The Devil’s Edge

9

Riddings had originally consisted of a dozen estate workers’ cottages, built by a local land-owning duke. Not the Duke of Devonshire, for once, but some rival aristocrat. The Duke of Rutland, perhaps. One of those people.

He had also built a tiny Wesleyan Reform chapel in the village, but there was no parish church. Several villages in this area were served by All Saints down the hill at Curbar, with its four-hundred-year-old poor box and Jacobean pulpit of black bog oak.

‘It seems strange,’ said Cooper. ‘Strange that we’re colleagues now. Last time we spoke, you were in the RAF Police.’

He’d taken Carol Villiers with him from Edendale to ease her into the inquiry, and they were parked up in the centre of the village on The Green, near the horse trough. It felt odd having her sitting next to him in the car. They had gone to school together, studied for their A levels at High Peak College at the same time, got a bit drunk with a group of mates in a local pub when they received their results. She had been a good friend, to whom he’d been sorry to say goodbye. Her parents lived in Tideswell, so it was a bit of a surprise that he hadn’t heard she was back in the area.

Seeing her earlier, Cooper’s mind had been thrown back several years, to the time when he’d seen another new DC coming towards him from the far end of the CID room. She had moved with a cool deliberateness, not meeting his eye, but glancing from side to side as she walked past the desks. He remembered thinking she was far too slim – slimmer than he’d grown up expecting women to be. His mother would have said she was sickening for something. Yet she had possessed a wiry look that suggested she was no weakling, no wilting violet. And so she had proved. That had been Diane Fry.

Carol Villiers was completely different. Isabel Cooper would have approved of her, for a start. She looked strong and fit, a woman who worked out in the gym regularly two or three times a week, and never found an excuse to miss. She had an outdoor colour too, not the deathly pallor he remembered when Fry first came. And her attitude was confident, but not belligerent. He felt no hostile vibes. He knew immediately that she didn’t need to be aggressive in her style. Her self-confidence went deeper.

‘Yes, I was an RAFP corporal,’ said Villiers. ‘Here. This is me as a Snowdrop.’

She showed him a photograph of her in her uniform, with black and red flashes, her corporal’s stripes on her sleeve, an MP badge, and a white top to her military cap. The cap was what gave the RAFP their nickname.

Cooper remembered her back in their school days as a lively, sports-obsessed girl who was also surprisingly ready to let her hair down. She had been into swimming and running half-marathons, had talked a lot about some female role models who had been prominent in athletics at the time, but whose names he had now forgotten.

And she hadn’t been called Villiers in those days either. She had been Carol Parry, the daughter of Stan and Vera Parry, who ran a bed and breakfast in Tideswell High Street.

‘I knew you were planning to join the police when you left the forces,’ said Cooper. ‘But I didn’t recognise the surname. Villiers? What happened?’

‘I got married,’ she said simply.

‘Oh.’

For a few moments they sat in silence, watching Riddings quietly coming to life. Opposite The Green there were still some of the original cottages standing near the chapel. But over the years, the older part of the village had been swamped by all those expensive detached houses, their paddocks and gardens carving out the lower slopes below Riddings Edge.

Cooper looked around him at the narrow lanes, no more than a car’s width, the stones embedded in the grass verges, the women walking their dogs, the high banks of trees screening every house. It wasn’t the best place for surveillance. A stranger sitting in a car stood out like a sore thumb. Indeed, there was hardly anywhere to park without blocking up the whole village. And all those trees hiding the big houses meant you couldn’t see a thing anyway.

A visible police presence? You could drive a marked response vehicle up and down these lanes all day with its beacons flashing like Blackpool Illuminations, and no one would even see it from behind those hedges and walls.

‘I never heard about the marriage, Carol. You kept it pretty quiet. Who is he? Someone you met in the RAF?’

‘Yes, he was a colleague.’

Cooper hesitated. He caught the word ‘was’ and the tone of voice that went with it. He’d heard them often enough from the families of victims.

‘Here.’

Another photograph. Carol again. But next to her was a tall, well-built man in a similar uniform. He had taken off a pair of sunglasses, which dangled from one hand, and was staring into the camera lens with eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. Behind them, Cooper could see the background of a military compound – vehicles, stores, a high boundary wall. The ground was dry and dusty, baked by heat. He could almost feel the grittiness of the sand on his skin.

‘That’s Glen.’

‘Your husband?’

‘Yes.’

Cooper hadn’t really needed to ask. His eyes had been drawn directly to the name badge stitched on the man’s uniform. Villiers, it said. Carol’s badge was marked Parry.

‘Before you were married, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘You look happy.’

‘We were. Very happy.’

She had certainly changed a lot, but Cooper realised he’d noticed it happening a while ago. On the few occasions he’d seen her or spoken to her in the intervening years, the old Carol Parry had developed a brisk professional air, a confidence that few of his old school friends possessed. He supposed that was what the services did for you, instilled discipline and self-confidence. Especially if you had a team looking to you for decisions, men and women you were responsible for.

But now there was an extra dimension – a shadow in her eyes, a darkness behind the professional facade. He’d noticed it straight away when DI Hitchens had brought her into the CID room in Edendale this morning. He’d looked into her eyes and seen a different Carol Parry. Part of that darkness might be explained by the loss of her husband. And perhaps there were other experiences, too, that she would be unwilling to talk about.

Cooper wondered if she was still the ‘work hard, play hard’ type. It seemed to go with the territory, when he thought of the squaddies in garrison towns getting drunk and picking fights with the locals. They came back from a conflict zone and needed to let off steam.

But Carol had served as an MP. It had been part of her job to control those drunken squaddies, surely? Or whatever their equivalent was in the RAF. That had to be good practice for dealing with some of the customers they scooped up for a spell in the custody suite.

‘I was aiming to come to E Division anyway, if I could,’ said Villiers. ‘But they moved my posting forward a bit, in view of the major inquiry you’ve got on here. I guess I was lucky to get in just before recruitment was frozen.’

‘We’re glad to have you,’ said Cooper. ‘Very glad. Especially right now.’

‘A detective sergeant, then? I always knew you’d get on. Nice to have you as my boss, Ben.’

‘Are you up to speed? Do you know what’s going on here?’

‘Yes, I’ve read the bulletins. Not to mention the news papers. It’s causing a lot of media attention, isn’t it?’

‘All these stories being put around are just frightening the public,’ said Cooper, shaking his head. ‘It’s making everyone unnecessarily paranoid. We ought to be calming the mood down, not allowing it to be whipped up.’

‘You can’t do anything about stories on the internet,’ said Villiers. ‘It’s unpoliceable. Like gossip over the garden wall, there’s no way of stopping it. Facebook and Twitter just make the stories spread all the faster.’

‘I know. But when people get as jumpy as this, something bad is likely to happen.’

‘Really?’

Cooper started the car and drew away from kerb.

‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘There’ll be some idiot who decides to take the law into his own hands, and a random passer-by will get hurt. It’s inevitable, the way things are going.’

At Valley View, E Division’s Crime Scene Manager Wayne Abbott had just completed a full review of the Barrons’ security systems.

Cooper introduced Abbott to Villiers, and asked him whether the Barrons had a monitored alarm system. False alarms had become so common that most police forces no longer attended call-outs from non-monitored systems, unless they also had first-hand indication of a crime in progress, either from the owner of the property or a member of the public. An alarm signal routed via a monitoring centre was a different matter.

‘Yes,’ said Abbott. ‘They have a monitored twenty-four-seven response system. There’s an external system panel, and a decoy siren box. A door entry system on the gate. Intruder alarms, passive infrared motion sensors, CCTV. They did pretty much everything they could.’

‘I thought most burglars avoided properties with an alarm system,’ said Villiers.

‘That’s because they don’t understand them, or don’t know how to do deal with them.’

‘So these were professionals? They knew how to disable the alarms?’

‘No,’ said Abbott. ‘They didn’t bother with that. They chose the other option. The one that’s only available if you’re completely ruthless and foolhardy.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘They came into the property before the alarms had been set. Simple when you think about it.’

Villiers looked at Cooper. ‘But that could only have been when the occupants were at home, and before they’d gone to bed, too. They must have known people would be around.’

‘Exactly, Carol,’ said Cooper. ‘They didn’t care if they were seen by the family. They came in fully prepared to use violence. Probably planned it that way.’

Abbott called back as he walked away: ‘Like I said, ruthless and foolhardy.’

‘You get an idea of what we’re up against now,’ said Cooper.

Villiers looked grim. But she wasn’t shocked, didn’t start talking about how horrible it must have been for the family. Cooper wondered what she might have seen elsewhere that made the incident at Valley View seem unshocking.

He took her inside the house, walking carefully on the stepping plates left by the scenes-of-crime team. Now that many of the crowd had left, it seemed very quiet inside Valley View. The windows were closed, and no sound penetrated from the garden. There was no birdsong, no sigh of the wind through the trees, no clang of karabiners from the climbers on the edge. It was good double-glazing, maybe even triple. The outside world was just that – sealed out.

Inside, Cooper found that every movement he made was deadened against the carpet, every dash of colour flattened by the stark white walls. It felt unnatural, and uncomfortable. He was used to entering houses where a TV set was babbling constantly in the background, a dog was barking in the yard, a couple of children crying upstairs. Noise and life. Funny how the two seemed to go together. But this place was like a morgue. A chapel of rest, waiting for the next body.

He turned to Villiers. ‘Seen enough?’

‘Yes.’

Outside, they paused, and Villiers squinted against the sun as she looked up.

‘And that – that’s the edge?’

‘Of course. Don’t you know the edges at all?’

‘I’ve never been up there. It’s funny, when I grew up not far away. But I suppose you take these things for granted. You tend to think they’re just for tourists. So I’ve only ever seen them from down here, and never so close. Standing on the ground looking up, that’s me.’

She seemed to have become thoughtful. Cooper wished he could tell what she was thinking. He supposed they would have to get to know each other properly all over again. There might be things she didn’t want to talk about. But now that he was her supervisor, he had to be there and ready to listen in case she did want to talk. It could be a bit of a minefield.

Villiers looked at him, and smiled.

‘Will you show me the edge sometime, Ben?’ she said.

Cooper raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Of course, if you want me to. Have you got a pair of boots?’

‘Are you kidding? I was in the military. Of course I’ve got boots. And don’t start worrying about my fitness, either – I’ll race you up that slope any time. What is it like up there?’

‘It’s a whole different world,’ said Cooper.

Villiers lowered her hand and touched him gently on the arm.

‘I’ll look forward to you showing me, then.’

Across the garden, Cooper saw a cluster of SOCOS in their blue scene suits. They were well away from the house, but had set up a route marked off by crime-scene tape. They had put an aluminium ladder against the high stone wall that formed the boundary on that side of the Barrons’ property. One of the SOCOs was over the ladder and examining the far side of the wall.

Cooper approached cautiously, not wanting to get in the way. Wayne Abbott saw him and held up a hand to stop him getting any closer.

‘What have you found?’ asked Cooper.

‘Handprints. Two white handprints on the wall.’

‘White?’

‘Two prints, clear as day,’ said Abbott. ‘They look almost as if they’ve been made in chalk.’

‘Good work.’

Watching the SOCOs at work photographing the wall, Cooper fingered his bag of stone chippings, deep in thought. What sort of person left white handprints? It didn’t make sense.

But then, that was par for the course. Nothing the Savages did made sense either. Only in some twisted logic of their own, anyway. They were fearless and audacious. And no one knew where they would strike next.

Lane End had a drive of freshly laid gravel, thick and crunchy under the Toyota’s tyres. Two convex mirrors mounted on the gateposts provided drivers leaving the property with a view round the blind bend to warn of oncoming traffic. This was certainly an area to drive with care, thought Cooper. The lane was only wide enough for one vehicle, and those stone walls looked pretty unyielding.

He drew up in front of the house and parked next to a brand-new Mini Clubman.

‘Who lives here?’ asked Villiers as she got out of the car.

‘Some people named Nowak,’ said Cooper. He checked his notebook. ‘Richard and Sonya, and Mr Nowak’s father, Adam.’

‘Polish?’

‘At some time.’

Villiers shaded her eyes as she studied the house. Cooper couldn’t resist the impression that she was scanning the horizon for potential enemies. A group of insurgents, a suspect vehicle on the skyline.

‘They are only possible witnesses at the moment,’ he said. ‘We’re canvassing all the immediate neighbours in the hope that one of them might have seen or heard something on the night of the attack on the Barrons.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘The grounds of Valley View are just across the lane there. That wall is their boundary. We don’t know which way the attackers came in, but this lane is one of the possible approaches. And, as you can see, it ends here.’

‘At Lane End.’

‘Exactly.’

Richard Nowak was older than Cooper had anticipated. He didn’t know why he’d expected to meet someone in their thirties or forties, but Nowak was clearly in his early sixties. Well, that wasn’t old these days. And he was undoubtedly fit and healthy. He had sandy hair cut very short, and large hands with a powerful grip as he shook Cooper’s.

‘It’s so nice to see police officers flocking to the premises,’ he said with a sardonic smile.

‘Sir?’

‘When we had our shed broken into a while ago, the police didn’t even come. They said there would be no forensic evidence, so there was no point in investigating. When we had the quad bike stolen, they didn’t do anything then either. Oh, they were happy to counsel us as victims of crime, but they made it clear that they weren’t going to try to find out who’d stolen the bike, let alone get it back. But when you’re driven to take the law into your own hands, they arrive in force and arrest you. They treat us as if we’re the criminals.’

‘You should have had a visit from a scene-of-crime officer.’

‘Yes, a civilian.’

‘Most of them are. They’re just as professional.’

‘And yet now we have a crime at my neighbours’, and the police are out in force. Three detectives have been to my house in the space of twenty-four hours. I’m so lucky.’

‘Well, we’re doing our best, sir.’

‘That was a detective you sent yesterday?’ said Nowak. ‘He ate a lot of my wife’s chocolate cake.’

‘Detective Constable Murfin. He’s very experienced.’

‘Yes, his experience shows in his waistline.’

Cooper introduced Carol Villiers and watched as she returned Nowak’s firm handshake. He found that he was looking forward to getting her impressions of the man. He already knew he could trust her opinion.

‘We’re sorry to bother you again, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘But the fact is, your property is in a very strategic position here, from the point of view of our inquiry.’

‘I know, I know. You think the people came up this lane. And if they did, I ought to have seen them. And if they came in a car, they would have turned round in my driveway. But I can’t tell you whether any of that happened. I didn’t see anything, nor did my wife.’

‘Your father also lives here?’

‘My father was already in bed at that time. He’s not in the best of health.’

Cooper looked at the front of the house. ‘What sort of view do you have from your front window? Can you see the gate?’

‘Not quite.’

‘And you don’t have CCTV, I noticed.’

‘No, unlike some of my more wealthy neighbours. So, as you can see, we would not be able to tell if someone drove up this lane and turned round.’

‘Would you mind if we take a look along the boundary on this side, sir?’

‘Help yourself.’

Villiers accompanied Cooper as he followed a flagged path towards the right-hand corner of the property. According to his sketch map, the house he could just see through the trees was South Croft, home of Mrs Slattery, the doctor’s widow. Croft Lane ran just behind the hedge towards Nowak’s. But the lane was so narrow and empty of traffic, he wouldn’t have known it was there.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Villiers.

‘I want to get a good idea of the layout in this area, the way the properties adjoin each other. Who neighbours who, and how well they can see the approach roads.’ Cooper looked at her apologetically. ‘I realise that might sound a bit strange.’

‘Not at all. You need to know the ground. It’s vital.’

They walked back past the gate, where the gravel drive swept up to the house. Cooper glanced out on to the lane, then back up at the Nowaks’ house. Richard Nowak was still watching them from his front door, his arms folded, sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms.

‘He’s not missing much now,’ said Villiers quietly.

Cooper restrained a smile. ‘Have you noticed that there’s one feature we can see from here? If you look down the lane…’

‘Another set of gates. Rather grand ones.’

‘It’s the entrance to Riddings Lodge. Mr Edson. Quite a statement, aren’t they?’

‘And he has CCTV, I imagine?’

‘Oh, yes. Why?’

‘Mr Nowak’s comment. Unlike some of my more wealthy neighbours.’

‘Ah. A little bit of envy creeping through there.’

‘Aren’t those gilt-edged gates all about provoking envy?’

Cooper nodded. ‘Of course. I wonder if there’s any envy of the Barrons, too?’

‘Can we see Valley View from here?’

Cooper pointed down the lane. ‘It’s close to where the road takes a bend there. See the big bank of rhododendrons?’

‘Yes?’

‘Those mark the boundary of the grounds at Riddings Lodge. Valley View and Fourways are on the other side of them.’

‘We’d better move, before Mr Nowak starts getting nervous,’ said Villiers.

The last section of boundary was a stone wall, which ran right up to the rough ground at the foot of Riddings Edge. Over the wall was more Edson territory. But the Nowaks and the Edsons had made sure they couldn’t see each other along this section. The wall was too high for that.

‘What next?’ asked Villiers.

‘I need to speak to Barry Gamble again. And I’m glad to have someone with me this time.’

‘Someone?’

‘Actually,’ said Cooper, ‘I’m glad to have you.’

When they left Lane End, Cooper noticed that his tyres had pushed the gravel up into waves like the wake of a boat. It was laid so deep and soft that every vehicle, no matter how small, must leave this impression. The marks of the Mini Clubman’s tyres would be just as visible as those of his Toyota. He supposed someone must rake this stuff back into place regularly to keep it looking neat. Otherwise there would soon be wheel ruts worn into the drive, and bare earth exposed. And that would never do.

Bare earth? Cooper looked back at the drive again as he reached the gate. If there was bare earth under this gravel, he could see no sign of it. No weeds broke the white surface – not a single blade of grass trying its luck. Someone with a rake and a tank full of systemic weedkiller, then.

A few yards down Curbar Lane, he saw a smart blue van, the signage on its side advertising Garden Landscaping and Design Services, Paving and Driveway Specialists. He stopped when he saw a man in a matching blue overall, and got out to speak to him, showing his warrant card.

‘Excuse me, do you maintain many of the driveways in this area?’

‘Oh, yes. We installed quite a few of them, too.’

‘At Valley View, for instance?’

‘Stone paving, right? A very nice design, that. Expensive, but it lasts well. We installed that about three years ago, when the new owners came in. Oh, isn’t that the people…?’

‘Yes. There’s no gravel on their property, is there? I couldn’t see any.’

He shook his head. ‘Gravel. no. Not at Valley View.’

‘I thought gravel was making a bit of a comeback.’

‘Well, gravel driveways cost less to build, but they need more maintenance. Over time, tyre tracks appear, hollows fill with rain, the surface breaks down. And keeping down weeds and grass is a never-ending job. I’m working on the drive of the house across the road there. If it were me, I’d have put a weed barrier down under the gravel when it was laid. But I didn’t build this one. I just got the maintenance. I’m not complaining, though.’

‘There must be plenty of work.’

‘Oh, aye.’ The man looked at Cooper more closely. ‘My name’s Brian Monk, by the way. This is my company. Well, it belongs to me and my brother. But we thought Monk Brothers sounded odd for a trading name.’

‘A bit too monastic.’

‘Maybe.’ He removed a blue baseball cap and scratched his head. ‘Well, if you’re interested in Riddings, it’s a bit funny round here. You’d think gravel would be a good material to use in a place like this. It matches the predominant stone colouring of the area. Nicely rural, like. And a lot of people just like the crunch of it under a car’s wheels. Some even go for it as a security measure, too – you can hear people coming, you know. But the thing is, you can’t use gravel on a site that has any gradient to speak of. It needs regular top-up, and can be really tricky to keep in place. And there are lots of gradients here, as you can see.’

‘Any other problems with it?’

‘Well, it sprays out everywhere, especially if you like to spin the wheels on your posh convertible.’

Cooper laughed, recognising the view that a tradesman must get of the people he worked for.

‘I bet they complain a lot, don’t they?’

‘You can say that again,’ said Monk. ‘See, I tell them – if you have a lawn next to your gravel driveway, you’re going to have to pay for expensive repairs to mowing equipment. Not to mention the potential damage to people and property if gravel gets spat out at speed by a mower. Then if you get it spreading on to pathways, there’s another hazard. Granules will roll underfoot, and you get people slipping and falling over. Some of these folk are paranoid about getting sued for injuries. If you’re laying gravel, you don‘t lay it any deeper than two inches, otherwise cars sink in. It does depend on the size of the granules, though.’

Cooper produced a piece of the stone he’d collected and bagged from the Barrons’ lawn.

‘What about this, sir?’

Monk peered at it closely. ‘Too small. If it came from a drive, anyway. No, I doubt we laid that stuff. Not here in Riddings.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it’s a personal choice, but ten-millimetre gravel like this tends to move around more and get stuck in car tyres. We advise people to use a fourteen-or twenty-millimetre stone on driveways.’

‘I see. Thank you, Mr Monk.’

The man looked at him curiously. ‘Is it important?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I’m not saying it isn’t from round here. Just that it’s unlikely my firm laid it. There are a few other outfits around. I wouldn’t call them cowboys exactly, but not they’re not as well qualified, if you know what I mean. Not so particular about their work. A couple of lads out of a job might decide to set up a little gardening business, mowing lawns and that sort of thing. Then they start branching out. When people ask them if they can do drives or tree surgery, they don’t want to say no. That’s how it happens. I’m not naming any names, you understand. But you might find some around here that answer the description.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Thanks again.’

‘No problem.’

The landscaper went back to work on the house across the road. The driveway looked quite smart to Cooper, but he could see there was an occasional burst of green where a weed had dared to come through.

‘Gravel?’ said Villiers when he got back in the car.

Cooper could hear the laugh in her voice, and turned in his seat, ready to justify himself. Then he saw her face, and he couldn’t help laughing with her. For the first time today he was seeing the old Carol, the one he’d known before she went off to join the services and experienced all the bad things that he was sure must have happened to her.

‘Well, that’s what we’re like in Derbyshire Constabulary,’ he said. ‘We leave no stone unturned.’