Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

As Diane Fry expected, it was DI Hitchens who took the bull by the horns.

‘Chief, in the Weston case, the fact is that there is only one person we can place anywhere near the scene at the time.’

‘Ah, the old story,’ said Jepson. ‘The first person that comes under suspicion is always the finder. Is that it?’

Diane Fry leaned forward. ‘Mark Roper,’ she said. ‘But he was there.’

Fry felt her superiors watching her closely. The pain in her leg drove her on like a spur.

‘He had plenty of time to kill Jenny Weston and do whatever he wanted to do before he reported that he had found her body. And he had scouted the area first, quite legitimately, so he had no worries about being observed.’

‘Obviously,’ said Jepson. ‘But what would his motive be?’

‘Well, there’s nothing obvious that we can see,’ admitted Fry. ‘But we’ve had some discreet enquiries made into his family background.’

Jepson raised an eyebrow. ‘Have we indeed?’ He looked at Hitchens, then at Tailby, but Fry was determined to keep his attention.

‘Three years ago, Mark’s older brother died and his father went off the rails. He started drinking and became depressed and lost his job. Frank Roper eventually walked out of the family home when he found out that his wife was having an affair. According to the neighbours, he hasn’t been seen in the area since. Mrs Roper promptly moved the boyfriend into the house, and Mark still lives with them. But he was very close to his father.’

‘This is a story no different from a thousand others, Fry. What are you trying to tell me? That Mark Roper has a grudge against women?’

‘We’ve heard much more incredible motives,’ put in Hitchens. ‘But this is simply background on Roper for now.’

‘OK. Weapon, then? What would he have done with the knife?’

Fry shook her head. ‘We don’t know. But he’s very friendly with the other Ranger, Owen Fox. He’s got a bit of a surrogate father there, from all accounts. Fox could be covering up for him. They could have concocted their story together.’

The Chief Superintendent was looking more and more unhappy. ‘We have an excellent relationship with the Ranger Service. Excellent.’

‘I don’t like it myself,’ said Tailby. ‘But we can’t ignore it. We need to look at elimination.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Jepson. ‘Could Roper have been the man Jenny Weston’s neighbours reported? How would he know where she lived?’

‘Oh, that’s the easy part,’ said Fry. ‘Weston’s details are recorded in the book at the cycle hire centre. The Rangers are in and out of there all the time. Either one of them would have had no trouble getting her address.’

‘All right.’

‘Not to mention the correlations the computer has thrown up. If it was anyone else — ’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘If we could show some inconsistencies in the stories of the two Rangers, it could be just the opening we need.’

Jepson said gently: ‘Don’t you think you’re getting a bit carried away here, Fry? What about Maggie Crew? Are you forgetting her? Besides, the Rangers have been helping us. Suddenly you’re suggesting they’re public enemy number one.’

‘But Roper was there. If only there was something. .’

‘Stewart, have you spoken to Alistair Prince recently?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Tailby. ‘He suggested a re-enactment.’

‘But there was nobody there. You have no witnesses. The place was deserted.’

‘Superintendent Prince says it works very well in central Derby.’

Jepson chewed his lip. ‘So that’s it. You think we’re going to have to admit defeat on this one otherwise, Stewart?’

‘To be honest, I’m not very hopeful, sir. We thought we had a stroke of luck with Darren Howsley. But that was a poisoned chalice.’

Jepson folded his fingers together and stared at the ceiling for a while. The others waited expectantly. Fry knew only too well that what they were suggesting was a difficult thing, a politically sensitive issue. ‘Somebody had better talk to DI Armstrong, then,’ said Jepson.

Fry blinked and looked at Hitchens, who shrugged. It wasn’t what he had expected either.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Kim Armstrong is engaged on the paedophile enquiry. They’re about ready to make some arrests, aren’t they?’

While they waited for more, the Chief Superintendent tapped his pen on the desk and looked at the broken end of it sadly, like a man contemplating something particularly unpleasant.

‘Go and talk to her,’ he said. ‘And tell her I said it’s a need-to-know situation.’

Ben Cooper particularly liked the narrow lanes and arcades in the oldest part of Edendale, between Eyre Street and Market Square. There were shops that sold decorated wooden elephants and pencil boxes, pine furniture, chocolates and malt whisky; there was an Italian restaurant and several coffee shops. And halfway up Nick i’th Tor, the steep alley off Market Square, was the window of Larkin’s, a traditional bakery. During the day the window was full of pastries and cheeses — apricot white stilton, homity pies, pasties, and enormous high-baked pork pies. Cooper came down to Larkin’s as often as he could at lunchtimes if he was in town. He was happy to queue with the tourists and listen to the assistants explaining one more time that Bakewell tarts should be called Bakewell puddings.

But today the window of Larkin’s was completely empty. It might as well have been selling picture frames, like the shop next door. All the shops here had been cleaned and painted up, and the stone setts had been relaid into the footpaths, while new arcades had been created in what had once been warehouse yards. Now the coffee shops sold exotic coffees — Jamaican Blue Mountain, Monsoon Malabar Mysore and Yemeni Mocha Ismaili.

In the Market Square itself was Ferris’s, a butcher’s that was also a licensed game seller. Normally, a few brace of pheasant dangled their tails in front of the window, their necks stretched and tied with string. Often there would be a pair of pigeons or a mountain hare. Tourists had been known to take exception to this — to burst into the shop with allegations of animal cruelty and obscenity.

Ben Cooper had seized the chance of his leave day to take Helen Milner for lunch. Helen had been quiet during the meal. She was concerned about the progress his mother was making, and she always asked about Matt and Kate and the girls. But he couldn’t help being aware that she was interested in almost everything except him. She didn’t ask what he was doing at work at the moment. She didn’t want to know. Not today.

Cooper sat through lunch hardly eating. He watched Helen’s hair as she talked, remembering when he had been enchanted by the coppery sheen of it in the summer sun and had begun to hope that its glow symbolized a bit of light entering his life. It had been just when he needed it, too, when everything else had seemed to be going wrong — when his mother’s descent into schizophrenia had seemed unstoppable, and when Diane Fry had appeared on the scene to complicate his life like a tangle of briars that he couldn’t shake off. Helen had seemed to be the answer to all that.

But now August seemed a long way off. The leaves of the trees in the Eden Forest had taken on the colours of copper and gold, and the yellow of sunlight, too. And then they had died.

After lunch, they walked towards the river. In the side streets, the houses huddled together, like little groups of people gossiping. They stared into each other’s windows, and knew each other’s business. On the paved steps that ran down to the River Eden the rain had brought out all the colours in the Yorkshire stone, the browns and reds and greens. The steps were uneven, and some of them were slippery with wet leaves. At the bottom, leaves had collected in a drain, and dirty water had flooded the path.