The Kill Call

15

As the temperature fell that evening, the moisture in the air began to form dense banks of fog on the higher ground. When Ben Cooper closed the front door of 8 Welbeck Street, he always looked up to see the hills. He found their presence reassuring, even in the dark, when they were black against the sky. But tonight, the hills above the town were masked by a grey blanket, and wisps of fog could be seen swirling above the streetlights.

Cooper’s local in Edendale was the Hanging Gate, a pub sitting in its own little yard off the High Street. When he first moved into the flat at Welbeck Street, he’d taken some trouble in finding the right sort of pub. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, not like some of his colleagues, who relied on alcohol to help them deal with the pressures of the job. A drink or two did help him relax. But most of all, a decent pub provided company, and a meal when you didn’t feel like cooking for yourself – which, in his case, was quite often.

Like so many pubs in the area, the Hanging Gate had framed scenic Peak District views on the walls, and even a few hunting prints. But the beer was good, and the choice of rock classics on the juke box was familiar and reassuring.

As he and Liz Petty stepped through the door on to the stone flags, Cooper nodded to a few acquaintances. He was pretty well known here now, but people left him alone. It wasn’t the sort of place where you got bothered if they knew you were a police officer. Another plus for the Hanging Gate.

He and Liz had been going out for several months now. It was one of those relationships that had grown up gradually from a casual awareness of someone in a different department at work into something more than friendship. It was supposed to be the way the best relationships developed, if you believed what the women’s magazines said.

They got their drinks, and found a table. Liz was a bit on edge, because she was due to meet Ben’s sister for the first time. Claire was expected to arrive in another half an hour, though it would be par for the course if she was late. So he and Liz had some time together first.

‘How did you get on at the vet’s?’ she asked.

Cooper looked at her over his bottle. ‘Oh, that’s nice. I like the way you’re concerned about the cat, but you haven’t bothered asking how I am.’

‘I don’t need to ask about you. I can see you’re as always.’ She studied him for a moment. ‘It didn’t go well, then?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s kidney failure. It seems old Rand must be more ancient than he looks. That, or he’s led a riotous life.’

‘Is there anything they can do?’

‘Not without putting him through a lot of pain and discomfort.’

‘I see.’

‘So it’s just a matter of time.’

She grasped his hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

Cooper felt embarrassed. ‘He’s only a cat.’

‘Yeah, right.’

There was a silence while they drank, each with their own thoughts. And then, in that inevitable way that it always happened, they began talking about work. No, not really work – office gossip.

After a few minutes, Liz looked away as she asked him another question.

‘Do you think Diane Fry might be in need of some support?’ she said.

Cooper put down his drink. ‘What?’

‘Support. You know what support is, Ben.’

‘Right. But Diane -’

‘Yes, Diane Fry. She’s only human, you know. The talk is that she might be going through a bad time.’

Well, Cooper suspected that every week was a bad time for Diane Fry in one way or another, but he let it pass.

‘Why particularly now?’

‘The word around the station is that the new superintendent has it in for her. Doesn’t think she fits in.’

‘How is it that civilian staff always manage to gather far more information than detectives?’ said Cooper. But he didn’t really feel like joking. What Liz was saying matched his own feeling too closely.

He looked around the Hanging Gate. A thick brass rail and stools lined up at the bar. A trophy cabinet for the darts team. Rooms were separated by coloured glass panels. A florid-faced man with a bald head and a dark moustache came into the pub, and a young woman with unnaturally pale hair and sunglasses followed him. While he waited to be served at the bar, she walked past and found a seat near the back of the room. The bald man watched her all the way.

It was in this pub that Angie Fry had once tried to present him with a forged death certificate, expecting him to help her in a strategy to get her sister off her back. It recorded the death in Chapeltown, Sheffield, of Angela Jane Fry, aged thirty, and had been dated just over a year previously. It was the first time he’d ever sat at a table in a pub and talked to a dead person.

‘ And presumably this isn’t your real address,’ Cooper had said.

And Angie had laughed. ‘ That isn’t even my name now. I changed it some time ago. The house was used as a squat, but the owners evicted everyone months ago.’

And because of his refusal to be involved in that scheme to prevent Diane from finding her sister, the two women had finally been re-united and had ended up living together for months at Diane’s place in Grosvenor Avenue. Cooper still had no idea whether Diane knew the full picture. Or ever would.

And the odd thing was, Diane Fry had been the bane of his life ever since her arrival in Derbyshire. She was the newcomer who had rejected his attempts at friendship, she was the woman who’d got the promotion he’d thought was his own. She was the supervisor who made him feel he never did anything right, who scoffed at his background and his way of life. She was the woman who looked at him as if he’d mortally offended her at some time, perhaps just by being who he was.

Yes, she was all of those things. He surely had every reason to hate her. Yet, when it came to the point, Cooper realized that he didn’t want her to leave. Her departure would create a strange, inexplicable gap in his life that he couldn’t imagine being able to fill in any other way.

‘Yes, I’ll speak to her,’ he said.

Liz nodded. ‘I think you should. You’re the closest thing she has to a friend, you know, Ben.’

‘You’re kidding.’

But as soon as he said it, Cooper knew she was right. He couldn’t think of a single person who was close to Diane Fry. Some had tried. In fact, he’d tried himself, for a while. But Fry was the sort of person who didn’t want friendship. If asked, she would say she could manage without it. He could almost hear her saying it now.

He looked at Liz. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Good.’

Liz had made a special effort tonight. Her hair was brushed back, and she’d applied touches of make-up that transformed her normal healthy bloom. Although Cooper was no judge, the glitter of her bracelet looked expensive.

He had a sudden feeling of panic that he hadn’t been treating Liz well enough. And here he was, expecting her to sit in the bar of the Hanging Gate with him. She hadn’t seemed to demand any more, but seeing her tonight, he had a nagging suspicion of a dangerous gulf between them that he’d been ignoring. What, after all, did he really know about her?

Liz’s green eyes seemed to mock him, as if she was reading his thoughts. Was his face so transparent, that everyone could do that?

But then her eyes slipped past him, and Cooper turned. His sister had arrived.

‘It’s getting really foggy out there,’ said Claire, shaking off her coat. ‘Not so bad in town, but you can’t see three feet in front of you on the hills.’

Introductions followed, and those few awkward moments before drinks were fetched and everyone settled down again. Liz clutched at his hand and held it firmly on the table, intertwining her fingers with his. To Cooper, it felt more like a proprietary gesture in the face of a rival than a need for reassurance. He saw Claire notice it, and felt oddly uncomfortable.

‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ said Claire to Liz. ‘I’ve heard such a lot about you.’

Cooper almost spilt his beer. He never talked about Liz to his family very much; in fact, he’d sometimes had to resist persistent cross-questioning from Claire. But Liz laughed, as if the idea of being gossiped about pleased her.

‘I’m glad you spare the time,’ she said. ‘Ben always tells me you’re really busy.’

‘That’s true.’

Claire Cooper often complained of being too busy for anything. But that might change now that she was closing down her craft shop in Bold Lane. The ‘To Let’ signs were already up, and she was letting the stock run down. Last time Ben had called in to see her, there were almost no healing crystals or dream catchers to be seen anywhere, though the aroma of sandalwood remained, and would probably persist for ever. He wondered if Claire had ever sold citronella oil, which was used by hunt saboteurs to distract hounds, as well as being a perfume and natural insect repellent.

‘So what are you going to do now, instead of running the shop?’ he asked.

‘Well, I’m getting a job,’ said Claire.

‘Oh, a New Age sort of job, I suppose?’

‘Ben, the shop was never “New Age”. It was just a little bit alternative, that’s all.’

‘Too alternative for the people of Edendale. It never made much money, did it?’

‘Profit isn’t everything.’

Ben laughed. ‘Try telling that to Matt.’

Claire looked from Ben to Liz. ‘You ought to go and visit Bridge End Farm. You haven’t been for a long time, have you?’

‘Well, a week or two, perhaps.’

‘Longer than that, Ben. The girls are missing you.’

‘Did they say so?’

‘Yes, actually. Amy particularly. She asked if you were ever coming again.’

Cooper thought he’d always enjoyed a close relationship with his two nieces, Amy and Josie. He was shocked to hear they didn’t think he was visiting them enough, that he might even have forgotten about them.

‘I’ll go this Friday,’ he said.

Liz gripped his hand more tightly. ‘Don’t forget we’re going out Friday night.’

‘Oh, right.’

Cooper remembered Liz talking about what they should do at the weekend. She wanted to go to the Dog and Parrot to see a band that was playing there this Friday, Midlife Krisis. Cooper had never heard of them.

‘It doesn’t matter, if you don’t want to.’

‘We’ll talk about it,’ he said.

Liz’s phone buzzed, a text message coming through. There were times when she was on call-out for Scenes of Crime, and could disappear at any moment.

‘Excuse me, I must take this. Besides, I’ve got to go to the loo, anyway.’

‘No problem. See you in a minute,’ said Cooper.

He smiled at his sister, taking a drink of his beer. But Claire looked at him steadily, waiting until Liz was out of earshot.

‘I don’t want to interfere, Ben…’

‘It never stopped you in the past, Sis.’

‘I’m sorry, but… I really don’t think she’s right for you.’

‘We’re only going out, you know. We’re not about to walk up the aisle tomorrow.’

‘I know that,’ said Claire. ‘But I know you, too. I don’t want you to make a big mistake.’

Cooper leaned back in his chair, and rubbed a hand across his face. Why did everyone always want to tell him what to do? He wasn’t a teenager any more, for goodness’ sake. He hadn’t been for a long time.

‘So what’s the problem, Claire? Is it because Liz is in the job? She’s a civilian, you know, not a police officer.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘They have an easier life,’ said Cooper. ‘But don’t tell Liz I said that.’

‘She gets called away, just the same way that you do. The job comes first, doesn’t it? It came first for Dad, and it comes first for you. Another one like that, and -’

‘We’re all doomed?’

Claire sighed. ‘It wouldn’t work, Ben. What happened to that teacher you went out with for a while?’

‘Helen? She just sort of disappeared.’

‘Well, I thought she was all right. But this Liz Petty – well, she spends her life looking at crime scenes, picking up bloodstains and hairs, and goodness knows what. Besides…’

‘What? There’s more?’

‘I think she’s too possessive. I’m worried you’ll get led into something you’ll regret.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ben, you’re the sort of man a certain type of woman could get obsessed with. Like a doctor – you know, someone dependable, reassuring. Someone who actually wants to help you. There are women who would do anything to believe they had a relationship with a man like that. GPs know it well. It’s called dependency syndrome.’

‘She’d have to be an obsessive kind of woman.’

‘Yes.’

Cooper put his drink down. ‘Claire, I appreciate that you’re concerned for me, but it is my life, you know.’

Claire sighed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure?’

‘I think you’re missing Mum and Dad a lot more than you let on, Ben. And they do say that you’re often looking for – Well, let’s change the subject.’

He stared at her, puzzled by what she could mean. But before he could ask her, he saw Liz was making her way back through the crowds from the ladies. And then the moment had passed.

Watching the two of them in cautious conversation, Cooper tried to analyse his feelings. Sometimes he seriously doubted his ability to pick the right woman. He’d been going out with Liz Petty longer than anyone else he’d ever known. They’d even gone through a Christmas together, and he’d met her parents. Boxing Day lunch at their house in Bakewell. A subtle barrage of questions over the mince pies about his background, his family, his prospects in the police. Old-fashioned parents who desperately wanted to feel that their approval was needed.

But he hadn’t minded that. It would have been the same the other way round, if he’d been able to take Liz home to meet his father and mother. But that would have to have been years ago, before Dad was killed, before Mum became so ill. He tried to imagine Boxing Day lunch with all of his family there – Dad at the top of the table, upright and solemn like an Old Testament prophet as he carved the joint, Mum fussing about, backwards and forwards to the kitchen, until she’d crammed the huge table to capacity and plates of vegetables threatened to tip off the edge. And there would have been Matt and Kate, of course, and the girls. And maybe Claire, too – though she usually managed to avoid those huge meals and call at less demanding times, when only the sherry and chocolates were on offer.

Could he imagine introducing Liz into that gathering, subjecting her to the third degree, the iron-jawed interrogation by his father, the more discreet insinuations of his mother, the candid curiosity of Matt, and Kate’s well meaning attempts at intimacy? Would he even have wanted to?

He couldn’t really explain to himself why the question was important. But it had been preying on his mind ever since that Boxing Day visit. He thought he had probably passed the test with Mr and Mrs Petty. But would Liz have survived the same ordeal among the Coopers at Bridge End Farm?

And what was it that Claire had been about to tell him people said? Could it be that when you chose a partner in life, you were subconsciously looking for someone who was just like your mother?

Ben was used to being told that he was trying too hard to emulate his father, that he would be forever standing in the shadow of Sergeant Joe Cooper, the model copper who’d died in the course of his duty, kicked to death on the streets of Edendale. The last thing he needed was a mother figure. That definitely wasn’t what he was looking for in Liz.

It was a funny thing, though. It actually seemed to be Claire who was starting to turn into his mother.

That night, Claire had emailed copies of the photos she’d taken at the National Memorial Arboretum. While Cooper waited for them to download on to his PC, he spooned some tuna-flavoured Whiskas into a bowl for Randy, hoping the cat might be tempted by his favourite food.

He smiled to himself as he recalled the scene at Watersaw House stables, with the horse passing its opinion on Fry in a way that the owners had been a little too polite to do. He’d never seen Fry quite so angry before. Her nostrils had flared wider than the horse’s.

Alicia Forbes had been all right, though, hadn’t she? Well, for a pony girl. He wasn’t sure what she’d meant about giving the wrong impression, though. Lots of men his age weren’t married – either because they hadn’t decided to settle down yet, or because marriage just wasn’t regarded as the social obligation it once was. Perhaps it was different in the circles that the Forbes moved in. But what had owning a cat got to do with it?

Then Cooper looked at the cat, and the cat stared back at him in disgust. The wrong impression?

‘Sorry, Randy,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid she thinks you’re gay.’

He went back to his computer screen, recalling another interesting fact about the black rat that he could have mentioned to Fry. The one group of people who had never been affected by bubonic plague were the nomadic tribes of central Asia, where the bacteria had first originated. Those nomads lived close to their companions, the wild horses of the arid Asian plains. And the one thing that rat fleas really hated was the smell of horses.

When the photos from Claire had finished downloading, Cooper clicked on the first attachment and opened the jpeg file with a strange feeling of reluctance.

He’d never really been keen on photos of himself, particularly in family snapshots. Now, they reminded him too much of his mother, who had always loved showing off the family albums, pages and pages recording the growth of her children from new-born horrors through the adolescent monster stage and into adulthood. Mum would have loved a snap of her sons together, treasured it as a testament of her crowning achievement in life. But without her being there to appreciate the photo, it was just one more embarrassment to suffer.

In this case, the picture was also too recent. It reminded him too much of the visit to the police memorial on Sunday. The comments made by Matt and Claire were fresh in his mind, and they weren’t what he wanted to be thinking about right now. ‘ Persecuting law-abiding people instead of going after the real criminals.’ ‘Police officers standing around doing risk assessments while someone is dying.’ Dad would never have done that. No, of course he wouldn’t.

And when Ben saw the picture full-size on the screen of his laptop, he realized something he hadn’t noticed at the time. He’d been too busy staring at the camera, wondering if he should try to hold a smile, or look serious because of the occasion. And wondering, too, whether he looked ridiculously windswept from being outside, those little bits of spiky hair sticking out like devil’s horns. When someone pointed a camera at you, your attention was automatically focused on yourself and the lens, it was such a peculiar moment of intimacy. You forgot completely about what might be around and behind you. Even the photographer did that. It was an error that had caught a lot of people out.

But in this case, what he hadn’t noticed was that he and Matt, gazing solemnly out of the screen, were standing right in front of the giant policeman in the main building of the arboretum. The bobby loomed over them, vast and ominous, blocking out the light from the windows like a monstrous ghost.

He’d also been much too tall for the lens of Claire’s digital camera. The head and helmet of the giant policeman were neatly sliced off.

Philip Worsley had finally admitted to himself that he was lost. The fog had come down so quickly on Longstone Moor that it had confused him totally.

When he’d set off to walk from Stoney Middleton, the weather had been clear, and he’d taken advantage of a spell without rain for his late afternoon walk. He couldn’t believe that it was so different up here – so different that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. This didn’t happen back home in Essex.

At one point, Philip thought he’d reached the path that led downwards to the crossroads. There was supposed to be a farmhouse not far from the junction, though he couldn’t tell which direction it lay in. He’d been here before, years ago, and it was a pity that his memory wasn’t clearer. He’d have to hope for a distant light visible when he got nearer.

He had a map in his rucksack, of course, but none of the landmarks seemed to fit. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. A slope where it should be flat, water where there should be land. It was as if he’d stepped out of the real world into some parallel universe.

He shivered in the damp fog. And for the first time, Philip started to feel concerned. Apart from his map, he had a waterproof, a bottle of water, a spare pair of socks in case he got his feet wet. But nothing to eat, except a roll of his favourite sweets, the perfumed Parma Violets that he’d remembered from his school days. There might be some sugar in them, but they wouldn’t provide him with extra energy for long.

Philip kept walking, but without recognizing any signs or gateways. Twenty minutes later, when his foot slipped into a hole and his ankle doubled up underneath him, he knew he wasn’t on the path at all. For the last few hundred yards, the slope of the land had been tending upwards, not down. The ache in his calf muscles was enough to tell him that fact, but he’d been trying not to notice it.

As he nursed his painful ankle and wiped a bloodied scratch on his hand, he knew that he was now in difficulties. He had no idea what direction he’d been walking in, or whether he’d even set off from the place he thought he had twenty minutes ago. His ankle wasn’t actually sprained, and he could still walk on it, if he was careful. But the fog was as thick as ever, and there were no lights visible, no sound of traffic from any direction. His senses detected nothing around him except muffled rustlings and coughs in the heather, sounds that he took for the presence of sheep.

Then he reached a point where the terrain sloped towards him on all sides, rough ground calloused with rocks and grimy with dead bracken. It seemed to him that the landscape had caught him up, and now held him in its grubby palm, like an insect it meant to crush.

On the ridge of the slope above him, a single hawthorn seemed to writhe in the fog drifting past its branches. For a few moments, Philip could do nothing but listen to the silence, his senses baffled by the absence of noise. It was as if he’d gone suddenly deaf, or someone had turned off the sound in the world around him.

Trying to make some contact with his senses, he held his hands up to his face. The smell of Parma Violets, and a single drop of blood.

He came to a low fence and decided to step over it, rather than casting backwards and forwards to find a gate or stile. A moment later, he was falling.