Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

They gave her a moment to recover, while the tapes recorded the silence.

‘What did Ros want exactly?’ asked Tailby.

‘My daughter saw that she might be able to make use of me.’

‘But in what way?’

‘She needed somewhere to stay, a handy base. That was the way she put it. And my home was much nearer to where she needed to be. Much nearer to Ringham Moor.’

‘Did she tell you what she planned to do?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And what was your reaction to that?’

‘Ironically, I think I probably reacted the same way that Jenny Weston did, but more so. I told Ros she was mad, that what she planned to do was criminal and dangerous. We argued terribly. Of course, I said all the wrong things. A lot of stupid things. I expect it’s because I’ve never known how a mother is supposed to behave. I’ve never learned by my mistakes how to deal with a daughter — so I made all the mistakes at once, in one blazing row. I told her I wouldn’t allow her to do it.’

‘I expect she didn’t like you telling her what to do.’

Maggie smiled. ‘That’s rather an understatement. It was obvious she was going to go to Ringham Moor, whatever I said. It became very personal, and all her bitterness poured out. Mine as well, I suppose. But Ros believed that I owed her a great deal. And I found I couldn’t argue with her any more. Because she was right, you see. I owed her more than I could say, for having let her down.’

‘So you allowed yourself to be persuaded. .’

‘Yes, from that moment, I was lost. I should have stuck to my guns, locked her in the flat. . anything. I can see that now. But she told me that if I was a real mother I would understand what she was trying to do, that I would support her in the one thing that was most important in her life. That if I was a real mother, I would go with her. She said I was the only one who could help to keep her out of danger. That it was what a mother would do.’

‘And so what did you do?’

‘What could I do?’ Maggie shrugged. ‘I went with her, of course.’

Cooper looked at Tailby, but the DCI just nodded. He was a father himself. Cooper could only imagine how difficult it was to stand by and watch your child walk away from you into danger, when all your instincts were urging you to keep them by you and protect them. How much stronger must the feeling have been in Maggie, who had only just discovered it? She had finally found her child, only to face the prospect of losing her again. There was no way that she could have stood by and watched Ros walk off alone.

‘Yes, I drove her up to Ringham,’ said Maggie. ‘We were both so angry that we didn’t speak a word to each other in the car. I had driven right through Matlock before I even remembered to put the headlights on. When we got to Ringham, we parked above the village and walked up to the tower. Ros told me it was the meeting point, where I had to wait until she came back from the farm. I didn’t want to just sit and wait. Waiting was the worst thing. On the other hand. .’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, there are other instincts, too.’

‘You couldn’t bring yourself to be too closely involved in a criminal act?’ said Tailby. ‘Is that right?’

‘All my training was against it, you see. All my beliefs. How could I? I was taking such a risk already.’ Maggie’s face betrayed a moment of appeal, a deep uncertainty. ‘Do you understand?’

Cooper looked away from the appeal. That was the crucial issue, in the end. Maggie Crew had waited at the Hammond Tower, torn between fear for the safety of her daughter and her horror at what Ros was doing out there on the dark moor. She hadn’t wanted to be there, but she couldn’t leave. Two powerful instincts had been battling inside her, and no doubt she had paced backwards and forwards at the foot of the tower, staring helplessly into the darkness, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Cooper could picture the unfinished butts tossed away, still glowing as they flew into the night. How many might Maggie have smoked during that time? Many of the cigarette ends would have landed among the trees on the slope, in the deep undergrowth. But not all. Some of them had landed on the ledge below the tower.

‘And what exactly was it Ros intended to do? Did she tell you?’

‘Oh, she didn’t just intend to do it. She actually did it,’ said Maggie. ‘She prepared her plan beforehand. She had two home-made petrol bombs hidden behind some loose stones in the wall of the tower. She had even collected some bits of rubbish and shoved them into the hole — empty drinks cans, chocolate wrappers, you know the sort of thing. She said nobody would bother to look in the hole when they saw the rubbish. I suppose she was right.’

‘Well, almost,’ said Cooper, thinking of Mark Roper and his preoccupation with clearing up after other people.

‘That makes me an accomplice,’ said Maggie. ‘I knew what she intended to do, and I helped her to do it. Technically, I’m guilty of conspiracy to cause an explosion.’

Neither of the police officers said anything. At that moment, it seemed the least of her concerns.

‘Ros had put petrol in two Evian water bottles. I don’t know who taught her how to do that. But then, I don’t know how she was brought up. I don’t even know who her adopted parents were. I don’t know anything about her at all, even though she was my daughter. I might have been able to put that right, in time. But they denied me the chance.’

‘Who do you mean by “they”?’

‘The men at the farm. The dog-fighting people. They killed Ros.’

‘Are you sure? Did you see it happen?’

‘I didn’t see it. I heard it.’

‘Tell us.’

‘Something must have gone wrong at the farm. I heard the first fire bomb go off, then the second, though it wasn’t as loud. But for some reason Ros didn’t get away as quickly as she meant to. The men came out of the shed with their dogs and they chased her back up the hill towards the tower. She was coming back to meet me, and I was supposed to keep her safe. But she never stood a chance. Oh, she might have been able to outrun the men, to escape among the trees in the darkness. But there were the dogs.’

‘If Ros never made it to the tower. .’

‘I remember hearing the voices of the men shouting. And the dogs barking and snarling in the dark somewhere. I didn’t know what was happening, and I couldn’t see anything. Then there was a scream — ’ Maggie stumbled to a halt. ‘The only other thing I remember is the man running at me out of the darkness, and then the knife and the pain. .’ She looked at Tailby. ‘What actually happened to her? Can you tell me?’

‘Your daughter fell off Ringham Edge, very near the tower. She ran off the top of one of the Cat Stones trying to escape from the dogs.’

‘I see,’ said Maggie. She took a few seconds to digest the idea, as if trying to fit it in with her mental picture. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it? It was all because of the dogs. It was the dogs that she was trying to save.’

‘I’m afraid those particular dogs were trained to kill,’ said Tailby. ‘We seized six pit bull terriers from various addresses when we made our arrests. Now they will have to be destroyed anyway.’

‘So it was the fall that killed her.’ Maggie took a deep breath. ‘Will the CPS carry forward a prosecution on a murder charge? Or will the men plead guilty to manslaughter? I’m sorry, that’s a lawyer speaking again.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Tailby slowly, ‘we believe the fall didn’t kill her outright. Your daughter didn’t die straight away. The pathologist thinks she was still alive for a while as she lay on that ledge. She had dragged herself a foot or two. The debris under her fingernails included gritstone sand from where she had been lying.’