Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘This was how you felt, that night at the Cat Stones,’ said Fry. ‘I know you, Maggie.’

Their faces were pressed against each other, Fry’s mouth touching Maggie’s disfigured cheek. But now she didn’t flinch away from the scars. Their breath mingled, and Fry felt their hearts beat hard against each other.

‘You’re going to have to give me the knife or kill me, Maggie.’

Maggie’s hand moved, and Fry felt the touch of the steel blade, sharp and cold. Maggie’s grip on her neck tightened.

It was a long moment, frightening yet exquisite, the feel of this person in her arms. Fry closed her eyes, unable to do anything to protect herself, or to prevent what might happen. She was waiting. Waiting for the knife to cut her again; waiting for it to enter her body.

Derwent Court still had much of its original Victorian guttering. The increasingly blustery winds that battered around Matlock had swirled heaps of wet leaves into the iron channels and downspouts, and now the rain was spilling over and cascading down the front of the building. Ben Cooper had to dodge a waterfall near the front door, wondering whether this was part of the water treatment that the Victorians had once flocked to the hydro to enjoy.

When Cooper joined the team in Maggie Crew’s apartment, they had already emptied her desk, and papers littered the surface. DI Hitchens was working his way through them, and when he saw Cooper he offered him a heap.

‘We found a rucksack back there in one of the bedrooms with Ros Daniels’ clothes and a few belongings in. She was travelling light, by the looks of it.’

Cooper began to look through some of the papers. Many of them were bills, bank statements, insurance policies, all carefully organized and filed. There were law books, a copy of Maggie’s partnership agreement, an address book packed with names. Who were all the people in the address book if Maggie Crew had been so alone? He turned over some leaflets about Hammond Hall, and showed Hitchens what he found underneath.

‘This looks like a diary of some kind,’ he said. ‘Or a journal.’

‘Is it Crew’s diary? We haven’t found one yet.’

‘No. It’s just some times and places, almost an itinerary. It’s from somebody called Eve. Who’s Eve?’

‘I don’t know.’

Cooper stopped and stared at the page. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Grosvenor Avenue, Edendale. But that’s — ’

‘Mm?’

‘So who’s Eve?’ repeated Cooper.

‘No idea. A friend of hers?’

‘There’s a phone number, anyway. It’s a local number.’

‘Try it then,’ said Hitchens.

Cooper looked uncertain. What he had read had thrown him. It wasn’t what he had been expecting. ‘What do I say?’

‘You can think of something, Cooper. Just ask for Eve and play it by ear.’

Still he hesitated, reading and rereading the bit about Grosvenor Avenue. ‘Shall I, sir?’

‘Go ahead.’

Cooper dialled. ‘I’ll tell her I’m selling something. Nobody thinks there’s anything unusual about that.’

‘That’s a good idea. So what are you selling?’ said Hitchens as the phone began to ring.

‘Soffits.’

‘What the hell are soffits?’

‘Exactly. Nobody knows. You can tell them any old rubbish.’

Then the ringing stopped, and a voice answered. But Cooper was speechless. He seemed to have forgotten he was a salesperson. His opening line had gone right out of his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Wrong number.’ And he put the phone down.

‘Was it?’ said Hitchens.

‘What?’

‘A wrong number?’

‘Not at all. Very much the right number, I think.’

‘You didn’t try to sell them any soffits.’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘They didn’t need any.’

Maggie Crew seemed almost at home in the interview room. Its sparseness suited her. She was able to live with her own thoughts, staring at a blank wall as she tried to recapture the elusive memories. Ben Cooper listened, fascinated, as she talked about the triggers that had achieved what nothing else could do.

‘It was the sounds and the smells that suddenly brought it back to me,’ she said. ‘You could have sent people to talk to me endlessly and you would never have achieved that. The voices, the way the men smelled of animals. And there were dogs barking somewhere, but I couldn’t see them. .’ Maggie shuddered. ‘And then somebody screamed. One of the animal rights women.’

‘And you’d just had it confirmed that Rosalind Daniels was dead,’ said DCI Tailby.

She nodded. ‘It was like something physical hitting me. The memories poured over me. It was as if I was existing in two places at once, at two different moments. The sounds and the smells connected them. And I knew what had happened to Ros.’

Maggie put her hands on the table and looked at them. Her long fingers were very still, her nails blunt and pale.

‘Ros had decided to trace me, you know,’ she said. ‘After all that time, my daughter decided to trace me. They allow adopted children to get access to information on their real parents, but not the other way round. It’s one of the provisions of the Adoption Rules. I don’t know what she hoped to achieve by it.’ Maggie paused and let out her breath. ‘Yes, I do. She wanted to get whatever she could from me. Money. A convenient place to stay.’

‘When did she first contact you?’

‘Around the middle of September. She said she was in the area, but she didn’t tell me why or where she was living.’

‘It seems she was staying with Jenny Weston at Totley during that time.’

‘Yes, I found that out later. These animal rights groups have networks they communicate through. And when Ros arrived with nowhere to live, Jenny Weston offered to help. She had a spare bedroom in her house.’

‘You know a bit about Jenny Weston, after all,’ said Cooper, recalling the efforts Diane Fry said she had made to bring Jenny alive in Maggie’s mind.

But Maggie ignored the comment. ‘Ros came on a mission — a mission against dog-fighting. She was following a link from the area she came from, somewhere in Cheshire. When one dog-fighting ring was closed down, some of the men began to travel to Derbyshire, to Ringham Edge Farm. Of course, the dog-fighting was much more important to Ros than finding her mother. I was just a side interest.’

‘That’s not what she told her adopted parents,’ said Tailby.

Maggie shook her head. ‘I expect she resented them, too. No — she came with a purpose in mind; I was merely a useful accessory.’

‘But Jenny didn’t agree with what Ros wanted to do, did she?’

‘Apparently not. Ros was much more radical in her views than Jenny. She believed in direct action. In fact, she believed in violence.’

‘And that’s what led her into trouble in the end,’ said Tailby.

Maggie dropped her head. ‘I suppose it has to be my fault.’

‘Does it? Why?’

‘Because there’s no doubt she would have been raised differently if I had kept her with me when she was a child. Well, that’s obvious,’ said Maggie. ‘She would never have reached that stage if I had brought her up myself.’

‘There’s no reason to believe that,’ said Cooper.

Maggie just stared at them and didn’t trouble to discuss it. ‘Ros had an argument with Jenny Weston when she found out what Ros intended to do. There were angry words. And Ros walked out and came to me.’

‘How did you feel about that?’

‘At first I thought it was the moment I’d always dreamed of,’ said Maggie. ‘My daughter had come back to me. But it wasn’t like that at all.’ She looked from Tailby to Cooper. ‘Nothing ever is how you hope it will be, is it? It’s best not to expect anything. It’s best not to hope for too much. Because the worst thing of all is when you have your hopes raised and then dashed again. That is very painful. That can be devastating.’