But it was the wrong thing to say. Daniel knocked her hand from his arm. ‘How can I not condemn you? You and my father are responsible for what happened to Laura. You’re responsible for what she became.’
He paused in the doorway of Laura’s room, his face suffused with rage and contempt as he looked back at Charlotte. ‘And
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you, Mum, you couldn’t even see what it was that she’d
turned into.’
The three old men were crammed into the front of Wilford’s white pick-up as it wound its way down from Eyam Moor towards the Hope Valley. They had avoided the main routes, leaving them to the tourists. But when they reached the A625 they would meet the evening traffic coming back from Castleton.
They huddled among empty feed sacks and neglected tools. The floor of the cab was littered with crumpled newspapers, an old bone, a plastic bucket and a small sack containing a dead
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rabbit. Sam was squeezed uncomfortably between the other two, shifting his bony knees to find room for his stick under the dashboard and wincing at every bump they hit. Wilford was driving, his cap pulled low on his head to stop his hair blowing about in the breeze from the open window. He drove with sudden twists of the steering wheel and sharp stabs on the brake as they approached each bend. Harry, on the outside, looked as though he was sitting in a limousine. His hands were spread on his knees, and his head moved slowly from side to side as he studied the passing scenery.
In the back of the pick-up, riding in the open on a bed of hessian sacks, was the brown and white goat. It was tethered securely to the backboard of the cab with a short length of chain so that it could not reach the sides. Every now and then it turned its head and bellowed at a startled cyclist.
The snaking twists of the road slowed a lumbering quarry lorry ahead of the pick-up. All around them were the familiar tucks and folds of the hills and the strange, unpredictable rolls of the landscape that concealed the history of the ancient lead mining industry. There were overgrown hollows and mounds running across one field, indicating the line of a rake vein. Here and there stood an isolated shaft, walled off for safety. Many years ago, two bodies had been pulled out of one of these shafts in a notorious murder case.
‘Even with all their scientific tests,’ said Harry, ‘the coppers still go round asking a lot of questions.’
“Course they do,’ said Wilford.
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‘But it’s like in the song,’ said Sam.
‘What’s dial?’
Sam begin to sing quietly in a cracked, off-key voice. The tune was just recognisable as one familiar to them all — ‘OF Man River’ from the musical Showboat. After a moment, the other two joined in with the song, timeless and punctuating their singing with laughter.
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‘Don’t say nothing,’ said Sam firmly, when they had finished.
Just outside Bamford, Wilford drove the pick-up into an untidy farmyard and sounded his horn. Two half-bred Alsatians ran out of a kennel until they hit the end of their chains and barked and snarled at the wheels of the vehicle. A man of about forty with wild hair and a vast bushy beard came out of the house and wandered towards them.
Wilford greeted him as ‘Scrubby’.
‘You brought the young nanny then?’ he said.
The goat screamed hysterically from the back of the pickup. The noise was so loud in the yard that the dogs stopped barking, stunned into silence.
‘Aye, happen that’ll be her now,’ said Wilford.
‘Bugger’s been giving directions all the way here,’ said Harry. ‘It’s worse than having the wife in the car.’
‘You’ve not brought any dogs, have you?’ said Scrubby. ‘Only it upsets them two over there.’
‘Not in here,’ said Wilford.
The three old men climbed carefully out of the cab, creaking as they straightened their legs. Harry put his arm round Sam and helped him down the step until he could support himself with his stick.
‘Bloody hell, what’s that?’ asked Sam as a ripe, musky stench slithered across the yard and grabbed the back of his nostrils. ‘It smells like someone’s been sick and set fire to it.’
‘Ah, that’s the billy,’ said Scrubby. ‘He’s in breeding condition a bit early this year. I reckon the young ‘un can smell him all right.’
A rapid smacking sound was coming from the back of the pick-up. The goat was wagging her tail so fast it was beating a
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tune on the metal sides. She was straining at her tether until the
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collar bit into her neck deep enough to choke her. She yelled again when she saw Wilford.
‘Are you going to mate her now? Can we watch?’ asked Sam.
“Course you can. I don’t even charge for tickets.’
The goat tugged them over to a low stone building, not much bigger than a pig sty, with an enclosed vard on two sides. The building seemed to be the source of the smell. The three old men bent to peer through a small opening into the gloom of the shed. They could make out something large and hairy moving restlessly inside, pawing at the gate with its hooves and rubbing its head on the walls.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Sam. ‘He’s got a pair of bollocks on him as big as your prize turnips, Wilford.’
The goat looked suddenly as though she might change her mind and go home.
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‘Come on, Jenny,’ said Wilford gently.
Together, they pushed the goat into the yard and Scrubby drew back a bolt on the door. They let out a concerted breath as the billy emerged steaming and snorting. He was twice the
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size of the young goat, with a powerful chest and a dense, matted coat. He had thick, twisted slabs of horn curling on to the back of his head like gnarled tree roots, and along his spine the hair was going thin, revealing grey patches of flaky skin, tough and wrinkled like the hide of an elephant. The two goats began to circle together, sniffing excitedly at each other’s rear ends. The billy’s top lip curled back to expose his bare upper gum in a grotesque, leering grin as he savoured the scent of sexual promise.
Scrubby was looking curiously at Harry, scratching at his beard and tugging at an old bit of baling twine lashed round the gate of the enclosure.
The heard you’re the bloke who found that lass that was murdered over your way.’
‘Aye, news travels well round here.’
‘It’s a bit of a funny do that, isn’t it?’
‘Bloody hilarious,’ said Harry.
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‘I saw her picture in the paper. Bashing her head in is about the last thing most young blokes would wanl to do with her. ‘Oh aye?’
‘Don’t you think so?’
‘She was only fifteen,’ said Wilford, without looking round. Scrubbv seemed to recocmize something in the tone of the
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reply.
‘I suppose so,’ he said.
In the enclosure, the billy was trying repeatedly to manoeuvre himself into a position to mount Jenny from behind, but the goatling was getting frisky. She was lighter on her feet than the billy, and every time he approached her she skipped away, turning to face him, then trotting off again, her tail wagging provocatively. The billy was growling from the back of his throat with his mouth hanging open, producing a deep moan like a wild animal in pain. He kicked at Jenny with his front hooves, smearing
dirty marks on her flanks. As he got more frustrated, he began to
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gobble excitedly. His tongue flopped out of his mouth and saliva flew. The feet of the two goats were churning up the surface of
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the enclosure, and dust coated the white hair on their legs. In
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avoiding the billy, Jenny tripped, stumbled to her knees, got up and skipped away again.
‘It doesn’t look like she’s cooperating,’ said Scrubby.
Sam nodded. ‘Playing hard to get.’
‘She’s only a young ‘un,’ said Wilford. ‘She doesn’t know what’s happening.’
‘She has to stand still, though.’
Scrubby reluctantly climbed over the fence into the enclosure. The billy growled at him, then returned his attentions to the nanny.
Next time the young goat came within reach, Scrubby grabbed her by the neck and pulled her towards him. He twisted her collar until he had her in a stranglehold, with her face turned up towards him and her eyes rolling in alarm. She was panting by now, her nostrils pink and flaring and her sides heaving.
‘You have to do this sometimes with the young ‘uns,’ said Scrubby. ‘They get the hang of it after the first time. The old chap there knows what he’s about, though.’
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The billy glared at him once, then took a few short steps and launched himself on to the young goat, digging his hooves hard into her sides and throwing the weight of his hairv bodv on to her back. Scrubby hung on grimly, tightening the nanny’s collar so that she couldn’t escape. She began to moan and whimper, and her breath came in short gasps. The billv balanced himself on her bony pelvis and thrust into her. The young goat’s back legs buckled, and she began to collapse under his weight. Srrubbv hauled her forcibly upwards to keep her oil the ground. The billy thrust three more times in rapid succession, then tossed back his head and gradually slid off. It was over.
Scrubby eased his grip on the goatling’s collar, and she began to cough spasmodically. Her legs were trembling and a string of white semen dripped from the bare patch of skin on the underside of her tail.
There was silence for a moment, except for the painful coughing of the goat.
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‘She didn’t enjoy that much,’ remarked Wilford in a strange voice.
‘She’s just immature, that’s all.’
‘Is that it, then?’
Jenny crouched and a stream of pale yellow urine hit the dirt. The billy stepped forward to sniff at the stream, then began to lap at it eagerly with his long tongue. The old men screwed up their faces and shuffled uneasilv.
‘I’ll just hang on to her for a bit, while he gets his breath,’ said Scrubby. ‘Then he can have another go.’
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The three men were quiet in the pick-up on the journey back to Moorhay. The visit to Bamford seemed to have subdued them.
‘Reckon she’ll be all right?’ said Wilford, as they climbed the hill out of the Hope Valley.
‘He looked as though he knows his animals,’ said Sam.
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‘It seems hard on them, when thev’re so young. She was a
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bit innocent.’
‘Innocent?’ said Harry. ‘She was screaming for it all the way there, wasn’t she?’
The others nodded uncomfortably, and Sam gave a painful
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cough. He looked exhausted by the drive, and had lost his willingness to make a joke. Wilford stared grimly through the windscreen until Harry spoke again as they breasted the rise that looked down on to their own valley.
‘I think/ said Harry, ‘I might tell them a bit of what I know, after all.’
Sam and Wilford nodded again. After that, nobody spoke all the way home. And nobodv sang.
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14
Den Cooper and Diane Fry emerged from their showers clamp and tingling, and drank a fruit juice in the rugby club bar before heading back to Edendale, Cooper had seen a glimpse of Frv’s flat in Grosvenor Road, and he thought he knew why she had been so easy to persuade with an excuse not to go home. But she could not know his own reason, and so far she had shown no curiosity. She did, however, want to talk about work, to go
J‘‘O
over the day’s results.
‘God, that Moorhay place,’ she said. ‘Is everyone round here as stroppy and awkward as that? The Dickinson man was the worst. Unhelpful or what?’
‘He’s an old man,’ said Cooper. ‘An old man who’d had a shock. How do you expect him to be? Most people around here are friendly and helpful, anyway.’
‘That I remain to be convinced of.’
Her view of Harry Dickinson struck Cooper as superficial. His own feelings had been quite different. He thought of the moment when he had found the body of Laura Vernon, of Harry standing like a black mark against the sun-drenched hillside. Stroppy and unhelpful? Maybe. Deeply disturbed and afraid, definitely.
‘Anyway,’ said Fry, ‘hold on a minute. That wasn’t what you said at the briefing this afternoon. You wanted Dickinson to be pressed harder.’
That’s different.’
‘Yeah? An old man who’d had a shock. So what do you want to press him harder for? That sounds suspiciously like gratuitous harassment to me, pal. Where’s the caring, sharing Ben Cooper here? Come off it, you think he was unhelpful too, don’t you?’
‘I think he knows something he’s not saying,’ admitted Cooper.
‘And that’s not the same thing?’
‘Maybe Mr Tailby and Mr Hitchens didn’t ask the right
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questions,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it’s not to do with Laura Vernon at all. I don’t know.’
‘Well, you could always ask your girlfriend, I suppose,’ said Fry.
‘Who?’
‘You know — the granddaughter, Helen Milner. Got the hots
OO
for you, hasn’t she? She was following you around Moorhay like a lost dog.’
‘Rubbish.’
Fry shrugged. ‘I stand by the evidence, your honour.’
Cooper refused to rise to the bait.
‘What did you make of the other two, then —Harry Dickinson’s friends?’
‘My God, don’t remind me. That place was like something medieval. When I left West Midlands, they kept telling me that the countryside was primitive. Now I know it’s true. That dead hen … How Wilford Cutts’s wife can put up with that, I don’t know. No doubt she would have had to cook it in a stew tonight.’
‘And chop off its head and legs and pluck it, and take out its innards,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s women’s work. So they say.’
‘Not this woman. I’d make him stuff his dead hen where it hurts most.’
Cooper sniffed his orange juice suspiciously, worried by the distinctly metallic tang.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think this enquiry will get any further until Lee Sherratt is traced.’
‘He’s a fair bet.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. We’re just accepting Graham Vernon’s word as gospel and hoping the evidence will turn up somehow. It’s lazy thinking.’
‘OK then, Sherlock. You obviously know better than Mr Tailby and Mr Hitchens put together. What’s your theory, then?’
‘You don’t want to hear about my gut feelings, I suppose.’
‘You’re right, I don’t. I asked for a theory. Something that relies on a few facts.’
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‘I suppose von play it by the b’)ok always. Do you iiewr follow a hunch, use your instincts?’ ‘By the book,’ said fry. ‘So you get voursclf into a difficult situation. The first thing you
JOjO .’
do is call in, then sit back and wait for the back-up to arrive?’ ‘Well, usually,’ said Fry. ‘That is the sensible course.’ ‘The safest for you, certainly. Would you never break the
rule?”
She thought about it. ‘OK, there are times when you might
O‘^fa
have to take the initiative.’
‘Eureka.’
‘I’ll let you know when that happens. All right?’
‘Sure. Send me a fax.’
A couple of rugby players walked past on their way out from the bar, smelling strongly of beer. They slapped Ben Cooper on the shoulder and ruffled his hair as they made jokes about making
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sure his balls were warmed up. They smirked across the table
at Fry without speaking to her.
Fry was rapidly losing interest in Ben Cooper. Other police officers’ private lives were a serious turn-off, she found. Just occasionally, there was someone she felt she needed to know more about. But there was no way Ben Cooper could be one of them.
‘What do you know about DI Armstrong?’ she asked him, when the rugby players had gone.
‘Not much. I worked with her briefly when she was a DS, but B Division poached her from us. She seemed to get promoted pretty quickly. I can’t say she’s dazzled anybody with her results since she was moved up to DI.’
The suppose you’re going to tell me she got the job because she’s a woman.’
‘No, but … Well.’
‘And maybe she did. So what? Makes a change, doesn’t it?’
JO ‘
‘Not to me, it doesn’t.’
Fry drained her glass and slapped it on the table. ‘I think it’s about time we left. There’s just no atmosphere in here.’
By the time they left the club, it was dark. Cooper pressed his key fob and the Toyota flashed its lights for him in the car
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park. The skeletal shapes of the white rugby posts were visible standing guard over the black, deserted pitches.
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‘Do you actually play rugby, then?’ asked Fry as they got into the car.
‘No, I could never see the attraction in it,’ he said.
‘Oh? I thought team sports were a boys’ thing.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Especially in the force. They like team bonding and all that, don’t they?’
Cooper shrugged. ‘I’ve managed to keep out of it so far. I prefer the individual sports. But I am in the Derbyshire Police Male Voice Choir.’
‘You are kidding.’
O
‘No. it’s good fun. We do a few concerts — for the old folks
‘o
mostly, that kind of thing, especially around Christmas time. The old dears love it. It’s good PR.’
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