Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘Where is she?’ she asked when she saw Cooper and Weenink under the trees. Cooper bent down to her car window.

‘She’s up there.’ He gestured vaguely, irritating her still further.

‘On the moor?’

Fry got out of the car and flexed her leg. She could feel her knee starting to swell up. She ought to be at home with a bag of frozen peas on it — if only she had any frozen peas in the freezer compartment of her fridge. She struggled up the rocky slope to look towards the plateau. She was no more than half a mile from Top Quarry.

‘Where is she exactly ?’

‘Near the Cat Stones, where she was attacked,’ said Cooper. ‘It was Mark Roper who reported sighting her earlier this afternoon. She refuses to come down. We were just discussing taking her into custody for her own safety.’

‘What?’

‘She can’t stay up there. She’s not safe. What if she runs into our killer? That would be just great, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’s not very likely.’

Cooper shook his head in exasperation as she pulled on her black jacket. ‘OK, I’ll come with you.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she said.

Fry began to walk away, tugging her jacket around her as she strode towards the path, brushing past a PC talking on his personal radio. Cooper and Weenink watched her go. Weenink’s expression was puzzled as he leaned towards his partner.

‘Ben?’

‘Fetch the car,’ said Cooper.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To see Mark Roper again.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I feel like something to cheer me up.’

‘But — ’

Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘Will you just fetch the car ?’

‘Jesus,’ said Weenink. ‘I thought it was only women who had a wrong time of the month.’

Mark was sitting on the ground in his red fleece jacket, with Owen’s walling hammer in his hand. Occasionally, he dug the cutting edge of the hammer hard into the soil and studied the shape of the gouge he had made.

‘So is the wall finished?’ asked Cooper.

‘I thought it was,’ said Mark. ‘But look at that.’

He pointed down the length of the newly-rebuilt stretch. The stones had bulged and bellied outwards, and the coping stones had slipped from their places, exposing the filling, which trickled from the interior of the wall like grain from a split sack.

‘What did that?’

‘A rotten stone,’ said Mark. ‘One single rotten stone that crumbled with the weight and let down everything above it. Owen must not have spotted it when he put it in place. He says every stone has to play its part. You can’t have weaknesses, or the whole thing comes down.’

‘That’s a shame.’ Cooper looked at the young Ranger more closely. ‘Mark, how did you come by those bruises?’

Mark touched his face again. ‘Oh, I slipped and landed face first on some rocks. I’ll survive.’

‘You sure?’

‘Of course.’

‘Mark, has Owen ever said anything to you about children?’

The Ranger looked away. ‘Not much. He always says: “Kids? I love ’em. But I couldn’t eat a whole one.”’

Cooper nodded, listening for something beyond the old joke. ‘I suppose you have to do school visits as a Ranger.’

‘It’s part of the job these days. They say if we educate youngsters about what Rangers do, they’ll respect the Peak Park and what goes on in it. That’s the theory, anyway. But Owen says a school visit just gives the kids a chance to take the piss out of you all at once instead of one at a time.’

‘Yeah, I know what he means. But Owen has no children, has he?’

‘He’s a good bloke, Owen,’ said Mark.

Todd Weenink was getting impatient at the turn of the conversation. He kicked at the wall and watched as more filling spilled out from between the stones.

Diane Fry could see Maggie Crew from a distance, her yellow jacket marking her out like a beacon. She was standing a little way from the tower, on the edge of the escarpment where the gritstone plateau fell away into the valley. Maggie was a few yards short of the contorted rock formations that Ben Cooper called the Cat Stones. She was standing quite still, as if afraid to go any closer. Beyond the rocks was the Hammond Tower, which ought to have represented the hand of humanity on the landscape of the moor, but failed to suggest any hint of civilization to Fry’s eye.

The wind coming down the valley was cold, carrying the first suggestion of November storms. But Maggie made no attempt to shelter behind the rocks. She seemed happy to expose herself to the full blast of the weather.

She didn’t look round when Fry limped up behind her. But Fry felt as if Maggie had been waiting for her to arrive.

‘Maggie, come on. It’s time to go back home.’

‘Give me a few minutes, then I’ll go.’

‘All right. I’ll stay with you, then.’

‘If you like.’

Maggie didn’t move for a moment. She hesitated as if she wasn’t sure which way to go. Fry had automatically walked up to her left side, understanding Maggie’s vulnerability. Now she watched Maggie’s face, looking for clues about her thoughts in the set of her mouth and squint of her eye.

‘I want to remember more,’ said Maggie. ‘I know that’s what you need from me, Diane. I want to be able to tell you that I remember.’

‘Maggie, it doesn’t matter. We can do it another way.’

‘You said you didn’t have enough information. Insufficient evidence. You needed me to make an identification.’

‘There are other leads we can follow.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘No. You’re lying to me now.’

As if on a signal, they walked in step towards the Cat Stones. Maggie’s footsteps became slower as they reached them. Imperceptibly, she seemed to have moved nearer to Fry, until their elbows were touching, making contact for mutual reassurance.

‘I would have brought you here, Maggie,’ said Fry.

‘You don’t understand. I wanted to do it on my own.’

Fry nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose I can see that.’

‘Can you? You wanted me to share everything with you, all my memories. But there are things I can’t share.’ Her eyes went distant again. ‘Tell me,’ she said. They were the words that Fry feared to hear from her. ‘Tell me, why did you have an abortion?’

‘Because I didn’t want the baby,’ said Fry. ‘Obviously.’

They stopped by the Cat Stones. They were lumbering great rocks, precariously balanced on smaller, softer slabs of gritstone that had been worn away by the weather and shaped like the back-jointed rear legs of an animal. The rocks crouched like leaping cats — or so local folklore said. Maybe they were leaping at the tower, determined to knock it from its perch.

‘But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’

Maggie touched one of the stones gently, as if she hoped to make it move with the lightest brush of her fingers. ‘Was it rape?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘But you never talk about it, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Bottled up. Is that the best way?’

‘I don’t talk about it,’ said Fry firmly.

‘But it’s a denial,’ said Maggie. ‘A sort of lie that you’re living.’

They were in the right spot. This was the place they had identified as the location of the assault on Maggie Crew — the brief, horrific attack that had left her disfigured. They had found little forensic evidence, nothing that could have led them to the identity of an assailant. There were no witnesses except Maggie herself. And no trace of a motive.

‘You can’t live your life by lies,’ said Maggie.

Then Maggie Crew began to laugh. Fry was mortified that her confession should be treated with hilarity. Then she began to get angry.