Stephen Booth - The kill call

‘Well, he enjoyed the work too much,’ said Fry. ‘That was his problem. It doesn’t do to get emotionally involved.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

Then Cooper remembered David Headon’s almost casual reference to Attack Warning Red, the recognized alert to an imminent nuclear attack during the 1960s. Attack Warning Red? That would have been the kill call on a massive scale.

They had lunch at the Miners’ Arms, a pub boasting that it was old enough to be pre-plague. Fry ate bacon-wrapped chicken breast stuffed with leeks and mushrooms, while Cooper had the home-made venison and orange pie.

As they ate, Cooper tried to close his ears to the voice of a man at a nearby table, boasting to two women that he kept a loaded pistol on his bedside table, in case of burglars. ‘ If I caught a burglar in my house, I’d shoot him. It’s the way I was trained.’

‘I heard your cat died,’ said Fry, draining half a glass of the house white.

As small talk, it wasn’t a brilliant opening. Cooper looked at the rapidly disappearing wine and wondered if Fry could really be as nervous as she seemed, so unaccustomed to a purely social situation.

‘How did you hear that?’ asked Cooper, genuinely curious about her sources of information.

‘Oh, it was mentioned around the office,’ said Fry vaguely. ‘Becky Hurst said something, I think.’

Office gossip, then? He didn’t think she ever noticed it, let alone paid any attention to it.

‘Yes, it’s true. Though I’m not entirely sure he was mine. He kind of came with the flat, and adopted me.’

‘Shame, though.’

‘You’re not a cat person, are you?’ said Cooper. ‘I’m sure you can’t be.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Well… no, you’re just not, Diane.’

Fry swallowed some more wine. ‘Can’t stand ’em,’ she admitted. ‘Aren’t you going to get a new one?’

‘I’m going to look this afternoon.’

‘From a sanctuary?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought it would be.’

Despite his best intentions, Cooper felt himself bridle at her tone. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Human or animal, it has to be a lost cause with you. You have to be able to ride in like a knight in shining armour and perform the noble rescue. It’s what you get off on. I’ve seen it often enough.’

Her accusation was so unfair that Cooper didn’t know what to say. How had she known that he would choose a sanctuary? He’d been thinking only the other day of Cats Protection, who had a centre somewhere near Ashbourne. But there was a sanctuary closer than that, just outside Edendale, and he’d decided to give them a try first. That wasn’t wrong, was it? Anyone would do the same, rather than leave all those animals abandoned in cages.

Fry put down her glass for a moment.

‘Can I ask you something?’

Cooper could feel the mood change, like a cold draught blowing through the bar. He almost looked round to see who’d left the door open.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Did you ever really understand why I came to Derbyshire from Birmingham?’

‘Well, there was your sister,’ said Cooper cautiously, remembering a particularly difficult period between them, and reluctant to open up any old wounds. ‘You thought she was living in this part of the world. Sheffield, right?’

‘Yes. And?’

Fry gazed at him challengingly, waiting for a reply. It made Cooper feel as though he was a suspect in an interview room, forced to fill that uncomfortable silence with some confession of his own.

‘Well, I heard you had a bad time in Birmingham,’ he said.

‘A bad time?’ Fry tossed back the rest of her wine and looked around for another. ‘What does that mean?’

‘There was the assault case.’

‘Oh, you heard about that? Who told you?’

Cooper shifted nervously. He recalled mentioning it himself, to Liz Petty.

‘I don’t know, Diane. It was a story that went around the office, not long after you arrived.’

‘I’d like to know who spread the story.’

‘I honestly don’t know. Are you saying it isn’t true?’

‘No, it’s quite true.’

‘I appreciate it’s something you might not want to talk about.’

Fry stared at her empty glass. For a moment, Cooper thought she was going to start talking to him about it, that she wanted to tell him about the rape that had blighted her career in the West Midlands and had followed her to Derbyshire, like a shadow.

But if the thought had crossed her mind, she decided against it. Cooper realized that she wasn’t going to say more. Though he’d barely touched his own drink, he fetched her another glass of wine, and after a while the conversation moved on.

‘Lies,’ said Fry. ‘Casual disregard for the truth. Why do people always feel the need to lie, even about the smallest things?’

‘It’s an occupational hazard in our business,’ said Cooper, watching her attack her full glass.

Fry nodded. ‘My sister called me this week.’

Cooper froze. Not only at the unexpected turn of the conversation, but at Fry’s sudden change of tone. Just when he thought she was about to thaw a little, she produced a knife to stab into his guts.

‘Angie?’ he said, knowing that he sounded completely feeble.

‘I don’t have any other sisters.’

‘Is she…?’ Cooper didn’t know what he meant to ask.

‘Much the same as the last time you talked to her,’ said Fry. ‘Probably much the same as the first time, too.’

‘Diane, I know we never talked about that — ’

‘You’re damn right we didn’t.’

‘Is there anything I can say that would help?’

‘You can tell me why you went to all that trouble to find my sister and plot with her behind my back. It’s something you should have explained to me a long time ago, Ben. A long time.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t find her. She found me.’

He was starting to feel a bit more confident now. None of it had been his fault, really. He knew that. But Diane was right — he’d never explained it to her. He’d been afraid to.

Fry stared at him. ‘Are you saying it was all Angie’s idea?’

‘Yes.’

That didn’t make her look any happier. Cooper searched for the right words to use that would get him past this moment. But Fry was too impatient, and she couldn’t wait for him to make his mind up.

‘More lies,’ she said. ‘It gets depressing.’

‘Diane — ’

She held up a hand. ‘No, that’s enough. I shouldn’t have asked. I ought to have known better.’

There was an awkward silence. Cooper fidgeted, wishing for an excuse to get up and move away. He exchanged glances with the people at the other table, who’d been staring at Fry. They turned away in embarrassment.

To his immense relief, it was Fry who broke the silence. She seemed to have two distinct halves to her brain, the way she could switch from one to the other so easily. But there was no doubt about it, thought Cooper — the professional part of her brain was the one that assumed dominance most easily.

‘Lies,’ she said again, and took a long breath, as if inhaling the fumes from her wine. ‘You know, the first person to deceive us in the Rawson enquiry was the manager at Le Chien Noir,’ she said.

‘How is that?’ said Cooper, eager to encourage this time.

‘He was so vague about the man that Patrick Rawson was having dinner with that Monday night. He couldn’t give a completely misleading description, in case we asked anyone else and their version contradicted his. So he was deliberately vague. He knew perfectly well who the other man was — Maurice Gains, Rawson’s partner in R amp; G Enterprises.’

‘Oh. They were trying to find restaurants to serve their horse meat, weren’t they?’