Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

Mark sat on the crate for a while and thought about the woman on the moor; and then he thought about Owen Fox. He had started to get used to relying on Owen for an element of stability in his life. The fear that the stability might be taken from him once again made Mark swear abruptly, so that the cats were startled and scuttled away from their bowls. The rabbits lifted their ears and gazed at him with their strange pink eyes. Like Mark, they were suddenly terrified of the unknown things that might lie beyond their cages in the outside world.

Todd Weenink looked up towards the road at the sound of a car approaching the cycle hire centre. Ben Cooper saw his partner stiffen, and heard him start to curse, low but vehemently. Spurts of Weenink’s breath were hitting the air, swirling ominously. Cooper could almost see the curses forming into dark, solid lumps in the mist.

‘Don’t look now, Ben, but the weather just got a few degrees colder round here,’ said Weenink.

The car that splashed through the puddles and pulled up in front of the hire centre was a black Peugeot. When it stopped, the headlights were turned down to sidelights, but its doors remained closed and no one got out. It sat there with traces of steam rising from its bonnet and mingling with the mist. And with each tick of its cooling engine, Cooper felt his heart chill a little more.

It was only an hour or so after the morning news that the first visitors started to arrive on Ringham Moor. They parked up on all the roadside verges, filling the lay-bys and blocking the field gates. Within a few minutes, the first of them began to wander up the tracks that led on to the moor. They came in ones and twos mostly, but some had brought their children for a day out.

‘Look at them,’ said the uniformed sergeant in charge of containing the crime scene. ‘Can’t you hear the conversations over the cornflakes? “Nothing much on the telly today — why don’t we all go and see where the lady got herself murdered?”’

These people had come wrapped up well, in their sweaters and anoraks and boots and hats. They brought their cameras, too, and their binoculars. They took photos of any policemen they saw, and of the crime scene tape rattling in the wind; they were excited by the sight of the small tent that the SOCOs had erected in the middle of the Nine Virgins, over the spot where Jenny Weston had lain.

Officers had been posted to block the main paths. But they were too easily visible across the moor, and soon they found that people were simply cutting across the vast expanses of heather to avoid them. They shouted themselves hoarse and got the bottoms of their trouser legs soaking wet trying to intercept the stragglers. The sergeant called in for reinforcements, but found there were no more officers available. As always, the division was short of resources.

‘“Just do the best you can,”’ he reported. ‘That’s what they always say. “Just do the best you can.”’

One young PC found himself being followed around by two old ladies who bombarded him with questions. They pulled at his sleeve and patted his arm and demanded to know whether there was a lot of blood, and how big the murderer’s knife had been, and whether the body was still inside the tent. The constable appealed to his sergeant to help him. But the sergeant was busy threatening to arrest a small, fat man in a fluorescent green bubble jacket who refused to move as he stared at the tent with feverish eyes and asked one question over and over again: ‘She was naked, wasn’t she? It said on the news she was naked.’

Finally, the officers were forced to retreat, reducing the size of the area they were trying to protect. They clustered round the clearing, abandoning the heather and birches to the intruders, like a garrison under siege.

‘Haven’t they got anything else to do?’ complained the PC to the sergeant for the tenth time. ‘Can’t they go and pester the ducks in Bakewell or something?’

‘There’ll be more of them yet, Wragg. It’s still early,’ said the sergeant, watching the green jacket constantly circling the clearing like a bird of prey.

‘Early for what?’

‘Early for the real loonies.’

‘What do you call this lot, then?’

The sergeant shrugged as PC Wragg shook off the grasping fingers of the old ladies. ‘These are just your normal, everyday members of the public. Wait till the pubs open. Then you’ll see a real circus.’

‘Christ, why don’t they leave us alone?’

‘It’s a bit of excitement for them, you see. Some of them probably think it’s a film set. They think we’re filming an episode of Peak Practice or something. In fact, I reckon those old dears have mistaken you for what’s his name, the heart-throb doctor.’

‘Let’s hope the forensics lot are finished soon over at the quarry.’

‘Shush. Don’t let on. The gongoozlers’ll be over that way too, if they hear you.’

‘I think it’s too late, Sarge.’

The old ladies had spotted a police Range Rover and the Scientific Support Unit’s Maverick parking on the roadway above the abandoned quarry. The pair set off at a brisk pace, adjusting their hats and twirling their walking sticks. A family with three children and a Jack Russell terrier had settled down on the grass under the birch trees and had begun to unpack sandwiches and flasks. One of the children got out a kite and unfurled the line. Another threw a stick for the dog to chase.

The sergeant looked around for the little man in the green jacket, and saw him crouched in the heather, his hands compulsively pulling up clumps of whinberry. He looked like a wild dog, eager and alert, sniffing the air for carrion.

‘I’m sure I know that one,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

‘He looks as though he shouldn’t be out on his own,’ said PC Wragg. ‘I reckon there ought to be at least two male nurses with him, carrying a strait jacket and a bucket of tranquillizers.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ve a feeling he’s a respectable member of society. A teacher or a lawyer, something like that. I can’t quite place him, but it’ll come.’

Wragg held up his hand like a traffic policeman as he saw more walkers approaching. ‘I’m sorry, ladies. This is a crime scene. I’ll have to ask you to walk another way, please.’

‘Oh, but we always come this way.’

There were four women, all in early middle age, with their hair tied back and their faces flushed and healthy. They were in bright cagoules and striped leggings, like a gaggle of multi-coloured sheep. They had probably left their husbands at home washing their cars or playing golf.

‘Not today, I’m afraid, ladies,’ said Wragg firmly. ‘Please take another route.’

‘He’s very polite,’ said one woman.

‘Have you the right to stop us walking along here?’ asked another in a different tone. ‘It’s a public right of way, after all.’

‘That’s right — it’s marked on the Ordnance Survey map.’ The third one produced the map as evidence and pointed at it triumphantly.

‘All the same. .’ said Wragg.

The women began to turn away. But the second one paused and glowered at Wragg.

‘You’d be better off making it safe for people to go about their business rather than stopping us using public rights of way. Get the man who’s attacking women, that’s the best thing you can do.’

PC Wragg watched them go. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he said to their retreating backs.

‘You’ll have to get used to that,’ said his sergeant. ‘As far as the public are concerned, it’s all your fault.’

The man in the green bubble jacket was still manoeuvring for a closer approach, watching the officers until they were distracted by something else, then creeping a few inches nearer.