Kill Call (17 page)

But then her eyes slipped past him, and Cooper turned. His sister had arrived.

‘It’s getting really foggy out there,’ said Claire, shaking off her coat. ‘Not so bad in town, but you can’t see three feet in front of you on the hills.’

Introductions followed, and those few awkward moments before drinks were fetched and everyone settled down again. Liz clutched at his hand and held it firmly on the table, intertwining her fingers with his. To Cooper, it felt more like a proprietary gesture in the face of a rival than a need for reassurance. He saw Claire notice it, and felt oddly uncomfortable.

‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ said Claire to Liz. ‘I’ve heard such a lot about you.’

Cooper almost spilt his beer. He never talked about Liz to his family very much; in fact, he’d sometimes had to resist persistent cross-questioning from Claire. But Liz laughed, as if the idea of being gossiped about pleased her.

‘I’m glad you spare the time,’ she said. ‘Ben always tells me you’re really busy.’

‘That’s true.’

Claire Cooper often complained of being too busy for anything. But that might change now that she was closing down her craft shop in Bold Lane. The ‘To Let’ signs were already up, and she was letting the stock run down. Last time Ben had called in to see her, there were almost no healing crystals or dream catchers to be seen anywhere, though the aroma of sandalwood remained, and would probably persist for ever. He wondered if Claire had ever sold citronella oil, which was used by hunt saboteurs to distract hounds, as well as being a perfume and natural insect repellent.

‘So what are you going to do now, instead of running the shop?’ he asked.

‘Well, I’m getting a job,’ said Claire.

‘Oh, a New Age sort of job, I suppose?’

‘Ben, the shop was never “New Age”. It was just a little bit alternative, that’s all.’

‘Too alternative for the people of Edendale. It never made much money, did it?’

‘Profit isn’t everything.’

Ben laughed. ‘Try telling that to Matt.’

Claire looked from Ben to Liz. ‘You ought to go and visit Bridge End Farm. You haven’t been for a long time, have you?’

‘Well, a week or two, perhaps.’

‘Longer than that, Ben. The girls are missing you.’

‘Did they say so?’

‘Yes, actually. Amy particularly. She asked if you were ever coming again.’

Cooper thought he’d always enjoyed a close relationship with his two nieces, Amy and Josie. He was shocked to hear they didn’t think he was visiting them enough, that he might even have forgotten about them.

‘I’ll go this Friday,’ he said.

Liz gripped his hand more tightly. ‘Don’t forget we’re going out Friday night.’

‘Oh, right.’

Cooper remembered Liz talking about what they should do at the weekend. She wanted to go to the Dog and Parrot to see a band that was playing there this Friday, Midlife Krisis. Cooper had never heard of them.

‘It doesn’t matter, if you don’t want to.’

‘We’ll talk about it,’ he said.

Liz’s phone buzzed, a text message coming through. There were times when she was on call-out for Scenes of Crime, and could disappear at any moment.

‘Excuse me, I must take this. Besides, I’ve got to go to the loo, anyway.’

‘No problem. See you in a minute,’ said Cooper.

He smiled at his sister, taking a drink of his beer. But Claire looked at him steadily, waiting until Liz was out of earshot.

‘I don’t want to interfere, Ben …’

‘It never stopped you in the past, Sis.’

‘I’m sorry, but … I really don’t think she’s right for you.’

‘We’re only going out, you know. We’re not about to walk up the aisle tomorrow.’

‘I know that,’ said Claire. ‘But I know you, too. I don’t want you to make a big mistake.’

Cooper leaned back in his chair, and rubbed a hand across his face. Why did everyone always want to tell him what to do? He wasn’t a teenager any more, for goodness’ sake. He hadn’t been for a long time.

‘So what’s the problem, Claire? Is it because Liz is in the job? She’s a civilian, you know, not a police officer.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘They have an easier life,’ said Cooper. ‘But don’t tell Liz I said that.’

‘She gets called away, just the same way that you do. The job comes first, doesn’t it? It came first for Dad, and it comes first for you. Another one like that, and –’

‘We’re all doomed?’

Claire sighed. ‘It wouldn’t work, Ben. What happened to that teacher you went out with for a while?’

‘Helen? She just sort of disappeared.’

‘Well, I thought she was all right. But this Liz Petty – well, she spends her life looking at crime scenes, picking up bloodstains and hairs, and goodness knows what. Besides …’

‘What? There’s more?’

‘I think she’s too possessive. I’m worried you’ll get led into something you’ll regret.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ben, you’re the sort of man a certain type of woman could get obsessed with. Like a doctor – you know, someone dependable, reassuring. Someone who actually wants to help you. There are women who would do anything to believe they had a relationship with a man like that. GPs know it well. It’s called dependency syndrome.’

‘She’d have to be an obsessive kind of woman.’

‘Yes.’

Cooper put his drink down. ‘Claire, I appreciate that you’re concerned for me, but it is my life, you know.’

Claire sighed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure?’

‘I think you’re missing Mum and Dad a lot more than you let on, Ben. And they do say that you’re often looking for – Well, let’s change the subject.’

He stared at her, puzzled by what she could mean. But before he could ask her, he saw Liz was making her way back through the crowds from the ladies. And then the moment had passed.

Watching the two of them in cautious conversation, Cooper tried to analyse his feelings. Sometimes he seriously doubted his ability to pick the right woman. He’d been going out with Liz Petty longer than anyone else he’d ever known. They’d even gone through a Christmas together, and he’d met her parents. Boxing Day lunch at their house in Bakewell. A subtle barrage of questions over the mince pies about his background, his family, his prospects in the police. Old-fashioned parents who desperately wanted to feel that their approval was needed.

But he hadn’t minded that. It would have been the same the other way round, if he’d been able to take Liz home to meet his father and mother. But that would have to have been years ago, before Dad was killed, before Mum became so ill. He tried to imagine Boxing Day lunch with all of his family there – Dad at the top of the table, upright and solemn like an Old Testament prophet as he carved the joint, Mum fussing about, backwards and forwards to the kitchen, until she’d crammed the huge table to capacity and plates of vegetables threatened to tip off the edge. And there would have been Matt and Kate, of course, and the girls. And maybe Claire, too – though she usually managed to avoid those huge meals and call at less demanding times, when only the sherry and chocolates were on offer.

Could he imagine introducing Liz into that gathering, subjecting her to the third degree, the iron-jawed interrogation by his father, the more discreet insinuations of his mother, the candid curiosity of Matt, and Kate’s well meaning attempts at intimacy? Would he even have wanted to?

He couldn’t really explain to himself why the question was important. But it had been preying on his mind ever since that Boxing Day visit. He thought he had probably passed the test with Mr and Mrs Petty. But would Liz have survived the same ordeal among the Coopers at Bridge End Farm?

And what was it that Claire had been about to tell him people said? Could it be that when you chose a partner in life, you were subconsciously looking for someone who was just like your mother?

Ben was used to being told that he was trying too hard to emulate his father, that he would be forever standing in the shadow of Sergeant Joe Cooper, the model copper who’d died in the course of his duty, kicked to death on the streets of Edendale. The last thing he needed was a mother figure. That definitely wasn’t what he was looking for in Liz.

It was a funny thing, though. It actually seemed to be Claire who was starting to turn into his mother.

That night, Claire had emailed copies of the photos she’d taken at the National Memorial Arboretum. While Cooper waited for them to download on to his PC, he spooned some tuna-flavoured Whiskas into a bowl for Randy, hoping the cat might be tempted by his favourite food.

He smiled to himself as he recalled the scene at Watersaw House stables, with the horse passing its opinion on Fry in a way that the owners had been a little too polite to do. He’d never seen Fry quite so angry before. Her nostrils had flared wider than the horse’s.

Alicia Forbes had been all right, though, hadn’t she? Well, for a pony girl. He wasn’t sure what she’d meant about giving the wrong impression, though. Lots of men his age weren’t married – either because they hadn’t decided to settle down yet, or because marriage just wasn’t regarded as the social obligation it once was. Perhaps it was different in the circles that the Forbes moved in. But what had owning a cat got to do with it?

Then Cooper looked at the cat, and the cat stared back at him in disgust. The wrong impression?

‘Sorry, Randy,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid she thinks you’re gay.’

He went back to his computer screen, recalling another interesting fact about the black rat that he could have mentioned to Fry. The one group of people who had never been affected by bubonic plague were the nomadic tribes of central Asia, where the bacteria had first originated. Those nomads lived close to their companions, the wild horses of the arid Asian plains. And the one thing that rat fleas really hated was the smell of horses.

When the photos from Claire had finished downloading, Cooper clicked on the first attachment and opened the jpeg file with a strange feeling of reluctance.

He’d never really been keen on photos of himself, particularly in family snapshots. Now, they reminded him too much of his mother, who had always loved showing off the family albums, pages and pages recording the growth of her children from new-born horrors through the adolescent monster stage and into adulthood. Mum would have loved a snap of her sons together, treasured it as a testament of her crowning achievement in life. But without her being there to appreciate the photo, it was just one more embarrassment to suffer.

In this case, the picture was also too recent. It reminded him too much of the visit to the police memorial on Sunday. The comments made by Matt and Claire were fresh in his mind, and they weren’t what he wanted to be thinking about right now. ‘Persecuting law-abiding people instead of going after the real criminals.’ ‘Police officers standing around doing risk assessments while someone is dying.’ Dad would never have done that. No, of course he wouldn’t.

And when Ben saw the picture full-size on the screen of his laptop, he realized something he hadn’t noticed at the time. He’d been too busy staring at the camera, wondering if he should try to hold a smile, or look serious because of the occasion. And wondering, too, whether he looked ridiculously windswept from being outside, those little bits of spiky hair sticking out like devil’s horns. When someone pointed a camera at you, your attention was automatically focused on yourself and the lens, it was such a peculiar moment of intimacy. You forgot completely about what might be around and behind you. Even the photographer did that. It was an error that had caught a lot of people out.

But in this case, what he hadn’t noticed was that he and Matt, gazing solemnly out of the screen, were standing right in front of the giant policeman in the main building of the arboretum. The bobby loomed over them, vast and ominous, blocking out the light from the windows like a monstrous ghost.

He’d also been much too tall for the lens of Claire’s digital camera. The head and helmet of the giant policeman were neatly sliced off.

Philip Worsley had finally admitted to himself that he was lost. The fog had come down so quickly on Longstone Moor that it had confused him totally.

When he’d set off to walk from Stoney Middleton, the weather had been clear, and he’d taken advantage of a spell without rain for his late afternoon walk. He couldn’t believe that it was so different up here – so different that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. This didn’t happen back home in Essex.

At one point, Philip thought he’d reached the path that led downwards to the crossroads. There was supposed to be a farmhouse not far from the junction, though he couldn’t tell which direction it lay in. He’d been here before, years ago, and it was a pity that his memory wasn’t clearer. He’d have to hope for a distant light visible when he got nearer.

He had a map in his rucksack, of course, but none of the landmarks seemed to fit. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. A slope where it should be flat, water where there should be land. It was as if he’d stepped out of the real world into some parallel universe.

He shivered in the damp fog. And for the first time, Philip started to feel concerned. Apart from his map, he had a waterproof, a bottle of water, a spare pair of socks in case he got his feet wet. But nothing to eat, except a roll of his favourite sweets, the perfumed Parma Violets that he’d remembered from his school days. There might be some sugar in them, but they wouldn’t provide him with extra energy for long.

Philip kept walking, but without recognizing any signs or gateways. Twenty minutes later, when his foot slipped into a hole and his ankle doubled up underneath him, he knew he wasn’t on the path at all. For the last few hundred yards, the slope of the land had been tending upwards, not down. The ache in his calf muscles was enough to tell him that fact, but he’d been trying not to notice it.

As he nursed his painful ankle and wiped a bloodied scratch on his hand, he knew that he was now in difficulties. He had no idea what direction he’d been walking in, or whether he’d even set off from the place he thought he had twenty minutes ago. His ankle wasn’t actually sprained, and he could still walk on it, if he was careful. But the fog was as thick as ever, and there were no lights visible, no sound of traffic from any direction. His senses detected nothing around him except muffled rustlings and coughs in the heather, sounds that he took for the presence of sheep.