Fry stared at him. ‘Hey, you don’t have to look too far for nutters round these parts, do you?’ she said. ‘The real loonies can be right there in front of your eyes.’

Cooper read the newspaper article over her shoulder. ‘They quote Stride as saying the wind chimes and tree sculptures will keep away the vengeful spirits of the moor.’

‘Why do they print that crap?’

‘It gives them a chance for a funny headline: “Tate for tat? Quarry dwellers’ art is more than just rock and roll-ups”.’

‘Very clever. At least they don’t mention Simon Bevington’s history.’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘But I think they might have done enough.’

‘All the attention might persuade them to leave the quarry. That would be no loss, in my opinion.’

‘They’re all right. They’re the sort of people we should be protecting.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You remember. That oath we took. “I do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm. .”’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘“. . and prevent all offences against the person and properties of Her Majesty’s subjects.”’

‘Ben, do you realize you’re the only copper in the country who can still quote his oath more than two minutes after his swearing in?’

‘Maybe I happened to check on it the other day.’

‘What the hell has that got to do with those two van people, anyway?’

‘I think they’re at risk. Just like the others.’

‘What others?’

‘Well, like Jenny Weston and Maggie Crew. Like Will Leach and his brother, little Dougie. Their mother as well. Even their father, in a way. And, well. . others. They’re our responsibility.’

‘Ben, it’s a big mistake to think you’ve been recruited as one of the Knights of the Round Table. They don’t issue shining armour these days. And your name isn’t Sir Galahad.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned and quaint. The fact is, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t try to do something for the people who need protecting. What a joke, eh?’

And he began to walk off, scuffing the loose stones, so that they left white marks on the toes of his shoes.

Ben Cooper remembered very well reading and rereading the oath on the back of his father’s warrant card as a small boy. Whenever he had seen his father in his uniform, he had asked to read it again. He must have been a terrible pest. But, at the time, it had seemed the most noble and meaningful sentence in the world, a hero’s vow of honour. He had regarded it with the superstitious awe and respect that only an over-imaginative child can produce. Though his hero had faded, and finally died a futile death, the power of the words had left a lasting impression. What was he here for, except to protect the innocent?

A potential for violence seemed to hang around the moor like low clouds. Cooper had been dwelling too long on the fate of Jenny Weston, on the question of why death had picked her out and flung her lifeless among the stones. It was as if she had been just one more bit of dead foliage among the masses scattered on the moor — her veins full of toxins, her living tissue turned brown and useless. But there was one difference. Leaves were sacrificed for the sake of a new beginning, the start of new life. The death of Jenny Weston had no such justification.

Cooper wondered about himself, too. Had he really joined the police because of his father? Was everything he did aimed at outdoing the memory of the Hero of Edendale? Or were people like Jenny Weston also part of his motivation? He hoped so. But it was hard to be sure.

Cooper wasn’t surprised that his reception in the quarry was twenty degrees cooler than the last time. Cal and Stride had become a centre of attention since then — they had met the press, the police, and no doubt some of the less sympathetic elements of the public. It was surely enough to make them shut themselves off from the world.

Only Cal appeared in answer to Cooper’s knock. This time, there was only a crack in the door for him to peer through.

‘You. What?’

‘Just a word of advice, sir.’

‘Oh, wow. Surprise me, man.’

‘Those things up there. . those sculptures, or whatever you call them. The phallus farm.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I don’t think they’re very wise, just at the moment. Best to remove them. Put them out of sight somewhere.’

‘They’re a tribute to Gaia. We’re using her space, so we say thank you. We make her gifts with our own hands. We wish her fertility.’

‘Yes, fine. I’m not interested in all that. It’s the appearance of the things that’s the issue. People might get the wrong idea. They might be considered provocative.’

‘Provocative?’

‘There are lots of folk around here with different views to your own. They don’t understand. Think about it.’

‘OK, OK. We’ll think about it.’

‘It’s in your own interests. For your own safety.’

‘Our own safety! Cool.’

‘You should seriously — ’

Cooper found himself staring at the panel of the closed door. Directly level with his eyes, there were scratches in the paintwork, a few letters gouged right into the metal. They spelled: ‘Perverts’.

When she was back in the car, Diane Fry remembered Catherine Dyson’s sigh at the other end of the phone line in Ireland, just after she had let slip the fact of Maggie Crew having a daughter.

‘She’ll know it came from me,’ she’d said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. She’s barely speaking to me anyway these days.’

‘Did you say a daughter?’

‘Yes. Maggie had a little girl. It was about twenty years ago now. It wasn’t intended, far from it. Mags was a law student then. She didn’t believe in abortion — a relic of our Catholic upbringing, I’m afraid. So she had the child adopted — there was no way she could have raised her. It would have interfered too much with her plans for her career.’

Fry recalled Maggie’s comments about female police officers, and realized that she had probably been talking about her own situation.

‘And Mags never even achieved what she wanted. She reached a plateau. She ended up in a small town, instead of becoming a partner in a big city firm. And it was a small town no more than ten miles from where we were raised. She is never going to get any further away now. There’s some strange tie that she has to the area, though she would never admit it. She always thought I was the one who would stay around, and I would have agreed with her at one time. But when you reach a certain age you learn things about yourself — you learn that you’re not quite what other people always told you.’

‘Do you think your sister resents not getting further in her career?’

‘Well, I certainly think she started to realize she’d reached that plateau. Of course she did. And she resented the fact that I’d escaped, as she saw it. That I’d left her to look after Mum and Dad. She couldn’t move away then, you see — not without adding to her feelings of guilt.’

‘She doesn’t strike me as someone who feels guilty,’ said Fry.

‘Oh, she’s good at blaming other people. She blames everyone but herself for her lack of real success — her teachers, her colleagues, our parents, me. And any friends she might have left. She was always a difficult person to like, but she became so prickly that people began to leave her well alone.’

‘And the child? Do you think she feels guilty about the child?’

‘Well, what do you think?’ said Catherine brightly. And in that one sentence, Fry was able to fill in the background around her picture of Maggie’s sister — the background was full of children hanging on to her skirt and bringing her their latest treasures to look at. All the children would be little copies of Catherine. Fry nodded at the clarity of the image. The arrival of each child must have been like salt in the wound to Maggie. What was it she had said at Derwent Court the other day? ‘Perhaps I’ll wake up one day and discover I have a maternal instinct after all.’

‘I think, you know,’ said Catherine, ‘that Mags must have been wondering a great deal about the child. Wondering what she would be like now, and where she is. Wondering if she ever thought about her real mother.’

‘And wondering what it would be like now to have a daughter of her own, instead of being so alone?’ said Fry.

‘Exactly,’ said Catherine. ‘And there’s no one else she can blame for that, is there? No one but herself.’

Fry took a moment to readjust her assessment of Maggie Crew. She was seeing a different person, sensing a greater tragedy taking place in the darkened rooms of the apartment at Derwent Court than she had imagined until now.

Catherine Dyson must have wondered about the silence at the other end of the line. It was her turn to ask a question, and the astuteness of it took Diane Fry by surprise.

‘Have you been going to see my sister often?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes,’ said Fry. ‘You know the circumstances, don’t you?’

‘Of course. You’re doing your job, I see that. But. .’

‘Yes?’

‘I can’t tell over the phone,’ said Catherine, ‘but may I ask how old you are?’

‘What on earth difference does that make?’ said Fry.

‘Oh, never mind,’ said Catherine hastily. ‘I’m sure it makes no difference at all.’

The offices of Quigley, Coleman amp; Crew were on Peveril Street. Diane Fry entered a reception area fronted by smoked plate glass. A blonde receptionist with a fake tan took her name without showing any interest in her warrant card, and took her time looking at a diary on her desk.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Crew is not available.’

‘What?’ Fry was brought up hard. She had thought of cancelling, true. But she had never got round to it. ‘What do you mean? I’ve got an appointment.’

The receptionist pretended to look at the diary. ‘I’m sorry, she’s cancelled it. Something came up. You know.’

The girl could hardly be bothered concealing her contempt for someone whose appointment had been cancelled at the last minute without telling her. She was obviously somebody of no importance.

‘Did she say why?’ asked Fry.

‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Then give Ms Crew a message. You can do that, can’t you?’

‘I suppose so.’

Fry leaned closer over the desk. ‘Tell her one thing. Tell her: “What if Jenny wasn’t enough for him either?”’

The girl looked nervous. ‘I don’t understand that.’

‘You don’t have to. Just write it down and give it to your boss.’

‘I think you ought to leave.’

‘You haven’t written it down yet.’

The girl wrote the eight words on a memo pad, her hand shaking slightly. ‘There. I’ll give it to Ms Crew when she’s in the office.’

‘Right. And then you can tell her to damn well phone me.’

‘I think I’ll really have to ask you to leave now.’

‘You know I’m a police officer?’

‘Yes. But that doesn’t mean I have to put up with harassment.’

‘You don’t know what harassment is. Not yet.’

Fry drove straight to Derwent Court. She was not surprised to get no answer from Maggie’s apartment. But even here there should be a next-door neighbour with an interest in what went on. They were useful people. She tried the next apartment and introduced herself to a lady called Mrs Dean, who seemed quite happy to talk about Maggie Crew.

‘I don’t know where she is today,’ she said. ‘I thought she’d started going back into her office to work.’

‘Yes, she had,’ said Fry.

‘I am glad. It’s for the best, really. It’ll help take her mind off things.’

‘But she’s not in the office today.’

‘Isn’t she? She went out at her usual time.’

‘In her car?’

‘I imagine so. I don’t know.’

‘On her own?’

‘She’s always on her own these days.’

‘Was there a time when she wasn’t?’ asked Fry.

‘Well, none of us has been in Derwent Court more than a year or two, just since the place was converted. I don’t know anything about her life before that.’

Fry looked at Mrs Dean’s apartment. It looked completely different from Maggie Crew’s, though the layout must have been identical. Instead of being cold and unwelcoming, this one was full of deep-pile carpets and light and mirrors, and a hundred little personal items.

‘She has no family who come to see her, has she?’ said Fry. ‘Any children?’

‘No, no children. She has never married, as far as I know. But there’s a sister.’

‘Of course, yes. Does she come?’

‘Not recently. Some people just can’t deal with it — with physical disfigurement, I mean. They’re frightened they’re going to say the wrong thing, or that they won’t be able to avoid staring. I’d like to think I wouldn’t be that way, if it happened to one of my friends. I’d want to support them, wouldn’t you?’

Fry searched her heart and wasn’t sure. Mrs Dean seemed to pick up on her hesitation.

‘Mind you, it is pretty awful to have to look at, isn’t it? I can see that it might put you off if you were invited round for tea. Are you sure you won’t sit down?’ said Mrs Dean.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Still. You’d think the sister would make an effort to get here. It’s at times like these that you need your family most, not just in the good times. Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course,’ said Fry, though she was hardly in a position to know. ‘So you haven’t seen Miss Crew since this morning?’

‘I heard her go out about ten o’clock,’ said Mrs Dean.

‘You didn’t actually see her?’

‘No. But I could tell it was her. You get to recognize the noises when you live so close together. You can identify all the familiar sounds. I know the way she closes her door, and the way her footsteps sound in the corridor.’

‘And unfamiliar ones?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Any unfamiliar sounds. Any sounds of anybody visiting Miss Crew, anybody you didn’t recognize?’

‘I don’t believe so. Not that I’ve been aware of.’

‘Nobody hanging around the flats?’

‘No.’

Fry looked at the window. She felt drawn to it in a way she hadn’t in Maggie’s apartment. The view was the same, but when she stood close to the window, she could see down into a paved courtyard that had been turned into a car park for residents.

‘She leads a quiet life then, Miss Crew. Would you say so?’ she asked.

‘Oh, very quiet,’ said Mrs Dean. ‘Very quiet indeed. These days.’

The two PCs had been deployed on a routine patrol in the Ringham Moor area. They were cruising as a visible symbol of positive police action, designed to make the area safe for law-abiding members of the community. And they were bored out of their minds.

On Hanger Hill, though, they found a little bit of excitement. A Renault coming down the hill too fast had braked on the sharp corner and skidded sideways in a scum of wet leaves. A stone wall had made a serious mess of its near-side front wing, and fragments of glass from a shattered headlamp littered the road. The officers stopped, and got out to help. The female half of the team went to talk to the driver.

‘Had a bit of trouble, sir?’

The driver looked dazed rather than injured. He was trying to straighten out the wheel arch where it had crumpled against the wall and been pushed on to his wheel.

‘Are you a member of the AA or RAC? If not, we can organize a garage to send someone out.’

‘Oh, thanks. It’s not too serious, but. .’

‘It needs to be made safe, sir.’

‘Of course.’

The second PC had done a spell in Traffic. Since then, he had automatically looked at things like tyres and number plates. The thing that drew his attention to the rear plate of the Renault was the fact that it was white. He knew that front plates were white, but rear plates were supposed to be yellow. Car owners themselves often failed to notice this.

He looked a bit closer. He saw that there was a thin strip of clean paintwork showing around the edge of the number plate. He concluded that it had recently replaced a previous plate that had been slightly larger.

‘I think I’ll do a check on the number,’ he said to his partner. They looked at each other, and the first officer walked over to engage the motorist in conversation again. They had worked together before, and they knew how to communicate.

Ten minutes later, they had obtained the motorist’s documents and he was in the back of the police car waiting to accompany them to the station in Edendale, once some support had arrived to secure the Renault. The two officers were grinning with suppressed excitement. They had just arrested Greater Manchester’s wanted man, Darren Howsley.