Dancing With the Virgins

31

Mark Roper stopped on the path to Ringham Moor and touched his face gingerly where Leach had hit him. His lip was split, and a tooth was loose. If it was true about Owen, he knew he ought to feel the outrage that had been expressed by his fellow Rangers. But Owen’s arrest the day before had confused him. Mark knew that Owen would have been up here to check on his wall, if he could have done. Instead, Mark was doing it for him.

When he got near the top of the path above Ringham Edge Farm that afternoon, Mark saw a woman in a yellow jacket climbing towards the Hammond Tower. It was the first time he had seen a woman walking on her own for over a week. There had been plenty of warnings about the dangers for lone women. But some of them couldn’t stay away. There was something that drew them, like the women who were attracted to form relationships with convicted murderers and rapists.

He had brought a rucksack from home, because the one he usually used for patrols had been in the briefing centre, which had been closed by the police. But at least this rucksack held a pair of binoculars. He focused them on the woman, following her movements through the high bracken until she reached a clear spot. She paused, and looked around. And then Mark saw her face. He recognized the long, red scar and the disfigured cheek, the twisted eye. He had seen her photograph in the incident room at Edendale, during the briefing three days before. Even if he hadn’t recognized her, he would have had to do something. Women weren’t safe alone on Ringham Moor any more.

Mark called in. ‘Peakland Partridge Three. Put me through to the police incident room.’

Then he leaned on the wall and looked down on Ringham Edge Farm. And he saw that the police were already there.

Warren Leach hadn’t bothered to move out of the kitchen after the boys had left the house. The blast of the shotgun had shredded the back of his skull, and his body had been thrown off the chair and on to the floor, where it lay among the debris of dropped food and unwashed clothes. A dog chained near the back door was barking ferociously, driven into a frenzy by the arrival of so many strangers. No one dared go near it. Someone had called for the dog warden and a vet.

When Ben Cooper had first arrived, a middle-aged man wearing jeans and a tweed jacket had been standing in the yard next to a red pick-up, talking to Todd Weenink. He turned out to be a farmer from across the valley, and Leach had rung to ask him to milk the cows that afternoon.

‘He’s taken that way out, has he?’ said the farmer. ‘I can’t say it’s a surprise. He isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. Some prefer to finish it cleanly, like.’

When Cooper looked at the state of the farm’s kitchen, he realized clean wasn’t the word for what Warren Leach had done. He stood in the doorway of the room, careful not to go too near. He could see a white envelope on the cluttered kitchen table. It was an official-looking envelope, with the address neatly typed. Unlike some of the others, which were obviously bills and unopened, Leach had slit the top of this envelope open with a knife, leaving a greasy butter stain on the edge of the flap. Cooper didn’t need to look at the letter inside. He guessed it was a notification to Mr Warren Leach that a prosecution was being considered under the Firearms Act 1986.

Cooper wondered whether there was anything else they could have done. They had contacted Social Services after their visit to Yvonne Leach, but that had been out of concern for the children, Will and Dougie. Who had been concerned about the fate of their father? Warren Leach had needed help, if anyone had. The evidence was there to be seen on the floor and walls.

A few minutes later, Cooper was very glad of the call that took him and Weenink away from the farm and up the hill to meet the young Ranger, Mark Roper.

Mark seemed even younger today. It wasn’t just the fact that his face was bruised and swollen. In between the bruises, he looked pale and lost, like a boy waiting for somebody to tell him what to do.

‘Are you sure it’s her?’ asked Cooper.

‘I’m sure.’

Cooper felt certain Mark was observant enough to be right. This was a situation where Diane Fry would have to be involved.

It was late afternoon by the time Diane Fry arrived at Ringham, and she was in a bad mood. She drove up the track past the farmhouse to where she could see other vehicles parked on the hill.

‘Where is she?’ she asked when she saw Cooper and Weenink under the trees. Cooper bent down to her car window.

‘She’s up there.’ He gestured vaguely, irritating her still further.

‘On the moor?’

Fry got out of the car and flexed her leg. She could feel her knee starting to swell up. She ought to be at home with a bag of frozen peas on it — if only she had any frozen peas in the freezer compartment of her fridge. She struggled up the rocky slope to look towards the plateau. She was no more than half a mile from Top Quarry.

‘Where is she exactly?’

‘Near the Cat Stones, where she was attacked,’ said Cooper. ‘It was Mark Roper who reported sighting her earlier this afternoon. She refuses to come down. We were just discussing taking her into custody for her own safety.’

‘What?’

‘She can’t stay up there. She’s not safe. What if she runs into our killer? That would be just great, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’s not very likely.’

Cooper shook his head in exasperation as she pulled on her black jacket. ‘OK, I’ll come with you.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she said.

Fry began to walk away, tugging her jacket around her as she strode towards the path, brushing past a PC talking on his personal radio. Cooper and Weenink watched her go. Weenink’s expression was puzzled as he leaned towards his partner.

‘Ben?’

‘Fetch the car,’ said Cooper.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To see Mark Roper again.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I feel like something to cheer me up.’

‘But — ’

Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘Will you just fetch the car?’

‘Jesus,’ said Weenink. ‘I thought it was only women who had a wrong time of the month.’

Mark was sitting on the ground in his red fleece jacket, with Owen’s walling hammer in his hand. Occasionally, he dug the cutting edge of the hammer hard into the soil and studied the shape of the gouge he had made.

‘So is the wall finished?’ asked Cooper.

‘I thought it was,’ said Mark. ‘But look at that.’

He pointed down the length of the newly-rebuilt stretch. The stones had bulged and bellied outwards, and the coping stones had slipped from their places, exposing the filling, which trickled from the interior of the wall like grain from a split sack.

‘What did that?’

‘A rotten stone,’ said Mark. ‘One single rotten stone that crumbled with the weight and let down everything above it. Owen must not have spotted it when he put it in place. He says every stone has to play its part. You can’t have weaknesses, or the whole thing comes down.’

‘That’s a shame.’ Cooper looked at the young Ranger more closely. ‘Mark, how did you come by those bruises?’

Mark touched his face again. ‘Oh, I slipped and landed face first on some rocks. I’ll survive.’

‘You sure?’

‘Of course.’

‘Mark, has Owen ever said anything to you about children?’

The Ranger looked away. ‘Not much. He always says: “Kids? I love ’em. But I couldn’t eat a whole one.”’

Cooper nodded, listening for something beyond the old joke. ‘I suppose you have to do school visits as a Ranger.’

‘It’s part of the job these days. They say if we educate youngsters about what Rangers do, they’ll respect the Peak Park and what goes on in it. That’s the theory, anyway. But Owen says a school visit just gives the kids a chance to take the piss out of you all at once instead of one at a time.’

‘Yeah, I know what he means. But Owen has no children, has he?’

‘He’s a good bloke, Owen,’ said Mark.

Todd Weenink was getting impatient at the turn of the conversation. He kicked at the wall and watched as more filling spilled out from between the stones.

Diane Fry could see Maggie Crew from a distance, her yellow jacket marking her out like a beacon. She was standing a little way from the tower, on the edge of the escarpment where the gritstone plateau fell away into the valley. Maggie was a few yards short of the contorted rock formations that Ben Cooper called the Cat Stones. She was standing quite still, as if afraid to go any closer. Beyond the rocks was the Hammond Tower, which ought to have represented the hand of humanity on the landscape of the moor, but failed to suggest any hint of civilization to Fry’s eye.

The wind coming down the valley was cold, carrying the first suggestion of November storms. But Maggie made no attempt to shelter behind the rocks. She seemed happy to expose herself to the full blast of the weather.

She didn’t look round when Fry limped up behind her. But Fry felt as if Maggie had been waiting for her to arrive.

‘Maggie, come on. It’s time to go back home.’

‘Give me a few minutes, then I’ll go.’

‘All right. I’ll stay with you, then.’

‘If you like.’

Maggie didn’t move for a moment. She hesitated as if she wasn’t sure which way to go. Fry had automatically walked up to her left side, understanding Maggie’s vulnerability. Now she watched Maggie’s face, looking for clues about her thoughts in the set of her mouth and squint of her eye.

‘I want to remember more,’ said Maggie. ‘I know that’s what you need from me, Diane. I want to be able to tell you that I remember.’

‘Maggie, it doesn’t matter. We can do it another way.’

‘You said you didn’t have enough information. Insufficient evidence. You needed me to make an identification.’

‘There are other leads we can follow.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘No. You’re lying to me now.’

As if on a signal, they walked in step towards the Cat Stones. Maggie’s footsteps became slower as they reached them. Imperceptibly, she seemed to have moved nearer to Fry, until their elbows were touching, making contact for mutual reassurance.

‘I would have brought you here, Maggie,’ said Fry.

‘You don’t understand. I wanted to do it on my own.’

Fry nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose I can see that.’

‘Can you? You wanted me to share everything with you, all my memories. But there are things I can’t share.’ Her eyes went distant again. ‘Tell me,’ she said. They were the words that Fry feared to hear from her. ‘Tell me, why did you have an abortion?’

‘Because I didn’t want the baby,’ said Fry. ‘Obviously.’

They stopped by the Cat Stones. They were lumbering great rocks, precariously balanced on smaller, softer slabs of gritstone that had been worn away by the weather and shaped like the back-jointed rear legs of an animal. The rocks crouched like leaping cats — or so local folklore said. Maybe they were leaping at the tower, determined to knock it from its perch.

‘But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’

Maggie touched one of the stones gently, as if she hoped to make it move with the lightest brush of her fingers. ‘Was it rape?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘But you never talk about it, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Bottled up. Is that the best way?’

‘I don’t talk about it,’ said Fry firmly.

‘But it’s a denial,’ said Maggie. ‘A sort of lie that you’re living.’

They were in the right spot. This was the place they had identified as the location of the assault on Maggie Crew — the brief, horrific attack that had left her disfigured. They had found little forensic evidence, nothing that could have led them to the identity of an assailant. There were no witnesses except Maggie herself. And no trace of a motive.

‘You can’t live your life by lies,’ said Maggie.

Then Maggie Crew began to laugh. Fry was mortified that her confession should be treated with hilarity. Then she began to get angry.

‘What’s so funny?’

Maggie put her hand on Fry’s arm to support herself. Her laughter bounced off the Cat Stones and seemed to drift off down the valley towards Matlock.

‘It doesn’t matter, Diane,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

She looked to be about to start chuckling again. Fry pulled away abruptly.

‘You’re getting a bit hysterical. Let’s go down. It was a mistake to come up here.’

‘Perhaps it was,’ agreed Maggie.

‘You’re doing yourself no good.’ Fry shivered. ‘Besides, I’m getting cold.’

Maggie smiled and shook her head. ‘Diane, there are things I remember.’

‘That’s good, Maggie,’ said Fry automatically.

‘I remember him running. He was on me so suddenly, before I knew what was happening. I remember him breathing heavily, like a runner, or. .’ Maggie hesitated. ‘I think he was frightened.’

‘Frightened, Maggie?’

‘Yes. I don’t believe he meant to attack me. I was in the wrong place.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Diane — I think I was just in the way.’

There was a faint scuffling, and a sheep peered at them from around a rock. Its black face and staring eyes looked ludicrous. Fry noticed there were hundreds of small black pellets scattered on the bare ground around the Cat Stones, drying in the wind. The sheep gazed at them for a few seconds, seemed to register that they were living creatures, and scuttled away down the slope.

‘Maggie, you told me the other day there were leaves. You remembered kicking the leaves, just before you were attacked.’

‘Yes.’

Fry gestured at the rock face, the tumbled boulders, the bare earth. ‘There are no leaves here. There are no trees.’

‘But I remember it.’

‘All right,’ said Fry. ‘So perhaps you’re mistaken about where it happened.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Some of these boulders look very much alike to me. What about a bit further up?’ Fry pointed towards the tower. Maggie didn’t move. ‘Maggie?’

‘All right.’

They walked a few yards to the north. As they rounded the central boulder of the Cat Stones, a view of the valley came into sight. Traffic could be seen moving on the A6 at Darley Dale, with the houses of Two Dales climbing the hill behind to the forest plantations on Matlock Moor and Black Hill. Nearer to the tower, the beeches began to cluster together, mixed with the occasional oak. Now there were plenty of leaves underfoot.

‘What about here?’ said Fry. ‘Surely this is more likely?’

‘It could have been, I suppose.’

‘But it’s important, you see. If we’ve got the scene of the attack wrong, then we ought to have the SOCOs up here again, to see if there’s anything that might still be left. Though it’s so long now. .’

‘Yes, it’s so long,’ said Maggie. ‘Too long. It can’t matter that much.’

‘You never know,’ said Fry. She began to cast her eyes about the area, worried now about where she and Maggie were treading. They could be contaminating the scene. There could be a vital piece of forensic evidence waiting to be found, the one piece of evidence that would link the attack definitely with a suspect. Just one bit of evidence. If only it hadn’t blown away, or been trampled into the ground. Or eaten by a sheep.

‘You shouldn’t have come out here, Maggie. You’re still alone out here, you know. Just as much as you were when you were at home.’

Maggie shrugged. Fry watched her carefully. They were close enough by now for her to gauge Maggie’s reactions without being completely misled.

‘Maggie, I know about your daughter,’ said Fry. She saw Maggie lift an eyebrow a fraction. It was her left eyebrow that moved, while the right one merely twitched like a facial tic and settled into its bed of red scar tissue again. ‘I know you had your daughter adopted.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

‘Your sister told me,’ said Fry. ‘But it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?’

Maggie walked a few yards further on, hunching her shoulders and turning up her collar when the wind cutting between the boulders caught her in the face, on her damaged side.

‘Do you have memories of your daughter?’ asked Fry. ‘It might help to let the memories come.’

‘You might be right,’ said Maggie quietly. ‘It could have happened about here.’

‘You shouldn’t just bury it, Maggie.’

‘I still don’t remember exactly. It’s a wonderful view. You can see forever from here. Right down the valley. Right across the hills to Chatsworth.’

‘Maggie — ’

Maggie sighed. ‘Do you blame me?’ she said.

‘No. But does that make it any better?’

Then Maggie touched her. It was the first time they had touched each other since they had met. A week ago, that was. A lifetime away.

Maggie put her hand on Fry’s sleeve and gently drew her towards the edge of the rock at the base of the tower. They stood close to the drop, with the wind whipping round their ears and stirring their hair. They were elbow to elbow, with Fry standing, as always, on Maggie’s left side.

Fry’s injured leg was throbbing from climbing up the rocky slope. She knew she had done too much, pushed herself too far. Her heart and lungs were struggling with the effort of breathing in the face of the wind. She waited to hear what Maggie had to say, not knowing what she hoped for.

‘There’s the train, look,’ said Maggie.

A trail of steam was emerging from the trees towards Rowsley, as the Peak Rail train ran along the far bank of the Derwent near Churchtown and the houses on Dale Road.

‘It’s the last train of the day. They’ll be shedding the engines at Darley Dale station. They don’t run as far as Matlock in November.’

Fry realized Maggie was directing her attention away — well away, towards the centre of Matlock and her own home. The smell of smoke was strong; it seemed to reach her all the way from down in the valley.

Ben Cooper’s neck was starting to get stiff from staring up at the moor. The overcast sky made the slopes look dark and ominous. But it was like that in the Peak — the landscape could change its mood from one moment to the next as the weather shifted and the clouds blew over the tops.

‘It’s a pretty bleak place to die, really,’ he said. ‘I never saw it like that before.’

‘It wouldn’t be my choice, either,’ said Weenink. ‘I reckon I’d like to die in bed, preferably on the job with a blonde with big tits. That’d be the way to go.’

‘It would suit Jenny Weston, though,’ said Cooper, as if Weenink hadn’t spoken. ‘From what her father says, it sounds as though she had a pretty difficult life. It would be no wonder that she was depressed.’

‘Is that them?’ said Weenink.

Diane Fry and Maggie Crew were halfway down the path, walking close together as if supporting each other. Weenink did a double-take when Maggie Crew got close enough for him to see her face.

‘Shit.’

‘I know it’s a bit nasty,’ said Cooper. ‘But you’ve seen worse things than that, surely? Don’t let her see how you react.’

‘OK, don’t tell me. I’ll fetch the car.’

Cooper shrugged. ‘If you like.’

Fry put Maggie straight into her car. Maggie kept her head down, like a defendant being led into court. She looked as though she ought to have been wearing a blanket over her head. Except that Maggie Crew was the victim, not the accused.

‘Ben, I’m not sure we have the right location for the assault on Maggie,’ said Fry.

‘Oh?’

‘Her statement doesn’t tally with the memories she’s getting now. She told me the other day that she remembered piles of leaves underfoot. But there are no leaves at the Cat Stones. I know it sounds like a small thing, but if we’ve missed examining the proper scene. .’

‘I’ll take a look,’ said Cooper.

‘We ought to get Forensics — ’

‘I’ll take a look first, and see if I can narrow down the possibilities before we do that.’

‘Of course, her memories may be distorted. They seem to be coming back, but who can say whether they’re accurate or not?’

‘It would take a psychiatrist to do that. If her evidence ever comes to court, we’ll need to back it up with expert opinion.’

Fry sighed. ‘She’s really going to love that.’

‘If only we could produce a case without her. But we can’t.’

‘Another thing. She says she thinks she was just in the way.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That she wasn’t the intended victim, I think. She says her attacker was breathless and running, not lying in wait for her.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘I’m not responsible for whether it makes sense,’ said Fry. ‘I’m just sharing information, right?’

‘Fine.’

Cooper watched them drive off, then waited for Weenink to come back with their own car.

‘Where to now, Ben?’ he said.

‘Up there.’

‘What? Ben, do you know it’s Monday? I’ll be missing drinking time soon.’

‘Are you coming, or what?’

Weenink locked the car again. ‘Yes. But only because you’re not safe on your own.’

When they reached the Cat Stones, Cooper instinctively followed Diane Fry’s footsteps to the place where the attack on Maggie Crew was supposed to have taken place. He could see straight away what she meant about the leaves. No trees grew on the exposed gritstone edge.

‘Why shouldn’t it be here?’ said Weenink. ‘She might have been walking through the leaves earlier. She could have gone through them on the way up.’

‘Possibly.’

Weenink began to get impatient. ‘Ben, there are things to do.’

‘Let’s try this way a bit.’

‘But bloody hell — ’

Cooper turned angrily. ‘Todd — just keep out of it!’ His face felt flushed. It was only a moment’s loss of control, but nagging doubts had made him irritable, and exasperation with himself was eating at him.

He worked his way north, as Fry had done. Weenink sat on a rock and watched him, like a tolerant parent. After a minute or two, Cooper reached the spot where the rocks parted, and he could see down to Rowsley and the railway line. The last train had gone, but he could see where the line ran. Which way had Maggie’s attacker come from? Not from the other side of the rocks, that was sure — not unless he was Spiderman. The slope behind him was steep, too, and covered in loose stones that would be noisy and difficult to negotiate. If you were going to run at someone at speed and take them by surprise, there was only one way to do it — downhill. People had known that ever since violence had been invented. That was why Iron Age forts were built on the summits of steep hills.

There was more dead foliage on the ground near the Hammond Tower, certainly. But how much would there have been seven weeks ago?

Then, in front of the tower, Cooper suddenly stepped into a hidden hollow filled with wet drifts of leaves. They lay in layers, where they had collected over the years. Below the surface, the older material was black and slimy and decaying into mould. You could wade through this lot, if you wanted to, and be very vulnerable to someone approaching from above.

Skirting the edge of the hollow to reach the base of the tower, he wrinkled his nose as a trace of something acrid and familiar reached his nostrils. Could he be mistaken? Were his senses playing tricks on him again? No, the smell was quite distinct and recognizable. Cal and Stride’s van had smelled of chicken curry. Yet the Hammond Tower smelled of petrol.

From the tower, a steep track ran down to a ledge below the Cat Stones. Cooper scrambled down the track, puzzled at the origin of the petrol smell. But as he moved away from the tower, the smell dissipated. It was lingering around the wall of the tower itself.

He looked at the outcrop of rocks above him. They formed one of the biggest of the cat shapes — a pile of wind-sculpted blocks of gritstone perched on a softer layer that had been worn almost completely away by wind and water. A yawning gap had been left underneath on this side — a great empty gash that made you wonder how the cat-shaped blocks stayed hanging in that precarious position. One day, the cat’s legs would give way under the weight of rock and it would topple into the dale, forfeiting all of its nine lives in one go.

Cooper peered under the overhang. The cavity went deep under the rocks, six feet in, the height getting less as it receded to the back, a very shallow cave formed by the weathering of the stone. On the outer edge lay a handful of damp, grey feathers, where some predator had stopped long enough to dismember a wood pigeon. Cooper’s nose twitched. There was something else here. Not petrol now, but something that smelled stale and unpleasant.

He crouched and ducked his head below the rock, then waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The smell was more powerful and unmistakable. At these moments, he always remembered his first shift sergeant telling him to learn to breathe through his mouth at a death scene. If you were going to deal with dead bodies often, he said, it helped if you had a sinus problem, or chronic nasal congestion.

Cooper saw a hand, then an arm. Where the body touched the rock, the surface was stained dark with leaking fluids. The muscles and tissues had shrunk inwards away from the skin, leaving it hanging loose, like the flesh of an old, old woman. On one edge of the forearm, the skin had burst open, exposing the layers of muscle and fat underneath. Next, he noticed the dark snakes of hair that lay around the head. Although the ledge was dry, enough moisture had been supplied by the body’s own fluids to support the process of putrefaction. By now, decomposition was well advanced, despite the cool air of the White Peak autumn. The body had been lying here a few weeks.

Cooper knew exactly what to do. It was as if the past few days had drawn him inexorably to this point, as if he had reached an inevitable conclusion without knowing any of the steps he had taken along the way.

He looked at the decomposed arm for a while, without surprise. There didn’t seem to be any hurry to do the next thing. In a dying landscape, one more death seemed completely natural.