Dancing With the Virgins (38 page)

*

Chief Superintendent Jepson laid his hands flat on the
desk and looked from one officer to the other. 'OK,
who's going to start? Put me out of my misery. Let me
know what this is all about.
’

As Diane Fry expected, it was DI Hitchens who took
the bull by the horns.

‘
Chief, in the Weston case, the fact is that there is
only one person we can place anywhere near the scene
at the time.'

‘
Ah, the old story,' said Jepson. 'The first person that
comes under suspicion is always the finder. Is that it?
’

Diane Fry leaned forward. 'Mark Roper,' she said. 'But he
was
there.
’

Fry felt her superiors watching her closely. The pain
in her leg drove her on like a spur.

‘
He had plenty of time to kill Jenny Weston and do
whatever he wanted to do before he reported that he had found her body. And he had scouted the area first, quite legitimately, so he had no worries about being observed.'

‘
Obviously,' said Jepson. 'But what would his motive
be?'

‘
Well, there's nothing obvious that we can see,' admit
ted Fry. 'But we've had some discreet enquiries made
into his family background.
’

Jepson raised an eyebrow. 'Have we indeed?' He
looked at Hitchens, then at Tailby, but Fry was deter
mined to keep his attention.

‘
Three years ago, Mark's older brother died and his
father went off the rails. He started drinking and
became depressed and lost his job. Frank Roper eventu
ally walked out of the family home when he found out
that his wife was having an affair. According to the
neighbours, he hasn't been seen in the area since. Mrs
Roper promptly moved the boyfriend into the house,
and Mark still lives with them. But he was very close
to his father.'

‘
This is a story no different from a thousand others,
Fry. What are you trying to tell me? That Mark Roper
has a grudge against women?'

‘
We've heard much more incredible motives,' put in
Hitchens. 'But this is simply background on Roper for
now.'

‘
OK. Weapon, then? What would he have done with
the knife?
’

Fry shook her head. 'We don't know. But he's very friendly with the other Ranger, Owen Fox. He's got a
bit of a surrogate father there, from all accounts. Fox
could be covering up for him. They could have concocted their story together.
’

The Chief Superintendent was looking more and
more unhappy. 'We have an excellent relationship with
the Ranger Service. Excellent.'

‘
I don't like it myself,' said Tailby. 'But we can't ignore it. We need to look at elimination.'

‘
All right, all right,' said Jepson. 'Could Roper have
been the man Jenny Weston's neighbours reported? How would he know where she lived?'

‘
Oh, that's the easy part,' said Fry. 'Weston's details
are recorded in the book at the cycle hire centre. The
Rangers are in and out of there all the time. Either one
of them would have had no trouble getting her address.
’

‘
All right.'

‘
Not to mention the correlations the computer has thrown up. If it was anyone else -'

‘
Yes, I know.'

‘
If we could show some inconsistencies in the stories
of the two Rangers, it could be just the opening we need.
’

Jepson said gently: 'Don't you think you're getting a
bit carried away here, Fry? What about Maggie Crew?
Are you forgetting her? Besides, the Rangers have been
helping us. Suddenly you're suggesting they're public
enemy number one.'

‘
But Roper
was
there. If only there was something . . . 'Stewart, have you spoken to Alistair Prince recently?
’

‘
Yes, sir,' said Tailby. 'He suggested a re-enactment.
’

‘
But there was nobody there. You have no witnesses.
The place was deserted.'

‘
Superintendent Prince says it works very well in central Derby.
’

Jepson chewed his lip. 'So that's it. You think we're
going to have to admit defeat on this one otherwise, Stewart?'

‘
To be honest, I'm not very hopeful, sir. We thought
we had a stroke of luck with Darren Howsley. But that
was a poisoned chalice.
’

Jepson folded his fingers together and stared at the
ceiling for a while. The others waited expectantly. Fry
knew only too well that what they were suggesting wasa difficult thing, a politically sensitive issue. 'Somebody had better talk to DI Armstrong, then,' said Jepson.
Fry blinked and looked at Hitchens, who shrugged.
It wasn't what
he
had expected either.

‘
Why?' he said. 'Kim Armstrong is engaged on the
paedophile enquiry. They're about ready to make some
arrests, aren't they?
’

While they waited for more, the Chief Superintendent
tapped his pen on the desk and looked at the broken
end of it sadly, like a man contemplating something particularly unpleasant.

‘
Go and talk to her,' he said. 'And tell her I said it's
a need-to-know situation.
’

*

Ben Cooper particularly liked the narrow lanes and arcades in the oldest part of Edendale, between Eyre
Street and Market Square. There were shops that sold
decorated wooden elephants and pencil boxes, pine fur
niture, chocolates and malt whisky; there was an Italian
restaurant and several coffee shops. And halfway up Nick i'th Tor, the steep alley off Market Square, was the window of Larkin's, a traditional bakery. During the day the window was full of pastries and cheeses -apricot white stilton, homity pies, pasties, and enor
mous high-baked pork pies. Cooper came down to Lar
kin's as often as he could at lunchtimes if he was in town. He was happy to queue with the tourists and
listen to the assistants explaining one more time that
Bakewell tarts should be called Bakewell puddings
.

But today the window of Larkin's was completely
empty. It might as well have been selling picture frames,
like the shop next door. All the shops here had been
cleaned and painted up, and the stone setts had been
relaid into the footpaths, while new arcades had
been created in what had once been warehouse yards.
Now the coffee shops sold exotic coffees — Jamaican
Blue Mountain, Monsoon Malabar Mysore and Yemeni
Mocha Ismaili
.

In the Market Square itself was Ferris's, a butcher's
that was also a licensed game seller. Normally, a few
brace of pheasant dangled their tails in front of the window, their necks stretched and tied with string.
Often there would be a pair of pigeons or a mountain
hare. Tourists had been known to take exception to this
— to burst into the shop with allegations of animal cruelty and obscenity
.

Ben Cooper had seized the chance of his leave day to take Helen Milner for lunch. Helen had been quiet
during the meal. She was concerned about the progress
his mother was making, and she always asked about
Matt and Kate and the girls. But he couldn't help being
aware that she was interested in almost everything
except him. She didn't ask what he was doing at work
at the moment. She didn't want to know. Not today
.

Cooper sat through lunch hardly eating. He watched
Helen's hair as she talked, remembering when he had been enchanted by the coppery sheen of it in the sum
mer sun and had begun to hope that its glow sym
bolized a bit of light entering his life. It had been just
when he needed it, too, when everything else had
seemed to be going wrong — when his mother's descent
into schizophrenia had seemed unstoppable, and when
Diane Fry had appeared on the scene to complicate his
life like a tangle of briars that he couldn't shake off. Helen had seemed to be the answer to all that
.

But now August seemed a long way off. The leaves
of the trees in the Eden Forest had taken on the colours
of copper and gold, and the yellow of sunlight, too. And then they had died
.

*

After lunch, they walked towards the river. In the side streets, the houses huddled together, like little groups
of people gossiping. They stared into each other's windows, and knew each other's business. On the
paved steps that ran down to the River Eden the rain
had brought out all the colours in the Yorkshire stone,
the browns and reds and greens. The steps were uneven,
and some of them were slippery with wet leaves. At
the bottom, leaves had collected in a drain, and dirty
water had flooded the path
.

Helen had been talking about school, telling Cooper
about the children in her class. Cooper had been content
to listen to her talk. He had come intending to make
amends for standing her up at the rugby club the pre
vious Sunday. He knew he had been neglecting her. Yet
the lack of necessity for a response allowed his thoughts
to drift occasionally. His mind kept returning to the reports of the attack on Cal and Stride in the quarry the previous night. The details had been shocking in themselves; but his imagination was able to provide
much worse. Cal and Stride were the typical victims —
a pair of innocents who had found themselves in the
wrong place at the wrong time. He had seen what they
were, and he had been unable to do anything to protect
them
.

And now Cooper had something else on his mind. He had to decide what to do about Mark Roper and
Owen Fox. Mark's suspicions were insubstantial, yet
Cooper would have to report them. Perversely, he felt
he would have liked to be able to discuss the subject
with Diane Fry. He would also have liked to have been
part of the team that was trying to identify the vigilante
group which had attacked her. They had the reports
from Fry and PC Taylor, and Cal and Stride themselves were being interviewed. But the scene was a mess - the
rain had left it a quagmire. An assault on a police officer
had to be treated seriously, but all that had been
achieved so far was to spread the division's resources
even thinner. It was enough to make Cooper feel guilty
about taking time off. But there was no more money in
the budget for overtime
.

Helen dipped into her shoulder bag and produced a packet of photos. Cooper looked at them, puzzled.
'The pictures of the children,' she said.

‘
Oh, right.
’

On Sundays, the riverside was always busy with families feeding the ducks. From the river walk, the water seemed to be full of movement. Mallards and
coot clustered anxiously round the bankside, darting
for the tidbits. Flocks of black-headed gulls wheeled
and screamed over the surface, landing and taking off
again, noisy and bad-tempered
.

They sat down on a bench next to an elderly couple. The photos were all badly composed and had a strange
cast over them, a combination of artificial light and direct flash.

‘
This is my little favourite, Carly,' said Helen,
pointing to a little girl of about six, with fair hair cut raggedly across her forehead and a selection of teeth and gaps like a half-demolished wall.

‘
She's really sweet. She likes to draw, and she insists
on giving me her drawings as presents. Look at this.'
The picture she showed Cooper was crayoned with
great care, but little subtlety. There were small children
with stick arms and clothes of various colours, and there
was a figure with a white beard and a red coat patting
them on the head and offering them brightly coloured
gifts. It was captioned 'Fathr Chistmass.'

‘
A bit early to be doing Christmas, aren't you? It's only just gone Bonfire Night.
’

Helen laughed. 'Yes, they do get confused sometimes.'
But somehow it didn't look quite right. There was
something wrong about Father Christmas's costume.
He looked like one of those cut-price Santas in the shops
in Edendale at Christmas, with home-made suits and cotton-wool beards that never fit. Most of them would
scare the kids to death, if they got too close. But these
days, there was no touching allowed, not even by Santa.
No 'come and sit on my knee, little girl.
’

Cooper thought of Warren Leach's boys, their air of
guarded distance, an instinctive wariness of strangers.
There had seemed little innocence about the Leach place. He wondered what the two boys had seen or experienced in their lives that made them nervous of visitors
.

He looked again at the drawing in his hands. It wasn't
the red jacket that made it look wrong. It was the
trousers. Every child knew that Santa's trousers were
red, the same as his jacket. But Carly had changed
crayons halfway through drawing her picture of Father
Christmas and his presents. She had selected her new
colour carefully — and it wasn't a colour that a child of six would normally choose. It wasn't bright or dramatic
enough; it was too dull and adult somehow
.

Yes, everyone knew Santas were dressed all in red.
But this Santa had grey trousers
.