Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘I don’t want to see Owen here,’ said Mark. ‘He might not change his mind.’

‘Mark. .?’

‘I think Owen’s involved. He must be.’

‘But why?’

‘He’s worked in that area a long time. He must have noticed what I noticed. But he’s never said anything to me about it. He always talks about Warren Leach as if they hate each other, but I’m not sure about that.’

‘There seemed to be no love lost between them when I was there,’ said Cooper.

‘I know. But I’m almost certain that Owen goes down to the farm on his own sometimes, when he should be somewhere else. I think that might have been where he was when I found the woman on Ringham Moor. It was the TIP that made contact with him in the end, you know. I couldn’t get through to him. I think he was away from his radio.’

‘I can’t see it. Not Owen.’

Mark looked at him. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You want to defend him, like everyone else. You think Owen’s a good bloke. They all say that — Owen Fox is a good bloke. Well, he is. But I think he’s got mixed up in something he shouldn’t have done, and now he’s frightened and he can’t see any way out. I don’t like the way he’s been talking these last few days. He is a good bloke. And he’s done a lot for me. I want to save him.’

‘And how exactly are you going to do that?’ asked Cooper.

The young Ranger wound the window down a few inches, just enough to let the cool wind in and blow away the fug they had built up in the car.

‘I want you to arrest him,’ said Mark, ‘before he ends up here. I want you to keep Owen away from Suicide Corner.’

Diane Fry jumped up from the cushion, banging her head on the metal roof as a burst of flame lit up the quarry. A small explosion rocked the van and the blast echoed backwards and forwards off the rock walls.

‘What the hell was that?’

She pulled the sheet aside to look through the cab. Black smoke poured into the sky, and the air was filled with an acrid smell and the sound of sizzling, like a huge barbecue. The blaze was clearly petrol-assisted, and it flared dramatically for a few moments before dying to a hiss.

In the light from the flames, she saw something begin to creep over the quarry edge. Whatever it was, it slid in a slow liquid movement. Fry turned on her torch and shone it through the windscreen. She saw a series of small rivulets running free, breaking apart, then slowing and congealing, until they had stopped, frozen on the rock. More rivulets followed, their bright colours twisting and mingling until the quarry face looked like psychedelic curtains picked out by the light of her torch. She remembered the phallus farm that Cal and Stride had created on the cliff edge, and she realized that she was seeing the multi-coloured wax melting in the flames.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

There was a thump on the back of the van, and the vehicle jerked as if it had been hit by a heavy object.

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Cal.

Stride folded his head into his arms and began to mutter unintelligibly, repeating a phrase over and over again.

Fry peered cautiously out through the windows of the cab, but could see nothing in the surrounding darkness. She went to the door and pulled it open a few inches. A cold gust of rain blew in. All she could see through the blackness was the faint glow of the interior light in the patrol car, where PC Taylor was reading about skimmers and wagglers, or more likely had fallen fast asleep and was only now wondering what on earth had woken him up.

In a narrow path between the van and the car, Fry could see the rain hurtling past. The ground was glistening alarmingly as the sand began to turn to mud.

Then she saw vague shapes moving in the darkness.

‘Taylor!’ she called. But she got no response.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Cal from behind her.

‘Stay in the van. Shut the door. Lock it.’

‘It won’t lock.’

‘For God’s sake.’ She struggled desperately with the door as she felt it slip off its bottom runner and jam two feet short of the frame. ‘Try to get it shut. Stay inside.’

‘But — ’

Fry stepped outside and was immediately drenched by the rain. She slid on the ground as she set off towards the patrol car.

‘Taylor!’

The noise of the downpour in the quarry drowned her voice. She tried to set off at a run, but her feet slipped and slithered. She turned to look back at the van, and saw figures surrounding it. They were dark, shapeless forms — human, but only just. The van began to sway. Glass smashed as a window was shattered.

At last a beacon flashed as PC Taylor woke up to what was going on and revved the engine of his car at the incline. Near the top, his wheels began to spin in the mud, and the bonnet slid sideways towards the drop, its headlights swaying drunkenly across the quarry.

Then Fry found herself suddenly in the midst of a crowd. They gathered close around her, silent but for the sound of their breath and the damp rustling of their clothes. All she could see were their eyes.

‘I’m a police officer. Stand clear.’

She was grabbed from behind and dragged further from the van. She felt a weight on her back, and arms clutched round her chest. She was aware of the other figures all around her, none of them speaking. Fry struck backwards with her right hand to grasp her assailant’s testicles, and missed. Twisting, she found herself facing him, though barely a glint of the white of an eye was visible through the holes in the mask he wore. She hesitated as she felt a frisson of familiarity.

And that hesitation was her mistake. Pain shot through her leg as a blow landed on her right knee. Her leg gave way and she slid to the ground, still hanging on to the man’s coat. Then she saw something swinging towards her again from the side, a shape like a baseball bat. She put her hand out to ward it off as she threw herself to one side, gasping from the agony in her leg.

Fry rolled over in the mud, glimpsing feet around her and covering her head in anticipation of boots coming in. She fetched up hard against a rock and pushed herself into a crouch ready to jump up, but realized that her leg was not going to support her. Only one dark figure still stood in front of her, watching her for a moment, before it turned and ran off to join the others around the van.

Now the noises came to her through the night. She could hear the van being trashed. She could hear other sounds, too. Shouts and curses, and thumps.

Taylor had switched on the siren in his stranded patrol car. But the noise didn’t help at all when the scream came. It was so high-pitched that it ought to have been female. But Fry knew that it wasn’t.

‘There has to be something in the damn computer, Stewart,’ said Chief Superintendent Jepson. ‘That’s what it’s there for, to come up with the right answers. You’ve got a multi-million pound guaranteed Mastermind winner. All you need is Bamber Gascoigne to ask it the right questions.’

Normally, Jepson loved to be kept up to date on the progress of a major enquiry. It made him feel involved, instead of just a man sitting in an office with a lot of brass on his uniform. And sometimes Tailby found that talking a case through with him could put it in a different light. But not this morning. This Sunday morning there was no light to be found of any kind, not even from a phallus-shaped candle. The reports of the incident in the quarry the night before made painful and depressing reading. Three people had been injured, one of them a police officer. And the perpetrators had come and gone like a flurry of dead leaves in the wind, vanishing back on to the moor before PC Taylor could dig himself out of the mud.