Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

The sound of Maggie’s voice had changed. It had a childish intonation that Fry had not heard before. It was slightly shocking coming from the mouth of this woman. It was as if she were recalling a childhood incident, not a trauma from a few weeks ago.

This time the pause was even longer. Fry squeezed her fingers together to stop herself breaking the silence and interrupting. She looked at the tapes to make sure they were both still running. But the silence went on too long.

‘Is there anyone else around?’ asked Fry as gently as she could, though her urge was to push Maggie harder as they reached a critical stage.

‘Anyone else? No, she’s not there.’

Fry shook her head, thinking she had misheard. ‘Who?’

Now Maggie looked confused too, as if two different memories were mingling together.

‘I had my head down, looking at the ground,’ she repeated. ‘I was looking at the ground, where the leaves were. That’s why I didn’t see him.’

Maggie’s voice had become bleak. Her pitch had risen slightly as people’s voices did when they were close to that crack in the facade that let through the tears.

‘If I hadn’t kicked at the leaves, I would have heard him coming. I could have got away.’

‘When did you first become aware of another person, Maggie?’

‘He was already close then.’

‘How did you know? Did you hear him?’

‘The leaves were rustling. They were too loud. I wasn’t paying attention.’

‘All right. You didn’t hear him. Did you smell him, Maggie?’

‘Smell him?’ Maggie frowned. Her nostrils flared as if she was drawing in remembered odours.

Fry knew that smells were powerful aids to memory. If Maggie could recall a single whiff of something — a distinctive deodorant, body odour, cigarette smoke — it would be something to add to the picture.

‘I can’t smell him,’ said Maggie. ‘Only the leaves.’

‘Can you hear him now?’ asked Fry, switching to the present tense that Maggie herself had started using.

Maggie’s eyes were distant. Was she listening? Fry was sure that Maggie could hear something. Some sound was replaying in her mind, but Fry was powerless to know what it was until she felt able to share it.

‘A rustling noise,’ said Maggie hesitantly, at last.

‘The leaves again? He was walking through the leaves. You heard his feet in the leaves.’

‘Yes, there was that too. But something else. A plastic rustling. No, not plastic — nylon. He was wearing a nylon cagoule or anorak.’

Fry felt a little surge of excitement. ‘That’s very good, Maggie. Think carefully now. Can you see it, this cagoule? What colour is it?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Black. Maybe blue.’

‘That’s good. Can you describe it? Does it have buttons or a zip? Has it got a hood?’

‘I can’t tell.’

‘Why not?’

Maggie paused. ‘It’s dark.’

Fry opened her mouth and shut it again. She looked at the tape machine, wondering whether it had heard the same thing that she had. Then she stared at Maggie Crew, resisting an urge to grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her, to force her to answer the biggest question of all.

‘Maggie,’ she said, ‘ what were you doing on the moor in the dark? ’

But Maggie was silent now. Fry thought she had lost her completely, that she had slipped away into sleep or some other world. But if she had, it was a world where there were only nightmares. Maggie’s body was rigid, her face strained and frightened. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut. She shook her head abruptly, like someone throwing off brambles tangled in her hair. Fry caught a glimpse of red, puckered tissue, glistening as if freshly burned.

Then Maggie put her hands to her face, covering her right eye, her fingers pressed tightly to her forehead for protection. There was only the sound of her breathing in the room, a ragged hiss through her nose that the tapes would fail to catch, though they kept on turning. And there was a high, distant noise, like the wheeze in the chest of an asthmatic, or the faint whimper of a small creature dying at the side of the road.

‘I can’t remember,’ said Maggie. ‘I can’t remember.’

19

‘Golden Virginia,’ said Owen Fox. ‘It’s their favourite.’

Owen had a six-pack of lager in one hand, a tin of tobacco in the other. Ben Cooper followed him uncertainly. He had paid for the lager and tobacco, and he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to be able to claim them back on expenses.

‘Are you sure it will work?’ said Cooper. ‘It seems a bit like bribing the natives with glass beads.’

‘It’s the only way to get close to these spiritual types,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve got to appeal to their materialism.’

‘Still — ’

‘Trust me, Ben. I’m a Ranger.’

But Cooper was still doubtful. It was because he knew he shouldn’t be there at all. This wasn’t an official visit — there had been no action form issued for him to conduct another interview with Calvin Lawrence and Simon Bevington. But he needed to talk to them on his own. There were things he couldn’t concentrate on properly with Diane Fry and a bunch of uniformed officers crowding round the van.

Cooper could smell cigarette smoke on Owen’s jacket. He guessed he had been to see Cal and Stride quite recently, and his red fleece had absorbed the scent of their roll-ups. Owen walked up to the van and stood by the cab. He gestured to Cooper to stand out of sight, and knocked on the side door. It was an unusual knock, a series of short and long raps. After half a minute, the door slid partly open.

‘Cal,’ said Owen. ‘We come in peace.’

‘Bloody hell, it’s Red Rum. What’s up? Got no tourists to piss off?’

‘Yes, but pissing you off is more fun.’

Cal stuck his head out of the door and spotted Cooper. ‘What’s he want?’

‘A bit of your friendly conversation. No hassle. He’s all right, Cal.’

The youth stared at Cooper, then back at Owen. ‘You saying he’s all right? He’s a copper. Coppers is bastards, period.’

‘He’s all right.’

Cal nodded. ‘Give us the cans then, you mean sod.’

Owen winked at Cooper, and they clambered into the back of the VW. Cooper’s senses sprang instantly alive, awakened by the powerful mixture of scents and sensations contained in the van. Cal and Stride had been smoking roll-ups for months in the enclosed space, and their aroma had ingrained itself into the panels of the van and soaked into the blankets and cushions and sleeping bags that lay on the floor. There was the pungent smell of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes. And, overlying it, the odour of cooked food, including a lingering trace of the chicken curry they had eaten at least two days before. There was also a slightly worrying whiff of gas from the two-ring camping stove behind the driver’s seat.

Cooper hesitated when he saw Stride. He was sitting in the back corner, barely visible in the gloom.

‘Don’t worry about Stride,’ said Cal. ‘He’s just doing an auric egg.’

‘OK. That’s fine.’

Cooper eyed Stride cautiously. He didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, really, let alone laying an egg. He was very still, sitting upright, with his eyes closed and his hands in his lap. The expression on his face was concentrated, but calm. Cooper wondered if Stride genuinely hadn’t noticed there was anyone else in the van. It seemed unlikely. It must just be a bit of acting talent, mustn’t it?

‘It’s to protect himself against negative mind energies,’ said Cal.

‘Right.’

‘He puts a shell round his aura.’

‘No problem.’

Owen settled himself on a pillow to one side of an old chest of drawers. Cooper followed suit on the other side. He felt something hard pressing into his hip. He looked down to find the biscuit tin packed with small mementoes that Stride had searched in for his NUS card.