Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘So help me, I’m going to thump him if he gets in reach,’ said PC Wragg. ‘Just the sight of him makes my skin crawl.’

Of course, Ben Cooper realized that the black Peugeot was familiar. It was just that he hadn’t expected to see it here. Maybe it was destined to follow him around for ever, like a kind of ghostly hearse, with a phantom undertaker at the wheel.

‘It’s Diane Fry,’ he said.

Todd Weenink cursed some more. ‘Oh great. First the Wicked Witch of West Street, DI Armstrong. Now the Frozen Bitch from the Black Country. God, we could do without this. Stand by for a laugh a minute.’

‘I thought she was already gone,’ said Cooper.

‘Fry? I wish.’

They watched Fry get out of the Peugeot and look around the car park. To Cooper, she still seemed thin, despite a heavy woollen jacket with a hood against the cold. She had never looked healthy — too much in need of a few good meals, and with a strength that was all sinew and technique, rather than muscle. For a moment, he wondered how she spent her time now. No one else in Edendale had taken the trouble to befriend her since his own efforts had failed. Diane Fry carried something dark and immovable on her shoulder, something that had accompanied her from West Midlands when she transferred. Cooper felt a frisson of unease at the thought of what might happen to her eventually, if she was left entirely on her own.

Finally, Fry saw them and walked directly towards Weenink. She took him aside and spoke to him quietly for a minute. Cooper could see that Todd looked unhappy. But then he walked to their car and drove away without a glance, his face set into a scowl.

Cooper stood quite still, like a child reluctant to draw attention to himself. He wanted to shove his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, but was worried about how it might be interpreted.

He found the officer safety techniques from the training manuals running through his mind — extracts from the sections on employing empathy. Don’t excite the suspect by sudden movements, they said. Show a willingness to resolve the situation by co-operation. That was fine. But there was one problem here. The manuals always recommended maintaining a verbal exchange with the suspect for as long as possible, if you were going to maintain empathy.

Cooper watched her as she took her time reading the notices in the window of the cycle hire centre, as if she were totally fascinated by the weather forecast or the penalties for returning a bike after the deadline.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Fry’s stare was capable of raising the temperature of his skin until he felt his face was glowing like a red traffic light. ‘DC Weenink is required back at Division, that’s all.’

‘Why?’ said Cooper. ‘What’s so important that they pull him off the job just like that?’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Can’t? Does that mean you do know why? Or haven’t they told you either?’

‘It’s nothing to do with you, OK?’

Cooper opened his mouth, then realized it would be a waste of time trying to explain that Todd Weenink was his partner.

‘Right. OK. So now what?’

‘Well, we’re following Jenny Weston’s route, aren’t we?’

‘We?’

‘Since I’ve deprived you of your friend, you’ll have to put up with me. Sorry. Is it this way?’

She turned away from him towards the trail. Cooper felt as though she had reduced him to insignificance with a mere twitch of her narrow shoulder. He followed her, a step behind, staring at the back of her head, trying to figure out what exactly was going on in her mind.

He knew their relationship had got off on the wrong foot. He had tried to be friends with her when she was the new girl in E Division and no one else had bothered. It had gone wrong, of course. But there was something in Fry’s manner, something about the way she held her body when she spoke to him, that told him it was more complicated than that. Things always were more complicated than they seemed.

Throughout the drive to Partridge Cross, Diane Fry had been preparing herself for dealing with Ben Cooper by repeating a mantra to herself. ‘Just keep him at arm’s length. Don’t let him get under your skin.’ She knew the best thing was to concentrate on the job in hand and discourage conversation. But it had still taken her a few moments to bring herself under proper control when she found herself facing him, alone and with nothing to distract her attention. And as usual she found herself unable to deter him from making his infuriating small talk.

‘So has your transfer has been put back, then?’ said Cooper. ‘Did something go wrong?’

‘There’s been a delay, that’s all. Some kind of administrative hold-up. You’re stuck with me for a while longer.’

‘That’s good.’

She looked at Cooper suspiciously. But, as always, he seemed to be saying only what he meant.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to do.’

Fry studied the cycle hire centre. With its collection of colourful bikes and the mist still hanging against the embankment, the stone building looked like a picture from a children’s story book. It typified the air of unreality about the area that she had yet to come to terms with. Back in Birmingham, they would have flattened this place long ago for a new motorway link road.

‘So this is Partridge Cross,’ she said. ‘I thought they were kidding me about the name. It sounds like something out of The Archers .’

‘It used to be a railway station on the High Peak line — ’

‘I think you can keep that sort of stuff for the tourists.’ She waited for Cooper to take offence. But all he did was raise his eyebrows.

‘Diane, I know something went wrong between us before, but it shouldn’t stop us working together,’ he said.

She hated it when he was tolerant and reasonable. She would have preferred him to show signs of resentment. She had got the promotion that everybody’s favourite detective constable had thought was owed to him by right, and surely it was inevitable that he would resent her.

Fry sighed. ‘Have we got a map or anything?’ she said.

They knew that Jenny Weston had set off from Partridge Cross an hour and a quarter before her death. She had headed eastwards on the High Peak Trail, where the strip of black compacted gravel provided easy going. Beech and elder trees overhung the trail, with nettles and brambles dying back on the verges. Jenny would have passed under the A515 before she left the trail and crossed the route of the old Roman road to begin the ascent to Ringham Moor.

The mist began to break up as they climbed away from the hire centre. A jet liner went overhead towards East Midlands Airport, leaving a white streak in the sky. A farm dog barked half-heartedly in the distance. In between the noises, it was so unnaturally quiet that when a flock of pigeons passed overhead the noise of their wings sounded as loud as the jet.

But a few people were already starting to arrive on the trail. A woman with iron grey hair jogged by. She was wearing purple Lycra and a clashing yellow bum-bag, and she had two large, shaggy dogs panting to keep up with her. Cooper stopped her and ran through the questions on his list. Had she been this way yesterday afternoon? Did she remember seeing this cyclist? He showed her the snapshot of Jenny Weston provided by her father, and described her bike and clothing. If not, who else had she seen? The woman did her best, but couldn’t help. She urged the dogs on as she crunched away again.

Walkers began to appear in pairs, and once there was a small group of half a dozen. They all said ‘hello’ to the detectives, even before they were asked to stop and answer questions.