Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘As right as he’ll ever be,’ said Cooper, quietly.

As they drove away, Cooper glanced in his rear-view mirror. Warren Leach had got up from the ground. He sat slumped against the tailgate of his trailer with his head in his hands. He had only the ginger cat for company now. And even the cat was looking at him with something like pity.

After a phone call to his client by the solicitor, Cooper and Fry were given an address near Bakewell. They found it was a small B amp; B, its rooms empty now for the winter. Yvonne Leach had a first-floor room, overlooking a similar row of Victorian semi-detached houses with dark brick porches and dormer windows.

‘I got too frightened of him,’ she said. ‘I stood it as long as I could, really I did.’

‘Are you saying you suffered physical abuse, Mrs Leach?’ asked Fry. Cooper could see her trying to relax the woman, who was plainly intimidated by having the two detectives standing in the room. Mrs Leach looked round at the cheap dresser and the washbasin in the corner and shrugged, as if accepting things were out of her control now.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘He never hit me, I mean. I’m not making a complaint about that.’

She rubbed her hands together and felt the radiator under the bay window. The room was chilly and miserable. She pulled her cardigan around her shoulders and stared out of the window.

‘The Ranger was the only one I could ever talk to. Owen. He used to come to the house sometimes to see if I was all right. But only when Warren wasn’t around. Warren wouldn’t have him near the farm, if he could help it.’

Cooper sighed with relief. That sounded much more like the Owen Fox that he knew. How could Mark Roper have got it so wrong about the reason for Owen’s visits?

‘Do you think I should go back?’ said Yvonne.

They stared at her. ‘Mrs Leach, there must have been something that frightened you enough to make you leave,’ said Fry.

Yvonne Leach nodded. She made them sit down on the bed. Then she told them how her husband used to threaten her when she wouldn’t have sex, how he had broken the lock of the door when she had gone to sleep in another room.

‘He’s a highly sexed man. He always has been. It’s one of the things that attracted me to him, once.’

She told them how much worse her husband had been since the farm had got into financial trouble. She knew that things were bad. She didn’t know what the debts were — Warren never told her things like that — but she knew it was very bad. She could understand why Warren drank. It was very hard on him, the way things had gone. But it made his temper even worse, and he always took it out on her. She seemed to provoke him simply by being there. She had left, she said, because she didn’t want the boys to see it any more. She thought, if she was out of the way, he would have less to provoke him and wouldn’t drink so much.

‘It was the most difficult decision I ever made,’ she said.

Cooper realized Yvonne Leach was one of those women who had to feel they were needed, that they had a role to perform to give meaning to their lives. Some women were afraid of stepping out of their place and finding that the gap they left had closed up behind them straight away. He imagined Yvonne’s fear was that everyone would forget about her in a single moment and carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened, as if she had never been there. And then she would know that her life had never had any meaning at all.

‘Because I love him, you see,’ said Yvonne.

The landlady knocked on the door and brought in a tray of tea for the visitors, looking at them curiously, with the air of being prepared to welcome them as long as they didn’t put their shoes on the bed and steal the soap.

Cooper tried his tea and found it weak and insipid. ‘Mrs Leach, did your husband have many visitors?’

She hesitated. Her face set into a stubborn line that reminded him for a moment of her husband’s expression. There must have been a time when they had something in common.

‘You’ve wondered yourself what happens in the big shed, haven’t you?’ he said.

Yvonne nodded, and she looked as though she might cry at the softness of his tone.

‘It was awful. The men started coming at night, after the boys had gone to bed. Warren warned me to stay in the house. But I heard the dogs, the snarling and the howling. I could imagine what was going on. He told me it was the only way to make some money to pay off the debts. But with people like that, something was bound to go wrong. He isn’t a very clever man. I knew they would take advantage of him.’

‘And what did go wrong, Mrs Leach?’

‘I don’t know. But one morning, after they had been, he was in a terrible temper. He was frightened, too. But angry.’

‘You don’t know what had happened?’

‘No, he never told me.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘Oh, six weeks or so. I remember, because the men haven’t been back since then. They used to come every week. Every Sunday night.’

‘Why do you think they stopped coming?’

‘I always thought it was because of the Ranger,’ she said.

‘Owen Fox? Are you saying he was involved in this?’ asked Fry.

‘No, no,’ said Mrs Leach. ‘But he knew. I think he knows everything that goes on in the area. He came to the farm and asked me to use my influence to persuade Warren to stop it happening. My influence! He didn’t understand the way it was, of course.’

‘But why did he do that? He could just have reported it,’ said Fry.

‘He said he didn’t want to get Warren in trouble. He was worried it would be the last straw for Warren. The Ranger understood that.’

‘And did your husband take any notice?’

‘Not of me. Nor of the Ranger.’

‘But something made them stop,’ said Fry.

‘Yes.’

Fry looked at Cooper. He shook his head, and she frowned.

‘What about women?’ she asked.

‘They were all men, I think,’ said Yvonne. ‘But, of course, I never saw them.’

‘I mean other women your husband may have met.’

Yvonne Leach put down her teacup. She hadn’t drunk any of it. But then neither had the two detectives.

‘I thought you might mean that.’

‘You said he was highly sexed. Do you think it’s possible that he might have looked elsewhere?’

Yvonne smiled and shook her head. ‘You don’t understand the life of a small farmer. Warren wouldn’t have the time or the opportunity for an affair. Where would he meet women? He spends every hour working on the farm.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, I’ve seen him looking at the hikers sometimes. You know, the women who come past on the track up to the moor. Sometimes, when I didn’t know where he was, I thought he might have gone up there to look at them. In the middle of summer, you can see them all gathered round the stone circle, the Nine Virgins, all the young ones. But he would never do anything except look, I’m sure.’

She must have seen the sceptical look on Fry’s face. ‘Warren is a good man, really,’ she added. ‘Things just haven’t gone right for him.’

‘What about the boys, Mrs Leach?’ asked Cooper.

‘I wanted to bring them away with me, of course. But how could I?’ She gestured at her surroundings. ‘I had to come here, because I’ve got no family to go to. But I can get a job, can’t I? I’ve been looking. I can earn some money and I’ll get somewhere bigger that I can take the boys to.’

‘But in the meantime. . are you quite sure they’re safe?’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘Oh, Warren won’t do anything to harm the boys. He thinks the world of them. They’re his whole life, but for the farm. He wouldn’t do a thing to harm them.’