Dancing With the Virgins

30

When Ben Cooper and Diane Fry drove into the yard at Ringham Edge Farm early next morning, they had to swerve to avoid the front bumper of a milk tanker. When they got out, they could hear Warren Leach yelling at the driver.

‘What good is that to me?’ he was shouting. ‘How am I supposed to survive?’

‘It’s not my fault, mate. Your cell count is way up. You know the way it works as well as I do.’

‘They’re robbing me blind. I need that milk cheque to live on.’

Cooper saw Leach and the driver facing each other. They had their hands on their hips, and both looked angry and stubborn. Leach had been loading a stack of heavy fencing posts into a trailer attached to the back of his tractor.

‘I can’t help you,’ said the driver. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Do you want me to take this milk or not?’

‘What’s the bloody point?’

The driver finally lost patience. ‘Suit yourself then. I can’t hang around any longer.’

He got back in his cab and the diesel engine rumbled. Leach grabbed a fencing post and hurled it like a javelin. It bounced off the back of the tanker, leaving a small dent in the paintwork above the rear number plate.

‘I wouldn’t do that, Mr Leach,’ said Cooper.

‘Piss off,’ said Leach.

‘Some trouble with your cell count, is it? That can be tricky to sort out. Not mastitis, I hope.’

‘They reckon I’m not cleaning the equipment properly. Not changing the filters. So they’ve docked my milk cheque. Now they’re threatening not to take my milk at all. Bastards.’

‘That would be pretty serious, I suppose.’

‘Serious?’ Leach went goggle-eyed with amazement at the understatement. ‘My cows give better milk than any in Derbyshire. What the hell did you want, anyway?’

‘We’re hoping to speak to Mrs Leach.’

‘You can hope, then.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She’s gone, that’s where.’

‘Left?’

‘Aye. So why don’t the rest of you bugger off and leave me alone as well? I’ve had enough.’

‘Can you tell me where she is, Mr Leach?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘We’d like to speak to her.’

‘Well, you can do what I have to do — speak to her solicitor. That’s what the letter says that I got. If I want to communicate with her in the future, I have to do it through her solicitor. And I’m her husband! I didn’t even know she had a bloody solicitor.’

‘Perhaps you could give us the name of your wife’s solicitor then.’

‘Bloody hell. Will you go away and leave me alone, if I do?’

‘For the time being, sir.’

Leach turned and marched towards the house. They began to follow him, gradually closing the distance.

‘Stay here,’ snapped Leach, and slammed the door behind him.

They had no option but to wait until Leach came back. A ginger tom cat strolled across the yard and stared at them. The cat was scrawny, its ears bitten. But it was a farm cat, used to fending for itself and finding its own food in the dark corners of the buildings, used to fighting its own battles against rats, dogs and other cats. Cooper clicked his tongue at it and held out his hand in a friendly gesture. But the cat ignored him.

Fry walked over to look at the house. She found some black plastic bin liners by the back door that were split and bursting with rubbish. She looked at Cooper and screwed up her nose. There was a lace curtain across the window which prevented her from seeing in.

When Leach returned, he had a letter which he pushed in front of Cooper’s face.

‘Yes, divorce proceedings,’ said Leach. ‘What do you think of that?’

Fry found herself behind Leach, near the open door of the farmhouse. Out of the corner of his eye, Cooper saw her stand on the step and push the door open a bit more so that she could see inside, being careful not to enter.

Cooper wrote down the name and address of Mrs Leach’s solicitor in his notebook.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Leach. What about the boys? It’s always tough on the children.’

Leach stared at him suspiciously, but said nothing.

‘That’s all I need for now, sir, thank you,’ said Cooper.

Leach turned suddenly, moving quickly for a big man, and saw Fry standing in his doorway. The expression on her face seemed to infuriate him.

‘Bitch!’

Leach hurled himself across the few yards that separated him from Fry. He was like a charging bull, and looked likely to flatten her against the wall. Cooper reacted too slowly, reached out and tried to grab his belt, but missed. He saw Fry step away from the door, giving herself a bit of clear space, flexing her leg to test the strength of her injured knee. She put out her left hand, her palm facing out towards Leach like a traffic officer. It looked like an appeal, a feeble defensive gesture, but Cooper knew it was her weak hand that she was offering as she adjusted the balance of her body.

Leach threw a vicious punch. His fist whistled past Fry’s shoulder as she blocked his elbow with her right forearm. She jabbed her heel into the back of his knee and he hit the ground heavily, rolling on to his face in the muck left by the cows.

‘Ouch,’ said Fry, as she stumbled, rubbing her ankle. ‘That damn cattle market has something to answer for.’

Cooper finally caught up. He put his knee in the flat of Leach’s back and grabbed for one of his wrists with the intention of getting the kwik-cuffs on. But he hesitated. All the fight had gone out of the farmer suddenly. His body was slack and unresisting.

‘Going to be sensible, Mr Leach?’

The farmer grunted. The grunt didn’t seem to communicate much, but Cooper let go of his wrist and didn’t bother with the cuffs.

‘What are you doing, Ben?’ asked Fry.

‘It’s all right.’

Cooper checked Leach’s breathing, his pulse and his heart. The farmer still didn’t resist. In fact, with small movements of his arms and legs, he seemed to be trying to dig himself deeper into the mud. An indistinguishable mumble came from his mouth. Cooper turned the man’s head and looked at his face. Suddenly, he got up and dusted off his trousers. Leach still didn’t move, except to turn his face back into the muck as Fry came across to stand over him, limping slightly.

‘Is he all right?’

‘Let’s go,’ said Cooper.

‘Hold on. He might need medical attention. Let me take a look.’

‘No. Leave him.’

‘Ben?’

‘Let’s leave it. No harm done.’

Fry shrugged. ‘He didn’t touch me, anyway.’

‘I know he didn’t. No point in making a charge, is there?’

‘He’s not worth the paperwork. You sure he’s all right?

‘He’s all right, Diane. Trust me.’

‘OK. Let’s go.’ She hobbled back towards the car.

‘As right as he’ll ever be,’ said Cooper, quietly.

As they drove away, Cooper glanced in his rear-view mirror. Warren Leach had got up from the ground. He sat slumped against the tailgate of his trailer with his head in his hands. He had only the ginger cat for company now. And even the cat was looking at him with something like pity.

After a phone call to his client by the solicitor, Cooper and Fry were given an address near Bakewell. They found it was a small B amp; B, its rooms empty now for the winter. Yvonne Leach had a first-floor room, overlooking a similar row of Victorian semi-detached houses with dark brick porches and dormer windows.

‘I got too frightened of him,’ she said. ‘I stood it as long as I could, really I did.’

‘Are you saying you suffered physical abuse, Mrs Leach?’ asked Fry. Cooper could see her trying to relax the woman, who was plainly intimidated by having the two detectives standing in the room. Mrs Leach looked round at the cheap dresser and the washbasin in the corner and shrugged, as if accepting things were out of her control now.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘He never hit me, I mean. I’m not making a complaint about that.’

She rubbed her hands together and felt the radiator under the bay window. The room was chilly and miserable. She pulled her cardigan around her shoulders and stared out of the window.

‘The Ranger was the only one I could ever talk to. Owen. He used to come to the house sometimes to see if I was all right. But only when Warren wasn’t around. Warren wouldn’t have him near the farm, if he could help it.’

Cooper sighed with relief. That sounded much more like the Owen Fox that he knew. How could Mark Roper have got it so wrong about the reason for Owen’s visits?

‘Do you think I should go back?’ said Yvonne.

They stared at her. ‘Mrs Leach, there must have been something that frightened you enough to make you leave,’ said Fry.

Yvonne Leach nodded. She made them sit down on the bed. Then she told them how her husband used to threaten her when she wouldn’t have sex, how he had broken the lock of the door when she had gone to sleep in another room.

‘He’s a highly sexed man. He always has been. It’s one of the things that attracted me to him, once.’

She told them how much worse her husband had been since the farm had got into financial trouble. She knew that things were bad. She didn’t know what the debts were — Warren never told her things like that — but she knew it was very bad. She could understand why Warren drank. It was very hard on him, the way things had gone. But it made his temper even worse, and he always took it out on her. She seemed to provoke him simply by being there. She had left, she said, because she didn’t want the boys to see it any more. She thought, if she was out of the way, he would have less to provoke him and wouldn’t drink so much.

‘It was the most difficult decision I ever made,’ she said.

Cooper realized Yvonne Leach was one of those women who had to feel they were needed, that they had a role to perform to give meaning to their lives. Some women were afraid of stepping out of their place and finding that the gap they left had closed up behind them straight away. He imagined Yvonne’s fear was that everyone would forget about her in a single moment and carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened, as if she had never been there. And then she would know that her life had never had any meaning at all.

‘Because I love him, you see,’ said Yvonne.

The landlady knocked on the door and brought in a tray of tea for the visitors, looking at them curiously, with the air of being prepared to welcome them as long as they didn’t put their shoes on the bed and steal the soap.

Cooper tried his tea and found it weak and insipid. ‘Mrs Leach, did your husband have many visitors?’

She hesitated. Her face set into a stubborn line that reminded him for a moment of her husband’s expression. There must have been a time when they had something in common.

‘You’ve wondered yourself what happens in the big shed, haven’t you?’ he said.

Yvonne nodded, and she looked as though she might cry at the softness of his tone.

‘It was awful. The men started coming at night, after the boys had gone to bed. Warren warned me to stay in the house. But I heard the dogs, the snarling and the howling. I could imagine what was going on. He told me it was the only way to make some money to pay off the debts. But with people like that, something was bound to go wrong. He isn’t a very clever man. I knew they would take advantage of him.’

‘And what did go wrong, Mrs Leach?’

‘I don’t know. But one morning, after they had been, he was in a terrible temper. He was frightened, too. But angry.’

‘You don’t know what had happened?’

‘No, he never told me.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘Oh, six weeks or so. I remember, because the men haven’t been back since then. They used to come every week. Every Sunday night.’

‘Why do you think they stopped coming?’

‘I always thought it was because of the Ranger,’ she said.

‘Owen Fox? Are you saying he was involved in this?’ asked Fry.

‘No, no,’ said Mrs Leach. ‘But he knew. I think he knows everything that goes on in the area. He came to the farm and asked me to use my influence to persuade Warren to stop it happening. My influence! He didn’t understand the way it was, of course.’

‘But why did he do that? He could just have reported it,’ said Fry.

‘He said he didn’t want to get Warren in trouble. He was worried it would be the last straw for Warren. The Ranger understood that.’

‘And did your husband take any notice?’

‘Not of me. Nor of the Ranger.’

‘But something made them stop,’ said Fry.

‘Yes.’

Fry looked at Cooper. He shook his head, and she frowned.

‘What about women?’ she asked.

‘They were all men, I think,’ said Yvonne. ‘But, of course, I never saw them.’

‘I mean other women your husband may have met.’

Yvonne Leach put down her teacup. She hadn’t drunk any of it. But then neither had the two detectives.

‘I thought you might mean that.’

‘You said he was highly sexed. Do you think it’s possible that he might have looked elsewhere?’

Yvonne smiled and shook her head. ‘You don’t understand the life of a small farmer. Warren wouldn’t have the time or the opportunity for an affair. Where would he meet women? He spends every hour working on the farm.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, I’ve seen him looking at the hikers sometimes. You know, the women who come past on the track up to the moor. Sometimes, when I didn’t know where he was, I thought he might have gone up there to look at them. In the middle of summer, you can see them all gathered round the stone circle, the Nine Virgins, all the young ones. But he would never do anything except look, I’m sure.’

She must have seen the sceptical look on Fry’s face. ‘Warren is a good man, really,’ she added. ‘Things just haven’t gone right for him.’

‘What about the boys, Mrs Leach?’ asked Cooper.

‘I wanted to bring them away with me, of course. But how could I?’ She gestured at her surroundings. ‘I had to come here, because I’ve got no family to go to. But I can get a job, can’t I? I’ve been looking. I can earn some money and I’ll get somewhere bigger that I can take the boys to.’

‘But in the meantime. . are you quite sure they’re safe?’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘Oh, Warren won’t do anything to harm the boys. He thinks the world of them. They’re his whole life, but for the farm. He wouldn’t do a thing to harm them.’

‘It was Leach you had in mind, Ben?’ said Diane Fry as they drove back to Edendale.

‘How do you mean?’

‘You said your friend Fox was being made a scapegoat. If so, he has to be a scapegoat for somebody else. Who did you have in mind? It must have been Leach. But if it was, you seemed a bit soft on him earlier on.’

‘He won’t take pushing any further,’ said Cooper.

Fry slapped the steering wheel in irritation. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said.

‘Shall I call in?’ he said.

‘Go ahead.’

Cooper reported in to the incident room. His head lifted as he listened to the latest news. Fry turned impatiently.

‘What is it?’

‘Information from the RSPCA special investigations officer dealing with the Ringham Edge Farm enquiry.’

‘Yes? Have they got any firm evidence? Enough to act on?’

‘They’ve passed on the name of one of their informants. They don’t usually do that, because they have to protect their identities. But this one happens to be dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. One of their informants was Jenny Weston.’

Will Leach had already seen the shotgun standing against the wall, where it had been taken out of its steel cabinet. He knew this was wrong, that a shotgun should never be left out. His father had always said so. The police might call at the farmhouse at any time and see it, and then his father would lose his shotgun licence. But he didn’t seem to care about that at all now.

Will hated it when his father shouted and swore. But he hated it more when he fell into a long silence. At those times, his eyes seemed to be looking far away and his body quivered, like the strands of wire in the electric fence in the top field. Will had known what his father was thinking when he had looked at Doll and had been so silent. And now Doll had gone. Will had tried to guess what his father was thinking when he had looked at their mother and was silent, too. And now their mother was gone as well.

It was the first day of half-term, and this morning Will had listened very carefully. His sense of hearing was trained to pick up the sound of his father’s footsteps in the yard or the clink of a glass against a bottle in the front room. His father had been more silent this morning than he could ever remember. And this time, Will thought he knew what his father was thinking.

Warren Leach had never really known the meaning of shame. He had heard people talk about it, but had never understood, and had just thought them weak. Now it was an emotion that came upon him suddenly, devastatingly, roaring over the hill and scything him down like ripe corn under the blade of the combine.

His cheeks had burned under the policewoman’s stare. This woman looked at him differently from the others. It was more than antagonism, it was contempt. She had seen what had become of his life, and she thought it was his own fault. She saw the squalor and had no hesitation in blaming him for it. And, of course, she was right.

His world took a sudden shift and became vivid and clear, as if somebody had shaken it to bring the picture into proper focus. Now he saw the colours of his life distinctly, and they were all dark. The revelation coalesced in one great lump all the burdens that had been piling up on him in the last few weeks. He knew now that they had drained his strength and his will, and had been the cause of all those strange, crippling aches in his belly that he hadn’t been able to explain.

For the first time, Leach faced the impossible magnitude of his problems; the disastrous hole that he had fallen into loomed way over his head like the walls of a deep well. And he had no energy left to climb any more.

‘But I never hurt the boys,’ he said to himself. Then louder: ‘Dougie, I never hurt you, did I?’ He reached out to take his youngest son by the shoulders. Dougie wriggled to get away, but his father gripped him harder, making him cry out.

Leach knew he had to make his decision. He was sure the police would come for him anyway because of what had happened with the young Ranger. The boys would be taken away from him. They would end up in one of those homes. But he had already thought about this moment, and he knew what he had to do. He let Dougie go, and the boy ran towards his brother, pale and shaking with the fear of the unknown. The boys clung to each other, watching their father as they would have watched a wild animal prowling through the house, afraid to move a muscle in case they attracted its attention.

Leach fingered the barrels of the shotgun, feeling the certainty and solidity of the heavy steel. His hand itched to grip the stock. He reached out to it like a man greeting an old friend. Then he drew back, and looked at the boys as if he had just remembered they were there. He had made careful plans, but he had nearly forgotten them. That was what his brain was like now. Soft as sponge. As rotten and stinking as the stuff he scraped out of the hoof of a cow with foot-rot.

‘Will. .’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘You know where your Auntie Maureen lives, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘You catch the bus into Edendale and walk to the bus station. Get a Hulley’s number 26. It stops at the corner of Bank Street, near the old library. You know your way from there. There’s enough money for the fare for you and Dougie in an envelope on the table.’ Will said nothing. ‘Can you remember that?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a letter for your auntie in there, too. Don’t open it, Will. It’s for Auntie Maureen to read. And there’s two chocolate bars I saved for you. One each. They’re the ones you said you liked. Crisp and crunchy.’ Leach tried a smile, but swallowed it as his throat constricted in a spasm. ‘And Will. . make sure young Dougie is all right, won’t you? Promise?’ said Leach.

‘Promise,’ said Will.

‘That’s a good boy.’

Leach found his eyes drifting towards the shotgun again. Not much time now. Not much left to say.

‘All the things I did, I did because I was trying to save the farm for you. For your future? Do you understand?’ he said.

The boys nodded, because it was what he expected of them. But Leach could see from their faces that they understood nothing. Probably they never would. By the time they were old enough, their mother would have talked a different story into their heads, one where their father was a weak fool, a drunkard, a bully, a criminal. But that wasn’t right. All he was, really, was a man who had failed. But probably the boys would never understand that, either. If they were lucky.

‘Dad?’ said Will.

‘Yes?’

‘When have we got to go?’

‘Best go now, son,’ said Leach. ‘Before it goes dark.’

He stared at the boys, wondering what else he should do. There were things which Yvonne had always done, which he had no idea of. He was vaguely aware that Will had taken charge of some of these things himself — somehow young Dougie always seemed to be washed and his hair was clean. But there ought to be something that a father did to look after his sons, some little thing that showed he cared. Especially when he was saying goodbye.

He saw that Dougie’s jacket collar had been turned over by the strap of his rucksack, exposing the lining underneath. It looked untidy. He reached out a dirt-stained hand to straighten the collar, his fingers passing close to Dougie’s cheek, so that he felt the warmth from the boy’s skin. Dougie was trembling, and his eyes looked puzzled and afraid.

Leach turned to Will, but the older boy flinched away, and Leach let his hand fall back to his side. He felt a small flicker of anger and hurt, but it died as quickly as it had come, leaving him cold. Cold, and ready.

‘Off you go, then.’

He watched them walk across the yard and down the lane without looking back. He glanced at the cows, whose heads showed over the wall of the barn. They were unsettled because they had been brought inside when there was still grass to be eaten in the fields. But they would be all right.

Leach went back into the kitchen and stared out of the window. The rain had left dirty streaks on the panes, and the world outside looked blurred and distant. The moor had retreated into low cloud. He could just make out the car parked in the trees at the top of the track, but even that held no meaning any more.

In contrast, the objects immediately around him seemed alive and weighted with unbearable significance. The colours of the boys’ clothes draped over the rail of the cold Aga were bright and painful, and the smell of the wet earth from his boots on the tiles bit so hard into the back of his nose that it made his eyes water. The clutter that pressed around him seemed to be composed of living things, like an army of rodents gathering to gnaw at his body. If he left it any longer, the vermin would start to eat him alive. But he wouldn’t give them the chance.

The number 26 to Edendale was late. It had been held up by roadworks and temporary traffic lights in Bakewell, and by an old lady who had slipped on the platform as she fumbled for her bus pass. The driver spent several minutes fussing over her to make sure that she was all right. It wasn’t because he was worried about a claim against his employers for negligence. It was because the old woman’s daughter knew his wife, and because all the other people on the bus were watching him, and a lot of them knew him, too.

Will and Dougie Leach were standing at the bus stop, carrying the rucksacks they took to school in the mornings. They had their clothes in them for tomorrow, their pajamas and toothbrushes. The driver wasn’t surprised to see the boys on their own. He had done the school run at one time, and he remembered them. When the Leach boys had first started getting on the bus, they had been accompanied to the stop by their mother, or sometimes by their bad-tempered father, who never seemed to have a good word to say to anybody. The driver thought Will was bit of a moody child, and expected he would probably turn out just like his dad in a few years’ time. He felt sorry for Dougie, though. He always looked unhappy; even more so today.

The driver took the boys’ money and watched them for a moment while they found seats. Then he released the brake and let in the clutch, and forgot about them as he accelerated towards the bend and the descent from the moor towards the A515.

Will’s face was frozen. But he saw the tears start in Dougie’s eyes. Just as the bus turned the bend, Will grabbed his brother roughly by the shoulder and pushed his own chocolate bar into Dougie’s hands.

‘Here, have mine,’ he said. ‘I don’t really like them anyway.’

The bus was only a few yards away from the stop when they heard the shotgun blast. The boys looked back towards the farm. Above the juddering of the diesel engine and the grinding of the bus’s gears as it approached the hill, they could hear the rooks that roosted in the beech trees behind the farmhouse erupt into the air, complaining raucously; they could hear the old farm dog, Molly, begin to bark hysterically in the yard.

And then they heard the silence that followed. And the silence was the loudest sound of all.