Dancing With the Virgins

by Stephen Booth

  In the end, Wednesday morning looked set to be overcast. Diane Fry had come through the Forestry Commission plantations and down past Flash Dam. She was already slightly late, but she sat in her car at the top of Sydnope Hill for a while and looked down on Matlock. She was watching the clouds come closer. They were rolling in from the east, their shadows chasing across the slopes of the hills and into the town.

  Fry had worked out where the roof of Derwent Court was, deep among the other roofs. At the moment, its tiles were glittering as the clear November sun fell on the remains of an overnight frost. She was due at Maggie’s at nine. But by the time the clouds had closed in enough for her satisfaction, it was nearly five past. Fry started the car. Maggie would be annoyed that she was late, but that was tough. She didn’t want any distractions today. It was difficult enough as it was.

  From here, she could see how damaged the landscape was to the east. Huge sections had been gouged and blasted from the side of Masson Hill, on the opposite side of the town. Bare terraces of exposed rock had been left by the quarrying, flat and unnatural in the slope of the hill. She checked the sky again for clouds. It was safe. There would be no sun on Maggie’s window now.

  ‘So you did come back,’ said Maggie a few minutes later. ‘I imagined I might have escaped your attentions. I thought you might have forgotten me.’

  ‘Never, Maggie.’

  ‘Oh? You remember me for my sparkling personality, do you? My intellect? My savage wit?’

  Fry noticed that Maggie had rearranged the lamps in the room. The lighting was softer, less uncompromising, perhaps designed to put her visitor at ease and make her more welcome. A new chair had been placed in front of the desk – this one was upholstered in green satin on the seat and back, and when Fry sat in it she found it remarkably comfortable.

  The cafetiere stood ready on the desk with cream and sugar in a ceramic jug and bowl. By such signs, Fry knew she was making progress. But it was a fragile intimacy; it could be broken in a second, by the ringing of a phone or the scrape of a chair leg.

  ‘I thought we were getting along fine before,’ she said.

  ‘Did you?’ Maggie fiddled with the lamp, tilting the shade so that the shadows played backwards and forwards across her face. Fry found the effect disconcerting, as Maggie’s good eye came first into the light, startling and white, then vanished again into the shadows of her face.

  With the Weston enquiry going nowhere, it seemed to Diane Fry that her interviews with Maggie Crew were a kind of Eastern Front, the one place where the breakthrough might come, if there was going to be one. Maggie was their only real witness. She could identify her assailant. However she did it, Fry would have to drag those memories out kicking and screaming. So she sat here alone with this woman, struggling to get through to her, digging for her memories like a miner hitting rock.

  ‘Have you thought about what we said last time?’ asked Fry.

  But Maggie responded with another question.

  ‘Do you know how many visitors I get?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what it’s like sitting here wondering whether anybody will come?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Maggie slammed back the arm of the lamp as far as it would go, throwing the full glare of the bulb into Fry’s face.

  ‘That’s the one thing I told you I wouldn’t tolerate. Do not feel sorry for me. Understand?’

  Fry had to bite back the natural response, reminding herself that this was a woman who was in a psychologically delicate balance. She needed careful handling, not an all-out row. Not the accusation of self-pity and hypocrisy that had sprung to her lips.

  ‘Let’s start again, shall we?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘What I’d really like to do,’ said Fry, ‘is take you back to when it happened, to jog your memory. I want you to try again, Maggie.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘For Jenny Weston’s sake. And to help us stop him from killing any more. Maggie – you can’t refuse.’

  Maggie blinked, and hesitated. ‘Your colleagues always used a different approach. They tried to be sympathetic, to put me at my ease – all that sort of thing. I hated it.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. I’ve got a job to do. I need you to help me.’

  Maggie stared at her. ‘Coffee?’ she said, and reached for the cafetiere.

  Fry nodded. Her clenched fingers began to relax. She looked around the room while Maggie poured. The place really wasn’t welcoming at all, even with a comfortable chair and the smell of fresh coffee. What would bring Maggie’s memories out into the light again? When you had suffered that sort of trauma, you needed some kind of closure. It was possible that her memories wouldn’t be fully released until they had her attacker behind bars.

  On the other hand, there might be something deeper inside that was keeping Maggie’s mind shut down. She had to find a trigger that would release those memories.

  Fry had a twin-deck tape recorder set up. She had fully expected Maggie to refuse to be taped, but she had agreed readily; in fact, she had seemed almost relieved. Perhaps the tape machine could be a compromise, an impersonal middle ground. She probably thought a tape couldn’t bring back memories, only capture the ones you already had. But Fry wasn’t sure about that. Today, she meant to take Maggie further.

  For a few minutes, they sat comfortably over their coffee. They even made a bit of small talk about the weather and Maggie’s neighbours, just as if Fry were a friend paying a social call. Who knew – there might even be chocolate biscuits with the coffee.

  ‘I feel as though I’m getting unfit sitting here all day,’ said Maggie. ‘Before I know it, I’ll be putting weight on.’

  No chocolate biscuits, then. Fry unwrapped two fresh tapes and inserted them in the machine.

  ‘You don’t look as though you have any trouble with your weight, Diane,’ said Maggie.

  ‘I don’t have time to put weight on.’ It was the answer she always gave when people asked her. She tested the tape machine, and both tapes began to turn. ‘Ready?’

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you first.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve decided to go back to work,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Is that wise?’ said Fry, immediately thinking of the dangers to Maggie rather than of the psychological advantages of getting her back into the outside world.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of this apartment some time.’

  ‘You must take precautions for your own safety. We’ll send someone to your office to check out the security arrangements.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘If you’re going back to work, I’ll have to make an appointment, I suppose. Solicitors’ time is expensive, isn’t it?’

  Maggie smiled at the comment. Fry liked to see her smile. It almost gave her an appearance of normality. But there was still a pain haunting her eyes, and still a strange physical vulnerability in the glimpse of pink gum.

  ‘I’ll pencil you in for Friday,’ said Maggie. ‘Two o’clock, at our offices in Mill Street.’

  Fry made a show of getting out her diary and writing it down. ‘Fine. At least it will take your mind off things. Do you find your work interesting?’

  ‘Interesting?’ Maggie considered the word. ‘I suppose some people might think so. But in fact it’s ninety per cent drudgery. Wading through mountains of paperwork until your eyes are sore, filling in reports and applications. Sitting in endless meetings.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  ‘And there are the most objectionable of people to deal with. Their concerns are unbelievable. It’s all jealousy and selfishness and greed. Husbands and wives, children and parents, colleagues and business partners – all desperate to know about what someone else is up to. The times they have asked me to employ enquiry agents to look into their sordid little affairs. And not just the clients, either. My partners are just as bad.’

  ‘You don’t get on w
ith your partners?’

  ‘We work together satisfactorily. But they’re all the same – complacent, self-centred and obsessed. They’re so single-minded that their lives are empty shells. They’ll discover it one day, but it will be too late.’

  Fry nodded. The description Maggie had just given of her partners echoed her own file. Maggie Crew’s history was one of professional achievements, and little else. Maggie talked of empty lives. But it only took a glance round the room to see whose life was the emptiest of all.

  Fry watched the way Maggie drank her coffee without turning fully to the desk, then spun her chair back towards the window.

  ‘Ready now?’

  Maggie nodded and closed her eyes.

  ‘Tell me what happened that day, Maggie.’

  Maggie didn’t need to ask what day she meant. ‘I’ve been over it so many times before. I can’t remember.’

  ‘What would you normally have done that day? It was a Sunday, wasn’t it?’

  ‘All right, then. On a Sunday, I would have got up later than usual, had a leisurely breakfast. Toast and marmalade and two cups of coffee, probably. I need coffee to get myself ready for the day. I would have switched on the TV to get the morning news. Maybe I looked out of the window and I saw what a nice day it was.’

  Fry watched Maggie gradually becoming less tense. She was starting to relax as she focused on the world outside herself. The best way was to ask few questions. Encourage the interviewee to close their eyes and picture the scene, down to even the tiniest details; let them recall smells, noises, their feelings at the time. Officers were no longer trained to take control of an interview. Too many courts had accepted the contention of defendants and lawyers that the police had suggested the answers themselves.

  Eventually, this process might be conducted by machine entirely. Two tape decks to record the answers, and a third to repeat the necessary phrases: ‘Now, just close your eyes …’

  ‘Is that what made you decide to go to Ringham Moor? That it was a nice day?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Maggie.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Ringham Moor is not too far away. I’ve walked there lots of times. I used to go there before I became a partner. Afterwards, there never seemed to be time.’

  ‘All right. Move forward a bit. To when you reached Ringham –’

  Maggie was silent. Fry tried to detect from the expression on just one side of her face whether she was remembering any more. But it was impossible to tell. Finally, Maggie’s eyes came fully open, and her body tensed again.

  ‘Does it tell you in my file that I’m unable to form relationships?’

  Fry could only nod. The moment was lost. No point in trying to recreate it now.

  ‘Yes, it would. But I was like that before, you know,’ said Maggie. ‘Too busy for relationships. And it’s too late now.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Please don’t try to patronize me on the subject. I’m learning to be a realist. People won’t accept me now. But people have never really accepted me in my entire life.’

  Fry frowned. If there was anything in the file to support this perception, she had missed it. Maggie Crew had received a perfectly normal education and upbringing. Her father had been a regional manager for British Rail, and the family had lived in Wingerworth, near Chesterfield. Mrs Crew had died some years ago of cancer, and a sister, Catherine, had married and lived in Ireland. Maggie’s father was still alive, though, and living not so far away.

  The two girls, Fry noted, had attended a well-known Catholic girls school in Chesterfield, and both had gone on to university. Maggie had studied for her Law degree in Nottingham. She had been successful in her career, yet had never married or had children.

  ‘Do you see much of your father?’ asked Fry.

  ‘He’s rather elderly now,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And … well, we were never a very close family, really.’

  ‘Does the same apply to your sister?’

  ‘Cath? She has her own family. A husband and four children. Why would she bother about me? She’s as content as an old cat in her little town in Ireland.’

  ‘And did you never want to do the same, Maggie?’

  But Maggie smiled. Fry was beginning to recognize that smile as one that signalled a subject she didn’t want to discuss.

  ‘What about you, Diane?’ said Maggie. ‘Married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. It would interfere with the career, perhaps? No crèche at the police station? No husband at home, no mother-in-law to look after them during the day? It’s so difficult for some women, I know. We see them in the legal profession, carrying their babies invisibly on their backs in court, disposable nappies spilling out of their briefcases, baby sick on their clothes, yawning from lack of sleep on the night before an important case. You can’t help but feel sorry for them.’

  ‘It happens in the police, too.’

  ‘No broody feelings for you either, Diane? No ticking biological clock?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘You’re lucky, then. I find the idea pretty horrific, to be perfectly honest. Awful, puking things, aren’t they? I can understand women who have abortions. It’s a horrible business, but there must be times when it seems vastly preferable to the alternative.’

  Fry was conscious of Maggie’s gentle probing. It was well done, the sign of a skilful interviewer. The fact that Fry had allowed herself to be interviewed had encouraged Maggie, of course. At this point, she either went along with the game and told Maggie what she wanted to know, or she closed it down and risked losing the fragile intimacy she had built up.

  ‘I had an abortion once,’ she said.

  Maggie’s voice dropped a shade, sliding a sympathetic note into her next words.

  ‘They tell me you always wonder what the baby would have been like, what sex it was. You think about what name you would have given it, if it had been allowed to live. Even an abortion doesn’t mean a clean ending, it seems to me.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  A small silence developed between them. Fry held on to it, valuing the suggestion of understanding. At the same time, she was calculating how she could use it. The time was almost right.

  ‘But there’s more, isn’t there?’ said Maggie quietly. ‘Something else that you can’t forget.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘There is.’ She told herself it was for the best. She could work it out of her system later.

  Maggie seemed to decide not to push for details.

  ‘Sometimes there are things you need to remember, no matter how much it hurts,’ she said.

  ‘A necessary pain?’

  ‘Maybe. But that necessary pain … does it always have to be a pain that you inflict on yourself? Because that sort of pain hurts all the more, don’t you find?’

  Fry put her finger on the ‘play’ and ‘record’ buttons, and looked at Maggie.

  ‘Shall we try again?’

  Maggie closed her eyes. The tapes whirred quietly.

  ‘Think about when you reached Ringham …’

  Maggie breathed quietly. ‘I remember the leaves under my feet,’ she said. ‘There were deep piles of them. They crunched when I trod in them. Thousands of dead leaves. I kicked some of them up in the air, like I used to do when I was child. A great heap of them, all brown and gold.’

  Fry thought she had stopped there. She waited for a moment, listening to the click of the tape decks. She had just opened her mouth to nudge Maggie with a question, when she began again.

  ‘The wind blew the leaves about, and I grabbed at them, trying to catch them in my hands. Some of them landed on me; they were on my arms and in my face, touching my skin. They felt cold and clammy, not what I expected at all. They smelled of damp and rottenness. I tried to brush them off my face. There were leaves in my hair as well, sticking there like bats. The
n I didn’t think it was funny any more. I brushed at the leaves harder. I had my head down, to get them off.’

  The sound of Maggie’s voice had changed. It had a childish intonation that Fry had not heard before. It was slightly shocking coming from the mouth of this woman. It was as if she were recalling a childhood incident, not a trauma from a few weeks ago.

  This time the pause was even longer. Fry squeezed her fingers together to stop herself breaking the silence and interrupting. She looked at the tapes to make sure they were both still running. But the silence went on too long.

  ‘Is there anyone else around?’ asked Fry as gently as she could, though her urge was to push Maggie harder as they reached a critical stage.

  ‘Anyone else? No, she’s not there.’

  Fry shook her head, thinking she had misheard. ‘Who?’

  Now Maggie looked confused too, as if two different memories were mingling together.

  ‘I had my head down, looking at the ground,’ she repeated. ‘I was looking at the ground, where the leaves were. That’s why I didn’t see him.’

  Maggie’s voice had become bleak. Her pitch had risen slightly as people’s voices did when they were close to that crack in the facade that let through the tears.

  ‘If I hadn’t kicked at the leaves, I would have heard him coming. I could have got away.’

  ‘When did you first become aware of another person, Maggie?’

  ‘He was already close then.’

  ‘How did you know? Did you hear him?’

  ‘The leaves were rustling. They were too loud. I wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘All right. You didn’t hear him. Did you smell him, Maggie?’

  ‘Smell him?’ Maggie frowned. Her nostrils flared as if she was drawing in remembered odours.

  Fry knew that smells were powerful aids to memory. If Maggie could recall a single whiff of something – a distinctive deodorant, body odour, cigarette smoke – it would be something to add to the picture.

  ‘I can’t smell him,’ said Maggie. ‘Only the leaves.’

  ‘Can you hear him now?’ asked Fry, switching to the present tense that Maggie herself had started using.

  Maggie’s eyes were distant. Was she listening? Fry was sure that Maggie could hear something. Some sound was replaying in her mind, but Fry was powerless to know what it was until she felt able to share it.