Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘Well, if you find this vengeful spirit has a physical body and a face, let us know,’ she said.

Stride looked unperturbed. ‘It’s the Fiddler himself,’ he said. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s the Fiddler who makes the women dance.’

Ben Cooper turned right at the Fina petrol station and dropped the Toyota down a gear to go up the steep street. He wasn’t familiar with this estate on the southern edge of Edendale. It was a fairly recent one, with cheap housing built to provide somewhere that local people could afford to live without having to move out of town. The houses were small stone semis, with narrow alleyways and car ports.

The homes on Calver Crescent looked like all the others, and the only thing that distinguished number 17 was a slightly neglected air. The paintwork on the front door was starting to peel, and part of the car port’s Perspex roof had come loose and split, leaving a gap plugged by a sheet of polythene that flapped and rattled in the rain.

Mark Roper was waiting outside, under the light of a bare bulb. He ran down the short drive and climbed into Cooper’s car. He was wearing jeans and a denim jacket, and Cooper hardly recognized him.

‘Can we go somewhere?’ asked Mark.

‘Sure. Anywhere in particular? A pub?’

‘No, somewhere quiet, where we can talk. I’ll show you where.’

‘OK.’

Mark told him to drive westwards out of Edendale until they left the street lamps behind and there was only the reflection of the Toyota’s headlights from the Catseyes in the road and from the rain that drifted across the bonnet. Two miles out of town they turned and headed uphill until they were rising through the dark, dripping fringes of Eden Forest. They saw few cars on the road and passed even fewer houses — just the occasional farmstead wrapped in its own little bowl of protective light.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Cooper.

‘Not far now.’

After a few more minutes, Mark directed him off the road. Cooper found they were in a gravel car park with litter bins and a map in a glass case pointing out the major features of the view that must lie somewhere out there in the darkness. He turned the Toyota round so that it was pointing back towards the road.

‘Well?’

Mark hesitated. Cooper knew better than to try to push him. It was better to let him take his time, now that they had come all this way. Gradually, his eyes started adjusting to the darkness. There were faint strings of light floating in mid-air in front of him, marking a hamlet or a village on a hillside across the valley. Then the hills themselves began to come into focus, black humps against the sky. Directly ahead, he had the sensation of a steep drop into a vast hole in the darkness.

Eventually, Mark felt the moment was right.

‘You know I told you this morning about something going on at Ringham Edge Farm.’

‘The big shed,’ said Cooper. ‘Vehicles arriving at night.’

‘That’s right.’

‘We haven’t had a chance to look into it, Mark. We’ve all had a lot of other things on our minds. You’ll just have to wait. Give us time.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘It will probably turn out to be nothing, anyway.’

Mark chewed his lip. The rain was beginning to obscure the Toyota’s windscreen. Cooper turned on the wipers to clear it, so that they could see the car park. There were no other vehicles, not even passing on the road. He almost turned the ignition on to drive back to Edendale, disappointed in what Mark had brought him out here to say. But something held him back.

‘There’s more to it than that,’ said Mark. ‘Things I haven’t told you.’

Suddenly, Cooper felt that old surge of excitement rising through his chest, leaving him short of breath. ‘Mark? What are you talking about?’

‘Dogs,’ said Mark.

‘What?’

‘I think it might be dog-fighting.’

‘You’re joking. Does that still go on?’

‘Oh, dog-fights take place every week, somewhere. And it’s on the increase. The RSPCA have made a few prosecutions, and a few fights are broken up now and again. The thing that’s most difficult for these people to find is a safe venue. There’s money in dog-fighting — a lot of cash changes hands in bets on the dogs. Just by renting his shed and keeping his mouth shut, Leach could have been doing quite well out of it, whether he joined in or not. The winning dogs are worth something, too. But the losers — sometimes the losers just die from their injuries.’

‘How do you know about this sort of thing, Mark?’

‘There’s a Rangers’ liaison group with the RSPCA. They showed us a video once that had been seized by their Special Operations Unit. It was sickening. These people film the fights so that they can show off the success of their dogs to buyers, you see. This one had been filmed in the attic of a house somewhere, with armchairs and an awful blue carpet and a colour TV in the corner. They normally use pit bull terriers. Those things are bred for fighting, and nothing else.’

‘It’s illegal to breed pit bulls,’ said Cooper. ‘Since the Dangerous Dogs Act, they all have to be neutered. The breed should be dying out by now.’

‘Oh, sure. And is cancer dying out, too? How much time have your people got to go round the Devonshire Estate checking whether anybody’s breeding pit bulls in the kitchen or out the back in the garden shed?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘And the police in Sheffield and Manchester have even less time, I suppose.’

‘So you think they’re using Ringham Edge for dog-fights? Are these local people involved?’

‘They come from all over the place. A lot from the Manchester area, I think. If Warren Leach has a dog-fighting pit in there, he’ll be mixing with some pretty unpleasant people. And they won’t take kindly to anyone sticking their nose into what’s going on.’

A Peak Park Ranger’s Land Rover pulled into the car park for a few minutes. Mark looked at the driver, but didn’t seem to recognize him. The thin red stripe on the silver side of the vehicle could have been a streak of drying blood, caught in Cooper’s headlights.

‘It was the captive bolt pistol that made me think I was right,’ said Mark.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The point is, those dogs will fight and fight until they’re half-dead. You can’t take them to a vet, because — like you say — they’re illegal. And you don’t put an animal like that out of its misery by wringing its neck. You need to have somebody there with a gun, or preferably a captive bolt pistol, if you can get hold of one. They’re a lot safer than having a free bullet flying around inside a shed somewhere. Dangerous, that is.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Very dangerous,’ said Mark. ‘That way, somebody could get themselves killed.’

The Land Rover drove off again. Maybe the Ranger had just stopped to use his radio or to have a drink of tea from his flask. Maybe he was checking on the Toyota. Everybody was suspect these days. Cooper watched the vehicle’s lights heading further west, following the tight bends until they disappeared into a dark band of conifers. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a sudden flicker of movement, and saw a stoat run across in front of his bonnet into a clump of gorse.

‘I know this spot,’ he said. ‘It’s the place they call Suicide Corner.’

‘That’s right. It’s where all the suicides come.’ Mark pointed up the valley towards Castleton and Mam Tor. ‘Owen says the view sometimes makes them change their minds.’

The unstable slopes of Mam Tor looked like a melted chocolate cake in the darkness. Erosion of the soft shale underneath its gritstone bands meant that its sides were in continual movement, long cascades of stone sliding and slithering into the valley, where the landslips had closed the A625 many years before. Now cars struggled over Winnats Pass to where the River Eden and the River Hope sprang up on the bleak moorlands of the Dark Peak. The locals called Mam Tor the ‘Shivering Mountain’. Its vast, soft outline dominated the head of the valley. And on the very summit, the defensive ramparts of a Bronze Age hillfort could clearly be seen against the sky, even from this distance.