Dancing With the Virgins (37 page)

*

Diane Fry jumped up from the cushion, banging her head on the metal roof as a burst of flame lit up the
quarry. A small explosion rocked the van and the blast
echoed backwards and forwards off the rock walls.

‘
What the hell was that?
’

She pulled the sheet aside to look through the cab.
Black smoke poured into the sky, and the air was filled
with an acrid smell and the sound of sizzling, like a
huge barbecue. The blaze was clearly petrol-assisted,
and it flared dramatically for a few moments before dying to a hiss
.

In the light from the flames, she saw something begin
to creep over the quarry edge. Whatever it was, it slid
in a slow liquid movement. Fry turned on her torch and
shone it through the windscreen. She saw a series of
small rivulets running free, breaking apart, then slowing and congealing, until they had stopped, frozen on
the rock. More rivulets followed, their bright colours
twisting and mingling until the quarry face looked like
psychedelic curtains picked out by the light of her torch.
She remembered the phallus farm that Cal and Stride
had created on the cliff edge, and she realized that she
was seeing the multi-coloured wax melting in the flames.

‘
I've never seen anything like it.
’

There was a thump on the back of the van, and the
vehicle jerked as if it had been hit by a heavy object.
'Oh Jesus,' said Cal
.

Stride folded his head into his arms and began to
mutter unintelligibly, repeating a phrase over and over
again
.

Fry peered cautiously out through the windows of
the cab, but could see nothing in the surrounding dark
ness. She went to the door and pulled it open a few inches. A cold gust of rain blew in. All she could see
through the blackness was the faint glow of the interior
light in the patrol car, where PC Taylor was reading
about skimmers and wagglers, or more likely had fallen
fast asleep and was only now wondering what on earth
had woken him up
.

In a narrow path between the van and the car, Fry
could see the rain hurtling past. The ground was glisten
ing alarmingly as the sand began to turn to mud.
Then she saw vague shapes moving in the darkness.
'Taylor!' she called. But she got no response.

‘
What's going on?' asked Cal from behind her.
'Stay in the van. Shut the door. Lock it.'

‘
It won't lock.'

‘
For God's sake.' She struggled desperately with the
door as she felt it slip off its bottom runner and jam two feet short of the frame. 'Try to get it shut. Stay inside.'

‘
But —
’

Fry stepped outside and was immediately drenched
by the rain. She slid on the ground as she set off towards
the patrol car.

‘
Taylor!
’

The noise of the downpour in the quarry drowned her voice. She tried to set off at a run, but her feet
slipped and slithered. She turned to look back at the
van, and saw figures surrounding it. They were dark,
shapeless forms — human, but only just. The van began
to sway. Glass smashed as a window was shattered
.

At last a beacon flashed as PC Taylor woke up to
what was going on and revved the engine of his car at
the incline. Near the top, his wheels began to spin in
the mud, and the bonnet slid sideways towards the drop, its headlights swaying drunkenly across the quarry
.

Then Fry found herself suddenly in the midst of a
crowd. They gathered close around her, silent but for
the sound of their breath and the damp rustling of their
clothes. All she could see were their eyes.

‘
I'm a police officer. Stand clear.
’

She was grabbed from behind and dragged further
from the van. She felt a weight on her back, and arms
clutched round her chest. She was aware of the other
figures all around her, none of them speaking. Fry struck backwards with her right hand to grasp her
assailant's testicles, and missed. Twisting, she found
herself facing him, though barely a glint of the white
of an eye was visible through the holes in the mask he
wore. She hesitated as she felt a
frisson
of familiarity
.

And that hesitation was her mistake. Pain shot
through her leg as a blow landed on her right knee. Her
leg gave way and she slid to the ground, still hanging on
to the man's coat. Then she saw something swinging
towards her again from the side, a shape like a baseball
bat. She put her hand out to ward it off as she threw
herself to one side, gasping from the agony in her leg
.

Fry rolled over in the mud, glimpsing feet around her and covering her head in anticipation of boots coming in. She fetched up hard against a rock and pushed herself into a crouch ready to jump up, but
realized that her leg was not going to support her. Only
one dark figure still stood in front of her, watching her
for a moment, before it turned and ran off to join the
others around the van
.

Now the noises came to her through the night. She
could hear the van being trashed. She could hear other
sounds, too. Shouts and curses, and thumps
.

Taylor had switched on the siren in his stranded patrol car. But the noise didn't help at all when the scream came. It was so high-pitched that it ought to have been female. But Fry knew that it wasn't
.

27

‘
There has to be
something
in the damn computer,
Stewart,' said Chief Superintendent Jepson. 'That's what
it's there for, to come up with the right answers. You've
got a multi-million pound guaranteed
Mastermind
winner. All you need is Bamber Gascoigne to ask it the right questions.
’

Normally, Jepson loved to be kept up to date on
the progress of a major enquiry. It made him feel in
volved, instead of just a man sitting in an office with
a lot of brass on his uniform. And sometimes Tailby
found that talking a case through with him could
put it in a different light. But not this morning. This
Sunday morning there was no light to be found of
any kind, not even from a phallus-shaped candle. The
reports of the incident in the quarry the night before
made painful and depressing reading. Three people had been injured, one of them a police officer. And the perpetrators had come and gone like a flurry of dead leaves in the wind, vanishing back on to the moor before PC Taylor could dig himself out of the mud.

‘
Bamber Gascoigne was never on
Mastermind,'
said
Tailby wearily. 'In fact,
Mastermind
hasn't been on TV for years.'

‘
So? Pick some other quiz. It doesn't matter.'

‘
These days contestants get to phone a friend or ask
the audience.'

‘
Well, we can't ask
our
audience,' said Jepson. 'If we admit that we know sod all, they'd be down on us like
vultures.'

‘
And we haven't got any friends either, have we?' Jepson sighed deeply. 'That's true.
’

Tailby stared at the files on Jenny Weston and Maggie
Crew. He didn't need to read them again. He knew
them practically by heart. But he turned over the pages
anyway
.

In the Weston file was the report from the officer who
had first responded to the call from the Rangers. The
call had come from the Rangers' TIP at Bradwell, not directly from Mark Roper, nor from Owen Fox at the Ranger centre at Partridge Cross. Maybe this was
standard procedure — it was worth checking. There was
a detailed witness statement from Roper himself, as well as further statements from the cycle hire centre manager, Don Marsden, and the farmworker, Victor McCauley, who seemed to have been the last people to see Jenny Weston alive. No one had come forward to say they had seen her once she had reached the moor
.

The vast amount of forensic material that had been
collected was confusing rather than helpful. Even
Jenny's pants and cycling shorts, found in the quarry
by a SOCO who had been lowered down the rock
face, had yielded no positive traces. The only item still
missing was the pouch she had normally worn round
her waist when cycling.

‘
The injury to Bevington suggests punishment for a
sexual assault,' said Jepson. 'But there was no such
assault on Jenny Weston.'

‘
There was no evidence of sexual intercourse, no body
fluids or traces of DNA. But the profilers talk about a
"disorganized" killer, and for that type the killing is a
sexual act in itself. On the evidence, the profile was
definitely that of the disorganized type, with a sudden attack, and no attempt being made to hide the body —
on the contrary, it seems to have been put out on dis
play. That might also explain the stripping of the lower
half of the body. A symbolic sex act.'

‘
That's rather academic for the average vigilante to
figure out, Stewart.
’

Tailby sighed. 'I know.'

‘
Bevington does have a history, though. Can he be
linked to Weston?'

‘
It must have been Bevington who wrote his name
on the ground in the stone circle. But that could have
been days earlier. It means nothing.'

‘
And what about Ros Daniels?'

‘
Oh, she's long gone from the area. That kind of
person — she could be anywhere. Using a different name
by now, probably.'

‘
Do you think so?'

‘
Certainly,' said Tailby. 'Remember, the last time she
was seen anywhere in the area was six weeks before Jenny Weston was killed.'

‘
Yet an unknown man was seen hanging around
Weston's house and workplace. Someone made a phone
call to her, claiming to be a police officer.'

‘
We've ruled out the ex-husband, Martin Stafford. All
the old boyfriends in Jenny's address book have been
eliminated. If there was a more recent one, she didn't
bother to put his number in the book. It would have been unlike her, though. She was well organized in other ways. And there's the note we took from her house. "Buy some fruit-flavoured ones," it said. That had to be a boyfriend, surely.'

‘
Perhaps the man the neighbours saw wasn't looking
for Jenny Weston, but for Ros Daniels,' said Jepson. 'She
had already disappeared by then.'

‘
Whoever the killer was, he was very audacious,' said
Tailby. 'And very lucky.
’

There had been a number of public appeals during
the past week. But no one had come forward to say they had seen a man on the moor at the right time.

‘
We have a partial footprint and a smear of sweat on
the bike frame. We have the shape of a knife blade. But
it's really nothing at all. Nothing — without evidence to
place a suspect at the scene.
’

Tailby paused, as if unsure how his next statement
would be received. Jepson noticed the hesitation and
fixed the DCI with his sharp blue eyes.

‘
Yes, Stewart? What are you going to say? Is it some
thing I don't want to hear?'

‘
Could be.
’

Jepson sighed again. 'I didn't really think things could
be worse. But go on.'

‘
If you don't mind,' said Tailby, 'I'd like to wait for
Paul Hitchens and Diane Fry to join us at this stage.
’

*

Diane Fry limped up the stairs towards the incident
room. Earlier, she had been writing up her report on the attack on Calvin Lawrence and Simon Bevington
the previous night, and her mind was still full of images
from the moments immediately after the mob had scat
tered in the quarry. She saw the scene that PC Taylor's
headlights had illuminated. She saw the rain glittering
like knives in the twin beams; she saw the bright, jagged
holes in the windows of the VW van, and the walls of the quarry black outside the range of the lights. And
she saw Stride sprawled half-naked in the mud on his
face, with the broom handle still bloodily protruding,
his body writhing like a worm cut into pieces
.

She had been finding the task of reliving the night's
events painful and humiliating. She was in physical
pain, too, from the bruises on her leg. But she wasn't about to make that an excuse for anything. And then
she had to run into Ben Cooper hovering near the top
of the stairs. He was the last person she wanted to see;
it was entirely because of Cooper and his stupid ideas
that she had been in the quarry in the first place, listen
ing to the ravings of those two travellers. But she
couldn't avoid him. He moved straight in on her, thrust
ing himself into her personal space.

‘
You did your best, Diane,' he said, with that infuriat
ing habit of reading her mind.

‘
Oh, sure I did.
’

She turned away from him too suddenly. Her injured
knee gave way and her foot slid off a step. Cooper grabbed her jacket to stop her falling back down the
stairs and yanked her towards him. Fry found herself nose to nose with him. She felt his breath on her face
and saw his eyes, big and brown and concerned, like
the eyes of one of Warren Leach's Jersey cows.

‘
What the hell do you think you're doing, Cooper? Get your hands off me.'

‘
Look, I know how you feel,' he said.

‘
No, you bloody don't.'

‘
Diane — even you couldn't fight them all.'

‘
They neutralized me in seconds,' she said. 'I hardly
tried.
’

Fry kept remembering that she hadn't even drawn
her ASP. It had been in her scabbard, readily to hand.
But she had not used it
.

Cooper held on to her for a moment longer than he
needed to, steadying her with a hand on her back. She
could feel his fingers against her spine through the cloth. He was pressing gently but insistently on her
vertebrae, triggering a small nerve that sent sensations running down into her abdomen. For a second, it even
seemed to ease the pain in her leg
.

Then Fry yanked herself free and straightened her
jacket. 'Isn't this supposed to be your rest day?
’

‘
Yes.'

‘
Then what the hell are you doing in the station? Haven't you got anything better to do?
’

She watched Cooper's face crumple and the flush start to creep up his neck. He was the only detective
she knew who blushed when he was spoken to sharply.

‘
As a matter of fact, I have,' said Cooper.

‘
Enjoy your day then. I've got a meeting with Mr Tailby and the Super.
’