Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘It’s her, all right,’ she said.

‘You can’t make a mistake with a face like that,’ said Weenink.

‘What the hell is she up to?’

‘Is she a member of this animal rights group?’

‘Not that I know of. If she is, it’s another thing she never told me.’

‘Here comes Slasher, anyway,’ said Weenink. ‘The DI wants to do it now, before the women cause any complications. You know, like women do.’

Teasdale was herding a group of brown heifers from the outdoor pens towards the auction ring, swishing his stick from side to side as they clattered against the steel gates. Fry waited for Teasdale to look up. Then she saw him glance towards the women and see Maggie. He winced, half-closing his eyes at the sight of her scars, stared for a moment, then went back to his job. No recognition.

As Teasdale walked past them towards the ring, he twitched his stick against the haunches of a lumbering heifer. He grinned up at the police officers, showing a double gap in his teeth. Watching Fry, he gave the animal an extra slap between its back legs, and it broke into a frightened trot.

Fry looked at Maggie. She was frowning at the treatment of the animal, but showed no sign of recognizing Teasdale. DI Hitchens was already waiting for Fry near the ring, and she turned towards him to help make the arrest.

Ben Cooper ran down to the control room. He needed to get the information through to DI Hitchens and Diane Fry as soon as possible. There were too many coincidences stacking up. How was it that Daniels had been killed at about the same time and in the same place that Maggie had been injured? And Jenny Weston, whom Daniels had lived with for a short while? Was it really Maggie who had been waiting to meet Jenny on the moor?

Before he could do anything, Cooper became aware that the control room sergeant was already taking an urgent call from Edendale cattle market.

Suddenly, the group of women had begun to surge forward. They surrounded a cattle transporter in which two large dogs were occupying the cab — an Alsatian and a Rottweiler. The dogs began to leap around on the seats, bouncing off the half-open windows and setting up a loud, furious barking as the women crowded round the lorry.

‘Remember Ros Daniels!’ one woman shouted.

‘She didn’t die for nothing!’

Weenink signalled to the PC and they moved towards the women to intercept them. But Diane Fry was watching Maggie, startled by the transformation in her manner. Maggie stood transfixed as the officers moved in. She had tilted her head to one side to listen to something, and her nostrils flared as if at a distinctive smell. Her whole body had changed; she straightened and stood to her full height. Her eyes widened in astonishment.

Just before the broad shoulders of DC Weenink moved in front of her, Fry saw Maggie’s expression change again. Shock was followed by fear, then anger. Her mouth opened in a scream of rage.

Then there was a confused melee, a mass of suddenly struggling bodies, shouting and shrieking. Fry couldn’t see what was happening, and she could tell that the women and the police officers didn’t know what was going on either. There were just a lot of bodies near to each other, barging, stumbling and staggering, like cattle herded too close together.

Then a gap appeared and Maggie was standing in the middle of it, with a knife in her hand. A trickle of blood ran down the blade to the hilt and dripped on to her finger. But Maggie didn’t notice it. She looked as though her mind was far away from the cattle market, maybe somewhere up on Ringham Moor on a night she had almost wiped from her memory. She seemed oblivious to the stunned crowd close around her, unaware of the noise of screaming women and barking dogs. Unaware of the body of DC Todd Weenink, lying on the concrete at her feet.

The voice on the radio was becoming incoherent as it called on Control for an ambulance and back-up. It requested officers with protective equipment, dog handlers, and a public order team for a violent person arrest.

Ben Cooper leaned in towards the control room sergeant.

‘Who is it?’ he said.

‘Please confirm the identity of the female suspect,’ said the sergeant.

‘The woman’s name is Maggie Crew.’

‘OK, support is on its way.’

‘The suspect is armed, Control. We need an ARV.’

‘Understood.’

Cooper and the sergeant looked at each other. There was no Armed Response Vehicle anywhere in E Division. The nearest would be patrolling the M1 in the Chesterfield area, nearly half an hour away. Cooper knew it could be too late.

‘Sarge, remind the Duty Inspector that I’m an approved firearms officer,’ he said.

Diane Fry had followed Maggie Crew as far as a long, narrow passage between the two sale rings. On one side were rows of steel pens packed with nervous calves; on the other side, a breeze-block wall was lined with plastic barrels of some dark liquid, stored for a later sale.

Maggie stopped and stared at her. ‘Well, you’ve done it in the end, Diane. Congratulations. You got under my skin, like a parasite I couldn’t get rid of.’

‘This is madness, Maggie. Put the knife down.’

Fry’s voice faltered as Maggie’s expression hit her like a bucket of freezing water. Though the sun that reached them through the high windows was weak and cold, its light was enough to change Maggie’s face. It clearly picked out the ragged edges of the scar tissue that ran across her cheek and into her hairline. The scar had flared angrily, marking her face like a fresh brand. Suddenly, Fry realized she was trapped in the narrow passage. They were alone among the rusted iron gates and the nervous cattle.

The knife in Maggie’s hand had a bright steel blade and a black hilt. Fry could see every detail of it — the markings on the handle, the narrow groove to channel the blood. Maggie held the knife out towards her, as if offering a treat for her to share.

‘We were going to use them to slash their tyres,’ she said. She smiled then — the first time that Fry had seen Maggie smile properly. But the corner of her damaged eye puckered and twisted her smile into a dreadful, ironic wink. ‘Ros would have been pleased.’

‘Do you mean Ros Daniels?’

‘Yes, Ros,’ said Maggie. ‘You knew about Jenny Weston too.’

Her grip tightened on the knife. Fry tensed, and her hand began to creep towards her scabbard, where the solid weight of her ASP sat, the foam grip protruding slightly, ready for her fingers to grasp.

‘When I was talking about Jenny Weston, it was because I wanted to make her a real person to you,’ she said. ‘Not just another victim.’

‘Oh, Jenny Weston was a real person to me,’ said Maggie. ‘But there was one thing you didn’t tell me about her. Was she my daughter’s lover?’

‘Your daughter?’

‘Yes — my daughter!’

Maggie’s shout reverberated around the tightly packed pens. The calves shrieked and scattered, crushing each other against the furthest corners of their steel cages. Fry’s hand slipped down to her scabbard. The handle of the ASP dropped into her palm and she flicked her wrist. With a hiss and a click of the ratchet, sixteen inches of steel baton suddenly shone in the artificial lights.

‘Stay back.’

Maggie grew calm again immediately. ‘Do you think you need that?’ she said. ‘You’re the great unarmed combat expert, aren’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Perhaps you’re not the only one with a file. The details of a police officer’s history are well recorded. Everything is available, if you have the right contacts.’

Maggie advanced, and Fry retreated, trying to keep more than an arm’s length between them. Her instructors had always said the same thing — in a knife fight, you first had to accept that you might not avoid getting cut.