Dancing With the Virgins (47 page)

33

There was no answer at the cottage in Cargreave. Ben
Cooper stood on the bottom step, his feet crunching shards of broken clay pot and lumps of soil tangled with roots. All the plant pots on the steps had been smashed and the plants uprooted. Now they lay in a
wet mess of soil. The bottom step had also been used
as a toilet, almost as if the entire village had stood and
urinated on to the doorstep. Urinated and worse. The
smell was appalling.

All the curtains were drawn on this side of the house.
Cooper walked a few yards along the road until he
found a ginnel that ran between the cottages, with steep
steps at the bottom where gates led into adjacent gar
dens. He clambered over a wall into the field and walked along it until he reached the back garden of Owen Fox's cottage and forced his way through an overgrown hawthorn hedge. A woman stared at him
from a first-floor window next door, then turned away.

Cooper peered through the windows, remembering
the gloom of the little room at the front of the house where Owen's computer had stood among the old newspapers and magazines. He banged on the back
door, knocked on the windows, watching for a hint of
movement inside. Nothing. Feeling foolish, he shouted
Owen's name. There was no reply. So where else could
he be? They had taken the Land Rover off him when he was suspended, and Owen wasn't the type to be
drowning his sorrows in the pub. He would want to be somewhere quiet, where he could think about things.

Cooper found himself looking up at the bedroom
window. The line of bereavement cards still stood there,
mostly white and silver, fading in the sun. They were
decorated with all the symbols of religion — crosses and
stained glass windows depicting the Virgin Mary. They
were the usual things on bereavement cards, often
meaning nothing. But, of course, Mrs Fox had believed
in religion. Owen had said so himself. He had taken
her to the village church until she became bedridden.
And the old lady could see the tower of the church from her bedroom window.

*

The graveyard at Cargreave parish church was full of
local names — Gregory, Twigg and Woodward; Pidcock,
Rowland and Marsden. There were lots of Shimwells
and Bradleys here, and someone called Cornelius Roper
— an ancestor of Mark's, perhaps? One of the most recent
headstones was down at the bottom of the graveyard,
in one of the last available plots. Annie Fox, aged ninety,
beloved mother of Owen.

Even in the dusk and from the far side of the church
yard, Ben Cooper could see the red of the Ranger's
jacket in the porch. He walked up the path. Inside the
porch, Owen Fox was dwarfed by a slate slab, eight feet
tall, bearing the Ten Commandments. Cooper sat down
next to him on a narrow stone seat.

‘
It's locked, Ben,' said Owen. 'The church is locked.
’

‘
Too much trouble with thieves and vandals, I suppose.'

‘
After she was gone, I didn't think I needed the church
any more,' said Owen.

‘Your mother?'

‘
We always used to come on a Sunday when she was
well enough. After she died, I didn't think I needed it any more. Then suddenly today I thought I did, after
all. But it's locked.’

Dozens of starlings were flocking in the churchyard,
chattering to each other as they rustled from one yew
tree to the next, deciding on a place to roost for the night.

‘
Look, it might be a good idea if you stayed at home
for a while, Owen,' said Cooper. 'Watch the telly, read
a book, mow the lawn, feed the cats. Anything. Go home.'

‘
I can't.' Owen scowled across the churchyard at the valley and the opposite hill. 'Not knowing your lot have
been through the house and pawed over my life. It
doesn't feel like my home any more. It's a place where
I'm a pervert, a sicko, the lowest of the low. But not
outside the house. Outside, I'm someone else entirely.’

Cooper looked at the notices pinned to a board inside
a glass case next to the slate slab.

‘According to this, you can get the key from the churchwarden at 2 Rectory Lane. The white house across the churchyard, it says.'

'Yes, I know,' said Owen.

‘It's just over there, look.'

‘Yes, I know.’

Cooper looked at the house, studying its curtained
windows and tall chimneys. There was smoke coming
from one of the chimneys, and it looked as though there
was somebody at home.

‘
In this village, the churchwarden is also the chairman
of the parish council,' said Owen. 'Councillor Salt. She
knows me well enough.’

Then Owen changed the subject. It might have been
the subject that had been running through his mind all
along, whatever the words he had been speaking. It all spilled out as if Cooper had suddenly tuned in halfway
through a conversation.

‘I looked after Mum for so many years, you know,' said Owen. 'We were more than mother and son. We
were a team. Do you know what I mean? It was like a marriage, in a way. I looked after her, and she looked
after me — or she liked to think she did. She used to
drag herself out of bed to get a meal ready for me when
I came home. I would find her sitting on the kitchen
floor, with the cutlery tipped out of the drawer and a
pile of unwashed potatoes. And she would be apologiz
ing for dinner being late.’

Owen's voice cracked. Cooper looked away, over his
head, to avoid seeing his expression, waiting while he
recovered. He felt like a voyeur suddenly faced with
something far more personal and intimate than he had
expected.

‘
Her mind was fine, but her body was long past being
able to keep up with her,' said Owen. 'I think that's the
saddest thing of all, don't you? It meant she knew
exactly what was happening to her. It was a long drawn-
out torture.'

‘
How long did you live together, just the two of you?
’

‘
Thirty years.'

‘
Thirty years? Owen, you must have been — ?
’

‘
Since I was twenty-three.'

‘
Well, you're right about a marriage. Except that not
many couples stay together so long these days.’

Owen nodded. 'We depended on each other. That's
the difference, isn't it? You stay together when you need
each other. Most of the couples I see, they don't really
need each other — not after the sex thing is done with
and the kids have grown up. Sixteen years at most, and
the reasons for their marriage have gone. There's no real tie to keep them from drifting apart. No ties like there are with a parent. Real blood ties.'

‘But never to have your own life, Owen . . .'

‘
You still don't really understand. Mum
was
my life.
Oh, I had the job. I've always loved being a Ranger,
and I wouldn't have done anything else. But I've never
really had friends — plenty of acquaintances, but no
friends. And I was never going anywhere else, because
I was needed right here, in Cargreave. I had a purpose.
Until she died.'

‘That must have left a big hole in your life,' said
Cooper, aware of how inadequate the words were. He
had an inkling of what it must have meant to Owen —not just to lose a part of your life, but to lose its entire
purpose. It made him think of Warren Leach, who had
come to the same point himself, in his own way, but
had chosen a different method of dealing with it. Owen
had followed a different path — less violent, perhaps,
but just as destructive.

Cooper ran his eye over the ornate writing on the stone slab. The old-fashioned letters were difficult to
read, full of curlicues and elegant swirls, not like the nice, plain print of a newspaper headline. The effects
of the weather and the rubbing of many hands had
worn the inscriptions down so much over the centuries
that they had almost been lost entirely. The Command
ments were so difficult to see that they were easy to
ignore, too empty of significance to draw meaning from
any more. Cooper traced the wording of number nine,
taking his time, almost reluctant to get to the end of the
sentence.

"'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh
bour,"' he said.

The Ranger stared at him, puzzled. 'Just because I
had that stuff on the computer, it doesn't mean I'd do
anything to children, you know. I want to tell people
that, but they won't listen. On the way here, I passed
a man that I've known all my life. He came to Mum's
funeral. Today, he crossed the road to avoid me; when
I got past, he spat on the pavement.’

The flock of starlings in the yew trees fell suddenly
quiet. Cooper glanced nervously at the churchyard. For
the third time in a week, he found himself worrying that someone might see him where he shouldn't be.
There were several routes he could take to get into big
trouble, and he was following them all simultaneously.

He couldn't help wondering what his father would
have done. Would he have followed the path he thought
to be right, and tried to achieve justice? Or would he
have stuck to the rules? Cooper wished he could get a message from him somehow. But he was in the wrong
place for that — Joe Cooper had never believed in a God
bigger than himself.

‘That woman you were accused of assaulting ten years ago . . .'

‘
It was different,' said Owen. 'Totally different.'

'You can
see
why it might look similar.'

‘
Not at all. That woman pursued me constantly. It
was well known in the village that she wasn't right in
the head. She would never leave me alone. It was ter
rible. Despite everything I could do to avoid her, she
managed to get me on my own one day at home. All I
did was push her away to make her leave. But she fell
on the steps outside the house and banged her head.
That was it. That was all that happened. Of course, her version was quite different. The things she said afterwards . .

Owen rubbed his fingers through his beard, so that
the grey hair stuck out in odd directions. He tried to wipe away a trickle of sweat from his temple and left
a dark smear instead.

‘
Do people here in the village know about your conviction?' asked Cooper. 'You've lived here all your life,
after all.'

‘
Yes, they know. They knew all about it at the time,
and they don't forget.'

‘
Yet nobody has said anything to us. Of all the calls
that have come in to the incident room, no one from
Cargreave has pointed out your history. If it hadn't been
for your name cropping up in the paedophile enquiry,
it would never have come to light.’

Owen nodded. 'It's because I belong here. Those other
people, on the interne, I meant nothing to them. I had no place there. And now look what I've done to my life
in Cargreave. I've been on the parish council for fifteen
years. But the chairman left a message on my answerphone last night and said the most appalling things. Mary Salt used to be one of Mum's patients.
Mum delivered both her children. I can never look Mary
Salt in the eye again. I've just put my resignation through her letter box.’

Cooper began to feel as if he were standing at the
front door of someone's house, searching fruitlessly for
the right words to break the bad news when a family
had lost a loved one — a father killed in a car crash, a teenager dead of an ecstasy overdose, a young girl snatched and dumped dead by the roadside. After a
while, you learned there
were
no right words. You just
did it, got it over with, and tried to keep up the barriers
against the emotions you were bombarded with.

People wanted you to play God. They wanted you
to bring the husband or daughter back to life somehow. In training, you were told how relatives might react, but not how you were going to react yourself.
You weren't trained in dealing with your own feelings.
And those emotions didn't come from a bottomless
well. Every time you drained the emotional reserves, it
took a bit longer to refill. Cooper had started to worry
that eventually it wouldn't refill at all. One day that
well might prove to be dry, and instead of normal feel
ings, all he would touch would be a dry, cracked sur
face, barren and stinking, like the sides of Ladybower
Reservoir after a hot summer.

‘I don't understand, Owen. Did you never have a girlfriend?' said Cooper.

The Ranger shook his head. 'It's old fashioned, I suppose.’

Old fashioned? Cooper didn't comment on the under
statement. Most people these days would find it incom
prehensible. Perversely, he knew, this would be another
thing that Owen would find held against him.

‘
I was always awkward and shy as a teenager,' said
Owen. 'I never developed the knack of forming relation
ships.'

‘And when there was just you and your mother? Surely it wasn't too late?’

For answer, Owen stared at the Ten Commandments.
Cooper tried to follow the direction of his gaze. Which
commandment riveted his attention, and what thoughts
had his question provoked that made Owen look so amazed and appalled at the way his life had turned out?
Cooper looked down the list, until he arrived at the
right line. Owen was right to be amazed, if that was
what he was thinking. He was looking at number seven:
'Thou shalt not commit adultery.'

‘I had to do everything for her, in the later stages,' said Owen. 'I had to get her up, wash her and dress
her, take her to the toilet, wipe her, feed her, clean her
teeth, then undress her and put her to bed again. What
marriage involves that kind of intimacy between a man
and a woman?’