Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

Maggie’s face went white, and the confidence in her eyes died. ‘She was still alive, then. And I left her.’

‘You weren’t to know that,’ said Cooper.

‘I left her there to die.’

The DCI looked at Cooper sharply. But Cooper felt he understood Maggie at last. He knew there was nothing to stop you being consumed by guilt when you failed to protect someone who relied on you.

‘There was nothing you could have done,’ he said.

‘I abandoned her again,’ said Maggie. ‘And this time she’ll never come back, will she?’

They allowed Maggie a rest period. They had plenty of time to keep her in custody before she had to appear in court. More evidence was needed yet, before they could decide how many murder charges she would face.

‘Why did you associate yourself with the animal rights group?’ Tailby asked her later.

‘I wanted to find out where Ros had gone, why she hadn’t got in touch. I couldn’t remember clearly enough, and I thought the details had become distorted, as they do in a nightmare. Most of all, I couldn’t believe that she was dead. I thought she had dropped me because I was no use to her any more. And with Jenny Weston dead, those other women were the only connection to Ros I had left. I’m afraid I pestered them until they let me join in their activities.’

‘How did they react to you?’

‘They felt sorry for me, I think. That made me angry. But I needed them — I needed the information I thought they had about Ros. On the other hand, some of them had heard that I was attacked near Ringham Edge Farm. They wondered whether I had been attacked by the dog-fighters. None of them ever dared to ask me outright, but I think it was that which earned me acceptance.’

‘But they didn’t know what had happened to Ros?’

‘No. And if they knew what Ros had planned to do, they wouldn’t have told anybody about it. They have their own loyalty, you see.’

‘Perhaps they just thought she had moved on again somewhere else, to undertake some other mission. She seems to have seen herself as some kind of animal rights commando,’ said Cooper.

‘But they heard about the latest body, and they knew perfectly well who it was. It seems I was the only one in ignorance. I had gone along to the cattle market still hoping. I was so blind — but only because I didn’t want to give up hoping.’

‘Hoping that Ros would turn up?’

‘I thought she might have appeared at the cattle market — it was her sort of thing, direct action. The plan was to slash the tyres on the vehicles of the people that had been targeted. That’s why we were all given knives. They almost didn’t let me have one, you know. It was a kind of sign of acceptance. Ros would have been pleased to see me there.’

‘Even though you were actually committing a crime yourself this time, Maggie.’

She nodded. ‘You see which instinct won? Besides, it was already too late for anything else by then. Too late for the old Maggie Crew. You can’t go backwards. You can’t get parts of your life back, once they’re dead.’

Keith Teasdale and five others had been arrested, despite the distractions at the cattle market. They were all believed to have been involved in the dog-fighting ring at Ringham Edge Farm. Under questioning, Teasdale told the story of the night Ros Daniels had staged her single-handed fire-bomb attack and the chaos that had followed as men and dogs spilled out on to the hill in a mad chase lit by flames from the burning pick-up.

Teasdale had admitted that he and Warren Leach had made a search of the area near the Hammond Tower at first light next morning and had found the body of the young woman on a ledge under the most northerly of the Cat Stones. They had moved it deeper into the cavity to conceal it, he said. At the same time, Yvonne Leach had stumbled across Maggie Crew, injured and incoherent from the hours she had spent on the moor. Ben Cooper wondered if Yvonne had guessed what had happened that night.

After that, Warren Leach had lived for the best part of two months with the fear and expectation that an injured woman’s memories would return. He had tried to live a life under those circumstances, seeing every visitor as an enemy, recognizing the potential for betrayal even in his own wife. Perhaps especially in his own wife. Cooper knew that no one could live with that kind of uncertainty. No wonder Leach could see no point in carrying on.

Maggie Crew had been a serious threat to Leach, that was obvious. Yet there had been someone who had seen Jenny Weston as the main target. Had that been Leach? Or had that been Maggie herself?

‘Teasdale will be charged with manslaughter and a few other things,’ said DCI Tailby. ‘They all admit the assault on Calvin Lawrence and Simon Bevington at the quarry. They made a good job of drawing our attention there. And, of course, there’s the dog-fighting pit.’

‘There must be more,’ said Chief Superintendent Jepson.

‘We’re quite sure there are others involved. But these people have their own sense of loyalty, too. They won’t implicate anyone else.’

‘I don’t mean more people. I mean Jenny Weston. Please tell me we can connect somebody to Jenny Weston, after all this. .’

But Tailby shook his head.

‘Yes, I lay in wait for Jenny that day,’ Maggie had said. ‘I waited at the tower, because she always came that way. I had met her before, two days earlier, and we had argued. I was angry with her — I didn’t believe her when she said she had no idea where Ros had gone. She was my main hope, because I suspected then that there was more to their relationship. But of course I did it all wrong. I antagonized her.’

‘We don’t believe there was any relationship between them, other than a loose connection through the animal rights group. No sexual relationship. Jenny Weston and your daughter were not lovers.’

‘That’s what Jenny told me, too. As far as she was concerned, Ros was just a silly, hot-headed girl who had passed through her life and was soon forgotten.’

‘But you didn’t believe her.’

And Maggie hesitated. ‘Actually, I suppose I did.’

‘So why did you attack her? Why did you use the knife?’

‘Did I do that? But yesterday, it felt as though I’d never held a knife in my life before. No, I don’t believe I saw Jenny Weston. Either she never came to the tower, or I was too late. I didn’t see her. Not that day.’

‘You expect us to believe that?’

‘You’ll have to,’ she said. ‘I think it’s true.’

Chief Superintendent Jepson scowled angrily at his officers, his blue eyes glittering.

‘Yes, I’m afraid it is true,’ said DCI Tailby.

‘Are we sure ?’

‘The shoe print over the bloodstain is much too big to be Maggie Crew’s. Or Simon Bevington’s either, for that matter.’

‘Damn.’

‘Also, some strength was needed to drag the victim into the stone circle,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘We doubt that either of them would be capable of it, or would even attempt it. Besides, there’s the missing camera.’

Jepson frowned. ‘The camera?’

‘Well, Jenny Weston had reported the dog-fights to the RSPCA,’ said Hitchens. ‘We believe she’d taken some photographs, too. She carried an auto-focus camera with her when she was on the moor. Most likely, it was in her pouch.’

‘Which was missing when the body was found.’

‘Yes.’

‘Suggesting that whoever killed her knew what was likely to be on the film. So it has to have been one of the dog-fighters.’

‘Teasdale has told us that she took photographs of him and Warren Leach burying a pitbull terrier that had to be put down because of its injuries. They had taken it well away from the farm — close to the stone circle, in fact, in the trees there. But Jenny saw them. Teasdale says they stood no chance of catching her, because she was on a bike. But she knew they’d seen her.’