Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

In the end, Wednesday morning looked set to be overcast. Diane Fry had come through the Forestry Commission plantations and down past Flash Dam. She was already slightly late, but she sat in her car at the top of Sydnope Hill for a while and looked down on Matlock. She was watching the clouds come closer. They were rolling in from the east, their shadows chasing across the slopes of the hills and into the town.

Fry had worked out where the roof of Derwent Court was, deep among the other roofs. At the moment, its tiles were glittering as the clear November sun fell on the remains of an overnight frost. She was due at Maggie’s at nine. But by the time the clouds had closed in enough for her satisfaction, it was nearly five past. Fry started the car. Maggie would be annoyed that she was late, but that was tough. She didn’t want any distractions today. It was difficult enough as it was.

From here, she could see how damaged the landscape was to the east. Huge sections had been gouged and blasted from the side of Masson Hill, on the opposite side of the town. Bare terraces of exposed rock had been left by the quarrying, flat and unnatural in the slope of the hill. She checked the sky again for clouds. It was safe. There would be no sun on Maggie’s window now.

‘So you did come back,’ said Maggie a few minutes later. ‘I imagined I might have escaped your attentions. I thought you might have forgotten me.’

‘Never, Maggie.’

‘Oh? You remember me for my sparkling personality, do you? My intellect? My savage wit?’

Fry noticed that Maggie had rearranged the lamps in the room. The lighting was softer, less uncompromising, perhaps designed to put her visitor at ease and make her more welcome. A new chair had been placed in front of the desk — this one was upholstered in green satin on the seat and back, and when Fry sat in it she found it remarkably comfortable.

The cafetiere stood ready on the desk with cream and sugar in a ceramic jug and bowl. By such signs, Fry knew she was making progress. But it was a fragile intimacy; it could be broken in a second, by the ringing of a phone or the scrape of a chair leg.

‘I thought we were getting along fine before,’ she said.

‘Did you?’ Maggie fiddled with the lamp, tilting the shade so that the shadows played backwards and forwards across her face. Fry found the effect disconcerting, as Maggie’s good eye came first into the light, startling and white, then vanished again into the shadows of her face.

With the Weston enquiry going nowhere, it seemed to Diane Fry that her interviews with Maggie Crew were a kind of Eastern Front, the one place where the breakthrough might come, if there was going to be one. Maggie was their only real witness. She could identify her assailant. However she did it, Fry would have to drag those memories out kicking and screaming. So she sat here alone with this woman, struggling to get through to her, digging for her memories like a miner hitting rock.

‘Have you thought about what we said last time?’ asked Fry.

But Maggie responded with another question.

‘Do you know how many visitors I get?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know what it’s like sitting here wondering whether anybody will come?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Maggie slammed back the arm of the lamp as far as it would go, throwing the full glare of the bulb into Fry’s face.

‘That’s the one thing I told you I wouldn’t tolerate. Do not feel sorry for me. Understand?’

Fry had to bite back the natural response, reminding herself that this was a woman who was in a psychologically delicate balance. She needed careful handling, not an all-out row. Not the accusation of self-pity and hypocrisy that had sprung to her lips.

‘Let’s start again, shall we?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘What I’d really like to do,’ said Fry, ‘is take you back to when it happened, to jog your memory. I want you to try again, Maggie.’

‘Why should I?’

‘For Jenny Weston’s sake. And to help us stop him from killing any more. Maggie — you can’t refuse.’

Maggie blinked, and hesitated. ‘Your colleagues always used a different approach. They tried to be sympathetic, to put me at my ease — all that sort of thing. I hated it.’

‘I don’t care about that. I’ve got a job to do. I need you to help me.’

Maggie stared at her. ‘Coffee?’ she said, and reached for the cafetiere.

Fry nodded. Her clenched fingers began to relax. She looked around the room while Maggie poured. The place really wasn’t welcoming at all, even with a comfortable chair and the smell of fresh coffee. What would bring Maggie’s memories out into the light again? When you had suffered that sort of trauma, you needed some kind of closure. It was possible that her memories wouldn’t be fully released until they had her attacker behind bars.

On the other hand, there might be something deeper inside that was keeping Maggie’s mind shut down. She had to find a trigger that would release those memories.

Fry had a twin-deck tape recorder set up. She had fully expected Maggie to refuse to be taped, but she had agreed readily; in fact, she had seemed almost relieved. Perhaps the tape machine could be a compromise, an impersonal middle ground. She probably thought a tape couldn’t bring back memories, only capture the ones you already had. But Fry wasn’t sure about that. Today, she meant to take Maggie further.

For a few minutes, they sat comfortably over their coffee. They even made a bit of small talk about the weather and Maggie’s neighbours, just as if Fry were a friend paying a social call. Who knew — there might even be chocolate biscuits with the coffee.

‘I feel as though I’m getting unfit sitting here all day,’ said Maggie. ‘Before I know it, I’ll be putting weight on.’

No chocolate biscuits, then. Fry unwrapped two fresh tapes and inserted them in the machine.

‘ You don’t look as though you have any trouble with your weight, Diane,’ said Maggie.

‘I don’t have time to put weight on.’ It was the answer she always gave when people asked her. She tested the tape machine, and both tapes began to turn. ‘Ready?’

‘There’s something I want to tell you first.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve decided to go back to work,’ said Maggie.

‘Is that wise?’ said Fry, immediately thinking of the dangers to Maggie rather than of the psychological advantages of getting her back into the outside world.

‘I’ve got to get out of this apartment some time.’

‘You must take precautions for your own safety. We’ll send someone to your office to check out the security arrangements.’

Maggie sighed. ‘If you insist.’

‘If you’re going back to work, I’ll have to make an appointment, I suppose. Solicitors’ time is expensive, isn’t it?’

Maggie smiled at the comment. Fry liked to see her smile. It almost gave her an appearance of normality. But there was still a pain haunting her eyes, and still a strange physical vulnerability in the glimpse of pink gum.

‘I’ll pencil you in for Friday,’ said Maggie. ‘Two o’clock, at our offices in Mill Street.’

Fry made a show of getting out her diary and writing it down. ‘Fine. At least it will take your mind off things. Do you find your work interesting?’

‘Interesting?’ Maggie considered the word. ‘I suppose some people might think so. But in fact it’s ninety per cent drudgery. Wading through mountains of paperwork until your eyes are sore, filling in reports and applications. Sitting in endless meetings.’

‘Join the club.’

‘And there are the most objectionable of people to deal with. Their concerns are unbelievable. It’s all jealousy and selfishness and greed. Husbands and wives, children and parents, colleagues and business partners — all desperate to know about what someone else is up to. The times they have asked me to employ enquiry agents to look into their sordid little affairs. And not just the clients, either. My partners are just as bad.’