Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

The council meeting started with fifteen minutes of public questions. Usually, there were only one or two familiar faces sitting at the back of the room, sometimes no one at all. But tonight the room was full, and more chairs had been brought in. These people wanted to ask what action was being taken to make the area safe. They wanted a senior police officer to be brought to the next meeting to answer questions, and the clerk was instructed to write to the Chief Constable. Then the chairman moved the agenda on. The public were allowed only fifteen minutes.

The real business of the meeting involved correspondence from the National Park Authority about a visitor questionnaire and a landscape enhancement grant scheme. The county council had replied to a letter about street lamps, and there was another discussion about installing a height barrier at the entrance to the village car park to stop gypsies getting their caravans on. The success of the Millennium tree-planting scheme was reported, and next year’s well-dressing considered. Mobile library visits were changing to alternate Thursdays. The bowls club were having a quiz night. Soon, the dangers of walking on Ringham Moor were long forgotten. The public got only fifteen minutes, after all.

‘Any other business?’ asked the chairman finally.

Councillor Salt looked round the table. Nobody responded, and Owen checked his watch. Not a bad time. Some of the other councillors would head for the Dancing Badger for a ritual exchange of gossip, but for Owen it would be a chance to get back to the house. Socializing in the village had never held any attractions for Owen; even less so now.

‘Meeting closed, then.’

Owen made a dash for the door, trying to get out into the street before any members of the public could corner him and ask about the attacks on Ringham Moor. He didn’t have the answers they wanted, no more than anyone else did. Nobody knew who it was stalking the moor. And nobody knew when he would strike again.

But Owen had his own thoughts. It only needed someone to ask him the right question, and he would no longer be able to keep them to himself.

The lamp on the desk was tilted at an angle that directed light into Diane Fry’s eyes and made Maggie Crew’s face more difficult to see in the shadows between the lamp and the window. There was little light left in the sky over Matlock as the evening drew in, and Fry felt a creeping sense of unease in the apartment. If she had been in Maggie’s position herself, she would have felt no reassurance from the panic buttons and the extra vigilance the police had promised.

‘You understand that I need to talk to you, Maggie,’ she said.

‘You can talk as much as you like. I’ve got plenty of time.’

Fry’s reading of Maggie’s file and her discussion with DI Armstrong had convinced her that she had to be persistent if she was to get anything out of this woman. Deep inside, Maggie Crew had valuable memories locked in — memories the police needed, memories that would help them to identify a man who had now become a killer.

‘I want to talk to you about our new victim,’ she said.

Maggie waited, playing with the lamp. No sign of interest. Fry tried again.

‘The woman found dead on Ringham Moor.’

Maggie shrugged. Fry felt a spasm of irritation, but controlled it. The file said that Maggie Crew was frustrated and bitter over the failure of the police to find her attacker. She mustn’t let personal reactions get in the way of doing the job.

‘I know nothing about your new victim,’ said Maggie. ‘Nothing.’

‘Let me help you, then. Her name is Jenny Weston. She’s thirty years old. I mean she was, when she died. She won’t ever be any older now.

‘Jenny Weston was five foot six and half, and she weighed sixty kilos. That’s nine and a half stone. She had been trying to lose weight recently, but wasn’t very successful. She lived in a modernized terrace house in Totley, on the outskirts of Sheffield, and she worked as a section supervisor at an insurance call centre. She might not seem to have had much in common with you, but maybe you would have got on with her. Jenny liked cycling and classical music, Haydn and Strauss. I see you like Strauss, Maggie.’

She nodded towards the stereo. A CD of Tales from the Vienna Woods lay on the top, the one case out of place from the neat racks. It was a rare splash of colour in the dark corner.

The light dipped slightly. Maggie’s outline began to come back into focus as Fry blinked and her eyes readjusted to the darkness.

‘Somebody loaned it to me,’ said Maggie. ‘I haven’t listened to it.’

‘Jenny bought her clothes at Marks amp; Spencer and Next, where she had store cards. She banked with the NatWest, but transferred her credit card account to one that supported Greenpeace. She was a big animal lover. She was a member of lots of societies, including the RSPCA, and she helped out as a volunteer for the local Cats Protection League. She had her own cat called Nelson. Do you know why she called him that? Because when she took him in as a stray he had an infection that made him keep one eye closed. Have you ever had a cat, Maggie?’

Maggie maintained the stare. Fry had no idea whether she was getting through to her.

‘We know a lot more about Jenny. We know she borrowed show business biographies and Maeve Binchy novels from her local library. She drove a blue Fiat Cinquecento, but she didn’t wash it very often. On the back seat were her spare shoes, an orange and her mobile phone. When we rang the number, it played “The William Tell Overture”.’

Maggie’s eyes were expressionless and unblinking, though her hands fidgeted restlessly and her shoulders were tense.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t listen to Rossini, either.’

Fry had all the details of Jenny’s life at her fingertips. Yet they knew almost nothing about the young woman who had stayed with her in Totley several weeks ago. Ros Daniels had disappeared as mysteriously as she had come, as far as Jenny’s neighbours were concerned. She had been seen walking up The Quadrant one day with a rucksack on her back, and she had knocked at Jenny’s door. Her hair was described as being ‘in tangles’ by an old man who had passed her on his way to the post office and who had noticed her heavy boots and the rings in her nose. He was seventy-five years old and not well up on modern fashions, but he was quite an observant old man. He had given it as his opinion that she hadn’t been wearing a bra, either.

But it was only from a colleague at the Global Assurance call centre that the police had learned the young woman’s name. The colleague had visited Jenny’s home, and had been introduced. The miracle was that she had remembered Ros’s name at all.

‘She was a girl, really. I’d say she was no more than twenty years old. A student type, you know? All dreadlocks and combat trousers she was, and sitting slumped on the floor like she’d not even been taught how to use a chair. Never had a job, you could tell. Never had to work in a call centre selling insurance, that’s for sure.’

‘Did she say much?’

‘“Hi.” That was what she said. And that was said a bit contemptuous, like. As if she’d weighed me up in a glance and thought I was too boring and respectable and hardly worth bothering with. It was a cheek, I thought. I mean, if I’m boring and respectable, then so was Jenny Weston. So what was she doing at Jenny’s house, this Ros?’

‘Did Jenny never explain who she was?’

‘Never. I did to try to ask her next day. Discreetly, like. I asked where Ros was from, and Jenny said from Cheshire. But then she changed the subject straight away, almost as if she’d said too much, though she hadn’t told me anything at all. She didn’t want to talk about her, that was plain. Well, she could be a bit stand-offish when she wanted to, could Jenny. I can’t imagine what she had to do with that girl.’