The Devil’s Edge

12

It was one of those peculiar transitions that Cooper experienced from time to time in the Peak District. Within a few minutes, he’d passed from a secluded cluster of affluent twenty-first-century homes into an alien stone landscape. Pools of peat-stained water, traces of primitive habitation.

Often the shift could be quite sudden. In this case, it had been the point where he turned the corner of a rocky outcrop and found himself on the far side of the Devil’s Edge. The wind had dropped, the sound of traffic fell away, the last sign of human habitation disappeared. It all happened in a second, within a distance of two or three steps. But he’d been concentrating on keeping his footing on the smooth rock, and he hadn’t noticed the exact moment of change.

He turned to see if Villiers was still behind him. He felt as though he’d walked through an invisible doorway by accident. Maybe he’d never be able to find it again to return to the twenty-first century. Would that be such a bad thing?

From the edge, he found himself looking eastwards across an expanse of scrub on Stoke Flat towards Big Moor. Big Moor was a kind of no-man’s-land, a buffer zone wedged between the Peak District National Park and the city of Sheffield. Out here on the moors, you stumbled across mysterious locations every few hundred yards. Isolated guide posts pointed the way across empty moorland, patterns were burned into the heather like UFO landing strips, memorial cairns commemorated long-forgotten deaths. And there were so many of those dark, twisted outcrops of rock, sculpted by centuries of wind and rain into bizarre shapes. and marked on the map by sinister names.

For Cooper, this was a landscape infested with evil. Hobs and boggarts, and all kinds of monsters. Ahead of him, the ground was scattered with curious lumps and hollows that his grandmother would have said were hob holes. You wouldn’t go walking across this moor at night, for fear of what might climb out of those holes and grab at your ankles with sharp claws. Of course, they were rabbit burrows, most likely. Or the remains of ancient mine shafts. But they could break your ankle just the same in the dark. They were as lethal as a hob any day.

Villiers was close behind him, hardly even breathing heavily from the climb. But her face was glowing and her eyes were bright as she gazed over the valley, sharing his pleasure at the panoramic view.

‘This is terrific,’ she said. ‘You know, I was never based anywhere in the world that compared to the Peak District.’

‘I suppose this kind of country doesn’t lend itself to air strips.’

He’d never really been able to explain the appeal that a landscape like this had for him. In a way, he felt it must mirror some hidden landscape inside his head. Those stories from local history and folklore were permanently lodged in his subconscious, a legacy of tribal memory. But it was here, in the physical environment of the edges and moors, that they came to life and were acted out by ghostly figures. Their spirits were caught and preserved in the ancient stones and trackways, their names immortalised on the map, their shapes and faces still vividly re-created in the imagination.

People talked about the mists of the past, as if history was wrapped in a gentle haze of nostalgia. But when Cooper thought about some aspects of his ancestors’ lives, the images in his mind tended to be swallowed by an evil fog – a swirling miasma of fear and superstition, a bitter smog of poverty and suffering.

They walked part of the way along the summit track, stopping whenever a new view opened up of rocks and valley. Dusk was falling quickly, changing the light every few minutes as the sun played among low clouds on the western horizon.

Seen from the valley, these gritstone edges resembled the long, broken battlements of an old fortress. One of Cooper’s nieces, seeing the edges one day, had said they were like the ruins of Helm’s Deep after the siege of the orc army. But from up here, high on the moors, there were fantastic views over the rooftops of the Derwentside villages, right out across the Peak District, with the Kinder plateau and Bleaklow in the far distance.

Turning to the south, he glimpsed a magical vision – a vast mansion gleaming gold in the midst of a green landscape. Chatsworth, of course. The home of the Duke of Devonshire, a favourite destination for millions of tourists. Its gilded window frames made the whole house glow in the evening sun.

He knew that Chatsworth was literally packed to the rafters with priceless antiques. Old Masters and oriental porcelain had been collected by dukes over the centuries. Da Vincis and Rembrandts hung on its walls. Delft vases and Blue John bowls mingled with Roman statues and precious silver. But security on the estate was top notch. Most of the thefts they experienced at Chatsworth were the result of tourists taking plants from the gardens.

‘This track was a millstone road, made by seventeenth-century quarrymen,’ said Cooper. ‘Then it was owned by one of the dukes, and he set gamekeepers to guard it against pesky ramblers. Now the public has access. It must be one of the best stretches of scenery in the country.’

‘No argument there.’ Villiers took a deep breath. ‘No matter how often I came home on leave, I never really felt I was back properly.’

‘It gets in the blood, doesn’t it?’

‘Like a virus. But in a good way.’

From the edge, they could see the steep, wooded slopes below, with a dense covering of rotting silver birch. You could make your way down to the woods, but only if you had good stability and the right footwear.

Riddings Edge was also littered with prehistoric sites. Ancient settlements, burials, field systems. To the north, the Stoke Flat stone circle was only a few yards from the main path. And old maps showed a network of packhorse trails crossing the moors, from a time when they provided the only route from north Derbyshire to the towns and cities in the east. It must have been a wild and lonely place for packhorse men and traders to navigate across in safety.

Yet these moors were within such easy reach of Sheffield, Chesterfield, Derby and the M1 motorway that they were possibly the easiest wild place in Britain to access from a major city. There were good footpaths too, and parking close to the top so that people could enjoy the views without a long walk.

The moors had originally been shaped by farming, tree clearance and grouse shooting. There was the purple haze of heather, and the strange, cackling call of the red grouse. And maybe a fleeting glimpse of a common lizard basking on weather-worn rocks. Here and there, under a tree, Cooper saw little mounds writhing with brown ants. There were hairy wood ants, fearsome creatures that squirted formic acid at you if you came too close. The smell of vinegar was the warning sign. There were adders here too. The snakes hibernated for winter. But in May, as the weather warmed up, they came out on to the moor to sun themselves.

No adders or lizards were out at this time of day, not even a deer. Cooper saw only a Coke can lying in the bracken. An aluminium can outlived most people. If it wasn’t picked up, this one would still be lying here in sixty years’ time. Maybe seventy or eighty. It wouldn’t have rotted or decomposed. There was nothing biodegradable about it. By the end of the century, this can would still be weathering slowly, its bright red surface faded to a dirty brown that matched the dead bracken. Yet the entire population of Riddings would be dead and gone. The human body was different. In the High Peak mortuary, Zoe Barron’s body was doing more than just fading.

He jumped as a pheasant burst from under his feet in an explosion of noise and feathers. He had failed to see it, been completely unaware of its presence as it lay motionless in the heather.

On other moors, the shooting season had started on the Glorious Twelfth. But Big Moor was owned by the National Park authority and designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its rare plants and wildlife. Despite the ease of access, this moorland had been left pretty much undisturbed since prehistoric times.

‘You think a lot, don’t you?’ said Villiers. ‘You’d forgotten I was here for a while – I could tell by your face. I don’t remember that about you, Ben.’

‘Sorry,’ said Cooper.

But she was right. He’d started to feel so relaxed with her that he hadn’t felt it necessary to concentrate on acknowledging her presence, the way courtesy demanded you had to do with strangers.

‘How long is it, then?’ he said.

‘Since we saw each other?’ she guessed.

‘Yes, sorry. That’s what I mean.’

‘When I was home on leave once, visiting the old folks. Maybe five years.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would be about that. So… five years ago. Does that mean you’ve not been given any leave in the last five years?’

‘Well, you know…’

‘You had more interesting things to do.’

‘We move on, don’t we?’

‘Of course,’ said Cooper. ‘Just not always in a good way, I suppose.’

‘No.’

‘So which was it for you?

He watched her eyes as she thought about the question, saw the doubt and pain pass across her face, the conflicting memories of love and grief written as clear as any words could express.

‘Both, perhaps,’ she said. ‘Is that possible?’

‘I don’t know.’

Villiers was silent for a moment, and Cooper thought he’d said the wrong thing, hurt her by poking into all those darkest corners of her life that she was trying so hard not to remember.

‘What about you, Ben?’ she said finally. ‘Moving on in a good way?’

Cooper hesitated. His first instinct was to tell her everything, to spill out all his feelings, explain exactly what he felt about his family, about his job, about Liz. Everything, for good or bad.

But then he looked at her again, noticing once more how changed she was. No, the time wasn’t right. Not quite yet. He needed to be sure that he still knew her as well as he’d always thought he did.

He pointed away from the edge towards the flats. Large expanses of these would be covered in bright red reeds in the autumn. The colour would merge with the purple of the flowering heather like a swathe of dramatic fabric. The furthest hills were already carpeted in heather. To stand on a rocky outcrop on the edge and look westwards was like gazing out over a red sea, crimson and magenta waves moving gently in the breeze like an ocean of blood.

‘Let’s walk that way for a while, across the moor towards White Edge. There’s a Neolithic settlement called Swine Sty. We should be able to reach that and get back again before the light goes.’

‘Okay. You’re the boss.’

‘Watch out for the hob holes,’ said Cooper.

Villiers laughed. ‘Hob? Are you kidding.’

‘You know about hobs?’

‘Yes, from my childhood fairy stories.’

The footpath towards White Edge crossed an area of grassland that gleamed gold even on a day of mist and rain. They headed towards a solitary tree standing in forlorn isolation on the moor.

‘I spend most of my time in this country, of course,’ said Villiers. ‘I served with an RAFP flight at a station in Cambridgeshire after I came back from Afghanistan. Mostly community policing, but you’d be surprised how much drug detection work we did, not to mention more recently breathalysing military personnel suspected of drink-driving.’

Cooper noted that her breathing was getting a bit ragged now. But the strenuous activity didn’t stop her talking. It was as if these wide-open spaces, the empty landscapes above the Devil’s Edge, had given her the freedom to express what she might not have said down in the valley, among strangers.

‘My last posting was with Number Five Squadron at RAF Waddington,’ she said. ‘In April last year, my unit was deployed to Santander after the Icelandic volcano closed air space. We were assisting stranded British troops from Afghanistan, and some UK civilians. They came back to the UK on board HMS Albion.’

‘I remember that in the news.’

‘Outside unit level, I had a spell in the investigations branch, the Specialist Police Wing. That’s plain clothes, the investigation of serious crime. CID work, in fact. Some of that time with the SPW was spent in Germany. I even liaised with the Forensic Science Flight on forensic investigations.’

‘Your CV must have read like a dream for the interview panel,’ said Cooper.

She laughed. ‘Yes, I think I had everything. A local girl who knows the area, has life experience and leadership abilities. Not to mention the training. Our basic training includes on-and off-road driving, weapons training, lines of communication…’

‘And good physical fitness.’

‘We were tested every six months. That doesn’t happen here, I guess.’

Cooper remembered the way she’d looked at Gavin Murfin.

‘No.’

They were climbing now, towards the highest point of Big Moor. Beyond Swine Sty, the county boundary ran right along a stream called Bar Brook. The moors they could see in the middle distance lay in South Yorkshire.

‘This stuff is difficult to walk through,’ said Villiers.

‘It’s peat, but it’s shallow peat. Not like the depths on Kinder or Bleaklow.’

The result of the peat’s shallowness on these eastern moors was a mass of coarse, tussocky grass interspersed with boggy areas. Villiers was right – it was a difficult landscape to walk through. In places, it felt like wading through drifts of snow, with no idea what lay underneath. Blankets of dead bracken stems choked everything.

‘And you met your husband in the service?’ asked Cooper.

‘Glen had a posting to the Tactical Provost Squadron. The TPS take on forward policing tasks in conflict zones. He served with his unit in the Gulf – Iraq, you know.’ Villiers paused, seemed to reflect for a moment on something. ‘The rest of his guys are still in a conflict zone now, in Afghanistan. Those are just the more publicised taskings, though. Most of our work doesn’t get in the news.’

‘Close protection duties?’

‘Not me personally. But I was given the training. We all were. So stick close to me and you’ll be safe, Ben.’

‘Great.’

‘Mind you, I’m used to carrying a Browning nine-millimetre. An extendable baton doesn’t quite feel the same on the hip.’

As they reached the top of the moor, Villiers gazed across the valley that opened up to the east.

‘I was trained not far from here, you know. Until the training school moved down south, we were based at RAF Newton in Nottinghamshire. We used to have a Hawker Hunter at the entrance, as our gate guardian.’

‘Over the river, then,’ said Cooper. ‘I think I know the site. The buildings are an industrial estate now, though. The airfield itself has gone back to being arable land. They grow oilseed rape.’

‘Shame.’

She hesitated. ‘I keep saying “we” and “us”, don’t I? I keep forgetting I’m not in the RAFP any more. When you’ve been a member of a tight-knit unit for so long, it’s hard to make the break. Especially if you’ve served in a conflict zone. You learn to depend totally on your mates, to watch each other’s back. Being part of a team under pressure, there’s nothing like it.’

‘I understand,’ said Cooper.

‘That’s why so many leave the services and find it impossible to adjust to civilian life. They suddenly find there’s no one to watch their back, no mates to depend on. No buddy at their side.’

Cooper could think of nothing to say. He could tell from the catch in her voice that she was no longer talking just about her colleagues in her unit, but about a much more personal loss. It was a loss that she might never recover from, no matter how often people told her that time was a healer.

‘You might not think so yet, Carol,’ he said, ‘but we can be like that too. A close-knit team. People you can depend on to watch your back.’

She smiled. ‘Thanks, Ben.’

In the distance, Cooper saw the antlers and head of a stag outlined against the moor. The animal itself stood motionless, listening. Its ears were erect, its nostrils quivering. What was it listening for? What scent had it detected? Could an animal sense the presence of evil on the moor?

‘How long were you actually in the services?’ asked Cooper as they reached the edge. ‘It can’t be more than – what? Nine years?

‘Yes. The standard contract.’

‘It seems such a lot to have crammed into nine years.’

‘Well, that’s the armed services for you. You never know what you’re going to be doing next, or where you’re going to be posted. It’s not like being a copper in sleepy old Derbyshire.’

She smiled, and Cooper knew he didn’t have to tell her that it wasn’t like that. But he said it anyway.

‘It can get quite exciting,’ he said. ‘Some of the time, anyway.’

‘From what we hear in the media, all you do is fill in paperwork for an entire shift.’

‘So Snowdrops spend their off-duty time reading the Daily Mail, do they?’

‘Oh, and I forgot – maybe the odd spell of planting false evidence, too.’

‘Well, that’s true.’

They began to trudge back towards the edge. As he walked through the expanse of reeds and cotton grass, Cooper noticed the way the distant rocky outcrops seemed to change shape. They slid slowly sideways, merged and divided, their outlines shifting from smooth to jagged to a distinctive silhouette.

It was all the effect of altering angle and perspective. With each step, a transformation took place in the landscape, a gradual reveal like the slow drawing aside of a curtain. At a point halfway across the flats, a split rock he hadn’t noticed before came into view. As it emerged from behind a larger boulder, its two halves slowly parted and turned, like the hands of a clock creeping past noon.

Of course, his logical mind told him that he was the only moving object in this landscape. It was his steady strides across the flats that were causing the change in perspective. But his senses were sending him a different message. With no nearby landmarks, and in this peculiar light, the effect was deceptive. Despite what he kept telling himself, it really seemed to be the rock that was moving.

Some people studied these rocks in minute detail, mapping the strata and analysing their structure. Cooper supposed it was important to understand the geology, to explain in cool scientific terms how these eastern edges had come into existence. That was one way of dealing with their presence. But he couldn’t help feeling that a logical approach took away the mystery. Didn’t analysis always destroy romance, and drain the life out of poetry? Why not just stand and gaze, and let the imagination wander? He preferred the edges this way – wild, and full of magic.

‘Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘You mentioned it once, but…?’

Villiers stared out over the valley. ‘Yes, we were both in Afghanistan. We were there for two months, instructing new Afghan police recruits in Kabul. That was fairly uneventful, actually. There are lots of other duties that people never get to hear about back home. Back in 2002, Glen was injured in Cyprus, during demonstrations against a new radio mast at RAF Akrotiri. He got a commendation from the Provost Marshal for that.’

Cooper waited, knowing there was more, but not sure of the right question to ask, or even if he should be asking.

Finally Villiers spoke again, more quietly. Cooper had to strain to catch her voice, before her words were swept away in the wind blowing across the Devil’s Edge.

‘But then he went back to Afghanistan,’ she said. ‘Two years ago, he was shot and wounded in Helmand Province, when Taliban insurgents opened fire on his patrol one night. He died from his injuries before they could fly him back home.’

They stood silently together for a few minutes as the light faded and dusk settled on the valley. Riddings was directly below them, and Curbar could be glimpsed in the south.

Northwards, the village of Froggatt lay below its own gritstone edge. The main part of the village was on the other side of the A625, with a tiny, ancient stone bridge that crossed the river to reach the Grindleford road. That bridge must have stood on another packhorse route, Cooper felt sure. Probably the route that snaked up the slope behind the Chequers Inn and zigzagged to the top of the rock-strewn edge. It was a steep track, worn into ruts over the centuries by the hoofs of the laden horses. It boggled the mind to imagine how they had managed it. Cooper had always thought it was difficult enough going down without losing your footing, let alone carrying a couple of millstones. Those packhorse men must have been tough characters.

Where were the packhorse trains heading when they went over the edge and crossed the moor? Towards Chesterfield. And, of course, to Sheffield. They carried grindstones for the city’s steel and cutlery manufacturers.

Tonight, mist hung in the valley bottom, masking the lights of the villages. As with any of these edges, the best light was in the evening, as the sun started to descend in the west and bathe the stones with warm light. Cooper liked to wait to see the afterglow, then walk back to experience the moors in the dark. There was nothing like starlight and moonlight, and there was plenty of it up here on the edge. As long as you tried to ignore the orange glow from Sheffield in the east.

On the slopes below the edge, the houses of Riddings and its neighbouring villages were taking on their own distinct shapes in the dusk. Tonight they looked like frightened creatures crouching in the hollows of the hillside, an occasional light winking on and off as if a cautious eye was opened to check for danger.

Cooper pictured the inhabitants huddled inside their homes. For some reason, the image in his mind resembled an illustration he’d seen once in a children’s history book – a primitive tribe of Homo sapiens crouching in their caves around smoking fires, their shadows thrown on to rock walls decorated with drawings of wild animals.

It must be so difficult, sitting in your home, or lying in your bed at night, knowing you were a potential victim. How did you run your life with the knowledge of lethal danger lurking outside the door? You huddled together in that primeval instinct for safety. It was the same fear that cavemen must have felt, listening to wild beasts crashing through the forest at night, picturing in their minds those unseen terrors in the darkness beyond the cave. A completely primitive dread.

There was one thing Cooper did know – the Savages didn’t belong in a village like Riddings. They belonged up here, on the moor. They were, after all, wild beasts who walked on two legs.

‘Carol,’ he said, ‘have they shown you how to access the PNC and use the intelligence system?’

She looked at him in surprise, her mind no doubt following a completely different train of thought.

‘Yes, I’m fully trained,’ she said. ‘I did all that in Ripley before I came up to E Division.’

‘I’ve got some jobs I’d like you to do in the morning, then.’

‘In the office?’

She sounded disappointed. Cooper sympathised, but it couldn’t be helped.

‘I’m afraid it’s where most of our work is done,’ he said.

‘Oh, I know.’

They were looking down on Riddings from the outcrop, poised in space, conscious of the empty air around them. It was the God position, everything below them laid out and visible. Cooper saw the headlights of a vehicle travelling along Curbar Lane, the beams sweeping across the trees and catching a reflection from the convex mirrors outside Valley View. He watched for the vehicle to reach the corner at The Green and turn up or down the hill. But the lights vanished before they reached that point. The driver must have stopped or pulled into one of the houses close to the junction. He wondered if that had happened on Tuesday night, too.

Tuesday. From their account of that night, William and Retty Chadwick had stood around here, watching for shooting stars as the Perseid meteor shower passed overhead. On the surface, it didn’t sound like much of an alibi. But how many other star-gazers were out on the edge that night? If it was a good night for viewing meteors, there were probably many people who’d driven out from Sheffield or Chesterfield to get away from the city lights and take advantage of the darker skies over the Peak District. Had that night been overcast, though? Or was it clear and cloudless, perfect for watching shooting stars?

So the Chadwicks had been standing here in the dark, looking upwards at the sky. But surely they must have looked down, too? They couldn’t have resisted this God-like sensation of being able to see everything from above, gazing down on their village and watching their neighbours coming and going.

Down there, the residents of Riddings would not have been able to see anything from behind their walls and hedges. The Chadwicks were the only people who might actually have witnessed what happened. Whether they realised it or not, their position had been unique.

Cooper wondered who else knew that the Chadwicks had been on the edge that night, watching the Perseids. That knowledge might be critical. Because if his theory was correct, it put the Chadwicks at risk of being the next victims.

Villiers shivered. ‘Is it me, or is it getting a bit cool now?’

‘Yes, the rocks lose their heat very quickly when it goes dark. And there’s always a cold wind up here. It’s a totally different place in the winter.’

‘I can imagine. Not the most hospitable landscape in the cold and rain, I guess.’

For a moment, Cooper took one last look at the rooftops of Riddings, spread out below him. He was reminded of the case of a serial killer who had chosen his victims on the basis of where they lived. When he was caught, he’d told his interviewers that the shape of a house roof told him something about the people living there. Told him whether it was their turn to die, he supposed.

Cooper was just thinking it was time to go home, when the ear-splitting screech of a burglar alarm shattered the silence.