Dancing With the Virgins (3 page)

It was a subject Cooper didn't really want to think about. It brought with it painful memories, some of
which he still didn't understand but suspected might
be his own fault.

*

After a few minutes, he realized Dave Rennie hadn't
come back into the bar. In the steamy atmosphere of
the changing room, he couldn't see Todd either. He had
to shout to make himself heard, even when close enough to tap one of the players on the shoulder.

‘
Have you seen Todd Weenink?'

‘
He's gone,' said the player. 'Control bleeped Dave
Rennie, and Todd went off with him. They went off in
a hurry, too. Todd hadn't even managed to put his trousers on.'

‘
You're joking.'

‘
No, mate. I saw him myself, with his arse hanging out. Should you be with them?
’

Cooper stared bleakly at the player. 'I'm not on call.
Control wouldn't have asked for me.'

‘
Right. You're the lucky one, then. You can have a few beers.'

‘
A few beers, yeah. What more could I ask for?
’

Suddenly, Cooper's mood plummeted. He felt as if
he had just been jilted by a lover. If there was a job on,
he wanted to be there. He wanted to be part of the team. He wondered why loyalty had to be so painful. And when would he learn to give his loyalty in the
right direction? He ought to have learned that lesson
from Diane Fry — their brief relationship had certainly
been difficult enough to drive it home. Cooper shuddered at a premonition. He thought it likely that she could inflict more pain on him yet, given the chance
.

*

The police vehicles cluttering up the roadsides at the
bottom of the main track on to Ringham Moor made
Diane Fry frown in exasperation. The scene looked
chaotic, as cars with beacons flashing arrived one after
another in the gathering dusk and slewed across the
narrow verge. A minibus carrying the Tactical Support
Unit was unable to squeeze through the gap left by the parked cars until a uniformed sergeant yelled at
someone to move. Figures in reflective yellow jackets
were caught briefly in the headlights as they passed aimlessly backwards and forwards
.

Fry itched to take control of the situation, to bring
order and a bit of sense to officers so charged with
excitement and adrenalin that they were causing more
trouble than they were worth. But, in fact, she shouldn't
even be here at all. She had thought she had got away
from E Division, that her few weeks in Edendale had
been a bad dream she could soon put behind her. But
here she still was, answering the call. And before she
knew what was happening, she had found herself out in
the Peak District countryside again, where civilization
seemed like a dim memory and the twenty-first century
was reduced to the fantasy of a Victorian novelist
.

She stood with Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens on
the rocks overlooking the road. A fine drizzle was set
tling on their clothes and in their hair, and turning the
gritstone slab under their feet a shade darker. With
Hitchens at her side, Fry felt as though she had taken another step closer in her ambitions. She was already 'acting up' as a detective sergeant, with a transfer to a
permanent DS's job in the offing when the imminent
re-shuffle took place
.

A move couldn't come too soon for Fry. At all costs,
she must avoid the crazy distractions and misjudge
ments that had plagued her in a spell shortly after her arrival in E Division from West Midlands. The name of
her biggest misjudgement was Ben Cooper
.

The thought of him immediately sparked the surge of anger that always bubbled somewhere deep in her
stomach, churning thick and corrosive like an acid that
flowed in her small intestines. It happened every time;
it only took the mention of Cooper's name, or even a
burst of the wrong music. There were cassettes that she
used to play often in her car which she had been forced to throw away — not just casually chucked on the back seat, but hurled into the nearest wheelie bin, with their
spools of magnetic tape ripped out and shredded like
the innards of a rat she had once seen killed and torn
apart by a police Alsatian in a derelict warehouse back
in Birmingham. If there had been an open fire in her
flat, she would have burned the tapes; she would have
happily watched their plastic cases crack and twist and
bubble, as they melted into a greasy smear
.

Fry wiped a sheen of drizzle from her face, where it
was starting to make her cheeks feel damp and uncom
fortable. No, she hadn't quite managed to erase Ben
Cooper from her memory yet. But she was working
on it.

‘
We've arranged for you to see Maggie Crew at six o'clock,' said DI Hitchens. 'You'd better get going, as soon as this lot are out of our way.'

‘
Was she willing to see me?'

‘
Willing isn't a word I'd use. She's bloody hard work.
’

‘
She's uncooperative? But why?'

‘
You'll see. Form your own impressions of her, Diane,
that's the best way. We want you to get to know her.
Get under her skin. Be an irritant, if you like.
’

Fry knew she was being presented with a chance to
do something different, to escape the routine chores
that the Ben Coopers of the world would be allocated
during this enquiry.

‘
I'm looking forward to it,' she said
.

Hitchens nodded in approval. 'When
are
they going
to stop messing about down there?' he said
.

DI Hitchens was dressed casually, in denims and trainers, and he looked like a man who should have
been doing something else. His cheeks were dark and
unshaven, and there were specks of white paint in his
hair.

‘
We've got to keep the road open,' said the sergeant
importantly as he passed below them.

‘
Yeah. You're doing a great job. We can see that.'

‘
Control reckons the cavalry's on the way, Inspector.
They tracked down a couple of your lot at the rugby match.
’

Fry knew exactly what that meant. The rugby match
was where Ben Cooper would have been with his
friend, Todd Weenink, and no doubt DS Dave Rennie,
too. Cooper wasn't a rugby-playing man himself. From
her own experience, Fry reckoned he was more likely
to be taking out the half-time oranges and cleaning the players' boots, generally getting in the way and making
helpful suggestions. But he would have been at the
match to support his colleagues. Oh yes, Ben Cooper
was a great one for supporting his friends.

‘
Oh, and you'll be pleased to know our lads won too!'
called the sergeant
.

Fry blew through her teeth and jammed her hands
into the pockets of her coat, squaring her shoulders like someone bracing herself for a fight. Rennie, Cooper, and Weenink. The dream team. Just what E Division needed
to stamp on a spate of attacks on women
.

At last it looked as though someone had located another place to park. Radios crackled, the sergeant shouted, and cars began to move off, flashing their
headlights and spinning their wheels dramatically on
the grass as they went. But as the patrols and vans made
space, another car arrived. It was an unmarked Mondeo
— a private car, not a police vehicle. The doors popped
open and a warm fug seemed to ooze out into the
evening chill. A voice was raised in complaint from the
back seat.

‘
I can't
believe
we left those uniformed bastards with
all the beer,' it said
.

Fry recognized DC Weenink immediately. He was damp-haired and pink-faced, and his voice sounded
petulant, like an overgrown child. She watched in dis
gust as he poked bare, muscular legs out of the car door and struggled to pull his trousers on over his
jockey shorts. Parts of his anatomy bulged dangerously
from his underclothes, and the buttons of his shirt were unfastened over his hairy chest. Even from several yards away, Fry knew that his breath smelled of alcohol
.

She watched DS Rennie get out of the driver's seat.
But no Ben Cooper. Suddenly, Fry felt more cheerful
.

Her shoulders relaxed, her lips formed a contemptuous
smile.

‘
Well, if that's the cavalry,' she said, 'my money's on
the Indians.
’

DI Hitchens laughed. Weenink heard the laugh, and
he looked around for its source. He grinned up at Fry,
with his zip still open, his hands pressed round his
crotch, the position of them emphasizing rather than
concealing the bulge in his shorts.

‘
Excuse me, Sergeant,' he said. 'Can you use me at
all?
’

Fry stared at him, but Weenink's grin only grew
broader, until it became a smirk. She turned to stride
away from the road. She had no time to waste on petty irritations - not when a woman's entire life had already
been wasted up there on the moor. She had seen enough
wasted lives, and her own had almost been one of them.
But not any more
.

*

Ben Cooper took a swig from his bottle, conserving the
beer carefully, anxious about drinking too much. He didn't want to become a solitary drinker, though the temptation was strong
.

A few minutes ago, he had rung Control to find out
what was happening. They said the body of a woman
had been found on Ringham Moor, fifteen miles south
of Edendale. A suspected murder. The control room
operator didn't need to mention the other attack that
had taken place not a mile away from the same spot
six weeks before. In that case, the victim had survived
- just about
.

Now Cooper's mind was no longer with him as he sat
in the sweaty rugby club bar. It was elsewhere, drifting
across the moors towards a flutter of tape and the flash
ing lights, the sound of urgent voices, and the scents
and the electric crackle in the air that never failed to
give him a buzz of excitement. That sense of satisfaction
from taking his place in the team was a thing that couldn't be explained to someone who had never experienced it
.

Yet tomorrow morning, he knew he would be sitting
in the monthly Crime Strategy Meeting for Edendale
Section. He would be discussing the section's annual
local objectives, the implementation of liaison policies
and the measurement of performance. Occasionally, in
these meetings, they talked about crime. But they hardly
ever talked about the victims
.

Cooper watched the rugby players reach the traditional highlight of the evening, when they began to pour pints of beer over each other's heads. The bare
wooden floor of the bar was already awash and turning sticky underfoot. Some of the students looked irritated
at the way their clubhouse was being taken over by the
more boisterous and more aggressive celebratory style
of the police. Soon it would reach the point when it
might be better not to have to witness a colleague com
mitting a breach of the peace
.

It was time for Ben Cooper to leave. He needed to be
awake and alert for the meeting in the morning, and he had a stack of burglaries to work on, as well as a
serious assault on a bouncer at one of Edendale's night clubs. With officers seconded to the murder enquiry, no
doubt there would be someone else's workload to take
over as well. Besides, if he stayed any longer, he would
drink too much. It was definitely time to go home
.

But home was Bridge End Farm, in the shadow of Camphill. Though he was close to his brother Matt,
Matt's young family were gradually making the house
their own, until their video games and guinea pig cages
left little room for Ben. So for a while he sat on in
the bar, like an old man in the corner watching the
youngsters enjoy themselves, and he thought about the
body on Ringham Moor
.

With a bit of luck, the police team would find some
obvious leads and get an early closure. There would
be initial witness statements that pointed with clunk
ing obviousness to a boyfriend or a spurned lover.
Sometimes it was as if the perpetrator carried a giant,
fluorescent arrow round with him and the word 'guilty'
in bright red letters that were visible five miles away
in poor light. All the team would need to do then was make sure they collected the forensic evidence at the
scene without either contaminating it, losing it or sticking the wrong label on it so that no one could say after
wards where it had been found. It was amazing what
could happen to evidence between the first report of a
crime and the day a case came to court
.

Cooper fought his way to the bar, shouting to the
barman to make himself heard above the din. It seemed
as though no one else in here wanted to sit down — they
were all up on their feet, shouting at each other. The
police were singing triumphal songs, having a great time. The students were starting to look hostile
.

The American beer Cooper was drinking came in a brown bottle, with a black label and a faint wisp of
vapour from its open neck. It was cold, and he closed
both his hands round it, drawing a strange comfort from
its chill for a moment before he turned and carried it
away from the bar. Instead of returning to his corner, he slipped out of the door into the cooler air outside
.

For a while, he leaned against a rail near the changing
rooms, gazing at the empty pitch, watching the starlings
that had arrived in the dusk to pick over the divots in
the turf, searching for worms exposed by the players'
studs. He became distantly aware of a more aggressive
note to the shouting in the bar behind him, but decided
it wasn't his concern
.

Cooper continued to believe it was nothing to do with
him right up until the moment that a six-foot six-inch
student lock forward put a hand like a meat plate on
his shoulder
.