Dancing With the Virgins (14 page)

*

Throughout the drive to Partridge Cross, Diane Fry had
been preparing herself for dealing with Ben Cooper by repeating a mantra to herself. 'Just keep him at arm's
length. Don't let him get under your skin.' She knew the best thing was to concentrate on the job in hand
and discourage conversation. But it had still taken her
a few moments to bring herself under proper control
when she found herself facing him, alone and with noth
ing to distract her attention. And as usual she found
herself unable to deter him from making his infuriating
small talk
.

`So has your transfer has been put back, then?' said
Cooper. 'Did something go wrong?'

‘
There's been a delay, that's all. Some kind of admin
istrative hold-up. You're stuck with me for a while longer.'

‘
That's good.
’

She looked at Cooper suspiciously. But, as always,
he seemed to be saying only what he meant.

‘
Let's get on with it,' she said. 'There's a lot to do.
’

Fry studied the cycle hire centre. With its collection
of colourful bikes and the mist still hanging against the
embankment, the stone building looked like a picture
from a children's story book. It typified the air of unreality about the area that she had yet to come to
terms with. Back in Birmingham, they would have flat
tened this place long ago for a new motorway link road.

‘
So this is Partridge Cross,' she said. 'I thought they
were kidding me about the name. It sounds like some
thing out of
The Archers.'

‘
It used to be a railway station on the High Peak
line —'

‘
I think you can keep that sort of stuff for the tourists.'
She waited for Cooper to take offence. But all he did was raise his eyebrows.

‘
Diane, I know something went wrong between us before, but it shouldn't stop us working together,' he said
.

She hated it when he was tolerant and reasonable.
She would have preferred him to show signs of resent
ment. She had got the promotion that everybody's
favourite detective constable had thought was owed to
him by right, and surely it was inevitable that he would
resent her
.

Fry sighed. 'Have we got a map or anything?' she said
.

*

They knew that Jenny Weston had set off from Partridge
Cross an hour and a quarter before her death. She had
headed eastwards on the High Peak Trail, where the strip of black compacted gravel provided easy going
.

Beech and elder trees overhung the trail, with nettles and brambles dying back on the verges. Jenny would
have passed under the A515 before she left the trail and
crossed the route of the old Roman road to begin the
ascent to Ringham Moor
.

The mist began to break up as they climbed away
from the hire centre. A jet liner went overhead towards
East Midlands Airport, leaving a white streak in the
sky. A farm dog barked half-heartedly in the distance.
In between the noises, it was so unnaturally quiet that
when a flock of pigeons passed overhead the noise of
their wings sounded as loud as the jet
.

But a few people were already starting to arrive on the trail. A woman with iron grey hair jogged by. She
was wearing purple Lycra and a clashing yellow bum-
bag, and she had two large, shaggy dogs panting to
keep up with her. Cooper stopped her and ran through
the questions on his list. Had she been this way yester
day afternoon? Did she remember seeing this cyclist?
He showed her the snapshot of Jenny Weston provided
by her father, and described her bike and clothing. If
not, who else had she seen? The woman did her best,
but couldn't help. She urged the dogs on as she crunched away again
.

Walkers began to appear in pairs, and once there was
a small group of half a dozen. They all said 'hello' to
the detectives, even before they were asked to stop and
answer questions.

‘
Is it obvious who we are?' asked Fry uneasily.

‘
No, it's just the thing to do, if you're walking out here. It's a sign of comradeship.
’

Fry snorted. Then a lone man passed them, walking
slowly, with his head down. He was wearing a worn
anorak, and his hair was dark and greasy. Fry's eyes
hardened and her shoulders tensed. The man glanced
at them nervously as he passed.

‘
Morning,' he said
.

Cooper started to go through the routine with him,
but he claimed not to have been in the area before. He
let the man go, but Fry stopped when he was a few yards past them.

‘
I didn't like the look of him,' she said. 'We ought to
check him out properly.'

‘
Why? He's probably just a bird-watcher or something.
’

There were views across open fields on either side
and the low bankings you could easily walk over. But
half a mile further on, the scenery changed. The trail
entered a rocky gorge with sheer faces of crumbling
limestone. The rock had been hacked into sharp angles
by the crude blasting methods of the railway builders.
The bramble-covered slopes above them would be impossible to scramble up, and there were lots of places to hide among the tumbled rocks and deep crevices
.

They were still some distance from the point where
Jenny Weston had tackled the climb on to Ringham Moor. Ahead, there would be police tape and officers posted to prevent them approaching too near to the crime scene.

‘
Aren't we chasing hares?' asked Cooper.

‘
We have to go through the routine.'

‘
We ought to be looking at Jenny's life. Not where she was, but why she was here.'

‘
It's procedure.
’

Up ahead was a tunnel, a black shadow across the
trail. The glimpse of light and greenery at the far end
only emphasized the blackness they had to walk
through to reach it. As they entered, the ground under
foot became softer and carved into ruts by bike tyres.
In the middle, the walls and roof were panelled with curved planks and buttressed with iron. Water ran
steadily down the wooden sides and dripped from the roof. They had to watch for the gleam and flicker of it
in the weak light to avoid the splashes.

‘
You're dealing with the earlier victim, aren't you?' said Cooper.

‘
Yes, Maggie Crew.'

‘
If it's the same assailant, I suppose the main hope
we've got is Crew herself. She's the only witness.'

‘
She's crucial,' said Fry. 'If we're ever going to get an
identification, it will be from her.'

‘
Only potentially crucial, I suppose.'

‘
Why?'

‘
She can't remember anything. Isn't that right?'

‘
I don't think it's as simple as that,' said Fry
.

The tunnel had been driven through the rock face at
the centre of the gorge, where pink gneiss showed
through the limestone. Ferns clung in patches, and a
silver birch had tried to colonize a high ledge. The only
sounds were the dripping and their own footsteps, until
a hissing roar began behind them. They turned to see
a racing cyclist, his head down, his face invisible behind
an aerodynamic helmet and wraparound shades. He was well past before they could stop him
.

The original chunks of dressed stone in the tunnel
walls had been filled in here and there with bricks. The
number of small stones that had fallen at each side of
the path looked a bit ominous, as if the tunnel was
slowly crumbling around them. Behind the boarding, a mass of stone that had rolled down from the limestone
face was prevented only by the damp boards and rusted
iron from closing the trail completely.

‘
What do you mean, it's not as simple as that?' asked
Cooper.

‘
What I mean is that she does have the memories.
The current thinking is that she's burying them, though.
Her mind is suppressing them because they're too
upsetting. There's a blank for several hours either side of the incident, caused by the trauma. But there might be certain triggers, certain circumstances in which the
memories will surface. We need to find a trigger. It
could just be a sound, a smell, the sight of something
she recognizes. We don't know.'

‘
But how are we even going to hope for that — unless
we can face her directly with her assailant? Isn't there
another way, Diane?
’

She shrugged. 'The counsellors tried to help, but she got too distressed. So we're not allowed to pressure her
into seeing a psychiatrist to take it any further.
’

Now it was starting to get busier, with families out
for the afternoon. Cooper and Fry crossed the road and
began the ascent to the moor. They stopped to look at the field where the farmworker, Victor McCauley, had
been working when he saw Jenny on her bike just after
half past one
.

They emerged above the remains of the mist, and
Cooper stared across the expanse of heather and whin-
berry that covered the plateau. He wasn't quite sure
about this Diane Fry who talked about triggers and the
current thinking. It sounded wrong. He wondered if she had been on a training course recently.

‘
Jenny ended up at the Nine Virgins, that way,' he
said. 'But we don't know which route she took across
the moor.'

‘
Whichever way she went, it took nearly three-quarters of an hour from when McCauley saw her.'

‘
Yes. So she probably took the long route. Towards
the Cat Stones and the Hammond Tower. Then past the
top of Ringham Edge Farm.'

‘
Let's go there, then.
’

There was no escape from the wind once they started
to walk across the moor. The uniformity and lack of
distraction in the landscape meant there was no escape
from your thoughts, either. Or from the presence of the
person you were with
.

As they approached the Cat Stones, the wind seemed
to double in strength, battering at them from the rocky
outcrops. Cooper shivered, and Fry pulled her collar
up higher. There was no life on Ringham Moor, apart
from the vegetation, itself already turning brown and
brittle. The moor was empty right the way across to the
outline of the tower, perched above the steep drop on
its eastern edge.

‘
Maybe it's a test, Diane,' said Cooper, after a while.
'You what?'

‘
Putting you on to Maggie Crew. You've got the hard
est job. Maybe they're just putting you through the wringer. They want to see whether you come out the other side.
’

At first, he didn't think she was going to answer. Fry
walked on a few more yards, her eyes fixed ahead,
concentrating on where she was going, oblivious to the
fascinations of the landscape around her.

‘
Which I will,' she said. 'I come through everything.
’

1
0

Ben Cooper recognized the look of a martyr when
he saw one. And Yvonne Leach had that look — the
defeated air of a woman worn down by many years of
battling against the odds
.

But it was more than that. She had an expression that
Cooper had seen in the eyes of his own mother so many times. For some reason, there were women who slipped
into the role of martyr as if it were their destiny. At one
time, Cooper had found the tendency so frustrating in
his mother that he had become angry with her, though
she was not the person his anger should have been
turned against. For years now, he had been drained of
the anger. The sight of Mrs Leach brought it all back to
him.

‘
Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Leach. Is your husband around at the moment?'

‘
No. I don't know where he is,' she said.

‘
Perhaps he's about the farm somewhere?'

‘
Perhaps he is.
’

She had kept Cooper standing in the yard, advancing
from her doorstep so that he had to retreat to a point
where he couldn't see into the house. He noted her
defensiveness without surprise. Many of these small hill farmers were used to making do on little money,
especially when they had children to raise. But when
things became too bad, it was often the women on
whom the burden fell; the women were the first to suffer the internal fractures that could tear apart their families
and their lives. They always tried to hide it. But there
were inadvertent signs — little giveaways that you could
learn to see, with practice.

‘
I noticed the Land Rover wasn't in the yard,' he said.
'Maybe he's gone out, then.'

‘
Do you know where, Mrs Leach?
’

She shrugged. 'He doesn't always tell me where he's
going. Why should he?
’

Now Cooper registered the note of defiance, and assessed the woman more carefully. Although her
clothes were old, they were clean and neatly pressed.
Her hair, streaking to grey, had not seen a hairdresser
for some time, but it was brushed and tied neatly
back. Cooper realized she had even applied a touch of make-up this morning. Her lips showed two unsteady
lines of red, her cheeks traces of powder.

‘
If you see your husband, please tell him we'd like to speak to him again,' he said
.

Then Mrs Leach smiled. It was a strangely elated smile, escaping through lips that trembled slightly. Cooper wondered whether she was on the verge of
hysteria, a step away from being tipped over the edge.
He wanted to stay for a while and talk to her, to tell her to seek medical advice before it was too late. He
wanted to tell her that those were the saddest words in
the language: 'too late'. But he couldn't do that. It wasn't
his job.

‘
If I see him,' she said. 'Oh yes, I'll tell him if I see him.'

‘
And how are the boys?
’

She looked surprised, almost unnerved, as if someone
had just delivered bad news.

‘
What?'

‘
Will and Dougie, is that their names? I saw them the
other day. A couple of grand lads.'

‘
Yes.' Mrs Leach took a handkerchief from her pocket
and began to twist it as she watched Cooper's face sus
piciously.

‘
They were tending to a fine-looking calf. They said
her name was Doll.'

‘
They showed her at Bakewell.'

‘
And won a prize, too.'

‘
They were that pleased,' she said. Her voice rose
suddenly on the last word, as if she had lost control of
her pitch. She screwed up the handkerchief and began
to dab at her lips.

‘
I'm sure you must be very proud of them.'
Mrs Leach nodded.

‘
I suppose they're at school just now,' said Cooper.
She made an indecipherable noise through the hand
kerchief that might have been agreement.

‘
How old are they?'

‘
Six and nine — no, ten.'

‘
Both still at the primary school in Cargreave, then,'
he said
.

She nodded again.

‘
I suppose Will is going to be off to secondary school
next year. Do they go to Matlock or Bakewell from here?'

‘
I forget.
’

Cooper looked back to where Diane Fry waited impatiently at the gate, eyeing the muck in the yard with distaste. It was only the mud left by the hooves of the cows as they passed through to the milking parlour from the wet fields. But it should have been cleaned up by now. Ringham Edge had the look of a
well-maintained farm in other ways — the house and
the buildings were in good condition, the tractor he
could see in the shed was almost new. But there was
the burnt-out pick-up standing abandoned by the
shed, and the yard hadn't been washed clean of mud
for days.

‘
Is everything all right, Mrs Leach? No problems?'
Yvonne Leach laughed, and then looked at him with
astonishment. 'What is it you want?' she said.
'We're trying to trace the movements of the woman
who was killed on the moor yesterday. We think she might have come this way.'

‘
Oh?' She ran her hand across her mouth again, and
kept it there for a moment. To hide an inappropriate smile or some other expression; Cooper couldn't tell.
The woman's eyes certainly weren't smiling. He began
to describe Jenny Weston. He showed Mrs Leach the
photo. She took it in her hand and looked at it for a
long time. When she handed it back, there was a smear
of lipstick on the edge of the print.

‘
No, no,' she said. 'I never saw her.'

‘
Did you see anybody else come by this way? Yester
day afternoon?'

‘
People are always coming by. It's a right of way, the
track there. We take no notice of them, as long as they
don't bother us.'

‘
It must have been fairly quiet yesterday, I suppose.
Not many walkers.'

‘
Yes. Quiet.'

‘
I just thought, if it was so quiet, you might have noticed somebody more.
’

Yvonne Leach seemed to be losing interest, or was thinking about something else. 'There was the other one, too. A few weeks ago.'

‘
Yes. She was attacked near the Cat Stones, we think.
Up by the tower somewhere.'

‘
It was me that found her, you know. That time.
’

‘
Yes, of course.'

‘
She was in a terrible state. Who would do a thing like that?'

‘
I'm afraid we don't know.'

‘
Is it the same man this time?' she asked. And she
covered her lips again. She used both hands this time,
as if afraid her mouth was running out of control.

‘
I'm afraid we just don't know,' said Cooper
.

He saw that she had rubbed at her mouth so much that the lipstick had been removed completely, except for a small smudge in one corner of her lip. He turned
to walk away. But as he crossed the yard, Cooper looked
back and saw Yvonne Leach fold her handkerchief and
begin to dab anxiously at her mouth all over again
.

It was obvious the woman was in trouble, but what
could he do? When he spoke to Warren Leach next, he
could mention his wife's condition, but he couldn't hold
out much hope that the man would listen. He could talk
to the Social Services, and say he was concerned about
the welfare of the two boys in the household. But he knew his concerns would be a low priority for them — they were
overwhelmed with more urgent calls on their time. They
were so stretched that they could only respond when
something had already happened, when things had gone
too far. They acted when it was already too late
.

But Ben Cooper understood that. It was what the police did, too
.