Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘Two years, and it doesn’t seem a day,’ said Matt.

His words couldn’t help but sound trite, but Ben was sure they were sincere. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

‘I still keep expecting him to appear. I think he’s going to come round the corner and tell me to stop idling around. It’s as if he’s just been on night shift for a while. Remember when we didn’t used to see him for a few days, then he would appear again, looking so tired? He always said it was short turn that was the real killer.’

‘He was already too old for night shifts by then.’

‘But he wouldn’t stop doing it. He always did his stint.’

There was a new National Police Memorial being created in Staffordshire, with a commemorative avenue of trees known as ‘The Beat’ and a daily roll of honour showing details of the officers who had died on duty. The work would take several years to complete, and Ben Cooper had offered to help.

Here in the cemetery, Sergeant Joe Cooper’s name was carved in stone. Eventually, it would be worn away by the rain driven down the Eden Valley, and the February frosts would crumble the surfaces. But now, just two years from his death, the letters were still crisp and clear, with sharply chiselled edges, cold and precise. Life might be brief and transient, scrawled in the sand. But death was written in a much harder alphabet.

Ben had the names of the group of youths who had killed his father imprinted on his mind. Now and then, they cropped up in other enquiries, or in court cases he read about in the Eden Valley Times . Two of them were still serving ten-year sentences for manslaughter, but those who were free seemed to be following predictable careers. It wouldn’t be long before they, too, had a taste of prison. The thought gave Cooper no satisfaction. It would solve nothing.

As always on these occasions, he found his brain spilling out memories like sour wine from an uncorked bottle; deeply stored images of his father that were preserved as if in vinegar. There were glimpses of a tall, strong man with wide shoulders and huge hands tossing bales of hay with a pitchfork, his face flushed and laughing. At other times he was frowning and angry, a terrifying figure in a dark uniform, opening his mouth to bring down the wrath of God on his sons. But among Ben’s memories was also a picture of his father lying dead and bleeding on the stone setts of Clappergate. It was a sight Ben hadn’t even seen, yet it was etched on his mind like a nail embedded in a tree — it was long grown over, but still there, hard and sharp, splitting the flesh that pressed too tightly around it.

But Ben had to close the stopper tight on his thoughts. He couldn’t bear to taste those memories. The pain of them was too thick for him to swallow.

‘He always expected great things of you,’ said Matt.

‘He didn’t just expect great things — he demanded them.’

‘He demanded a lot, that’s true. But he was very proud of you. And you did exactly what he hoped for, always.’

Ben looked at his brother. ‘Matt, he gave me an appalling time. He drove me like a maniac. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. I always had to do better, to work a bit harder. But you were different. You were the favoured son.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘He never drove you like he did me. He left you alone to do whatever you wanted.’

‘Exactly,’ said Matt.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It shows that it was you that he cared about, Ben. He cared about you more than anything.’

‘It didn’t feel like it at the time.’

‘It was obvious to everybody else. Obvious to me, anyway. It didn’t matter to him what I did. It didn’t matter how hard I worked, how successful I was at what I chose to do. It meant nothing to him. He would just say, “That’s fine,” and he’d turn away to ask how your training was going, or how you’d dealt with an incident, and what your feelings were about it. Every last detail about you was important to him. But me, I could just do what I liked. I might as well not have been there.’

Ben thought he and Matt had little in common physically, except perhaps a look of their father around the eyes and nose. Their mother was blue-eyed, but the eyes of both her sons were brown, their hair dark where she was fair. Though Cooper was five foot eleven, it was Matt who had inherited their father’s size, the wide shoulders, the enormous hands and the uncertain temper.

‘Matt, you’re the one who’s like him. Everyone says that. People always told me I took after Mum. But Dad and me, we were like chalk and cheese. It infuriated him every time he saw me reading a book. He nearly threw me out of the house when I got interested in music and joined the choir. For Heaven’s sake, I barely came up to his shoulder. I was a pigmy in his eyes.’

Matt stood up. When he towered over him, with that exasperated frown, Matt looked more than ever like Sergeant Joe Cooper come back to life.

‘Maybe you never saw the similarity, Ben,’ he said. ‘But everybody else did. I can see him in you now, over this case you’re involved in, this woman who was killed on Ringham Moor.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’

‘You stand here by his grave, today of all days, and you start asking me about this bloody Warren Leach. As if I cared about all that. But Dad would be proud of you, all right. Your head’s full of the same big ideas that his was, like justice and truth. You think you have to put the world right on your own. Just like him. You’re exactly like him.’

Before his brother could reply, Matt walked away to stand over the grave, leaving Ben on the bench. Matt rearranged the flowers at the foot of the headstone and re-read the inscription.

Ben stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ he said.

Matt half-turned his head. His eyes glistened, and he wiped the heel of his hand across his face. ‘You can’t help it, Ben,’ he said. ‘Neither of us can help it.’

They walked in silence back through the cemetery, passing a workman sweeping up leaves. When they reached the car, Matt paused and looked back at the cemetery. Their father’s grave was no longer discernible from here. It had merged into anonymous rows of headstones, swallowed up among centuries of Edendale dead.

‘Ben. . this Warren Leach,’ said Matt.

‘What about him?’

‘They say his farm is in big trouble. Creditors are calling the debts in, the usual story. He’s very close to bankruptcy, they reckon, but he won’t admit it. Leach is the type who’ll try to pretend it’s not happening until it’s much too late. It’ll only take one small thing to be the last straw.’

Cooper thought back to the two occasions he had met the farmer. ‘He isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. But it can’t be much of a life up there.’

‘Those hill farmers are proud men. They think they don’t need anyone else; they want to believe they’re self-reliant, like their ancestors always were. It’s hard for men like that to admit any sort of weakness. Losing the farm would be the end of the world for Warren Leach. He must be close to the edge.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you, Ben? I’m not sure.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I’d watch out for Warren Leach, if I were you. When a man is driven close to the edge, he might do anything. And, unlike you, Ben, some men can completely lose sight of what’s right and what’s wrong.’

Each time Diane Fry emerged from Maggie Crew’s apartment, the rest of the world looked garish and unreal. It was like coming out of the cinema after a horror matinee. One minute it was all nightmare figures leaping out of the dark and blood splattering against the camera lens, and suddenly you found yourself standing at the traffic lights outside Mothercare with the sun in your eyes and an ice-cream van playing ‘Greensleeves’.