The Devil’s Edge

17

As she passed through the corridors of E Division head quarters towards the end of Friday afternoon, Diane Fry felt like a ghost. It was as if there were people here but she couldn’t see them. And, of course, they couldn’t see her. She was only a dim memory to them, a presence forgotten in every way but for her fading signature on a file.

In the CID room, she saw a woman talking to Ben Cooper. A woman who seemed at home, occupying a desk that had once been hers. She guessed this must be the new DC.

At least Cooper had tidied himself up a bit. Maybe becoming DS had done that for him, or perhaps the serious girlfriend, the little SOCO with the dark hair. When she’d first worked with Cooper, Fry had stifled a constant urge to tell him to straighten his tie, push his hair back from his forehead, get rid of that boyish look.

She’d always thought of Cooper as the social-worker type of police officer – the sort who thought there were no villains in the world, only victims; that people who did anything wrong must necessarily be in need of help. When she arrived in Derbyshire, he had obviously been well settled and popular, with friends and relatives around him, helping him out, smothering him with support. And preventing him from standing on his own two feet, the way she did herself.

But when she looked at him now, from beyond the doorway, Fry could see that the change in him went deeper than she’d thought. There was a different set to his shoulders, a firmer tone to his voice, and a new confidence in his eyes as he gazed around the room. He had the air of a prince surveying his domain. So he was maturing. She’d never really noticed it before.

And another thing. What was it that she detected in his manner when he spoke to the new woman? A fleeting expression, an exchange of glances, a suggestion of familiarity in the body language.

Fry’s eyes narrowed. She’d known there was a fresh addition to the E Division CID team. No one had bothered to tell her, of course. That was so typical. Before she’d gone to Nottinghamshire for the working group, she’d just overheard their DI, Paul Hitchens, say something like when the new DC arrives. And he’d given a meaningful nod towards one of the empty desks.

Now the new DC was here. Fry managed to hold her tongue for a while so that she didn’t look as if she was desperate to know about her. Then she turned to Gavin Murfin.

‘So who’s the new girl?’

‘Carol? You mean Carol Villiers, the new DC, I guess.’

‘Where has she come from?’

‘She’s ex-military. RAF Police.’

‘Really?’

Murfin smiled. ‘Apparently she’s a friend of Ben’s, from way back. An old school pal.’

‘Oh.’

‘From what I’ve seen of her, she seems great.’

‘I’m sure she is.’

The reporter’s name was Erin Byrne. She was one of the senior staff at the Eden Valley Times – though that wasn’t saying much, in Cooper’s experience. The turnover in the editorial department of the Times seemed to be very rapid, as anyone with two or three years’ experience moved on to better things. And for reporters on Edendale’s local paper, ‘better things’ didn’t necessarily mean the excitement of Fleet Street. It often meant a move into public relations, or the press office at Derbyshire County Council.

Byrne was dark and angular, with a soft Irish accent that made Cooper think of some rural county in the west of Ireland. Galway or Mayo. She was dressed all in black, like a high-powered businesswoman. One of those destined for a career in PR, perhaps.

‘We’ve been getting these messages,’ she said. ‘At first we didn’t take any notice. We get our fair share of loonies, you know.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

She smiled. ‘Some of them complaining about the police, of course.’

‘So what did these messages say?’

‘It’s a male caller. He claims his call is connected to the Riddings murder inquiry, and he says, “Tell them Sheffield Road.” He’s called three times now.’

‘Just Sheffield Road?’

‘That’s what he said. The trouble is, he’s been put through to a different person each time he’s called, and we all wrote him off as a nutter. It was only when someone mentioned it that we realised three of us had received similar calls. Mine was the most recent one.’

‘And they were all exactly the same?’

‘It certainly seems to have been the same man each time. He sounded as though he was calling from a phone box somewhere, too. Probably had an idea that we might trace his call. People get exaggerated ideas of what journalists can do.’

‘ Tell them Sheffield Road. That’s it?’

‘Well, my call was a bit different. He was getting cross by then. He didn’t like being passed from person to person, and thought we weren’t taking him seriously.’

‘Which you weren’t.’

‘True.’ She laughed. ‘Anyway, when he got me, on the third occasion, he was very unhappy. Maybe because I was female, I don’t know. He might have thought he’d been fobbed off with the secretary or something. He ended up slamming the phone down. But before he did, he said he would put it in writing.’

Cooper’s ears pricked up. ‘And has he?’

‘Not yet. Are you interested?’

‘On its own, the message doesn’t seem to mean anything.’

‘It didn’t to us, either. But I thought there might be some significance in the context of the inquiry. I mean, you must have gathered a lot of information that we’re not aware of. There might be a significant detail that you haven’t chosen to share with the press.’

Byrne raised an eyebrow and looked at him expectantly. He knew she was fishing for a titbit, an angle that she could turn into an exclusive story for her paper. Her charm probably worked on some people. But in this job, you learned to be close-mouthed when it came to giving out information to the public.

‘There’s a Sheffield Road out of Baslow,’ said Cooper. ‘The A621. Not many houses on it, though. A couple of farmsteads down at Far End, near the roundabout. And a big house in the woods across Bar Brook, just under Jack Flat. But that’s about it, I think.’

‘That’s the only one I know of, too.’

He pictured the road as it climbed out of Baslow. Gardom’s Edge on one side, Baslow Edge on the other, two pincers of rock squeezing the road into a narrow gap. It was a busy route, though – the main road up to the junction at Owler Bar, and on into the city via Totley. Many people thought of Owler as the gateway into the Peak District. At that curious elliptical junction sandwiched between two pubs, you could choose to head north towards Hathersage and the Hope Valley, or southwards to Baslow and Bakewell. Either way, you had to work your way round the edges and the expanse of Big Moor. If you were travelling by car, at least.

‘Well? Any thoughts?’

Cooper shook his head. ‘I can’t think what significance Sheffield Road has. It might be the route the attackers took if they came from Sheffield, but so what? There are only two possible routes to Riddings from the east anyway. It’s that, or the A625.’

‘I don’t know what to make of it, then. I thought you might understand what it meant.’

‘I wish I did.’

‘I’m sorry, I seem to have wasted your time, then.’

‘No, that’s all right. And if you do happen to get a written message…’

‘I’ll let you know what it says.’

‘It might be helpful if I could see the actual message,’ he said. ‘Helpful how?’

‘I don’t know. But seeing the original can often make quite a difference to its interpretation.’

‘Okay. If that happens, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m on duty this weekend. If a letter arrives in the morning…?’

Cooper gave her his card. ‘Don’t wait until Monday. Call my mobile number, or email me.’

He escorted Byrne back into reception. In the entrance, two sets of double doors faced the reception desk, looking out on to the visitors’ car park. A van came through the barrier, carrying a prisoner to the custody suite behind the station.

He held the door open for her, but she hesitated.

‘I might see you again, then,’ she said.

‘It’s possible.’

She gave him a small wave as she went down the steps to her car, and Cooper smiled automatically. It was only as Byrne pulled away that he noticed a crime-scene van waiting for the barrier to rise. It was inevitable that it should be Liz who was driving it.

On his way back to the CID room, Cooper glimpsed Diane Fry in the doorway, and wondered if she had come to see him. But a moment later, she was gone again. He shook his head in incomprehension. It was strange how Fry always seemed to be in a doorway, forever passing through from one place to another.

‘I see Diane Fry is back,’ said Hurst.

‘Is she? I thought it had turned cold suddenly,’ said Murfin.

‘I wonder what happened to the Implementing Strategic Change working group.’

‘There are rumours,’ said Murfin darkly.

Cooper turned towards him. ‘There are always rumours, Gavin. Usually being spread by you.’

Murfin tapped the side of his nose. ‘But this is from a reliable source, like.’

Cooper sighed. ‘Go on, then.’

‘Well, they say that something happened in Nottinghamshire, after one of the meetings. An incident. Some occurrence that upset the deliberations of the Incessant Sodding Change working group.’

A few minutes later, Cooper turned a corner in the corridor and found himself face to face with Fry, who was coming the other way. They both stopped, uncertainly.

‘Hi, Diane.’

She nodded briskly. ‘How are things going?’

‘Busy, you know.’

‘Absolutely. I do know.’

‘You’ve heard about the attacks in Riddings? The home invasions?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Cooper looked at her more closely. She fidgeted from one foot to the other, as if she was anxious to sidestep him and get on with whatever she was doing.

‘I suppose you’re anxious to get involved,’ he said.

‘Not particularly. I’m sure you’re on top of things. You surely don’t need any help from me. You never did, Ben.’

He took a step back, stung by her tone. He’d thought it might be different, now that they were no longer under each other’s feet.

‘Diane…’

‘I have a meeting with Superintendent Branagh,’ she said.

‘That’s why I’m here, if you really want to know.’

‘Oh, okay. So it’s nothing to do with the incident, then?’

‘Incident?’

‘Well, I heard…’

‘Yes, I can imagine what you heard. There are too many people who can’t keep their mouths shut.’

‘Things don’t change much here,’ said Cooper.

‘There’s one lesson you really should learn, Ben, if you never learn anything else. Places don’t change. If you want things to change in your life, you have to make it happen yourself.’

‘Well, thanks for that. I wasn’t expecting a thought for the day.’

He made to move past her, but she stopped him.

‘So, how is GI Jane getting on?’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘The female Rambo. Your new DC.’

‘Carol Villiers. Have you been checking up on her?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘I have no idea. But it sounds that way from your sarcastic references. Otherwise, how would you know she was in the services?’

‘I’m not totally out of touch, you know. You haven’t quite got rid of me from Edendale yet. It’s all around the section who the new DC is. Old pals, aren’t you? You went to school with her, right? It must be nice to reminisce about the old days together whenever you feel like it.’

‘I suppose you’ve been talking to Gavin,’ said Cooper as he brushed past her. ‘I wish you wouldn’t try to interfere with my team.’

He knew Fry was watching him as he walked away, but he didn’t look back.

‘It used to be my team,’ she said. But he pretended he hadn’t heard her.

When Cooper returned to the CID room, Diane Fry was still there. And she’d met Carol Villiers. The two were sitting at desks opposite each other, though they didn’t seem to be speaking.

Murfin was watching Fry and Villiers sizing each other up.

‘Who do you think would win in a fight?’ he said when he saw Cooper. ‘Well, I suppose there’s only one way to find out…’

‘Gavin,’ said Cooper warningly, knowing he was wasting his breath.

‘Go on. I bet you’ve wondered. Do you think Villiers knows those SAS death grips? Can she kill someone with nothing but a ballpoint pen? Only, I’ve got a spare one, if she needs it.’

Cooper couldn’t help following Murfin’s gaze. The sight of the two women drew his attention irresistibly. They seemed to be talking to each other now. He strained to hear what they were saying, but Villiers was sitting with her back to him, and Fry was speaking too quietly to be heard against the background noise of ringing phones. That was unlike her, too. She had never been one to whisper or mumble. And she had certainly never been afraid of letting people hear her opinions.

‘Wishing you could lip-read?’ said Murfin.

‘What? Of course not,’ said Cooper, though it was exactly what he’d been thinking.

‘Mostly swear words, I reckon. A bit of sarcasm. Ritual abuse.’

Cooper looked at Fry’s expression again, saw a raised eyebrow that accompanied a murmured question.

‘No, Gavin,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t think so.’

Becky Hurst had been busy working on her PC, but she stopped when an officer brought in a copy of the Sheffield evening paper to show her.

‘I can’t believe this,’ she said.

Cooper caught her outraged tone.

‘Becky?’

‘People are starting to treat the Savages as some kind of heroes.’

‘What is it?’

‘This story in the Sheffield paper. It’s as if they’re Robin Hood and his Merry Men or some rubbish. Unbelievable.’

Murfin chuckled. ‘Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? But they’re only doing the first part, surely?’

‘How do we know?’ said Cooper.

‘Well…’

‘We don’t know, do we? We don’t know anything about them.’

‘Still, whoever they are – they’re not heroes.’

‘It’s the way they’re managing to come and go at will,’ said Murfin. ‘Evading capture, eluding the police. The public love all that. It makes them think they’re watching a Hollywood film. You’ll see, they’ll be built up into legends if we don’t catch them soon. There’ll be stories told about them, all kinds of exaggerations. Songs, jokes – it’ll all happen.’

‘There’s already a Facebook fan page,’ said Irvine.

‘A what?’ asked Cooper.

‘A fan page. On Facebook.’ Irvine looked at him as if that was enough explanation for anyone.

‘Show me,’ said Cooper.

Irvine called up the page. It was headed We all luv the Savages. Cooper read through a few of the messages before he could stand any more.

These guys are legend.

Just brilliant the way they’re giving the f***ing cops the runaround. Ram it to the pigs!

You said it, dude. More power to the Savages.

‘Who are these people?’ he said.

‘All kinds of folk. It’s been building up ever since the first attack. Not the first one in Riddings, I mean the first one attributed to the Savages.’

‘In Hathersage.’

‘Right. That guy they robbed was a banker.’

‘No, he was a financial adviser,’ said Cooper.

‘Still. You know how people feel. That was enough for public support to come down on the side of the Savages. And then, with them sticking it to the police the way they have…’

‘So these are their groupies. Criminals with a fan club. Pity we can’t shut them down.’

‘We could try. Facebook might cooperate.’

‘It’s freedom, though, isn’t it?’ said Irvine. ‘That’s what the internet is supposed to be about, the freedom to express your own views and share information.’

‘Freedom can be used as a weapon, too,’ said Hurst.

Surprised, Cooper looked round at her. He was seeing a side of her he hadn’t noticed before.

Hurst flushed slightly at his look.

‘Well, it’s true,’ she said defiantly. ‘Sometimes you have to protect people from themselves.’

Irvine laughed. ‘Listen to Maggie Thatcher. It’ll be no such thing as society next. Roll on the Fourth Reich.’

‘That’s very offensive,’ said Hurst, going redder.

‘Well, lighten up.’

‘All right,’ said Cooper firmly. ‘That’s enough. You two can continue your political debate in your own time.’

Hurst and Irvine went back to their desks in silence. Hurst ostentatiously picked up her phone and turned her back to her colleague to make a call. Cooper looked round the office, wondering where the suddenly sour atmosphere had come from. But Fry was no longer there. She seemed to have faded into the background, vanishing as unexpectedly as she’d arrived.

Carol Villiers placed copies of her reports on Cooper’s desk for him to check, along with an envelope of crime-scene photographs from Riddings.

‘Not much love lost there, then,’ she said. ‘That was a surprise.’

‘They’re okay,’ said Cooper. ‘I think they like each other really.’

‘Some people have a funny way of showing it.’

‘Yes, they do.’

Cooper opened the envelope and spread the photos out on his desk. Some of them still made him flinch. For some reason, the scene of a violent crime always looked so much more sordid in the photographs than in real life. It might be because the victim was no longer a person, but had been reduced to a tangle of pale, dead limbs, an untidy heap of clothes, a drying bloodstain on the floor. The small details of that person’s life were just so much rubbish scattered in the background, every item marked with a crime-scene number.

Many murder scenes were sordid in reality too, of course. Grubby bedrooms heaped with dirty washing, sitting rooms stacked with leaking plastic bags and cardboard boxes, filthy back alleys jammed with waste bins, stinking of rotten food and infested with rats.

Zoe Barron’s kitchen was nothing like that. Cooper remembered its gleaming newness, its almost clinical cleanliness – a spare, minimalist lack of clutter that seemed unnatural. Definitely not the way he thought of a kitchen, anyway. A long, long way from the kitchen he recalled in his childhood at Bridge End Farm, his mother surrounded by pans and cooking smells, a huge pine table without an inch of clear space.

And yet these photographs had reduced the kitchen at Valley View to the same sordid level as a rat-infested alley. Blood and violent death could do that. Zoe Barron would be appalled. Muddy footprints, the cold light of the camera’s flash, the peculiarly dead quality of a digital image. All the gleam of the steel and marble had been sucked out, drained away the way Zoe’s life had been.

Cooper stared for a long while at the sprawled body. Zoe Barron was no longer a human being with a past, a present and a future, an individual with a life and relationships and all the human hopes and fears. She was no longer even a name, but a series of numbers.

Finally he could look no longer. He felt the anger growing inside him, like a surge of acid through his veins. His hands began to tremble, his ears buzzed with the rush of blood as an overwhelming desire took hold of him. The need to hit out, to lash out at anything that came within range.

He gritted his teeth in his effort to fight back the rage.

‘Some Robin Hood,’ he said. ‘Some bloody Robin Hood.’

Monica Gamble was tired. She’d been tired for years now. Not because she was ill – well, not all the time anyway. She was exhausted from the ordeal of living with her husband. Thirty-five years they’d been married. It was a life sentence. Two or three life sentences. From what she’d read in the papers, some murderers got out after twelve years.

Monica didn’t know what crime she’d committed to end up lumbered like this. Barry was the equivalent of the most annoying cell mate you could imagine getting banged up with in prison. She supposed anyone could get irritating after thirty-five years of close contact. But Barry made a special art of being annoying.

‘It’s a mistake to lie to the police, though, isn’t it?’ he said that night. ‘They always find out you’re lying, one way or another. They just keep on and on asking questions, until they catch you out.’

‘But they haven’t asked us anything important yet. So we’re not lying.’

‘No,’ said Barry doubtfully.

‘Well? We’re not, are we?’

He shook his head, still looking worried. ‘It makes no difference. They’ll be annoyed with us if they find out.’

‘Let them be annoyed.’

‘We’ll be in trouble.’

‘For God’s sake, Barry, do you think you can live your whole life avoiding trouble? That would be so boring, even if you could. It’s the thought of getting in trouble that makes life interesting. It’s the excitement of the risk. Don’t you see that?’

Monica gazed into his face, and sighed. Clearly he didn’t see it. She could read it in his puzzled eyes and wrinkled brow.

‘Look, just answer their questions as briefly as you can, and don’t volunteer any information. You can do that, surely?’

She flinched as she felt her nails digging into the palms of her hands. What had she done to deserve this?

Barry wandered off to his shed and left her standing in the garden in the dusk. Instead of going back into the house, she stayed out for a while. She was gazing upwards, beyond the village, watching the edge as the rocks were painted in vivid colours and shaped by the evening light.

In earlier years, Monica had often heard Barry point out those shapes to the children, encouraging them to picture faces or the outlines of animals in the rock. He said it developed their imaginations. It was true that if you watched the rocks in the setting sun, they seemed to move as perspectives changed, the shadows shifted and lengthened, and darkness filled a crevice to form the suggestion of a mouth or an eye. If you stared long enough, you could see a dragon turn its head to gaze across the valley, a giant dog rise from the ground, a cruel profile sink slowly into the dusk until it was lost from sight.

The children had asked once whether all those creatures came to life at night, when no one was looking. And Barry had said yes, they did. She supposed there was no harm in it. Nothing wrong with letting kids exercise their imaginations. It was better for them than all that sitting in front of TV screens and Game Boys, all that squinting at text messages on their mobile phones.

When she was a child herself, Monica had pictured all kinds of beasts roaming the flats, those wide plains of heather and mat grass that filled the space above the edges. She knew the stories were just folk tales to frighten the gullible. No one would go walking up there in the dark, would they? No one with any sense. Not if they had an ounce of imagination.

Monica had her own theory about those folk stories. She figured they represented natural common sense, a little bit of sound psychological strategy. After all, it was better to place your demons right out there in the dark, and leave them wailing mournfully on the edge. So much better than to keep them prowling endlessly inside your head.