The Devil’s Edge

21

Robin Hood tourists. They used to be restricted to Nottinghamshire. They haunted Sherwood Forest, hoping for a glimpse of the Merry Men among the oak trees. Or they visited Nottingham Castle, signed up for a guided tour of the caves, and were amazed to find that the Sheriff actually existed. Occasionally, a few might stray into Derbyshire to look at Little John’s grave in the churchyard at Hathersage.

But these people were a different kind. A different kettle of fish altogether. They weren’t interested in bows and arrows, or men in green tights. Their obsession was with a more contemporary phenomenon: the developing twenty-first-century legends known as the Savages.

Cooper was frustrated by the number of vehicles parked all over Riddings. No wonder local residents got annoyed. There were constant trickles of people walking past Valley View and Fourways, pointing at the police tape, taking photographs on their mobile phones. And it wasn’t because the village was quaint. Not any more.

He thought of the press photographers gathered outside Moorside House, and wondered if they were still there. If they’d been expecting Tyler Kaye to arrive, they had been right. Luckily, Cooper knew that he himself wasn’t anyone the press would pay attention to. He was far too unimportant, not a face they would recognise.

E Division headquarters in West Street always seemed so much quieter at the weekend. Downstairs, the custody suite was still busy, of course. Uniformed officers on Saturday duty came and went, prisoners were processed, members of the public came into reception to visit the enquiry desk.

Upstairs, it was different. The incident room was manned, but Cooper’s presence wasn’t required. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the office today. There was no sign of Hitchens or Branagh either, but that wasn’t unusual at the weekend.

Luke Irvine was the duty DC. He looked up in surprise when Cooper and Villiers came into the CID room.

‘Something up?’ he said.

‘No, no. Just wanted to check up on a few things.’

‘Okay,’ said Irvine uncertainly.

Watching him, Cooper was reminded of himself as a young DC, not quite knowing what was going on a lot of the time, and being reluctant to ask in case he seemed dim.

Villiers placed the open box of chocolates on a desk.

‘This feels really decadent,’ she said. ‘Gavin will be sorry he missed it.’

‘Not when it comes to a clash with the Rams at home,’ said Cooper.

Villiers shook her head. ‘Football. It’s so sad.’

Cooper had begun making a list of names, consulting a file occasionally for one that he couldn’t quite remember.

‘There’s no need for you to be here, you know, Carol. You can go home.’

‘I know.’

He looked at her and smiled, reflecting what Diane Fry might have said to him in these circumstances. Something caustic and dismissive, no doubt. She certainly wouldn’t have been here supporting him in some quixotic pursuit. A wild goose chase, she would have called it. And probably other things a lot worse.

Villiers peeked at his list of names. ‘Well, from what we saw at the show this afternoon, there seem to be plenty of feuds and disputes going on in that village.’

‘You’re not kidding,’ said Cooper. ‘The Chadwicks and the Barrons, Mr Nowak and the Barrons, Mr Nowak and the Slattery family.’

‘Mr Edson and…?’

‘Well, his own mother, by the sound of it.’

‘Is she his only family?’

‘Hold on.’

Cooper called up the details that had been gathered on Edson during the early stages of the inquiry.

‘Here we are. Russell Edson, of Riddings Lodge, Curbar Lane. A former building contractor, but he gave up the business after the big win. He’s divorced, with two grown-up children. He lives at the lodge with his mother Glenys, as we know. His father died some years ago.’

‘Divorced, eh? Did that happen before or after the lottery windfall?’

‘Good question. It would make a big difference to the wife’s divorce settlement, wouldn’t it?’

‘Absolutely. So what’s the answer?’

‘Before.’

‘Unlucky. She’s got to be resentful. Thinking if only she’d hung on a bit longer, all this could be hers.’

‘It seems Mr Edson has one of the highest levels of security in Riddings, too. He possibly has the most money, and certainly the largest collection of valuables – the house is packed with them.’

‘I wonder if he feels vulnerable. He might expect to be the next target.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, he might. Well, that’s Edson. But the striking thing is that nobody seems to have had any objections to the Hollands. Not that we’ve heard about.’

‘Interesting. So that leaves us without a motive for them being a target on Thursday night.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Cooper.

‘I mean, we are thinking along the lines of someone in Riddings being responsible for these attacks, rather than the legendary Savages everyone else is out chasing? I have got that right, Ben?’

Cooper threw up his hands in submission. ‘You’ll say I’m mad, I suppose.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Everyone else will.’

He looked over his shoulder, but Irvine was on the phone and paying no attention to them.

‘Superintendent Branagh seems to like you anyway,’ said Villiers. ‘Unless you’ve got something on her?’

Cooper shook his head. ‘I‘ve just learned not to rub people up the wrong way all the time.’

‘The way I do, you mean?’

‘I didn’t say that, but…’

‘I’m getting on really well with Gavin Murfin, at least.’

‘Are you?’ said Cooper. ‘I hadn’t noticed. But, well… Gavin is okay.’

‘And the youngsters are great.’

Cooper nodded. ‘It’s a good team.’

‘I think I can fit in here, Ben.’

‘I’m sure you can. I wasn’t suggesting anything else.’

‘I know I’ve come from a different background. Gavin’s been a copper almost all his life, it seems. Luke and Becky are just starting out, so they have most of their experience to come. But me – I’ve seen and done things they never will, and to be honest I wouldn’t ever want them to. That sort of experience leaves a mark on you. It can’t be helped. Counselling only achieves so much. That’s just the way it is. I’m sure you must see a big difference in me from the way I was before I joined up.’

‘Not that much.’

‘Oh, come on. I’m harder, more callous, less understanding of others. I’m sure that’s the way it must seem.’

‘I-’

She held up a hand. ‘No, you don’t need to say anything. There’s no point in trying to contradict me. I know it’s true. But I’m trying. I really am trying to get back into humanity, to join the everyday world like an ordinary human being again. I just need a bit of time. And perhaps a bit of help now and then?’

Cooper swallowed, touched by her confidence.

‘You’ve got it, Carol. Any time you need it.’

‘Thank you, Ben.’

She paused, scanned the CID room as if something had caught her attention. But there was nothing to see, except Irvine.

‘So, Riddings,’ she said. ‘If your theory is correct…’

‘It’s not exactly a theory,’ said Cooper hastily. ‘Not a theory.’

‘A feeling, then. An instinct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s good. You should trust your instincts.’

‘Not everyone says that.’

She shrugged. ‘But if your feeling is right, the answer lies among the residents of the village themselves. A personal motive for the attack on the Barrons – and perhaps on the Hollands?’

‘I don’t know. That could have been different.’

‘Really? Well, we need a link, then. A definite connection. Somewhere there must be a name, or a combination of names, that explains everything.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

Cooper frowned. He ran his eye down the list of names he’d just written down. It included everyone who lived or worked in the neighbourhood of the Barrons and the Hollands in Curbar Lane. Not just residents, but the housekeeper at Riddings Lodge, the cleaners, the man who maintained the drives. But there was still something missing.

‘Luke,’ he called. ‘Did we get a list of employees from that gardening firm working Riddings?’

‘Yes, it’s here.’

Cooper scanned the list that Irvine gave him. Adrian Summers of AJS Gardening Services had listed half a dozen names, including two or three that sounded East European.

‘Is this all of them?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’m wondering where Dave is,’ said Cooper.

‘Dave who?’

Cooper looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Dave?’ echoed Villiers.

Cooper shrugged. ‘A gardener, I think.’

It suddenly dawned on Cooper that he hadn’t told Villiers about the letter he’d been given by Erin Byrne. She knew about the phone calls to the Eden Valley Times, but the letter had been lying on the back seat of his car, forgotten while they were visiting Riddings Show.

He ran back down to the car park to fetch it, feeling a mounting excitement that there might actually be a connection after all. On the face of it, the message seemed very trivial, even meaningless. But it must have some significance. Yes, it must.

‘Well, I know that symbol,’ said Villiers, putting her finger on the horizontal line with the arrow beneath it.

‘You do?’

‘It’s some kind of surveyor’s mark. The Ordnance Survey use it, and people like that. It’s meant to indicate a point where a specific measurement can be taken. I think it’s called a benchmark.’

‘A surveyor’s mark? That sounds educated. But the words themselves look as though they’ve been written by somebody illiterate.’

‘I know. It’s a puzzle. Sheffeild Rode? Which way is the Sheffield Road?’

‘Well, from Riddings, it’s over the edge,’ said Cooper thoughtfully. ‘Over the edge…’

‘What?’

‘That was originally the way to reach towns and cities to the east of the Peak District, for travellers and packhorse trains. Way back, before the turnpike roads were built.’

‘They went over Riddings Edge?’

‘Yes, over the edge, across the flats and on to Big Moor. Remember the packhorse way we used on Thursday night?’

‘Of course. But across that moor? It’s just a wasteland. No roads, no landmarks, no signposts, nothing but heather and bracken. How could that be the road to Sheffield?’

‘Believe it or not, there were half a dozen trackways and trade routes up there, all converging on a pre-Roman road. It was a major east-to-west route through the Middle Ages, right up to the end of the nineteenth century. And it’s not true to say there are no signposts.’

‘Really?’

Cooper was staring at the symbol that Villiers had said was a surveyor’s mark, and at the scrawled message Sheffeild Rode.

‘And you know what?’ he said. ‘I think I’ve actually seen something like this up there.’

‘On Riddings Edge?’

‘Not on the edge itself – but behind it, out on Big Moor.’

Diane Fry had found that interviews often became a game of cat and mouse between interviewer and interviewee, a test to see which of them could make the other lose his temper. When a suspect was provoked to anger, that was when he gave the most away. Unless his solicitor was able to rein him in.

Mick Brammer had decided to decline the advice of his legal representative. He didn’t know enough to appreciate the tactic of a repeated ‘no comment’. He thought the fault wasn’t his – so why shouldn’t he say so?

‘Ade signed me up for the job,’ he said. ‘It was just a one-off, that’s all. Cash in hand, and nothing more said about it. Fair enough, I thought. You can’t turn down a chance to make a few quid these days.’

Brammer was small and wiry, with quick, suspicious eyes and tattoos on the sides of his neck. Not the type Fry would have chosen if she was hiring a gardener. But for a burgling job? Yes, maybe.

‘Ade? This would be Adrian Summers of AJS Gardening Services?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Yes, mate. Easy pickings, he said. And it would have been, too.’

‘Until something went wrong?’

‘Yeah. Well… I think that was it.’

‘Are you sure? Did Adrian make a mistake? Or was it planned to end that way?’

‘I dunno. I didn’t expect it to go down the way it did. And I don’t think the other bloke did either.’

‘Who was this other bloke?’ asked Fry. ‘What was his name?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’

‘That seems a bit unlikely.’

‘No. You don’t understand. It’s best that way.’

Hitchens placed his hands on the table. ‘Who was the client?’

‘Look, mate, I don’t know anything about that. It’s no use you keeping on asking me.’

‘Where did the instructions come from?’

‘I can’t tell you, mate. All I know is it was Ade who took me on for that job.’

‘And what about the other jobs?’ asked Fry.

He shook his head. ‘I only did the one.’

Hitchens sighed. Quietly, so that the tapes in the interview room didn’t pick it up.

‘As you know, Mr Brammer, we have your DNA from the scene of the robbery at Hathersage last month. It was a match to a sample you gave when you were arrested for motoring offences in Sheffield twelve months ago.’

‘Can’t deny it,’ said Brammer. ‘DNA. So it was me, right? I was at the place in Hathersage. The banker bloke.’

‘Mr Johnson.’

‘Yeah. I was there to help take the stuff. I didn’t agree to anything else.’

‘Mr Johnson was injured in the attack.’

‘That wasn’t me. It was…’

They paused, waiting for a name. ‘… the other bloke.’

Hitchens managed to stifle another sigh. ‘Let’s move on, then. Let’s talk about the robbery at Valley View, in Riddings, on Tuesday night this week.’

But Brammer was shaking his head vigorously, looking at his solicitor now. ‘Not me. I wasn’t there. I only did the one, the Hathersage job. I don’t like the rough stuff. Too nasty, like. You can go down for a long time over that kind of business, can’t you? So I told Ade I didn’t want to know about any more jobs. It isn’t worth it, for any amount of money.’

Fry and Hitchens exchanged a glance, and Fry nodded. Unfortunately, their suspect sounded as though he was telling the truth.

‘Did Adrian Summers ask you to do any more jobs? In Riddings, particularly?’

‘No, mate. Like I said, I told him I didn’t want any more. So he never asked. I kept out of it. Good thing too. That was a bad business. Nasty stuff. It’s not worth it.’

Word filtered through via one of the officers in the HOLMES incident room that a suspect was in custody. When he heard the news, Cooper was first amazed, then angry. His logical mind told him that his resentment was irrational, but he couldn’t stop it welling up into his chest and making him feel light-headed with anger.

As soon as he saw DI Hitchens enter his office, he burst in without the barest suggestion of a knock on the door. Hitchens swung round in astonishment and alarm.

‘Ben? What are you doing?’

‘Why didn’t I know about this arrest?’ said Cooper bluntly.

Even to his own ears, his voice sounded too loud, and too aggressive. He saw the DI’s face set into a rigid mask, and knew he’d already gone too far. But it was too late to step back now.

‘You’re not in charge of this inquiry,’ said Hitchens.

‘Even so – I should have known about this. I should have been told.’

‘The operation was on a need-to-know basis. You’ve seen what the interest from the press and public has been like? Well, the super is worried about leaks to the media. So a decision was made to limit the people involved. And that’s the end of the discussion.’

Cooper felt a flush rising at the suggestion that he might be responsible for leaks. Then he remembered his meeting with Erin Lynch, and realised he hadn’t told his DI about the letter. Perhaps it was best not to do it now.

But the surge of guilt only seemed to make him angry all over again. He was afraid he might not be responsible for anything he said in the next few minutes. So he took a couple of deep breaths before he spoke.

Hitchens raised a warning finger when he saw Cooper’s expression.

‘Don’t push this, Ben,’ he said.

Cooper shook his head. ‘Was this arrest a result of the forensic evidence?’

The DI’s face was still grim. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A DNA match from Hathersage.’

‘Hathersage? But not from Riddings.’

‘No.’

Cooper’s anger began to dissipate. Maybe he hadn’t been proved wrong behind his back after all. ‘So who…?’

‘We pulled in a gardener working for Adrian Summers,’ said Hitchens. ‘A Sheffield lad.’

‘I’ve seen Summers. Big shoulders, cropped blond hair.’

‘That’s him. He has a bit of a record. Nothing major, but some of his associates are interesting.’

‘Can we tie him to the assault on the Barrons?’

‘Not yet. Just the Hathersage job. But when we find him, we’re definitely going to ask him some tough questions. He’s got to be one of the Savages, though maybe not the leader.’

Cooper hadn’t always had good experiences with gardeners. He still winced whenever he remembered a case a few years ago when he was still a hopeful DC. In the village of Moorhay, that was. He’d managed to make a fool of himself, and jokes about compost heaps had followed him around the division for months afterwards. In fact, given half a chance, Gavin Murfin would bring the subject up even now.

He turned away to the door, and managed a brief, apologetic nod that he knew wouldn’t be enough for his DI.

‘But it’s never the gardener,’ said Cooper. ‘Never.’

It was no longer acceptable for the dead to be untidy. Civic orderliness, or health and safety considerations – whatever the reason, the headstones in the newest part of Edendale cemetery would never be permitted to lean, or grow mossy with age.

Sergeant Joe Cooper was buried in the new cemetery. He had no visible grave, only one of many headstones regimented into a neat row, with the grass around them mowed short and smooth. At the moment of his dying, when his blood had run on to the stone setts in Clappergate, he had left a stain that had taken weeks to remove. Sergeant Cooper’s killing had darkened the reputation of the town. But now they had done their best to tidy him away.

Every time Ben came here, the row of headstones had extended a little further, as if his father was slowly vanishing into the distance. Not far away, in a more recent row, stood his mother’s grave. Isabel Cooper might have expected to be buried in her village churchyard, like her parents, and her grandparents before them. But the churchyards were full. Now it was the new cemetery, or a trip to the crematorium. Those were the facts of death.

Normally the family came here in November, at the anniversary of their father’s death. And lately they had been coming in September too. Cooper supposed they would stop coming one day, at some distant time in the future. He couldn’t imagine when that would be, but it was bound to happen.

Today he had come for a different reason. This was something he could only do alone. He would never have an opportunity to sit down with his parents and tell them about his engagement. Well, that wasn’t quite true. They might never know now – but it didn’t stop him telling them.

Every year, when he came here with his brother, the conversation seemed to follow exactly the same pattern. Their exchange had become a ritual, as much as the laying of flowers.

Three years, and it doesn’t seem a day.

Matt’s words couldn’t help but sound trite. But Ben had never objected, just waited for the next part of the custom.

I still keep expecting him to appear. I think he’s going to come round the corner and tell me to stop idling around. It’s as if he’s just been on night shift for a while.

Ben had always known it would be impossible to escape his father’s shadow completely, unless he transferred from E Division. Sergeant Joe Cooper’s memory would always be there, in Edendale, imprinted on the walls of the police station. Literally, in some places. In the chief superintendent’s office at West Street, there was a large framed photograph of dozens of solemn men sitting or standing in long rows. They were the entire uniformed strength of Edendale section, pictured during a visit by some member of the royal family in the 1980s. On the second row, as a young sergeant, was his father. Downstairs, in the reception area, a memorial hung on the wall near the front counter – a plaque commemorating the death of Sergeant Joe Cooper, killed while on duty. Yes, he would always be there, cemented into the very fabric of E Division.

Eventually, in a few hundred years, Sergeant Joe Cooper’s name might be worn away from this headstone by the winter frosts and the rains lashing down the Eden Valley. But for now, the letters were still clear and precise, with sharply chiselled edges. Life might be brief and transient. But death was written in stone.

Ben shivered. It was that cold shudder again. Perhaps it was just a result of standing on this hillside surrounded by death, an effect of all these graves around him. But he felt an uneasy sensation that somewhere out there, a disaster was about to happen. No, not quite that. It had happened already.

He spent a few quiet minutes standing by his mother’s grave, thinking through everything that was happening in his life, hoping that she would understand. Then he walked back through the cemetery, reaching the exit just before the gates were closed for the night.

When he reached the car, he paused and looked back. He knew his father’s grave would no longer be discernible from here. It had long since merged into the anonymous rows of headstones, swallowed up among Edendale‘s dead.

In his flat at 8 Welbeck Street, Cooper had finally fallen asleep in his armchair in front of the TV, with his cat purring in the crook of his arm, well fed and content. When his phone rang, he jerked awake in panic, knocking the cat off the chair in a protesting heap.

‘Yes?’

‘Sarge, it’s Luke Irvine.’

‘Oh, Luke. What is it?’

‘Reports are starting to come in of another incident. I thought you’d want to know straight away.’

‘Not in Riddings?’

‘No. Further away, on the other side of Edendale.’

‘Can it be connected to the other attacks in our inquiry?’ asked Cooper.

‘I don’t know at this stage. But everyone in the division is jumpy. The DI is on alert, maybe even the superintendent.’

‘Everyone knows it’s impossible to predict where and when the next attack will be.’

‘If that’s what it is.’

‘What do you mean? Is this an aggravated burglary, or not?’

‘There are no details yet, Ben. Just the 999 call so far. We’ll have to wait for the FOAs to report in. Sorry, that’s all I have.’

Cooper saw that he had another call waiting.

‘Got to go,’ he said. ‘Keep in touch if you get anything more definite, Luke.’ And he pressed the key to accept the new call.

At first there was only silence on the line. No, not silence – a series of strange, disturbing sounds thudding and yelping in the background. Noises he couldn’t identify, but which made his heart lurch and his throat constrict with fear.

‘Hello? Hello? Who is that?’

Finally a voice, barely distinguishable. It sounded muffled, oddly choked by distress and panic.

‘Ben? Ben, you’ve got to come to the farm.’

‘Kate? Is that Kate? I can barely hear you. What’s happened? Is it one of the girls?’

‘No, no. It’s Matt.’

There was a long pause on the line, with Kate quietly sobbing, and Cooper’s mind racing as all the possibilities went through his head. He was picturing an accident with a piece of farm machinery, his brother trapped and crushed under a toppled tractor, his leg caught and mangled in the blades of a combine harvester. His thoughts moved so rapidly that they’d flashed through all the scenarios and reached the scene in hospital, Matt on a trolley in A amp;E, being wheeled straight into theatre for emergency surgery to save a severed limb. He felt sick with the immediacy of the horror and pain and blood that he knew awaited him at Bridge End Farm.

Time must have stood still for a moment, because it all went round and round inside his head before Kate finally spoke again and dropped the bombshell that turned Cooper’s life over.

‘Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s Matt – he’s shot somebody.’