Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

Cooper remembered seeing the slides of the animal bones. It hadn’t been immediately obvious what they were. They were just slivers of something pale caught in the dark fibrous peat, like those burnt stems of heather, crumbling and white. Then the slide had suddenly come into focus, and the shapes of the white splinters came together in a vaguely familiar shape. He had thought of the farmyard at home, of rats caught by the sheepdogs, and the discarded evidence of foxes hunting in the fields. But this wasn’t quite the same. This was something much bigger, something with a heavier and wider skull than a rat.

‘Do those two gypsies go in for animal sacrifices?’ asked Jepson.

‘The youths in the van? They’re not exactly gypsies,’ said Hitchens.

‘Whatever they are.’

‘They’re just travellers, sir,’ said Cooper.

‘Travellers, my arse. They’re not going anywhere. What makes them travellers?’

‘They’re classed as having no settled home, sir. A Volkswagen van doesn’t count as a home under the law, even if it’s broken down.’

‘So what do they live on down there, Cooper? Nuts and berries, or what?’

‘Our information is that Calvin Lawrence catches the bus into Bakewell once a week to collect his benefit money.’

‘Ah. So he’s a Social Security scrounger. What about the other one?’

‘Simon Bevington isn’t even registered for benefits,’ said Cooper. ‘He seems to stay in the vicinity of the quarry or on the moor. He doesn’t claim anything. I suppose they must share what little they’ve got.’

‘Oh, love and peace, hallelujah,’ said Jepson.

‘It must be enough for both of them — they hardly have an extravagant lifestyle. But they’re not gypsies.’

‘They could be circus trapeze artists, for all I care, Cooper. Have we asked them about animal sacrifices?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then ask them. And find this Martin Stafford and the girl, Ros Daniels. We ought to be able to find at least one of them, shouldn’t we? Is there anything else? And don’t make it anything too exciting. I’ve had enough for today.’

‘Well,’ said Hitchens, as if suddenly noticing an important item that everyone had forgotten, ‘there is the phallus farm.’

‘ What kind of farm?’ said Jepson.

‘Well, I don’t mean Warren Leach’s kind of farm. There are no EU subsidies for this particular crop. .’

Warren Leach was waiting for the milk tanker. It was one of the few routines that still held his day together. Bringing the cows in, milking, waiting for the tanker. The morning’s yield was taken for Hartington Stilton, the local cheese made at the dairy in Dovedale. It was something most farmers were proud of, that their milk was going for Stilton. It was like still being part of the traditional dairy industry of the dales, not an anonymous unit of production for some huge commercial organization. Leach had once been proud of it himself, and had boasted about the quality of his milk. Now he found he couldn’t care less. He would have been just as happy to pour the stuff down the drain or into the nearest ditch.

The lad who normally came to help him had not turned up yesterday or today, so Leach had done everything himself. Gary was one of the Dawsons, from over the moor at Pilhough. The Dawsons weren’t up to much, but at least they were farming folk. But there had been a blazing row on Sunday afternoon, when Leach had lost his temper and sworn at the lad and accused him of being idle. Gary had threatened he would never come again, and it looked as though he never would.

In a way, Leach preferred it; he preferred to be left on his own, to have so much to do that it left no time for thinking. Yet it only lasted for a while, only until after the tanker had gone and the rest of the jobs held no urgency. Then, when there were no cows bellowing for attention, no tanker driver sounding his horn in the lane, when his sons had gone off to school in Cargreave on the bus — then he found the rest of the day stretched before him endlessly.

But this morning a car had arrived. He had been expecting the tanker turning in from the road, but the sound of the engine was wrong. The big diesel always made the glass in the windows of the farmhouse vibrate, and the layer of dust on the window ledge dance and slide before it settled into a new pattern. There had been plenty of police vehicles going by the farm for the past two days, of course — but they went straight up the lane, past the front of the shippon. They didn’t turn into the yard like this car did.

Leach’s chest grew tight with apprehension. He had known it would only be a matter of time before the men he feared arrived.

The farmer looked at his hands, astonished at the dirt ingrained in his fingers, as if he hadn’t washed for days. How long had his hands been like that? He glanced at the steel cabinet where his shotgun was locked, and waited for the familiar surge of aggression to come, for the righteous anger to drive strength and heat into his limbs. He was the sort of man who ought to be able to see a bailiff off, no problem. But something was wrong. Somehow the adrenalin failed to flow, the flush of testosterone never came. He felt weak and helpless; he was alone and cornered, yet with no fight left in him. It was the feeling that he had always dreaded would come to him in the end.

Leach laughed quietly as he listened for the men to enter the gate. ‘You’ve had it, Warren. What use are you now?’ He thought of not answering the door, of hiding in another room until the strangers went away. It was what a woman might do, or a child. Was he reduced to that?

Unable to face the answer, he stood paralysed when the knock came at the door. A second knock followed, more impatient. Then Leach moved, without a thought in his head about what he would say. What did bailiffs do in these circumstances? Obviously, the men hadn’t come alone in a car to take away his furniture. Maybe they had come to deliver a court notice. Maybe they had just come to check what he had that was worth selling. Good luck to them, then. There was precious little.

But they weren’t bailiffs, after all, just the police again. The first face he saw he recognized immediately, and it reminded him that there were vitally important things he ought to have done, but hadn’t. He had watched the police cars and vans go backwards and forwards across his land, cursing each one as they went, yet desperate to know what they were doing up on the moor, to hear what they had found out about the woman who had died. He longed for someone to tell him what was going on. Yet now these policemen had arrived, he didn’t know what to do, except to tell them he had nothing to say.

‘Detective Constable Cooper and Detective Constable Weenink, Mr Leach. We just need a few words, that’s all. We won’t keep you from your work long. We know how busy you farmers always are.’

The one who spoke tried a smile. Leach refused to be impressed. ‘Cut the crap. I see enough of it round here.’

‘If that’s the way you want it.’

Leach looked at the other one, the big one in the leather jacket, and felt a small measure of his old confidence starting to return. ‘What have they sent you two for? Ranger scared to come here any more, is he? Thought he needed to send in the heavy mob? You won’t get anything out of me, anyway.’

‘We’re collecting information about vehicles seen in this area on Sunday,’ said Weenink, staring at the farmer.

‘Are you now? But they’ve asked me about this before.’

‘We’re following up a report on a van that was noticed leaving your farm entrance between two and three o’clock that day. Was that your van?’

‘Does it look as though I’ve got a van? A Land Rover, but that’s knackered. Otherwise it’s a tractor or the back of a cow if I want to get about.’