The Devil’s Edge

3

Detective Sergeant Diane Fry was starting to feel suffocated. And it wasn’t just the heat, or the airlessness of the conference room. The suffocation went much deeper. It was a slow choking of her spirit, the draining of life from her innermost being. In a few more minutes she would be brain dead. Heart dead, soul dead, her spirit sapped, her energy levels at zero.

And her bum was numb, too. This was purgatory.

Fry had spent the whole morning in Nottinghamshire Police headquarters at Sherwood Lodge. At the front of the room, someone whose name badge she couldn’t read was sticking Post-it notes on a sheet of brown paper that had been Blu-Tacked to the wall. The Post-its were all the colours of the rainbow, which apparently had some significance. A few of them had already moved position several times during the session, making determined advances or strategic retreats, like military units moving around a simulated battlefield. She supposed there was some kind of overall narrative to the present ation. It might even be explained in the handout she hadn’t read. But she’d lost track half an hour ago. Now she was losing the will to live. She could feel her eyes glazing over, a well-known clinical side effect of staring too long at yellow Post-it notes.

When the speaker turned his back for a moment to move another Post-it, she leaned towards the officer sitting next to her.

‘What is this kind of presentation called again?’ she whispered. ‘A Sellotape brainstorm?’

‘No. A brown-paper workshop.’

‘Of course.’

If she remembered rightly, her neighbour was an inspector from the Leicestershire force. Mick or Rick, something like that. They’d all had to do ten-second introductions at the start of the session. Tell us who you are and what you hope to get from today. Cue a bunch of po-faced lies.

‘The Sellotape comes at the end,’ said Mick or Rick with a conspiratorial smile. ‘When we fix the Post-it notes in their final position.’

‘I’ll be on the edge of my seat by then.’

‘You and me both.’

Fry sighed. She was almost starting to miss Edendale. Unlike Derbyshire Constabulary, their neighbours in Nottinghamshire had an extra assistant chief constable, whose sole responsibility was Strategic Change. And change these days meant cooperation between forces to save money. So here she was, in this conference room in Sherwood Lodge, forty miles from Derbyshire E Division and starting to feel nostalgic for the company of DC Gavin Murfin and his colleagues. She would never have thought it possible.

She wondered idly which she would prefer right now – a nice restful spell in the private hospital she’d seen on the other side of the trees as she came down the drive, or a visit to the pub a little way back down the road.

She caught Mick or Rick looking at her. He pointedly checked his watch, and made a gesture with his wrist suggesting the act of drinking. A soulmate, then. Or at least close enough for now.

‘Seven Mile Inn,’ he said.

‘I saw it. Just by the lights.’

These working-group sessions were supposed to be interactive. That meant she couldn’t entirely escape joining in. At strategic moments she had found herself blurting out phrases that sounded right. Methodical workforce modernisation. Greater interoperability. She tried to say them while other people were shouting out suggestions, so that her words were swallowed in the general verbiage. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest.

The frustrating thing was that she knew she could do this stuff. She could do it standing on her head, write the entire report for them if that was what they wanted. You didn’t get far in the modern police service without learning those skills. It was just that her heart wasn’t in it. This wasn’t how she should be spending her days, trapped in a stuffy conference room.

And then the facilitator said the words she’d been waiting for.

‘Okay, people. We’ll break for lunch. Please be back promptly at two.’

Some of the attendees had brought their own sandwiches. Packed lunches, like schoolchildren. There was a civilian, a techy type from an IT department somewhere in the region, who was drinking Coke through a straw while he listened to an iPod and scrolled through messages on his iPhone.

You would have thought they’d supply lunch, at least. But this was the age of austerity. No such thing as a free lunch. Whoever said that had got it dead right.

Fry wondered what the others had done wrong to be sent here. When she stood up, her body ached. Not just from the ordeal of sitting still for so long. She physically craved action.

Somewhere in the world, something must be happening. There must be people who needed her. Mustn’t there?

The village of Riddings had no pubs, and no shops. Not a sign of a cafe or a craft shop, or even a farmhouse selling fruit at the side of the road.

Yet Cooper could see that the place still attracted tourists. Perhaps they saw some quaintness in its narrow lanes and stone houses, or enjoyed the smell of horse manure. But the people who lived here clearly had no interest in tourism. Unlike other villages in the Peak District, they made no effort to encourage visitors. They provided no facilities, not even anywhere to park a car.

Driving through the centre of the village, he noticed a few smaller cottages standing on The Green, where a hand-written sign advertised horse manure at a pound per bag. But the only people he saw anywhere were women walking their dogs.

The lanes really were very narrow. Where cars were left parked at the side of the road, their offside wing mirrors had been folded in to avoid getting knocked off by passing vehicles. A lesson learned from experience, he supposed.

The property neighbouring Valley View was called Fourways. This one was probably worth barely a million. Through more black wrought-iron gates, a drive ran straight up to a double garage, and the house was below it, approached by a set of steps. It was much smaller than Valley View, maybe no more than three bedrooms. But the views alone would add a lot of value to the property.

On the way to the front door, he passed a window and saw a woman emerging from the kitchen and walking towards a split-level dining room. Through the kitchen door, Cooper glimpsed Shaker-style units, lit by a dozen spotlights. A cream Persian cat sat in a basket by the Aga. When it saw him, it gave him a look of pure contempt.

He thought of his own moggy back at home in his flat in Welbeck Street, a rescue from the local animal sanctuary and happy just to have a back yard to sit in when it was sunny. There were cats and cats, just like there were different people.

When he rang the bell, the same woman answered.

‘Mrs Holland?’

‘Yes.’

‘Police. I’d like to have a few words about your neighbours. Have you heard what happened?’

‘Oh, the Barrons, yes. Terrible.’

Inside the house, the entrance hall was floored with slate, which Cooper had always liked the look of. Wherever it was used, it seemed to bring a bit of the natural world into a home. The feel of it underfoot was so different from synthetic flooring. He liked the way it changed colour in different light, and even the smell of it when it got wet. One day he would own a house with slate floors. One day.

The Hollands were a couple in their late sixties. Comfortable-looking was the expression that came into his mind. Well settled into retirement, but fit enough to be active. The husband was a bit overweight. Perhaps he ought to play more golf, and eat fewer good dinners. Compared to him, his wife was like a slender bird, forever moving here and there, steel-grey hair cut straight around her face.

‘I feel so sorry for the children,’ said Mrs Holland. ‘At their age, it must be terrible. At any age, I suppose. You know what I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘I wouldn’t wish a thing like this on anyone, no matter what I might think of them personally.’

‘How do you get on with the Barrons, then?’

‘Oh. Fine, you know. We don’t see all that much of them. It’s not as if we’re right on top of each other.’

‘We hear them more than see them, I suppose you’d say,’ said Mr Holland.

His wife gave him a look, but Cooper couldn’t quite interpret the message.

‘The children play in their garden, of course,’ she said. ‘What children wouldn’t love to have a garden like that to play in?’

Cooper gazed out of the window, trying to orientate himself in relation to the Barrons’ property.

‘Those trees there. They must be on your neighbours’ side.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘I think I noticed a tree house when I was at Valley View.’

‘Oh, you saw it.’

‘The most expensive tree house ever built,’ said Mr Holland. ‘When I was a child, my dad built us one out of bits of spare timber, and we loved it. Not Jake Barron. He brought in a tree house designer. Can you believe it?’

‘I don’t think Sergeant Cooper wants to hear about tree houses,’ said Mrs Holland firmly.

Her husband shrugged and wandered away a few feet, making a show of examining the rose bush outside the window.

‘Actually, I was wondering if you might have seen anything last night,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh, anything suspicious? That’s what you say, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Any unusual activity, strangers hanging around, vehicles you didn’t recognise?’

She looked disappointed. ‘No. We would have told someone already if we’d seen anything like that.’

‘How long have you lived here in Riddings?’

‘About five years,’ she said. ‘Martin was a very successful commercial lawyer. He still does a certain amount of consultancy work, but at least I get to spend time with him now. And there’s the house. It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes. Very nice. It must be a wonderful place to live.’

‘All this business is very worrying, though. Nowhere is safe, is it? Not these days. We thought a place like this, in the country…’

‘Unfortunately, it’s not the case.’

‘I suppose it’s the times we live in. People need money badly. And they look at houses like ours and think we have more than our share. That must be what makes them do things like this, don’t you think? It’s envy, isn’t it? Envy, pure and simple. It’s an emotion that can really eat into people.’

She sounded as though she was speaking from experience. Cooper was about to ask her why, when his phone buzzed. There was a text message from Becky Hurst, asking to speak to him when he was free.

‘I’ll have to go,’ he said. ‘But if you do happen to think of anything, here’s my card.’

Mr Holland had turned to look at him again with a glower, his hands thrust into the pockets of his corduroy trousers. Cooper handed his card to Mrs Holland, simply on the basis that she seemed to be the one who was most interested.

‘Well, you ought to check on the people who go up on the edge at night,’ she said.

‘Which people?’ asked Cooper.

‘You’ll see them. There are always cars parked up at the gap, no matter what time of night you go past. Goodness knows what they do up there. I wouldn’t care to think.’

‘We’ll be checking on everything.’

‘Be sure that you do.’

Cooper thought he was probably going to have to get used to people telling him what to do. Here, everyone would think it was their right.

On his way out on to Curbar Lane, Cooper had to squeeze past a gardener’s van drawn up in the gateway with a trailer full of freshly sawn branches. There must be plenty of work for gardeners in this area. Maintenance of all these lawns and flower borders had to be an endless task, like painting the Forth Bridge.

Working near the van was a gardener with short-cropped blond hair. The young man failed to look up as Cooper passed, which was odd. The natural thing would be to show curiosity about what was happening. A few yards down the lane, when his car was out of sight round a bend, Cooper pulled over and wrote down the name of the company from the side of the van. AJS Gardening Services.

While he was stopped, he called Becky Hurst.

‘What’s up, Becky?’

‘I thought you should know, Sarge. I took the side lane by the Methodist church. Chapel Close? Mr Gamble lives at number four. He’s the member of the public who called the incident in.’

‘Oh, yes. Mr Gamble.’

‘Well, his wife was in. Her name is Monica.’

‘Where’s her husband?’

‘She didn’t know.’

‘Didn’t know?’

‘She told me she often doesn’t know where he is. Sorry.’

‘He should never have been allowed to wander off from the scene,’ said Cooper.

‘He did make a statement to the FOAs.’

‘The first officers to arrive didn’t know what sort of incident they were dealing with. We really need to speak to Mr Gamble again, and soon. I don’t like the fact that he’s disappeared, Becky.’

‘No, that’s why I thought you ought to know straight away.’

‘You were right. Thanks, Becky.’

‘The good news is that he can’t have gone far. He hasn’t taken their car, so he’s likely to be on foot. I’ve got his mobile number from his wife. I’m trying to call him, but there’s no answer so far.’

‘Okay. Keep at it.’

Cooper started the car and drove on. He really didn’t like Mr Gamble being missing. He liked even less the knowledge that before long, someone was going to ask him about Gamble. Either his DI or Superintendent Branagh would want to know where the informant was. I don’t know wasn’t a good enough answer.

The Chadwicks’ home, The Cottage, was a barn conversion with big Velux windows installed in the roof. As Cooper approached, two herons took off from behind the house and flapped ponderously away over the village, their feet trailing clumsily below their bodies. You didn’t often see two herons together. He felt sure there must be a pond behind the house, nicely stocked with fish.

He passed a Nissan Qashqai and a Mercedes Kompressor standing close together in front of a double garage. A small boat trailer was parked on the drive. He looked for the burglar alarm, and found a yellow box high on the front wall. There was also a security light at the bottom of the drive.

The Chadwicks were outside, enjoying the sun, seated on garden chairs under a parasol. Mr Chadwick rose to greet him. He was a tall man with anxious eyes and a balding head shiny with perspiration.

‘Bill Chadwick. This is my wife, Retty. Marietta, that is. We call her Retty.’

Cooper showed his warrant card, even though they hadn’t asked to see it. It was odd how some people were so trusting when he said he was a police officer. No matter what was going on around them, they still felt no reason to be suspicious of strangers.

‘You’ll have heard…?’ he began.

‘At Valley View, yes. The Barrons.’

‘It’s so close,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘Ever so close. Just across the lane.’

They all looked instinctively towards Valley View, though it wasn’t even possible to see Curbar Lane from here, let alone anything of the Barrons’ property. Trees and the corner of a wall, then more trees. And beyond the trees, Riddings Edge. So close? Cooper wondered if the Chadwicks knew what it was actually like to have neighbours living practically on top of you, packed in cheek by jowl, so close that you could hear them clearly through the walls on either side of you. There were lots of people in Edendale who knew what that was like. His own ground-floor flat in Welbeck Street sometimes echoed to the slam of a door from the tenant upstairs, the clatter of feet on the stairs, the blare of old Mrs Shelley’s TV set next door.

‘Obviously you’re some of the Barrons’ closest neighbours,’ he said.

‘And you wondered if we might have noticed anything,’ said Chadwick. ‘Obviously. But I’m afraid we didn’t.’

‘But you were at home last night?’

‘Actually, we went out as soon as it got dark,’ said Chadwick.

‘Where to?’

‘Up on to the edge.’

‘Really?’

Cooper couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He’d been warned only a few minutes earlier about the people who went up on the edge at night. But he hadn’t thought the Chadwicks were the sort of people Mrs Holland was referring to. From her tone of voice, he’d been picturing a dogging site, where people had sex in public while others watched. The growing number of such sites was a regular cause of complaints from residents in secluded parts of Derbyshire. But they didn’t attract people like the Chadwicks, surely?

‘Yes, we were out for a couple of hours,’ said Chadwick.

‘In the dark? Why?’

‘Well, it has to be at night-time. It needs to be dark, to watch properly. You can’t see anything in daylight, of course.’

‘Ah,’ said Cooper, still hoping that he was wrong.

Chadwick nodded. ‘Yes, we were watching the Perseid meteor shower.’

‘Of course you were.’

‘It was one of the best nights for viewing. A nice clear sky – but not much moon. We saw lots of shooting stars. A wonderful experience to watch them from a place like that.’

‘While you were up there, you didn’t notice anything at all?’ asked Cooper.

‘Well, we gathered there was some trouble. Lots of sirens and flashing lights disturbing the peace during the night. We don’t get that here very often. I see it in Sheffield, yes. But not in Riddings.’

‘Oh, you work in Sheffield, sir?’

Chadwick shuffled his feet and blinked nervously. A trickle of sweat ran across his temple. ‘Yes. Er… in a way.’

Immediately Cooper began to study him more keenly. It was unusual to see someone thrown into confusion by such a simple question. You either worked in Sheffield or you didn’t. Unless your job involved travelling around the country, and you were only in Sheffield sometimes. But in that case, why not just say so? What was the cause of the embarrassment?

‘I’m a head teacher,’ said Chadwick. ‘ Was a head teacher.’

‘So you’re retired?’

‘I’m on gardening leave.’

Cooper glanced instinctively at the manicured lawn and neat flower beds around them, before he recognised the euphemism.

‘What happened?’

Chadwick shrugged. ‘I lost it. Simply as that, really. It all just became too much one day. Oh, it had been building up for a while. Quite a few years, actually, when I look back. There was a time in my career when I used to get up in the morning and think Great, I’m going to work today. It was exciting. I relished the challenge. I thought only about what I could achieve each day. But gradually it all changed. I began to wake up in the early hours and feel sick. Sick to my stomach at the thought of having to face school. And it wasn’t just the kids, either. God knows, they were bad enough. But there were all the whingeing staff, the stupid parents, the endless, endless hassle, everyone expecting me to do something to solve their problem, to make their life easier, to produce some magic solution out of a hat to make their child more intelligent, better behaved, more talented at music or football, or less of a bully. It was always my fault when things didn’t happen the way they wanted. And… oh God, I don’t really want to think about it. It makes my guts churn even now.’

‘So you were suspended.’

‘Not exactly. It was… a mutual arrangement. A spell away from the job, while things are sorted out. Or that’s what they said. Maybe it’s just to allow the governors time to find a new head to replace me. My deputy will be happy enough with that, I dare say. Or they could be hoping I’ll give up the fight and resign. It would save them money.’

‘I see.’

Chadwick screwed up his eyes and gazed into the distance, staring at something that Cooper couldn’t see.

‘Or maybe…’

‘What?’

‘Well, I wonder sometimes. Perhaps everyone is just waiting for me to do the decent thing, and top myself.’

Too surprised to know how to respond, Cooper watched Chadwick turn away and walk slowly into the house, as if seeking the shade. He moved like a wounded animal, creeping away to find somewhere quiet and dark.

Cooper looked at Mrs Chadwick. She smiled sadly.

‘I’m sorry. He’s been like that for a while. It doesn’t seem to get any better.’

‘Do you have any family living here?’

‘We have a daughter, Bryony. She’s seventeen, nearly eighteen.’

‘Where would she have been last night?’

‘Oh, she was out.’

Mrs Chadwick became more relaxed now that she had been steered on to a different subject.

‘Bryony got her A level results last week,’ she said. ‘So she was out celebrating with her friends from school. She’ll be off to uni in September.’

‘Good grades? All A stars?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Sometimes I think I’m the only person who never got any,’ said Cooper.

The woman was becoming more animated as she spoke of her daughter. This was a far more comfortable topic, something to be seized on gratefully when life was going wrong.

‘We wanted her to do a gap year,’ she said. ‘The way we both did ourselves when we were students. It was a terrific experience for us. And, of course, it helped us to work through in our minds what we really wanted to do with our lives. I don’t think you can do that without seeing a bit of the world, do you?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But Bryony wasn’t interested in a gap year. She says she knows what she wants to do. She’s set out her plan, and she needs to get on with it and earn her qualifications if she’s going to meet her goals. A gap year would just be a waste of time and set back her schedule. She’s very driven, you see. Very ambitious. Obviously we’re giving her all the support she needs. We’re very proud of her.’

‘I’m sure you are.’

A shadow of anxiety passed across her face, and she glanced back towards the house. It was sad that a few moments of silence was enough to cause that apprehension. But she saw her husband pass in front of a window, and the concern eased.

‘She’s chosen her university herself, too,’ she said. ‘I went to Oxford. St Hilda’s. But Bryony wanted to go to Bristol for some reason. She insisted on putting it down as her first choice. Something about them having the best reputation in her subject. As I said, she’s very…’

‘Driven?’

‘Quite.’

A very slim girl with long dark hair appeared round a corner of the house. She saw Cooper, and walked quickly away again.

‘Was that your daughter?’ he asked.

‘That’s Bryony, yes.’

Mrs Chadwick escorted Cooper to his car. Usually people were only too glad to see him leave, and shut the door behind him as quickly as possible. But this woman seemed to want to linger. Did she want to talk more about the achievements of her daughter? Or was there another subject she longed to discuss, but was afraid to force on him? Something she might be ashamed of. That self-conscious, embarrassed look again. She was a person afraid of showing too much emotion, yet struggling to hold it inside any longer.

‘So what actually happened, Mrs Chadwick?’ asked Cooper.

‘Happened?’

‘To your husband?’

She nodded, and her shoulders seemed to slump, as if a great weight of tension had been lifted from her.

‘A child pushed him too far one day,’ she said. ‘A fourteen-year-old kid. Student, we’re supposed to call them, aren’t we? Cocky little devil he was, by all accounts. Everyone knew he was trouble. He just kept pushing and pushing to see how far he could go, wanted to find out what he could get away with. You know the type. You must see them all the time in your job.’

‘Yes, of course. Usually when they’re a bit older.’

‘Well, perhaps you wouldn’t see so many of them if teachers like Bill were allowed to keep proper discipline in our schools.’

Cooper knew that a lot of police officers would agree with this view. More than one of them had gone the same way as Mr Chadwick when they’d been pushed too far. There was only so much you could take, after all. Everyone had a breaking point.

‘Is your husband getting help?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. Regular counselling sessions. Medication for his depression. I don’t think the medication is working properly yet.’ She paused. ‘That, or he’s stopped taking it.’

Cooper glanced at her, saw the strain in her eyes. ‘It must be a difficult thing to live with.’

She smiled through a sudden welling of tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is. We just hope that we can all rely on some support when we need it, don’t we?’

Cooper drove back along Curbar Lane to Valley View and took a look at the Barrons’ property with new eyes, trying to see it as a passer-by might.

One thing immediately struck him. At the front, everything seemed to have been done to advertise the fact that there was plenty worth stealing inside – electric gates with an entryphone system, a security camera pointing at the gate, little yellow signs warning of an electric fence topping the dry-stone wall. Yet at the back, the property had been pretty much left open, the fences low and the trees cleared to provide a view of the edge from the patio and balcony. Whoever designed this landscape had seen the edge as an attraction, not a threat.

He supposed most of the residents of Riddings would be commuters, or well-off retired people like the Hollands. These weren’t the seriously rich, just the affluent and comfortable. Definitely not a tourist-friendly village, though.

Many of these people would have come here from the city, seeking peace and quiet, looking for a refuge from noise and traffic – and an escape from crime. Perhaps they had encountered violence on the streets of Sheffield and Manchester, or become nervous at the stories of robberies and shootings every week in the newspapers, feared the monsters stalking their cities. So they had sought refuge in a rural haven. The village of Riddings, in the eastern edges. Secluded properties, respectable neighbours. Yet it seemed that for some of them, their monsters had followed them to their sanctuary.

Of course, everyone had monsters in their lives. Most people left them behind in their childhood, locked away safely in a fading corner of memory. Some kept them with them, all the way through their lives. Cooper was one of those people, so he knew all about it. His monsters were always close by, glimpsed from the corner of his eye, forever lurking in the darkness, breathing quietly in the silent hours of the night.

He paused outside the Barrons’ back door, watching the sunlight catching the windows, hearing the birds singing in the trees, listening to the quiet engine of the black van as it took Zoe Barron’s body away.

He knew that most people never met their monsters in the flesh.

But a few were not so lucky.