Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘Where’s Acting DS Fry?’ asked Tailby. ‘Wasn’t she here earlier?’

‘She has one of her sessions with Maggie Crew,’ said Hitchens.

‘Oh, yes.’ The DCI drew the words out like a sigh. He didn’t sound hopeful of Maggie Crew.

Tailby stood quietly for a minute, staring at the van and the two youths. ‘I’ve got a press conference to do in half an hour,’ he said. ‘What am I going to tell the TV and the newspapers?’

‘How about telling them to keep out of our bloody way?’ suggested Hitchens.

‘All right,’ said Tailby. ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.’

The group of women had moved on. They could be heard chatting again for a while. But they fell very silent when they reached the rock that contained the phallus farm.

At the West Street HQ, they had already been making structural alterations to the canteen. They had succeeded in making it both smaller and less welcoming at the same time. Perhaps it was a deliberate ploy to make the introduction of the vending machines seem like an improvement.

But E Division was lucky. Their neighbours in B Division had no canteen at all. A mobile sandwich service called at the front of the building every lunchtime. Beyond that, it was a question of a kettle, a jar of Nescafé and a packet of chocolate biscuits in the corner of every office. There could be no ‘canteen culture’ when there was no canteen. Problem solved.

Ben Cooper carried a cup of coffee to a table where some of his shift were already sitting, and he arrived in the middle of a conversation that immediately made him uneasy.

‘She’s a real hard bitch,’ Todd Weenink was saying.

Opposite Weenink was Toni Gardner, a DC from another shift, who still had her straight blonde hair tied back into a ponytail in the fashion of the uniformed officers. She nodded in agreement. ‘She’s a toughie, all right.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Cooper, though he felt he could have a good guess.

‘That Diane Fry,’ said Weenink.

‘A snotty cow, she is, too,’ said Gardner.

Cooper settled down on a spare chair, concentrating on not spilling his coffee so that he didn’t have to meet anyone’s eye.

‘She’s just trying too hard,’ he said. ‘She’ll settle down after a bit.’

Weenink shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t know how you can be so tolerant. I know I wouldn’t be, if it was me.’

Cooper looked at the officers round the table, and he wanted to tell them about the time that Diane Fry had reluctantly confided in him the secrets of her past, the dreadful history of her family, and the heroin-addict sister she hadn’t seen since she was sixteen. But he knew it was impossible to share this knowledge with anyone else.

‘I’d tell her where to stick her stripes,’ said Gardner. She smiled at Todd Weenink, as if willing him to notice that she was agreeing with him. Cooper realized that there was more going on here. Todd had an attraction for some women that he never fully understood. He supposed it was a kind of overt masculinity, the sense of sexual challenge in his dark smirk and the way he held his body. Yet these things were not what women said they looked for in men. Not the women Ben Cooper talked to, anyway.

Gradually, the conversation veered to other topics — grumbles about supervisors, night shifts and salaries. Every man there could have run E Division better than the Divisional Commander. Under their guidance, the clear-up rate would double. But then there were the courts to deal with, of course. Not to mention the CPS. The Criminal Preservation Society, they called it — the body of lawyers given the responsibility of prosecuting the alleged offenders the police produced for them. There was a general shaking of heads.

‘And we’re chasing up white vans tomorrow,’ said Weenink. ‘I can’t wait.’

Finally, the other officers drifted away and left Cooper and Weenink alone.

‘Are you all right, Todd?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘I just wondered what all that was about earlier on today. What did you get called back for?’

‘Oh, just the usual sort of bollocks,’ said Weenink dismissively. ‘Somebody upstairs with their knickers in a twist.’

On the television screen in the corner of the room, DCI Tailby’s face appeared. It was a clip from the coverage of the press conference. Tailby was trying to look serious and professional, but hopeful.

‘Todd,’ said Cooper, ‘what do you know about Maggie Crew? The victim that Diane Fry is dealing with.’

‘I know she can’t remember much about the attack, that’s all. But I can’t say I’d want to remember much myself, really. It’s tough on a woman, getting her face messed up like that.’

‘Do you know if she’s ever been married or anything?’

‘No. She’s a solicitor, all business suits and fancy briefs. Likes to be called “Ms”, I expect.’

‘Has she got children?’

‘Kids? You’re joking. I bet her womb has cobwebs.’

Cooper ran his mind back over the earlier conversation. He felt dissatisfied with the way it had ended.

‘Look, you have to realize she’s a bit of an outsider,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Diane Fry. Being an outsider can be a difficult thing to deal with. It takes time.’

‘You don’t have to tell me about that,’ said Weenink. ‘I’m an outsider, too. And I always will be. Neither one thing nor the other, that’s me.’

‘You mean because you’re Dutch?’

‘Half-Dutch. My dad’s from Rotterdam. He came over to work in the British shipyards back in the seventies. He ended up in Sheffield.’

‘What shipyards?’

‘Exactly. There are none left. That’s why he ended up in Sheffield. He worked in a steel mill, until that closed too.’

‘I bet you got the piss taken out of your name when you were a kid.’

Weenink scowled. ‘Are you kidding? I cursed my dad as a bastard every day, just because he gave me that name. It’s pronounced like “Vaining” but with a “k” on the end, I’d say. I’d tell them and tell them till I was blue in the face, but do you think they took any notice?’

‘It was a joke,’ said Cooper.

‘What was?’

‘Taking the piss. Like “wee”, you know.’

Weenink flushed. ‘It’s pronounced like “Vaining”. .’

‘. . but with a “k” on the end. Right.’

Cooper began to look around the canteen for an excuse to leave.

‘Anyway,’ said Weenink slowly, ‘when I got bigger than the rest of them, they stopped doing it.’ His face solidified into his notorious stare. ‘Once I’d smashed the first one’s teeth in, anyway.’

‘Sorry, time’s up for the public. Next item on the agenda — minutes of the last meeting.’

The chairman of Cargreave Parish Council wore a white cardigan and a tweed skirt, and she was so short-sighted that she barely seemed able to recognize her colleagues at the far end of the table. Councillor Mary Salt preferred to be known as ‘chair’, but some members of the council refused to be forced into ways that sounded a bit modern. They still called her ‘chairman’, ignoring her angry, myopic glare.

Owen Fox didn’t belong to Councillor Salt’s party. He was an Independent, so his voice carried no weight in the important decisions, like where to spend the parish’s share of the Council Tax. But he and the chairman had known each other for many years.

The parish room was cold and echoey, with a creaky wooden floor and a small stage at one end that had been turned into a Chinese laundry for rehearsals of the village pantomime. From where he sat, Owen could see Councillor Salt’s legs tucked under the table in her flesh-coloured tights. Her legs looked tight and shiny, like sausage skins. His fingers itched for a fork to prick them.