Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

Then there was Warren Leach. Cooper wished he could turn away from the sight of Leach’s head, a red mass that made him almost unrecognizable. He was followed by Yvonne, her wide hips giving her a distinctive waddle, one hand rubbing at her mouth, her other hand trailing the two boys, Will and Dougie. Owen Fox was close behind them, stumbling after the boys with his red jacket flapping open. And then came Ros Daniels, all in black, her dreadlocks flying, a nose ring glittering, the skin of her arms and legs split and bursting, laid open to the air as she brought up the rear of the dance .

But no — Daniels wasn’t at the rear at all. There was another figure, very dim, still shrouded in the mist so that Cooper couldn’t make it out. There was a ninth victim. One more who had made a mistake .

And then Cooper had gradually become aware of the faint music they all danced to. And he knew that, somewhere in the thickening mist, was the Fiddler .

Despite the appeals in the paper and on TV, the youth, Gary Dawson, had been pushed into coming forward by his mum. Only a second dead body had made a difference to the potential excitement of being a witness. As a result, Gary’s evidence had been almost too late.

‘Did you know we were looking into the death of Mr Warren Leach?’ Ben Cooper asked him.

‘I heard. Did himself in, didn’t he?’

‘You worked for him.’

‘Used to. I walked out. I told him I wouldn’t stand for it any more. He got to be such a foul-arsed bugger. But I told him. “I don’t need to put up with this hassle and abuse all the time,” I said. “I can soon get a job somewhere else.”’

Gary was wearing a red woollen cap, even indoors. He had protruding ears that he had made look even bigger by pulling his cap down over them.

‘And have you? Found another job?’

‘Well, not yet. There’s not much about.’

Cooper produced the photographs of the three women. ‘Did you ever see any of these three near the farm?’

Gary pointed immediately at the picture of Maggie Crew. ‘That’s the one Yvonne Leach found, isn’t it? Warren went on and on about that for days. I saw her picture in the paper.’

‘Were you there when Mrs Leach found this woman?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see her around the farm at all?’

‘Not around the farm, no.’

‘All right, Gary. What about the other two?’

He tipped his head on one side. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But that one, I think I saw her.’

‘Yes?’

‘She looked different from that picture, but I reckon it could have been her on the moor. Bird on a bike, is that right?’

‘Gary,’ said Cooper carefully, ‘what day was this?’

‘The day I walked out on Warren Leach. I wasn’t hanging around to hear him ranting at me any more, so I walked out. Usually he gave me a lift home when I finished work, but I didn’t wait for that. I walked back over the moor. I live at Pilhough, just the other side.’

‘What day, Gary? Please be exact.’

‘It was a Sunday,’ said Gary. ‘But not last Sunday.’

‘The one before?’

‘Yes, it must have been.’

‘And on your way back over Ringham Moor, you saw this woman?’

‘On a bike — it was her, all right. She gave me the evil eye, she did. She didn’t want someone like me hanging around. There was no one else up there that day — no one else at all, except her and the other woman.’

‘The other woman?’

‘The one that was waiting for her.’ Gary noticed the sudden silence and read the expression on Cooper’s face for the first time. ‘Well, she was going up there to meet someone, wasn’t she?’

‘Why do you say that, Gary?’

‘She had that look about her. Like she was expecting to see someone, only it wasn’t me. Do you know what I mean? In any case, I saw the other one a bit earlier. Up near the tower, she was.’

‘The other one? Gary? Which other one?’

‘That one, the one that Yvonne Leach found. I never saw her near the farm, but she was up near the tower that day. And you could see she was waiting. She was smoking cigarettes like there was no tomorrow.’

A herd of heifers was being sold in the cattle market. The mart men dodged and danced round them as they went through the ring. The heifers were being sent for breeding, to a suckler herd, where they would meet the bull for the first time. And the bull would be some giant Limousin or Charolais, weighing two tons and bulging with double layers of muscle so heavy and deep into his body that he could barely move, except to hoist himself into position for the thrust. It would come as a shock to them, these black and white virgins. Their white eyes showed they were already getting a suspicion of things that lay ahead.

From where they were parked, Diane Fry could see through the doors to the side of the auction ring, where farmers and buyers milled around, absorbed in their own conversations.

‘Keith Teasdale is inside,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘His vehicle has been located in the car park.’

‘When do we make a move?’

‘We want to do it as discreetly as possible.’

‘Wait for the auction to finish, then?’

‘Yes. We take it easy, keep an eye on them and let the crowd disperse. It’s too full of people in there at the moment.’

The radio crackled, and Fry answered it. ‘I think we might have a problem, sir,’ she said.

‘What’s up?’

‘DC Weenink reports a group of women gathering in the car park. Fifteen or twenty of them, he says.’

‘What the hell do they want?’

‘It looks like some kind of protest.’

As he entered the hospital ward, Ben Cooper nodded to the nurse at the desk, who smiled at him. She looked a nice girl, but tired and preoccupied, too busy to engage in social intercourse. But for the colour of her uniform, she could have been in the police service.

There were twelve beds in the ward. Some of the patients were old men, stirring restlessly or sitting up in their striped pyjamas, staring at the unexpected visitor. It was outside normal visiting hours and there was little to occupy them until the next meal arrived.

At first Cooper thought it might have been a mixed ward, one of those relics of the NHS. But then he remembered who he had come to see. Stride lay on his side, a slight figure too slender and too mannered in his pose to be at home among the old men. He was running his pale hand through his long hair, pushing a strand away from his face.

As Cooper came nearer, he saw that Stride’s eyes were distant and unfocused, like a man listening to a personal stereo or an audio tape of some absorbing thriller that had taken him away from the real world. But there were no headphones. Stride needed no artificial aids to distance himself from reality. That distancing must be a great talent.

‘Visiting time, Simon,’ he said.

The young man didn’t stir. ‘They call me Stride.’

There was a bottle of mineral water on the bedside cabinet and a glass. Stride seemed to be fascinated by the slow floating of the bubbles towards the surface.

Stride had told the police nothing so far — nothing useful either about the night he had been attacked, or about anyone he might have seen on Ringham Moor. But Cooper knew Stride spent more time on the moor than anyone else. He was there at night, too — to talk to the Virgins, according to Cal. Like Mark Roper, he probably saw more than was good for him.

But Stride’s vagueness was more than just an absence of memory which might be brought back by the right triggers, like Maggie Crew. What sort of unimaginable triggers would release Stride’s knowledge?

‘I wanted to tell you something,’ said Cooper. ‘There was a youth on the moor that day — the day that Jenny Weston was killed. His name was Gary and he’d been working for Warren Leach at Ringham Edge, but they had a row and he walked off. He saw Jenny reach the top of the path, and he says she went towards the Hammond Tower. It was very helpful that Gary came forward. Eventually.’